President Trump

Military Preparing to Hold and House 32,000 Illegal Immigrants

With the flood of illegal immigrants rushing the border, the U.S. military is preparing plans to hold, and care for up to 12,000 family members in detention facilities across the southwestern United States on military bases.

The new request comes addition to the plans to house as many as 20,000 immigrant children at Defense Department facilities who are apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border without an adult relative or are separated from parents.
The military is being asked to help provide space to hold the migrants because existing federal facilities are running out of capacity due to the waves of people, mostly from Central America, who are being swept into the system due to the Administration’s policy of referring all border crossers for prosecution. On Monday, Defense Secretary James Mattis identified two Texas military bases as the sites where migrants will be held: Fort Bliss and Goodfellow Air Force Base.
The Trump Administration has yet to publicly identify where the groups of migrants will be held, but an official told TIME that Fort Bliss is being prepared to house families whose adults face criminal charges for the Department of Homeland Security. Fort Bliss, located near El Paso on the Rio Grande river across the U.S.-Mexico border, is an Army base comprised of more than 1 million acres across New Mexico and Texas.
Capacity is an urgent need. The Pentagon said in a statement late Wednesday it needs to be ready for as many as 2,000 people to be ready for detention within 45 days. A senior administration official says the 45-day timeline is likely to be on the long side. The official says the White House is pushing for a quicker ramp-up and expects the Pentagon will be able to deliver.
Meanwhile, the same Administration official says children who arrive on the U.S. border without a parent will stay at Goodfellow under a program run by the Department of Health and Human Services. The base is located further north near San Angelo in central Texas.
The military has had this role before. In 2014, the Obama Administration placed around 7,700 migrant children on bases in Texas, California and Oklahoma. The temporary shelters were shuttered after four months.

The Pentagon has also been asked to identify available land and “construct semi-separate, soft-sided camp facilities capable of sheltering up to 4,000 people, at three separate locations,” in the event of enough space not being available.

To read the entire article from Time, click here:

Photo: screenshot of an illegal immigrant video

China Will Increase Its Defense Ties, Influence in Africa

China’s presence in Africa has been steadily growing and since establishing their first overseas military base in Djibouti, they are looking to expand their foreign military presence all across the continent.

The claim is to protect their national assets, where the Chinese government has dumped billions in economic assistance. But now, they’re looking to expand their influence in the military field as well, challenging the US at every turn.

In Djibouti, where Chinese companies have constructed strategic ports and Africa’s first electric transnational railway, Beijing last year formally launched its first overseas military base, which also operates as a logistics and intelligence facility. Many experts now anticipate more Chinese bases in the years to come, with Namibia rumored as a potential location.
Meanwhile in Tanzania, where the state-run conglomerate China Merchants Holdings International is hoping to invest in the Bagamoyo mega port, China built a complex designed to train local armed forces earlier this year. And, at the first-ever China-Africa Defense and Security Forum in Beijing on Tuesday, the communist state announced it will provide African countries with “comprehensive support” on matters such as piracy and counter-terrorism. That includes providing technologies, equipment, personnel and strategic advice, local media reported.
All that comes amid expectations for the U.S. to reduce troops in Africa under President Donald Trump’s “America First” policy, which is set to boost Chinese President Xi Jinping’s government as the dominant foreign power on the continent.
“In recent years, Chinese arms sales to Africa have surpassed the United States,” said Luke Patey, senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies: “In particular, Chinese small arms and light weapons have spread rapidly since China is less inhibited by selling arms to countries in the midst of conflict than Western providers.” That goes hand in hand with Beijing’s expanding military cooperation, he continued.
The world’s second-largest economy has long described Sino-Africa cooperation as a “win-win” arrangement — one that provides China with natural resources and African economies with badly-needed infrastructure. But while the flood of Chinese resources may be welcomed by the region’s cash-strapped governments, the fear is that increased capital could translate into political leverage.
In fact, many speculate that it was Beijing’s concerns over its investments that resulted in the 2017 coup that ousted Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe — a charge that Xi’s administration has denied.

The Chinese will no doubt look to expand their base in Djibouti as well as start exploring other avenues in the very near future. As the events in Zimbabwe showed, the influence of China and their willingness to project their force is a new, and unsettling threat to the West in the region.

To read the entire article from CNBC, click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

Kushner: US Will Present Its Own Peace Plan for the Middle East Soon

The Trump administration’s senior envoy to the Middle East, Jared Kushner said that the United States will soon present its own peace plan for the Middle East after meeting with regional leaders.

He also slammed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for refusing to meet with him during the recent talks.

Kushner’s comments were published in the Sunday edition of the Arabic-language Al-Quds newspaper. Kushner has spent the week discussing the plan with leaders from Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Qatar.
Kushner did call on Abbas to join the talks: “If President Abbas is willing to come back to the table, we are ready to engage; if he is not, we will likely air the plan publicly.”
“However, I do question how much President Abbas has the ability to, or is willing to, lean into finishing a deal. He

has his talking points which have not changed in the last 25 years,” Kushner added.
Abbas has refused to meet with US officials following Trump’s decision last year to officially recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and relocate the US Embassy there. The US relocated its embassy to Jerusalem and opened it in May.
Palestinian leaders say the move confirms their long-held suspicions that the US is not an honest broker in the on-again, off-again peace talks, but is allied with Israel.
Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat criticized Kushner’s effort on Saturday and accused him of trying to topple the Abbas-led government, which presides over the West Bank.
Erekat also slammed the Trump administration for trying to dismantle the UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees. The negotiator doubled down on his criticism Sunday during an interview on Israeli television, saying the Washington negotiators were “not neutral” and predicting the US plan would fail.

Arab leaders want a two-state solution, but the Palestinians insist on having the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem completely under their control. But beyond that, the peace plan will ultimately fail as long as one side claims the other doesn’t have a right to exist.

To read the entire article from Deutsche Welle, click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

Military Asked to Provide 20,000 Beds for Detained Immigrant Children

The U.S. military has been asked to prepare to house up to 20,000 immigrant children, officials said on Thursday.

The request by the Department of Health and Human Services aims to provide temporary beds for up to 20,000 undocumented children at U.S military bases. That bed space would be needed beginning in July and running through the end of the year.

Officials tell NPR that four bases are expected to provide space, including the Army’s Fort Bliss base in El Paso, Texas. It’s uncertain if there would be enough barracks space, so officials say that tents likely would have to be put up.
It’s unclear whether the space could be used for the family detention ordered this week by the Trump administration; the Department of Health and Human Services only handles detained children — separated from their parents or unaccompanied — while the adults are held by the Department of Homeland Security.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is being asked to provide 21 attorneys — most of them military officers — to help the Department of Justice to prosecute undocumented immigrant cases in California, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico.

President Trump’s administration has been under fire for separating children from their parents who crossed the border illegally.

However, on Wednesday, Trump signed an executive order stating that families should be kept together in detention during any immigration hearings.

On Wednesday, First Lady Melania Trump made an unannounced visit with detained children in McAllen, Texas. Out of earshot, she quietly urged officials to reunite children with their parents.

To read the entire article from NPR, click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

Vague Trump Directive Creates “Space Force” or Did It?

The President, love him or hate him certainly knows how to make a splash. And he definitely did just that on Monday afternoon when he signed an executive order directing the Pentagon to create a new ”Space Force,” which will certainly anger the Air Force.

The President’s purposely vague directive, if followed thru will radically change the way the military services operate by putting all of the functions in space that many of services operate on their own, under one headquarters.

“I am hereby directing the Department of Defense and Pentagon to immediately begin the process necessary to establish a Space Force as the sixth branch of the armed forces,” Trump said while at a meeting of the National Space Council.

“That’s a big statement. We are going to have the Air Force and we are going to have the Space Force. Separate but equal. It is going to be something. So important,” Trump added, (Yes, he really did say separate but equal).

The President reportedly signed the order at 12:36 p.m. on June 18, 2018. So, does that mean we now have a Space Force? Not yet. The President can direct the Pentagon to go ahead with the planning for a new Space Force but only Congress can authorize a new branch of the military.

“Establishing a service branch requires congressional action.” House Armed Services Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee chair Mike Turner, R-Ohio said.

While the President can authorize the Pentagon to conduct working or study groups to lay out the groundwork for a future military branch, only Congress has the power to establish a new branch of the military and to establish the positions of senior officials to lead a new branch.

Which was why Trump’s directive was so vague.

However, a statement from one DOD official read, “The Joint Staff will work closely with the Office of the Secretary of Defense, other DoD stakeholders, and the Congress to implement the President’s guidance.”

The Pentagon will work on the basics of the Space Force and would have to brief Congress and have plans as to if creating a Space Force is even feasible, what the Space Force would do, who is going to be in it, and most importantly, how much is this going to cost.

Support for another service in Congress is mixed but right now it is probably safe to say, there will not be enough support in Congress to carry the necessary votes.

Trump’s directive goes counter what Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has stated publicly. In a letter Mattis wrote last year to Congress “At a time when we are trying to integrate the Department’s joint warfighting functions, I do not wish to add a separate service that would likely present a narrower and even parochial approach to space operations vice an integrated one we’re constructing under our current approach.”

The existing service chiefs are likely to be all against this move, specifically the Air Force. The decision is political rather than pragmatic as the chiefs don’t want to compete with another service for personnel, and for budgets. It is all about protecting their empires within. Currently, the Air Force considers space part of its domain.

And they have approximately 36,000 troops assigned to 134 world-wide bases to their Space Command, headquartered at Peterson AFB in Colorado. Their budget for their unclassified projects is expected to top $44.3 billion dollars.

The Air Force has the most to lose by creating a new sixth military service and would be forced to compete for pieces of space domain that it already enjoys. What of the bases and personnel that the Air Force is already using under Space Command? Do these get turned over to the new service or will the Pentagon build new facilities and start from scratch?

Each of the branches has their own space-based initiatives, albeit to differing degrees and they’ll be reluctant to give them up. Among them are the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC), Naval Network and Space Operations Command (NNSOC), Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR), and U.S. Marine Corps Forces Strategic Command (MARFORSTRAT). The U.S. Missile Defense Agency would also likely be tied into a new service arrangement.

In a sign that the Air Force could have seen this scenario arising, the Air Force Space Command was stripped of its role overseeing the service’s computer warfare efforts. Those personnel were transferred from Colorado Springs to Virginia and was seen as a move to allow the Air Force to focus more on their space warfare roles.

So, while they lost 72 airmen and civilians, they are expected to get an additional 150 personnel to boost their ability to plan and conduct warfare in orbit.

This current program that is under consideration and one that the Chinese and Russians are supposedly heavily invested in is the militarization of space, specifically the weaponization of satellites. It is believed that the Russians and Chinese are developing lasers which can knock out satellites in space which can throw our entire economy into a sudden stop and destroy our ability to spy on our adversaries.

It wouldn’t necessarily be a very expensive move in creating a new service per se. Most of the programs that are already existing could be just transferred from the service where it now resides to the new Space Force. It would then have to be reorganized under a new Chain of Command. That’s where it will get expensive. A new command requires the level of bureaucracy to the nth degree. This would require a new service secretary and a new member of the Joint Chiefs. Included in that would be a new headquarters and all the bells and whistles where staff personnel shuffle paper and “coordinate” but offer little to the overall mission.

A new service academy will probably not be needed, the new service can draw from the existing service academies, which would be a cost-saving measure.

But Congress may come back to the President and simply say that they won’t fund it and want to keep the command under the Secretary of the Air Force under the auspices of the Department of the Air Force.

And what, pray tell will they be called. OSF? (Outer Space Forces), one thing they won’t be called, at least officially are “Space Cadets.”

So while the internet is awash with futuristic Star Wars, Star Trek et .al, type of uniforms that the new Space Force may be wearing, we’ll take a break on that and just wait and see if the new command actually comes to fruition.

However, if they do opt for a Star Trek inspired duty uniform, a word of warning. Don’t be that obscure guy from the engineering section (red uniform shirt), who beams down to Rigel 7 for a scouting party….

Photo: Star Trek

US Cancels August Military Drill With South Korea, Kim Visits China

The United States has canceled a major joint exercise with South Korea as a sign of good faith with the summit meeting with North Korea. Meanwhile, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un arrived in Beijing on Tuesday, where he will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“Consistent with President Trump’s commitment and in concert with our Republic of Korea ally, the United States military has suspended all planning for this August’s defensive ‘wargame’,” Pentagon spokesperson Dana White, said in a statement.

“The South Korean and U.S. military authorities have been having close consultations over the combined exercises that U.S. President Donald Trump has said he will stop,” South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported.

The suspension of the military exercises reportedly will include a clause to resume the exercises if North Korea stops bargaining in good faith.

This is Kim’s third trip to China this year, coming a week after he met Trump in Singapore for historic talks.
Trump agreed to work with Kim toward complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, committed to provide the North’s regime with security guarantees and pledged to end “war games”, which Pyongyang and Beijing have long seen as provocative.
South Korea and the Pentagon announced they would halt the annual Freedom Guardian military drill scheduled for August.
In an unusual move, Chinese state media announced Kim’s visit and said he would stay for two days. Previously China would only confirm Kim had visited after he had left the country.

While critics of Trump are saying that he conceded these exercises with no assurances, they should recall that at the request of South Korean President Moon Jae-in, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis postponed the start of the Foal Eagle air, sea and land exercises prior to the Winter Olympics and Paralympics in South Korea.

To read the entire article from Reuters, click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

Chinese Hackers Steal Sensitive Data on US Submarines

Sensitive data about U.S. submarine research has been hacked from an unnamed government contractor by Chinese hackers working for China’s Ministry of State Security or MSS.

Included in the loss were six hundred fourteen gigabytes of data which were stolen, including submarine communications data and information on a secretive project known as Sea Dragon.

The Washington Post, citing anonymous American officials, reports that the data was stored on the contractor’s unclassified network, though officials said the material could be considered classified and was highly sensitive. The compromised data could give China important edges in both technology and tactics at sea, including in its conflict with a half-dozen nations including Japan and Indonesia over territorial claims in the South China Sea.
Little is known about the classified Sea Dragon initiative, but it is an underwater technology that the Defense Department has described as introducing a “disruptive offensive capability,” according to the Post, and which some defense experts regard as a key component in America’s precautions for conflict with China. Submarine weapons are key for China’s military ambitions, but Chinese cyber-incursions in recent years have nabbed designs and data for everything from advanced fighter jets to missile systems.
Former Navy officer and NSA analyst John Schindler, writing for the Observer, highlights the loss of cryptographic information used in submarine communications. Those techniques allow coordination of forces at sea, and their compromise can lend an enemy a huge tactical advantage in any conflict. As a precedent, Schindler cites the Allied compromise of the German Enigma cipher, and the resulting demolition of Nazi U-Boats that hastened the end of World War II—though it’s important to note that the Germans didn’t know the code had been cracked, and the U.S. may be able to react to the recent hack by changing codes and practices to keep messages out of Chinese hands.

The Chinese said that they were not aware of any such operation. Not much is known on Sea Dragon, however, the Pentagon has asked for or spent more than $300 million dollars for the project since late 2015 and said it planned to begin underwater testing by September.

Whether or not this latest hack sets that timetable back remains to be seen.

To read the entire article from Fortune, click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

Iran Seeks Help From China After US Sanctions

Politics makes for some strange bedfellows. This weekend, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani heads to China to participate in a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit. Will China, insistent on pushing the United States on every turn, improve ties with the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism?

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a regional security bloc led by China and Russia, is set to hold its 18th annual gathering in the Chinese city of Qingdao on Saturday (June 9) and Sunday. Iran is currently an observer member of the SCO, though it has long sought full membership.
The event will be chaired by Chinese President Xi Jinping. The participants — including leaders from four ex-Soviet Central Asian republics and two new members, Pakistan and India — will discuss matters of international security and trade, with shoring up the Iranian nuclear deal likely to be on the top of the agenda. In May, US President Donald Trump announced that the United States will withdraw from the deal, which aimed to contain Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting Western sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
China, along with the European Union and Russia, also signed onto the deal with Iran. The Chinese had been ardent supporters of the agreement, according to Kerry Brown, professor of Chinese Studies at King’s College, London.
Iran and China already have a strong relationship, as China is Iran’s biggest trading partner. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), an ambitious project launched by President Xi aiming to link China with other parts of Asia and Europe through multibillion dollar investments in infrastructure, also plays a role in strengthening their economic partnership.
Iran is a key transport hub between Asia and Europe. According to Berger, “Iran provides maritime access to land-locked countries and if China manages to build a high-speed railway across Central Asia, the Central Transport Corridor is faster and poses less hurdles in terms of rail-track standards and customs than the Northern route via Moscow.”

The Chinese are too shrewd and too cautious to get overly cozy with the Iranians who are back to square one economically after the US reinstituted sanctions after President Trump backed out of the nuclear deal. The Chinese will undoubtedly make some concessions to Iran, but probably not much more. They don’t view Iran as the major player that the Islamic Republic sees itself.

To read the entire article from Deutsche Welle, click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

Google Drops the Pretenses, Military Millions Rule the Day

Ah, those ethical do-gooders over at Google. Don’t you just love the perks the millennials receive for working there? Slides, laundry service, free meals and on-site gyms with free exercise classes, free massages for those stressed out workers make it one of the best places to work in terms of job satisfaction.

And the company stands for something, after all, wasn’t their motto, “Don’t Be Evil” or a reasonable facsimile thereof? So, when the powers that be over at Google decided to partner up on an Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) project with the Pentagon that would better interpret imagery from the military drones called “Project Maven”, all hell broke loose.

That upset the delicate sensibilities of those employees and 4000 of those Google hirelings signed a letter of protest and demanded the company “never build warfare technology.” Several resigned. No more free lunches and game rooms in the workplace. After all, a millennial has to stand up for what is right. But in that line of protest wouldn’t “Don’t Be Evil” apply to the United States military…right? Under pressure from the employees, the powers that be at Google decided to pull out of Project Maven.

So, the spoiled, pampered do-gooders over at Google are too principled to work for the very people who protect their right to work in their insulated little cocoons? News flash children, there is real evil in the world and the people in the United States military aren’t part of it. The people that they’re fighting in ISIS, al-Qaeda and the Taliban definitely wear the black hats in an increasingly gray world. Does this mean the Pentagon is perfect? Hell no, ask anyone who ever served in any service and they’d laugh at that suggestion.

But the military goes to great lengths to do no harm to civilians at or near the battlefields of today. Often to the point of putting their own troops in harm’s way. Think about that shit for a moment; the military at times puts its own troops in danger by trying to limit the number of civilian casualties. Isn’t that a perfect “Don’t Be Evil” example? Apparently not to the people of Google.

Project Maven at its core is a classic case of their motto, to begin with. Instead of “damaging Google’s brand” as they feared, they would ensure that no innocents would be targeted. This project was meant to ensure that only the bad guys get targeted.. Unless the people there believe that the people of the Islamic State are just misunderstood frat boys, who, you know the men who cut down thousands of Iraqi and Syrian civilians and beheaded countless others. Aren’t they, and the al-Qaeda people in the Middle East and beyond, the same ones who brought down the World Trade Center the evil ones? They must have slept through those nasty incidents in their nap pods.

One would think any technology that would spare innocent civilian lives would appeal to Google. This project is supposed to do just that, by giving military men and women the technology to differentiate between armed hostile forces and innocent men, women, and children. That is saving lives and is far from being evil.

It wasn’t a very well thought-out protest, because it didn’t even protect Google’s own interests. Last year, Google spent $1.1 billion dollars to buy a piece of HTC in Taiwan that makes its excellent Pixel smartphones. Earlier this year, Google made what was characterized as the largest investment ever in that nation by an international tech company. What was the investment for? Artificial Intelligence. The research and development of the AI project along with their other projects makes Taiwan the largest R&D center for Google in Asia.

China has long stated that it wants the island of Taiwan back under its sway, and they’ll be willing to use force if necessary. So while the company invested billions in Taiwan, who exactly did they think was protecting it from the “evil” Red China? The Chinese are spending a huge amount of money on their own AI project and they’ve made it clear that want to have the world’s most powerful military. If they overtake the US as the world’s predominant military power, who will defend Taiwan then?

But in the end, pragmatism won out. Those military millions of dollars are very rarely a one-time investment by Uncle Sam, and they will continue to generate millions in revenue for the company. That will pay for a heckuva lot of cooking and guitar lessons. Google also saw that there was no shortage of their competitors who would jump at the chance to take over working for the evil Pentagon and cash in.

And now it is reported that Google, Amazon along with Microsoft and other tech companies, are pursuing contracts to build the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure Cloud (JEDI), potentially the largest IT procurement project in history. according to Pentagon officials, the purpose of JEDI is to “increase lethality and readiness” of the military.

So, in a self-serving message that caters to the wishes of their employees who try to put their heads in the sand about the world they live in, Google CEO Sundar Pichai revealed new internal guidelines that the company will follow.

Google stated that the company will have no part in building weapons or “other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people,” and also ruled out surveillance technologies like those sold by Amazon.

Wasn’t this Google’s stance before Project Maven? Yes, it was. So what changed? Nothing. But as we stated above, they get to keep their heads in the sand while, cashing in on the fat Pentagon contract. The key number in this? 88,110.

That is how many employees are in the pay of Google and the powers that be there are continuing their contracts and bidding on others to keep the perks flowing at the campuses of the tech giant while protecting their R&D in Taiwan.

Who said there is no such thing as a free lunch?

Photo: DOD

US Airstrikes Kill 27 al-Shabab Militants in Somalia

United States military airstrikes in northern Somalia have killed at least 27 members of the militant al-Shabab organization according to military officials. The several drone strikes against the militants are the second strike the U.S. has conducted in the past week.

The statement issued Monday by the U.S. Africa Command said it assesses that no civilians were killed in the attack on Sunday about 26 miles southwest of Bosasso, the commercial capital of the semiautonomous Puntland state.
The area has recently seen attacks on local forces by extremists aligned with the Islamic State group.
The Trump administration approved expanded military operations against extremists in Somalia, including al-Shabab, which is linked to al-Qaida and was blamed for the truck bombing in Mogadishu in October that killed more than 500 people.
And elsewhere in Somalia, at least 10 people were killed on Tuesday morning when Al-Shabaab and government clashed in the Gedo region town of Bardheere, Radio Dalsan reports. Two government soldiers and eight militants were killed in the fighting according to an official of Gedo region. Al-Shabaab had attempted to overrun the Bardheere Military camp but failed to succeed in executing the attack.
SNA displayed a captured militant.
The Al-qaeda linked group has intensified its activities since last Friday when they attacked the Hiraan region’s Moqokori town where it claimed tens of SNA soldiers were killed. The group displayed bodies purported to be government soldiers. The town was recaptured on Saturday.
On the same day in Puntland’s Balikhadar area the militants attacked a military camp killing 5 soldiers. Local authority said at least 40 militants were killed later including 27 in a US airstrike.

AFRICOM said that none of the strikes were assessed to have caused civilian casualties and that the strikes were carried out in coordination with the US-backed Federal Government of Somalia.

To read the entire article from AllAfrica, click here:

Photo courtesy DOD