NO NATO

10/30/11

NO MORE NATO by June Terpstra

NATO is a political and military organization where members having common values such as capitalist profit and imperialist domination work together in the principle of collective aggression. The continuation of NATO is not in the interest of the people or the planet and may well constitute a threat to all our security in the future. More than 50 years ago the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed to consolidate Western Europe and the United States hegemony over the communist nations of Eastern Europe. It was an alliance of sovereign nations bound together in common purpose — domination.

The deterrence principle of NATO and its member states assisted in destabilizing governments seeking self-determination and independence. In short, NATO achieved its stated mission. With the fall of the Soviet system and the accompanying appearance of the end of a threat to member states, in 1989—1991, NATO's reason to exist ceased. Unfortunately, as with most military bureaucracies, the end of NATO's mission did not mean the end of NATO. Instead, heads of NATO member states gathered in 1999 desperately attempting to devise new missions for the outdated and adrift alliance. This is where NATO moved to an overtly offensive and interventionist organization supposedly concerned with "economic, social and political difficulties...ethnic and religious rivalries, territorial disputes, inadequate or failed efforts at reform, the abuse of human rights, and the dissolution of states," in the words of the Washington 1999 Summit.NATO is an obstacle to achieving world peace.

Since the end of the Cold War, NATO – in a process known as “mission creep,” something that frequently happens when the original raison d’état of large bureaucracies passes away, reinvented itself as a tool for military action by the “G-8-20 community” including the promotion of the so-called “war on terror”. In reality it is a vehicle for US-led use of force with military bases on all continents which bypasses the United Nations and the system of international law, accelerating militarization and escalating arms expenditure. Pursuing an expansionist agenda since 1991, designed to advance strategic and resource interests, NATO has waged war in the Balkans, under the guise of so-called “humanitarian war”, and has waged ten years of brutal war in Afghanistan, where the tragic situation is escalating and the war has expanded into Pakistan.

In the past year, NATO has killed thousands of innocents in Libya, assassinated its leader, Gadhafi and destroyed the Libyan Green government. In Europe NATO is worsening tensions, feeding the arms race with so-called “missile defense”, a massive nuclear arsenal and a nuclear first strike policy. EU policy is increasingly tied to NATO. NATO’s ongoing and potential expansion into Eastern Europe and beyond and its “out of area” operations are making the world a more dangerous place. The conflict in the Caucasus is a clear indication of the dangers. Each advance of the NATO border increases the possibility of war, including the use of nuclear weapons.NATO membership demands a minimum level of military spending of its member states. For NATO's new members, the burden of significantly increased military spending when there are no longer external threats is hard to meet. Unfortunately, this is where the US government steps in, offering aid and subsidized loans to these members so they can purchase more unneeded and unnecessary military equipment. In short, it is nothing more than corporate welfare for the US military industrial complex.

NATO’s expansion and its progressively broader operations over the past ten years indicate in a glaring manner the Alliance’s intention to circumvent, subvert and jeopardize the very existence of the United Nations, a theme dealt with in a previous article, West Plots To Supplant United Nations With Global NATO. In addition to “guaranteeing energy security” by establishing military beachheads in the Balkans, Central and South Asia, the Caucasus, the Persian Gulf, the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Guinea and retaining U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe and participating in the American-led drive for a global missile shield, NATO has claimed for itself the exclusive mandate to address virtually all problems confronting humanity. In conjunction with Western arms manufacturers and the likes of Lloyd’s of London and Royal Dutch Shell. [1] Rick RozoffThe Holy Triumvirate —

The United States, NATO and the European Union — recognizes no higher power and believes, literally, that it can do whatever it wants in the world, to whomever it wants, for as long as it wants, and call it whatever it wants, like “humanitarian” intervention. NATO waged lawless imperial aggression against Libya. Daily terror bombings massacred tens of thousands. The continuation of NATO is in reality a cover for increased US interventionism across the globe. It will be a conduit for more unconstitutional US foreign aid and US interference in the internal politics of sovereign nations.

NATO is a lawless killing machine, not a liberator.

________________________________________________________________________

Mayor 1%'s new rules try to thwart protest, while groundswell of public dissent grows

Author

Andy Thayer and Chris Geovanis

Date Created

13 Jan 2012

Date Edited

21 Jan 2012

Rating

Current rating: 8

In the last ten days, literally thousands of people from across Chicago and beyond rallied a massive amount of public outcry against efforts to restrict free speech and the right to dissent in Chicago.

To help folks separate spin from fact, we've put together this analysis to help you understand how local rules have changed in ways that undercut protest and political speech. While these revisions will not deter us from speaking out and protesting, they do change the excuses the police may use to try to prevent us from protesting.

It's also important that we understand these changes so we can educate our friends and neighbors – and fight for meaningful change that puts people's rights and the greater good ahead of the fear-mongering and greed that drove Mayor 1%'s push for these changes.

City Hall made only token changes to "improve" these revisions, and the worst of Mayor 1%'s proposed revisions remain. While the old protest ordinance was pretty terrible in its own right, the changes approved this week make it even worse. How? Because the revisions give the police more excuses to target protesters they don't like and speech they oppose with greater fines and penalties. The revisions also give police more excuses to try and censor the tools we use to speak out – sound equipment, signs, banners and whatnot.

Let's be clear, under the old ordinance, police routinely repressed speech they disliked anyway. More than a few protesters have been arrested for absolutely no reason, only to find that the police have cooked bogus charges as an afterthought – and an excuse for targeting them in the first place.

But few aldermen or reporters understand the problems with the OLD ordinance, and they certainly have no experience with the police department's chronic selective enforcement of the rules. Most have taken Mayor 1% at his word on the impact of these changes – setting them up for serious buyers' remorse once City Hall starts using these changes as an excuse to suppress political speech.

It's also important to note that Mayor 1%'s latest efforts to suppress our civil liberties do not occur in a vacuum. For the past several months, personnel from the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the Secret Service have been on the ground in Chicago working to coordinate overall security measures for the NATO/G8 summits – and have made recommendations to municipal authorities on how to "enhance" these security measures.

This occurs at a time when Obama has signed the National Defense Authorization Act and other repressive measures, and where strong evidence exists of a nationally coordinated, inter-city campaign to suppress the Occupy movement. The National Lawyers Guild and its legal partners have filed a series of Freedom of Information requests seeking evidence of this federal role in the Occupy crackdown, and they have painted an ugly picture of federal coordination at the highest levels to undermine the most basic precepts of our right to dissent.

We "strongly suspect that the 72 so-called Fusion Centers created by the Homeland Security Department around the country, and the many Joint Terror Task Forces operated by the FBI in conjunction with local police in many cities, are serving as coordination points for the increasingly systematic attacks on the Occupy Movement,” writes the Guild .

Inevitably, much of this will be litigated in the courts. Meanwhile, this latest effort by Mayor 1% and his yes-men and women – as well as his national federal partners – will not deter the legitimate right of the rest of us to speak our minds, raise our grievances and protest government policy, whether or not new "rules" give the police another excuse to try to censor us.

We may not have won on Wednesday, but every single person who spoke out, showed up, shot off an email or phoned their alderman has joined a growing groundswell of truly grassroots opposition to the abuse of power. And that is very, very powerful.

The 1% can make new rules. We honor a higher law and more fundamental freedoms: the human right to equality, dignity and peace with justice, the human right to challenge those who rip us off, undercut our health and safety and abuse our basic freedoms, and the human right to defend these freedoms with words and deeds.

Basic talking points – what has changed with the new ordinances

1. We defeated the increased penalties for "resisting arrest," but Chicago's onerous interpretation of what constitutes "resisting" remains, overly penalizing many forms of non-violent civil disobedience. The penalties remain a minimum fine of $25 and a maximum of $500.

2. The City originally wanted minimum violations of the parade permit and public assembly ordinances to jump 20-fold, from $50 to $1000, and double the maximum penalty from $1000 to $2000, while keeping in place the maximum jail time penalty of 10 days. The new ordinances will make the minimum fine "only" quadruple, to $200, while keeping in place the current maximum penalties of $1000 and/or 10 days in jail. The old ordinance was used to exact a "free speech tax" on messages the City disliked, and so the new ordinance just makes that much worse, while providing additional criteria to find alleged "violations."

3. The new parade permit ordinance proposed in December and the revised version floated January 12th both required that organizers provide in their permit application – something typically prepared months before the event – "a description of any recording equipment, sound amplification equipment, banners, signs, or other attention-getting devices to be used in connection with the parade."

Besides being logistically unworkable, this was an obvious 1st Amendment restriction. The great "concession" in the new ordinance is that it demands that organizers include in the permit application "a description of any sound amplification or other equipment that is on wheels or too large to be carried by one person, and a description of the size and dimension of any sign, banner or other attention-getting device that is too large to be carried by one person,to be used in connection with the parade." [emphasis ours]

4. The "reformed" version of the legislation is thus only a slightly less obvious 1st Amendment restriction and begs the question, will parade organizers be required to ban "unauthorized" banners under threat of fine and/or jail time?

Speaking at the City Council's Committee on Special Events, Cultural Affairs and Recreation meeting on Tuesday, Michelle T. Boone, the Commissioner of the Department of Cultural affairs and Special Events, tried to soft-pedal this provision by implying that there would be no penalty for violation of it. But if that's so, why include the provision in the ordinance at all?

5. By changing the definition of what constitutes a "large parade," the new ordinance slips in onerous insurance and other burdens on demonstration organizers. Unless one gets a financial waiver from the Commissioner of Transportation, every street march in the downtown area will require $1 million liability insurance and "indemnify the city against any additional or uncovered third party claims against the city arising out of or caused by the parade; and (3) agree to reimburse the city for any damage to the public way or to city property arising out of or caused by the parade." Failure to provide proof of insurance with one's permit application will be grounds for rejection of the application.

6. Under the new ordinance, one can apply to the Commissioner of Transportation for a waiver of the financial requirements "if the application is for an activity protected by the 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution [virtually every activity is protected by the 1st Amendment] and the requirement would be so financially burdensome that it would preclude the applicant from applying for a parade permit for the proposed activity. An application for a waiver of the application fee or insurance requirement shall be made on a form prescribed by and contain reasonable proof acceptable to the commissioner."

There is no definition as to what constitutes "reasonable proof acceptable to the commissioner." Moreover, both the old and new versions of the ordinances allow the Transportation Commissioner to "establish…rules and regulations" in addition to those specified in the legislation – i.e., a virtual blank check to institute unpopular measures that might have difficulty passing the City Council.

7. The new ordinance repeats most of the bureaucratic limitations on "public assembly" that were contained in the old ordinance. The city defines "public assembly" as any gathering that does not use the street, but does use sidewalks and "which is reasonably anticipated to interfere with or impede the flow of pedestrian traffic."

When a member of the public raised concern about this during a City Council committee meeting, Boone tried to allay the concern by noting that the language had been lifted wholesale from the old ordinance and that "they [the police] don't enforce a lot of it." The reality is that there has been very selective enforcement of this provision of the old ordinance, amounting to a 1st Amendment content-based restriction.

By making the public assembly provisions a new subsection of the Municipal Code, the City will either enforce the old provisions against everyone, or continue its selective enforcement. Either result is a serious retreat away from the 1st Amendment.

8. The deputizing of police authority, perhaps even to private security outfits, remained intact in the legislation as passed. There is no sun-set clause on this provision.

9. The only "temporary" ordinance concerns the issuance of no-bid contracts. It is important to make sure that this truly goes away on July 30th as provided for in the legislation as passed.

Transparency

Emanuel claimed that his mayoralty would have "the most open, accountable, and transparent government that the City of Chicago has ever seen." As many have commented, given Chicago's history, that's hardly setting the bar very high. Our struggle has given the lie to Mayor 1%'s claims of transparency:

a) The approximately half-dozen aldermen in the Committee on Special Events, etc. apparently had the latest version of the parade permits ordinance when they passed it out of committee on Tuesday afternoon. It was announced that paper copies of it would be distributed to them at the start of that meeting. When one of us asked for a show of hands during public comment section as to who had read it, all six or so claimed they had.

The fact remains, though, that the "latest" versions of the legislation that the City Clerk's office gave us 90 minutes before the Council vote on Wednesday were outdated, and as of yesterday, the Clerk's website still only had the old versions. So there was no way the general public had access to what was being voted on and thus have the opportunity to meaningfully weigh in on them.

b) As noted above, there is only one item in the whole body of legislation that has a sunset clause. This legislation then was not just for G8/NATO, as Emanuel claimed. In a January 17 City Council committee meeting, Mike Simon of the CDOT said that the permits ordinance revisions had been in the works since 2009. As one of us said to Tunney after the committee meeting, they've had this under review for two years and they've apparently talked to all players except those who actually use the ordinance.

c) The January 12th not-for-attribution press briefing (with no paper copies of what the revisions were) was accepted with virtually no criticism by the City Hall beat press crew. This was as much a statement about them as it was about Emanuel. Right up to and after Wednesday's vote, most accepted City Hall's spin that there were dramatic concessions to our side in the revised legislation.

d) Next up in the transparency department – what are the G8/NATO summits going to cost city taxpayers? Mayor 1% said that "We’ll make sure that taxpayers don’t take on the bill" and in a Council committee meeting, Alderman Pope falsely claimed that "Historically host cities have been wholly reimbursed." But wholesale violations of protesters' rights by police have typically cost host cities millions in civil suits after the fact.

Win, lose, or somewhere in between?

Finally, there is the issue of whether or not to call what happened on Wednesday a "victory" for our side or not. Most (but not all) mainstream media accounts accepted the 5th floor's spin that Mayor 1% had listened to the people and revised the legislation to address our concerns – a victory for protesters. We obviously don't think so, but at the same time, it would be wrong to label what happened as a wholesale defeat.

It is standard operating procedure for the City is to introduce draconian measures to the CTA, etc. in so-called "doomsday" budgets, only to then walk back the cuts to more "acceptable" levels once there is public outcry – the "acceptable" levels being the ones they planned on instituting all along. But we don't think that this was the initial plan for this legislation – "professional protesters" (their term) are not a group in the chain of power that they think merits any concessions. We think that they introduced the legislation in the form that they wanted it to pass, and were taken aback at the level of resistance our side was able to muster.

There was no advance plan for the January 12th Mayoral dog-and-pony shows. Those and the other spin measures were crafted in response to our resistance, and the City had to deliver at least minimal concessions in order to make them credible. If we had not fought, we would not have won anything.

Aside from the teachers and those fighting the health clinic cuts, we were the first group to take the new mayor on in a sustained battle. And we're really not a group at all – many thousands of people who did not know each other united in opposition to the mayor's plans. As with any new administration, there are always those in the public who hope that the new guy will be better than the old one, that he can be reasoned with, etc. This was an uphill battle on those grounds alone.

Our sustained battle over the ordinances helped take Emanuel's credibility down at least a few notches, concretizing his reputation as Mayor 1%. Moreover, we sent the message that if the City messes with us, we will fight back tenaciously.

Given the rubber stamp nature of our City Council (reinforced by Emanuel's deep pockets, etc.), the idea that anyone could defeat him first time out was a total long-shot. Thanks to this struggle, the odds of people defeating him on other issues in the future have gotten at least a little bit better.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *Previous articles in this series can be found here, here, here and here.

Here are the new versions of the ordinances:

G8NATOSub.pdf (75 k)

Parade & public assembly ordinances, new.pdf (56 k)

NATO: National Association of Terror Operations

Posted on August 20, 2011

NATO: National Association of Terror Operations

By Azartush Najjarian
Press TV
Aug 20, 2011

Most people are familiar with the acronym NATO, which stands for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. However, people might not be so informed about the history of NATO and their military interventions.

NATO was created on April 4, 1949. NATO headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium. NATO was originally created as a precautionary, counter-military organization, which would be prepared to fight the spread of soviet communism.

The true history of the movement depicts a very aggressive and offensive military apparatus. NATO is described as an organization with goals exclusively for self defense against external threats. Thus each member state mutually agrees to respond to an attack if and when NATO faces an external threat. Hence, as NATO originally was to function as a political entity, NATO transcended into a military organization. This is proved by its offensive blunders since its founding.

NATO Secretary General was Lord Ismay. Ismay’s famous words for the primary goal of the organization were: “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” The United States alliance with NATO was sealed in Washington, D.C on April 4, 1949. It included the five Treaty of Brussels states and the United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark and Iceland.

Many Icelanders opposed joining and had an anti-membership March in 1949; thereafter, the goals were declared for NATO:

“The Parties of NATO agreed that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all. Consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defense will assist the Party or Parties being attacked, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”

NATO was originally conceived as an alliance to protect the Western democracies against any invasion by the Soviet Bloc during the cold war. However, none of the member nations of NATO were ever subject to any attack by a foreign army since membership.

The trend of NATO interventions involves military forces from wealthy parts of the world fighting with unimaginative-military advantages with regards to weaponry against impoverished groups in the third world. Humanitarian reasons have been used as the primary justifications in most all of these intervention wars led by NATO. The original twelve members of NATO in 1949 were the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Some of states were the major ex-colonial powers such as the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, France, Denmark and the US.

After the masses are programmed to commit to the protocols the elite wish to impose, the chaos begins. Propaganda is the tool of indoctrination and it goes back to psychological programming as we have discussed before, which is also synonymous with synthetic realities. Synthetic realities could be defined as the intentional manipulation and distortion of what we perceive to be true in order to achieve a particular aim or goal. In essence it is the annihilation of compassion, rationale, logic, and sympathy. It works to rape and distort human beings from their humanity and mutual desire to assist each other.

According to Thinkquest.org describes propaganda as such: “Propaganda is designed to manipulate the emotions and instincts of the general public. Relying on such low level emotions as hate and fear, it uses incomplete or incorrect information while avoiding logical arguments. It repeats ideas and catchphrases, often uses scapegoats, and relates itself with the high ideals. It tries to curtail individual thought, denounces or suppresses contradictory facts, and acts as a distraction. Mass communication is necessary for the success of propaganda.”

When considering NATO’s historical record of savagery and death, one of the most controversial interventions documented was in Yugoslavia. The former Yugoslav Republics included Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia (Republic), Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. The US and NATO allies attacked the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on the 24th of March 1999. Kosovo Albanians wanted independence from the Serbian province of Kosovo. Thus the US and NATO used false allegations to attack Yugoslavia claiming it was for humanitarian reasons. After almost a decade later on the 17th of February 2008 the situation became more transparent. NATO warplanes began attacking military targets first and then the infrastructure while many civilians were killed in the bombings.

The attack on Serbia was seen by Serbs as an attack on their nation and not against the regime of Milosevic. Cluster bombs were used in many areas, which are forbidden by international laws. The regular express train Skopie-Belgrade was targeted by a US pilot twice, which was full of civilians. NATO bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. NATO also bombed a TV station in Serbia, which killed more than a dozen journalists. Amnesty International sought war crimes measures against the alliance. The Strasbourg Court refused to accept the case filed by Amnesty.

The fears of the Cold War in US history share much in ideology with the modern War on Terror. Both of these historic events were a type of synthetic manipulation of realities through media and politics. Americans were accused of being communist spies in the United States and were arrested unjustly during the Cold War.

The Japanese were also placed in concentration camps during WWII in the US. It would be apparent after little investigation that the US has a long history of bombing and terrorizing countries only to rebuild them and forge alliances. Is this the replay of the Masonic-motto: “Order out of Chaos”? We won’t have time to address this here, but there is sufficient history and writings addressing this subject.

Over the last decade NATO has invaded Iraq and Afghanistan backed by the US fighting the synthetic War on Terror. NATO and the US invaded Libya, and NATO is leading bombing campaigns in Libya for the ousting of Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi. The combined military spending of all NATO members is over 70 percent of the world’s defense spending. Former President George W. Bush said that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction as justification for the invasion of the country.

However, considering that NATO defines itself as a military defensive organization in special circumstances when its member states are being attacked, I’m not sure how bombing Libya fits NATO’s stated mission.

For that matter, none of their military adventures have ever followed the organization’s official intentions and stated policies. We must keep in mind that we live in an age where corporations, governments and militaries feel they are free to behave however they wish whether that means killing innocents, drone bombings, physical and psychological torture, military occupations and the like. The future is unpredictable and NATO will continue to play a similar role as the United States, which is the role of a world police force imposing draconian laws that they invent themselves to oppress others and steal the resources of the indigenous.

AN/HGH

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/194848.html

NATO, G8 in Chicago: Labor, Community Groups Push Back Over Revised Protester Proposals

First Posted: 1/14/12 02:14 PM ET Updated: 1/14/12 02:14 PM ET

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A coalition comprising some 20 community and labor groups on Friday issued a public letter addressed to Chicago's City Council which outlined their concerns with the revised proposals concerning protesters of the concurrent NATO and G8 summits to be held in the city in May.

The letter -- cosigned by Stand Up! Chicago, the Chicago Teachers Union, several SEIU chapters and other groups -- outlines the groups' "deep concern" with the ordinances submitted by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, which they say "would diminish both the rights of citizens to peaceful public protest and the democratic tradition of our city" if passed.

The letter proceeds to outline their concerns with the ordinances themselves, as well as what they describe as an "apparent rush to usher them through City Council without time for meaningful community consideration and input."

(Scroll down to read the letter in full.)

The groups plan to hold two press conferences next week ahead of the City Council's anticipated vote on the proposal at their Wednesday meeting.

As the city on Thursday announced that it had approved its first parade permit to protesters ahead of the summits and the mayor stated the city stands "in strong support of the applicant organizations' First Amendment right to protest."

City leaders also announced this week that some of the new rules it had previously proposed, such as increasing the maximum fine for a violation of the parade ordinance and requiring parade marshals per every 100 participant, had been dropped.

But despite the city's recent assurances, other protesters beyond those signing onto the City Council letter also remain unimpressed. Andy Thayer, a veteran Chicago activist at the forefront of the groups planning to protest the summits, said in a statement issued Friday that the latest version of the city's plans for handling protesters of the May summits[PDF], "stunk. Almost as much as the earlier versions."

Thayer said many of the remaining proposals -- such as one requiring protest organizers to describe "any recording equipment, sound amplification equipment, banners, signs, or other attention-getting devices to be used in connection with the parade" in advance -- are "ridiculous" and "odious."

The city previously came under criticism for its plan to put parts of downtown Chicago, essentially,on a lockdown as part of the federal government's security plan for the summits. Activists have also not been pleased by the increased fines protesters accused of resisting a police officer will face, among other concerns.

Read the letter here:

Open Letter From Community and Labor Organizations

Demons Unleashed in Libya
NATO’s Islamists Continue Program of Ethnic and Ideological Cleansing

By Gerald A. Perreira

This is the dark time, my love,
All round the land brown beetles crawl about
The shining sun is hidden in the sky
Red flowers bend their heads in awful sorrow
This is the dark time, my love,
It is the season of oppression, dark metal, and tears.
It is the festival of guns, the carnival of misery
Everywhere, the faces of men are strained and anxious
Who comes walking in the dark night time?
Whose boot of steel tramps down the slender grass
It is the man of death, my love, the stranger invader
Watching you sleep and aiming at your dream.
Martin Carter

December 01, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- All of the good that Muammar Qaddafi did for his people, and the immeasurable contribution he made to the oppressed peoples of the world is catalogued everywhere for those who have eyes to see. NATO's war crimes are also catalogued – they went viral, so even in the absence of a court where NATO and their mercenaries can be tried, millions of people worldwide watched, at their computers and TV screens, the horrific war crimes that unfolded in Sirte and elsewhere in Libya. The verdicts are in. The question is what can be done about it?

The world was quite literally watching and still can watch, anytime they care to google the litany of obscene crimes committed, when a coalition of the most powerful nations on this earth, backed up by the vast majority of Arab and African misleaders, deployed the most sophisticated arsenal of weaponry in the history of the world against a small bastion of African resistance. In the now famous cities of Sirte and Bani Walid, Colonel Muammar Abu Minyar al-Qaddafi led his people in a courageous battle which lasted for months. The battles of Sirte and Bani Walid have surely earned their place in the annals of African history.

At his side were his son, Mutassim Qaddafi and Libya's Minister of Defense, and one of the leaders of the 1969 Al Fateh revolution, Major General Abu-Bakr Yunis Jaber. Decades ago, he and the young Muammar were in the same class at the Military Academy in Benghazi and were co founders of the Free Officers' Movement which overthrew King Idris.

Both men, spiritual heirs of Omar Al Mukhtar's armed resistance against the Italian invaders in 1911, were in their 70s. Having to witness such a savage attack on them and not being able to do anything to defend them against NATO's jackals, was traumatizing.

The core group of revolutionaries, who led the Al Fateh revolution in 1969 in their twenties, all now in their late 60s and 70s, chose to stay at their posts and fight alongside the people, despite having received many offers for safe passage out of Libya.

Muammar Qaddafi and Yunis Jaber praying in the desert near Sirte in 1973

Sirte following NATO's bombardment

A Picture Tells a 1000 Words
This picture of Sirte, after NATO's bombardment, is worth more than a thousand words when it comes to understanding what actually took place in this once beautiful and prosperous African city. And all in the name of 'protecting civilians' – clearly with the exception of civilians loyal to Muammar Qaddafi and the Al Fateh revolution. We salute all of those who fought to defend Al Fateh and the Pan African project in Sirte, Bani Walid and throughout Libya. They are the real Jihadists – the true Pan-African Army.

Julius Malema, ANC Youth Leader, in reference to the North Atlantic Tribes, asked the question – why are these people so bloodthirsty? He pointed out that they did not seem to understand anything other than war.

It is no surprise that Julius Malema has been banned by Jacob Zuma's ANC. Zuma is one of those African misleaders who signed Qaddafi's death warrant, when South Africa, along with Nigeria and French controlled Gabon, all temporary members of the so-called Security Council at the time, agreed to the implementation of a 'No Fly Zone', which unleashed the demons of war.

Let us not imagine that they did not know what would ensue – the entire world has just witnessed the destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan. It was a painful blow to many Africans in Africa and throughout the world. We remembered Nelson Mandela's now famous speech, when on the world stage he called Muammar Qaddafi 'one of the great freedom fighters of the 20th century' and he publicly thanked the Brother Leader and the people of Libya for the material and moral support provided to the ANC when, as Mandela put it – their 'backs were up against the wall'. The half hearted attempts by the AU to take the necessary action to defend Libya was shameful and demoralizing.

There was a time…
Some of it in my lifetime, when we had visionary, principled and courageous African leaders - Shaka Zulu, Queen Nzingha, Cetshwayo, Dedan Kimathi, Julius Nyerere, Ahmed Sekou Toure, Kwame Nkrumah, Jamal Abdul Nasser, Marien Ngouabi, Ahmed Ben Bella, Samora Machel, Thomas Sankara, Murtala Muhammad, Laurent Kabila to name but a few. Had leaders such as these been in power today, NATO could not have gotten away with invading Libya. The fact is, with few exceptions, the current bunch of African leaders, many of them put in place by the forces of white supremacy were just not up to the job.

Those who are misleading Africa today – 'who the cap fit let them wear it' – have paid a dear price. What is coming our way will be punishment for such a colossal betrayal. And sadly, we will all suffer for their sins.

The murder of Muammar Qaddafi plunged us into despair. We mourned his death as sons mourn their father - he called us his sons and we responded as such because we understood his sincerity.

Those who worked with Qaddafi can testify that the Brother Leader's efforts were motivated by a strong and uncompromising faith in God, his deep love for humanity and a sincere desire to assist all those engaged in the struggle to end injustice and oppression. If anyone epitomized Che's famous quote, it was our brother: 'Revolutionaries are first human beings, and at the risk of sounding utterly ridiculous, revolution is based upon supreme feelings of love'

Those among the leadership of Al Fateh who were not murdered, were captured. Dr Ahmed Ibrahim, one of the foremost exponents of the Third Universal Theory, an intellectual warrior and committed Pan-Africanist, was captured while defending Sirte. The uncle of Moussa Ibrahim, who over the past months became known as the spokesperson for the legitimate government of Libya, he is currently being held in Misurata, and his son, Yurub Ibrahim, has also been arrested. The well known Islamic scholar Sheik Khaled Tantoush, has been abducted from his home in Sirte and is also being held in Misurata. These elderly men are being subjected to constant taunting, beatings and torture and their condition is deteriorating rapidly. Global campaigns have been launched to demand the protection under international law and conventions, regarding prisoners of war, for high profile prisoners Saif-al Islam Qaddafi, Abdullah Senussi, Ahmed Ibrahim, Khaled Tantoush and the thousands of prisoners held by the NTC. (see websites Libya SOS, Libya 360 and Mathaba.net for ways you can assist the campaign and video footage of how these elderly prisoners are being treated).

Dr Ahmed Ibrahim tormented by his captors

In addition to loyalty to the Leader, and defense of their country against foreign invaders, having black skin and asserting one's Africanity has become a crime in the new Libya. Ethnic cleansing is continuing unabated. Every day Black Africans from Libya and other parts of Africa are hunted down. Thousands have been brutally tortured and executed. Rape of Black women is a favored weapon of NATO's Islamists. Many of the female bodies found show signs of rape, beatings and torture. Large numbers of Black Africans make up the ranks of the Green Resistance.

NATO's Living Hell

One Tripoli resident, who cannot be named, told me:

'Everyone is terrified of the NTC and their armed gangs. We have seen with our own eyes what they are capable of – they are animals. All around us people are being rounded up and imprisoned. We have no way of knowing how many have been murdered. Anyone who is associated with Qaddafi or suspected of loyalty to him is at risk. Even people who have worked for people who are known supporters of the leader have been rounded up and tortured. I personally know of many persons who were just working for people associated with the leader who have been taken away and never seen again. If you are black you are an immediate suspect – these rebels call black Libyans 'abd' means slave and they are rounding them up just because they are black – it is making me sick and ashamed.

What these rebels have done to their own people is disgusting – some of the acts of torture I can't even speak about. There has been a lot of rape. I wept when I learned of what these animals did to the leader's female body guards – they are not human and that is why there is so much fear. Any known Qaddafi loyalists who have not been able to get out of Libya have to stay underground. Libyans are afraid to talk to other Libyans – anyone could be an informer. It feels like the last days are upon us – Libya has been turned into a living hell.'

There is now a complete whiteout by the corporate media regarding all news from Libya. And of course, although a genocide is unfolding right before our eyes, there will be no outcry from the UN, Amnesty International or that euphemistic chorus known as 'the

international community', that bleats on ad nauseum about 'democracy, human rights and the rule of law'? No time or motive for outcry – having shared the spoils, they have already moved on to their next victims – Syria and Iran.

Demons Unleashed
To do their dirty work, NATO employed the most barbaric marauders they could find. These Islamist mercenaries are programmed, sadistic fighters – they have been on the battlefields in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya. They have been hired many times over by NATO, who characteristically plays all sides, and that is why they need to sprinkle stimulant powders on their food - to keep them in killing mode.

Shouting Allahu Akhbar, like robots, they go from town to town, city to city, ransacking, beating, torturing, raping and murdering, and then, in their crazed state, with inflated feelings of omnipotence, they actually take footage of themselves committing heinous war crimes and post them on youtube.

As the people bury their dead, they defiantly whisper, 'Allah, Muammar, Libya and nothing else'. Amidst the screams that can be heard deep into the night, a shell shocked population tries to understand what happened to them, and struggles to come to terms with the obscene end inflicted on a man they loved. Now they must try to find a way to confront the 'brave new world' that has been imposed upon them by this foreign invasion. In an instant, they have been transported back in time to when Europeans last occupied their country.

Green Resistance – It is only a matter of time…
The war in Libya is far from over. The corporate media continues the lie that Libya has been 'liberated' and that life there has 'returned to normal'. In truth, chaos reigns. Rumours about NATO's plans to carve up the country are rife and Libya remains engulfed in warfare.

People are being systematically hunted down. Truck loads of bodies are being carted away, as the now feuding armed gangs, each with their own command structure, and none adhering to anything the NTC says, introduces the only policy they ever had – exterminate Qaddafi and all those loyal to him. That numbers in the millions and they are stopping at nothing to track them down.

The Green resistance referred to as the Libyan Liberation Army (LLA) or the Libyan Liberation Front (LLF) is regrouping and growing stronger by the day. Street battles are commonplace, explosions can be heard all over Tripoli and in other regions, and NATO's mercenaries are facing fierce resistance.

Libya's powerful Warfalla Tribe, comprising more than a million Libyans, have stated that 'they are thirsting for revenge', many of them having fought in the battle of Bani Walid.

One Green resistance fighter summed up the feeling of all:

'It does not matter how long it takes, we will rise again as sure as the sun rises. It is only a matter of time. It may not be today – we are a patient people. Right now, many of us have to lay low while the leaders regroup and put certain things in place so that we can take our resistance to the next level, but we know our time will come and we are only waiting for the word to take up our arms.

We have to be organized and this takes time, especially under the present conditions of occupation. Our people are being tortured and raped and murdered for supporting the leader and defending their revolution. We have had to leave our homes and watch these dogs destroy them and steal everything from us. But our day will come – we can never forget the crimes committed against us by NATO and these murdering thieves who call themselves revolutionaries and Muslims.

What I have seen with my own two eyes is unbelievable – people committing the cruelest acts - crimes against humanity while they cry out Allahu Akhbar. They are like drugged people. We have uncovered mass graves of Qaddafi loyalists – with their hands tied behind their backs - all executed. I want to tell them that every person they tortured, every person murdered, every woman they raped, every home they destroyed and looted and everything they did to our dear leader and his family will be avenged.

This is not the first time this has happened to us Libyans – this is exactly what happened to us when the Italians occupied our land – thanks to the leader we are a very educated people now – we know our history and our heroes. The NTC has already taken the picture of Omar Al Mukhtar off the Libyan dinar but it does not matter – they can destroy every picture of Omar Al Mukhtar and the leader, because the story of his bravery and the bravery of his son Muammar Qaddafi is in our hearts – these men can never die - and this gives us the belief and certainty that we will overcome these thieves again – believe me, it is only a matter of time.'

A Frenzied Phase
The invasion of Libya and the murder of Muammar Qaddafi ushered in what can be described as the empire's 'frenzied phase'. Capitalism and imperialism are taking their last hideous gasps, and in this phase we will see their evil laid bare. NATO will continue to become ever more brazen with its 'shock and horror' tactics, believing that they are unstoppable and invincible, as once did Rome. In other words, with the imperialists in panic mode, we can expect their behavior to become all the more barbaric, savage and uncivilized, as has been prophesied.

The Twilight Zone – Vampires of Empire
The additional dimension in this new phase is that capitalism, White supremacy's socio-economic system, has entered a period of unprecedented crisis – it is on its last legs and the system is turning in on itself. The vampires of empire do indeed 'suck the blood of the sufferer'. They are desperate now and quite literally don't care if they are seen to be dripping in our blood. Their global economic arrangement is crumbling faster than they can hold their next summit, and we cannot be caught off guard.

We have watched Europe and the US forestall their collapse for a number of years, to the point where they are frantic and fast running out of ideas. As fast as they share the spoils of one war – they need another to quench their insatiable appetite for plunder. Our trouble is, that many of us are too slow to follow the visionary leadership in their midst. Had African leaders shared the vision, united and worked together toward a United States of Africa as Qaddafi pleaded, the world would have been a very different place today. Muammar Qaddafi and the Libyan revolution were on the verge of bringing about a total shift in the global balance of power, and giving Africa its rightful place in the world. We have never been so close to reasserting African power. He was truly a Lion of Africa.

A Ruthless Enemy – Know Them
The North Atlantic Tribes are an extremely ruthless enemy. It is necessary to study and understand their mentality in order to build an effective resistance. Indisputably, there is good and bad in every race. However, also indisputably, the historical and cultural continuum known as Europe has specificities that no other group on the face of this earth has demonstrated. Their will to dominate, consume and destroy is unparalleled.

Marimba Ani, in her seminal work, Yurugu, An Afrikan-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior, offers an incisive analysis of the European mindset. In her words:

'All modes of European behavior and dominant styles of action act to increase and ensure material control…The power ideology that defines the total culture keeps it off- balance. The culture itself – always 'progressing', never 'progressed' – is unidirectional, one dimensional, fanatical, and atrophied; a culture that must consume others. But ultimately this ideology is incoherent; it literally lacks human meaning. It is the compulsiveness, the drive, the insatiable appetite of the culture that are its distinguishing features…it is as well-constructed as a power machine can be…For success it has sacrificed 'soul'. What is left is profane. Aesthetically, and in terms of self-image, it identifies as white. Europe is the cultural home of a people who identify as one race; i.e., banding together for survival and destruction of others. They would destroy each other if there were not others to destroy. They fear and hate blackness, which they associate with spiritual power – a power which they can neither possess, create nor control.'

In White Racism: A Psychohistory, Joel Kovel describes this drive to conquer and destroy as a 'cosmic yearning', 'a bottomless longing'.

Samuel Huntington, author of the Clash of Civilizations reminds us of something that we should never forget: 'The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.'

That is the reason why the enemy gets so agitated when we organize armed resistance, because they know how powerful organized violence can be.

The invasion of Libya and the murder of Qaddafi is what happened to a nation and its leader when they give up their program to develop 'weapons of mass destruction' and opted for a path of peaceful coexistence. In an interview at the beginning of the war, Saif Qaddafi admitted that Libya had been caught 'unprepared for war', having not even upgraded their conventional weaponry. No nation will ever make that fatal mistake again. The North Atlantic Tribes can never be trusted. Deterrents of any kind are better than no deterrents at all.

The North Atlantic Tribes have mastered the art of war and perfected weaponry like no other peoples in history. They are the quintessential warlords.

In order to carry out this regrab, in their desperate and frenzied attempt to hasten their plunder of Africa and the global south's wealth, it is imperative for the imperialists to get rid of all revolutionary nationalist regimes that might stand in their way, and ensure that compliant regimes are firmly in place. We must prepare ourselves for what is to come. In his last message, the Brother Leader warned us to 'hold down our corners' because if they get past Libya they are coming for all of us. The challenge in this phase is to find ways to cope with the Empire's collapse and to strengthen our resistance in order to confront the frantic and barbaric behavior which will inevitably characterize their demise.

Their House is Burning - Not Ours
At a global economic summit in 2009, former President of Brazil, Lula Da Silva, when commenting on the global economic crisis, stated, 'This was a crisis that was fostered and boosted by the irrational behavior of people who were white and blue-eyed, who before the crisis looked like they knew everything about economics, but now have demonstrated they know nothing about economics' He added, 'The part of humanity that is responsible should be the part that pays for the crisis.'

Too many of us are still, as Malcolm X put it, 'house negroes'. The house negro lived in the master's house and when the master's house was burning, he said 'we house burning'. If the master was sick, the house negro said 'we sick'. And then there was the field negro. When he saw the master's house burning he said 'Let it burn'.

In Africa, South America, the Caribbean and throughout the global south, we have been in crisis for centuries as a result of the imperialists endless thirst for domination, plunder and war. It is the master's house that is burning this time. And we say – 'let it burn'. The demise of this empire is a welcome thing. We don't need to concern ourselves with bringing Babylon down, for it is surely crumbling – politically, economically, ideologically and morally, due to its own internal contradictions. In the meantime, as Muammar Qaddafi urged, 'we must build the new as the old crumbles around us'. Only then can we be ready. It is not the end of the world – it is the end of their world.

Gerald A. Perreira is a founding member of the Guyanese organizations Joint Initiative for Human Advancement and Dignity and Black Consciousness Movement Guyana (BCMG). He lived in Libya for many years, served in the Green March, an international battalion for the defense of the Al Fateh revolution and was an executive member of the World Mathaba based in Tripoli.

Source: Gerald A. Perreira

Human rights investigations

evidence-based, independent and rigorous investigation of human rights abuses

NATO’s secret weapon – racism

Posted on September 1, 2011

Human Rights Investigations has been repeatedly warning about the Libyan rebels and it has become increasingly clear that racism lies at the very heart of the conflict in Libya. It now clear that the rebel forces are NATO (and Qatar and UAE)’s proxy fighters on the ground. Many of these fighters have been recruited and motivated on the basis of psy-ops about African mercenaries, fired up by viagra, mass-raping women and pillaging their cities - discredited stories which have been spread and amplified by rebel commanders, NATO ministers, the media and ICC prosecutor Moreno Ocampo.

The effects of this pernicious propaganda campaign have been seen in Benghazi, Misrata and Tawergha and across the nation and are now being seen on the streets of Tripoli as rebels round up black-skinned Libyans and African guest workers, putting them into football stadiums.

AP reports:

Virtually all of the detainees say they are innocent migrant workers, and in most cases there is no evidence that they are lying. But that is not stopping the rebels from placing the men in facilities like the Gate of the Sea sports club, where about 200 detainees – all black – clustered on a soccer field this week, bunching against a high wall to avoid the scorching sun.

In the Khallat al-Firjan neighborhood in south Tripoli, Associated Press reporters saw rebel forces punching a dozen black men before determining they were innocent migrant workers and releasing them.

Racism lies at the heart of many of the NATO campaigns, including in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq where innocents are slaughtered in a way that simply would not be accepted if the victims were white.

NATO’s chief weapon in the Libyan conflict has been and continues to be, not Brimstone or Paveway bombs, Tornados, Typhoons or Tomahawk cruise missiles - but racism.

To appreciate the importance of racism in motivating soldiers please listen to Mike Prysner’s speech made at the 2008 Winter Soldier hearings:

Transcript:

“And I tried hard to be proud of my service but all I could feel was shame and racism could no longer mask the occupation. These were people. These were human beings. I’ve since been plagued by guilt anytime I see an elderly man, like the one who couldn’t walk and we rolled onto a stretcher, told the Iraqi police to take him away. I feel guilt anytime I see a mother with her children like the one who cried hysterically and screamed that we were worse than Saddam as we forced her from her home. I feel guilt anytime I see a young girl like the one I grabbed by the arm and dragged into the street.

”We were told we were fighting terrorists, but the real terrorist was me and the real terrorism is this occupation. Racism within the military has long been an important tool to justify the destruction and occupation of another country. It has long been used to justify the killing, subjugation, and torture of another people. Racism is a vital weapon deployed by this government. It is a more important weapon than a rifle, a tank, a bomber or a battleship. It is more destructive than an artillery shell, or a bunker buster, or a tomahawk missile. While all of those weapons are created and owned by this government, they are harmless without people willing to use them.

”Those who send us to war do not have to pull a trigger or lob a mortar round. They do not have to fight the war. They merely have to sell the war. They need a public who is willing to send their soldiers into harm’s way and they need soldiers who are willing to kill or be killed without question. They can spend millions on a single bomb, but that bomb only becomes a weapon when the ranks in the military are willing to follow orders to use it. They can send every last soldier anywhere on earth, but there will only be a war if soldiers are willing to fight, and the ruling class: the billionaires who profit from human suffering care only about expanding their wealth, controlling the world economy, understand that their power lies only in their ability to convince us that war, oppression, and exploitation is in our interests. They understand that their wealth is dependent on their ability to convince the working class to die to control the market of another country. And convincing us to kill and die is based on their ability to make us think that we are somehow superior. Soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, have nothing to gain from this occupation.

”The vast majority of people living in the US have nothing to gain from this occupation. In fact, not only do we have nothing to gain, but we suffer more because of it. We lose limbs, endure trauma, and give our lives. Our families have to watch flag draped coffins lowered into the earth. Millions in this country without healthcare, jobs, or access to education must watch this government squander over $450 million a day on this occupation. Poor and working people in this country are sent to kill poor and working people in another country to make the rich richer, and without racism soldiers would realize that they have more in common with the Iraqi people than they do with the billionaires who send us to war

”I threw families onto the street in Iraq only to come home and find families thrown onto the street in this country in this tragic, tragic and unnecessary foreclosure crisis; only to wake up and realize that our real enemies are not in some distant land. But not people whose names we don’t know, and cultures we don’t understand. The enemy is people we know very well and people we can identify. The enemy is a system that wages war when it’s profitable. The enemy is the CEO who lays us off our jobs when it’s profitable; it’s the insurance companies who deny us health care when it’s profitable; it’s the banks who take away our homes when it’s profitable. Our enemies are not 5000 miles away, they are right here at home. If we organize and fight with our sisters and brothers, we can stop this war, we can stop this government, and we can create a better world.”

Cynthia McKinney on NATO and Libya [ 83088 ] -

Cynthia McKinney

November 13, 2011

I was just contacted by someone saying that yet another prominent Libyan--a nice man whom I met--had been tortured and killed by the "rebels" who are now recognized by the US and other governments as the legitimate government of Libya. I hope this information is not true. Upon reflecting on the sad news, I thought about all of the people who were so sure that the lies were true; that the US military response was appropriate; in short, they told us that war is peace. Many spouting the palaver were people who should have known better. Instead, they lapped up the imperial lies like Pavlov's dog, and proselytized war.

I recall those who were vociferous in their support of NATO's assault on Libya and those who were SILENT.

Reverend Jesse Jackson (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm8lDFD9hOo), all but six Members of the Congressional Black Caucus (http://alexandravaliente.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/black-caucus-on-libya-war-the-good-the-bad-the-confused-and-the-hopeless/), most Black civic leaders and many Black media backed the President's policy against the people of Libya or were silent.

How many "Progressives" affirmatively backed the President's policy to unleash depleted uranium, helicopter gunships, bunker buster bombs, and these "allies" onto the Libyan population? Or worse yet, were silent? Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

Mission accomplished: Libya is destroyed, rivers of blood now flow, and the momentous plans for African independence are over. Gone is the visionary and well-financed project for a United States of Africa, a one million-person Army for Africa to repel unwanted invasion and penetration, and the projects that had already been approved by the African Union: the African Central Bank (to be headquartered in Nigeria) to issue a gold-backed currency; the African Monetary Fund (to be headquartered in someplace in Central Africa); and the African Investment Bank (to be headquartered in Libya).

War is a crime and the aggression against Libya is criminal.

1. This video depicts clearly who was backed. The caption: Les rebelles sont racistes et n'arrètent pas de torturer et tuer des Libyens noirs. Un libyen de Taouerga est torturé. (The "rebels" are racists and do not stop torturing and killing black Libyans. One Libyan from Taouerga [that was the mostly Black Libyan city bombed to smithereens by NATO and that the "rebels" have vowed to wipe off the map of Libya] is tortured):

This video, entitled "Rebels torture a Libyan from Taouerga" is dated 7 November 2011:

( http://www.algeria-isp.com/videos/politique-libye/201111-V1588/libye-des-rebelles-torturent-libyen-taouerga-2011.html )

2. Libya is in chaos, rebel now points arms at rebel. I passed through Zawiya on my way from Tunisia to Tripoli. This video is entitled Rebels attack the NTC of Zawiya and is dated 6 November 2011:

( http://www.algeria-isp.com/videos/politique-libye/201111-V1586/libye-des-rebelles-attaquent-cnt-zawiya-2011.html )

The caption in part reads a new kind of war begins--rebels killing rebels.

3. With Iraq, we have seen the decimation of an entire country. So, too, with Libya. From infrastructure to people, nothing was left unattacked. Many individuals whose hand I shook are now dead; many streets bombed, buildings reduced to rubble. This video, done by Russians, depicts Sirte before 20 October 2011 and after NATO's unrelenting bombardment:

( http://www.algeria-isp.com/videos/politique-libye/201110-V1565/libye-une-video-sirte-avant-apres-octobre-2011.html

4. Listen to the National Endowment for Democracy Libya representative Mahmoud Jibril say why he thinks Muammar Qaddafi was killed: "Too many things would have been revealed you know. This man was full of secrets, you know. He had too many contacts with too many leaders with too many countries . . . "

4. Then review this incredible video of Sliman Bouchiguir admitting that they just made up the numbers of dead, attributed the atrocities to the Jamahiriya government, while reporting to the world that the Libyan Jamahiriya was using a "scorched earth policy" against Libyan civilians and foreigners. It was all lies.

http://www.laguerrehumanitaire.fr/english for Europe, and for US:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gJz45K4Q50

:: Article nr. 83088 sent on 14-nov-2011 02:13 ECT

www.uruknet.info?p=83088

:: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website.

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Thinking the Unthinkable: NATO's Global Military Roadmap by Rick Rozoff

Thinking the Unthinkable: NATO's Global Military Roadmap by Rick Rozoff

Global Research, October 3, 2009
Stop NATO - 2009-10-02


Not content with expanding from 16 to 28 members over the past decade in a post-Cold War world in which it confronts no military threat from any source, state or non-state, and not sufficiently occupied with its first ground and first Asian war in Afghanistan, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – the world’s only military bloc – is eager to take on a plethora of new international missions. With the fragmentation of the Warsaw Pact and the breakup of the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991 NATO, far from scaling back its military might in Europe, not to mention returning the favor and dissolving itself, saw the opportunity to expand throughout the continent and the world. Beginning with the bombing campaign in Bosnia in 1995, Operation Deliberate Force and its 400 aircraft, and the deployment of 60,000 troops there under Operation Joint Endeavor, the Alliance has steadily and inexorably deployed its military east and south into the Balkans, Northeast Africa, the entire Mediterranean Sea, Central Africa, and South and Central Asia. It has also extended its tentacles into the South Caucasus, throughout Scandinavia including Finland and Sweden, and into the Asia-Pacific region where it has formed individual partnerships with Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea along with recruiting troops from Mongolia and Singapore to serve under its command in the eight-year war in Afghanistan. With the upgrading of its Mediterranean Dialogue program (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia), with the Persian Gulf component of the 2004 Istanbul Cooperation Initiative partnership underway and planned for the Gulf Cooperation Council states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and with the deployment of U.S.-trained Colombian counterinsurgency forces for its Afghan war, a military bloc ostensibly formed to protect the nations of the North Atlantic community now has armed forces and partnerships in all six inhabited continents. It has waged war in Europe, against Yugoslavia in 1999, and in Asia, in Afghanistan (with intrusions into Pakistan) from 2001 to the present and into the indefinite future, and is currently conducting military operations off the coast of Africa in the Gulf of Aden. The “Soviet menace” invoked sixty years ago to create even at the time the world’s largest and most powerful military alliance receded into history a generation ago and the gap provided by the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact and the USSR has been filled by a military machine that can call upon two million troops and whose member states account for over 70 percent of world arms spending. But the past fifteen years’ expansion is not sufficient for NATO’s worldwide ambitions. It is now in the process of elaborating a new Strategic Concept to replace that of 1999, introduced during the air war against Yugoslavia and the first absorption of nations in the former socialist bloc. One which NATO described at the time as the Alliance’s Approach to Security in the 21st Century. In the decade-long interim the bloc has come to refer to itself as 21st Century NATO, global NATO and expeditionary NATO. (The first Strategic Concept was formulated in 1991, the year of the breakup of the Soviet Union and the Operation Desert Storm war against Iraq.} The updated version was deliberated upon at NATO’s sixtieth anniversary summit this April, the first held in two nations: Strasbourg in France and Kehl in Germany. Over a year in advance the bloc’s Secretary General at the time, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, “called on the transatlantic military alliance to develop a new, long-term strategy designed to tackle third-millennium concerns such as cyber attacks, global warming, energy security and nuclear threats” and demanded that it increase its budget to address a “growing list of responsibilities.” [1] If upon its founding in 1949 NATO justified the launching of a military bloc in a Europe still nursing the wounds of the deadliest and most destructive war in human history; if after the end of the Cold War it transformed its self-defined mission to encompass military intervention in the Balkans to prove its ability to enforce peace, however one-sided; if after September 21, 2001 it obediently adjusted to Washington’s agenda of a Global War On Terror and efforts against weapons of mass destruction everywhere but where they actually exist; in the past few years NATO has announced new roles and missions that will allow, in fact necessitate, its intrusion into any part of the globe for a near myriad of reasons. If fact myriad is the exact word used on October 1 at a conference jointly organized by NATO and Lloyd’s of London – “the world’s leading insurance market” as it describes itself – by the latter’s chairman, Lord Peter Levene, in reference to NATO’s new “third millennium” Strategic Concept. Levene’s address included these words: “Our sophisticated, industrialised and complex world is under attack from a myriad of determined and deadly threats. If we do not take action soon, we will find ourselves, like Gulliver, pinned to the ground and helpless, because we failed to stop a series of incremental changes while we still could.” His allusion to the character who lends his name to Jonathan Swift’s novel Gulliver’s Travels invites the opportunity of quoting a paragraph from it about the protagonist’s – and Levene’s – native land, Great Britain. After Gulliver boasts to a foreign king of among other matters Britain’s vast colonial domains and its military prowess, his interlocutor responds: “As for yourself, who have spent the greatest part of your life in travelling, I am well disposed to hope you may hitherto have escaped many vices of your country. But by what I have gathered from your own relation, and the answers I have with much pains wrung and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.” Lord Levene hosted the conference on the Alliance’s updated Strategic Concept, one which was attended by what were described as “200 high-level representatives from the security and business community.” [2] This past July NATO announced that a “group of experts” would be convened to discuss and plan its new strategy. Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, as much as anyone responsible for the Alliance’s first prolonged armed conflict, the 78-day air war against Yugoslavia, chairs the group. The co-chairman is Jeroen van der Veer, who until June 30 was chief executive officer of Royal Dutch Shell. NATO’s Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Lord Levene co-authored a column in The Telegraph of October 1, so accommodating is the Western “free press,” to coincide with the conference of the same day. They provided a litany of joint NATO-private business sector collaborations to protect the interests of the second party, Western-based transnational corporations, including but by no means limited to information technology, the melting of the polar ice cap, risk management for overseas investments and “storms and floods.” The article states that “industry leaders, including those from Lloyd’s, have been involved in the current process to develop NATO’s new guiding charter, the Strategic Concept; indeed, the vice-chair of the group is the former chief executive of Shell, Jeroen van der Veer.” [3] It also lays out far-reaching plans for military responses to a veritable host of non-military issues. “[G]overnments need to do some contingency planning…including focusing intelligence assessments on climate change, tasking military planners to incorporate it into their planning as well….They also need to step up their cyber-defences, as NATO has done in creating a deployable cyber-defence capability that can help its members if they come under attack.” The last item is an allusion to events in Estonia in 2007, cyber attacks variously ascribed by Western government and NATO officials to Russian hackers or the Russian government itself. No proof has been offered for the accusations, though that hasn’t prevented major American elected officials from threatening the use of NATO’s Article 5 collective military force provision for use in similar cases. That is precisely what Levene and Rasmussen meant by endorsing NATO’s “creating a deployable cyber-defence capability that can help its members if they come under attack.” The urgency of the demand of Lord Levene of Portsoken and former Danish prime minister Rasmussen for history’s largest military bloc to protect Western commercial investments was expressed in an unadorned manner by the writers when they stated “Humans have always fought over resources and land. But now we are seeing those pressures on a bigger scale…. “We must be prepared to think the unthinkable. Lloyd’s developed its 360 Risk Insight programme and its Realistic Disaster Scenarios, and NATO its Multiple Futures project, precisely to lift our eyes from the present and scan the horizon for what might be looming.” There will be no lack of opportunities for implementing what appears to be the heart of the new Strategic Concept. Levene mentioned a thousand “determined and deadly threats” during his speech at the conference and Rasmussen started identifying them. In his presentation at the conference the NATO chief framed his inventory of “deadly threats” by saying, “[T]he challenges we are looking at today cut across the divide between the public and private sectors….NATO, the EU and many Governments have had to send navies to try to defend against attacks. And it has cost insurance companies – many of which are part of the Lloyd’s market – millions.” [4] The implication is inevitable that NATO and European Union warships are operating in among other locales the Horn of Africa so that firms like Lloyd’s will have to settle fewer claims. Rasmussen’s speech included these pretexts for NATO interventions, these future casus belli, all in his own words: Piracy Cyber security/defense Climate change Extreme weather events – catastrophic storms and flooding Sea levels will rise Populations will move…in large numbers…always into where someone else lives, and sometimes across borders Water shortages Droughts Food production is likely to drop Arctic ice is retreating, for resources that had, until now, been covered under ice Global warming CO2 emissions Reinforcing factories or energy stations or transmission lines or ports that might be at risk of storms or flooding Energy, where diversity of supply is a security issue Natural and humanitarian disasters Big storms, or floods, or sudden movements of populations Fuel efficiency, reduc[ing] our overall dependence on foreign sources of fuel None of the seventeen developments mentioned can even remotely be construed as a military threat and certainly not one posed by recognized state actors. Surely no “rogue states” or “outposts of tyranny” or “international terrorists” are responsible for climate change, yet Rasmussen’s proposals for contending with it are military ones. “[T]he security implications of climate change need to be better integrated into national security and defence strategies – as the US has done with its Quadrennial Defence Review. That means asking our intelligence agencies to look at this as one of their main tasks. It means military planners should assess potential the impacts, update their plans accordingly and consider the capabilities they might need in future.” He additionally advocated the inclusion of the over forty nations the 28-member bloc has individual and collective partnerships with in adding, “We might also consider adapting our Partnerships to take climate change into account as well. Right now, NATO engages in military training and capacity building with countries around the world. We focus on things like peacekeeping, language training and countering terrorism. What about also including cooperation that helps build capacity in the armed forces of our Partners to better manage big storms, or floods, or sudden movements of populations?” [5] Rasmussen’s Pandora’s box of NATO concerns were for years adumbrated by his predecessor, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who two years ago said that “[T]he subjects that the Alliance leaders are expected to discuss at the Bucharest Summit (Spring 2008) [are] NATO enlargement, missile defence, military capabilities, energy security, maritime situation awareness, cyber defence and other new security threats” [6] in one statement, and in another in the same period “emphasised the importance of such issues as enlargement, partnerships, energy security, the fight against global terrorism, energy security, cyber and missile defence which he expects to be discussed at the Bucharest summit.” [7] In March of 2008 Scheffer was quoted in a news report titled “NATO Chief Calls for `Atlantic Charter’ to Define Strategy” as saying, “Challenges are multifaceted, interlinked and can arise from anywhere. We need to do a better job of scanning the strategic horizon. We can’t just be reactive….If NATO is to be capable to act anywhere in world, we will need more global partners.” [8] During a visit to Israel this past January Scheffer expounded on the theme: “NATO has transformed to address the challenges of today and tomorrow. We have built partnerships around the globe from Japan to Australia to Pakistan and, of course, with the important countries of the Mediterranean and the Gulf. We have established political relations with the UN and the African Union that never existed until now. We’ve taken in new [countries], soon 28 in total, with more in line….[W]e are looking at playing new roles, as well, in energy security and cyber defence….” [9] In a speech on March 22, “The Future of NATO,” he spoke of “long-term, costly and risky engagement far away from our own borders” and interventions “to cover a wider range of concerns and interests – from territorial defence, through regional stability, all the way to cyber defence, energy security, and the consequences of climate change. “From just 12 member states we went to 26 – and soon 28. And from a purely ‘eurocentric’ Alliance NATO has evolved into a security provider that is engaged on several continents, working with a wide range of other nations and institutions.” [10] His earlier reference to the African Union is to NATO’s deployment to the Darfur region of Sudan in 2005, its first African operation, and that to “political relations with the UN” to a backroom deal reached in September of 2008 between Scheffer and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that bypassed permanent Security Council members Russia and China. Indeed, the growing list of excuses for NATO involvement and intervention, that of Scheffer and now of Rasmussen, is a dangerous arrogation of responsibility and functions that are properly those of the UN and not that of a non-elected military cabal whose combined member states’ populations are a small fraction of the human race. NATO’s expansion and its progressively broader operations over the past ten years indicate in a glaring manner the Alliance’s intention to circumvent, subvert and jeopardize the very existence of the United Nations, a theme dealt with in a previous article, West Plots To Supplant United Nations With Global NATO. [11] In addition to “guaranteeing energy security” by establishing military beachheads in the Balkans, Central and South Asia, the Caucasus, the Persian Gulf, the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Guinea and retaining U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe and participating in the American-led drive for a global missile shield, NATO has claimed for itself the exclusive mandate to address virtually all problems confronting humanity. In conjunction with Western arms manufacturers and the likes of Lloyd’s of London and Royal Dutch Shell. 1) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, March 16, 2008 2) NATO, October 1, 2009 3) The Telegraph, October 1, 2009 4) NATO, October 1, 2009] 5) Ibid 6) NATO, October 9, 2007 7) NATO, October 9, 2007 8)Bloomberg News, March 15, 2008 9) Haaretz, January 10, 2009 10) NATO, March 22, 2009 11) Stop NATO, May 27, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/154
Rick Rozoff is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Rick Rozoff

The role genocidal NATO-1
FIDEL CASTRO

This brutal military alliance has become the most insidious instrument of repression known to human history.

NATO took over the role global repressive, after the USSR, which had served the United States a pretext to create it, ceased to exist. Its purpose became clear criminal in Serbia, a Slavic country of origin, whose people fought heroically against the Nazi troops in World War II.

When, in March 1999, the countries of this nefarious organization in its efforts to Yugoslaviadisintegrated after the death of Josip Broz Tito, sent troops in support of the secessionistKosovo, met with strong resistance that nation, which experienced forces were intact.

The Yankee management, advised by the Spanish right-wing government of Jose Maria Aznar, attacked the television stations in Serbia, the bridges over the Danube and Belgrade, the capital of this country. The embassy of the People's Republic of China was destroyed by Yankee bombs, several employees were killed, and there could be no possible mistake, as the authors claimed. Numerous Serbian patriots lost their lives. President Slobodan Milosevic, pressed by the power of the aggressors and the disappearance of the USSR, yielded to the demands of NATO and acknowledged the presence of troops of this alliance in Kosovo, under UN mandate, which finally led to his political defeat and his subsequent trial by no impartial tribunals in The Hague. Strangely died in prison.
If the Serbian leader had resisted a few days more, NATO would have entered a serious crisis, which was about to erupt.
The empire had, so much more time to impose its hegemony among the more subordinate members of this organization.

Between February 21 and April 27 this year, I published the site Cubadebate nine reflections on the subject in which I discussed extensively the role of NATO in Libya and what would happen in my opinion.

I find myself obliged to make a synthesis of the ideas I put forward, and the events that were happening as they were planned, now that a central character in this story, Muammar Qaddafi was severely wounded by the most modern fighter-bombers of NATO, who intercepted his vehicle and worthless, still alive captured and murdered by men armed that military organization.

His body was kidnapped and displayed as a trophy of war, conduct that violates the most elementary principles of standards and other Muslim religious beliefs prevailing in the world. It is announced that Libya will be soon declared a "democratic and human rights defender."

I find myself obliged to devote several reflections to these important and significant facts. It will continue soon.

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As explained above, member countries make direct contributions to NATO in accordance with an agreed cost-sharing formula based on Gross National Income. The largest direct contributors to NATO in absolute terms are the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and France.

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Mayor 1%'s new rules try to thwart protest, while groundswell of public dissent grows

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NATO: National Association of Terror Operations

NATO, G8 in Chicago: Labor, Community Groups Push Back Over Revised Protester Proposals

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NATO’s secret weapon – racism

Cynthia McKinney on NATO and Libya [ 83088 ] -

Cynthia McKinney

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