Stop NATO - Opposition to global militarism

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Re: Stop NATO - Opposition to global militarism

Postby conniption » Tue Aug 25, 2020 8:44 pm

Eric Bogle - The Green Fields of France

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxkhBvO8_kM
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Re: Stop NATO - Opposition to global militarism

Postby conniption » Sat Feb 20, 2021 10:11 pm

MoA
(embedded links)

February 20, 2021

NATO Deployments To Iraq Are Supposed To Put Pressure On Iran - They Will Instead Become Hostages

The U.S. is increasing pressure on Iran by surrounding it with NATO troops.

On Thursday, after a meeting of NATO defense ministers, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced a larger occupation force for Iraq:

Today, we decided to expand NATO’s training mission in Iraq. To support the Iraqi forces as they fight terrorism and ensure that ISIS does not return.

The size of our mission will increase from 500 personnel to around 4,000. And training activities will now include more Iraqi security institutions, and areas beyond Baghdad.

Our presence is conditions-based, and increases in troop numbers will be incremental.

Our mission is at the request of the Iraqi government. It is carried out with full respect for Iraq’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

I spoke with Prime Minister Al—Kadhimi this week and assured him that everything will be done in full consultation with the Iraqi authorities.


There is no doubt that the idea for this is coming from the U.S. side:

Earlier this week, a senior US defense official told reporters on the condition of anonymity that Pentagon leadership was “enthusiastic about and welcomes NATO’s increased focus on Iraq.”


Al-Kadhimi is a weak prime minister Iraq has asked for a new $6 billion IMF loan. The U.S. will have conditioned that on a request for an 'incremental' NATO occupation force.

After the U.S. murder of Qasem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in January 2020 the Iraqi parliament adopted a resolution that called for all foreign troops to leave the country. The U.S. has ignored that. Resistance fighters in Iraq then started to fire missiles on U.S. occupied encampments. Earlier this week a rocket barrage hit a U.S. base in Erbil:

A volley of projectiles targeted the main military base inside Erbil’s airport, which hosts foreign troops deployed as part of the US-led coalition that has helped Iraq fight the armed group ISIL (ISIS) since 2014.

But the rockets struck all over the city’s northwestern sector early Tuesday, killing one foreign civilian contractor and wounding at least nine others, including an American soldier.
...
A shadowy group calling itself Awliya al-Dam – or the Guardians of the Blood – claimed responsibility and said it would continue to attack “occupation” American forces in Iraq.

The attack was the first in nearly two months after a series of similar incidents – blamed on pro-Iran Shia militias – directed at Western military installations or diplomatic missions in Iraq since 2019.


Like the at least 2.500 U.S. troops in Iraq the new NATO 'trainers' in Iraq will become targets of such attacks. The attacks 'by Iranian proxies' will then become the justification to send more 'incremental' NATO troops. After a few month a full NATO division will be on standby at Iran's western border.

There are also 10,000 NATO troops on Iran's eastern boarder in Afghanistan. These are supposed to leave by May 1 according to the peace agreement the Trump administration made with the Taliban. But that agreement also requires negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government. The Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is persistently stalling those talks. He hopes to keep foreign troops in Afghanistan to further feast on the bribes and 'development' monies that come with them.

Some factions in the Iraqi parliament have protested against Al-Kadhimi's troop request to NATO. But there is no unity in the rather chaotic Iraqi political environment. But outside of parliament there are many Iraqis who really want to see all foreign troops gone. They will take their own measures to achieve that.

It is likely that the U.S. sees the additional troops in Iraq and Afghanistan as a pressure point that can be used against Iran in the rather hopeless attempt to renegotiate the nuclear agreement with Iran into a larger surrender document. Iran will not surrender.

The NATO troops will become hostages of U.S. policies and may well take casualties.

Why the European NATO countries agreed to put themselves into this no-win situation is beyond me.

Posted by b on February 20, 2021

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/02/n ... ages-.html

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Re: Stop NATO - Opposition to global militarism

Postby conniption » Thu Jul 01, 2021 8:33 pm

The Saker

A Sea Painted NATO Black

by Pepe Escobar
June 28, 2021

Welcome to the latest NATO show: Sea Breeze starts today and goes all the way to July 23. The co-hosts are the US Sixth Fleet and the Ukrainian Navy. The main protagonist is Standing NATO Maritime Group 2.

The show, in NATOspeak, is just an innocent display of “strenghtening deterrence and defense”. NATO spin tells us the exercise is “growing in popularity” and now features more than 30 nations “from six continents” deploying 5,000 troops, 32 ships, 40 aircraft and “18 special operations and dive teams”. All committed to implement and improve that magical NATO concept: “interoperability”.

Now let’s clear the fog and get to the heart of the matter. NATO is projecting the impression that it’s taking over selected stretches of the Black Sea in the name of “peace”. NATO’s supreme articles of faith, reiterated in its latest summit, are “Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea” and “support for Ukraine sovereignty”. So for NATO, Russia is an enemy of “peace”. Everything else is hybrid war fog.

NATO not only “does not and will not recognize Russia’s illegal and illegitimate annexation of Crimea” but also denounces its “temporary occupation”. This script, redacted in Washington, is recited by Kiev and virtually the whole EU.

NATO bills itself as committed to “transatlantic unity”. Geography tells us the Black Sea has not been annexed to the Atlantic. But that’s no impediment for NATO’s goodwill – which the record shows turned Libya, in northern Africa, into a wasteland run by militias. As for the intersection of Central and South Asia, NATO’s collective behind was unceremoniously kicked by a bunch of ragged Pashtuns with counterfeit Kalashnikovs.

Meet the Bucharest 9

The White House defines its NATO eastern flank allies as the Bucharest 9.

The Bucharest 9 includes the members of the Visegrad Four (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia); the Baltic trio (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania); and two Black Sea neighbors (Bulgaria and Romania). No Ukraine – at least not yet.

When the White House refers to “strengthening transatlantic relations”, this means above all “closer cooperation with our nine Allies in Central Europe and the Baltic and Black Sea regions on the full range of challenges.” Translation: “full range of challenges” means Russia.

So welcome to the return, in style, of the Intermarium – as in “between the seas”, mostly the Baltic and Black, with the Adriatic as a side show.

After WWI, the drive for what would possibly become a geopolitical entente included the three Baltics, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Belarus and Ukraine. That concoction was made in Poland.

Now, under the hegemon and its NATO weaponized arm, a revamped Baltic-Black Sea intermarium is being pushed as the new Cold War 2.0 Iron Wall against Russia. That’s why the definitive incorporation of Ukraine to NATO is so important for Washington – as it would solidify the intermarium for good.

Double O Seven does Monty Python

The prequel to Sea Breeze took place last week, via a farcical Britannia Rules The Waves stunt enacted like a Monty Python sketch – yet with potentially explosive overtones.

Imagine waiting at a bus stop somewhere in Kent and finding a soggy blob – nearly 50 pages – of secret documents in a trash bin detailing Ministry of Defense elaborations on the explicitly provocative deployment of the Defender destroyer off Sebastopol, in the Crimean coast.

Even a BBC journalist embedded with the destroyer smashed the official London spin that this was a mere “innocent passage”. Moreover, the Defender weapons were fully loaded – as it advanced two nautical miles inside Russian waters. Moscow released a video documenting the stunt.

It gets better. The soggy blob found in Kent revealed not only discussions about the possible Russian reaction to the “innocent passage”, but also digressions about the Brits, “encouraged” by the Americans, leaving commandos behind in Afghanistan after the troop pull out next 9/11.

That would qualify as extra evidence that the Anglo-American-NATO combo will not really “leave” Afghanistan.

A vague “member of the public” contacted the BBC when he innocently found the geopolitically radioactive materials. No one knows whether this was a leak, a trap or a silly mistake. If the “member of the public” were a true whistleblower he would have gone the Wikileaks way, not BBC.

The “innocent passage” happened only hours after London signed a deal with Kiev for the “enhancement of Ukrainian naval capabilities”.

On the Russian reaction front, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova summed it all up: “London has demonstrated yet another provocative action followed by a bunch of lies to cover it up. 007 agents are not what they used to be.”

Meanwhile, in the Mediterranean front, which NATO considers its Mare Nostrum, two Russian Mig-31k fighters – capable of carrying Khinzal hypersonic missiles – were redeployed last week to Syria. The Khinzal range encompasses the whole Mediterranean, west as well as east.

Across the Global South, NATO promoting “global peace” in the port of Odessa, in the Black Sea, is bound to evoke shades of Libya cum Afghanistan. Austin Powers, self-billed Agent Double Oh! Behave! would perfectly fit in the Kent trash bin “secret documents” caper. “Oh. Behave!” totally applies to Sea Breeze. Otherwise, the opportunity might arise to say hello to Mr. Kinzhal.

https://thesaker.is/a-sea-painted-nato-black/

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1 of many comments:
Auslander on June 28, 2021

To quote a famous quote: Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

So 30 ‘nations’ are bringing 32 ships to the Black Sea. Uk has two here, Uncle Sugar has two here. Orcland is trying mightily to get their one semi floating frigate to move and will provide ‘over 14 ships for the exercise’, meaning maybe 1 dilapidated Soviet hull and 13 of this ridiculous little Dnepr River ‘armored ships’ just like the two ‘ships’ captured last year at Kerch. Armored? They are plastic, the ‘cabin’ is not even fiberglass, they have less than 2 meters of free board at the bow and their armament is one each 30 mm automatic ‘gun’ bolted to a fiberglass hull floor. So 18 ‘ships’ are contributed by three countries. It is my understanding that SK and Taiwan have withdrawn from the ‘exercise’ after the Brits pulled their farcical remake of Monty Python.

Doing the numbers, and assuming Bulgaria, Turkei and Romania and Gruzya each contribute two hulls, the numbers are pretty slim from the other contributors, ergo the remaining 23 nations will field 4 ships. Sounds like a really compact and supportive group gathering off our shores.

On the other hand the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Flot, the Kruiser Moskau, along with two of the most modern frigates of the flot and who knows how many ‘black holes’ belonging to Mother are in the Med now, driving the CO of the floating death trap carrier belonging to UK to complain of a ‘lack of sea room to maneuver’, and Foggy Bottom wants to pull off who knows what kind of foolishness over the next couple weeks. The other ships of the Black Sea Flot I have no idea where they are or even if they have sailed out from harbor. The newly formed ‘nato navy’ is now gathering inside a Russian lake from which there is no way out if things go sour and precisely zero chance of any resupply or support if this ‘navy’ gets silly and picks a fight.

My introduction sentence says a great deal. However, the situation is as serious as a heart attack and could explode at any moment. May God help this new ‘nato navy’ if they provoke shooting, their life expectancy is measured in literally minutes as is the brit units in the Med. The problem is we ordinary workers and peasants will face the storms of cruise missiles fired by nato as they sink. I guess there is a blessing in every cloud, though, there are no sharks in the Black Sea and no tide, so at least the swimming nato crews won’t be eaten alive.

Auslander
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