Tag: Pete Hegseth

A Wave of Pessimism

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Una oleada de pesimismo (Google Translate)

“Keep calm. Hasty emotions are unnecessary today,” wrote yesterday Mykhailo Podolyak, one of the most belligerent members of the Ukrainian government, reacting to the wave of pessimism and, at times, hysteria that spread across the European continent throughout the day yesterday, focusing on analyzing the implications of the telephone conversation between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump and the subsequent statements by the president of the United States. “The Trump-Putin conversation reduces tension, but at the expense of Ukraine,” stated the British BBC before the political spin managed to create a continental crisis from an initial conversation whose only agreement is to continue talking. Because despite the adjectives that are being used to describe the contact between the two presidents or the way in which it occurred, the result of the call was the mutual reaffirmation of the importance of peace and the implementation of the mechanisms to schedule a meeting between the two leaders, which will presumably be in Saudi Arabia, and begin a negotiation process.

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Pentagon Appointee Opposes ‘Belligerent Military Initiatives’ Aimed at China

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The Pentagon official tasked with overseeing U.S. defense policy toward Southeast Asia recently advised against pursuing hawkish defense policies and a major trade war against China, a marked contrast with top Trump appointees.

John Andrew Byers, a longtime history professor who oversaw the Charles Koch philanthropic network’s grants promoting libertarian foreign policy stances at universities, was sworn in this week as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for South and Southeast Asia — a role that immediately thrusts him to the center of America’s response to China’s ongoing military pressure campaign targeting the Philippines, with which Washington holds a mutual defense treaty.

Pentagon Appointee Opposes ‘Belligerent Military Initiatives’ Aimed at China

Related:

Lowy Institute: Trump’s grand bargain? The Philippines caught between US and China by Richard Heydarian

CGS non-resident fellow Andrew Byers co-authors article with The American Conservative

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia: Andrew Byers

Five transgender service members speak out as Trump pushes military ban + Trauma trigger ⚠️

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Five transgender service members speak out as Trump pushes military ban

There are not many people who want to serve anymore. We’re in a recruiting and retention crisis across the board. It doesn’t matter what service you’re going in, they’re having a hard time getting people in and they’re having a hard time keeping people. And to want to push somebody out that has given their entire adult life to an organization, but then also to the nation, it’s just really unfortunate and sad that for everything that I’ve done, the hard work that I’ve done, the work that I’ve done, for the government to just kind of say that you are no longer able to serve. We just don’t want you because you’re trans.

…

Rand [Corporation] — who had predicted that it could cost up $150,000 per service member per year to have transgender folks serve — went back after trans folks were allowed to serve openly, to see what the costs actually were. And it was less than $1,000 per transgender service member per year, which I don’t need to tell you, is like an average military service member’s prescription costs per year.

…

For a lot of trans people, the military is the only option for them to to survive, to get out of the situations they’re in, and again, we’re part of that one percent of the population that has sworn to defend the country. Why would you want to not allow them to do that?

…

People do tend to isolate transgender medicine as this like wildly difficult thing, but it’s actually not. It’s fairly straightforward and basic for most people. Are there folks who have complications? Sure, but we have folks who have any number of orthopedic surgeries who have complications. Or we try to manage their allergies, and the solution that we start with isn’t where we end. You can have high cholesterol or high blood pressure, and maybe we put you on medications, maybe we say you need to change your diet, and we work down [to address the question of] how do we take care of you? Because we need you on the team.

Related:

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Mike Gallagher says that the Pentagon Has Two Years to Prevent World War III

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
Source

Pentagon Has Two Years to Prevent World War III

By China Hawk Mike Gallagher, Palantir

Xi Jinping has ordered the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to seize Taiwan by 2027. Whether he launches an invasion may depend on President Trump’s defense secretary. If confirmed by the Senate, Army National Guard veteran and Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Mr. Trump’s nominee, will have to confront the collapse of deterrence in Europe and the Middle East, resource constraints on Capitol Hill, recruitment challenges, and a deteriorating balance of power in the Indo-Pacific. The only way to promote peace is to go to war on day one—not with China, Russia or Iran but with the Pentagon bureaucracy.

Gallagher wants a wartime economy while leaving the financing to the private sector. It won’t work. 👇👇👇

Related:

US Seeks “Super Weapons” to Reign as Sole Superpower

In reality, Russia and China’s industrial bases are larger than America’s because of a number of factors, including factors no amount of American political will, can overcome. China in particular has a population four times greater than the US. China graduates millions more each year in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics than the US, and the physical size of its industrial base – military or otherwise – reflects this demographic disparity.

Even if the US had the political will to reform its military industrial base, stripping away profit-driven private industry and replacing it with purpose-driven state-owned enterprises, even if the US likewise transformed its education system to produce a skilled workforce rather than squeeze every penny from American students, and even if the US invested in its national infrastructure – a fundamental prerequisite for expanding its industrial base – it still faces a reality where China has already done all of this, and done so with a population larger than it and its G7 partners combined.

FYI, Gallagher is with Palantir, as well as the Hudson Institute.

Hudson Institute’s funding

Trump taps Hegseth as defense secretary, vows ‘no Marxism, no communism’ in military

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
YouTube

Trump taps Hegseth as defense secretary, vows ‘no Marxism, no communism’ in military

Related:

Pentagon report warns of threat from white supremacists inside the military

A Defense Department report highlights disturbing examples of white supremacy inside the military, calling for changes in how the department screens recruits for possible ties to domestic extremism.

The report, which the Trump administration drafted last year before the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, was sent to Congress in October, but it has not been made public until now.v