Australian military not ‘fit for purpose’ – government review

Canberra is set to adapt its military assets amid ongoing US-China tension

A comprehensive assessment of Australia’s defense forces has found that the country’s military must undergo drastic changes if it is to have the capacity to address fluctuating strategic demands in the Indo-Pacific. The report comes amid concern in Canberra over the potential impact of posturing by Beijing and Washington in the region.

The center-left Labor government-ordered Defense Strategic Review, released on Monday, declared Australia’s armed forces to be not “fit for purpose,” and called for increased spending on assets, including long-range missiles and military drones.

“This is a watershed moment for defense policy in our country’s history,” said Minister of Defence Richard Marles in a Monday news conference discussing the report. He added that changes recommended in the review will ensure that Australia will become a “more confident and self-reliant nation.”

The assessment, which involved input and analysis from a former foreign minister and former defense chief, warned that Canberra must adapt to a “radically different” strategic environment brought upon by a Chinese military build-up it said was “the largest and most ambitious” by any global power since World War II. It also said that the Indo-Pacific region remains in a state of strategic flux given that for the first time in decades the United States is not “the unipolar leader of the Indo-Pacific.”

It added that tensions between the US and China are “the defining feature of our region and our time” and that Beijing’s military expansion is “occurring without transparency” as to its “strategic intent.”

An official from the Chinese embassy in Australia attended a briefing on the report, The Guardian wrote on Monday.

Responding to the report the same day in Beijing, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning, said countries should not “hype up the so-called China threat narrative.” Mao also said Beijing remains “committed to maintaining peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific and the whole world” and that it does “not pose any challenge to any country.”

In March, Beijing expressed its anger at elements of the AUKUS military alliance between the US, UK and Australia. It said that Washington’s move to provide Canberra with three nuclear-powered Virginia class submarines amounted to the allies “walking further and further down the path of error and danger.” China’s mission to the UN subsequently accused the members of the trilateral alliance of provoking an arms race.

https://www.rt.com/news/575274-australia-miltary-government-review/

Dear CCP the Aus gov that you control is letting you know they are primed for your invasion

Meta’s Oversight Board recommends continuing Covid censorship until WHO calls end to pandemic

Letting the WHO make the call.

Meta’s Oversight Board has recommended the continued censorship of COVID-19 “misinformation.”

In a report published Thursday, the board said that Meta should have one global approach on COVID-19 misinformation, and that Meta should continue its current approach of censoring Covid misinformation until the World Health Organization (WHO) stops considering COVID-19 an international public health emergency.

The board encouraged the social media giant to continue censoring COVID-19 information deemed false by the WHO as it is “likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent and significant physical harm.”

The Board also recommended that Meta should create a process of regularly performing transparent evaluations of the 80 claims about the virus that it currently censors.

Aside from removing content, the report said Meta can label, fact-check, or demote content containing COVID-19 misinformation.

“We thank the Oversight Board for its review and recommendations in this case,” a Meta spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “As Covid-19 evolves, we will continue consulting extensively with experts on the most effective ways to help people stay safe on our platforms.”

Meta is supposed to review the recommendation and respond within 60 days.

https://reclaimthenet.org/metas-oversight-board-recommends-continuing-covid-censorship

EPA looking to impose historic restrictions on power plants, report

The news comes as Democrat Senator Joe Manchin has condemned the EPA's desired crackdown on gas vehicles.

The Environmental Protection Agency is preparing a proposal to impose for the first time restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions for power plants, the Wall Street Journal reported.

According to the report, natural-gas and coal-fired power plants would be subject to emissions regulations for the first time by the federal government. The proposal reportedly aims to require such plants cut nearly all carbon emissions by 2040 – either by using new technology that does not emit CO2 or by engaging in “carbon capture,” a process of storing the CO2 underground.

Electric utilities would have various options for meeting the tougher standards – either by installing new carbon-capture systems or switching to cleaner fuels such as hydrogen, the newspaper also reports.

The White House is still reviewing the plans and could make adjustments prior to the release, which is expected in the near future.

EPA spokeswoman Maria Michalos said the agency is "moving urgently to advance standards that protect people and the planet, building on the momentum from President Biden’s Investing in America economic agenda, including proposals to address carbon emissions from new and existing power plants."

Power The Future President Daniel Turner told Just The News that utility companies "cannot comply" with such regulations and that the proposal is designed to make them 'obsolete.'

"What then, especially knowing that fossil fuels power nearly 2/3 of our electricity?," he asked. "Does America go dark? Does driving up costs on American families make the unreliable, expensive, Chinese-made wind and solar products more attractive?" .

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/energy/report-epa-looking-impose-historic-restrictions-power-plants

Reps. Tom Tiffany, Lance Gooden Propose Bill to Shutter Chinese NYC Consulate After Illegal Police Station Scandal

Congressmen Tom Tiffany (R-WI) and Lance Gooden (R-TX) will introduce legislation on Tuesday tasking leftist President Joe Biden with shutting down the Chinese Consulate General and Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in New York, a move meant to counter transnational repression and espionage by Beijing.

The bill, as obtained by Breitbart News on Monday, is only two pages long and would require Biden to “take such actions as may be necessary to — (1) provide for the closure of the Consulate General … and the expulsion of all diplomatic personnel assigned to that mission by not later than 72 hours after the date of the enactment of this Act.” Similarly, the bill would require the executive to shut down the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in New York and cancel “the visas or other entry documentation of all personnel assigned to that Office who are citizens of the People’s Republic of China.”

The consulate serves as a diplomatic outpost for China. The Hong Kong office exists to provide certain trade privileges to the port city as a result of the “One Country, Two Systems” policy, which — between 1997 and 2020 — allowed Hong Kong to govern itself as a free, capitalist society autonomous from Beijing.

The Chinese National People’s Congress (NPC) effectively ended the policy in 2020 by passing a “National Security Law” — which, under “One Country, Two Systems,” should not have any legal weight in Hong Kong — that essentially criminalized any dissent from the Communist Party. China later appointed a Party loyalist as the city’s chief executive and has forced nearly all prominent dissidents into prison or exile, shutting down a pro-democracy protest movement that flourished in 2019 and ending Hong Kong’s autonomy.

Reps. Tiffany and Gooden described the bill as a response to last week’s revelations that multiple law enforcement actions had taken place in New York to shut down an illegal police station that China had established to persecute dissidents on U.S. soil.

“The Chinese Communist Party’s brazen and provocative behavior has once again crossed a line,” Rep. Tiffany said in a statement. “The Biden administration must respond forcefully to Beijing’s outrageous attempts to monitor and intimidate dissidents on American soil — and that starts with telling their local ‘diplomats’ to pack their bags and get out.”

“American cities cannot become hunting grounds for Chinese secret police,” Rep. Gooden said. “The Biden Administration’s supposedly blissful ignorance of foreign enforcers operating on home soil is disturbing. The American people demand answers, and the Republican Majority will deliver them.”

The Department of Justice (DOJ) revealed last week the arrests of two alleged Chinese Communist Party agents, “Harry” Lu Jianwang and Chen Jinping, on charges of what U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace described as “repeatedly and flagrantly violat[ing] our nation’s sovereignty by opening and operating a police station in the middle of New York City.”

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/04/24/exclusive-reps-tom-tiffany-lance-gooden-propose-bill-to-shutter-chinese-nyc-consulate-after-illegal-police-station-scandal/

Alleged Pentagon Leaks Say ISIS Regrouping in Afghanistan, Angering Taliban

Documents allegedly procured from a trove of Department of Defense leaks suggest the Islamic State’s Afghanistan operation, ISIS-Khorasan, has strengthened markedly under Taliban rule and is consistently plotting attacks around the world, the Washington Post claimed this weekend.

ISIS-Khorasan, or ISIS-K, has taken responsibility for multiple terrorist attacks in Afghanistan since leftist President Joe Biden abandoned the country to the Taliban, another jihadist terror outfit, in August 2021. Several of those attacks have targeted Chinese interests in the country, which have expanded as the Taliban seeks investment from the Communist Party, disregarding China’s ongoing genocide against Muslim people on the countries’ mutual border. Taliban officials enthusiastically reject all indications that the Islamic State is a threat to the stability of Afghanistan, however, and have repeatedly claimed that ISIS simply does not have a presence in the country.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid condemned the Washington Post’s reporting as based on a “fake document” in an extensive statement posted to Twitter on Sunday, declaring that ISIS “has been severely defeated and is in the process of being eliminated.”

The Post claimed that the ominous warnings of the Islamic State rebuilding from the destruction of its “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria using Afghan territory came from documents initially surfacing on the video game chat platform Discord. That set of allegedly classified intelligence and defense documents includes information regarding a wide variety of national security topics, from the status of the war in Ukraine to sensitive conversations attributed to South Korean officials.

FBI agents arrested 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, an Airman First Class in the Massachusetts Air National Guard, in mid-April in relation to the alleged leaks. Multiple corporate media outlets have accused Teixeira of stealing the documents and sharing them on Discord with online friends in an attempt to impress them. Pentagon officials said this month that they are not sure exactly how many documents are now in the public domain as a result of this one incident.

https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2023/04/24/alleged-pentagon-leaks-say-isis-regrouping-in-afghanistan-angering-taliban/

Video: Neil Cavuto Shuts Down RFK Jr When He Calls For Peace in Ukraine

RFK Jr. compared NATO's encroachment against Russia to the Cuban missile crisis.

Fox News host Neil Cavuto shut down a series of comments by 2024 Democrat Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr as Kennedy compared NATO’s encroachment on Russia to the Cuban missile crisis and vowed that as President of the United States, he would stop propping up the Zelsnsky regime that’s sent hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to their deaths.

“We went over there being told that this was a humanitarian mission and now President Biden is saying that we’re there because we want regime change in Russia, which is the same thing the neocons did in Iraq with catastrophic results,” RFK Jr told Cavuto when he appeared on the Fox News channel to discuss his 2024 bid for the Presidency and the ongoing war in Ukraine.

“So if you became President, Robert, I just want to be clear, you would put a stop to it?” Cavuto asked.

“Yeah, I would pressure the parties to enter a ceasefire and then negotiate a settlement,” Kennedy said, telling Cavuto that he would stop propping up Zelensky’s military efforts.

“There are 300,000 Ukrainian troops who have already died in this war,” Kennedy said, adding that the situation has “become a proxy war between the United States and Russia.”

“Well without our help Robert, without our help the argument goes that there would be more obliteration in Ukraine, that hundreds of thousands more Ukrainians would die. They would lose their country. What do you say?” Cavuto replied.

https://nationalfile.com/video-neil-cavuto-shuts-down-rfk-jr-when-he-calls-for-peace-in-ukraine/

https://nationalfile.com/video-neil-cavuto-shuts-down-rfk-jr-when-he-calls-for-peace-in-ukraine/

>>18747060

>https://www.xxlmag.com/pras-fbi-informant-fans-react/

>>18747092

https://www.holdingschannel.com/funds/holding-evbg/

>>18747092

Leadership team

The Everbridge leadership team is comprised of executives with years of expertise leading both

high-growth entrepreneurial companies and established organizations such as Alcatel, BMC Software, Compuware, F5, Fannie Mae, McAfee, OpenText, PayPal, PMC Global, Red Hat, SAP Concur, Sophos, Symantec, Verisign, and Zix.

https://www.everbridge.com/about/leadership/