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NATO’s Expensive Expansion

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By Brian CLOUGHLEY – Strategic Culture Foundation – 27.10.2015

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation has many secrets, of which one of the most closely guarded is the final cost of its luxurious new headquarters complex in Brussels. As reported last year by Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper, the price had climbed to a billion Euros “against a background of Nato pledges to reduce its command structure, agencies and national HQs by 30 per cent in response to savage defence cuts in most of its 28 member states.”  According to NATO the final bill was supposed to be 750 million Euros for completion in 2015, but as had to be eventually admitted by NATO, “the project now has a clear way forward to completion in 2016” — with a 30 per cent increase in the price.

But that officially-stated price was not what it seemed, because, as revealed by Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine, “member states had already been sceptical when the consortium won the contract for €460 million [emphasis added] in 2010 . . .  [Nato Chief] Anders Fogh Rasmussen is aware of the problem but hasn’t seen fit yet to inform the public about it . . . At a meeting of NATO’s Deputies Committee on December 19 [2013], Rasmussen’s staff asked that the issue be dealt with ‘confidentially’.”

That shabby deceitfulness couldn’t prevent Spiegel from disclosing that the cost had risen to 1.3 billion Euros, “almost three times the €460 million contract awarded in 2010 to replace NATO’s Cold War-era headquarters with a soaring glass-and-steel structure to house some 4,000 staff.”  This vastly expensive palace has eight wings which converge “in a glass-covered central hall . . .  to ‘symbolise the allies coming together, while glass walls are supposed to represent Nato’s transparency’.”

The designer of this glass castle rhapsodised that “the wing-like profiles of the buildings reinforces [sic] the ideas of consensus, fluidity and aspirations towards peace . . .” But peace doesn’t seem to be what NATO is intent on achieving, any more than it seems to welcome transparency in glass walls or anything else, because a  leaked cable from Germany’s ambassador explained that a meeting of NATO representatives “pointed to the disastrous effect on the image of the alliance if construction were to stop and if NATO appeared to be incapable of punctually completing a construction project.”

How transparent. And how prophetic.

Although NATO’s deceit about its incompetence in building its new headquarters is veiled in secrecy, its ambition to expand in territory and military muscle-flexing is open for all to see, and has been for twenty years.

After the Warsaw Pact disbanded in March 1991, NATO, although deprived of any reason to continue in existence, managed to keep going, and in 1999 added Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary to its 16 members. As the BBC noted, these countries became “the first former Soviet bloc states to join Nato, taking the alliance’s borders some 400 miles towards Russia.”

With good reason Moscow wondered what on earth the US-NATO military alliance might be planning.

The New York Times recorded that the 1999 expansion was “opening a new path for the military alliance” and expressed delight that the ceremony took place in the town of Independence, Missouri, where “the emotional Secretary of State Madeleine K Albright watched the three foreign ministers sign the documents of accession, signed them herself, then held them aloft like victory trophies.” Ms Albright was born Marie Korbelová in Prague and “made no secret today of her joy as her homeland and the two other nations joined the alliance.”

It was the emotional Madeleine Albright who appeared on the US television programme Sixty Minutes on May 12, 1996 and was asked to comment on Washington’s economic sanctions that were savaging Iraq.  The interviewer, Lesley Stahl, said that as a result of the punishment “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima.  [90,000 people were killed at Hiroshima. Probably about 20,000 were children.] And, you know, is the price worth it?”

Albright replied that “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.” (The YouTube recording is nauseating.) Then she was given the US Medal of Freedom by President Obama in 2012. You couldn’t make it up.

In spite of facing no threat whatever from any country in the world, NATO continued to expand around Russia’s borders, inviting Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia to join in 2002, which they did two years later.

As President Putin observed in an interview with Italy’s Corriere della Sera “we are not expanding anywhere; it is NATO infrastructure, including military infrastructure, that is moving towards our borders. Is this a manifestation of our aggression?”

Then NATO took wider and more aggressive action in August 2003 when it took “control of the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in Afghanistan, its first major operation outside Europe.”  Predictably, the war in Afghanistan plunged from crisis to calamity after US-NATO countries agreed in 2005 “to expand the alliance’s role,” including “deployment of thousands more troops in the south.” The result was disaster.

Last December NATO (but not the US) ceased offensive operations in Afghanistan, having sacrificed the lives of over 3,500 soldiers of whom some 2,300 were American.  One might imagine that this humiliating defeat might have resulted in a pause for reflection about NATO’s role, purpose and effectiveness, but its new Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, is proving as energetically expansive as his predecessor, which is why he was chosen for the job. NATO’s appalling blitz of Libya in 2011, which reduced the country to its present catastrophic chaos, has failed to modify his intriguing belief that “from Afghanistan to Morocco, and many places in between, NATO is helping other countries to defend themselves.”  He may have forgotten that Libya is one of the “places in between.”

On 23 October Stoltenberg expressed delight about Obama’s change of policy about keeping troops in Afghanistan,  expressing “appreciation for President Barack Obama’s announcement that the United States will maintain its current troop levels in Afghanistan through 2016, and will retain a substantial presence beyond 2016.  This important decision paves the way for a sustained presence by NATO Allies and partners in Afghanistan.”

If Stoltenberg had said that he welcomed Obama’s decision because it would result in a better life for the citizens of Afghanistan (which, alas, it will not), then his stance could be understood and applauded. But Stoltenberg welcomed the decision only because it would enable NATO to carry on its expensive expansion. That’s the way that military-associated  bureaucrats think about the world. They’ve never risked their lives for any cause — any more than did the evil child-killer Albright — but they’re really happy to engage in exciting martial adventures in which the lives of thousands of soldiers can be placed at risk.

Jens Stoltenberg is the embodiment, the essence —  the ultimate epitome — of the sleek, well-manicured, desk-bound, happy non-combat warrior. His peaceful and lucrative career in politics was marked by early anti-Americanism, during the Vietnam War, but over the years the chameleon changed from being an anti-American protester to eventually embracing his present anti-Russian complexion.  When he was made head of NATO, President Putin considered him to be a “serious, responsible person”  but warned with prescience that “we’ll see how our relations develop with him in his new position.” Both responsibility and relations collapsed.

A few days before his declaration of happiness about NATO’s “sustained presence” in Afghanistan Stoltenberg boasted that “we have doubled the size of the NATO Response Force, making it more ready and more capable, and established a high readiness Joint Task Force, able to move within a matter of days. We have increased our presence in the east, with more planes in the air, more ships at sea and more boots on the ground. We have established six new headquarters in our eastern Allies, with two more on the way.” He told NATO  countries that “the time has come to invest more in defence.”

NATO’s threat to Russia is direct and aggressively confrontational.  And it’s going to cost member nations a great deal of money. But Mr Stoltenberg is no stranger to expense.  As NATO announced : “While Mr Stoltenberg was Prime Minister, Norway’s defence spending increased steadily with the result that Norway is today one of the Allies with the highest per capita defence expenditure.”

Now he has committed Europe’s financially struggling NATO nations, including almost-bankrupt Greece and Spain, to “continue to fund the Afghan national army and security forces” which cost about 12 billion dollars a year.

The huge cost of NATO’s recent and current military manoeuvres in nations circling Russia has not been revealed, presumably because it is as secret as the escalating price of the new NATO headquarters.

Unfortunately it is improbable that Mr Stoltenberg will try to encourage economic prudence or support any attempts to reduce tension with Russia. The Obama-Stoltenberg NATO military alliance has won the battle to expand its presence and its budget. The sword-brandishing will continue — and the cost of the glitzy glass palace will go through the roof.

October 30, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

We Must Oppose Obama’s Escalation in Syria and Iraq!

By Ron Paul | October 27, 2015

Today Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee to outline a new US military strategy for the Middle East. The Secretary admitted the failure of the US “train and equip” program for rebels in Syria, but instead of taking the appropriate lessons from that failure and get out of the “regime change” business, he announced the opposite. The US would not only escalate its “train and equip” program by removing the requirement that fighters be vetted for extremist ideology, but according to the Secretary the US military would for the first time become directly and overtly involved in combat in Syria and Iraq.

As Secretary Carter put it, the US would begin “supporting capable partners in opportunistic attacks against ISIL (ISIS), or conducting such missions directly, whether by strikes from the air or direct action on the ground.”

“Direct action on the ground” means US boots on the ground, even though President Obama supposedly ruled out that possibility when he launched air strikes against Iraq and Syria last year. Did anyone think he would keep his word?

President Obama claims his current authority to conduct war in Iraq and Syria comes from the 2001 authorization for the use of force against those who attacked the US on 9/11, or from the 2002 authorization for the use of force against Saddam Hussein. Neither of these claims makes any sense. The 2002 authorization said nothing about ISIS because at the time there was no ISIS, and likewise the 2001 authorization pertained to an al-Qaeda that did not exist in Iraq or Syria at the time.

Additionally, the president’s year-long bombing campaign against Syrian territory is a violation of that country’s sovereignty and is illegal according to international law.

Congress is not even consulted these days when the president decides to start another war or to send US ground troops into an air war that is not going as planned. There might be notice given after the fact, as in Secretary Carter’s testimony today, but the president has (correctly) concluded that Congress has allowed itself to become completely irrelevant when it comes to such grave matters as war and peace.

I cannot condemn in strong enough terms this ill-advised US military escalation in the Middle East. Whoever concluded that it is a good idea to send US troops into an area already being bombed by Russian military forces should really be relieved of duty.

The fact is, the neocons who run US foreign policy are so determined to pull off their regime change in Syria that they will risk the lives of untold US soldiers and even risk a major war in the region — or even beyond – to escalate a failed policy. Russian strikes against ISIS and al-Qaeda must be resisted, they claim, because they are seen as helping the Assad government remain in power, and the US administration is determined that “Assad must go.”

This is not our war. US interventionism has already done enough damage in Iraq and Syria, not to mention Libya. It is time to come home. It is time for the American people to rise up and demand that the Obama Administration bring our military home from this increasingly dangerous no-win confrontation. We must speak out now, before it is too late!

October 29, 2015 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Revealed: US almost launched nuclear weapons during Cuban Missile Crisis

RT | October 28, 2015

During the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, an Air Force airman says that his unit was ordered to launch a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. His captain’s use of common sense over 50 years ago may have saved the world from a nuclear apocalypse.

An article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists paints a picture of John Bordne, an Air Force airman who was stationed at one of four secret US missile sites in Japan during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. While the US Air Force has not come out and verified the claims, Bordne’s account is that, in the early morning hours of October 28, 1962, his unit of 32 Mace B cruise missiles inexplicably received launch orders.

Each Mace B cruise missile had an enormous payload 70 times more powerful than the atomic bombs that hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Within strike range were various communist countries: the capital cities of Hanoi, Vietnam; Beijing, China; and Pyongyang, North Korea, as well as the Soviet military facilities in Vladivostok.

Bordne says that a few hours before his shift began, the commander at the Missile Operations Center on Okinawa began a routine radio transmission to the missile sites, giving a string of characters that normally did not match the ones that the crews had. But this time was different: For the first time in history, the codes matched.

The fate of the entire world hung in the balance when US Air Force Captain William Bassett had clearance to open his pouch to see if his personal string of characters matched the last part of the code that was transmitted. They did. This authorized him to open an envelope to read his site’s launch instructions, but the captain declined to fulfill the order of launching a nuclear strike.

Bassett then saw that three of his four targets described in the envelope were not located in the Soviet Union. This was a fact that was corroborated over telephone correspondence with an officer at a different site. Indeed, the fact that they were only at DEFCON 2 added to the incredulousness of the orders: If they were actually supposed to launch their nuclear missiles and kick off World War III, they should have gone to DEFCON 1, the maximum possible level of alert, which is necessary for such a strike to occur.

The crew, with their fingers on the button, were ready to launch the nukes, but Bassett stalled them, as Bordne recalls, and ordered two armed airmen to “shoot the [lieutenant] if he tries to launch without [either] verbal authorization from the ‘senior officer in the field’ or the upgrade to DEFCON 1 by Missile Operations Center.”

“If this is a screw up and we do not launch, we get no recognition, and this never happened,” Bordne recalled the captain saying.

And the fiasco turned out to be a screw up indeed, one of a magnitude only a few notches away from nuclear war.

“None of us will discuss anything that happened here tonight, and I mean anything. No discussions at the barracks, in a bar, or even here at the launch site. You do not even write home about this. Am I making myself perfectly clear on this subject?” Bassett reportedly told his men after the crisis had passed.

Bassett died in 2011, and during his lifetime, the crew faithfully kept to his orders, with the public remaining oblivious to crisis until now.

But not even those stationed at the secret bases on Okinawa could have known that the Soviet Union was facing its own brush with starting World War III.

On October 27, 1962, just a day before Bordne’s experience occurred, Soviet Navy officer Vasili Arkhipov also saved the world from destruction in the middle of the Cold War’s tensest moment. He was the second-in-command of a B-59 submarine when American destroyers began to drop depth charges on it, trying to force the Soviet vessel to surface.

The submarine’s captain assumed that the Americans were trying to destroy his nuclear-armed submarine and that a catastrophic war had broken out. He ordered the B-59’s ten kiloton nuclear torpedo to prepare for firing on an enemy aircraft carrier that was leading the American task force near Cuba. The launch of the B-59’s torpedo required the authorization of all three senior officers aboard the submarine, and Arkhipov was alone in denying permission. His level head, like Bassett’s, may have saved the human species.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, best known for its Doomsday clock, is now calling on the Air Force to release details on the harrowing Okinawa event. Other organizations have attempted to uncover this information through Freedom of Information Act requests, but the Bulletin notes that these requests could take years, if they are successful at all.

October 28, 2015 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Britain’s Poppy Fascism

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By Finian Cunningham – Sputnik – 28.10.2015

It’s that time of year again – when Britain’s “poppy fascism” dominates public life. Television presenters are perhaps the most conspicuous exponents, whereby the paper facsimile of the little red flower must be donned on all lapels.

Now weeks ahead of the official commemoration day, more and more Britons, including TV personalties, are pinning the poppy in public.

It may seem innocuous, but there is a disturbing authoritarianism to the increasing custom. Those who don’t wear the symbol commemorating Britain’s war dead are liable to be castigated and abused for being “traitors”.

The BBC is a classic example. The publicly owned state broadcaster says that its presenters and reporters have the option of not wearing the red poppy. But in practice such is the peer pressure and jingoistic mood of modern Britain that all BBC staff will have to conform to a personal display of the red floral tribute. Bet on it.

Some brave television figures refuse to go along with the established “norm”. It was Channel 4 news presenter Jon Snow who coined the phrase “poppy fascism” a few years ago when he was publicly berated by BBC journalists and other media outlets for refusing to don the flower during his nightly broadcasts. It remains to be seen if the Channel 4 news anchor will this year cave to public pressure – a pressure which seems to be growing every year.

Ever since 1919, Britain and its Commonwealth states, including Australia, Canada and New Zealand hold Remembrance Day on November 11.

It marks the armistice of the First World War in 1918. The first commemoration was held by Britain’s King George V who wore a red poppy, thus inaugurating a tradition that continues to this day. The delicate flower was commonly seen on the battlefields of Belgium and France and came to symbolise the millions of soldiers killed during the four-year-old war.

Across Britain, Remembrance Day is marked by sombre ceremonies in towns and cities during which poppy wreathes are laid at war memorials. The biggest event is held at the Cenotaph in London’s Whitehall. Queen Elizabeth, Prime Minister David Cameron and other political leaders will be among the chief dignitaries, along with senior members of Britain’s armed forces.

So what, you may ask, is objectionable about Britain’s annual Remembrance?

In its early observance, the event was indeed a momentous mourning for the millions who died in the First World War. It was an occasion to vow “never again” should mankind be plagued with such horror.

However, the massive demonstration of grieving and repudiation of war has since given way to an obscene glorification of war. The danger of such co-option was there from the beginning when King George V led the first Remembrance Day. For the British monarch – whose cousins included Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II and other European aristocrats – personified the basic background to the conflict. It was an imperialist squabble that exploded into a conflagration that consumed up to 18 million ordinary civilians among the warring nations.

From the very outset therefore, the British commemoration was an opportune way to rehabilitate the monarch and the state’s ruling class who had largely precipitated the war, along with their European elites.

It is a heinous indictment that only two decades after the end of the First World War, the world would be plunged into an even greater conflagration of the Second World War, which resulted in nearly 80 million dead – more than four-fold more. The subsequent war had its antecedents in the imperialist rivalries of the first. Why a second more terrible war should happen was because the war-making imperialist state apparatus had never been held to account. The British rulers were able to deftly reinvent themselves in the eyes of their public as “victors” instead of being seen, as they should have been, as warmongering villains.

To be fair to honourable exceptions, many genuine anti-war Britons were aware of the disgraceful and dangerous co-option by the ruling class. During the 1920s, a movement began which saw war remembrances conducted with white poppies, instead of the red ones that came to be associated with the official event. White poppies are still worn to this day and that tradition has been reinvigorated by campaign groups like Stop the War Coalition.

Nevertheless, Britain has become a discernibly more jingoistic country in which the red poppy has taken on an Orwellian symbolism. Television presenters are dragooned into wearing it, schools and workplace are expected to display it. It has become a badge of loyalty to the state, and those who decline to wear the poppy are fingered as treacherous or disrespectful to “our troops”.

A major cause of the cultural shift is that Britain has become a more warmongering state over the past 20 years. True, it was always a belligerent state, playing the bulldog role to the more powerful and even more warmongering United States.

But former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s criminal partnership with Washington in invading Afghanistan and Iraq has unleashed a virtual permanent state of war. British troops are still stationed in Afghanistan and will be for at least another year. Blair’s warmongering has been continued by David Cameron who launched NATO strikes on Libya in 2011 and who is moving to deploy British warplanes to bomb Syria – without the consent of the Syrian government.

When Cameron joins Queen Elizabeth in laying wreathes at the Cenotaph in London, they will be followed in their footsteps by former British prime ministers, including Tony Blair. Together, they will be honouring not only the dead of the First World War, but British veterans who took part in all subsequent wars, including the destruction of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and countless other colonial wars in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Britain’s dirty war in Northern Ireland will also be exonerated.

In other words, this is not a solemn regret for the dead or for war.

Not a bit of it. It is the warmongering British capitalist state apparatus indulging in an exercise of sanitising Britain’s history of illegal wars, including its present role in Syria. It deifies the war criminal class, which is then “authorised” to keep repeating its crimes. If that’s not fascism, then what is?

Britain’s official war commemoration is certainly not a fitting tribute to victims of war. Because if it were then there would a commitment to stopping wars. But as history shows, Britain’s warmongering has proliferated over the years. That in turn is because the upper echelons of British class society use war commemorations as a cloak to hide their vile belligerence.

A fitting Remembrance Day would be for British citizens to call for the prosecution of Tony Blair and David Cameron as war criminals.

But when British news channels are falling over themselves to wear red poppies out of unthinking “loyalty” or fear of being labelled traitors – that shows how disturbingly authoritarian and conformist British society has become.

Photo – © Sputnik/ Evgenya Novozhenina

October 28, 2015 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

Extra 136,500 sonobuoys US wants pose threat to whales

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RT | October 28, 2015

The US Navy continues to cover the oceans with tens of thousands of sonobuoys to monitor and detect submarine movement around the world. The DoD has allocated $178.5 million to buy an additional 136,000 sonobuoys.

About a meter-long, a typical sonobuoy device can be passive or active. The first type ‘listens’ to the noises produced by propellers of various kinds of vessels and pick out those made by a submarine. Active sonobuoys, sited in strategic points such as straits and harbors, can also sonar the water space around them to detect submarines.

The sonobuoys are usually positioned in designated areas from the air, typically by using SH-60F Seahawk helicopters.

“The United States Navy maintains a superior global Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) capability with the ability to detect, localize, identify, and track potential hostile submarines,” Global Security outlet said in 2011.

According to CNN, US sonobuoys are first and foremost aimed at tracking Russian submarines, over concerns they are “taking up positions near critical communication lines.”

Scientists say these sonar “intrusions” are proving deadly to marine wildlife, in particular whales. Sonar devices disrupt them and other sea mammals when nursing and feeding, which leads to injury or death of the animals who rely on sound to communicate and navigate, Elisa Allen, from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, told RT.

“Sonars can confuse and disorient them, terrify these animals,” Allen said. “Animals exposed to sonars have been known to rapidly change their depth in an attempt to escape the noise. This causes them to bleed from their ears and eyes,” she said, adding that whales and dolphins often beach themselves in their attempts to escape sonar.

The lucrative $178,565,050 contract has been granted to ERAPSCO, a defense contractor in Columbia City, Indiana. Five types of sonobuoys are set to be delivered by October 2017.

ERAPSCO, a joint venture between the Sparton corporation and Ultra Electronics, has been producing military grade sonobuoys capable of detecting and classifying manmade objects traveling underwater since 1987.

October 28, 2015 Posted by | Environmentalism, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Examples of U.S. Foreign Policy Dysfunction

By Rick Sterling | Dissident Voice | October 27, 2015

If the U.S. is to ever change its foreign policy based on dominance and aggression to a foreign policy based on diplomacy and respect for international law, there needs to be a foundation of realistic assessments. Foreign policy decisions need to be based on reality not fantasy and propaganda.

Unfortunately, dysfunction, deception and propaganda extend across the spectrum from Congressional Republicans to Hillary Clinton to the White House to Bernie Sanders. The following are recent examples:

Benghazi Hearings in Congress ignore important issues to focus on superficial

Congress recently held hearings on what happened in Benghazi Libya leading up to the death of Ambassador Stevens. The hearings focussed on what former Secy of State Clinton knew, when she knew it and whether she should have ordered more security. Before that, millions were spent exploring the email home server issue.

Meanwhile the root cause of Stevens’ death and consequences of the US/NATO overthrow of the Gaddafi government have been ignored. The hearings were silent on the deaths of tens of thousands of Libyans, the eruption and expansion of terrorism within Libya and beyond and the massive numbers of refugees fleeing across the Meditarranean. Instead of evaluating the consequences of “regime change” in Libya, Congressional members focused on cheap political advantage.  Mainstream media said nothing about the shallowness of the hearings; they were happy to report on political maneuvering and whether or not Clinton would lose her temper or be able to get “above the fray”.

Points which would have been informative to explore include:

  • Were the claims of imminent ‘massacre’ in Benghazi exaggerated and largely false? These claims paved the way to the UN Security Council resolution and NATO imposed No Fly Zone. Was it a fake emergency?
  • Who authorized the transition from “protecting civilians” to a campaign of attack and Libyan government overthrow? UN Security Council members China and Russia both say there were deceived and that the US and NATO violated the UN Security Council resolution.

Politicians and much of the media have portrayed Gaddafi as “crazy” for many years. For readers interested in a reality check, see the short video of Gaddafi’s speech to the Arab League in 2008 as he points out the contradictions of acknowledging Israel on the 1967 boundary, as he warns the Arab League leaders of plots and coups, and as he says “we might be next” (for assassination).  For a concise contrast of Libya before and after the NATO backed invasion see this article aptly titled “From Africa’s wealthiest democracy under Gaddafi to Terrorist Haven after US Intervention”.

Clinton advocates No Fly Zone for Syria despite U.S. military opposition and Turkey turning against it.

U.S. military leadership has generally opposed the “no fly zone” idea.  They have made clear that a “no fly zone” begins with military attacks on anti-aircraft positions and is an act of war. They have underscored that imposing such a zone in Syria would be vastly more difficult than in Libya where there were no sophisticated anti-aircraft installations. Even then it took seven months of intense bombing to overthrow the Tripoli government. The risks in Syria would be huge with a significant chance of international war. The idea is reckless and irresponsible for the following reasons:

  • The areas are controlled by armed opposition groups, predominately Jabhat al Nusra (Al Qaeda). Very few civilians remain in the areas proposed for NFZ in Syria. Most have fled to areas under Syrian government control, especially around Latakia and Tartous. Other have gone to Turkey. The proposal is basically to make US and NATO the air force for Al Qaeda. Amazing.
  • If it was imposed, the No Fly Zone would more likely become an “intense conflict zone” rather than a “safe zone” as promoted by interventionists.  It would bring USA and NATO directly into the conflict which is what the proponents want.
  • There already exists a “safe zone”. It’s called the Turkish border.

Of crucial importance, the second Turkish Parliamentary elections are this coming Sunday November 1. Polls indicate the ruling “Justice and Develpment Party” (AKP) will probably lose majority control of the parliament. It’s possible they will lose power altogether. Either way, this will put a stop to the schemes for an all powerful Turkish President (Erdogan) and continuation of the war on Syria. All three non-AKP parties in Turkey oppose the current policies supporting war and terrorism in Syria.

Clinton’s NFZ proposal is opportunistic and out of step with reality in Syria and Turkey.

White House continues anti-Assad lies as they are further exposed in Turkey

The White House must know very well that Assad government forces did NOT carry out a chemical weapons attack on the outskirts of Damascus in August 2013. They must be acutely aware of this because they could not get the U.S. Intelligence to agree with the statement that Assad was behind the atrocity back in Fall 2013.  Instead of the usual “U.S. Intelligence assesses with high confidence …..” they had to substitute the “US Government assesses …..” Although rarely remarked or noted in mainstream media, this was a significant deviation.

Despite this, and the investigations of the most acclaimed US investigative journalists (Seymour Hersh, Robert Parry, Gareth Porter, Russel Baker) which all point to the Assad government NOT being responsible, just a couple weeks ago the White House spokesman asserted the Assad government “used chemical weapons against his own people”.

Meanwhile last week in Turkey two deputies of the social democratic party CHP held a press conference to expose the evidence of Turkish involvement in shipping sarin to Syria and the refusal of the Erdogan government to pursue the investigation or charge the culprits.

This evidence, including wire taps, supports the conclusions of Hersh and others, that the chemical weapons used in Damascus on August 21, 2013 were supplied by Turkey to armed “rebels”. This further exposes the fact free propaganda that “Assad used chemical weapons on his own people”. Politicians and mainstream media outlets such as PBS Frontline just keep repeating it.

Bernie Sanders joins the absurd propaganda campaign against Venezuela and former leader Hugo Chavez

As recently reported at Venezuelanalysis, Bernie Sanders referred to former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as a “dead communist dictator”.  It’s nonsense, just like the White House claim that Venezuela is a “threat to US national interests”. It’s sad that Sanders is following that path.  Chavez was a socialist not communist; he was a member and leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela.  Between 1998 and 2013 Chavez and the PUSV competed in elections seventeen times.  They won every time except once. Elections in Venezuela are vastly more free and fair than elections in the US. They have high turnout, they have very active and hard campaigning, there is a paper trail to verify the accuracy of the electronic voting, over 50% of the electronic votes are matched to the paper votes to confirm the accuracy of the vote counting.

National Lawyers Guild and Task Force on the Americas (and others) have sent many delegations to Venezuela. They have observed conditions including the voting process. National Lawyers Guild’s statement on the 2013 election concluded the Venezuelan elections were “well organized, fair and transparent”.  They added: “The U.S. would do well to incorporate some of the security checks and practices that are routine in Venezuela to improve both the level of participation and the credibility of our elections,” said NLG attorney Robin Alexander.

So why in the world is Bernie Sanders promoting false propaganda that Chavez was a “communist dictator”?

Task Force on the Americas, based in the SF Bay Area, has written a letter to the Sanders campaign asking him to review and correct his inaccurate statement.

Conclusion

There is profound need for dramatic changes in U.S. foreign policy. Given that over 55% of the discretionary budget of the U.S. goes to the military, it’s likely that positive changes in domestic policy will depend on changes in foreign policy. The starting point has to be realistic assessments of conditions in other countries, sincere examinations of the consequences of past actions and a genuine commitment to abiding by international law.  As we can see from the above examples, there is a long way to go.

Rick Sterling is a retired engineer and co-founder of Syria Solidarity Movement. He can be emailed at: rsterling1@gmail.com.

October 28, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Hypersonic deterrence: how to maintain strategic balance

By Vladimir KOZIN | Oriental Review | October 27, 2015

It is unlikely that nuclear weapons, which the US created in the mid-twentieth century and used only once – to bomb Japanese cities – will ever be activated in a global conflict. We can assume that the leaders of the official Western nuclear powers (the UK, US, and France) as well as the other states that actually possess such weapons (India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan) will continue to base the conceptual foundation of their military strategy on this incontestable truism: “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” Russia’s current military and political leaders agree with this self-evident observation. In his Oct. 22 speech in Sochi before the Valdai Club, an international discussion group, President Vladimir Putin echoed these sentiments: “The development of nuclear weapons has made it clear that there can be no winners in a global conflict.”

Unlike nuclear weapons, which are “tools of extreme impact,” Long-Range Hypersonic High-Precision Weapons (or Advanced Hypersonic Weapons – AHW in US terminology) are ready for use in any scenario, including as part of counter-terror operations. AHW do not cause unnecessary civilian casualties and do not inflict significant material damage to civil transportation systems, power plants, or other infrastructure beyond the small affected area.

Russia has been developing its own promising prototypes of AHW in the numbers deemed necessary to bolster its own security, in response to both America’s functional rollout of Prompt Global Strike, an ambitious program to deploy a global, layered missile-defense system, as well as the Pentagon’s modernization of its strategic and tactical nuclear weapons.

There have already been calls for an international moratorium on R&D and testing of AHW. Despite the fact that this idea appears somewhat utopian, it is quite feasible that at some future date quantitative limits could be introduced on types of AHW and the regions where they could be positioned, but only if the following six key preconditions are met:

1) Any future AHW agreement must be grounded in the principle of equality and equivalent security for all signatory states and must ensure the creation of a system of multilateral, strategic-deterrence treaties.

2) Signatories to such an agreement must agree to respect the mutual commitment not to use AHW against each other under any circumstances.

3) Before such a treaty goes into effect, all nuclear powers must agree to respect the reciprocal obligation to either refrain from inflicting a nuclear first strike against each other or not to use such weapons at all, and also to renounce the use of weapons of any kind against manned or unmanned spacecraft, and these promises would be formalized through legally binding, international covenants.

4) All states possessing nuclear weapons, whether officially or factually, must commit themselves to move toward the use of defensive strategies and unconditional nuclear deterrence that threatens no one.

5) States deploying missile-defense systems and tactical nuclear weapons within the borders of other states, must dismantle the installations of this type currently being designed or constructed, before reaching an agreement on limiting AHW, and America must also pull all of its tactical nuclear weapons out of Europe and the Asia Pacific region, deploying them only within the borders of the continental US.

6) This agreement must be formalized through a legally binding international treaty that is both versatile and inclusive – in the sense that it includes provisions allowing any other state to join it – and its validity should be of indefinite duration.

Unfortunately, any type of Agreement on Quantitative and Territorial Constraints on the Deployment of AHW would hardly be reached shortly, given the context of America’s updated National Security Strategy (February 2015), which six times refers to Russia an “aggressor,” as well as the identification of Russia and China (here, here, and here) as her first and second, respectively, biggest potential adversaries in the American playbook for the use of strategic nuclear weapons. The Pentagon still adheres to a doctrine that calls for inflicting initial “preemptive and preventative” nuclear strikes against an enemy, and it keeps a longer list of potential targets for an initial nuclear strike than any other state. Another important point to consider is the multifold increase in NATO’s military activity near Russia’s borders during last two years.

In other words, without a radical change by Washington and its NATO allies in their negative and even hostile stance toward Russia and China, the idea that any sort of mutually acceptable agreement could be reached to limit or control AHWs is simply unrealistic and should be put off until a “better time.”

Vladimir Kozin is Head of Advisers’ Group at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and Professor of the Academy of Military Sciences of the Russian Federation.

October 28, 2015 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Tokyo orders work to start on Okinawa US base, despite governor’s opposition

RT | October 28, 2015

Japan’s Defense Ministry says it will restart work on a land reclamation project, which is vital for a proposed US military base on the site. This is likely to infuriate the local Okinawa prefectural government, who are deeply against the move.

Work is planned to start on Thursday and will create storage space needed to start the landfill work. The Okinawa Defense Bureau will also continue a seabed drilling survey off the coast of Henoko, where an alternative US base could be built.

“An administrative decision to start the landfill work has already been made,” said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga on Wednesday, as cited by the Japan Times.

The Okinawa government says it refuses to accept the notice and has asked the bureau to consult with them before starting the landfill work. Tokyo says these talks have already finished.

On October 13, Okinawa Governor Takeshi Onaga revoked permission granted for the construction of a new US military base to host the US Marine Corps, following their relocation from the Futenma Air Station from the heavily populated city of Ginowan.

“I will continue to do everything in my power to fulfill my campaign pledge of not allowing the construction of a new base at Henoko,” Onaga said, according to the Asahi Shimbun.

However Onaga appears to have been outflanked. Land Minister Keiichi Ishii suspended the landfill approval cancelation on Tuesday, while Tokyo said it would now be giving itself permission to carry out the work and sideline the governor.

The Land Ministry asked Onaga to withdraw his cancelation of the landfill approval by November 6, the Japan Times reports.

“This is like an ultimatum from the government,” Onaga told a news conference on Tuesday. “It’s not just unfair but also insulting to many people in the prefecture. It’s absolutely unacceptable.”

The previous Okinawa governor, Hirokazu Nakaima, gave the green light for the relocation of the base in 2013. However, after Onaga won the elections in 2014, he promised to oppose the plan – to the delight of the majority of locals.

There has been tension for years between the local population and US servicemen. This dates back to a notorious crime committed in 1995 when three US marines kidnapped and raped a 12-year-old schoolgirl.

There have also been less-publicized sex crime cases involving underage victims reported in 2001 and 2005, the fatal running over of a female high school student by a drunken US marine in 1998, and other incidents.

Okinawa, home to about one percent of Japan’s population, hosts nearly half of the 47,000 US troops based in Japan.

October 28, 2015 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Trident trap: Replacement of UK’s nuclear subs ‘to cost £167 billion, exceeding all expectations’

RT | October 25, 2015

The overall cost of replacing and maintaining Britain’s nuclear submarine fleet will reach 167 billion pounds ($256 billion), far exceeding initial expectations, Cameron’s Conservative party lawmakers told Reuters.

The final decision on replacing the UK’s four aging nuclear subs is due to be made in 2016, with Prime Minister David Cameron being a strong backer of continuing the country’s at-sea nuclear deterrent.

The British government had said earlier that the purchase of new Vanguard-class vessels, which are capable of carrying Trident missiles, would require around 15-20 billion pounds, without specifying estimated maintenance costs.

However, Minister of State for Defense Procurement Philip Dunne said on Friday that the price tag for the state-of-the-art submarines will come in at around 25 billion pounds.

The new figures were revealed in Dunne’s written parliamentary response to fellow Conservative party lawmaker Crispin Blunt’s request.

According to the response, the in-service costs would amount to about 6 percent of the annual defense budget, which now stands at around 34 billion pounds, over the vessels’ lifetime.

Blunt used the data provided by the Defense Ministry to calculate the total cost of the project, which he said will be “167 billion pounds.”

“My office’s calculation based on an in-service date of 2028 and a missile extension until 2060,” the MP told Reuters.

“The successor Trident program is going to consume more than double the proportion of the defense budget of its predecessor… The price required, both from the UK taxpayer and our conventional forces, is now too high to be rational or sensible,” Blunt stressed.

The lawmaker’s figure was based on the presumption that the UK will spend 2 percent of its annual GDP on defense, as Cameron has promised, and a forecast that the country’s GDP will grow 2.48 percent on average every year between 2020 and 2060.

Reuters said that they had repeated the calculations using the same numbers and conditions and also come to the same result – 167 billion pounds.

The Defense Ministry defended the rise in cost, saying that there was no alternative to the Trident-based nuclear deterrent in terms of both price and capability.

“At around 6 percent of the annual defense budget, the in-service costs of the UK’s national deterrent … are affordable and represent an investment in a capability which plays an important role in ensuring the UK’s national security,” the ministry stressed.

However, there is strong opposition to prolonging the Trident program in Britain, with critics suggesting that the money would better spent on families facing austerity.

The main Labour Party remains split on the issue, as its new leader, Jeremy Corbyn, doesn’t share the majority’s support for replacing the nuclear subs.

In late-September, Corbyn said he was “opposed to using nuclear weapons” and wouldn’t use the Trident system even if it was at his disposal.

The leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP), Nicola Sturgeon, has said that the renewal of Trident “is unjustified. It is unaffordable. It is immoral.”

READ MORE: ‘Get rid of Trident or back Tory WMD’: SNP calls on Scottish Labour ‘to be straight with people’

“Be in no doubt. The SNP will stand against Trident – today, tomorrow and always,” Sturgeon promised at the party’s conference earlier this month.

Last year, a poll by the Guardian newspaper revealed that 79 percent of British voters believe that UK shouldn’t renew its Trident program.

October 25, 2015 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | | Leave a comment

Veto Corleone Already in White House

By David Swanson | War Is A Crime | October 23, 2015

President Barack Obama has vetoed a military authorization bill. Why would he do such a thing?

Was it because dumping $612 billion into a criminal enterprise just finally struck him as too grotesque?

Nope.

Was it because he grew ashamed of holding the record for highest average annual military spending since World War II, not even counting Homeland Security Department or military spending by the State Department, the Energy Department, the Veterans Administration, interest on debt, etc.?

Nope. That would be crazy in a world where pretense is everything and the media has got everyone believing that military spending has gone down.

Was it because the disastrous war on Afghanistan gets more funding?

Nope.

The disastrous war on Iraq and Syria?

Nope.

The monstrous drone wars murdering 1 vaguely identified person for every 9 innocents slaughtered?

You kidding?

Oh, I’ve got it. Was it because building newer, bigger, and smaller more “usable” nuclear weapons is just too insane?

Um, nope. Nice guess, though.

Well what was it?

One reason that the President provided in his veto statement was that the bill doesn’t allow him to “close” Guantanamo by moving it — remember that prison still full of people whom he, the President, chooses to keep there despite their having been cleared for release?

Another reason: Obama wants more money in the standard budget and less in his slush fund for the War on the Middle East, which he renamed Overseas Contingency Operations. Obama’s language suggests that he wants the base budget increased by more than he wants the slush fund reduced by. The slush fund got a piddley little $38 billion in the vetoed bill. Yet the standard budget is deemed so deficient by Obama that, according to him, it “threatens the readiness and capabilities of our military and fails to provide the support our men and women in uniform deserve.” For real? Can you name a man or woman in uniform who would receive a dime if you jumped the funding of the most expensive military in the history of the known universe by another $100 billion? The President also complains that the bill he’s vetoed did not allow him to “slow growth in compensation.”

Another reason: Obama is worried that if you leave limits in place on military spending in the “Defense” Department, that will mean too little military spending in other departments as well: “The decision reflected in this bill to circumvent rather than reverse sequestration further harms our national security by locking in unacceptable funding cuts for crucial national security activities carried out by non-defense agencies.”

Hope and Change, people! Here’s a full list of the areas in which Senator Bernie Sanders has expressed disagreement with President Obama’s preferences on military spending:

 

 

 

 

 

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October 25, 2015 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

Portugal’s President Won’t Allow Leftists to Form a Government

teleSUR – October 23, 2015

Portuguese President Anibal Cavaco Silva said he will not allow a coalition of leftist parties to form a government despite the fact that they won an outright majority in parliamentary elections held earlier this month.

The president said Thursday that he gave conservative Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho the mandate to form a minority government that will fall in line with the policy of austerity imposed by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“In 40 years of democracy, no government in Portugal has ever depended on the support of anti-European forces, that is to say forces that campaigned to abrogate the Lisbon Treaty, the Fiscal Compact, the Growth and Stability Pact, as well as to dismantle monetary union and take Portugal out of the euro, in addition to wanting the dissolution of NATO,” said President Cavaco Silva.

He argued that it was too risky to let the Left Bloc or the Communists come close to power, saying the country’s right wing would protect austerity measures the left had threatened to overturn.

The decision outraged Left Bloc leader Antonio Costa, who called the president’s action a “grave mistake” that threatened the country’s stability. “It is unacceptable to usurp the exclusive powers of parliament,” he said. “The Socialists will not take lessons from professor Cavaco Silva on the defense of our democracy.”

Parties in the Left Bloc ran an anti-austerity campaign than won them more than 50 percent of the vote in the Oct. 4 elections. Coelho’s coalition won only 38 percent of the vote, not enough to form a single-party government. That prompted the leftist parties to form a coalition, allowing it to gain an outright majority that would, in theory, permit it to form a government.

Cavaco Silva said it was now up to lawmakers in parliament to decide on the new government’s program, which must be presented in 10 days. If it is rejected in parliament, the government will collapse. The three-party leftist coalition vowed to reject the program as they, after all, control the legislative body, holding 122 seats out of 230.

“I give this government a week or a week and a half,” said Left Bloc lawmaker Filipe Soares. “The president will have to take the responsibility for the instability that will be created by this decision.”

Critics portrayed the president’s move as an assault on democracy.

“Democracy must take second place to the higher imperative of euro rules and membership,” wrote Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor of The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper.

Portugal returned to democracy in 1974 after nearly 50 years of authoritarianism.

October 24, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Brookings Wants to Strengthen the Syrian Rebels by Bombing Hezbollah

By Steven MacMillan – New Eastern Outlook – 24.10.2015

Western think tanks have been working relentlessly to try and counter Russia’s geopolitical masterstroke in Syria, which has clearly taken most strategists in the West by complete surprise. Reading through the analysis by these think tanks on Russia’s role in Syria, one is starkly reminded of how immoral Western foreign policy actually is, when you remember that these organisations are freaking out because Russia is bombing terrorists! Obviously, the reason why they are so distraught is because Russia is bombing the West’s terrorists, which they have been using as proxy armies to try and force regime change in Damascus (a strategy that has completely failed).

Potential countermeasures are the subject of a recent article for the Brookings Institution written by Pavel K. Baev, a nonresident senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings, titled: Russia’s Syrian entanglement: Can the West sit back and watch? Baev suggests that “the decision to withdraw the batteries of Patriot surface-to-air missiles [from Turkey] must be cancelled”,before arguing that the US and its allies could bomb “Hezbollah bands around Damascus”:

“Finally, the United States and its allies could deliver a series of airstrikes on the Hezbollah bands around Damascus. That would be less confrontational vis-à-vis Russia than hitting Assad’s forces. Hezbollah has already suffered losses in the Syrian war and is not particularly motivated to stand with Assad to the bitter end, away from [its] own home-ground in Lebanon. (Israel would appreciate such punishment, too.)”

Striking Hezbollah may not have the desired effect Baev seems to envisage however, as this belligerent action is as likely to galvanize the group and ensure it will fight “to the bitter end” with the Syrian army, than encourage it to scale back its involvement in Syria. Airstrikes on Hezbollah could also potentially provoke a response against the perpetrators of the violence, further escalating a conflict that already involves a plethora of regional and international powers. Furthermore, many people would consider an attack on Hezbollah to be essentially an attack on Iran, as the Lebanese based group is funded by Tehran and closely aligned with the country.

Brookings recommendations once again highlight the fact that large sections of the US establishment have absolutely no focus on defeating ISIS in the region, as Brookings is advocating bombing a major group that has been fighting ISIS for years now. Rather, many within the US are still focused on toppling the regime in Damascus (which is never going to happen) in addition to weakening the forces that are battling ISIS. If the West was serious about defeating ISIS, they would support and cooperate with the forces that are truly fighting against this new so-called caliphate.

TTIP is an Geoeconomic Tool against Russia

 Western strategists are terrified of Europe moving closer to the East, and an EU-Russian (especially a German-Russian) alliance arising. Merging Russia and the EU in the future is an objective of some US strategists, but Washington only desires this if both Russia and the EU are completely subservient to US dictates. Today however, Russia is a sovereign, independent nation which is not controlled by the US, and some within the EU are increasingly tiring of being vassals of Washington. This means closer relations between Russia and the EU is a geopolitical disaster for the US at the present moment, as Washington’s power will be severely diminished if this tectonic shift occurs.

By understanding this reality, it is now obvious how essential the trade deal between the US and the EU – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) – is to US geostrategy. As well as being a corporate fascist deal that empowers multi-national corporations at the expense of citizens, TTIP is a geoeconomic weapon against Russia to cement the transatlantic alliance between the US and the EU.

Ensuring TTIP passes was a recommendation of another Western organisation that has been working on potential counter strategies to Russia, namely the Washington-based Atlantic Council (AC). In a testimony before the US Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington on October 8, 2015, Gen James L. Jones, Jr., the Chairman of the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security and a former National Security Advisor, Jones emphasises the importance of TTIP “successfully concluding” for the West:

“Energy security is instrumental for transatlantic growth, prosperity, and security. The same can be said of successfully concluding TTIP. Europe and the US have the largest trading partnership in the world. Strengthening it serves our mutual interests and reaffirms the centrality of the transatlantic alliance in the 21st century. TTIP also affords the U.S. a unique opportunity to author the rulebook and roadmap for 21st century advanced economies.”

Jones other recommendations include working to diversify the EU’s energy supply to “undermine Putin’s use of energy as a political weapon”, continuing to impose sanctions on Moscow, in addition to admitting Montenegro into NATO next year and working to pull Macedonia into the military alliance. The retired General also asserts that the US should provide the government in Kiev with “anti-tank missiles, intelligence support, training and counter-electronic warfare capabilities”.

Russia of course is well aware of the importance of TTIP to Washington’s long-term agenda. In Vladimir Putin’s speech at the United Nations at the end of September, Putin appeared to confront some of the US-led trade deals which we have seen being negotiated in recent years, most probably referring to TTIP and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) (from 18.45 into the speech):

“I would like to point out another sign of a growing economic selfishness. Some countries have chosen to create closed and exclusion economic associations, with the establishment being negotiated behind the scenes in secret from those countries own citizens, the general public [and] the business community. Other states whose interests may be effected are not informed of anything either. It seems we are about to be faced with an accomplished fact that the rules of the game have been changed in favour of a narrow group of the privileged, with the WTO having no say. This could imbalance the trade system completely and disintegrate the global economic space. These issues affect the interests of all states and influence the future of the world economy as a whole.”

For a multitude of reasons, defeating TTIP would be a colossal achievement for the world. Many European’s are diametrically opposed to this deal, with hundreds of thousands protesting TTIP in Germany a recent illustration of this sentiment. Stop TTIP!

October 24, 2015 Posted by | Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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