AUKUS: If the truth be told....

 

By Caitlin Johnstone

Australia has joined the U.S. and U.K. in an “enhanced trilateral security partnership” called AUKUS with the unspoken-yet-obvious goal of coordinating escalations against China.

Antiwar reports:

    “President Biden and the leaders of Australia and the UK announced a new military agreement on Wednesday aimed at countering China. The pact, known as AUKUS, will focus on the sharing of sensitive military technologies, and the first initiative will focus on getting Australia nuclear-powered submarines.

     US officials speaking to CNN described the effort to share nuclear propulsion with another country as an ‘exceedingly rare step’ due to the sensitivity of the technology. ‘This technology is extremely sensitive. This is, frankly, an exception to our policy in many respects,’ one unnamed official said.”

    This deal will replace a planned $90 billion program to obtain 12 submarines designed by France, an obnoxious expenditure either way when a quarter of Australians are struggling to make ends meet during a pandemic that is four times more likely to kill Australians who are struggling financially.

This is just the latest in Canberra’s continually expanding policy of feeding vast fortunes into Washington’s standoff with Beijing at the expense of its own people.

If readers are curious why Australia would simultaneously subvert its own economic interests by turning against its primary trading partner and its own security interests by feeding into dangerous and unnecessary provocations, I will refer them once again to the jarringly honest explanation by American political analyst John Mearsheimer at a debate hosted by the Australian think tank Center for Independent Studies in 2019.

Mearsheimer told his audience that the U.S. is going to do everything it can to halt China’s rise and prevent it from becoming the regional hegemon in the East, and that Australia should align with the U.S. in that battle or else it would face the wrath of Washington.

“The question that’s on the table is what should Australia’s foreign policy be in light of the rise of China,” Mearsheimer said. “I’ll tell you what I would suggest if I were an Australian.”

Mearsheimer claimed that China is going to continue to grow economically and will convert this economic power into military power to dominate Asia “the way the US dominates the Western Hemisphere” and explained why he thinks the U.S. and its allies have every ability to prevent that from happening.

“Now the question is what does this all mean for Australia?” Mearsheimer said. “Well, you’re in a quandary for sure. Everybody knows what the quandary is. And by the way you’re not the only country in East Asia that’s in this quandary. You trade a lot with China, and that trade is very important for your prosperity, no question about that. Security-wise you really want to go with us. It makes just a lot more sense, right? And you understand that security is more important than prosperity, because if you don’t survive, you’re not gonna prosper.”

“Now some people say there’s an alternative: you can go with China,” said Mearsheimer. “Right, you have a choice here: you can go with China rather than the United States. There’s two things I’ll say about that. Number one, if you go with China you want to understand you are our enemy. You are then deciding to become an enemy of the United States. Because again, we’re talking about an intense security competition.”

“You’re either with us or against us,” he continued. “And if you’re trading extensively with China, and you’re friendly with China, you’re undermining the United States in this security competition. You’re feeding the beast, from our perspective. And that is not going to make us happy. And when we are not happy you do not want to underestimate how nasty we can be. Just ask Fidel Castro.”

Nervous laughter from the Australian think tank audience punctuated Mearsheimer’s more incendiary observations. The CIA is known to have made numerous attempts to assassinate Castro.

There you have it. Australia is not aligned with the U.S. to protect itself from China. Australia is aligned with the U.S. to protect itself from the U.S.

~ Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularly at Medium. 

Things have to change

 

Chief Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Wolf Clan speaks about the ignored warnings & how we are living in the times of a 200-year-old prophecy. 

It will get worse before it gets better - get ready. 

This was recorded in 2007 and is timelier than ever.

Sunday song

 

Latest GN newsletter now online

 

Inside the new Space Alert!

 
The latest edition of our Global Network newsletter, Space Alert, is now finished and at the printer.
 

•     Cover story by Koohan Paik-Mander is a must read.

•     We have a two-page spread in this issue about the explosion of space ports being built around the world in environmentally sensitive areas.

•     Stories about coming super-power conflict over bases on the Moon and the pathway to get there.

•     'Colonies on Mars' envisioned by the aerospace industry. One way ticket to the red planet is only $300,000 (that is at today's prices so make your reservation ASAP!).

•     A special 'In Memoriam: J. Narayana Rao Presente' to remember one of our greatest GN leaders from India who passed away in June due to Covid.

•     And our usual section called 'the funnies'.... you gotta laugh sometimes.

•     You can order bulk copies of the newsletter - just send a donation to help cover print/mailing costs.

•     You will find the full color version online here

Implications of 5G sat launches

 

STOP 5G GLOBAL PROTEST DAY
SEPTEMBER 18 + 19 2021

 

Plus the video did not mention the military applications of 5G - increased speeds for 'better surveillance, tracking, targeting and robotic operations'.

 

 

 

Aussie quandary : Don't say it out loud!

 

Say the name....say it!

China.....

But why? 

Because Washington told Canberra it had to buy submarines from the UK. 

How long will the Australian people allow their government to remain a US lap dog like London?

Break this damn noose of co-dependent behavior!

The law giving the US President the license to kill

 

The Art of War

By Manlio Dinucci (il manifesto,Italy)

On September 18, 2001, a week after September 11, the US Congress unanimously approved Public Law 107-40 which stated: “The President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons that he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by  such nations, organizations or persons.” 

The Act, which gave Republican President George W. Bush full war powers, was drafted by Democratic Senator Joe Biden, chairman of the Foreign Relations Commission.

President Bush was thus authorized by Congress, in the name of the "war on terror", to use military force not only against organizations or people but entire nations, whose guilt was decreed by the President himself, who passed the sentence without trial nor the possibility of appeal and ordered immediate execution by means of war. 

The only ones who have long called for the cancellation of this law are two senators, Democrat Tim Kaine and Republican Christopher Young, but their attempt has so far been unsuccessful. The Law of September 18, 2001, still in force, was used after Republican President Bush by the Democrat Barack Obama, the Republican Donald Trump and the Democrat Biden (former Vice-president in the Obama Administration). 

It is estimated that it has been used by presidential order to "legitimize" in the last twenty years military operations carried out by the US armed forces in 19 countries around the world, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Tunisia, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, Somalia, Cameroon, Niger.

Three weeks after the passing of the law, President Bush ordered to attack and invade Afghanistan, officially to hunt down Bin Laden protected by the Taliban; three months later, he ordered the opening of the Guantanamo prison camp, where alleged terrorists from various parts of the world were secretly deported and tortured; a year and a half later - prompted by a bipartisan resolution of 77 senators, promoted by Joe Biden - President Bush ordered to attack and invade Iraq with the accusation (later proved false) that it possessed weapons of mass destruction. 

The order was to use the knuckle duster to crush the resistance: this was confirmed by the images of the tortures in Abu Ghraib prison, which came to light in 2004.

Always on the basis of the 2001 law which authorized him to "use all necessary and appropriate force", President Obama, ten years later, authorized the CIA to carry out covert operations in Libya in preparation for the NATO war that would demolish the Libyan State. 

 

According to the same "legal" procedure - the New York Times documented on May 29, 2012 - during the Obama administration the "kill list" was established, updated weekly, including people from all over the world secretly sentenced to death with the accusation of terrorism, who were eliminated for the most part with drone-killers after the President’s approval. The same procedure was followed in January 2020 by President Trump, who ordered the elimination of the Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, killed by a US drone at Baghdad airport. 

Similar attacks by the US drones have been "legally" authorized in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen.

Based on the authorization of President Biden, the most recent drone-killer attack was the one that hit a car suspected of carrying an ISIS bomb on August 29 in Kabul. An investigation by the New York Times (September 10) found that the car (followed for a long time by the drone pilot sitting thousands of kilometers away) was not carrying explosives but water tanks. A "Hellfire" missile was fired at this car in a densely populated neighborhood, killing ten civilians including seven children.

Operation Cyclone: Arrogance in action in Afghanistan

 

Going Underground invited John Pilger to discusses the US support for the Afghan Mujahideen, which would become the Taliban, in its war against the communist PDPA government and the Soviet Union.

Operation Cyclone was a CIA and MI6 invention to overthrow the PDPA.

This was done despite the US government acknowledging in one of its own reports that support for the jihadists would likely mean the irreversible end of progressive reforms implemented, such as women's rights, rights to education and the end of the empowerment of the poorer classes of Afghan society. 

All the hot-wailing from Washington (and the BBC) these days about the poor women in Kabul is pure bullshit.

New voices: Connecting Military and Climate

 

Luke Sekera-Flanders (Fryeburg, Maine) at the Blue Angels Air Show protest in Brunswick on September 4. 

He served as the rally Emcee and spoke about our current climate crisis. 

Luke connected the dots between Climate and the Pentagon. 

We were quite proud of this young man.

How DOD is taking it’s Mission to Space

 

By Walter Pincus

While others this past weekend have been looking back to 9/11, U.S. Space Command is looking forward to the next domain of warfare — in the heavens — to be directed from a Space Electromagnetic Operating Base somewhere in the United States.

Space Command’s Systems Command, Enterprise Corps and Special Programs Directorate, located at Los Angeles Air Force Base, Calif., are looking for potential contractors to run an ambitious, five-year program that will, by 2027, design, develop, deliver and operate a Space Electromagnetic Warfare facility whose primary purpose would be to jam or destroy enemy satellite and land-based communications in time of war.

It all was described in a request for information published September 1, for possible contractors to provide their potential capabilities and interest in taking on the job.

The U.S. may not have done well here on earth against the Taliban in Afghanistan, but Space Command is moving to stay ahead of its big-power competitors in using the electromagnetic spectrum for use as a weapon against potential adversary satellites in space.

As the Congressional Research Service (CRS) recently described it, “The electromagnetic spectrum is the range of wavelengths or frequencies of electromagnetic radiation. It includes radio waves, microwaves, visible light, X-rays, and gamma rays.”

The majority of military communications capabilities use radio waves and microwaves. Infrared and ultraviolet spectrums can disseminate large volumes of data, including video, over long distances – for example, intelligence collection and distribution. The military can also use lasers offensively, to dazzle satellite sensors, destroy drones, and for other purposes, according to the CRS.

Electronic warfare is not new – it was extensively used in World War II and its uses have been growing ever since.

CRS described it this way: “Missiles in general, and anti-air munitions in particular, use either infrared or radar for terminal guidance (i.e., guiding a missile once it has been launched) to targets. Electronic jammers are used to deny an adversary access to the spectrum. These jammers are primarily used in the radio and microwave frequencies (and sometimes paired together), preventing communications (both terrestrially and space-based) as well as radar coverage. Militaries have also begun using lasers to disable intelligence collection sensors, destroy small unmanned aerial systems (aka ‘drones’), and communicate with satellites.”

 

Back in 1977, I covered a House hearing when Dr. George Ullrich, then-Deputy Director of Defense Special Weapons Agency, described resumption of atmospheric nuclear testing in 1962 following a three-year testing moratorium. One test, called Starfish Prime, was a 1.4 megaton, high-altitude detonation. It took place over Johnston Island in the South Pacific at an altitude of about 250 miles – the largest nuclear test ever conducted in outer space.

Ullrich testified that the EMP (electromagnetic pulse) effects of the Starfish explosion surprisingly knocked out the telephone service and street lights on Hawaiian Islands, which were 800 miles east of the detonation. Years later, Ullrich wrote that another surprise outcome had been that months after the 1962 detonation, an AT&T satellite transmitting television signals from space died prematurely followed by the early failure of other satellites.

Ullrich closed on a note more relevant to today. “High-altitude EMP does not distinguish between military and civilian systems. Unhardened infrastructure systems, such as commercial power grids, telecommunication networks, as we have discussed before, remain vulnerable to widespread outages and upsets due to high-altitude EMP. While DOD (Defense Department) hardens their assets it deems vital, no comparable civilian programs exist. Thus, the detonation of one or a few high-altitude nuclear weapons could result in serious problems for the entire U.S. civil and commercial infrastructure.”

There are also non-nuclear, EMP weapons that produce pulses of energy that create a powerful electromagnetic field capable of short-circuiting a wide range of electronic equipment, particularly computers, satellites, radios, radar receivers and even civilian traffic lights.

 

Key to the proposed Space Electromagnetic Operating Base is L3Harris’ next generation CCS (Counter Communications System) electronic warfare system known as Meadowlands, that can reversibly deny adversaries’ satellite communications. In March 2020, Space Force declared initial operational capability of Meadowlands as “the first offensive weapon system in the United States Space Force.” Currently a road-mobile system, an additional $30 million was added to the program in this fiscal year (2021) to “design forward garrison systems…Accelerate development of new mission techniques to meet advancing threat and integrate techniques into the CCS program of record.”

Defense Daily reported last month that in May, Space Force put out a bid for production of an additional 26 Meadowlands systems with production to go on through fiscal 2025.

The first task listed for the proposed, new Space Electromagnetic Operating Base is to provide a “Space EW (Electromagnetic Warfare) Common Operating Picture” that displays relevant space electromagnetic warfare information via the remote modular terminals (RMTs) of the Meadowland program. Another task will be mission planning to include providing “executable tactical instructions, planning weapon-target pairings, & enabling automated control of multiple SEW assets by a single operator.”

The proposal called for the Space EW common picture to depict the current adversary’s Space Order of Battle (SOB), the current state of space electromagnetic warfare tasking, and real-time status of operations.  The information displayed will come from “real time intelligence, C2, and operational units.  The information from intelligence will include SOB and Battle Damage Assessment (BDA). Command and control (C2) will provide its information to SEWOL [Space Electromagnetic Warfare Operating Location] via secure communications. Operational units will provide systems status, electromagnetic support (ES) reporting, Electromagnetic Attack (EA) strike assessment, and remote assets situational awareness (SA).”

The eventual contractor “will integrate the Meadowlands and RMT Remote Operations capability into the facility’s eventual architecture,” according to the proposal. The architecture of the proposed space warfare operating base “will be scalable and flexible to allow incorporation of future SEW [space electromagnetic warfare] systems. Future SEW systems could have substantially different interfaces from the RMT and Meadowlands systems without a baseline interface, and the development of the COI [common operating interface] will help streamline integration of future systems,” according to the proposal.

While Space Command is focused on an initial location in the continental U.S., the proposal said, “It will then expand to include multiple geographically dispersed operating locations…[which] will be able to control a scalable number of assets. In addition, they can be used interchangeably and/or collaboratively to provide high resiliency and operational flexibility.”

Three weeks ago, on August 24, Army Gen. James Dickinson, U.S. Space Command commander, declared the nation’s 11th combatant command achieved initial operational capability (IOC). “We are a very different command today at IOC then we were at stand-up in 2019 — having matured and grown into a war fighting force, prepared to address threats from competition to conflict in space, while also protecting and defending our interests in this vast and complex domain.”

This is just the beginning.

~ Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics from nuclear weapons to politics.  He is the author of Blown to Hell: America’s Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders (releasing in November 2021)  He also won an Emmy in 1981 and the 2010 Arthur Ross Award from the American Academy for Diplomacy.