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Posts Tagged ‘Space Force’

Space Force General Admits She’d Prioritize Gender Surgery Access Over Qualified Officers

Posted by M. C. on June 15, 2023

Space Force veteran Lt. Col Matt Lohmeier — who was relieved of command after he said on a conservative podcast that Marxism was infiltrating the U.S. military — argued in a tweet that Burt had actually done what he was fired for doing.

“I was once fired from command in the @SpaceForceDoD for allegedly ‘being politically partisan while acting in an official capacity.’ That allegation was totally false,” he said. “Lt. Gen. Burt here demonstrates what being politically partisan while acting in an official capacity really looks like.”

This person is in command of nukes floating over your head. Feeling safer?

https://www.dailywire.com/news/space-force-general-admits-shed-prioritize-gender-surgery-access-over-qualified-officers

By  Virginia Kruta

United States Space Force Lt. Gen. DeAnna M. Burt admitted during a recent Department of Defense (DoD) LGBTQ+ PRIDE event that she would allow access to “gender-affirming care” to take priority over qualifications when assigning officers.

Burt referenced several states that have passed laws banning transgender surgeries — and in some cases, puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones — for minors, and said that while she would normally consider job performance and qualifications before selecting officers for certain jobs, she had to also consider whether her troops and their families would feel safe in those assignments.

“Transformational cultural change requires leadership from the top, and we do not have time to wait,” Burt began. “Since January of this year, more than 400 anti-LGBTQ+ laws have been introduced at the state level. That number is rising and demonstrates a trend that could be dangerous for service members, their families, and the readiness of the force as a whole.”

“When I look at potential candidates, say for Squadron command, I strive to match the right person to the right job,” she continued, adding, “I consider their job performance and relevant experience first. However, I also look at their personal circumstances, and their family is also an important factor. If a good match for a job does not feel safe being themselves and performing at their highest potential at a given location, or if their family could be denied critical health care due to the laws in that state, I am compelled to consider a different candidate, perhaps less qualified.”

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War in space: U.S. officials debating rules for a conflict in orbit

Posted by M. C. on March 14, 2023

The new approach has “balanced that tension very well between let’s make sure we have what we need for national security access to space and, as best we can, help to foster and take advantage of growth in the commercial market,” Thompson said.

The one thing we can count on is a universe size opportunity for the right people to pocket your taxes while making no one but themselves safer.

https://news.yahoo.com/war-space-u-officials-debating-120515128.html

487

Christian Davenport, The Washington Post

Ukraine’s use of commercial satellites to help repel the Russian invasion has bolstered the U.S. Space Force’s interest in exploiting the capabilities of the private sector to develop new technologies for fighting a war in space.

But the possible reliance on private companies, and the revolution in technology that has made satellites smaller and more powerful, is forcing the Defense Department to wrestle with difficult questions about what to do if those privately owned satellites are targeted by an adversary.

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White House and Pentagon officials have been trying to determine what the policy should be since a top Russian official said in October that Russia could target the growing fleet of commercial satellites if they are used to help Ukraine.

Konstantin Vorontsov, deputy director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s department for nonproliferation and arms, called the growth of privately operated satellites “an extremely dangerous trend that goes beyond the harmless use of outer-space technologies and has become apparent during the latest developments in Ukraine.”

He warned that “quasi-civilian infrastructure may become a legitimate target for retaliation.”

In response, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reiterated earlier comments from her counterpart at the Pentagon that “any attack on U.S. infrastructure will be met with a response, as you’ve heard from my colleague, in a time and manner of our choosing.”

But what that response will be is unknown, as officials from a number of agencies try to lay out a policy framework on how to react if a commercial company is targeted.

In a recent interview, Gen. David Thompson, the Space Force’s vice chief of operations, said that while expanding the partnership with the commercial space industry is one of his top priorities, it has also led to a host of unanswered questions.

“The Ukraine conflict has brought it to the forefront,” he said. “First, commercial companies are thinking very clearly and carefully about, can we be involved? Should we be involved? What are the implications of being involved? … And on our side, it’s exactly the same thing. Should we depend on commercial services? Where can we depend on commercial services?”

The Pentagon has long relied on the private sector, he said. But the proliferation of small satellites has created a more resilient system that has provided real-time imagery of the Ukraine battlefield from space, allowing nations to track troop movements, assess damage and share intelligence. Communication systems, such as SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, has kept the internet up and running at a time when Ukraine’s infrastructure has been decimated.

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Fired Space Force commander issues warning to military leaders

Posted by M. C. on October 21, 2021

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Elephants Unseen – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on February 12, 2020

Thanks for your service!!! It may be a service indeed to the military/industrial complex, but the typical American only knows he’s paying for it—or else. You were probably thrilled to learn that the U.S. now has a new branch of the military, the Space Force, which will serve us by bringing democracy to Martians.

But isn’t it interesting that in the movies servants do as their masters dictate, whereas the “public servants” have US do as THEY dictate.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/02/paul-hein/elephants-unseen/

By

Certain ideas, although as outrageous as elephants in the living room, are not perceived as such because, while present, their presence is so common and expected as to render them virtually invisible. But perhaps, one day, maybe on awakening from a nap, we see them clearly and wonder “What are THEY doing here? Have I been blind?” The answer, of course, is “yes.”

MONEY

If you ask someone to show you money, you will very likely be shown a dollar bill. You object: but it’s just a piece of paper! Ah, you are told, perhaps rather smugly, “We don’t need to use metals for money. We use paper for money.” But in that case, why isn’t there ten times as much paper in a TEN as in a ONE dollar bill? Afer a moment of confusion, your correspondent corrects himself. “Well, the paper isn’t actually the money, but a promise to pay money. It’s clearly labeled a NOTE.” That would be an end of the matter, were it true, but it isn’t. The company issuing the note—the Federal Reserve—will laugh at you if you present one of their notes for payment. If you look up the law establishing the Federal Reserve, you will find that its notes are “obligations of the United States,” meaning, of course, that they are obligations of the taxpayers. What an elephant! The banking cartel can go into the marketplace and use its “notes” to buy whatever it needs from the very people who will ultimately be expected to redeem the notes!

In fact, however, the notes are self-redeeming. Years ago I sent a Federal Reserve Note to the secretary of the Treasury, William Miller, with the request that he do whatever was required by law to satisfy the obligation of the United States. He promptly replied that his only obligation was to return my note, which he did. In other words, a Federal Reserve Note/government obligation redeems itself. An IOU payable with—another IOU! A veritable gang of elephants running amok through our society— and that’s just a small part of the herd!

PUBLIC SERVANTS

When a prominent politician dies or retires, you will, without a doubt, hear him referred to as a “public servant.” We will be told that a nation is grateful for his years of service, and that as a mere youth, he aspired to a career as a public servant. Another whopper of an unseen elephant, perhaps because few, if any of us, have servants, or have even encountered a servant, except in the movies. But isn’t it interesting that in the movies servants do as their masters dictate, whereas the “public servants” have US do as THEY dictate. And if you actually found yourself blessed (?) with servants, would you expect them to sit you down and tell you how you were to behave, what you had to do, or not do, how much you were to pay them, what their hours would be, and how you would be punished for disobedience?

The traffic cop who tickets you for traveling five miles over the speed limit will also be referred to as a public servant, which, evidently, must mean that he is “serving” you when you gives you that ticket. And the judge in traffic court—another servant—is serving you when he fines you for committing this non-crime. What kind of servants deprive you of your money or your freedom?

A contestant on a TV quiz show, if a veteran, will likely be thanked for his service by the host. His “service” might have consisted in imposing our Rulers’ will—-democracy!!!—upon befuddled natives in some poor mid-east country, but let’s not quibble. Thanks for your service!!! It may be a service indeed to the military/industrial complex, but the typical American only knows he’s paying for it—or else. You were probably thrilled to learn that the U.S. now has a new branch of the military, the Space Force, which will serve us by bringing democracy to Martians.

Wake up and discover the pachyderm on your sofa. You’d be better off if he were to leave.

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While You Were Obsessing Over Impeachment

Posted by M. C. on January 4, 2020

The political class, including the mainstream media, would prefer you pay attention to the fluff, not to the things that really matter. Perhaps instead of obsessing over impeachment or the latest debate over a Trump tweet, you would be better served to pay attention to what they don’t want you to pay attention to.

https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2019/12/20/while-you-were-obsessing-over-impeachment/

…While you argued over the gory details of impeachment with your friends on Facebook, Congress passed the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. The nearly 3,500-page bill authorizes $738 billion in defense spending in Fiscal Year 2020. It creates a “Space Force,” so the U.S. can expand its empire into the cosmos. And Congress rejected a provision that would have made it just slightly harder for the president to unilaterally send American troops into combat. In other words, Congress agreed that it would not bother to do its job and declare war before sending the U.S. military to conduct offensive combat operations as required by the Constitution. It will continue to let the president make that call on his own. You know – the president the House just impeached.

Even worse, the current iteration of the NDAA extended provisions written into the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act that effectively authorize government kidnapping. The vaguely worded sections purport to authorize the arrest and “indefinite detention” of anybody the president decides might be associated with “terrorism” and subject them to the law of war. In effect, the government can deem you a terrorist and lock you away without due process. Government kidnapping may sound like hyperbole, but that’s exactly what the NDAA authorizes in effect.

Speaking of war, while all eyes were glued to the three-ring circus in D.C., the Washington Post released documents revealing that the U.S. government has been lying to us about the war in Afghanistan for decades.

“A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.”

As one three-star general put it, “What are we trying to do here? We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking. If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction .?.?. 2,400 lives lost.”

This seems, maybe, just a tiny bit, significant. But the news barely saw the light of day. It was completely buried under an avalanche of impeachment reporting…

So, let’s review. While America was mesmerized by the pro-wrestling event on Capitol Hill, Congress agreed to maintain the government’s “authority” to kidnap you, to keep spying on you without a warrant, to continue unconstitutional wars, and to spend you deeper into debt.

Political theater makes for splashy headlines and heated debates, but it really has very little impact on your life. The political class, including the mainstream media, would prefer you pay attention to the fluff, not to the things that really matter. Perhaps instead of obsessing over impeachment or the latest debate over a Trump tweet, you would be better served to pay attention to what they don’t want you to pay attention to.

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An End to the World as We Know It?, by Philip Giraldi – The Unz Review

Posted by M. C. on December 26, 2019

Congress and the White House compete in year-end stupidity sweepstakes.

The U.S., to be sure, has been adept at turning adversaries into enemies and disappointing friends, and it is all done with a glib assurance that doing so will somehow bring democracy and freedom to all.

https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/an-end-to-the-world-as-we-know-it/

At the end of the nineteenth century, Lord Palmerston stated what he thought was obvious, that “England has no eternal friends, England has no perpetual enemies, England has only eternal and perpetual interests.” Palmerston was saying that national interests should drive the relationships with foreigners. A nation will have amicable relations most of the time with some countries and difficult relations with some others, but the bottom line should always be what is beneficial for one’s own country and people.

If Palmerston were alive today and observing the relationship of the United States of America with the rest of the world, he might well find Washington to be an exception to his rule. The U.S., to be sure, has been adept at turning adversaries into enemies and disappointing friends, and it is all done with a glib assurance that doing so will somehow bring democracy and freedom to all. Indeed, either neoliberal democracy promotion or the neoconservative version of the same have been seen as an overriding and compelling interest during the past twenty years even though the policies themselves have been disastrous and have only damaged the real interests of the American people.

The U.S. relationship with Israel is, for example, driven by a powerful and wealthy domestic lobby rather than by any common interests at all yet it is regularly falsely touted as being between two “close allies” and “best friends.” It has cost Americans hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies for the Jewish state and Israeli influence over U.S. policy in the Middle East region has led to catastrophic military interventions in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Mogadishu and Libya. Currently, Israel is agitating for U.S. action against the nonexistent Iranian “threat” while also unleashing its lobby in the United States to make illegal criticism of any of its war crimes, effectively curtailing freedom of speech and association for all Americans.

Far more dangerous is the continued excoriation of the Kremlin over the largely mythical Russiagate narrative. Congress has recently approved a bill that would give to Ukraine $300 million in supplementary military assistance to use against Russia. The money and authorization appear in the House of Representatives version of the national defense authorization act (NDAA) that passed last week.

The bill is a renewal of the controversial Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative that Donald Trump allegedly manipulated to bring about an investigation of Joe Biden’s son Hunter. The new version expands on the former assistance package to include coastal defense cruise missiles and anti-ship missiles as offensive weapons that are acceptable for export to Kiev. It also authorizes an additional $50 million in military assistance on top of the $250 million congress had granted in last year’s bill, “of which $100 million would be available only for lethal assistance.”

Ukraine sought the money and arms to counter Russian naval dominance in the Black Sea through its base at Sevastopol in the Crimea. One year ago the Russian navy captured three Ukrainian warships and Kiev was unable to push back against Moscow because it lacked weapons designed to attack ships. Now it will have them and presumably it will use them. How Russia will react is unknowable.

Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, has been in Washington lobbying for the additional military assistance. He has had considerable success, particularly as there is bipartisan support in Congress for aid to Kiev and also because the Trump Departments of Defense and State as well as the National Security Council are all on board in countering the “Russian threat” in the Black Sea. President Trump signed the NDAA last week, which completed the process.

Far more ominously, Kuleba and his interlocutors in the administration and congress have been revisiting a proposal first surfaced under Bill Clinton, that Ukraine and Georgia should be admitted to the NATO alliance. Like the $300 million in military aid, there appears to be considerable bipartisan support for such a move. NATO already has a major presence on the Black Sea with Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey all members. Adding Ukraine and Georgia would completely isolate the Russian presence and Moscow would undoubtedly see it as an existential threat.

The NDAA also provides seed money to initiate the so-called Space Force, which President Trump inaugurated by describing it as “the world’s newest war-fighting domain. Amid grave threats to our national security, American superiority in space is absolutely vital. We’re leading, but we’re not leading by enough, but very shortly we’ll be leading by a lot. The Space Force will help us deter aggression and control the ultimate high ground.”

If that isn’t bad enough, the new defense budget ominously also requires the Trump administration to impose sanctions “with respect to provision of certain vessels for the construction of certain Russian energy export pipelines.” Last week the House of Representatives and Senate approved specific sanctions relating to the companies and governments that are collaborating on the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that will cross the Baltic Sea from Vyborg to Greifswald to connect Germany with Russian natural gas. President Trump has signed off on the legislation.

The United States has opposed the project ever since it was first mooted, claiming that it will make Europe “hostage” to Russian energy, will enrich the Russian government, and will also empower Russian President Vladimir Putin to be more aggressive. Engineering companies that will be providing services such as pipe-laying will be targeted by Washington as the Trump administration tries to halt the completion of the $10.5 billion project.

Now that the NDAA has been signed, the Trump administration has 60 days to identify companies, individuals and even foreign governments that have in some way provided services or assistance to the pipeline project. Sanctions would block individuals from travel to the United States and would freeze bank accounts and other tangible property that would be identified by the U.S. Treasury. One company that will definitely be targeted for sanctions is the Switzerland-based Allseas, which has been contracted with by Russia’s Gazprom to build the offshore section of pipeline. It has suspended work on the project while it examines the implications of the sanctions.

Bear in mind that Nord Stream 2 is a peaceful commercial project between two countries that have friendly relations, making the threats implicit in the U.S. reaction more than somewhat inappropriate. Increased U.S. sanctions against Russia itself are also believed to be a possibility and there has even been some suggestion that the German government and its energy ministry might be sanctioned. This has predictably resulted in pushback from Germany, normally a country that is inclined to go along with any and all American initiatives. Last week German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas asked Congress not to meddle in European energy policy, saying “We think this is unacceptable, because it is ultimately a move to influence autonomous decisions that are made in Europe. European energy policy is decided in Europe, not in the U.S.”

German Bundestag member Andreas Nick warned that “It’s an issue of national sovereignty, and it is potentially a liability for trans-Atlantic relations.” That Trump is needlessly alienating important countries like Germany that are genuine allies, unlike Israel and Saudi Arabia, over an issue that is not an actual American interest is unfortunate. It makes one think that the wheels have definitely come off the cart in Washington.

The point is that Donald Trump, Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence and Mike Esper (admittedly too many Mikes) wouldn’t know a national interest if it hit them in the face. Their politicization of policy to “win in 2020” promoting apocalyptic nonsense like war in space has also reinforced an existing tunnel vision on what Russia under Vladimir Putin is all about that is extremely dangerous. Admittedly, Team Trump throws out sanctions in all directions with reckless abandon, mostly aimed at Russia, Iran, North Korea and, the current favorite, Venezuela. No one is immune. But the escalation going from sanctions to arming the Kremlin’s enemies is both reckless and pointless. Russia will definitely strike back if it is attacked, make no mistake about that, and war could easily escalate with tragic consequences for all of us. That war is perhaps becoming thinkable is in itself deplorable, with Business Insider running a recent piece on surviving a nuclear attack. New homes in target America will likely soon come equipped with bomb shelters, just like in the 1950s.

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‘America Says’ Game Show Cleared For Fall Syndication ...

 

 

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