Space Command Reaches Full Operational Capability (Buzzword Bingo Buffet)

epochtimes  | The U.S. Space Command, the Pentagon’s newest and 11th combatant command, has reached full operating capability, according to its commander, Army Gen. James Dickinson.

Gen. Dickinson made the declaration during a headquarters town hall on Dec. 15, according to a statement. The U.S. Space Command (USSPACECOM) was created in 2019 at the direction of former President Donald Trump.

“Since its establishment in 2019, USSPACECOM has been singularly focused on delivering exquisite capability to the joint force to deter conflict, defend our vital interests, and, if necessary, defeat aggression,” Gen. Dickinson said.

“Thanks to the disciplined initiative of our people and the support of our joint, combined, and partnered team, I can confidently say we have reached full operational capability.”

He explained that the announcement followed an “in-depth evaluation of the command’s capabilities,” including the ability to execute its mission on “our worst day, when we are needed the most.”

The declaration of full operating capability met certain criteria, including having the appropriate numbers of skills across the human capital and having the necessary command processes and functions in place, according to Gen. Dickinson.

“As the command has matured, challenges to a safe, secure, stable, and sustainable space domain have significantly increased,” Gen. Dickinson said. “Both the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation are fielding counter space capabilities designed to hold U.S., Allied, and partner space assets at risk.”

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has said that it'll become a “major space power” sometime around 2030 and that it's planning to double the size of its space station in the next few years.

Rick Fischer, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, in a commentary published by The Epoch Times last month, warned that “China has no hesitation to arm its space stations and other large manned space platforms, including its bases on the moon and beyond,” no matter what China’s state-run media have stated.

 “Until the CCP expires or abandons its ambitions for hegemony on Earth, the United States and its partners in space will need to achieve security, meaning they will require military capabilities in space to use against Beijing’s manned and unmanned space systems intended to attack the democracies,” Mr. Fischer added.

The command had completed its first training exercise with the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, which “served as a major step in validating the headquarters staff as a ready, joint force,” Gen. Dickinson said.

“Our work continues,” he said. “As the complexity of the domain grows, so must our capability to deliver operational and strategic effects to our nation and preserve the safety and stability of the domain.”

In July, President Joe Biden said the U.S. Space Command’s headquarters would remain at Peterson Air Force in Colorado Springs, Colorado, reversing President Trump’s plans to move it to Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama.

Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) both released statements on Dec. 15 welcoming the command’s news.

 

 

 

 

The Pentagon Can't Account For 63% Of Its Assets But Congress Gives Them $886 Billion Just The Same...,

thepressunited  |   The US Department of Defense has failed its sixth annual audit in a row, but taxpayer money will keep going down that drain

Recently, the Pentagon admitted it couldn’t account for trillions of dollars of US taxpayer money, having failed a massive yearly audit for the sixth year running.

The process consisted of the 29 sub-audits of the DoD’s various services, and only seven passed this year – no improvement over the last. These audits only began taking place in 2017, meaning that the Pentagon has never successfully passed one.

This year’s failure made some headlines, was commented upon briefly by the mainstream media, and then just as quickly forgotten by an American society accustomed to pouring money down the black hole of defense spending.

The defense budget of the United States is grotesquely large, its $877 billion dwarfing the $849 billion spent by the next ten nations with the largest defense expenditures. And yet, the Pentagon cannot fully account for the $3.8 trillion in assets and $4 trillion in liabilities it has accrued at US taxpayer expense, ostensibly in defense of the United States and its allies. As the Biden administration seeks $886 billion for next year’s defense budget (and Congress seems prepared to add an additional $80 billion to that amount), the apparent indifference of the American collective – government, media, and public – to how nearly $1 trillion in taxpayer dollars will be spent speaks volumes about the overall bankrupt nature of the American establishment. 

Audits, however, are an accountant’s trick, a series of numbers on a ledger which, for the average person, do not equate to reality. Americans have grown accustomed to seeing big numbers when it comes to defense spending, and as a result, we likewise expect big things from our military. But the fact is, the US defense establishment increasingly physically resembles the numbers on the ledgers the accountants have been trying to balance – it just doesn’t add up. 

Despite spending some $2.3 trillion on a two-decade military misadventure in Afghanistan, the American people witnessed the ignominious retreat from that nation live on TV in August 2021. Likewise, a $758 billion investment in the 2003 invasion and subsequent decade-long occupation of Iraq went south when the US was compelled to withdraw in 2011– only to return in 2014 for another decade of chasing down ISIS, itself a manifestation of the failures of the original Iraqi venture. Overall, the US has spent more than $1.8 trillion on its 20-year nightmare in Iraq and Syria.

Gaza Fitna Eclipse Fallujah And Mariupol F'Sho (REDUX Originally Posted 9/15/20)

Gestapo Surveillance was invented during America's Conquest of the Philippines...,

Counterpunch |  Entitled Future Strategic Issues/Future Warfare [Circa 2025], the PowerPoint presentation anticipates: a) scenarios created by U.S. forces and agencies and b) scenarios to which they might have to respond. The projection is contingent on the use of hi-technology. According to the report there are/will be six Technological Ages of Humankind: “Hunter/killer groups (sic) [million BC-10K BC]; Agriculture [10K BC-1800 AD]; Industrial [1800-1950]; IT [1950-2020]; Bio/Nano [2020-?]; Virtual.”

In the past, “Hunter/gatherer” groups fought over “hunting grounds” against other “tribal bands” and used “handheld/thrown” weapons. In the agricultural era, “professional armies” also used “handheld/thrown” weapons to fight over “farm lands.” In the industrial era, conscripted armies fought over “natural resources,” using “mechanical and chemical” weapons. In our time, “IT/Bio/Bots” (robots) are used to prevent “societal disruption.” The new enemy is “everyone.” “Everyone.”

Similarly, a British Ministry of Defence projection to the year 2050 states: “Warfare could become ever more personalised with individuals and their families being targeted in novel ways.”

“KNOWLEDGE DOMINANCE”

The war on you is the militarization of everyday life with the express goal of controlling society, including your thoughts and actions.

A U.S. Army document on information operations from 2003 specifically cites activists as potential threats to elite interests. “Nonstate actors, ranging from drug cartels to social activists, are taking advantage of the possibilities the information environment offers,” particularly with the commercialization of the internet. “Info dominance” as the Space Command calls it can counter these threats: “these actors use the international news media to attempt to influence global public opinion and shape decision-maker perceptions.” Founded in 1977, the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command featured an Information Dominance Center, itself founded in 1999 by the private, veteran-owned company, IIT.

“Information Operations in support of civil-military interactions is becoming increasingly more important as non-kinetic courses-of-action are required,” wrote two researchers for the military in 1999. They also said that information operations, as defined by the Joint Chiefs of Staff JP 3-13 (1998) publication, “are aimed at influencing the information and information systems of an adversary.” They also confirm that “[s]uch operations require the continuous and close integration of offensive and defensive activities … and may involve public and civil affairs-related actions.” They conclude: “This capability begins the transition from Information Dominance to Knowledge Dominance.”

“ATTUNED TO DISPARITIES”

The lines between law enforcement and militarism are blurred, as are the lines between military technology and civilian technology. Some police forces carry military-grade weapons. The same satellites that enable us to use smartphones enable the armed forces to operate.

In a projection out to the year 2036, the British Ministry of Defence says that “[t]he clear distinction between combatants and non-combatants will be increasingly difficult to discern,” as “the urban poor will be employed in the informal sector and will be highly vulnerable to externally-derived economic shocks and illicit exploitation” (emphasize in original). This comes as Boris Johnson threatens to criminalize Extinction Rebellion and Donald Trump labels Black Lives Matter domestic terrorists.

In 2017, the U.S. Army published The Operational Environment and the Changing Character of Future Warfare. The report reads: “The convergence of more information and more people with fewer state resources will constrain governments’ efforts to address rampant poverty, violence, and pollution, and create a breeding ground for dissatisfaction among increasingly aware, yet still disempowered populations.”

Pentagon Leaks 5 Key Revelations

sputnikglobe  |  The appearance online of what looks like secret documents concerning US intelligence assessments of the conflict in Ukraine and their proliferation by media have sparked widespread controversy, with observers divided into two broad camps: those who believe the docs are genuine, and those who have reservations. Here’s what we know right now.

The leak of over 100 photographed pages of documents dated between late February and early March and labeled “Secret,” “Top Secret,” and “NOFORN” (not for viewing by foreign nationals) related to the ongoing NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine continues to generate global headlines. It has also had a real world impact, with Washington officials scrambling to contact and reassure allies amid embarrassing revelations that the US has been spying on its own allies (although, of course, that’s nothing new to anyone who’s been paying attention).

Key Takeaways
As the dust settles and the potential security implications of the leaks (including, potentially, the judiciousness of further US and NATO military assistance to Kiev), several facts seem to stand out among the info gleaned.

1. A page from a “Top Secret” assessment from February highlights apparent major “force generation and sustainment shortfalls” within Ukraine’s Armed Forces, and warns that Kiev would be able to secure only “modest territorial gains” if it decided to launch a spring offensive.

The assessment is significant because it highlights the contrast between the glum internal appraisal by the Pentagon, and the gung ho, everything-is-awesome sentiment expressed by officials in Washington and Brussels, and by President Joe Biden’s brash talk of Kiev’s impressive capabilities to conduct large-scale offensive operations with US support.

The information also raises questions about just where the tens of billions of dollars in US and NATO security assistance to Kiev has gone, given growing concerns about Western weapons sent to Ukraine somehow popping up in the hands of European gangs and African and Middle Eastern rebels and terrorist groups, while the dollar value of arms deliveries to Ukraine comes close to matching Russia’s entire annual defense budget.2. Another significant document, also dating from February, highlights President Volodymyr Zelensky’s recommendation that Ukrainian forces carry out massed drone strikes against “Russian deployment locations in Russia’s Rostov Oblast,” and complaints that Kiev does not have the necessary long-range missile capabilities for such strikes.This piece of info is significant because it highlights President Zelensky’s apparent desperation and readiness to attack Russia directly despite warnings by some of his NATO paymasters that doing so might undermine their support for Kiev.3. The leaks challenge longstanding claims by the Pentagon and the Ukrainian military about casualties. A document entitled “Top Secret – Status of the Conflict as of March 01, 2023” estimates total Russian losses could be up to 16,000-17,500 killed in action, and 61,000-71,500 on the Ukrainian side.

That’s a far cry from the assessment by Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley in November, which estimated Russian deaths at “well over” 100,000 troops, as well as the Ukrainian military’s pie in the sky “eliminated personnel” figures of 180,050 (i.e. nearly matching the 190,000 troop total that Western intelligence estimated were near Donbass in February 2022 before the escalation of the crisis). 

Ukrainian officials and Western media have sought to downplay these figures, accusing Russia of “doctoring” the stats (despite possible secondary corroboration) and assuring that Russian casualties are much higher, and Ukrainian ones much lower. Wherever the truth lies, the figures serve to undermine confidence in Ukraine’s NATO-supported and equipped army of super soldiers.

4. Another key revelation relates to the extent of NATO involvement. While alliance officials have consistently assured that no Western forces are on the ground fighting against Russia, a “Top Secret” document dated March 23 indicates that nearly half-a-dozen NATO powers do in fact have “boots on the ground” in the form of special forces troops. These include Britain (50 troops), Latvia (17), France (15), the US (14), and the Netherlands (1).

It’s unclear what exactly these forces are doing there. The document doesn’t say. Apparently realizing the grave implications of this information, Britain’s Defense Ministry offered a catch-all dismissal of the documents, assuring in a Tweet Tuesday that “the widely reported leak of alleged classified US information has demonstrated a serious level of inaccuracy,” and that “readers should be cautious about taking at face value allegations that have the potential to spread disinformation.”

What’s significant about the NATO troops on the ground in Ukraine? Well, for one thing, they serve to confirm longstanding allegations made by senior Russian officials including President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that the US and its allies are waging a “total war” against Russia. Moreover, it raises important questions about the dangerous potential future of proxy wars. How, for example, would the US react if Russia or China deployed special forces troops to fight NATO forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, or Yugoslavia? The presence of Western alliance forces in Ukraine has effectively opened that can of worms.5. One final significant piece of information that can be gleaned from the documents relates to the state of Ukraine’s air defenses. A Pentagon assessment dated February 28 projected that Kiev’s stocks of Soviet-made Buk and S-300 missile systems – which make up almost 90 percent of the country’s air defenses, would be “fully depleted” by mid-April and May 3, respectively. A second slide from an assessment from February 23 predicts that Ukrainian forces’ frontline protection would be “completely reduced” by May 23.

This information is significant because it seems to confirm that the US and its allies are running out of time to shore up their client’s air defense protection before Russia gains total air superiority similar to the kind its Air Force enjoyed in the counterterrorism operation in Syria, or the kind the US and its allies typically have when they decide to bomb a third world country.

The US has promised to provide Ukraine with its bulky Patriot missile system and to ramp up deliveries of other anti-air weaponry, but observers have expressed concerns about the ability of the US military-industrial complex to ramp up production quickly enough, and questioned whether Washington will be willing to send additional sophisticated air defense hardware to a conflict zone where losses would mean a significant hit to US weapons makers if the equipment is lost.

Skepticism is Healthy
The leak of the documents online, and the fact that they were picked up by major legacy media resources in the West, has caused understandable consternation in some circles about whether or not they are genuine. After all, these are the same newspapers, outlets, and television networks that have pumped out story after debunked Russia-related story over the years and decades, from the claim that Russia paid bounties to the Taliban to kill US troops in Afghanistan, to the allegation that Moscow meddled in America’s elections in 2016 and secretly installed a “Manchurian Candidate” named Donald Trump.

“We don’t have a position,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told Sputnik when asked about the leaks. “Maybe it’s a fake, deliberate misinformation.”

Ryabkov explained that since Washington is a key party to the Ukraine conflict and is waging a hybrid war against Russia, the documents may be a ploy to mislead the Russian side. “I’m not confirming anything, but understand that various scenarios are conceivable here,” he said.

Publicly, at least, officials in Washington have treated the leaks as if they’re the real thing. Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin vowed that his department would “turn over every rock” until the “source” of the leaks was found and their extent clarified. CIA chief William Burns echoed Austin’s performance, calling the leaks “deeply unfortunate” and saying they were something the US government “takes extremely seriously.”

Amid reports that the Pentagon has been trying to scrub the leaked docs from the net, Twitter CEO Elon Musk sarcastically quipped that “yeah, you can totally delete things from the internet – it works perfectly and doesn’t draw attention to whatever you were trying to hide at all.”

Kiev, predictably, has blamed Moscow, calling the leaks a “Russian propaganda ploy.” Chinese media dismissed these assertions, suggesting that if Russia had gotten its hands on the documents, it would likely hold onto them and use them to its advantage against Ukraine and NATO instead of spreading them online.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the leaks “quite interesting.” As for the suggestion that Moscow might somehow be involved, he said that “the tendency to constantly blame Russia for everything is a widespread disease right now.”

The truth about who leaked the documents and why may never be found. However, a stream of retired US officials, Washington-based security advisors, and CIA analysts have told Sputnik that the “leaks” may be an attempt by “dissenters” and “realists” within the US security state establishment to provide Washington with a much-needed “offramp” from the ever-escalating conflict with Russia in Ukraine before it turns into a world war.

As If Obsolete Infrastructure And Thinking Weren't Bad Enough - There's Political Corruption As Well

responsiblestatecraft  |  This week U.S. government officials and defense industry personnel are walking the halls of the UAE’s International Defense Exhibition and Conference (IDEX) to promote some of the latest U.S. defense technology to the UAE and other Middle East buyers. The officials, however, will largely ignore one increasingly risky aspect of the deals defense companies will put on the table.

Typically referred to as “offsets,” these secretive “sweeteners” or investments masks corruption risks that could harm U.S. security interests and help keep millions in a constant state of poverty and conflict around the world. This U.S. approach also seriously undermines the Biden administration’s efforts to encourage U.S. companies and foreign governments to fight corruption and protect democracies.

Big Business

This year’s IDEX will be sure to result in many major arms sales agreements.. The EXPO comes at a time when defense spending is rising globally in response to growing threats and new conflicts. The UAE remains among the top arms buyers in the world. In 2019, the UAE Armed Forces signed 33 deals worth $2.8 billion with international companies at IDEX.

The United States continues to dominate arms sales to the UAE, but it faces competition from major players like China and European countries, as well as the growing defense production capabilities of countries like Turkey and Israel. Defense companies often rely on offsets to make their proposed arms sales more attractive to foreign buyers. Offset packages are essentially the selling company’s promises to invest in the buyer country’s defense industry (direct offsets) or broader economy (indirect offsets).

U.S. defense companies regularly agree to offset packages worth billions of dollars each year. In 2019, U.S. defense contractors reported entering into 31 new offset agreements with 12 countries valued at $8.2 billion, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. The value of these agreements often equaled more than half the total value of the arms deal. Some of the common types of U.S. company indirect offsets include agreements to purchase items from the procuring country, subcontract with their businesses, transfer desirable technologies, or provide credit assistance.

At the 2019 IDEX, the UAE announced a new offset policy for their arms purchases, which requires defense companies to include offsets for contracts at $10 million or more. Unlike some previous policies, this one focuses more on offsets to areas outside the defense sector (indirect offsets), including infrastructure, food and water security, and other strategic sectors. The policy encourages defense companies to use cash payments to satisfy offset requirements. The UAE has made it policy not to release any information publicly about its offsets agreements.

Facilitating Corruption

The use of offsets is controversial. In 2007, the European Commission directed European countries to put significant restrictions on companies using offsets as they viewed them as anti-competitive, and pushed member states to outlaw the use of indirect offsets. A common concern is that offsets transfer substantial resources, often to authoritarian governments, with very little transparency and even less accountability. Offsets, especially cash payments, can also serve as bribe money to help win a contract, avoid paying fees/penalties, or serve other corrupt purposes.

The Commerce Department has for years warned U.S. companies about investing in sovereign wealth funds in Persian Gulf countries and beyond out of concern that these funds could easily serve as vehicles for bribes. These funds can also be used to support foreign lobbying of the U.S. government. In 2016 and 2017, The Intercept reported that U.S. companies offset cash payments to the UAE’s sovereign wealth fund, Tawazun Holding, resulting in some $20 million reaching the DC-based Middle East Institute, which has promoted expanding sales of U.S. arms to Gulf countries.

The UAE’s refocus on indirect offsets, after a decade of focus on direct offsets, elevates the risks for U.S. companies indirectly supporting strategic sectors of the UAE economy that fuel conflict in Africa and facilitate money laundering. In 2009, an Italian defense company agreed to a joint production project to build a gold and silver refining plant in the UAE as part of its offset deal. Gold trade experts have raised concerns about the central role the UAE is playing in allowing gold acquired illicitly by African armed groups to be refined and resold to European and U.S. markets, masking and reinforcing conflict dynamics and death in Central and Eastern Africa.

U.S. and European defense companies have also invested in the UAE’s real estate markets through offsets. This strategic sector, however, has reportedly been a major source of money laundering for foreign public officials and U.S. sanctioned individuals. Think-tank reports on this sector have described how foreign public officials have invested millions in UAE’s luxury homes with money stolen from national budgets, leaving their own citizens in a perpetual state of poverty. International arms traffickers, such as AQ Kahn and Viktor Bout, have also used the UAE as a base of operations to ship weapons to U.S. adversaries.

America's Cold-War Military Industrial Complex CANNOT Be Modernized (REDUX 2/15/23)

wired  |  “Let's imagine we’re going to build a better war-fighting system,” Schmidt says, outlining what would amount to an enormous overhaul of the most powerful military operation on earth. “We would just create a tech company.” He goes on to sketch out a vision of the internet of things with a deadly twist. “It would build a large number of inexpensive devices that were highly mobile, that were attritable, and those devices—or drones—would have sensors or weapons, and they would be networked together.”

The problem with today’s Pentagon is hardly money, talent, or determination, in Schmidt’s opinion. He describes the US military as “great human beings inside a bad system”—one that evolved to serve a previous era dominated by large, slow, expensive projects like aircraft carriers and a bureaucratic system that prevents people from moving too quickly. Independent studies and congressional hearings have found that it can take years for the DOD to select and buy software, which may be outdated by the time it is installed. Schmidt says this is a huge problem for the US, because computerization, software, and networking are poised to revolutionize warfare.

Ukraine’s response to Russia’s invasion, Schmidt believes, offers pointers for how the Pentagon might improve. The Ukrainian military has managed to resist a much larger power in part by moving quickly and adapting technology from the private sector—hacking commercial drones into weapons, repurposing defunct battlefield connectivity systems, 3D printing spare parts, and developing useful new software for tasks like military payroll management in months, not years.

Schmidt offers another thought experiment to illustrate the bind he’s trying to get the US military out of. “Imagine you and I decide to solve the Ukrainian problem, and the DOD gives us $100 million, and we have a six-month contest,” he says. “And after six months somebody actually comes up with some new device or new tool or new method that lets the Ukrainians win.” Problem solved? Not so fast. “Everything I just said is illegal,” Schmidt says, because of procurement rules that forbid the Pentagon from handing out money without going through careful but overly lengthy review processes.

The Pentagon’s tech problem is most pressing, Schmidt says, when it comes to AI. “Every once in a while, a new weapon, a new technology comes along that changes things,” he says. “Einstein wrote a letter to Roosevelt in the 1930s saying that there is this new technology—nuclear weapons—that could change war, which it clearly did. I would argue that [AI-powered] autonomy and decentralized, distributed systems are that powerful.”

With Schmidt’s help, a similar view has taken root inside the DOD over the past decade, where leaders believe AI will revolutionize military hardware, intelligence gathering, and backend software. In the early 2010s the Pentagon began assessing technology that could help it maintain an edge over an ascendant Chinese military. The Defense Science Board, the agency’s top technical advisory body, concluded that AI-powered autonomy would shape the future of military competition and conflict.

But AI technology is mostly being invented in the private sector. The best tools that could prove critical to the military, such as algorithms capable of identifying enemy hardware or specific individuals in video, or that can learn superhuman strategies, are built at companies like Google, Amazon, and Apple or inside startups.

“The big challenge that the US military faces going forward is how to rapidly adapt commercial technologies for military use faster than competitors,” says Paul Scharre, a vice president at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank, and the author of Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, a forthcoming book about AI and geopolitics. Scharre notes in his book that the Pentagon’s share of global R&D spending has declined from 36 percent in 1960 to 4 percent today.

“We're trying to build a 21st century military with 20th century bureaucracy.”

Paul Scharre, Center for a New American Security

The US DOD primarily works with the private sector through large defense contractors specialized in building expensive hardware over years, not nimble software development. Pentagon contracts with large tech companies, including Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft, have become more common but have sometimes been controversial. Google’s work analyzing drone footage using AI under an initiative called Project Maven caused staff to protest, and the company let the contract lapse. Google has since increased its defense work, under rules that place certain projects—such as weapons systems—off limits.

Scharre says it is valuable to have people like Schmidt, with serious private sector clout, looking to bridge the gap.

 

 

 

Shame These Other Countries Are Sitting On Top Of OUR Resources...,

washingtontimes |  The world’s attention may be focused on the fighting in Ukraine and the posturing over Taiwan, but there’s plenty to worry about closer to home, the commander of U.S. military forces in Latin America said Thursday.

The U.S. is also willing to replace Russian military firepower now used by armies in Latin America so it can be shipped to Ukraine to help Kyiv fight off Russian invaders, Army Gen. Laura Richardson, the head of U.S. Southern Command, told a Washington think tank.

“We have a lot at stake. This region matters,” Gen. Richardson said. “It has a lot to do with national security. We need to step up our game.”

While leftist regimes Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua are considered firmly in Moscow’s camp, Gen. Richardson said Washington is working with other countries in South America that still use military hardware that originated in Russia, which she called her “No. 2 adversary in the region.”

“A total of nine [countries] have Russian equipment in them and we are working to replace that Russian equipment with United States equipment,” Gen. Richardson said in the online conversation hosted by the Atlantic Council.

Gen. Richardson considers Russia and China, both of whom have reached out to Central and South American states in recent years, to be “malign state actors” in the region. 

“This is very concerning to me — to see the tentacles of the [People’s Republic of China] in the countries of the Western Hemisphere,” she said. “We are very much in a strategic competition in the Western Hemisphere.”

China’s ever-expanding footprint in South America has long worried U.S. strategists. Beijing’s trade footprint in the region has grown from $18 billion in 2002 to $450 billion now. The trade is predicted to be about $750 billion in the near future, she said.

Beijing has at least 30 port facilities scattered throughout the region, including five located on the Pacific and Atlantic sides of the Panama Canal. It operates a satellite tracking station in Argentina that reports to the People’s Liberation Army and has no oversight from local officials in Buenos Aires.

“I worry about these dual-use, state-owned enterprises that pop up” from China, Gen. Richardson said. “I worry about the dual-use capability, being able to flip them around and use them for the military.”

At least seven Chinese-owned banks are also operating in Latin America, making heavy infrastructure investments that outpace the U.S. presence. Much of the region is struggling economically and Beijing is willing to write checks now. Even with strings attached, it is a tempting deal that many are unable to pass up.

“The people are getting impatient. They need help now,” Gen. Richardson said. “We are just not investing in the region as we could or should be.”

Even as it struggles in Ukraine, Moscow continues to cultivate relationships with countries like Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. High-level Russian delegations visited all three countries just before the invasion of Ukraine 11 months ago, Gen. Richardson said.

“They will keep up those relationships for as long as they can to keep their foothold in the region,” she said. “The more they can sow that insecurity [and] that instability, they can keep countries looking away from the United States and away from democracy.”

She said her third major concern in Latin America is the drug cartels and other transnational criminal organizations. The groups are responsible for about $310 billion worth of criminal activity in the region every year, including funds derived from narcotics trafficking and human smuggling.

“They sow insecurity and instability in the region, which allows the malign state actors such as [China] and Russia to move in and to flourish,” Gen. Richardson said.

The Colonial Audacity Of General Laura Richardson Is PRICELESS....,

The U.S. wants to take Russian military equipment from Russia’s Latin American allies and "donate it to Ukraine". pic.twitter.com/ghmjfGav1X

— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) January 21, 2023

A year ago plans were put in motion to draw Russia into a fight in the Ukraine accompanied by economic ’shock and awe’ on the Russian economy that would cause Putin’s government to collapse . This would help initiate a process that would lead to the break up of the Russian Federation. These plans would have taken years to be drawn up. Doubtless western officials and NATO officers were  checking out real estate prices in Moscow in preparation for for their next assignments. So the Russians saw this as nothing less than an existential fight for their very existence. You can imagine how people in Washington would feel if there was a plan to break up the United States into a couple dozen smaller countries.

Well it didn’t work out that way and the Russian economy is doing just fine. So here is the problem. The Ukraine is about to get crunched and no matter what hodgepodge of old military gear we send to them, it won’t make a difference. This being the case, the collective west has now realized that the shoe is on the other foot. They now think that it is an existential fight for organizations like NATO. This being a NATO-Russia war, NATO finds that no matter what they do they are on the verge of defeat. They keep on escalating but it is the Russians that have escalatory dominance. Even if NATO decides to openly send troops to the Ukraine, it won’t do much good as they have run their arms and ammunition stockpiles down. Germany has two days worth of ammo for example while France has only four.

Sure there are threats to use nukes but where? Russia won’t be the first and so that leaves the US. They start bombing the Russian Federation and the same day the US is just glass. And this includes the Crimea and the Donbass along with the other new Oblasts. And are they really going to drop one in the Ukraine after all their speeches about trying to protect that country? Would they really just nuke the Ukraine? Maybe they could drop one in the Mediterranean as a warning – but have the entire planet get on their case. The trouble is nukes are the one weapon that you can’t use, no matter how many you have.

We are now arriving at the moment when the West discovers that the fraud is over, the shake-down has failed, and everyone can see it.

What then?

Our entire economy needs a make-over. That’s the best-case scenario; a strategy that will restore the West as a constructive, useful entity in world affairs. That’s a viable future.

The likelier scenario is that the predation currently aimed at Russia and China will get re-directed toward the global south (they’re more vulnerable) and, more intensively, on North and Central America.

The economy won’t get fixed, extraction and despoliation will continue at roughly the current pace, and we’ll continue at-speed into the environmental and economic collapse

WATCH: 🇺🇸 SOUTHCOM Commander Laura Richardson describes how Washington is actively negotiating the sale of lithium in the Lithium Triangle through its U.S. embassies. pic.twitter.com/uQTvpSRHAH

— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) January 21, 2023

Finally When There's Nothing Left You Bust The Joint Out....,

BAR  |  One would think that Europeans would be outraged to see their already limited energy supply cut even further but they are strangely quiet. Sweden announced that it wouldn’t participate in a Joint Investigative Team because of fears that national security would be compromised. That’s a strange position to take considering that a terror attack took place near that country.

The countries involved are more than likely silent because they know that their super power ally, the United States, was involved in the sabotage. They murmur about Russia being the culprit but they also know that makes no logical sense whatsoever.

Europe is under the thumb of the United States, which is determined to turn allies into impoverished vassal states. France is suffering from fuel shortages created by sanctions against Russia and a general strike has been called. Italians are also protesting high fuel prices and are calling for an end to that country’s EU and NATO memberships. But these governments dare not complain.

The U.S. runs a protection racket not unlike that of its infamous organized criminal gangs. The state is reminiscent of characters in the movie Goodfellas, who promised partnerships with local businesses only to loot them and then set them on fire. The Biden administration is akin to a mafioso boss. European governments do nothing but grovel out of fear, which is just what the criminal gang wants.

The truth of U.S. “partnerships” with allies has been revealed as a gigantic fraud. In reality these countries are living under occupation and now there is no pretense that they will be treated any differently from other countries living under U.S. control. Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, and the UK all have U.S. troops stationed on their soil. Germany has gold reserves held by the Federal Reserves. They are not truly independent and the Nord Stream sabotage shows it.

Russia isn’t the only country the U.S. is trying to weaken. The hegemon has come out of the closet. It has no friends, only enemies and puppets and all end up being treated badly. Europe went along with the scam only to see the ruble rise in value and the euro decline. It turned out that Russia had a strong economy while the Europeans were very weak.

Missile Defense Fantasies: AKA That Above Top Secret Green Gas BeeDee Was Talm'bout....,

undark |  century now, governments and their military forces have enlisted the aid of scientists and engineers to invent weapons, devise defenses, and advise on their use and deployment.

Unfortunately, scientific and technological realities don’t always conform to the preferred policies of politicians and generals. Back in the 1950s, some U.S. officials liked to proclaim that scientists should be “on tap, not on top”: in other words, ready to provide handy advice when needed, but not offering advice that contradicted the official line. That attitude has persisted into the present, but scientists have steadfastly refused to play along.

One of the best-known leaders of this resistance is Theodore “Ted” Postol, professor emeritus of science, technology, and national security policy at MIT. Trained as a physicist and nuclear engineer, Postol has spent a career immersed in the details of military and defense technology. He worked for Congress in the now-defunct Office of Technology Assessment, then in the Pentagon as an adviser to the Chief of Naval Operations before joining academia, first at Stanford University and then returning to his alma mater, MIT.

Throughout, he has been an outspoken critic of unworkable concepts, impractical ideas, and failed technological fantasies, including Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” system, the vaunted Patriot missile of the first Gulf War, and more recent intercontinental ballistic missile defense concepts tested by the U.S. His investigations and analyses have repeatedly revealed self-deception, misrepresentation, flawed research, and outright fraud from the Pentagon, academic and private laboratories, and Congress.

When we contacted him, we found that, far from being retired at age 70, he was preparing to travel to Germany to consult with the German Foreign Ministry on European-Russian relations. His work exemplifies the eternal verity that if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. In the exchange below, his responses have been edited for length and clarity.

The Nixon Piece Concrete-Specifically Completed The Jigsaw Puzzle Of Our Current Predicament

chrishedges |  The United States, as the near unanimous vote to provide nearly $40 billion in aid to Ukraine illustrates, is trapped in the death spiral of unchecked militarism. No high speed trains. No universal health care. No viable Covid relief program. No respite from 8.3 percent inflation. No infrastructure programs to repair decaying roads and bridges, which require $41.8 billion to fix the 43,586 structurally deficient bridges, on average 68 years old. No forgiveness of $1.7 trillion in student debt. No addressing income inequality. No program to feed the 17 million children who go to bed each night hungry. No rational gun control or curbing of the epidemic of nihilistic violence and mass shootings. No help for the 100,000 Americans who die each year of drug overdoses. No minimum wage of $15 an hour to counter 44 years of wage stagnation. No respite from gas prices that are projected to hit $6 a gallon.

The permanent war economy, implanted since the end of World War II, has destroyed the private economy, bankrupted the nation, and squandered trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. The monopolization of capital by the military has driven the US debt to $30 trillion, $ 6 trillion more than the US GDP of $ 24 trillion. Servicing this debt costs $300 billion a year. We spent more on the military, $ 813 billion for fiscal year 2023, than the next nine countries, including China and Russia, combined.

We are paying a heavy social, political, and economic cost for our militarism. Washington watches passively as the U.S. rots, morally, politically, economically, and physically, while China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, and other countries extract themselves from the tyranny of the U.S. dollar and the international Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a messaging network banks and other financial institutions use to send and receive information, such as money transfer instructions. Once the U.S. dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency, once there is an alternative to SWIFT, it will precipitate an internal economic collapse. It will force the immediate contraction of the U.S. empire shuttering most of its nearly 800 overseas military installations. It will signal the death of Pax Americana.

Democrat or Republican. It does not matter. War is the raison d'état of the state. Extravagant military expenditures are justified in the name of “national security.” The nearly $40 billion allocated for Ukraine, most of it going into the hands of weapons manufacturers such as Raytheon Technologies, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing, is only the beginning. Military strategists, who say the war will be long and protracted, are talking about infusions of $4 or $5 billion in military aid a month to Ukraine. We face existential threats. But these do not count. The proposed budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in fiscal year 2023 is $10.675 billion. The proposed budget for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is $11.881 billion. Ukraine alone gets more than double that amount. Pandemics and the climate emergency are afterthoughts. War is all that matters. This is a recipe for collective suicide.

There were three restraints to the avarice and bloodlust of the permanent war economy that no longer exist. The first was the old liberal wing of the Democratic Party, led by politicians such as Senator George McGovern, Senator Eugene McCarthy, and Senator J. William Fulbright, who wrote The Pentagon Propaganda Machine. The self-identified progressives, a pitiful minority, in Congress today, from Barbara Lee, who was the single vote in the House and the Senate opposing a broad, open-ended authorization allowing the president to wage war in Afghanistan or anywhere else, to Ilhan Omar now dutifully line up to fund the latest proxy war. The second restraint was an independent media and academia, including journalists such as I.F Stone and Neil Sheehan along with scholars such as Seymour Melman, author of The Permanent War Economy and Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War. Third, and perhaps most important, was an organized anti-war movement, led by religious leaders such as Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr. and Phil and Dan Berrigan as well as groups such as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). They understood that unchecked militarism was a fatal disease.

Russia Thwarted A Large-Scale Ukrainian Military Operation Against Lugansk And Donetsk

thesaker  |  During special military operation, classified documents (https://function.mil.ru/files/morf/dokumentynua.pdf)of the command of the National Guard of Ukraine ended up in the hands of the Russian servicemen. These documents confirm the covert preparation by the Kiev regime of an offensive operation in the Donbass in March 2022.

The Russian Ministry of Defence publishes the original secret order of the commander of the National Guard of Ukraine, Colonel-General Nikolai Balan, dated January 22, 2022.

Order “On organizing the training of a battalion tactical group of the 4th operational brigade to perform combat (special) tasks in the joint forces operation as part of a brigade of the armed forces of Ukraine.”

The document is addressed to the heads of the northern Kiev, southern Odessa and western territorial departments of the National Guard of Ukraine.

The order, brought to the command of the National Guard of Ukraine, explains the plan for preparing one of the shock groups for offensive operations in the so-called “Joint Forces Operation” zone in Donbass.
The document approves the organizational structure of the battalion-tactical group of the 4th operational brigade of the National Guard, the organization of its comprehensive support and reassignment to the 80th separate air assault brigade of Ukraine.

I would like to emphasize that since 2016, this formation of the air assault troops of Ukraine has been trained by American and British instructors under the “NATO standard” training programs in Lvov.

In accordance with the order, the Deputy Commander of the National Guard was tasked with organizing joint combat training of the battalion-tactical group of the National Guard as part of the 80th separate air assault brigade of the armed forces of Ukraine from February 7 to February 28, 2022.

I draw your attention that as many as five paragraphs of 4th paragraph are devoted to the issues of careful selection of personnel, psychologists examination and ensuring their high motivation.

For this reason, the National Guard servicemen are provided with “visual agitation, information and propaganda materials, flags, and printing products.”

The deputy commander of the National Guard for Staffing (personnel) was ordered to organize “an effective system of moral and psychological support for the battalion tactical group of the 4th operational brigade, internal communications of commanders with subordinates, informing.”

At the same time, it is important to provide “an explanation to the personnel of command decisions and the importance of upcoming tasks.”

I draw special attention to the fact that the 12th paragraph of the order prohibits sending National Guard servicemen who showed “unsatisfactory” results of psychological testing according to the criterion of “risk appetite” to the area of joint command training and to the place of “combat special tasks”.

All events of joint combat training of the nationalists are ordered to be completed by February 28 in order to further ensure the fulfillment of combat missions as part of the Ukrainian “Joint Forces Operation” in Donbass.

The document contains the original signatures of the officials of the command of the National Guard of Ukraine responsible for the tasks.

We remember the statements by the leadership of the Kiev regime replicated by the Western media in February, that there were no plans for an armed seizure of Lugansk and Donetsk people’s republics. About their desire to resolve all issues in “political and diplomatic way.”

However, the originals of the secret military documents of the National Guard of Ukraine clearly prove the falsity of these statements.

A special military operation of the Russian Armed Forces, conducted since February 24, thwarted a large-scale offensive operation of Ukrainian troops on the Lugansk and Donetsk people’s republics in March of this year.

Thus, only one question remains unclear so far: how deeply the US leadership and its NATO allies were involved in the planning and preparation of the operation to storm the Donbass by the Ukrainian joint force grouping in early March. All those who care so much about peace in Ukraine today.

T-Shirt Churchill Damn Near As Gangsta As "The Big Guy" Brandon

occrp  |  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rode to power on pledges to clean up the Eastern European country, but the Pandora Papers reveal he and his close circle were the beneficiaries of a network of offshore companies, including some that owned expensive London property.

Key Findings

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his partners in comedy production owned a network of offshore companies related to their business based in the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus, and Belize.
• Zelensky’s current chief aide, Serhiy Shefir, as well as the head of the country’s Security Service, were part of the offshore network.
• Offshore companies were used by Shefir and another business partner to buy pricey London real estate.
• Around the time of his 2019 election, Zelensky handed his shares in a key offshore company over to Shefir, but the two appear to have made an arrangement for Zelensky’s family to continue receiving money from the offshore.

Actor Volodymyr Zelensky stormed to the Ukrainian presidency in 2019 on a wave of public anger against the country’s political class, including previous leaders who used secret companies to stash their wealth overseas.

Now, leaked documents prove that Zelensky and his inner circle have had their own network of offshore companies. Two belonging to the president’s partners were used to buy expensive property in London.

The revelations come from documents in the Pandora Papers, millions of files from 14 offshore service providers leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and shared with partners around the world including OCCRP.

The documents show that Zelensky and his partners in a television production company, Kvartal 95, set up a network of offshore firms dating back to at least 2012, the year the company began making regular content for TV stations owned by Ihor Kolomoisky, an oligarch dogged by allegations of multi-billion-dollar fraud. The offshores were also used by Zelensky associates to purchase and own three prime properties in the center of London.

The documents also show that just before he was elected, he gifted his stake in a key offshore company, the British Virgin Islands-registered Maltex Multicapital Corp., to his business partner — soon to be his top presidential aide. And in spite of giving up his shares, the documents show that an arrangement was soon made that would allow the offshore to keep paying dividends to a company that now belongs to his wife.

A comedian and actor who had been famous since the 2000s, Zelensky began his political rise a few years after taking on a starring role in the political satire “Servant of the People,” which began airing on the oligarch’s network in 2015. The show starred Zelensky as a humble history teacher whose anti-corruption rant in class is filmed by a student, goes viral online, and wins him national office.

In a case of life imitating art, Zelensky ended up winning the real-world Ukrainian presidency just three-and-a-half years after the show’s launch, with more than 73 percent of the vote.

Zelensky capitalized on widespread public anger at corruption, but his 2019 campaign was dogged by doubts over his anti-graft bona fides, given that his campaign was boosted by media belonging to Kolomoisky — who is accused of stealing US$5.5 billion from his own bank and funneling it offshore in concert with his partner, Hennadiy Boholiubov.

In the heat of the campaign, a political ally of incumbent President Petro Poroshenko published a chart on Facebook purporting to show that Zelensky and his television production partners were beneficiaries of a web of offshore firms that allegedly received $41 million in funds from Kolomoisky’s Privatbank.

Former General David Petraeus Central European Media Mogul?

ojim  | All his life, Petraeus has built up his career by courting those highest in power. His passage from the summits of military and intelligence fields to the ranks of financiers is typically seen as one of retirement or resignation. We are inclined to see it as a promotion.

The career of David Howell Petraeus follows the same ascending line and the same red thread: the manipulation of perceptions. His case illustrates a radical change in the world of media. Before him, no one could have imagined a former chief of intelligence at the head of the media, especially not in a country he had helped to destroy. An enemy general, head of the secret service, and a propaganda specialist, he has imposed himself on the media of a bombed nation, under the pretext of bringing objective information to it – a real tour de force. But nothing shocks hearts and minds already conquered.

In the 1970s and 1980s, KKR was the pioneer of LBO, or the “leveraged buyout” – leverage here signifying massive debt. The architect of this concept, Jerome Kohlberg, soon worried by the “overpowering greed that pervades our business life,” would leave the fund he had created, leaving only his K at the head of the acronym. Following his departure, it was the second K, Henry Kravis, who would lead these LBOs to skyrocket, thus earning KKR the unflattering nickname of the “Barbarians of Wall Street” (the best-seller and film “Barbarians at the Gate” are dedicated to their historical LBO on RJR Nabisco). They would remain the champions of this method, despite the practice often resulting in the dismemberment or even bankruptcy of the companies bought, as was the case with their other historical LBO: Energy Future Holdings. The same method is now practiced by Patrick Drahi, who built his media empire on colossal debt.

At the end of 2016, Donald Trump was considering Petraeus for head of US diplomacy, but he would remain with KKR, henceforth as a partner. Kravis and Petraeus are also members of the Council on Foreign Relations and regular participants in Bilderberg meetings. Kravis was ranked 38th on the list of the richest Jews by the Jerusalem Post.

The “financial barbarians” spearheaded by Petraeus have erected a true media empire, but they have done so very discreetly, shying away from public scrutiny. Rare, reluctant, and belated investigations have, however, eventually revealed some details.

In 2015, a “Report on Ownership Structure and Control over Media in Serbia” by the Serbian Anti-Corruption Council identified the lack of transparency of media ownership as its priority issue. The following year, the ownership structure of United Group was investigated by the Slovenian newspaper Delo in cooperation with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). Their article “On the Dark Side of Telemach” finally allowed the people of the region a behind-the-scenes look at their prime source of information. What they found in their probe was a labyrinth of ghost offshore companies, mushrooming in tax havens in order to hide the original owners and their financial networks.

 

Zelenskyy: The Servant Of The People

chesno |   The financial statements from the Servant of the People indicate that the party collected 226 million hryvnias (~$8 million USD) in donations while Zelenskyy and his associates’ election accounts collected 200 million hryvnias (~$7 million USD).

These numbers themselves seem relatively unremarkable, but the sources and types of donations are much more interesting.

Chesno reported that from September 2018 to September 2019 only 94 people donated to Servant of the People. Of the 94 people, most of these were entrepreneurs or sole proprietors. Most of the donations came from Kyiv, followed by donations from Odessa and Dnipro.

Chesno also found that 44 legal entities donated to the Servant of the People and Zelenskyy, with 34 of these entities donating 3 million hryvnias ($105,000 USD), which is just under the 3.3 million hryvnia ($120,000) limit placed on donations. The majority of these donations came from either Kyiv or Odessa.

More than 99% of all donations were more than 100,000 hryvnias ($3,500 USD); only two donations of less than 10,000 hryvnias ($350) were received in this time period.

To contextualize these figures, the minimum wage in Ukraine is 6,000 hryvnias per month ($220 USD) and the median salary in Ukraine is around 21,000 hryvnias ($775 USD).

This means that the majority of donations received by Zelenskyy and Servant of the People were more than what most Ukrainians make over five or six months of full-time work.

Chesno also found that some of the 94 personal donations came from questionable sources. Chesno interviewed Tetyana Staneva, who lives in a village in Odessa and has no business registered in her name. She donated 1.5 million hryvnias ($52,000 USD) to the Servant of the People party, telling Chesno, “It’s not just my money, I just sent it. This is a group of like-minded people, we did it together.” It should be noted that this is against Ukrainian law, which says that individual citizen must make financial contributions to political groups personally, and not as a collective.

Investigators identified one of the 44 entities that donated as Yaroslava Reklama, LLC, registered to a 22-year old cook named Yaroslav Kuzka who works at one of Kyiv’s restaurants. Yaroslava Reklama LLC, transferred the maximum donation of 3.3 million hryvnias ($120,000 USD) to Servant of the People. Upon investigating the address to which Yaroslava Reklama LLC was registered, journalists found that tenants in the area had never heard of the company.

Another company, Prom Import LLC, was registered to a woman named Juliana Kuku. She complained on her social media accounts that business was “not going well”, but at roughly the same time, made a 500,000 hryvnia ($16,000 USD) donation to Servant of the People.

Chesno also found that of the 44 entities that donated to Servant of the People, four of them changed their addresses within two days of one another in December 2018, leading investigators to conclude that many of the donors were likely linked.

It is perhaps remarkable to consider that although only 94 persons and 44 legal entities donated to Servant of the People, that it grew to controlling 254 of 450 seats in the Verkhovna Rada despite not existing less than six months before.

Palantir Is A Creepy Cannibalistic Eye Of Sauron

bloomberg  |  Palantir Technologies Inc. has long pursued some of the largest governments and companies in the world as customers. Now, in a dramatic shift in strategy, it’s chasing startups.

The controversial data integration and analytics company co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel plans to announce Tuesday it will sell software on a monthly subscription model to smaller companies, starting first with a handful of startups connected to former Palantir employees.

The startup sales push is a break with tradition for the $40 billion company that made its name on large contacts with the U.S. Army, Merck KGaA and a handful of other high-profile organizations -- and is part of Palantir’s larger effort to diversify its sources of revenue away from a few big customers.

The new program, called Foundry for Builders, will start with five startups in fields including robotics, health and fintech. The group will experiment with software that Palantir says functions as an operating system for company data. Palantir chose startups connected to former employees, who are already familiar with how to operate the system, and use their feedback to refine the product for startups before rolling it out more broadly in coming months.

Palantir had 149 customers driving $341 million revenue for the first quarter, with the bulk of sales coming from government contracts. A flurry of deal-making during the pandemic, including agreements with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, pushed the company’s government business to more than 60% of revenue -- an imbalance that unsettled some investors.

Foundry for Builders aims to counteract that disparity by adding a larger number of potentially fast-growing companies to Palantir’s customer base. Developing closer relationships with early-stage companies appears to have been an increasing focus in recent months for Denver-based Palantir.

Besides expanding sales to startups, the company has also been investing in them. Palantir recently made a string of direct investments in companies going public through SPACs totaling more than $130 million. All of those companies also became customers, a practice that has raised some eyebrows.