Friday 29th of March 2024

a kid in charge of the ice-cream van...

austin

President-elect Joe Biden has picked a retired US Army general to lead the Defence Department in his administration, according to a Politico report published Monday.

Lloyd Austin, a four-star general with over four decades in the military, was one of the leading candidates for Biden’s Cabinet, three people told Politico. Austin’s name was one of several that was thrown in the mix in recent weeks, including Michèle Flournoy, the former undersecretary of defence for policy, who was widely believed to be the frontrunner for the top Pentagon position.

Several other news outlets, including CNN and The New York Times, confirmed Politico’s report by Monday evening.

If confirmed by the Senate, Austin would be the first Black defence secretary in the US.

Biden’s transition team had been considering other factors in addition to experience for their selection, including a candidate’s race, unnamed sources said in a previous Axiosreport. The former vice president was criticised by some Democrats for not naming qualified candidates of colour for his Cabinet picks.

Biden’s team did not respond to a request for comment on Monday evening.

Democratic Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina told The Hill in late November that although he heard Black candidates were “given fair consideration,” only one Black person had been named to Biden’s cabinet. Former diplomat Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a Black woman, was selected to be the next United Nations ambassador.

Since then, Biden has picked other Black staffers for Cabinet-level positions, including Cecilia Rouse for chair of the Council of Economic Advisers.

Austin first served in the Army in 1975 and graduated from West Point. He took on numerous leadership roles, having commanded all of the US’s troops in Iraq and helmed US Central Command, the combatant command responsible for all US operations in the Middle East, for three years. Austin retired in 2016 and founded the Austin Strategy Group, a consulting service in Washington, DC.

Austin was also on defence contractor Raytheon Technologies’ board of directors since 2016, as well as steel producer Nucor Corporation’s board.

“Back when I was a brand-new second lieutenant, I was ready to take on the world,” Austin said in a speech in 2016. “I wanted to get out and do great things.”

“I’m very proud to have had the opportunity to lead troops in combat,” he added. “I have seen our young leaders do amazing things in really tough and dangerous situations.”

Former Homeland Security Sec. Jeh Johnson, who is also Black, was being considered by Biden for the Pentagon post, Politico reported. Some Democrats, however, reportedly expressed concern over Johnson for his tenure in the Obama administration.

Austin’s potential role still faces some challenges from Congress. Critics have long argued that defence secretaries must have had some level of separation from the military, given the political nature of their duties, and to avoid any bias based on their prior service.

Retired service members are also required to have been separated from the military for at least seven years, a requirement Austin has not fulfilled. Austin would need a waiver from Congress, just like James Mattis, a four-star US Marine Corps general, who served as President Donald Trump’s first defence secretary before resigning in 2018.

Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, said in 2017 that he would not support a similar waiver to Mattis’ in the future.

“Congress has enacted an exception one time since the creation of the Department of Defence,” Reed said, according to Defence News. “And waiving the law should happen no more than once in a generation. Therefore I will not support a waiver for future nominees. Nor will I support any effort to water down or repeal the statute in the future.”


read more:https://www.businessinsider.com.au/biden-picks-black-general-lloyd-austin-military-2020-12

See also:understanding the military mind...

paying terrorists in syria...

WASHINGTON — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is expected to nominate retired Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, a former commander of the American military effort in Iraq, to be the next secretary of defense, according to two people with knowledge of the selection.

If confirmed by the Senate, General Austin would make history as the first African-American to lead the country’s 1.3 million active-duty troops and the enormous bureaucracy that backs them up.

General Austin, 67, was for years a formidable figure at the Pentagon, and is the only African-American to have headed U.S. Central Command, the military’s marquee combat command, with responsibility for Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria — most of the places where the United States is at war.

General Austin is known as a battlefield commander. But he is less known for his political instincts — and has sometimes stumbled in congressional hearings, including a session in 2015 when he acknowledged, under testy questioning, that the Defense Department’s $500 million program to raise an army of Syrian fighters had gone nowhere.

 

Read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/07/us/politics/lloyd-austin-biden-defense-secretary.html

 

 

 a "program to raise an army of Syrian fighters" is euphemism for regime change — by using terrorists ("rebels" : Al Qaeda, Al Nusra and Daesh) to fight and unseat Assad... The Russian knew what was on.

the front runner is at the back...

Biden’s Pentagon Pick Reignites Debate Over Civilian Control of Military


Congress would need to approve a waiver for Lloyd J. Austin III, a recently retired general, to serve in the civilian post, four years after President Trump’s first defense secretary received one.


WASHINGTON — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s intention to nominate a retired Army general as secretary of defense has run into bipartisan resistance on Capitol Hill, where there are growing concerns about another former commander leading the Pentagon in a nation that has a long tradition of civilian control of the military.


Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, a four-star Army general who retired in 2016, was named on Tuesday by Mr. Biden as his pick — and would be the first Black defense secretary. But General Austin would need a congressional waiver to serve, required for any Pentagon chief who has been retired from active-duty military service less than seven years.


Rejecting a waiver for such a historic nominee could be tricky for lawmakers, especially those who four years ago approved a similar measure for President Trump’s first defense secretary, Jim Mattis, a retired four-star Marine officer. But many lawmakers said Tuesday they do not want the practice enshrined into American political life.


“I have the deepest respect and admiration for General Austin,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “His nomination is exciting and historic. But I believe that a waiver of the seven-year rule would contravene the basic principle that there should be civilian control of a nonpolitical military.”

Many lawmakers said they reluctantly voted for a waiver for Mr. Mattis to provide a seasoned counterbalance to Mr. Trump’s inexperience and bombastic style, and now question the need to violate a cornerstone of American national security policy so quickly again. An approval for General Austin would underscore how deeply Mr. Trump has altered the norms in civilian oversight of the military.


“I supported a one-time waiver in the case of Secretary James Mattis with the belief that the circumstances at the time warranted a rare exception, not the establishment of a new precedent, which erodes the basic principle of civilian control of the military,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine. “I would need to take a hard look at the Biden administration’s justification for such a waiver before reaching a conclusion on whether or not one is warranted in this case.”


The chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, said on Tuesday that he did not see an issue with the waiver. General Austin has several weeks to make his case to lawmakers, which many on Capitol Hill and in the military policy community believe he can do successfully. Mr. Inhofe’s nod will be important. And, as was the case with Mr. Mattis, it is possible that General Austin will receive more support from Republicans than Democrats.


Congress and the American public historically have been unwaveringly opposed to the military operating outside the control of civilian authorities, something common in authoritarian and unstable regimes. General Austin would be only the third defense secretary in American history to receive such permission, the first being George C. Marshall in 1950.


Both the Senate and the House must approve a waiver, but only the Senate votes to confirm the nomination.

 

 

Read more:

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/us/politics/biden-austin-defense-secretary.html

 

 

Gus believes that this is a tactic by Biden's team to get Michèle Flournoy back as a front runner with a bunch of flowers to boot. I could be wrong though...

 

See also:  

the bombers are back...

 

 

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war on the menu...

Libertarian educator Tom Woods famously quipped that “no matter who you vote for you end up with John McCain.” Unfortunately Woods was proven right for about the thousandth time this past week, as Washington again showed us that it is all about war.

First, we learned that if Joe Biden ends up in the White House next month he intends to put a deep state member of the military-industrial complex in charge of the Pentagon. General Lloyd Austin will be only the second Defense Secretary in decades to require a special Senate waiver to serve in that position. Gen. James Mattis under President Trump also needed a waiver, as he had been out of the military less than the required seven years before becoming Defense Secretary.

But the revolving door between active military service and civilian leadership of the Pentagon is perhaps less troubling than the revolving door between the military-industrial complex and leadership of the Defense Department.

As the first African-American to take charge of the Pentagon, the Austin pick is celebrated as a great victory for “diversity.” However, if we move beyond the color of a person’s skin, Biden’s selection is not all that diverse. Gen. Austin was head of the US Central Command under an Obama Administration that launched a brutal war on Libya under false pretenses and pursued a regime-change policy in Syria that involved arming and training jihadists. Upon retirement, as is all too common with military leaders, he cashed in on his service with a position on the board of military contractor Raytheon.

Austin will be “business as usual” for Washington’s warmongers and the military contractors who make a fortune inventing endless conflicts overseas.

Then things went from bad to worse, as the yearly monstrosity called the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was passed with an amendment severely restricting the US president’s ability to remove troops from Afghanistan and Europe. Offered by neoconservative Congresswoman Liz Cheney, daughter of the warmongering Dick Cheney, the amendment all but guarantees that America’s longest war in history will continue pointlessly onward.

A coalition of warmongering Democrats and Republicans have been furious with President Trump for his last minute effort to draw troops down from Afghanistan and elsewhere, and they appear to have a veto-proof majority to tie the president’s hands.

Congress has for decades believed that the president can go to war whenever or wherever he pleases without a declaration, but if the president dares attempt to end a war their belief in a “unitary executive” is thrown out the window. What hypocrisy.

The Constitution is clear that the president is the commander in chief of the military and as such should have the authority to move troops as he sees fit. The Founders understood that 535 Members of Congress trying to micromanage troops on the battlefield is not a good idea.

Congress has it backward. It should be very difficult for a president to take the country to war and easy for that war to be ended.

Time after time, the “peace” candidate usually wins the election. But no matter how sick the American people are of endless war, the war machine finds a way to keep chugging along. What will it take to return to a policy of peace and prosperity?

 

Read more:

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2020/december/14/congress-again-proves-that-the-business-of-washington-is-war/

 

 

Read from top. Hopefully, the senate will refuse to endorse Lloyd Austin for defence secretary...

do not be suckered into insanity, joe...

VIPS MEMO: To Biden: Don’t Be Suckered on Russia




VIPS hopes President-elect Joe Biden will avoid the mousetrap being laid for him to make it more difficult for his administration to deal in a sensible way with Russia.



By Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity


December 22, 2020 "Information Clearing House" - 



MEMORANDUM FOR: The President-elect

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Attempts to Sucker You Into Russia-Bashing

Dear President-elect Biden,

“Fool Me Once …” You may recall that President George W. Bush could not remember the last part of that aphorism. No matter. It turned out that — on Iraq — Bush was not fooled by bad intelligence. Rather, he and Vice President Dick Cheney were determined to attack Iraq and asked malleable former colleagues of ours to manufacture intelligence to “justify” that catastrophic war.

It was so bad that Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Jay Rockefeller described prewar intelligence as “unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent.” James Clapper, who was in charge of imagery analysis, admits in his memoir that the Bush/Cheney pressure to document a rogue WMD program in Iraq was so intense that “intelligence officers, including me, were so eager to help that we found what wasn’t really there.” (Emphasis added) .

That coterie of “intelligence officers” — first and foremost CIA Director George Tenet and his protegé Michael Morell — were able to pull the wool over the eyes of enough members of Congress to grease the skids for unnecessary war. Many of the latest crop of intelligence leaders bubbled up to the top for services rendered under the malleable Tenet, and seem to have adopted his flexible attitude toward truth.

It is a safe bet that some of them are responsible for the recent “anonymous” leaks feeding the current media frenzy about what we shall call “Russian hacking 2.0”.

We urge you not to rise to the bait — the more so, since Russia is the target this time around.


‘Russian Hacking 1:0’ — a Proven Fraud

You may be unaware that horse’s-mouth testimony given on Dec. 5, 2017 to the House Intelligence Committee gave the lie to claims — still widely taken as gospel truth by consumers of major media — that there is persuasive technical evidence that Russia hacked the DNC emails that WikiLeakspublished on July 22, 2016. There is no such evidence.

We Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity wrote to the president before the Iraq war to let him know that our former colleagues were playing fast and loose with the “intelligence,” which was conjured up to “justify” the invasion. With that painful experience behind us, it was not difficult to spot the lies about Russia “hacking” the DNC emails.

Four years ago we warned, in somewhat technical — but easily understandable terms — why the alleged Russian hacking of the DNC would have been impossible without the National Security Agency detecting it. We were helped by revelations from Edward Snowden, the expertise of two former technical directors at NSA (members of VIPS), and, not least, by applying the principles of science, which — thank goodness — are impervious to political pressure. See our MEMORANDUM of Dec. 12, 2016. 

Proving a Negative

It proved difficult, of course, to prove a negative, particularly in the face of copious commentary and pseudo-analysis bereft of supporting data — for example, the evidence-impoverished, misnomered “Intelligence Community Assessment” of Jan. 6, 2017. 

We had to wait two and a half years, from Dec. 2017 to May 2020, for the House Intelligence Committee to publish the sworn testimony of Shawn Henry, head of the DNC-hired cyber security firm CrowdStrike. (For reasons best known to ex-FBI Director James Comey, the FBI deferred to CrowdStrike to perform the forensics on what Sen. John McCain was calling an “act of war” by Russia.)

In short, three years ago Mr. Henry admitted under oath that there was no technical evidence that Russia, or anyone else, hacked the DNC and exfiltrated those damaging emails. 

What he said in his sworn testimony appears to be as close as one can get to proving the negative on this very key issue. If this is news to you, please check with your advisors. It may be not too surprising that the major media have suppressed that news since May. We would be disappointed to learn, though, that no one saw fit to tell you of Shawn Henry’s testimony.

As far as we can tell, you have been careful to avoid joining — lemming-like — the “Russians-did-it-again” chorus. For fresh insight on the current media frenzy, you may wish to skim through an article published Friday morning on “Russian Hacking 2.0” and what seems to be afoot.

We are hoping that you will continue to avoid putting your foot in the mousetrap being laid for you to make it more difficult for your administration to deal in a sensible way with Russia. There are a whole lot of people — in intelligence, the media, and the weapons industry who are determined to get you off on the wrong foot with President Putin — for reasons that will be obvious to you.

We stand ready to support you with objective, tell-it-like-it-is analysis. Our record speaks for itself. Links to VIPS’s earlier memoranda, starting with our same-day critique of Colin Powell’s UN speech shortly before the war on Iraq, can be found at: https://consortiumnews.com/vips-memos/ .

 


FOR THE STEERING GROUP

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

William Binney, Technical Director, World Geopolitical & Military Analysis, NSA; co-founder, SIGINT Automation Research Center (ret.)

Marshall Carter-Tripp, Foreign Service Officer and Division Director, State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (ret.)

Mike Gravel, former Adjutant, top secret control officer, Communications Intelligence Service; special agent of the Counter Intelligence Corps and former United States Senator

Edward Loomis, NSA Cryptologic Computer Scientist and a Technical Director (ret.)

Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst; Presidential briefer (ret.)

Elizabeth Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East & CIA political analyst (ret.)

Todd E. Pierce, MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (ret.)

Kirk Wiebe, Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA (ret.)

Ann Wright, U.S. Army Reserve Colonel (ret) and former U.S. Diplomat who resigned in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq War


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56077.htm

 

 

Source: https://consortiumnews.com/2020/12/20/vips-memo-to-biden-dont-be-suckered-on-russia/

 

 

Please note that telling Joe something about Russia is like farting in a bathtub and blaming the goldfish in the bowl on top of the fireplace. Joe Biden hates Russia beyond white rage and this is why he was in Ukraine doing his great impressions of Al Capone: "Fire THAT investigator or we break your knees"...

 

 

with war in his veins...

 

Pentagon Chief Lloyd Austin Says Next Major War Will Be ‘Very Different’

 

According to Austin, he has spent most of the past two decades “executing the last of the old wars”, amid the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

United States Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin said in his first major speech that the US and its allies should prepare for a new type of military conflict.

 

“The way we fight the next major war is going to look very different from the way we fought the last ones,” Austin said on Friday at the change of command for US Indo-Pacific Command at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam."

Austin pointed at the rapid rate of technological advances, saying they would require “changes in the work we do to keep the United States secure across all five domains of potential conflict - not just air, land and sea, but also space and cyberspace”.

"They mean we need new capacities and operational flexibility for the fights of the future."

Austin did not mention any particular country as an adversary in particular, however, the outgoing commander of US Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Philip Davidson, who was speaking after Austin, pointed at China.

"The strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific is not between our two nations, it is a competition between liberty - the fundamental idea behind a free and open Indo-Pacific - and authoritarianism, the absence of liberty, and the objective of the Communist Party of China," Davidson said.

According to the admiral, to keep the peace, the United States and its allies “must be prepared to fight and win”.

The speech comes amid tense relations between Washington and Beijing, with the US increasing its military presence in the Indo-Pacific region and conducting so-called "freedom of navigation operations" in or near Chinese waters.

According to Chinese Defence Ministry spokesperson Senior Col. Wu Qian, the provocative actions of the US in and near Chinese waters have increased in 2021.

“This kind of behaviour will only harm others and itself and lead to a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’. China has no intention to threaten or challenge any country. However, if someone insisted on threatening or challenging China, we would have no choice but to fight back,” Wu said...

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/military/202105011082777174-pentagon-chief-lloyd-austin-says-next-major-war-will-be-very-different/

 

 

Yep... The next "major" war was already predicted by Albert Einstein as being stupid and dangerous to the extend the following one would BE fought with stones and sticks... The old general Pentagon Chief Lloyd Austin is DANGEROUSLY DELUDED...

 

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FREE JULIAN ASSANGE TOAY !!!!!!!!!!!!

above his station...

 

BEIJING (Sputnik) - Beijing has repeatedly refused to receive phone calls from US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, who requested to talk not with his Chinese counterpart, Wei Fenghe, but with a higher-ranking official, in violation of diplomatic protocol, the South China Morning Post reported, citing military sources.

According to sources, the US official's request caused a misunderstanding, as he sought to talk with Chinese Central Military Commission (CMC) Vice Chairman Xu Qiliang, which offended the Chinese Defence Ministry.

Though both the CMC vice chairman and the defence minister report directly to Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to diplomatic protocol, Wei Fenghe should be the Pentagon head's interlocutor, according to the report.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters at a briefing on Tuesday that the Department of Defence was still ready for a dialogue with Chinese military chiefs.

 

"We certainly desire to have a dialogue with our counterparts in Beijing, and we're still working our way through exactly what that's going to look like and how that's going to transpire", Kirby said.

The Pentagon spokesman, however, refused to further elaborate on the issue or comment on Chinese media reports saying that Beijing had sent a "friendly signal" to Austin, but the US official never responded and later requested a meeting with another CMC leader, an act that also disregards diplomatic protocol.

 

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/world/202105261082998320-china-repeatedly-rejected-phone-calls-of-us-austin-over-protocol-violation-reports-suggest/

 

 

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assange2assange2