Tag: South China Sea

Spy ships and Pine Gap

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Spy ships and Pine Gap

Peter Cronau, the author of a forthcoming book on Pine Gap, told The Saturday Paper that the facility’s primary function has expanded “from its early focus on passive surveillance gathering, such as collecting military communications, diplomatic traffic and mobile phone calls. It now plays a vital part in active war-fighting, such as providing targeting information for use by lethal drones, invasion forces and aerial bombing missions.”

He said the first hard evidence confirming Pine Gap’s additional role was found in secret US National Security Agency documents about Pine Gap, leaked by the American whistleblower Edward Snowden. In new research for his book, Cronau says he has found Pine Gap’s role in boosting US war-fighting capabilities is intensifying. He says there has been a rapid expansion in the capability of the US-built and -funded base, with the construction during the past year of four new satellite antennas covered by radomes. Preparations are under way for a massive new antenna that he says would amount to five new ones in a little over a year, making it the fastest period of expansion for the base, to a total of 41 satellite antennas. Cronau says three of the new antennas are designed to download data from powerful new-generation satellites that will collect information from distant war zones.

Faux Populists Shill for the Permanent War State

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Faux Populists Shill for the Permanent War State

In 2018, the Pentagon announced a shift away from their failing policy of counterterrorism in the Middle East and North Africa toward a new National Defense Strategy of so called “Great Power Competition,” with Russia and China. Instead of turning toward peace, free trade, and diplomacy, this policy change will come at enormous opportunity costs such as further distorting our economy, practically guaranteeing boom-bust cycles of ever intensifying severity, as well as reducing the average American’s standard of living. It would impoverish the very people who desire genuine populism.

“Unchallenged Orientalism”: Why Liberals Suddenly Love the Lab Leak Theory

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

“Unchallenged Orientalism”: Why Liberals Suddenly Love the Lab Leak Theory

It is this context in which the return of the lab leak theory should be seen. Lab leaks do happen. But there is precious little hard evidence that such is the case here. That so many of the nation’s top alternative news figures — individuals who stood against U.S. wars and against similar campaigns, such as RussiaGate — are buying into this one is remarkable. This is especially the case in light of the fact that the evidence is so weak and comes from highly discredited sources, while scientists remain highly skeptical of the theory.

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The lab leak theory bears a striking resemblance to the weapons of mass destruction hoax of 2002-03, not only in the fact that one of its key players is literally the same journalist using potentially the same anonymous sources, but also in the bipartisan political and media support for the project, all while ignoring the opinions of the scientific community. That so many in alternative media who question war and U.S. intervention not only cannot see that, but are invoking the WMD story to bolster their own side, is extraordinary, and shows how badly the need is to build up a healthy media ecosystem.

Between 2001 and 2003, the public was subjected to a constant barrage of pro-war propaganda. But at least nascent alternative media offered a dissenting voice. Anti-war voices pushing the lab leak theory might one day find it is too late to stop the clock on the dangerous drive towards a second Cold War. If there is any conflict with China, it will make Iraq look like a tea party by comparison. But truth, in war, is always the first casualty.

The NATO Summit: Front for Democracy or Return to the Cold War?

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The NATO Summit: Front for Democracy or Return to the Cold War?

To drive home this point, Biden stressed during a press conference after the summit that article 5 of the North-Atlantic Treaty remains “rock-solid” and “sacred” 72 years after its adoption. Article 5 obliges all thirty member states to consider an attack on one of the allies as an attack on all of them. Yet, NATO invoked it only once in its history, and this in support of the United States after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

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The final communiqué of the present NATO summit underscored that article 5 can now also be invoked as a reaction to aggression in space and cyberspace.