"Joe announces his run for a second term."

unbelievable.. kind of...

unbelievable there isn't a better alternative

unbelievable the democrats lack the self awareness to think this is ok

unbelievable joe thinks this is ok... or maybe not...

95 % of americans don't want a biden v trump rematch

yet here we are, seemingly walking straight into it...

something is seriously broken

democracy under attack they cry!

DNC has already announced that it will not allow any debates in 2024 primary. Biden is not to be challenged. Everyone on the Democratic side must shut up and fall in line. Not having debates is undemocratic and ridiculous. No progressive should agree to this kind of power grab.

— Cenk Uygur (@cenkuygur) April 24, 2023

<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

imagine being a highly competent subordinate in the democrat machine...

gonna be a challenge to keep dissenting ducks in a row and pull of a basement biden version 2 i reckon

especially if old boy wobbles

(which he does anyway)

imagine being a moderate conservative in the GOP?

I think many in middle America feel very uncomfortable in both parties these days and unsafe in a lot of cities.

I never thought that much of Tucker just very cliche over the top USA style presentation.

But viewed him a bit differently after seeing this video a while back, handled this situation perfectly, obviously at first a bit defensive expecting the worst, but then once realises he doesnt even know who he is, he lets his guard down, just cool he is fly fishing in the city lake thing and ties his own flies too

Going to be interesting to see what he does next, another media company? Join the Daily wire? Or do his own thing podcast/Youtube?

sypkan wrote:

democracy under attack they cry!

DNC has already announced that it will not allow any debates in 2024 primary. Biden is not to be challenged. Everyone on the Democratic side must shut up and fall in line. Not having debates is undemocratic and ridiculous. No progressive should agree to this kind of power grab.

— Cenk Uygur (@cenkuygur) April 24, 2023

<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

imagine being a highly competent subordinate in the democrat machine...

gonna be a challenge to keep dissenting ducks in a row and pull of a basement biden version 2 i reckon

especially if old boy wobbles

(which he does anyway)

If there was ever an opportunity for trump this is the one. Biden is a terrible and vulnerable candidate. Even those who support him will really question his old age and sanity. Another 6 years in charge? Trump looks like a young man next to him.

bit ageist flollo. Personally, I'd prefer elders in ceremonial leadership roles than young megalomaniacs. Leaders have been getting younger globally in past decades, and the world isn't improving. The longer the track-record a leader has, the more of an idea we have of how they have responded in different political climates and situations.

… more tucker box ;)

basesix wrote:

bit ageist flollo. Personally, I'd prefer elders in ceremonial leadership roles than young megalomaniacs. Leaders have been getting younger globally in past decades, and the world isn't improving. The longer the track-record a leader has, the more of an idea we have of how they have responded in different political climates and situations.

I agree, experience is critical. I’m not necessarily against specific age, I’m just not sure how healthy Biden truly is or will be during the next few years? Internet is full of him showing signs of very questionable health conditions. I know a lot of this is bullshit and propaganda but it will surely play on some people’s mind.

sypkan wrote:

"Joe announces his run for a second term."

unbelievable.. kind of...

unbelievable there isn't a better alternative

unbelievable the democrats lack the self awareness to think this is ok

unbelievable joe thinks this is ok... or maybe not...

95 % of americans don't want a biden v trump rematch

yet here we are, seemingly walking straight into it...

something is seriously broken

It's just mind boggling from both sides.

Democrats= An 80+ year old man with clear signs of ageing of the mind.

Republicans= The guy that lost last time and acted like a spoilt child when he lost.

You know what though while it seems crazy Trump could sneak a win. (not sure thats even a good thing)

1. The motivation for people to vote for Biden might not be there this time, seeing its not getting Trump out, but preventing him from getting back in, they might not think he has a chance and not bother voting.

2. Them continually going after Trump for anything and everything, might work in his favour.

But that said I dont know how even a lot of Democrats voters could vote for Trump after how he took the loss, to me it ruined any legacy he had.

If i was in the USA i would have voted for Trump the first time for the shake up factor, but i couldn't again not after how he acted when he lost.

I feel for Ron De Santis, it should be his turn Trump should be letting him have his time and supporting him, then Trump voters would vote for him and he has many fans himself and would also grab many fence sitters as ticks so many boxes, you would expect against Biden he would take it out easily.

If Trump runs i just hope De Santis can hang in there for next time and keep his popularity up.

Is it me but as much as Trumpy is the supreme Boofhead in Chief the world seemed to be more peaceful and economically seemed to be powering along when he was in. That's despite what the MSM would have you believe.

Since Biden economically the world seems to be tanking and it seems we're closer to war than we ever have been?

I think Biden for next win, if he's up to it. Of note is that he's basically continued Trumps foreign and trade policies as well as the military pivot (started Obama in 2013 I think) - so nothing has changed for the way the US ship of State has been turning. It's been a realisation of a growing threat, and that the kumbaya globalisation is receding.

They are also reindustrialising hard - the America COMPETES act, the discussions with Intel to get them back on Moore's law, the incentives for tech to set up and thrive there, relocating some TSMC plants (Hello Australia, are you even thinking of reindustrialising?). Separate supply chains and processing paths for rare earth and battery metals, hydrogen etc etc

But yeah, that 'Trump and the Risk of War' thread didn't age well...

zenagain wrote:

Is it me but as much as Trumpy is the supreme Boofhead in Chief the world seemed to be more peaceful and economically seemed to be powering along when he was in. That's despite what the MSM would have you believe.

Since Biden economically the world seems to be tanking and it seems we're closer to war than we ever have been?

That is part of his propaganda machine. There's a video of him talking about how he is the only president that didn't start a war in the 21st century. Is he wrong about it? Technically, no. Considering the times this actually feels appealing. Biden is clearly trigger-happy.

Top of the pops ;)

View this post on Instagram

- musings of a concerned US citizen …

Whilst the empire creates peace and goodwill across the globe, decay sets in within the homeland:

Retailers abandon downtown San Francisco

one store's example:
-Workers routinely threatened with weapons.
-568 emergency calls to store over the course of 13 months.
-Chaotic scenes of fights, food throwing, and yelling.
-Stores closes
30% of offices vacant
- workers tired of dodging poop on walk to work.
- safer to work from home of move cities.

I found this contextualised California's strengths and problems well frog, same guy as VJ's Vail ski-town vid..

Jelly Flater that video is pretty representative of the Global South's psych and mindset on its relationships with the US vs with China. The US and West more generally has badly burnt most of its bridges in most of the Global South and Middle East (and parts of Asia) due to all the reasons and more mentioned in the video.

While I'm at it, for those interested, the below is what I think are some of the cleanest, clearest recent statements of what the US wants the world to believe when it comes to China, and what's driving geopolitics on this planet including AUKUS. It's from some of the most preeminent and influential think tanks.

In a nutshell, supposedly the West is facing the most serious and unprecedented existential threat to its very survival that it has ever faced, that the very founding values and principals of Western civilisation are at risk. Conservative US think tanks are particularly hellbent on it all since the most central, important and originally unifying founding tenet of Western civilisation - European Christendom - is of course supposedly directly at threat.

It seems to me to be completely insane pathological US-centric delusions of grandeur combined with a deranged US-glorifying fabrication of modern history and ignorance/misread of Chinese history combined with China-threat hyperventilation gone haywire combined with dollar signs ringing in the eyes of the US military-industrial-media-govt-thinktank ecosystem, etc, all within an Anglosphere thought bubble and groupthink that is being swallowed hook line and sinker by a gullible population and captured non-US governments unable to stand up to the US, but of course the reader can decide for themselves.

Winning the New Cold War: A Plan for Countering China

An information strategy for the United States

The President Can’t Counter China on His Own

The opening statement of this last link (Hudson Institute):

"There is a growing bipartisan awareness in the United States that the totalitarian global ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) make it the most dangerous threat the free world has faced since the Cold War, and perhaps ever."

And from the Heritage Society material:

"The Chinese Communist Party is the most persistent and consequential threat facing the American people today. Our homeland is not secure, and the consequences for Americans will be severe if our country does not soon take action."

This is what we've signed up to with AUKUS.

I personally think "the most persistent and consequential threat facing the" Australian people today is being part of this madness. It frightens me.

Phew .... sort of unfixable (California's problems).

... although many issues would be fixable if a fraction of the effort, political energy and money spent on the military and meddling in other countries affairs and poorly conceived and clumsily executed wars was spent on sorting out such problems in the homeland.

i reckon frog. ...their relentless need to create an 'other' to unite themselves..

(always worth a re-watch)

Quite the statistic:

"the average [US] taxpayer spends $1,087 per year on weapons contractors compared to $270 for K-12 education and just $6 for renewable energy"

For Pentagon contractors, Washington’s ever more intense focus on the prospect of war with China has one overriding benefit: it’s fabulous for business.https://t.co/irkjBBx7sF

— Responsible Statecraft (@RStatecraft) May 9, 2023

I highly recommend the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and their magazine Responsible Statecraft. One of the very few reputable US think tanks not in full blown hardline pro-US pro-war mode.

Quincy Institute wrote:

The military-industrial complex (MIC) that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned Americans about more than 60 years ago is still alive and well. In fact, it’s consuming many more tax dollars and feeding far larger weapons producers than when Ike raised the alarm about the “unwarranted influence” it wielded in his 1961 farewell address to the nation.

The statistics are stunning. This year’s proposed budget for the Pentagon and nuclear weapons work at the Department of Energy is $886 billion — more than twice as much, adjusted for inflation, as at the time of Eisenhower’s speech. The Pentagon now consumes more than half the federal discretionary budget, leaving priorities like public health, environmental protection, job training, and education to compete for what remains. In 2020, Lockheed Martin received $75 billion in Pentagon contracts, more than the entire budget of the State Department and the Agency for International Development combined.

This year’s spending just for that company’s overpriced, underperforming F-35 combat aircraft equals the full budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And as a new report from the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies revealed recently, the average taxpayer spends $1,087 per year on weapons contractors compared to $270 for K-12 education and just $6 for renewable energy.

The list goes on — and on and on. President Eisenhower characterized such tradeoffs in a lesser known speech, “The Chance for Peace,” delivered in April 1953, early in his first term, this way: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children…”

How sadly of this moment that is.

New Rationales, New Weaponry

Now, don’t be fooled. The current war machine isn’t your grandfather’s MIC, not by a country mile. It receives far more money and offers far different rationales. It has far more sophisticated tools of influence and significantly different technological aspirations.

Perhaps the first and foremost difference between Eisenhower’s era and ours is the sheer size of the major weapons firms. Before the post-Cold War merger boom of the 1990s, there were dozens of significant defense contractors. Now, there are just five big (no, enormous!) players — Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon. With so few companies to produce aircraft, armored vehicles, missile systems, and nuclear weapons, the Pentagon has ever more limited leverage in keeping them from overcharging for products that don’t perform as advertised. The Big Five alone routinely split more than $150 billion in Pentagon contracts annually, or nearly 20% of the total Pentagon budget. Altogether, more than half of the department’s annual spending goes to contractors large and small.

In Eisenhower’s day, the Soviet Union, then this country’s major adversary, was used to justify an ever larger, ever more permanent arms establishment. Today’s “pacing threat,” as the Pentagon calls it, is China, a country with a far larger population, a far more robust economy, and a far more developed technical sector than the Soviet Union ever had. But unlike the USSR, China’s primary challenge to the United States is economic, not military.

Yet, as Dan Grazier noted in a December 2022 report for the Project on Government Oversight, Washington’s ever more intense focus on China has been accompanied by significant military threat inflation. While China hawks in Washington wring their hands about that country having more naval vessels than America, Grazier points out that our Navy has far more firepower. Similarly, the active American nuclear weapons stockpile is roughly nine times as large as China’s and the Pentagon budget three times what Beijing spends on its military, according to the latest figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

But for Pentagon contractors, Washington’s ever more intense focus on the prospect of war with China has one overriding benefit: it’s fabulous for business. The threat of China’s military, real or imagined, continues to be used to justify significant increases in military spending, especially on the next generation of high-tech systems ranging from hypersonic missiles to robotic weapons and artificial intelligence. The history of such potentially dysfunctional high-tech systems, from President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” missile defense system to the F-35, does not bode well, however, for the cost or performance of emerging military technologies.

No matter, count on one thing: tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars will undoubtedly go into developing them anyway. And remember that they are dangerous and not just to any enemy. As Michael Klare pointed out in an Arms Control Association report: “AI-enabled systems may fail in unpredictable ways, causing unintended human slaughter or an uncontrolled escalation crisis.”

Arsenal of Influence

Despite a seemingly never–ending list of overpriced, underperforming weapons systems developed for a Pentagon that’s the only federal agency never to pass an audit, the MIC has an arsenal of influence propelling it ever closer to a trillion-dollar annual budget. In short, it’s bilking more money from taxpayers than ever before and just about everyone — from lobbyists galore to countless political campaigns, think tanks beyond number to Hollywood — is in on it.

And keep in mind that the dominance of a handful of mega-firms in weapons production means that each of the top players has more money to spread around in lobbying and campaign contributions. They also have more facilities and employees to point to, often in politically key states, when persuading members of Congress to vote for — Yes!– even more money for their weaponry of choice.

The arms industry as a whole has donated more than $83 million to political candidates in the past two election cycles, with Lockheed Martin leading the pack with $9.1 million in contributions, followed by Raytheon at $8 million, and Northrop Grumman at $7.7 million. Those funds, you won’t be surprised to learn, are heavily concentrated among members of the House and Senate armed services committees and defense appropriations subcommittees. For example, as Taylor Giorno of OpenSecrets, a group that tracks campaign and lobbying expenditures, has found, “The 58 members of the House Armed Services Committee reported receiving an average of $79,588 from the defense sector during the 2022 election cycle, three times the average $26,213 other representatives reported through the same period.”

Lobbying expenditures by all the denizens of the MIC are even higher — more than $247 million in the last two election cycles. Such funds are used to employ 820 lobbyists, or more than one for every member of Congress. And mind you, more than two-thirds of those lobbyists had swirled through Washington’s infamous revolving door from jobs at the Pentagon or in Congress to lobby for the arms industry. Their contacts in government and knowledge of arcane acquisition procedures help ensure that the money keeps flowing for more guns, tanks, ships and missiles. Just last month, the office of Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) reported that nearly 700 former high-ranking government officials, including former generals and admirals, now work for defense contractors. While a few of them are corporate board members or highly paid executives, 91% of them became Pentagon lobbyists, according to the report.

And that feverishly spinning revolving door provides current members of Congress, their staff, and Pentagon personnel with a powerful incentive to play nice with those giant contractors while still in their government roles. After all, a lucrative lobbying career awaits once they leave government service.

Nor is it just K Street lobbying jobs those weapons-making corporations are offering. They’re also spreading jobs to nearly every Main Street in America. The poster child for such jobs as a selling point for an otherwise questionable weapons system is Lockheed Martin’s F-35. It may never be fully ready for combat thanks to countless design flaws, including more than 800 unresolved defects detected by the Pentagon’s independent testing office. But the company insists that its program produces no less than 298,000 jobs in 48 states, even if the actual total is less than half of that.

In reality — though you’d never know this in today’s Washington — the weapons sector is a declining industry when it comes to job creation, even if it does absorb near-record levels of government funding. According to statistics gathered by the National Defense Industrial Association, there are currently one million direct jobs in arms manufacturing compared to 3.2 million in the 1980s.

Outsourcing, automation, and the production of fewer units of more complex systems have skewed the workforce toward better-paying engineering jobs and away from production work, a shift that has come at a high price. The vacuuming up of engineering and scientific talent by weapons makers means fewer skilled people are available to address urgent problems like public health and the climate crisis. Meanwhile, it’s estimated that spending on education, green energy, health care, or infrastructure could produce 40% to 100% more jobs than Pentagon spending does.

Shaping the Elite Narrative: The Military-Industrial Complex and Think Tanks

One of the MIC’s most powerful tools is its ability to shape elite discussions on national security issues by funding foreign policy think tanks, along with affiliated analysts who are all too often the experts of choice when it comes to media coverage on issues of war and peace. A forthcoming Quincy Institute brief reveals that more than 75% of the top foreign-policy think tanks in the United States are at least partially funded by defense contractors. Some, like the Center for a New American Security and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, receive millions of dollars every year from such contractors and then publish articles and reports that are largely supportive of defense-industry funding.

Some such think tanks even offer support for weapons made by their funders without disclosing those glaring conflicts of interest. For example, an American Enterprise Institute (AEI) scholar’s critique of this year’s near-historically high Pentagon budget request, which, she claimed, was “well below inflation,” also included support for increased funding for a number of weapons systems like the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile, the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, the B-21 bomber, and the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile.

What’s not mentioned in the piece? The companies that build those weapons, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, have been AEI funders. Although that institute is a “dark money” think tank that doesn’t publicly disclose its funders, at an event last year, a staffer let slip that the organization receives money from both of those contractors.

Unfortunately, mainstream media outlets disproportionately rely on commentary from experts at just such think tanks. That forthcoming Quincy Institute report, for example, found that they were more than four times as likely as those without MIC funding to be cited in New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal articles about the Ukraine War. In short, when you see a think-tank expert quoted on questions of war and peace, odds are his or her employer receives money from the war machine.

What’s more, such think tanks have their own version of a feverishly spinning revolving door, earning them the moniker “holding tanks” for future government officials. The Center for a New American Security, for example, receives millions of dollars from defense contractors and the Pentagon every year and has boasted that a number of its experts and alumni joined the Biden administration, including high-ranking political appointees at the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Shaping the Public Narrative: The Military-Entertainment Complex

Top Gun: Maverick was a certified blockbuster, wowing audiences that ultimately gave that action film an astounding 99% score on Rotten Tomatoes — and such popular acclaim helped earn the movie a Best Picture Oscar nomination. It was also a resounding success for the Pentagon, which worked closely with the filmmakers and provided, “equipment — including jets and aircraft carriers — personnel and technical expertise,” and even had the opportunity to make script revisions, according to the Washington Post. Defense contractors were similarly a pivotal part of that movie’s success. In fact, the CEO of Lockheed Martin boasted that his firm “partnered with Top Gun’s producers to bring cutting-edge, future forward technology to the big screen.”

While Top Gun: Maverick might have been the most successful recent product of the military-entertainment complex, it’s just the latest installment in a long history of Hollywood spreading military propaganda. “The Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency have exercised direct editorial control over more than 2,500 films and television shows,” according to Professor Roger Stahl, who researches propaganda and state violence at the University of Georgia.

“The result is an entertainment culture rigged to produce relatively few antiwar movies and dozens of blockbusters that glorify the military,” explained journalist David Sirota, who has repeatedly called attention to the perils of the military-entertainment complex. “And save for filmmakers’ obligatory thank you to the Pentagon in the credits,” argued Sirota, “audiences are rarely aware that they may be watching government-subsidized propaganda.”

What Next for the MIC?

More than 60 years after Eisenhower identified the problem and gave it a name, the military-industrial complex continues to use its unprecedented influence to corrupt budget and policy processes, starve funding for non-military solutions to security problems, and ensure that war is the ever more likely “solution” to this country’s problems. The question is: What can be done to reduce its power over our lives, our livelihoods, and ultimately, the future of the planet?

Countering the modern-day military-industrial complex would mean dislodging each of the major pillars undergirding its power and influence. That would involve campaign-finance reform; curbing the revolving door between the weapons industry and government; shedding more light on its funding of political campaigns, think tanks, and Hollywood; and prioritizing investments in the jobs of the future in green technology and public health instead of piling up ever more weapons systems. Most important of all, perhaps, a broad-based public education campaign is needed to promote more realistic views of the challenge posed by China and to counter the current climate of fear that serves the interests of the Pentagon and the giant weapons contractors at the expense of the safety and security of the rest of us.

That, of course, would be no small undertaking, but the alternative — an ever-spiraling arms race that could spark a world-ending conflict or prevent us from addressing existential threats like climate change and pandemics — is simply unacceptable.

"Countering the modern-day military-industrial complex would mean dislodging each of the major pillars undergirding its power and influence. That would involve campaign-finance reform; curbing the revolving door between the weapons industry and government; shedding more light on its funding of political campaigns, think tanks, and Hollywood; and prioritizing investments in the jobs of the future in green technology and public health instead of piling up ever more weapons systems. Most important of all, perhaps, a broad-based public education campaign is needed to promote more realistic views of the challenge posed by China and to counter the current climate of fear that serves the interests of the Pentagon and the giant weapons contractors at the expense of the safety and security of the rest of us."

There's a glimmer of hope there, and deffo "no small undertaking".
But I don't have much faith in anything changing anytime soon.
I mean us Australians must be inwardly cheering as we look forward to spending of $300b plus on some submarines...
I reckon old Ike Eisenhower would be rolling in his grave.

‘War is a racket’.

- General Smedley Butler, 1935…

Nothing too much has changed
… the soundtrack maybe more so ;);)

NATO, the US and neocons .... Champions of peace, truth and justice or a hammer looking for a nail?

https://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2023/may/08/nato…

Ukraine's is getting boring and awkward for the heroic Think Tankers so China is next ....

A sad track record over decades. Nothing like a Top Gun movie. But somehow they plough on regardless.

T42 Home Brew > 10,000/day comin' thru...
2022 ~ 2.76m US illegals breaking record by 1m
11 May 2023 ~ 27,000 in custody reserved for several thousand max.
11-13,000 daily with 150,000 on their way.
Joe's Polls dropping to 36%...(Say Hello to the crew Zombie Prez)

The White House this morning: President Biden didn’t take any questions from reporters. pic.twitter.com/qasvfagnHU

— Emel Akan (@mlakan) May 10, 2023

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mess-americans-grade-biden-poll-shows-…
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/migrant-border-crossings-f…
GI Joe failed to stall T42 reopen so had WHO call an end to legitimise his failed open date.
Joe wanted to buy a further 2 weeks to get his shit together...(Has plenty of time for other shit!)
Joe is pushin' for Court to buy [L] style transient 1st cross border > 3rd Country Asylum

Stone Garden or Joe's Stoner Garden
( Joe can now align all his border patrol at just 130m apart across whole US.)
Yep! They could see & hear each other...Joe has officially assembled a Human US Border Wall.
Joe's Stoner Garden Human wall is fast approaching 100,000 foot soldiers.
Joe's US Border : 60,000 Staff / 20,000 Agents / 10,000 National Guard /1,500 Troops / 1,120 Police
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/texas-border-agents-title-42/

Rudy Giuliani hit with bombshell rape lawsuit; ex-staffer says he demanded oral sex while he took calls from Trump https://www.businessinsider.com/giuliani-demanded-staffer-oral-sex-duri…. https://www.businessinsider.com/rudy-giuliani-took-viagra-constantly-de…

I know this is wishful thinking but it would be amazing if Biden’s decision to not join the quad meeting here was symbolic of a major turning point in the history of human civilisation, at which the US decides to step back from the precipice of war and changes course to look inwards at its own problems:

Instead of continuing to go down the path of rallying as many countries and military blocs that it can in support of it going to war with China, the US instead decides to look at itself in the mirror and focus on fixing the long and growing list of internal political, economic and social etc problems it is facing.

I think the world would be much better off that way and 90% of the planet’s population and countries would breath a massive sigh of relief that they don’t have to choose between the wrath of an angry USA hellbent on punishing and destroying the economies and toppling the governments of all those who defy it, vs, joining the US in going to war with China (actually more like fighting China for the US).

Biden’s absence is more likely the fact the dude is in bad shape - being unable to string a sentence together is one thing, but travelling on a schedule taking you to the other side of the world is something obviously getting well beyond him.

I hope the wishful thinking is correct ;)
… the summary is spot on.

- as long as we remain a US /UK vassal state, though, then there is no real reason for brandon to visit anyway…

It’s all propaganda and tokenism - yet it wasn’t too long ago he referred to our then pm as ‘that fella down under’ (which was an unintentional but accurate assessment of the public acknowledgment sco mo deserved) …and our new bloke is probly just ‘that other fella down under’.

Anyway… whoever is our pm is down under the desk and following orders ;)

- but, you never know, US leaders are often busy chasing a free feed ;)
And the white house is prone to putting on quite the banquet…

Albo : "D' Prez will be exhuming tbb's sarcophagus to liven up the Kama Sutra Harbour Cruise!"
MSM : "Unearthed Sarcophagus Rental Crisis!"
Experts : "Dig yerself a deeper hole!"
tbb : "Core Meltdown!"

2016 Vice Prez Joe's Oz Quad wrangle
https://media.gettyimages.com/id/577555654/photo/united-states-vice-pre…
Joe : "Travelling 17,000 miles as Vice Prez & I know that as a fact!"
https://media.gettyimages.com/id/576817646/photo/united-states-vice-pre…
Waving to some random Fellow from Down Under!
https://media.gettyimages.com/id/576816770/photo/united-states-vice-pre…
Some loser ALP Leader out polled Albo to pull punches with Joe...Bugger!
https://media.gettyimages.com/id/577296564/photo/australia-us-diplomacy…
Oz Parliament Sacred Gift Ceremony (Ouch!) > Prez sues AFL for Historic Head Concussion.
https://media.gettyimages.com/id/576686454/photo/united-states-vice-pre…
Girls Gone Wild Harbour Cruise "Happy Birthday Mr President!"
https://media.gettyimages.com/id/577567860/photo/australia-us-diplomacy…
Narrow escape from another Oz Chaser terrorist incident.
https://media.gettyimages.com/id/576703942/photo/united-states-vice-pre…
Must visit here again one day...where are we?
https://media.gettyimages.com/id/576852510/photo/united-states-vice-pre…

Biden won't be there as he has a small fire to put out in the how to fund government department...

Say you are about to run out of money, but you can magically create a new limit of money to have; only if you get everyone to agree but they love being disagreeable and you need to sort them out - what do you do?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/16/us-and-micronesia-to-rene…

Totally aside from the topic, but it really irks me how The Guardian turns acronyms into proper nouns. They write NASA as Nasa, AUKUS as Aukus, and in this instance COFA - the Compact of Free Association, note the capitals - as Cofa.

Terrible habit. Bad enough to stop me from subscribing.

You’re not on your Pat Malone Stu.
It’s an even worse habit than taking away hyphens and ending up with messes of words like “coexist” or “cooperate”.

'one who coaxes' + 'a meal good enough for a barrel-maker'

"Trump has successfully fertilised and harvested the discontent that has resulted from decades of growing inequality and unfairness, and is still doing it."

ol' al says this like its a bad thing...

that was definitely not his finest work

al not trump

"Dennis1 DAY AGO

No mention here of massive corruption in the Democratic Party and major bureaucracies and agencies of government. Nor of RFK Jr and his challenge to the demented and utterly corrupt Biden regime. Nor how both sides of US politics ratify obscene military spending to maintain a Neocon obsession with regime change wars and hegemony, even as the country sinks into third world poverty and social chaos. Trump is a symptom of decay not its cause. The military industrial espionage complex runs the country no matter which fool occupies the WH."

a good press club

never seen julian assange's missus talk before, was an interesting intro and chat

(seems the press club have never listened to her before either)

Powerful talk to some press and political allies and to many with influence who stayed silent for too long.

What about no submarine payments until Julian is released as leverage Albo?

https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tiktok.com%2F%40bigdog…

A First Family to be proud of:

https://bidenlaptopmedia.com

Photos, emails, influence peddling info etc fortunately with genitals redacted ( but not crack pipes).

Fruit does not fall far from the tree.

So now all the cheer leaders for Taiwan sovereignty will now be supporting sovereignty for Cuba. Guess the Chinese navy just needs to start some freedom of navigation exercises around the coast of Cuba.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/08/china-cuba-base-florida-s…

and new rumour .... Russia to form SATO (South American Treaty Organisation) to counter US expansionism into South America. SATO will:
- set up military bases near Mexican border with US
- Train and equip Mexican drug cartel members to SATO standards
- Support proxy insurgencies along border regions
- have a longer term goal of decolonizing and liberating the 51 US states currently under the oppression of the dangerous dictator President Hunter Biden and so freeing up US resources for exploitation.

Media immediately denounces such dangerous provocative aggression.

Wonders never cease...
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/roberts-kavanaugh-voting-rights-ac…

andy-mac wrote:

So now all the cheer leaders for Taiwan sovereignty will now be supporting sovereignty for Cuba. Guess the Chinese navy just needs to start some freedom of navigation exercises around the coast of Cuba.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/08/china-cuba-base-florida-s…

Chinese Navy already practice Freedom of Navigation in international waters - per UNCLOS - @andy. Off the coast of the US, Indonesia, Australia - everywhere!

It’s relatively uncontroversial. Except, apparently, when it applies to artificial islands in the Spratley and Paracel islands.

There is the annual breathless reporting of “Chinese spy ships” off Australia’s coast. But, they’re exercising their right. And we should be OK with that.

etarip wrote:

andy-mac wrote:

So now all the cheer leaders for Taiwan sovereignty will now be supporting sovereignty for Cuba. Guess the Chinese navy just needs to start some freedom of navigation exercises around the coast of Cuba.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/08/china-cuba-base-florida-s…

Chinese Navy already practice Freedom of Navigation in international waters - per UNCLOS - @andy. Off the coast of the US, Indonesia, Australia - everywhere!

It’s relatively uncontroversial. Except, apparently, when it applies to artificial islands in the Spratley and Paracel islands.

There is the annual breathless reporting of “Chinese spy ships” off Australia’s coast. But, they’re exercising their right. And we should be OK with that.

Cheers @etarip
Was just being glib....
But how will USA go with permanent Chinese presence in Cuba if report correct?

jp and tg

on mic, vlad1, vlad2, war, big bombs, the lobby disease, and a heap of stuff...

sorry jp, but well worth a watch

Has "positive thinking" and narrative shaping (propoganda) seriously weakened US military decision making?

General Petraeus describes the Russian Army as poorly trained, equipped and led and in contrast the Ukraine army is well trained and equipped to NATO standards. A pushover is implied.

Results suggest otherwise. The current counter offensive is making no progress and having big losses.

Wheras the reality of the Ukranian army is discussed here by instructors working closely with them.

https://warontherocks.com/2023/06/what-the-ukrainian-armed-forces-need-…

The obvious and predictable problems of brief, fragmented training in multiple very different countries on a host of different equipment types are emerging. This is compounded because the best and most able combat leaders probably died some time ago.

Has the US become so accustomed to spin and psyops that they can't distinguish reality from fiction? Do the leaders read the carefully controlled media messages their own spooks feed into the news cycle and somehow come to believe them?

In politics and economics spin creates disfunction but can seem like a big game with consequences that are hard to measure.

In war it does not work so well and is more than a little cruel for those putting their lives on the line.

Where are you getting your info on the counter offensive frog? If you want some recommendations, I’m happy to share.

Every single credible source I’ve had said that the Ukrainians will a. take significant casualties and b. that this is more likely to resemble the Kherson offensive than the Kharkiv one. They’re assaulting into prepared defensive lines. There will be an attritional phase to this offensive that will be ugly. (I mean, it’s all ugly…). It’s been going for about a week. Maybe too early to call it a failure?

The broader point you might consider is that the US, and the West actually OVER-ESTIMATED Russian conventional military capability for decades. It all looks good on paper but a lot of the units are hollow, the equipment is poor, some of the high-end stuff doesn’t do what it’s supposed to. They’ve been unable to establish air superiority. Their navy is effectively confined to stand off missile attacks. And they’re reliant on contracted military companies (Wagner) for sustained assault operations. And Ukrainian air defence is having a very high interception rate against continuous drone, cruise and ballistic missile attacks against infrastructure and cities.

They just seem to be unable put all of the capabilities they have together consistently, at least since the initial phase of the war. And even then, analysts were surprised at just how poor many (not all) of the formations were.

What has been apparent over the past 18 months is a reduction in the scale of efforts. They started with Combined Arms Armies manoeuvring, with their basic unit as the Battalion tactical group of about 500-1000 people each. Their key higher level formation now is a brigade staff but they’re basically unable to put any combined arms assaults together above platoon (~30 people), maybe on occasion, company (~100)level. That’s not what people expected from an Army that’s half a million men. That’s not the legacy that was bequeathed them by the soviets.

That WOTR article is great. It’s frank, it very accurately describes the fundamental challenges of modernizing the Ukrainian military, at both an organizational but more importantly a cultural level away from the Soviet model. They’re describing practical problems. It’s certainly not a description of failure. The Ukrainians have to fight differently to the Russians. They can’t win in a symmetrical contest.

In fact, I’d suggest that a longer view is that the success of the Ukrainians in resisting the Russian invasion in 2022 - when they were written off by everyone - can and should be put down to their modernization since 2014. This was mostly done with ex-Soviet equipment too. So, maybe the training has worked!

What did you think of the War on the Rocks report?

It appeared to describe what logic would predict from pulling newly recruited troops off to foreign countries giving them somewhat ad hoc training using a huge variety of equipment and then sending them straight to the front to join others trained differently in other countries.

Then stretched logistics on the ground under constant bombing of arms depots etc. Spare parts, supply lines, maintenance must all be under severe pressure.

If that is a recipe for comfortable superiority against a fully mobilised Russian army as Petraeus suggested I would be surprised.