Carl,
I was truly horrified when I read that article. It was such a detailed
description about all of our country's military domination of the world. All
of this talk about the Chinese threat and the Russian threat! All just excuses
to continue on this road to hell!
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2020 11:46 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: COVID-19: US Military Pursues War Games Amid
Contagion
Two thoughts.
First, Do we need any more proof that the Ruling Class views the American
People as a resource to be used to advance the well being of the Ruling Class?
Secondly, is not this proof that the United States has undergone a non violent
Military Coup? Following the massive buildup during WW II, the American
Industrial Complex realized that massive fortunes could be made through the
continuation of sales of War Machinery, and the eternal buildup of military
bases and the supplies needed to maintain them. Today we are so tied to our
Military/Industrial Masters that we could not reduce production without causing
a major depression. And it looks as though COVID-19 got there first.
Carl Jarvis
On 5/27/20, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
COVID-19: US Military Pursues War Games Amid Contagion May 26, 2020 A
robust schedule of military maneuvers and exercises is either underway
or planned for Europe and the Pacific this year, with more in store
for 2021, Ann Wright reports.
Fleet of 15 partner nations, exercise Rim of the Pacific 2014. (DoD,
Shannon
Renfroe)
By Ann Wright
OpEdNews.com
During the pandemic the U.S. military is running the largest maritime
military maneuvers in the world, with Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC)
coming to the waters off Hawaii Aug. 17-31, bringing 26 nations,
25,000 military personnel, up to 50 ships and submarines and hundreds of
aircraft.
Hawaii hasstringent measures to combat the spread of Covid-19, with a
mandatory 14-day quarantine for all persons arriving in the state;
returning residents as well as visitors. This quarantine is required
until at least June 30, 2020.
The U.S. Army is also pursuing a 6,000-person war game in Poland, June
5-19, with a Polish airborne operation and a U.S.-Polish division-size
river crossing.
If these weren't too many military operations during an epidemic in
which personnel on 40 U.S. Navy ships have come down with the
hyper-contagious virus and during which military personnel and their
families have been told not to travel, plans are also underway for a
U.S. Army division-sized exercise in the Indo-Pacific region in less
than a year. Known as Defender 2021, the U.S. Army has requested $364
million to conduct the war exercises throughout Asian and Pacific
countries.
The pivot to the Pacific, begun under the Obama administration, and
maintained by the Trump administration, is reflected in a U.S.
National Defense Strategy (NDS) that sees the world as "a great power
competition rather than counterterrorism and has formulated its
strategy to confront China as a long-term, strategic competitor."
Earlier in May, the U.S. Navy sent at least seven submarines,
including all four Guam-based attack submarines, several Hawaii-based
ships and the San Diego-based USS Alexandria to the western Pacific in
what the Pacific Fleet Submarine Force announced as simultaneous "contingency
response operations"
for all of its forward-deployed subs. This was all in support of the
Pentagon's "free and open Indo-Pacific " policy - aimed at countering
China's expansionism in the South China Sea - and as a show of force
to counter ideas that the capabilities of U.S. Navy forces have been
reduced by Covid-19.
USS Theodore Roosevelt departs Apra Harbor following an extended visit
to Guam in the midst of the Covid-19 global pandemic. (U.S. Marine
Corps, Jordan E. Gilbert)
The U.S. military force structure in the Pacific will be changed to
meet the National Defense Strategy's perceived threat from China,
beginning with the U.S. Marine Corps creating new infantry battalions
that will be smaller to support naval expeditionary warfare and
designed to support a fighting concept known as expeditionary advanced
base operations.
U.S. Marine forces will be decentralized and distributed across the
Pacific on islands or floating barge bases. As the Marine Corps
eliminates much of its traditional equipment and units, the Marines
plan to invest in long-range precision fires, reconnaissance and
unmanned systems, doubling the number of unmanned squadrons.
To effect this change in strategy, Marine infantry battalions will go
down to 21 from 24; artillery batteries will go to five down from two;
amphibious vehicle companies will be reduced from six to four' and
F-35B and F-35C Lightning II fighter squadrons will have fewer
aircraft per unit, from 16 aircraft down to 10. The Marine Corps will
eliminate its law-enforcement battalions, its units that build bridges
and will reduce the service personnel by 12,000 in 10 years.
A Hawaii-based unit called a "Marine Littoral Regiment" is expected
to have
1,800 to 2,000 Marines taken from the three infantry battalions based
at Kaneohe Marine Base. Most of the companies and firing batteries
that will make up a littoral anti-air battalion will come from units
not currently stationed in Hawaii.
The III Marine Expeditionary Force, based in Okinawa, Japan, the main
Marine unit in the Pacific region, will be changed to have three
Marine littoral regiments that are trained and equipped to operate
within contested maritime areas. The region will also have three
Marine expeditionary units that are globally deployable. The other two
Marine expeditionary force units will provide forces to the III MEF.
The U.S. military war games in Europe, "Defender Europe 2020," is
already underway with troops and equipment arriving at European ports.
It will cost about $340 million, which is roughly in line with what
the U.S. Army is requesting for fiscal year 2021, which begins Oct. 1,
for the Pacific version of the Defender series of war maneuvers.
It will take place at Drawsko Pomorskie Training Area in northwest Poland.
More than 6,000 U.S. and Polish soldiers will participate the
exercise, named Allied Spirit. It was originally scheduled for May,
and is linked with Defender-Europe 2020, the Army's largest exercise
in Europe in decades.
Defender-Europe was largely canceled because of the pandemic.
U.S. Army Reserve soldiers check vehicles once they arrive to
Fallingbostel, outside of Bergen-Hohne, Germany, in preparation for
DEFENDER-Europe 20 on Feb. 8, 2020. (Dod, Joseph Bush)
U.S. Army Europe is planning additional exercises over the coming
months focusing on training objectives originally outlined for
Defender-Europe, including working with equipment from pre-positioned
stocks in Europe and conducting airborne operations in the Balkans and Black
Sea region.
In the current 2020 fiscal year, ending Sept. 30, the Army will
conduct a smaller version of Defender Pacific while Defender Europe
will get more investment and focus. But then attention and dollars
will swing over to the Pacific in fiscal-year 2021. Defender Europe
will be scaled back next year.
The Army is requesting just $150 million to conduct the exercise in
Europe, according to the Army.
The U.S. military has 85,000 troops permanently stationed in the
Indo-Pacific region and is expanding its longstanding series of
exercises called Pacific Pathways by extending the time Army units
are in countries in Asia and the Pacific, including in the
Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. A division
headquarters and several brigades would have a South China Sea
scenario where they will be around the South China Sea and the East China Sea
over the course of a 30- to 45-day period.
In 2019, under the Pacific Pathways exercises, U.S. Army units were
in Thailand for three months and four months in the Philippines. The
U.S. Army is in discussions with the Indian government about expanding
military exercises from roughly just a few hundred personnel up to
2,500 for a duration of up to six months - which "gives us a presence
in the region longer as well without being permanently there,"
according to the U.S. Army of the Pacific commanding general.
Breaking from the larger exercise, smaller U.S. Army units will deploy
to countries such as Palau and Fiji to participate in exercises or other
training events.
The Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine USS Alexandria (SSN 757)
transits Apra Harbor as part of regularly scheduled operations in the
Indo-Pacific on May 5, 2020. (U.S. Navy/ Randall W. Ramaswamy)
In May, 2020, the Australian government announced that a delayed
six-month rotation of 2,500 U.S. Marines to a military base in
Australia's northern city of Darwin will go ahead based on strict
adherence to Covid-19 measures including a 14-day quarantine. The
Marines had been scheduled to arrive in April but their arrival was postponed
in March because of the pandemic.
The remote Northern Territory, which had recorded just 30 Covid-19
cases, closed its borders to international and interstate visitors in
March, and any arrivals must now undergo mandatory quarantine for 14 days.
U.S.
Marine
deployments to Australia began in 2012 with 250 personnel and have
grown to 2,500.
The Joint U.S. Defense facility Pine Gap- the U.S. Department of
Defense, Five Eyes and CIA surveillance facility that pinpoints
airstrikes around the world and targets nuclear weapons, among other
military and intelligence tasks - was also adapting its policy and
procedures to comply with Australian government COVID restrictions.
As the U.S. military expands its presence in Asia and the Pacific, one
place it will NOT be returning to is Wuhan, China. In October 2019,
the Pentagon sent 17 teams with more than 280 athletes and other staff
members to the Military World Games in Wuhan. Over 100 nations sent a
total of 10,000 military personnel to the games in Wuhan last October.
The presence of a large U.S. military contingent in Wuhan just months
before the outbreak of the Covid-19 in Wuhan in December 2019, fueled
a theory by some Chinese officials that the U.S. military was somehow
involved in the outbreak, which now has been used by the Trump
administration and its allies in Congress and the media that the
Chinese deliberately used the virus to infect the world and adding
justification for the U.S. military build-up in the Pacific region.