An Ongoing Disaster
The scale of the ongoing tragedy visited on Libya by NATO and its allies is becoming horribly clearer with each passing day. Estimates of those killed so far vary, but 50,000 seems like a low estimate; indeed the British Ministry of Defence was boasting that the onslaught had killed 35,000 as early as last May. But this number is constantly growing. The destruction of the state’s forces by British, French and American blitzkrieg has left the country in a state of total anarchy – in the worst possible sense of the word. Having had nothing to unite them other than a temporary willingness to act as NATO’s foot soldiers, the former ‘rebels’ are now turning on each other. 147 were killed in in-fighting in Southern Libya in a single week earlier this year, and in recent weeks government buildings – including the Prime Ministerial compound – have come under fire by ‘rebels’ demanding cash payment for their services. $1.4billion has been paid out already – demonstrating once again that it was the forces of NATO colonialism, not Gaddafi, who were reliant on ‘mercenaries’- but payments were suspended last month due to widespread nepotism. Corruption is becoming endemic – a further $2.5billion in oil revenues that was supposed to have been transferred to the national treasury remains unaccounted for. Libyan resources are now being jointly plundered by the oil multinationals and a handful of chosen families from amongst the country’s new elites; a classic neo-colonial stitch-up. The use of these resources for giant infrastructure projects such as the Great Manmade River, and the massive raising of living standards over the past four decades (Libyan life expectancy rose from 51 to 77 since Gaddafi came to power in 1969) sadly looks to have already become a thing of the past.
But woe betide anyone who mentions that now. It was decided long ago that no supporters of Gaddafi would be allowed to stand in the upcoming elections, but recent changes have gone even further. Law 37, passed by the new NATO-imposed government last month, has created a new crime of ‘glorifying’ the former government or its leader – subject to a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. Would this include a passing comment that things were better under Gaddafi? The law is cleverly vague enough to be open to interpretation. It is a recipe for institutionalised political persecution.
Even more indicative of the contempt for the rule of law amongst the new government – a government, remember, which has yet to receive any semblance of popular mandate, and whose only power base remains the colonial armed forces – is Law 38. This law has now guaranteed immunity from prosecution for anyone who committed crimes aimed at “promoting or protecting the revolution”. Those responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Tawergha – such as Misrata’s self-proclaimed “brigade for the purging of black skins” – can continue their hunting down of that cities’ refugees in the full knowledge that they have the new ‘law’ on their side. Those responsible for the massacres in Sirte and elsewhere have nothing to fear. Those involved in the widespread torture of detainees can continue without repercussions – so long as it is aimed at “protecting the revolution” – i.e. maintaining NATO-TNC dictatorship.
This is the reality of the new Libya: civil war, squandered resources, and societal collapse, where voicing preference for the days when Libya was prosperous and at peace is a crime, but lynching and torture is not only permitted but encouraged.
Nor has the disaster remained a national one. Libya’s destabilisation has already spread to Mali, prompting a coup, and huge numbers of refugees – especially amongst Libya’s large black migrant population – have fled to neighbouring countries in a desperate attempt to escape both aerial destruction and lynch mob rampage, putting further pressure on resources elsewhere. Many Libyan fighters, their work done in Libya, have now been shipped by their imperial masters to Syria to spread their sectarian violence there too.
Most worrying for the African continent, however, is the forward march of AFRICOM – the US military’s African command – in the wake of the aggression against Libya. It is no coincidence that barely a month after the fall of Tripoli – and in the same month Gaddafi was murdered (October 2011) – the US announced it was sending troops to no less than four more African countries – the Central African Republic, Uganda, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. AFRICOM have now announced an unprecedented fourteen major joint military exercises in African countries for 2012. The military re-conquest of Africa is rolling steadily on.
None of this would have been possible whilst Gaddafi was still in power. As founder of the African Union, its biggest donor, and its one-time elected Chairman, he wielded serious influence on the continent. It was partly thanks to him that the US was forced to establish AFRICOM’s HQ in Stuttgart in Germany when it was established in February 2008, rather than in Africa itself; he offered cash and investments to African governments who rejected US requests for bases. Libya under his leadership had an estimated $150 billion of investments in Africa, and the Libyan proposal, backed with £30billion cash, for an African Union Development Bank would have seriously reduced African financial dependence on the West. In short, Gaddafi’s Libya was the single biggest obstacle to AFRICOM penetration of the continent.
Now he has gone, AFRICOM is stepping up its work. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan showed the West that wars in which their own citizens get killed are not popular; AFRICOM is designed to ensure that in the coming colonial wars against Africa, it will be Africans who do the fighting and dying, not Westerners. The forces of the African Union are to become integrated into AFRICOM under a US-led chain of command. Gaddafi would never have stood for it; that is why he had to go.
And if you want a vision of Africa under AFRICOM tutelage, look no further than Libya, NATO’s model of an African state: condemned to decades of violence and trauma, and utterly incapable of either providing for its people, or contributing to regional or continental independence. The new military colonialism in Africa must not be allowed to advance another inch.
DAN GLAZEBROOK writes for the Morning Star newspaper and is one of the co-ordinators for the British branch of the International Union of Parliamentarians for Palestine. He can be contacted at danglazebrook2000@yahoo.co.uk
May 25, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Africa, Gaddafi, Great Manmade River, Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, NATO, Tripoli |
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White middle class Americans grow up imbibing Hollywood stereotypes of police states in which the villains have exotic names and accents and are very definitely not the kind of people you’d want to drink beer or smoke a joint with. But five young people who went to Chicago to oppose U.S. wars had the misfortune to meet some secret police who seemed to fit in quite well with their peer group. Known only as “Mo” and “Gloves,” the undercover police officers were among the eleven people originally seized at an apartment in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago’s South Side. Then, suddenly, they were gone, but three of their erstwhile anti-war friends would face charges of manufacturing Molotov cocktails and conspiring to mount an attack on President Obama’s campaign headquarters. Apparently, Mo and Gloves will testify to that effect. However, attorneys at the National Lawyers Guild say there were no Molotov cocktails found at the scene, just some equipment to home brew beer.
Mo and Gloves were also apparently behind the arrest of two other activists, both from Chicago, charged with making terrorist threats and attempted possession of explosives or incendiary devices. The dynamic duo Mo and Gloves are expected to testify that the defendants confided that they wanted to burn and bomb things. One of the guys supposedly bragged that he could blow up a bridge in downtown Chicago. The other man allegedly wanted to build a pipe bomb. They are guilty, you see, of felonious and wishful thinking.
The two undercovers were clearly among the most gregarious couples in town for the NATO summit meeting. A defense attorney said lots of activists told her they had met Mo and Gloves – and were, understandably, worried.
In Cleveland, a 39-year-old police informant named Shaquille Azir appears to have lured five young guys who were associated with the Occupy movement and called themselves anarchists into a possible lifetime in prison. According to an excellent Counterpunch article by Jake Olzen, Azir talked himself into the men’s lives, encouraged them to separate from Occupy to form a People’s Liberation Army, and finally, got them to try to blow up a bridge with an inert bomb built with materials provided by the FBI. The informant Azir accomplished this feat of mass manipulation through the dispensing of vast quantities of beer. Every morning, he gave his victims a case of beer, and each evening he showed up with marijuana and another case of beer. It is, therefore logical to conclude that American capitalism is threatened, not so much by implacable opponents or internal contradictions, but by beer.
When I was a very young child, there was a television show called “I Led Three Lives.” The hero was an undercover informant who infiltrated American communist cells to expose their violent plans. The communists were all played by character actors from gangster films. The result was pure fiction, but it did hang together as a typical TV melodrama of the time. However, I think there will never be a movie about the undercover cops Mo and Gloves, who flitted around Chicago making up conversations in order to put people they had never met in prison for life. There oughta be a movie like that, but there won’t. Even the cops would be shamed.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
May 23, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | Federal Bureau of Investigation, Molotov cocktail, national lawyers guild, NATO, NATO Summit, United States |
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Pakistan has allowed four trucks containing office supplies for the US Embassy in Kabul to cross into Afghanistan, which is the first time the supply routes have been opened since Islamabad closed them six months ago.
Pakistani officials, speaking condition of anonymity, said that the four trucks recently crossed Pakistan’s Torkham border into Afghanistan, AFP reported on Friday.
“I can confirm that three trucks have gone to Afghanistan and there are also reports about the crossing of the fourth one on Friday,” said one of the officials.
Islamabad closed the border crossings used to transfer NATO supplies to landlocked Afghanistan in November 2011, after 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed in US-led airstrikes on two checkpoints on the Afghan border.
Pakistan has called on the United States to apologize for the November attack, but Washington has refused to do so.
Meanwhile, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has left the country and is traveling to the US at the invitation of NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen to attend the May 20-21 NATO summit in Chicago, during which he will discuss future ties with NATO countries.
May 18, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, War Crimes | Afghanistan, Asif Ali Zardari, NATO, Pakistan, United States |
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If anyone has doubts about what it means here at home when the U.S. seeks to militarily dominate the world, take a trip to Chicago, this week. There, you’ll see the Chicago police, the second largest force in the country, reinforced by cops from Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Charlotte, North Carolina, and backed up by two high decibel noise machines that were first used against American civilians in Pittsburgh to blow out the eardrums of protesters, back in 2009. Overall security for the NATO summit meeting is overseen by the FBI and the Secret Service, who in recent months have been given unprecedented police state powers, thanks to President Obama and a bipartisan Congress.
With dignitaries on hand from the more than 50 countries that have done Washington’s bidding in Afghanistan, there will be lots of opportunities for the feds to invoke their new powers to put demonstrators in prison for up to ten years if they set foot on property containing any person under the protection of the Secret Service. That could include huge chunks of the city. And, of course, who knows what kinds of plots the FBI is conjuring up through its squads of agent provocateurs embedded in the ranks of demonstrators. Thanks to the preventive detention without trial legislation signed into law by President Obama this past New Year’s Eve, every American has lost her Constitutional right to due process of law. Which means that a reconfigured and far more principled U.S. anti-war movement now confronts a growing fascist infrastructure here at home, as it opposes imperial crimes, abroad.
The Chicago police claim they don’t plan to turn the eardrum-busting sound cannons on full volume against the demonstrators – just loud enough to convey “messages” to the crowd. The protesters are sending their own message, one that has become far more popular and general than could have been imagined, a year ago. Since the emergence of the Occupy movement, last October, millions of Americans have come to understand what Latin American peasants have always known: that the nexus of war in the world is Wall Street, and the Pentagon is its servant – as is the White House and most of the Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. War is waged for the purpose of global economic subjugation and, therefore, peace can only be won by dethroning the financial bad guys: the Lords of Capital. So, much of the peace movement now sees itself as an expression of the 99 Percent, against the warlike and greedy 1 Percent.
Once that lesson is learned, it cannot be shouted out by police sound-blasters.
President Obama has made skillful use of NATO, to make it appear that he is not a go-it-alone cowboy, like George Bush. Obama has drawn closely to his side the old imperialists of Europe, who looted and pillaged the earth for five hundred years, establishing the planetary racial hierarchy that has only recently begun to crumble. The Black man in the White House is seen, ironically, as the last best hope of the old colonial racial order and the rule of capital. The Global One Percent can only be maintained in power by the U.S. war machine. Ultimately, the world needs only one thing from the American people: that they dismantle the machine.
Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
May 16, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | Chicago, Chicago Police Department, NATO, NATO Summit, Obama, United States |
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If anyone has doubts about what it means here at home when the U.S. seeks to militarily dominate the world, take a trip to Chicago, this week. There, you’ll see the Chicago police, the second largest force in the country, reinforced by cops from Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Charlotte, North Carolina, and backed up by two high decibel noise machines that were first used against American civilians in Pittsburgh to blow out the eardrums of protesters, back in 2009. Overall security for the NATO summit meeting is overseen by the FBI and the Secret Service, who in recent months have been given unprecedented police state powers, thanks to President Obama and a bipartisan Congress.
With dignitaries on hand from the more than 50 countries that have done Washington’s bidding in Afghanistan, there will be lots of opportunities for the feds to invoke their new powers to put demonstrators in prison for up to ten years if they set foot on property containing any person under the protection of the Secret Service. That could include huge chunks of the city. And, of course, who knows what kinds of plots the FBI is conjuring up through its squads of agent provocateurs embedded in the ranks of demonstrators. Thanks to the preventive detention without trial legislation signed into law by President Obama this past New Year’s Eve, every American has lost her Constitutional right to due process of law. Which means that a reconfigured and far more principled U.S. anti-war movement now confronts a growing fascist infrastructure here at home, as it opposes imperial crimes, abroad.
The Chicago police claim they don’t plan to turn the eardrum-busting sound cannons on full volume against the demonstrators – just loud enough to convey “messages” to the crowd. The protesters are sending their own message, one that has become far more popular and general than could have been imagined, a year ago. Since the emergence of the Occupy movement, last October, millions of Americans have come to understand what Latin American peasants have always known: that the nexus of war in the world is Wall Street, and the Pentagon is its servant – as is the White House and most of the Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. War is waged for the purpose of global economic subjugation and, therefore, peace can only be won by dethroning the financial bad guys: the Lords of Capital. So, much of the peace movement now sees itself as an expression of the 99 Percent, against the warlike and greedy 1 Percent.
Once that lesson is learned, it cannot be shouted out by police sound-blasters.
President Obama has made skillful use of NATO, to make it appear that he is not a go-it-alone cowboy, like George Bush. Obama has drawn closely to his side the old imperialists of Europe, who looted and pillaged the earth for five hundred years, establishing the planetary racial hierarchy that has only recently begun to crumble. The Black man in the White House is seen, ironically, as the last best hope of the old colonial racial order and the rule of capital. The Global One Percent can only be maintained in power by the U.S. war machine. Ultimately, the world needs only one thing from the American people: that they dismantle the machine.
Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
May 16, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | Chicago, Chicago Police Department, NATO, NATO Summit, Obama, United States |
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Everyone who cares enough to express an interest knows that Israel gets $3 billion every year in military assistance, money that continues to flow no matter what is happening to the US economy. It being an election year, it should be no surprise that both the Obama Administration and a Republican controlled House of Representatives have agreed to send an additional $1 billion taken from the United States defense budget to fund the so-called Iron Dome missile defense system for Israel in 2013-4.
But there’s more. House Resolution HR 4133 United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012, which recently sailed through the US Congress by a 410 to 2 vote, reveals the true objective of Israel and its friends in congress. It is to bind the United States and even NATO to Israel in such a fashion that Israel can continue to behave as it wishes vis-à-vis its neighbors and will be able to do so with impunity because the US and possibly even the Europeans will be obligated to defend it. HR 4133 provides what amounts to a blank check for Israel’s defense and also advances the Israel-as-part-of-NATO agenda, calling on the White House to implement “an expanded role for Israel within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), including an enhanced presence at NATO headquarters and exercises.”
JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, founded by AIPAC, has not been slow to see an opportunity by putting 4133 and the Iron Dome funding together. In a May 10th article, Gabriel Scheinmann, a “Visiting JINSA Fellow,” argues that Iron Dome should become a joint US-Israel system, which he calls a “bold and mutually beneficial symbol of the closeness and importance of the US-Israel strategic alliance.” One might well ask, “What strategic alliance?” and “beneficial to whom?” US joint ownership and management of Iron Dome would make US citizens who are involved in the project hostages to Israeli misadventures. Israel creates an incident to justify an attack against its neighbors, they respond with missiles, a handful of US citizens die, and Washington is at war. And in the meantime you can bet that the US will bear all the costs. Sounds like a great deal to me.
Philip Giraldi is the executive director of the Council for the National Interest and a recognized authority on international security and counterterrorism issues.
May 16, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Wars for Israel | Council for the National Interest, Iron Dome, Israel, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, NATO, Philip Giraldi, United States |
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A Global Crime Spree
Wondering why anyone would confront NATO’s summit in Chicago this month? A look at some of its more well-known crimes might spark some indignation.
Desecration of corpses, indiscriminate attacks, bombing of allied troops, torture of prisoners and unaccountable drone war are a few of NATO’s outrages in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere. On March 20, 2012 Pakistani lawmakers demanded an end to all NATO/CIA drone strikes against their territory. As reported in The New York Times, Pakistan’s foreign secretary Jalil Jilani said April 26, 2012, “We consider drones illegal, counter-productive and accordingly, unacceptable.” On May 31 last year, Afghan President Hamid Karzai gave what he called his “last” warning against NATO’s bombing of Afghani homes, saying “If they continue their attacks on our houses … history shows what Afghans do with trespassers and with occupiers.”
While bombing Libya last March, NATO refused to aid a group of 72 migrants adrift in the Mediterranean. Only nine people on board survived. The refusal was condemned as criminal by the Council of Europe, a human rights watchdog.
NATO jets bombed and rocketed a Pakistani military base for two hours Nov. 26, 2011—the Salala Incident— killing 26 Pakistani soldiers and wounding dozens more. NATO refuses to apologize, so the Pakistani regime has kept military supply routes into Afghanistan closed since November.
The British medical journal Lancet reported that the US-led unprovoked 2003 bombing, invasion and military take-over of Iraq—which NATO officially joined in 2004 in a ‘training’ capacity—had resulted in over 665,000 civilian deaths by 2006, and 200,000 in the UN-authorized, 1991 Desert Storm massacre led primarily by the US with several NATO allies.
On April 12, 1999, NATO attacked the railway bridge over the Grdelica Gorge and Juzna Morava River with two laser-guided bombs. At the time, a five-car civilian passenger train was crossing the bridge and was hit by both bombs. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch accused NATO of violating binding laws that require distinction, discrimination and proportionality.
NATO rocketed the central studio of Radio Televisija Srbije (TRS) in Belgrade, the state-owned broadcasting corporation, on April 23, 1999 during the Kosovo war. Sixteen civilian employees of RTS were killed and 16 wounded when NATO destroyed the building. Amnesty Int’l reported that the building could not be considered military, that NATO had violated the prohibition on attacking civilian objects and had therefore committed a war crime.
Headlines chronicle NATO’s crime spree
“U.S. troops posed with body parts of Afghan bombers.” Los Angeles Times, April 18, 2012
“Drones At Issue…: Raids Disrupt Militants, but Civilian Deaths Stir Outrage.” New York Times, March 18, 2012
“G.I. Kills 16 Afghans, Including 9 Children In Attacks on Homes.” New York Times, March 12, 2012
“NATO Admits Airstrike Killed 8 Young Afghans, but Contends They Were Armed.” New York Times, Feb. 16, 2012
“Informer Misled NATO in Airstrike That Killed 8 Civilians, Afghans Say.” (Seven shepherd boys under 14.) New York Times, Feb. 10, 2012
“Video [of U.S. Marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters] Inflames a Delicate Moment for U.S. in Afghanistan.” New York Times, Jan. 12, 2012
“Commission alleges U.S. detainee abuse.” Minneapolis StarTribune, Jan. 8, 2012
“Six Children Are Killed by NATO Airstrike in Afghanistan.” New York Times, Nov. 25, 2011
“American Soldier Is Convicted of Killing Afghan Civilians for Sport.” New York Times, Nov. 11, 2011
“Pakistan: U.S. Drone Strike Kills Brother of a Taliban Commander.” New York Times, Oct. 28, 2011
“Afghanistan officials ‘systematically tortured’ detainees, UN report says.” Guardian, & BBC Oct. 10; Washington Post, Oct. 11, 2011
“G.I. Killed Afghan Journalist, NATO Says.” New York Times, Sept. 9, 2011
“Cable Implicates Americans in Deaths of Iraqi Civilians.” New York Times, Sept. 2, 2011
“Civilians Die in a Raid by Americans and Iraqis.” New York Times, Aug. 7, 2011
“NATO Strikes Libyan State TV Transmitters.” New York Times, July 31, 2011
“NATO admits raid probably killed nine in Tripoli.” St. Paul Pioneer Press, June 20, 2011
“U.S. Expands Its Drone War to Take On Somali Militants.” New York Times, July 2, 2011
“NATO airstrike blamed in 14 civilian deaths.” St. Paul Pioneer Press, May 30, 2011
“Libya Effort Is Called Violation of War Act.” New York Times, May 26, 2011
“Raid on Wrong House Kills Afghan Girl, 12.” New York Times, May 12, 2011
“Yemen: 2 Killed in Missile Strike.” Associated Press, May 5, 2011
“NATO Accused of Going Too Far With Libya Strikes.” New York Times, May 2, 2011
“Disposal of Bin Laden’s remains violated Islamic principles, clerics say.” Associated Press, May 2, 2011
“Photos of atrocities seen as threat to Afghan relations.” St. Paul Pioneer Press, March 22, 2011
“Missiles Kill 26 in Pakistan” (“most of them civilians”) New York Times, March 18, 2011
“Afgans Say NATO Troops Killed 8 Civilians in Raid.” New York Times, Aug. 24, 2010
“A dozen or more” Afghan civilians were killed during a nighttime raid August 5, 2010 in eastern Afghanistan, NATO’s officers said. Chicago Tribune, Aug. 6, 2010
“Afghans Say Attack Killed 52 Civilians; NATO Differs.” New York Times, July 27, 2010
In June 2008, NATO bombers attacked a Pakistani paramilitary force called the Frontier Corps killing 11 of its soldiers. New York Times, Nov. 27, 2011
“Afghans Die in Bombing, As Toll Rises for Civilians.” New York Times, May 3, 2010
John LaForge works for Nukewatch, a nuclear watchdog and anti-war group in Wisconsin and edits its Quarterly.
May 14, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Afghanistan, Libya, NATO, Pakistan, United States |
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The US is planning to spend $4 billion to upgrade NATO’s Western European nuclear arsenal. The “unnecessary and expensive” initiative is likely to stir new animosity with Russia, a report says.
The alliance is preparing to replace “dumb” free-fall nuclear bombs with new generation of precision-guided nuclear gravity bombs, reveals a report by the European Leaders Network (ELN), a political think tank. The new bombs will also require new delivery aircraft, the Lockheed Martin F-35, each costing $100 million.
The report “Escalation by Default? The Future of NATO Nuclear Weapons in Europe” is authored by Ted Seay, a former arms control advisor to the US mission at the NATO headquarters in Brussels. It points to the fact that the upgrade will target such countries as Russia and Iran, who will be the most unlikely to be overjoyed with the prospect.
“This will increase NATO’s ability to reach targets in Russia with tactical nuclear weapons,” the paper reads. The initiative comes at a time when NATO and Russia are already “locked in a tense stand-off over missile defense.”
“This could alienate Russia in particular and worsen the prospects for further negotiations on non-strategic nuclear weapon reductions in Europe as a whole,” the report states.
A nuclear escalation “by default” would only harm security and safety prospects throughout Europe, and should be avoided, the paper concludes.
Commenting on the research, ELN chief Ian Kearns stressed to The Guardian that Washington’s plans for the upgrade are exorbitant.
“The planned upgrade of NATO’s tactical nuclear forces in Europe will be expensive and is unnecessary,” said Kearns. “NATO states are fully secure without this additional capability and should be focused on removing all tactical nuclear weapons from Europe, not on modernizing them.”
NATO currently possesses around 180 B61 free-fall tactical nuclear bombs stored at bases in Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany and Turkey. The report states that they are increasingly regarded as obsolete.
In the meantime, a US interceptor successfully downed a ballistic missile as part of a military test in Hawaii, the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency stated.
The Raytheon Co-Built Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Interceptor is a key component in the anti-missile defense (AMD) shields the United States is due to build in Poland, Romania and Turkey. The SM-3 Interceptor is to be deployed to Romania by 2015 and will also be used aboard ships equipped with Lockheed Martin’s Aegis anti-missile combat system.
Russia has been calling for NATO to give legally-binding guarantees that its AMD system would not target Russia, thereby upsetting the global balance of power. NATO and the United States have so far refused to give such guarantees.
May 11, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | ELN, Lockheed Martin, NATO, Nuclear weapon, Russia, Tactical nuclear weapon, United States |
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The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a cold war relic with no positive use in the 21st century. Its original intent, or so it was claimed, was to protect western nations from a supposedly threatening Soviet block. The Soviet Union collapsed, and now some of the old Soviet bloc states are NATO members themselves. Why does this organization still exist?
The explanation is simple, but not very pretty. NATO is the armed wing for European and American elites who control the destiny not only of the capitalist nations they represent but of people around the world. It is NATO which continues to occupy Afghanistan, and send drones which kill civilians. It is NATO which over threw the Muammar Gaddafi government in Libya and killed an unknown number of civilians in the name of protecting them.
When the United Nations sought to investigate whether NATO committed any crimes against the Libyan civilian population, NATO said quite simply that it hadn’t, and that no one should even suggest otherwise. “We would accordingly request that, in the event the commission elects to include a discussion of NATO actions in Libya, its report clearly states that NATO did not deliberately target civilians and did not commit war crimes in Libya.”
This same NATO, which despite its claims to the contrary, did target civilians in Libya, will soon celebrate its violent triumphs in the city of Chicago. It was meant to be a celebration with its economic and political arm, the G-8, but the possibility of mass protests against the G-8 caused Barack Obama to move the festivities to secluded Camp David, where the pesky masses won’t be allowed to disrupt the party.
Fortunately, activists are not fooled by the sleight of hand of a smaller celebration and are organizing mass protests. NATO’s presence in Chicago must not be seen as acceptance of its activities by the American people. It is vital that peaceful protests be successfully carried out against NATO and against its activities around the world.
NATO’s criminality did not begin with Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. Its hands have been very dirty in recent history in many different places. In 1999 NATO used the ruse of humanitarianism to kill human beings and destroy the infrastructure of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavs victimized by these acts weren’t silent about them, and in the absence of action anywhere else in the world, convened their own war crimes tribunal against NATO heads of state and military personnel.
Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder and others were sentenced in absentia to twenty years imprisonment. They were convicted of violating the Geneva Conventions, and the U.N. Charter. In the words of the Yugoslav court, NATO leaders were guilty of the following, “…inciting an aggressive war, war crimes against the civilian population, use of banned combat means, attempted murder of the Yugoslav president, as well as with the violation of the country’s territorial integrity”.
NATO’s trail is a long and bloody one, and the phony festivities are creating risks to the people of Chicago too. They will not only face disruptions and inconvenience as they attempt to go about their daily lives, but their city will also be the place where new Obama administration restrictions on civil liberties will be put into full effect.
The Nobel Peace Prize winning constitutional law professor has decreed, with bipartisan support, that American citizens can be seized and held without charge if they are even suspected of anything the government labels as terrorist activity. Constitutional protections of due process are now a thing of the past.
In addition, the mere proximity of secret service personnel at even peaceful protests can result in arrests and federal felony charges carrying a sentence of up to ten years in prison. This Trespass Bill, as it is called, can be used to charge protestors who are in proximity of the Secret Service – whether knowingly, or unknowingly. Of course, there will be plenty of Secret Service staff on hand in Chicago, and anyone who takes the righteous action of protesting may put themselves in great legal jeopardy.
The NATO meeting is obviously seen as a political plus for the president in his home town in an election year. It should be seen as nothing of the sort, and the activists who attempt to tell the world about NATO’s crimes are doing their country and the world a great service.
Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com.Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.
May 9, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Chicago, Libya, NATO |
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David Cronin is one of the leading public critics of European policies on Palestine. He has written for a variety of publications across Europe, has served as European correspondent for the Sunday Tribune (Dublin) and as Brussels correspondent for the Inter Press Service news agency, and is the author of Europe’s Alliance with Israel: Aiding the Occupation (Pluto Press, 2011). His book is described by Ken Loach as “essential reading for all who care about justice and the rule of law.”
Dan Freeman-Maloy: In your book, you describe the determination of Israeli planners to develop closer ties with the European Union. Has Israel’s traditional policy of trying to limit European diplomatic involvement in the Middle East changed?
David Cronin: Yes and no.
In recent years, there has been quite a bit of strategic thinking undertaken by the Israeli foreign ministry. This was particularly the case when Tzipi Livni was in charge of that ministry.
One of the conclusions of that thinking was that Israel should not rely entirely on the US to defend its indefensible actions. There was a realisation that while the US remains the only superpower at the moment, other powers are emerging. The decision to “reach out” more to the EU was taken in that context. Israel is similarly seeking to engage more with China, India and Brazil, particularly with regard to sales of weaponry and surveillance technology.
There is a perception in some circles that European diplomats are hostile to Israel. In the first few months of this year, a series of leaked reports from EU representatives in East Jerusalem and Ramallah expressed frustration with the expansion of Israeli settlements. Yet it’s significant that these reports were drawn up by people who witness the results of Israel’s activities “on the ground”. The EU also has representatives in Tel Aviv and Brussels, who see things very differently and have been beavering away to increase cooperation between Israel and the Union.
We occasionally see newspaper articles in which Israeli ministers accuse the EU of meddling in Israel’s affairs or suggesting that the EU is biased towards the Palestinians. Yet if you dig even a tiny bit beneath the surface, you will see that this apparent tension is at odds with the real picture. The real picture is one where the EU has become so close to Israel that, I would argue, it has become complicit in Israel’s crimes against humanity.
DF: Not long after Operation Cast Lead, then NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer made a cordial visit to Israel (where his hosts drew a parallel between Israeli operations in Gaza and NATO operations in Afghanistan). You report that NATO-Israel relations may be set to deepen.
DC: We should never forget that in 2010, Israel killed eight Turkish citizens and one Turkish-American in international waters, while these activists were taking part in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. I’m not an expert on these matters but my understanding is that this attack was tantamount to an act of war against Turkey, a member of NATO.
I think it’s fair to say that if Iran had done something comparable, NATO would have reacted forcefully. Yet Israel has a so-called “individual cooperation programme” with NATO since 2006, under which both sides share sensitive information; the scope of the programme was extended in 2008. Israel’s relationship with NATO has remained strong despite how the alliance condemned the flotilla attack. Shortly before Gabi Ashkenazi stepped down as head of the Israeli military last year, he was treated to a farewell dinner by senior NATO officers in Brussels. He also was called in to give NATO advice on how to fight the war in Afghanistan.
And Israel is taking part in a NATO operation in the Mediterranean called Active Endeavour. Originally, this was supposed to be an “anti-terrorism” initiative in response to the 11 September 2001 atrocities. But it has subsequently been broadened to cover immigration. What this means is that Israel is helping Western governments, especially Greece, to prevent vulnerable people fleeing poverty and persecution from reaching Europe’s shores. It’s quite disgusting.
DF: Turning back to the EU specifically, where does the recent Conformity Assessment and Acceptance of Industrial Products (ACAA) agreement fit in the broader struggle around Europe’s preferential trade ties with Israel?
DC: ACAA sounds dull and technical. But it is deeply political.
This is an agreement reached between the EU and Israel, whereby quality checks carried out by the Israeli authorities on manufactured goods would have the same status as similar checks carried out by authorities within the EU. At the moment, it’s limited to pharmaceutical products but it could easily be extended to other goods.
This agreement is a top priority for the Israelis because once it enters into force, Israel would take an important step towards being integrated into the EU’s single market.
To their credit, some members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have been asking difficult questions about ACAA for a few years. And this has meant that the Parliament has not yet approved the agreement. It’s not clear when the Parliament will make a final decision about the matter. There was a discussion at the Parliament’s foreign affairs committee in the past couple of weeks, where it was decided to delay holding a vote on the dossier until legal assurances are provided on the question of whether or not the agreement would apply to Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
It’s significant that the Israelis have hired a top public relations firm, Kreab Gavin Anderson, to help with their efforts to break the deadlock on ACAA. Kreab’s Brussels office is headed by a guy who used to be the chief adviser to MEPs with the Swedish Conservative Party. It cannot be a coincidence that one of the MEPs most vocal in supporting ACAA, Christoffer Fjellner, belongs to that party. He is arguing that if the agreement is not approved, Europeans will have less access to medicines. This is scaremongering, in my view, and is hypocritical because Fjellner is very supportive of the big players in the global pharmaceutical industry, who are actively seeking to use intellectual property issues to prevent the poor in Africa, Asia and Latin America from having access to affordable medicines.
DF: Even people writing for quasi-official EU publications have felt compelled to question ‘the sincerity of repeated declarations encouraging Palestinian unity’ from official spokespeople. How have EU donor and diplomatic policies contributed to fragmenting Palestinian politics?
DC: Those declarations have zero credibility.
The EU always claims that it wishes to promote democracy around the world. In 2006, an election took place in Palestine. The EU’s own observation team found the election to be free and fair and something of a model for the Arab world. And then the EU decided to ignore that election because in its eyes the “wrong” party – namely Hamas – won.
I’m personally not a fan of either Hamas nor Fatah but if Hamas won a democratic mandate, that should be respected.
It’s a classical colonial attitude for an imperial power to show preference for one side in an occupied territory over another. Divide and rule. That’s exactly what’s been happening in recent years. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, and Salam Fayyad, the so-called prime minister, lack any democratic mandate. Yet they are treated as real darlings by the EU and US. Why? Because rather than resisting the occupation, they accommodate it.
In particular, they are also happy to pursue the kind of neo-liberal economic policies that are treated as sacrosanct in Brussels and Washington. Salam Fayyad used to work for the International Monetary Fund and has clearly been inculcated with its ideology.
DF: Can you describe the EUPOL COPPS programme and its relationship to the US training of PA forces in the West Bank?
DC: This is another “divide and rule” case.
The EU’s police mission for Palestine (COPPS) was originally supposed to apply to both the West Bank and Gaza. But in practice it only applies to the West Bank because the Union refuses to deal with the Hamas administration in Gaza.
What has happened is that the EU is in charge of training civil police and the US has been charged of training more militarised police units in areas under control of the Palestinian Authority. We are told that this is helping the Palestinian Authority get ready to assume the responsibilities of statehood. This is nonsense. One of the key aims of the these training missions is to boost cooperation between the PA police and Israeli forces. So the EU is really helping Palestinians to police their own occupation.
Worse again, it has been documented that police loyal to Fatah have used brutal methods – including torture – against their political rivals. Even though these police are trained by the EU, the Union says nothing about these human rights abuses. This silence is shameful.
DF: Germany is reportedly in the process of selling Israel a sixth partially subsidized ‘Dolphin’ submarine. What’s the significance of these sales?
DC: I’d put these sales in the context of wider military cooperation between the EU and Israel.
As well as helping to arm Israel, Europe is helping Israel to sell its weaponry abroad. The British Army has been using Israeli unmanned warplanes, or drones as they are generally called, in Afghanistan, for example. The ethical question of using weapons that have been “battle-tested” in an obscene manner isn’t even broached in “polite society”. Drones were used extensively to kill and maim innocent civilians during Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s attack on Gaza in 2008 and 2009.
What’s also significant is that Israeli arms companies are receiving scientific research grants from the Union. These include Elbit and Israel Aerospace Industries, the two suppliers of drones used in Cast Lead. At the moment, Israel is taking part in 800 EU-financed research projects, which have a total value of 4 billion euros. This means that my tax is helping to subsidise Israel’s war industry.
DF: Historically, France has been seen as the European power most likely to challenge the US monopoly on diplomatic initiative in the Middle East. Is this reputation still deserved?
DC: Definitely not.
Jacques Chirac demonstrated occasionally that he could be independent of the US when he was president. But Nicolas Sarkozy has been much more of an “Atlanticist” – for example, he decided that France should participate more fully in NATO than it has for a number of decades.
I’m answering this question a few days before the second round of voting in France’s presidential election. If Francois Hollande wins, then I don’t predict any major changes in terms of France’s policy on Israel-Palestine. I hope, however, that I am proved wrong.
Hollande has been quite happy to pander to the Zionist lobby in France. Both he and Sarkozy turned up at the annual dinner of CRIF, the biggest pro-Israel lobby group in Paris, earlier this year. It was clear that Hollande wasn’t there to denounce Israel’s crimes.
DF: The Greek government brazenly cooperated with Israel in blocking the ‘Freedom Flotilla II’ from challenging the Gaza blockade last summer. You’ve suggested that specific US-Israeli pressure (‘possibly even financial blackmail’) was at work, but that the incident was also a ‘logical consequence of a process that was already underway’.
DC: Yeah. This is quite closely connected to the question you asked about NATO. Greece and Israel have been working together in NATO operations a lot recently.
George Papandreou, the former Greek prime minister, was quite happy to court Israel. When it became clear that relations between Israel and Turkey had soured, Papandreou sniffed an opportunity for Greece to replace Turkey as Israel’s key ally in the Mediterranean.
Even though Greece has been going through an economic nightmare, the Athens authorities have decided to take part in a series of military operations with Israel over the past few years. Let’s not forget that Greece has been spending more on the military as a proportion of national income than most countries in Europe. You can see why the Israeli arms industry would be interested in cultivating stronger links with Greece because, even though Greece is in the doldrums financially, it’s still spending much more than it should be on weapons, while cutting back drastically on essential services like healthcare.
DF: One of your recent articles notes that many of the British officers deployed in post-WWI Palestine were veterans of the Black and Tans, the colonial force infamous for its brutality in Ireland. How has the Irish anti-colonial experience affected Irish politics on the Palestine question?
DC: Among the Irish public, there is a huge amount of sympathy for the Palestinians. The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign has been described by some Zionist watchdogs as the best organised Palestine solidarity group in the world. That’s very interesting because the IPSC relies almost entirely on volunteers.
The Dublin government is a different story. In the current Irish government, there are at least three strong supporters of Israel. These include the ministers for defence and education.
Last year, a number of Irish activists were abducted by Israel as they tried to sail to Gaza. The response of the Dublin government was extremely weak. The Irish foreign minister, Eamon Gilmore, even attended a ceremony film festival sponsored by the Israeli government soon after that incident. He appears to regard avoiding or minimising tension with Israel as a priority.
Furthermore, it should be borne in mind that it’s Ireland’s representative at the European Commission, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, who is administering the research grants to Israeli arms companies I mentioned earlier. She won’t even acknowledge that giving money to firms profiting from human rights abuses is problematic.
DF: In 2010, the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights issued a report criticizing EU maintenance of ‘anti-terrorist’ blacklists that effectively function ‘as ideological and political tools for undermining the right to popular resistance and self-determination.’ How do these lists constrain European politics on Palestine, and are there active campaigns to get them overturned?
DC: This is an important issue.
Israel has lobbied successfully over the past decade to have both the political and military wings of Hamas placed on the EU’s “anti-terrorist” blacklist. EU officials and governments have, as a result, been able to say “we don’t talk to terrorists”, even when the “terrorists” have a democratic mandate. I note, however, that there have been press reports lately indicating that Hamas has had some contacts with European governments. So perhaps this is changing a little bit. But in general, there is an enormous double standard, when the EU is happy to embrace Israel, a state that uses violence and intimidation against civilians on a daily basis, yet brands those who resist Israeli oppression as “terrorists”.
DF: Finally, in recent years the gap between European government support for Israel and public opinion has sometimes been so wide that the EU leadership has issued official apologies to Israel for polling results. What opportunities does this gap provide for strategic Palestine solidarity?
DC: The European public is way more critical of Israel than our governments are. This offers real hope.
The Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel was only launched in 2005. And it has made enormous progress. Veolia, the major French corporation, has ignominiously lost a number of major contracts around the world, for example. Why? Because of public outrage at how Veolia is involved in constructing a tramway that would effectively be reserved for Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem. This illustrates how supporting Israeli apartheid can prove bad for business if ordinary people monitor what corporations get up to and protest.
The BDS campaign is often compared to the one undertaken against South Africa. As it happens, the call for boycott was originally made by South African political activists in the 1950s. But it wasn’t until the 1980s that it had a major impact internationally. So the Palestinian BDS campaign has achieved in seven years what it took the South African campaign three decades to achieve.
The challenge now is to maintain the momentum – and intensify the pressure on Israel and its “corporate sponsors”.
May 8, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | European Union, Israel, Israeli settlement, Middle East, NATO, Palestine |
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Today, more than 14 million voters in Syria will have the chance to select among several thousand candidates for 250 parliamentary seats.
Cities across the country are plastered with posters of the candidates, with many adopting an Obama-sque “Change we can believe in” slogan.
However, the armed groups that have been backed by the NATO powers for the past 15 months have rejected the polls, and are showing their hostility by targeting candidates for assassination, usually by the use of explosives.
Since the armed uprising began, several thousand members of the security forces and their family members have been killed by the insurgents, who themselves have lost thousands of their own.
However, those relying on Western media are told that every such death has been caused by the security forces, ignoring the deadly violence that is being unleashed in the country by groups of armed mobs.
We have seen this before, in Libya, where tens of thousands of people have died so far as the result of externally backed civil war. In that country, those willing to kill regime elements were given training, cash and weapons.
Today, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are providing the same assistance to those seeking to use deadly force against the government in Damascus.
Although Syria President Bashar al-Assad has announced a raft of reforms, including new media laws and the right to form political parties, each such announcement has been met by an escalation in violence, which has rendered null the ceasefire brokered by UN envoy Kofi Annan.
Since mid-April, there have been numerous ceasefire violations by the insurgents, with the Alawi, the Muslim sect to which the Assad family belongs, and the Christian community the main target of the insurgents. Syria is the home of the Patriarchate of Antioch, the oldest church in Christendom.
For reasons not clear, the triumvirate of Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have joined hands with the NATO powers to back the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood has been the greatest beneficiary of the Arab Spring.
Today in Syria, one can see women across the country dressed as they please. Were the Brotherhood to take control, this freedom might soon be replaced with the obligation to wear the chador (full veil). Already in Egypt and in Tunisia, the secular ethos of the country is rapidly giving way to Saudi-style conservatism.
While European members of NATO are opposed to Islamic conservatives in their own countries, in the Arab world, they favor such elements over those who are secular. The result is a galloping conservatism across the Arab world.
Clearly, the NATO powers are aware that the more hardline local regimes are, the less chance that they will be able to compete with the US and the EU.
Rather than support the process of democratization in Syria, the NATO powers have joined hands with regional powers to train, arm and provide cash to the armed opposition, thereby fomenting a violent civil war in the country.
The 11 percent of the population that are Alawi and the 9 percent of Syria’s 24 million people that are Christian are terrified that they will become the target of ethnic cleansing. As for the majority Sunni community, more than two-thirds are moderate, with less than a third favoring the conservative Wahabbi-Salafi faith.
We have seen this before, in Afghanistan in the 1980s, where the US backed religious extremists to fight the USSR. The effects of that mistake are still creating harmful ripples across the region.
Today, rather than support secular elements and encourage the transition to democracy, NATO is backing armed groups that create mayhem across the country, groups that overwhelmingly follow an extremist ideology.
Of course, there are exiled Syrians who have congregated in Paris to provide a moderate face to the armed struggle. However, these people control nothing, only those with guns do.
And these days, more and more guns are flowing into Syria, as NATO seeks regime change not through the ballot but through the bomb.
The author is director and professor of the School of Geopolitics at Manipal University in India. He visited Syria last month as part of an Indian delegation.
May 7, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, War Crimes | Alawi, Bashar al-Assad, Kofi Annan, Middle East, NATO, Saudi Arabia, Syria |
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On Thursday, at an international conference held in Moscow, attended by senior NATO and US officials, in the most unequivocal and harshest terms possible, the Chief of the General Staff, Army General Nikolay Makarov, laid out Russia’s position on the US’ plans for European missile defense, saying that a pre-emptive strike is possible on UN/NATO missile elements if the situation becomes aggravated. However he did add that this is an extreme solution according to RIA-Novosti.
Quote: “The placing of new first strike weapons in the south and the north-west Russia in order to counter ABM missile defense components, including the deployment of “Iskander” missile batteries in the Kaliningrad region, represent one of the possible options for the destruction of missile defense infrastructure in Europe.” Said General Makarov.
General Makarov stated that taking into account the; “…destabilizing nature of their missile defense system, namely the creation of the illusion of a first-strike-disarming capability to which a response can not be made, a decision on the preemptive use of existing weapons will be made during the exacerbation of the situation.”
NATO and the US have refused to cooperate on equal terms with Russia on ABM elements in Europe, in particular ignoring Russia’s proposals for a sectoral approach to missile defense. Agreements had been reached between Russia and NATO to cooperate on the draft European missile defense system at the summit in Lisbon in 2010, but due to the U.S. refusal to provide binding legal written guarantees as to the non-targeting nature of the system being deployed, meaning against Russia’s nuclear deterrent, the situation has continued to worsen. US claims at being open to cooperation are based on verbal promises which can in no way be taken seriously.
On Thursday the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation Anatoly Serdyukov also commented on the situation saying that talks on European missile defense between Moscow and Washington are close to being at a dead end.
The International Conference organized by the Ministry of Defense and titled “The factor of Missile Defense in the the Formation of a New Security Zone” was attended by over 200 military representatives, professionals and experts from 50 countries, including 28 NATO member countries, and representatives of China, South Korea, Japan, the CIS countries and the Organization of Collective Security Treaty.
At the conference, while addressing U.S. and NATO officials, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said: “We can’t just reject the distrust that has been around for decades and become totally different people… Why are they calling on me, on my Russian colleagues, to reject distrust? Better look at yourselves in the mirror.” He later said Russia would not plan any retaliation unless the United States goes through with its plans and takes the third and final step and deploys defense elements in Poland which is estimated to happen no earlier than in 2018.
Soon after General Makarov’s statements, and most likely due to them, US State Department spokesman Mark Toner stated that the U.S. is ready to redouble efforts to find a compromise with Russia on missile defense.
When asked to respond to General Makarov’s comments Toner said; “I think we will redouble efforts to find a compromise on this issue and will strive for mutual understanding. Cooperation on missile defense exists and we intend to continue it for many years. We also intend to continue the search for a compromise.”
And in a move that in my opinion smells of censorship, the State Department official urged American journalists not to construe the comments made by Makarov as a return to the cold war era although the US through its actions is doing everything possible to keep the cold war era alive, unarguable proof being the very continued existence of NATO as a block.
According to Russian media the Deputy Head of the Russian General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, has stated that the European missile shield would be unable to protect Europe from a possible missile strike by Iran.
Mr. Gerasimov stated the following: “Elements of the US missile shield deployed in Romania are unlikely to be able to protect Southern Europe from any missiles launched from the South. As for the elements in Poland, they would be unable to protect Europe from any potential missiles coming from the South.”
What no one seems to be remembering when discussing the ABM shield is the phased approach and the fact that the West has and continues to refuse to provide the Russian Federation with written guarantees regarding the fact that, as the West claims, the shield is not directed against nor does it pose a threat to the strategic defensive or offensive military capabilities of Russia.
The phased approach is important to note because what it calls for is a strengthening and improving of all of the elements of the system once they are in place, in other words, an empty Trojan Horse is placed in the optimum location and is to be filled for attack at a later date, elements which are not a threat to Russia today will be when later phases are complete.
Ellen Tauscher, US Special Envoy for Strategic Stability and Missile Defense, summed it quite nicely in a conference posted on the US Department of State web site when she said; “It (missile defense cooperation) presents an opportunity to put aside the vestiges of the Cold War thinking, and move away from mutually assured destruction, toward mutually assured stability. At the same time, (she presents a contradiction) the United States is committed to all four phases of the European Phased Adaptive Approach.” It is the later phases that will nullify Russia’s strategic potential.
She also states: “… we cannot agree to pre-conditions outlined by the Russian Government. We cannot agree to any limitations on our missile defense deployments.” This means that there are plans in place or the potential should be available to direct elements against Russia, as those are the only limitations sought by the Russian side.
Lastly she states that: “… we are able to agree, however, to a political statement that our missile defenses are not directed at Russia,” which has been the problem all along as the Russian Federation rightfully and justifiably has requested, time and time again, written guarantees as to what has been said verbally. What is the use, in reality, of a “political statement”? Politics change like the weather and the US, for all its short recorded history has pathologically gone back on political statements.
Lastly the Secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, again re-stated Moscow’s offer to jointly operate the ABM shield with NATO. He said a jointly run European missile defense system “could strengthen the security of every single country of the continent” and “would be adequate for possible threats and will not deter strategic security.”
Maybe it’s time for the US to let go of its cold war thinking? IT seems as if the biggest threat to regional, if not global security at present, is NATO itself.
Have a nice day.
May 6, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | ABM, Cold War, NATO, Nikolay Yegorovich Makarov, Russia, United States |
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