All posts filed under: NATO

«War in the Balkans» – the Memoirs of a Portugese Peacekeeper (II)

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by Stephen Karganovic, July 9, 2017, Strategic Culture In his memoir, «War in the Balkans», (1) retired Portuguese general Carlos Martins Branco, who was during the conflict in the Former Yugoslavia in the strategically important post of Deputy Head of Mission of UN Military Observers in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (1994-1996), recounts his knowledge of events that took place around Srebrenica in July of 1995. In contrast to the fanciful tales of a bevy of dubious «experts», false witnesses, and outright propagandists, General Martins Branco reports facts as they were observed or collected by intelligence and other sources in the field.  That information made its way through official channels to his desk in Zagreb, where the headquarters of the UN Observer Mission was located.  Martins Branco’s facts and conclusions are hardly susceptible to off-hand dismissal. Excerpts cited below are on pages 201 – 206 of his memoir. We will begin with the general’s conclusion challenging the received wisdom that Srebrenica was genocide and then work our way back from there: «Had they entertained the …

«War in the Balkans» – the Memoirs of a Portugese Peacekeeper (I)

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by Stephen Karganovic, July 7, 2914, via Strategic Culture General Carlos Martins Branco is one of the most fascinating (and until quite recently also inaccessible) actors in the Srebrenica controversy.  From his Zagreb vantage point as deputy head of the U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR) between 1994 and 1996, during the latter phase of the 1990s Yugoslav conflict as it unfolded in Croatia and Bosnian and Herzegovina, this Portuguese officer had privileged access to significant information.  Confidential reports about the goings on in the field were crossing his desk.  With first-hand information and further enlightened by discrete conversations with colleagues from various intelligence structures, Martins Branco was positioned ideally to learn facts which many officials would have preferred to cover up, and the media frequently ignored. With a typically Latin emotional flair, refusing to remain silent as the «Srebrenica genocide narrative» was taking shape in the second half of the 1990s, Martins Branco published in 1998 an article provocatively entitled «Was Srebrenica a Hoax? Eyewitness Account of a Former UN Military Observer in Bosnia».  In that early plunge …

Liberals’ massive increase in defence spending is a budgetary coup

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by Murray Dobbin, from rabble.ca The arrogance of power could scarcely be more dramatically demonstrated than by the tag team of Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan announcing that Canada was going to cave in to Donald Trump’s demand that we spend two per cent of GDP on defence. We will be increasing military spending by 70 per cent over 10 years — an obscenity when so many social needs go unmet. Not only does this make a mockery of Trudeau’s election pledge to return to Canada’s historic peacekeeping role but surrenders to the absurd one-size-fits-all NATO imperative. Nothing has changed internationally to justify such an increase. There are no existential threats to Canada on any horizon. As Trudeau said in March, Canada more than pulls its weight in NATO: we are the sixth-highest spender in NATO and 16th in the world. Giving Freeland the opening role on the announcement raises the question of her disproportional position in changing Canada’s defence posture. Her contradiction-filled foreign policy speech in the House of …

Weapons of mass derision: Is Russian comedy the Kremlin’s secret weapon?

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by Alexey Timofeychev, from Russia Beyond the Headlines NATO analysts studied Russian comedy TV programs over the past nine years and concluded that they serve the Kremlin’s political objectives and are directed against the West. NATO’s Strategic Communications Center (StratCom) is sounding the alarm about the threat of Russian humor. On March 17 in Riga, Latvian specialists presented the report, “StratCom laughs: in search of an analytical network,” that was the result of nine years of research. The authors conducted a content analysis of four popular comedy programs on Russia’s Channel One TV since 2008. Special focus was given to the Club of the Merry and Witty, also known by it’s Russian initials, KVN, which is one of the oldest comedy shows on Russian television. Discrediting Western leaders StratCom specialists are especially concerned by the way evening comedy shows – Projector Paris Hilton, Evening Urgant, Yesterday Live, and Maxim Maxim – depict Western leaders. NATO analysts concluded that Russian TV comedians depict Western leaders in a negative light in order to discredit them. Russian TV …

Why Albanians Fled Kosovo During the 1999 NATO Bombing

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Interview with Čedomir Prlinčević from the Emperor’s New Clothes This interview dates from December 2000, but is still highly relevant to today. NATO’s conduct in Kosovo can be seen as anticipating much of its current actions on Syria and/or Ukraine. The same exploitation of emotional and inaccurate narratives, the same promotion of wars of aggression in the guise of “humanitarian intervention”, the same promotion of dangerous elements such as terrorists and gangsters as “rebels” or “freedom fighters.” The same utter disregard for the longterm consequences for the people who have to live in these regions. In 18 years little or nothing has changed, and the same playbook is still in use. Introduction This is the second Emperor’s Clothes interview with Čedomir Prlinčević (pronounced Ched-o-meer Pra-linch-eh-vich). Mr. Prlinčević, an historian, was chief archivist in Priština, capital of Kosovo, and head of the Jewish community there until, as he explained in his first Emperor’s Clothes interview, the terrorist KLA drove him and his family and thousands of others from their homes. Heavily armed British NATO forces stood …

Tu-154 crashed as a result of NATO’s covert operation?

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by Lyuba Lulko for Pravda Russia’s Ministry for Transportation does not consider a terrorist attack to be one of the versions that led to the crash of the Tu-154 passenger airliner of the Russian Defence Ministry in the Black Sea on December 25. For the time being, we know that the weather was fine, the pilots were experienced, and the aircraft was technically sound. The crash of the Tu-154 over the Black Sea looks very much like the explosion of the Russian passenger jetliner over Sinai Peninsula, when the Federal Security Bureau made an official announcement about the terrorist attack only two weeks after the crash. There is another version – of radio-electronic attack. Black boxes may not give an answer to the question of whether there was a terrorist attack on board the Tu-154. This has already been the case in the investigation of the Sinai plane crash, before specialists found traces of two-component explosives in a can of Coke, hidden in a seat pocket. The explosion caused the plane to collapse in midair. …

At Least 14 US Coalition Military Officers Allegedly Captured by Syrian forces in East Aleppo Bunker

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According to two reports coming out of Aleppo, at least 14 US Coalition military officers were captured in an East Aleppo bunker by Syrian Special Forces. This story was quietly leaked by Voltaire.net, who announced, “The Security Council is sitting in private on Friday, December 16, 2016, at 17:00 GMT, while NATO officers were arrested this morning by the Syrian Special Forces in a bunker in East Aleppo.”

Russia Remains the Only Target Country of NATO’s Nuclear Weapons

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by Brian Cloughley, via Strategic Culture Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States are the world’s five “nuclear weapons states”, a description officially recognised in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which lays down that “each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices…” It is apparent that the word ‘transfer’ involves ownership and not location, because the United States has transferred many nuclear weapons to countries which, although members of the US-NATO military alliance, are not nuclear weapons states. An analysis by the Nuclear Threat Initiative indicates that the US has positioned 160-200 B-61 nuclear warheads «at six bases in five NATO countries: Belgium (10-20), Germany (10-20), Italy (60-70), Netherlands (10-20), and Turkey (60-70)». According to a NATO statement of December 2015, «A number of NATO member countries contribute a dual-capable aircraft (DCA) capability to the Alliance. These aircraft are available for nuclear roles at various levels of readiness – the highest level of readiness is measured in weeks. In their nuclear role, the aircraft are equipped to carry …

Crystal Clear Agreements: Enduring subordination

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by Manlio Dinucci, translated by Anoosha Boralessa, via VoltaireNet President Barack Obama was absolutely right to pat himself on the back for “the crystal clear agreements [and] long friendship” that united his country to Italy. In actual fact, that European state is “welded from the hip” to its US suzerain by a number of treaties and a long history. First, President Obama called upon the Italians to vote “yes” in the referendum, thus interfering in our national politics with the silent complicity of the parliamentary opposition. Then he went on to confirm to his “good friend Matteo” that the US has “clear agreements, long friendship” with Italy. Noone would question that these agreements were crystal clear, especially the Atlantic Treaty that places Italy in a position of subordination to the U.S.A.  The US President always appoints the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and all the other key commands are in US hands. When the disintegration of the USSR brought the Cold War to an end, Washington declared the “fundamental importance of preserving Nato as a …

ΝΑΤΟ, Russia and Cyprus

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by Aris Petasis, via Defend Democracy Press The Cyprus problem is a Russian problem as well.  The current purblind negotiations, ostensibly between the two Cypriot communities (82% Greek and 18% Turkish), are strictly directed by NATO under the watchful eye of 40,000 Turkish occupation troops that hold 37% of Cyprus’s land and 54% of its shores.  At every major juncture in Cyprus’ recent history one finds the obsession with Russia of Britain and its successor in the Eastern Mediterranean (EM), America. The Russia factor featured strongly in 1878 (and before of course.)  In that year the Ottomans ceded Cyprus to Britain in exchange for United Kingdom’s military support to the Ottomans (read: Turkish) should Russia attempt to take possession of territories of the Ottomans in Asia.  So, we see the people of Cyprus treated as commodity; Turkey and Britain acting as traders and Russia as collateral.  With the start of WWI Cyprus was put under British military occupation (1914-1925) and then became a British crown colony (1925-1960.)  During WWI when the Turks joined the losing …

Domestic U.S. Politics of War with Russia

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by Eric Zuesse First, the context in which the issue of war against Russia is being raised: Syria’s government is allied with Russia’s government, and ‘The West’ is trying to overthrow Syria’s government and is bringing into Syria, and arming, tens of thousands of jihadists there, as the footsoldiers to do it. Syria and Russia are bombing the people that we are bringing in. The Presidential candidate of the U.S. Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton, is a longstanding and ardent proponent of the U.S. establishing a “no-fly zone” over at least the parts of Syria where non-ISIS jihadists — the jihadists that are financed and armed by the U.S. and its allies (mainly by the Sunni fundamentalist royal families who own Saudi Arabia and Qatar) — have conquered territory from Syria’s (legitimate and internationally recognized) government. It’s conquest of Syria, that the U.S. is backing. The U.S., in both law and fact, is already participating in an invasion of Syria. Syria’s government is run by the ideologically committed anti-Sharia-law and non-sectarian Ba’ath Party, under President Bashar …

Chief NATO Lobbyist Urges Trump Be Replaced by Pence

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by Eric Zuesse As the U.S. hurtles toward nuclear war with Russia over Syria and Crimea, Jon Huntsman, the head of NATO’s lobbying organization the Atlantic Council, urged on October 7th that Donald Trump — who has many times stated clearly that improving relations with Russia so as to avoid nuclear war would be his top priority as President — should withdraw from the U.S. Presidential contest and leave it to his Vice Presidential pick, Mike Pence, who (like Hillary Clinton) favors war against Russia. The U.S. had slapped sanctions against Russia when Russia on 16 March 2014 protected the residents of Crimea so that they could safely hold a referendum on whether to become again a part of Russia, of which Crimea had been a part until the Soviet dictator Khrushchev arbitrarily transferred them to Ukraine in 1954. The issue of Crimea had arisen because U.S. President Barack Obama had just overthrown in a violent February 2014 State-Department-&-CIA coup in Ukraine, the democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, for whom 75% of Crimeans had voted; and, during that coup, …

Fact-sheet on the White Helmets

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via Simon Wood from the “Retract the Award Given to NATO’s White Helmets” petition at Change.org The White Helmets – here are a few facts that you need to know.  Share this to your family and friends who subsist on Western corporate media: * The White Helmets, also called Syria Civil Defence, are not who they claim to be. The group is not Syrian; it was created with USA/UK funding under the supervision of a British military contractor in 2013 in Turkey. * The name “Syria Civil Defence” was stolen from the legitimate Syrian organization of the same name. The authentic Syria Civil Defence was founded in 1953 and is a founding member of the International Civil Defense Organization (1958). * The name “White Helmets” was inappropriately taken from the legitimate Argentinian relief organization Cascos Blancos / White Helmets. In 2014, Cascos Blancos / White Helmets was honored at the United Nations for 20 years of international humanitarian assistance. * The NATO White Helmets are primarily a media campaign to support the ‘regime change’ goals …

NATO’s War On Russia: The Winds Howl Before The Storm

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by Christopher Black, via New Eastern Outlook, October 3, 2016 A few weeks ago I wrote, “I have been a defence lawyer most of my working life and am not used to gathering evidence for a prosecution, but circumstances impelled me to open a file for the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, or perhaps some future citizen’s tribunal, in which is contained the evidence that the NATO leaders are guilty of the gravest crime against mankind, the crime of aggression. I would like to share with you some brief notes of interest from that file, for your consideration. Article 8bis of the Rome Statute, the governing statue of the International Criminal Court states: For the purpose of this Statute, “crime of aggression” means the planning, preparation, initiation or execution, by a person in a position effectively to exercise control over or to direct the political or military action of a State, of an act of aggression which by its character, gravity and scale, constitutes a manifest violation of the Charter on the United Nations. …

VIDEO: “Once again, they lied to us…”

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Russian President Putin’s address to the press, in full, made at the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum, in June 2016 (English subtitles).   Putin urged Western journalists to stop accepting passively the narratives dished out by their politicians and unquestioningly passing on mere “tall tales to your people,” and to instead report accurately on the danger inherent in the current nuclear arms race. How can you not understand that the world is being pulled in an irreversible direction?”

French General Calls for NATO’s Liquidation

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Sputnik NATO’s present format and the alliance’s continuing expansion eastward is beneficial only to the United States, which seeks to keep Russia and Europe at odds, says retired French Army General Jean-Bernard Pinatel. Accordingly, he suggests the alliance be liquidated or ‘Europeanized’, and the creation of a European-Russian alliance against terror. Interviewed by Le Figaro, Pinatel, a retired officer who now works as an expert in geopolitics and economic intelligence, recalled that if Russia and the European countries had succeeded in forming an alliance in the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, they would have been able to effectively challenge US pretentions to global hegemony. Now, the retired general emphasized, the threat of radical Islamist terrorism has once against opened a discussion on global leadership, and whether the US truly deserves its hegemonic position in Europe. According to Pinatel, the spate of attacks in Europe has clearly demonstrated to the French, and to other NATO members, that the US-led alliance is helpless in the struggle against the terrorist threat. Moreover, against the background …

Stolen Kosovo: the Czech Documentary

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a film by Václav Dvořák [with English subtitles] From the Wikipedia entry on the film: “Stolen Kosovo (Czech: Uloupené Kosovo, Serbian: Украдено Косово, Ukradeno Kosovo) is a 2008 Czech language documentary by director Václav Dvořák (b. 1948), about events during and following the Kosovo War.  The documentary describes the situation in Kosovo, first in a short overview of the history of the area, followed by the 1990s conflicts and bombing of Serbia by NATO forces in 1999 and ending with the situation after the Kosovo War.  The documentary focuses on 1990s in the time of Slobodan Milošević’s rule as well as on numerous interviews of Serbian civilians and, less, of Albanian insurgents against the Milošević regime. Although the Czech Television (Česká televize) was one of the sponsors of the documentary, it delayed broadcasting it several times, claiming the documentary was “unbalanced” and marked with “pro-Serbian bias”, and so “the tone of the documentary could cause negative emotions.”   Václav Dvořák, the director, responded that the same could be said for “Holocaust documentaries, where the Nazi Germany …

The Exoneration of Milosevic: the ICTY’s Surprise Ruling

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by Andy Wilcoxson, via CounterPunch The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague has determined that the late Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic was not responsible for war crimes committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. In a stunning ruling, the trial chamber that convicted former Bosnian-Serb president Radovan Karadzic of war crimes and sentenced him to 40 years in prison, unanimously concluded that Slobodan Milosevic was not part of a “joint criminal enterprise” to victimize Muslims and Croats during the Bosnian war. The March 24th Karadzic judgment states that “the Chamber is not satisfied that there was sufficient evidence presented in this case to find that Slobodan Milosevic agreed with the common plan” to permanently remove Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from Bosnian Serb claimed territory.[1] The Karadzic trial chamber found that “the relationship between Milosevic and the Accused had deteriorated beginning in 1992; by 1994, they no longer agreed on a course of action to be taken.  Furthermore, beginning as early as March 1992, there was apparent discord between the Accused and …