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What's Next? NATO vs Pakistan
The Nato assault on a Pakistani checkpoint close to the Afghan border which killed 24 soldiers on Saturday must have been deliberate. Nato commanders have long been supplied with maps marking these checkpoints by the Pakistani military. They knew that the target was a military outpost. The explanation that they were fired on first rings false and has been ferociously denied by Islamabad. Previous such attacks were pronounced 'accidental’ and apologies were given and accepted.
This time it seems more serious. It has come too soon after other 'breaches of sovereignty’, in the words of the local press, but Pakistani sovereignty is a fiction. The military high command and the country’s political leaders willingly surrendered their sovereignty many decades ago. That it is now being violated openly and brutally is the real cause for concern.
November 30th 2011
'NATO strike revenge for Pakistan crackdown on CIA assets'
A NATO air strike on an army checkpoint in northwest Pakistan has killed up to 25 soldiers, according to the country's military officials. Islamabad has now blocked the alliance's vital supply lines into Afghanistan in response. The incident threatens to put more pressure on relations between Pakistan and the military alliance, already strained by continued U.S. drone attacks. Ahmed Quraishi, President of Pakistan's biggest lobbying group - the PakNationalists forum, thinks this accident was a deliberate act of punishment.
November 27th 2011
Gadaffi Death. NATO WAS THERE. PROOF!
October 28th 2011
NATO Countries Set to Steal $30,000 from Each Libyan Citizen
by Scott Creighton
The pro-Western corporatist media outlets are hurriedly trying to help spin every aspect of the murder of Moammar Gadhafi and the ongoing rape and pillage of the Libyan people’s assets.
Yesterday Paul Richter of the LA Times wrote an article claiming that Moammar Gadhafi was the richest man in the world, holding some $200 billion dollars in assets hidden all over the globe. Buried deep within the body of his article, the truth finally comes out…
‘NATO has bombed Libya back to Stone Age’
Former MI5 agent Annie Machon says that the US wants to reinforce the myths that public has been told about NATO’s ‘humanitarian’ intervention, while Libya is being bombed beyond the point of no return.
During her visit to Libya, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has used unusually blunt terms to describe what the United States wants to see happen in Libya, namely former dictator Muammar Gaddafi being killed or captured.
Machon says even though Gaddafi was an odious dictator and a thorn in the side of Western countries for three decades, for the majority of Libyans their quality of life was perfectly fine.
“They’ve had free education, free health, they could study abroad. When they got married they got a certain amount of money. So they were rather the envy of many other citizens of African countries. Now, of course, since NATO’s humanitarian intervention the infrastructure of their country has been bombed back to the Stone Age. They will not have the same quality of life. Women probably will not have the same degree of emancipation under any new transitional government. The national wealth is probably going to be siphoned off by Western corporations. Perhaps the standard of living in Libya might have been slightly higher than it perhaps is now in America and the UK with the recession,” she said.
October 20th 2011
Media Manipulation: 'NATO in a hurry to wrap up war in Libya'
NATO's presence in Libya little resembles a humanitarian mission with houses, hospitals and schools being hit. But Libya prospered prior to NATO's intrusion, Yvonne Di Vito, an activist from Libyanfriends.com told RT. RT: You have been saying that here in Italy the news reports abut what is happening in Libya were very confusing, a lot of conflicting information there. Can you tell us what you saw and what you found?
Yvonne Di Vito: We went to Libya on the 28th July and we came back on the 7th August and we found a totally different situation because NATO was bombarding civilians.
RT
August 29th 2011|
The Real Reason for NATO Attacking Libya EXPOSED
Some believe it is about protecting civilians, others say it is about oil, but some are convinced intervention in Libya is all about Gaddafi's plan to introduce the gold dinar, a single African currency made from gold, a true sharing of the wealth.
"It's one of these things that you have to plan almost in secret, because as soon as you say you're going to change over from the dollar to something else, you're going to be targeted," says Ministry of Peace founder Dr James Thring. "There were two conferences on this, in 1986 and 2000, organized by Gaddafi. Everybody was interested, most countries in Africa were keen."
June 26th 2011|
NATO chief Rasmussen grilled LIVE on RT over Libya assault
Russia and NATO have an open channel for talks, but there are still fundamental points in which they have trouble seeing eye-to-eye. From how to handle Libya and Syria through to missile defence, the hurdles are clear. To see if that might change any time soon, we can talk to NATO's Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
June 13th 2011|
It’s a story CNN won’t report. Late at night there’s a pounding on the door in Misurata. Armed soldiers force young Libyan women out of their beds at gun-point.
Hustling the women and teenagers into trucks, the soldiers rush the women to gang bang parties for NATO rebels—or else rape them in front of their husbands or fathers. When NATO rebels finish their rape sport, the soldiers cut the women’s throats.
Rapes are now ongoing acts of war in rebel-held cities, like an organized military strategy, according to refugees. Joanna Moriarty, who’s part of a global fact-finding delegation visiting Tripoli this week, also reports that NATO rebels have gone house to house through Misurata, asking families if they support NATO. If the families say no, they are killed on the spot.
June 10th 2011
 While serving on the House International Relations Committee from 1993 to 2003, it became clear to me that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was an anachronism. Founded in 1945 at the end of World War II, NATO was founded by the United States in response to the Soviet Union's survival as a Communist state. NATO was the U.S. insurance policy that capitalist ownership and domination of European, Asian, and African economies would continue. This also would ensure the survival of the then-extant global apartheid.
NATO is a collective security pact wherein member states pledge that an attack upon one is an attack against all. Therefore, should the Soviet Union have attacked any European Member State, the United States military shield would be activated. The Soviet response was the Warsaw Pact that maintained a "cordon sanitaire" around the Russian Heartland should NATO ever attack. Thus, the world was broken into blocs which gave rise to the "Cold War."
June 7th 2011
“The rebels have chosen to become imperialism’s mascots, waiting like pitiful little Gunga Dins for the British and French to arrive with attack helicopters to burn and kill their countrymen.”
As far as the United States and Europe are concerned, Africans have nothing to say about what happens in Africa. South African President Jacob Zuma made a second trip to Libya this week, on behalf of the African Union, seeking a diplomatic end to NATO’s war against Mouammar Gaddafi’s government. Just as with a previous African Union peace keeping mission, back in early April, Col. Gaddafi agreed to the peace plan. And just as before, the so-called rebels and their American and European bosses refused even to consider a cease fire. As has been obvious from the beginning of this “humanitarian” farce, the Great White Fathers of Europe and the “Wall Street mascot” from the United States, as Obama has been called, will be satisfied with nothing less than regime change in Libya – and to Hell with what Africans think!
June 5th 2011
 Clinton: NATO Afghanistan Withdrawal Can't Be Rushed
BERLIN — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned NATO allies on Thursday against bringing forces home from Afghanistan too soon, even as the United States prepares to begin drawing down its forces in July.
Clinton said the Taliban will be watching what the alliance does in the coming months and that speedy reductions will hurt the fragile security gains the alliance claims. The United States is worried that pressure will grow within the alliance to match U.S. withdrawals and answer rising discontent with the war in Europe.
Clinton told NATO foreign ministers that an exodus of other forces would make it appear to the Taliban that withdrawals were a sign of alliance weakness and defeat. The U.S. and its NATO partners cast the planned reductions as a mark of success and the beginning of a transition to Afghan control that would allow all foreign forces to leave eventually.
NATO has invested too much to risk that perception, Clinton said.
April 25th 2011
'No sign Gaddafi bombed Tripoli - NATO wages war on false claims'
In Libya, Colonel Gaddafi's troops are reportedly being withdrawn from the rebel-held city of Misrata in the face of NATO airstrikes. It follows an almost two month standoff. Meanwhile, allied aircraft carried out fresh airstrikes on the capital Tripoli overnight, with a government spokesman saying at least three people were killed in the raid. Sukant Chandan, who has just returned from a monitoring mission in Libya, believes there's no justification for NATO's actions
April 25th 2011
 NATO Data Confirms the Magnitude and Destructive Nature of the Libya Military Operation
NATO data confirms the magnitude and destructive nature of the Libya military operation.
"Since the beginning of the NATO operation (31 March 2011, 08.00GMT) a total of 2,771 sorties and 1,110 strike sorties have been conducted.
"A total of 18 ships under NATO command are actively patrolling the Central Mediterranean. 22 Vessels were hailed on 17 April to determine destination and cargo. 1 boarding was conducted (no diversion).
A total of 384 vessels have been hailed, 10 boardings and 3 diversions have been conducted since the beginning of arms embargo operations."
We are dealing with a formidable military force, a deployment of naval power and air force bombers directed against a country of less than 7 million people, less than the population of Switzerland.
April 20th 2011|
NATOs Libya Putsch Likely Means Losing Afghanistan
April 17th 2011
 NATO Ministers: No Gaddafi In Libya's Future
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton did not say whether the U.S. would send more ground attack craft, but she appealed to the other NATO foreign ministers for unity over the Libyan campaign.
"As our mission continues, maintaining our resolve and unity only grows more important," Clinton said. "Gadhafi is testing our determination."
NATO's 28 members are "sharing the same goal, which is to see the end of the Gadhafi regime in Libya," Clinton said. "We must also intensify our political, diplomatic and economic mission to pressure and isolate Gadhafi and bring about his departure."
April 15th 2011
 NATO Split on Calls for Escalation
While French and British officialsmade much early in the day of wanting to escalate the war in Libya, it seems their viewpoint is not universal across NATO. Officials with the alliance say the escalation is unlikely to happen in the near term.
“NATO is conducting its military operations in Libya with vigor within the current mandate,” they insisted. NATO has only been under control of the war for eight days, and officials say they are unlikely to move beyond the UN mandate so quickly.
The split may well be a result of French and British officials going to bat for the war early on, and now facing an open-ended conflict with no real long term goals. There seems to be a belief that escalation can impose a favorable solution on the nation
April 14th 2011
The Conquest of Africa: NATO Wages War On Third Continent
At its summit in Lisbon, Portugal last November the North Atlantic Treaty Organization adopted its first strategic concept for the 21st century, one in keeping with its expansion into not only a pan-European but a self-styled international military force.
In addition to subordinating all of Europe to a U.S.-dominated interceptor missile system, complementing the new U.S. Cyber Command in waging cyberwarfare defensive and offensive, and erasing whatever distinction remained between NATO and European Union military functions on the continent and globally, the world's only military bloc endorsed the nearly ten-year-old war in Afghanistan as its prime mission and affirmed its commitment to ongoing operations in the Balkans.
Almost all of the approximately 150,000 foreign soldiers in Afghanistan are currently under the command of the NATO-run International Security Assistance Force, which is also conducting deadly helicopter gunship raids and artillery attacks inside neighboring Pakistan.
April 2th 2011
 NATO Chief Opens The Door to Libya Ground Troops
The mantra, from President Obama on down, is that ground forces are totally ruled out for Libya. After all, the United Nations Security Council Resolution authorizing the war explicitly rules out any “occupation” forces. But leave it to the top military officer of NATO, which takes over the war on Wednesday, to add an asterisk to that ban.
During a Senate hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island asked Adm. James Stavridis about NATO putting forces into “post-Gadhafi” Libya to make sure the country doesn’t fall apart. Stavridis said he “wouldn’t say NATO’s considering it yet.” But because of NATO’s history of putting peacekeepers in the Balkans — as pictured above — “the possibility of a stabilization regime exists.”
So welcome to a new possible “endgame” for Libya. Western troops patrolling Libya’s cities during a a shaky transition after Moammar Gadhafi’s regime has fallen, however that’s supposed to happen. Thousands of NATO troops patrolled Bosnia and Kosovo’s tense streets for years. And Iraq and Afghanistan taught the U.S. and NATO very dearly that fierce insurgent conflict can follow the end of a brutal regime. In fact, it’s the moments after the regime falls that can be the most dangerous of all — especially if well-intentioned foreign troops become an object of local resentment.
March 30th 2011
 Who's in charge? Germans pull forces out of NATO as Libyan coalition falls apart
Deep divisions between allied forces currently bombing Libya worsened today as the German military announced it was pulling forces out of NATO over continued disagreement on who will lead the campaign.
A German military spokesman said it was recalling two frigates and AWACS surveillance plane crews from the Mediterranean, after fears they would be drawn into the conflict if NATO takes over control from the U.S.
The infighting comes as a heated meeting of NATO ambassadors yesterday failed to resolve whether the 28-nation alliance should run the operation to enforce a U.N.-mandated no-fly zone, diplomats said.
Yesterday a war of words erupted between the U.S. and Britain after the U.K. government claimed Muammar Gaddafi is a legitimate target for assassination.
U.K. government officials said killing the Libyan leader would be legal if it prevented civilian deaths as laid out in a U.N. resolution.
But U.S. defence secretary Robert Gates hit back at the suggestion, saying it would be 'unwise' to target the Libyan leader adding cryptically that the bombing campaign should stick to the 'U.N. mandate'.
March 23th 2011
 Libya: NATO's African War
Following similar developments in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt, anti-government protests began in Libya on February 15. On March 19 the U.S., France and Britain delivered air and cruise missile attacks against targets in Libya: 112 Tomahawk missile strikes from U.S. and British submarines and warships in the Mediterranean Sea and attacks by French warplanes on what were identified as government military vehicles on the ground.
Twenty French Rafale and Mirage jet fighters took to the country's skies and U.S. stealth bombers delivered 40 payloads to its main airfield.
A Russian parliamentarian pointed out that the attack on Libya represented the fourth country targeted for armed assault - the fourth war launched - by the U.S. and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 12 years: The current one, codenamed Operation Odyssey Dawn, and Operation Allied Force in Yugoslavia in 1999, Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan in 2001 and Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq in 2003. The beginning of the war against Libya occurred on the eighth anniversary of the attack on Iraq and five days before the twelfth anniversary of that against Yugoslavia.
March 22th 2011
 Operation Odyssey Dawn: Libya to get the “Kosovo Treatment”
President Barack Obama has now made the exact same speech Bill Clinton made on network news back in 1999 – promising "no ground forces" in the next American-led war of aggression. UN and NATO actions against Gaddafi’s Libya are signs of imperialist designs for Libya, including its enormous oil wealth. Moammar Gaddafi has rightfully called these attacks "colonial" and "crusader."
The United States and its allies have committed an act of aggression by bombing the country of Libya in the so-called "Operation Odyssey Dawn." A coalition of European countries and the United States bombed Libyan targets by air and sea on Saturday, March 19th, 2011. These acts constitute an open act of war against the Libyan people. Chillingly, this is widely being referred to as "the largest international effort since the Iraq War," as though that were a desirable model!
Comparisons are already being made to the previous "military intervention" and "humanitarian bombing" of this type – the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.
March 21th 2011
 Word Games: Most US Media Hide an American Atrocity in Afghanistan Behind 'NATO' and Fudge the Victims' Ages
The people of Afghanistan know who was flying the two helicopter gunships that brutally hunted down and slaughtered, one by one, nine boys apparently as young as seven years old, as they gathered firewood on a hillside March 1. In angry demonstrations after the incident, they were shouting "Death to America."
Americans are still blissfully unaware that their "heroes" in uniform are guilty of this obscene massacre. The ovine US corporate media has been reporting on this story based upon a gutless press release from the Pentagon which attributes the "mistake" to "NATO" helicopters.
The thing is, this terrible incident occurred in the Pech Valley in Afghanistan’s Kunar province, where US forces have for several years been battling Taliban forces, and from which region they are now in the process of withdrawing. Clearly then, it is US, and not "NATO" helicopters which have been responding to calls to attack "suspected Taliban forces."
March 11th 2011
U.S. And NATO Escalate World’s Deadliest War On Both Sides Of Afghan-Pakistani Border
The United States and its military allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have entered the third month of war in Afghanistan this year, which President Barack Obama in December of 2009 announced as the year in which American and other foreign occupation forces would be reduced preparatory to their full withdrawal.
Within months of the U.S. head of state’s claim, the commander-in-chief had over 90,000 troops in the conquered country and currently there are 60,000 more from some fifty other nations serving in NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). The total number exceeds that of any foreign military force ever before stationed in Afghanistan. The presence of American and allied troops, beginning as it did on October 7, 2001, is the longest in the Asian nation’s history, with U.S. forces already in the country for several months longer than Soviet troops were stationed there from late 1979 until early 1989.
March 6th 2011
Pentagon And NATO Apply Afghanistan-Pakistan War Model To Africa
The New Year began with three North Atlantic Treaty Organization soldiers killed in Afghanistan and 20 people, all portrayed as militants, killed in four American missile strikes in northwest Pakistan. The third drone missile attack killed four people attempting to rescue and remove the bodies of the victims of the first, a technique used by the U.S. and NATO in their war against Yugoslavia in 1999.
The West’s war in Afghanistan and Pakistan is currently the longest, largest and deadliest in the world. Fatalities among U.S. troops, non-U.S. NATO and allied forces, Afghan National Army soldiers and anti-government fighters reached a record high last year: 498, 213, 800 and an unknown number (by U.S. and NATO accounts well into the thousands), respectively. The United Nations estimated 2,400 Afghan civilians were killed in the first ten months of last year, a 20 percent increase over the same period in the preceding year. Approximately a thousand people were killed by U.S. drone missile strikes in Pakistan
January 4th 2011
 2011: U.S. And NATO To Extend And Expand Afghan War
The war being waged by the United States and the Western military alliance it controls, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is well into its tenth year and is already the longest war in the history of the U.S., Afghanistan and NATO alike. In fact it is NATO's first ground war and its first armed conflict in Asia.
It has now graduated into a broader war, having engulfed neighboring Pakistan with a population of 170 million and a nuclear arsenal.
The U.S. has suffered reverses in the past week and half with the death of Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke on December 13 and the recall of the Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Pakistan, Jonathan Banks, on December 16, the day the White House issued its annual policy review on the protracted and increasingly deadly war in Afghanistan.
As of December 23, American and NATO military fatalities for this year are at 705, almost a third of the total 2,275 killed since the war was launched on October 7, 2001.
December 27h 2010
Kosovo: Europe's Mafia State. Hub of the EU-NATO Drug Trail
Kosovo's Prime Minister Accused of Running Human Organ, Drug Trafficking Cartel
 In another grim milestone for the United States and NATO, the Council of Europe (COE) released an explosive report last week, "Inhuman treatment of people and illicit trafficking in human organs in Kosovo."
The report charged that former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) boss and current Prime Minister, Hashim Thaçi, "is the head of a 'mafia-like' Albanian group responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs through eastern Europe," The Guardian disclosed.
According to a draft resolution unanimously approved December 16 in Paris, the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights found compelling evidence of forced disappearances, organ trafficking, corruption and collusion between criminal gangs and "political circles" in Kosovo who just happen to be close regional allies of the United States.
The investigation was launched by Dick Marty, the Parliamentary Assembly for the Council of Europe (PACE) special rapporteur for human rights who had conducted an exhaustive 2007 probe into CIA "black fights" in Europe.
December 24th 2010
NATO Going Global: World's Largest Military Force Expanding
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) is the largest military force ever assembled, with a potential armed force of more than seven million.
Two decades after its original enemy, the Soviet Union, disintegrated, the alliance has been searching for a new identity and new role.
As it reinvents itself for the 21st century, Nato is also redefining its threat assessments and its area of operations.
Its philosophy is summed up in Article 5 of the treaty, all for one, and one for all. But does this 'Three Musketeers' approach work when there are 28 different or conflicting agendas?
Is this alliance anything more than a fig leaf for US foreign policy? And what sort of relationship can it strike with reinvigorated Russia?
December 1th 2010
Saucy summit: Georgian NATO delegation in wild orgy scandal
Georgia's parliamentary opposition is demanding an investigation into allegations of a racy scandal involving the country’s delegation to the recent NATO summit in Lisbon.
”This fact, cited in the western mass media, requires an investigation as it concerns the reputation of all Georgia,” said Georgian parliament vice speaker Levan Vepkhvadze.
According to Portuguese "Correio da mahna" newspaper, the Georgians hired 80 prostitutes to attend a huge party at a posh hotel in Lisbon.
According to the newspaper, French president Nikolas Sarkozy, who was staying in the same hotel, was outraged by the noise so the party had to stop.
Georgian media are citing a source in Moscow as saying that the publication in “Correio da mahna” was paid for by Russia. However, they do not dispute the fact that the controversial party indeed took place.
The Georgian Foreign Ministry has yet to comment on this scandal
Source RT.com
Ncvember 26th 2010
In keeping with the global trend manifested in other strategically vital areas of the world, the United States and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization - a consortium of all major Western military (including nuclear) powers and former colonial empires - are increasing their military presence in Southeast Asia with special emphasis on the geopolitically critical Strait of Malacca.
The latter is one of the world's most important shipping lanes and major strategic chokepoints.
In an opinion piece The Times of London granted to George Robertson and Paddy Ashdown - the first a former NATO secretary general and current Baron Robertson of Port Ellen, the other a past intelligence officer and the West's viceroy in Bosnia at the beginning of the decade who nearly reprised the role in Afghanistan two years ago - in June of 2008 which in part rued the fact that "For the first time in more than 200 years we are moving into a world not wholly dominated by the West."
In fact for the first time in half a millennium the founding members of NATO in Europe and North America are confronted with a planet not largely or entirely under their control.
October 23h 2010
The government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently concluded the largest of a series of so-called Canadian sovereignty exercises in the Arctic, Operation Nanook, which ran from August 6-26.
Harper, Minister of National Defence Peter MacKay and Chief of the Defence Staff of the Canadian Forces General Walter Natynczyk visited the nation's 900 troops participating in the "Canadian Forces' largest annual demonstration of Canada's sovereignty in the Arctic" [1] which included "Canada's air force, navy, coast guard...testing their combat capabilities in the frigid cold."
Nanook military exercises were commenced in 2007 when Russia renewed its claims to parts of the Arctic and resumed air patrols in the region after an almost twenty year hiatus. They are complemented by two other Canadian military drills in the region, Operation Nunalivut in the High Arctic and Operation Nunakput in the western Arctic
August 30th 2010
The military alliance has announced, it plans to carry out a series of air force exercises over Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia from March 17-20.
The exercises will represent "the most recent demonstration of NATO solidarity and commitment to its member countries in the Baltic region”, says Thomas Dillschneider, spokesman for the Allied Air Headquarters in Ramstein, Germany.
The training mission will involve French Mirage, Polish F-16 fighters, Lithuanian L-39 Albatross aircraft, as well as U.S. aerial tankers.
The announcement comes shortly after the news that NATO-member France is in “exclusive talks”to sell Russia up to four warships. The French 20,000-ton Mistral-class command and control helicopter carriers will significantly enhance Russia’s naval ability to project power over greater distances. The deal, estimated at about $2.2 billion, is the first military sale to Russia by a NATO country.
However, NATO has denied there is any link between the Russia-France arms deal and the planned exercises: “There is no relationship between our training event and the potential Mistral deal,” said Dillschneider.
NATO admits guilt in Afghan slayings
NATO officials have admitted that there was a cover-up in the death of three women and two Afghan law-enforcement personnel in Khataba, Afghanistan on Feb. 12. Troops initially claimed that the victims died before the raid. A spokesman from Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s headquarters said that the women were found tied up, gagged and already dead. However, on April 5, NATO Spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Todd Breasseale said that the women died as a result of troops firing at the men
In 1991 the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was a nominally defensive military bloc with sixteen members that, as the cliche ran, had never fired a shot.
In 1991 the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the only simultaneously multiethnic and multiconfessional nation (entirely) in Europe, consisting of six federated republics with diverse constituencies.
By 2009 NATO had grown to 28 full members and at least that many military partners throughout Europe and in Africa, the Caucasus, the Middle East, Asia and the South Pacific. Next month NATO is to hold a summit in Estonia to be attended by the foreign ministers of 56 nations. Last month a meeting of NATO's Military Committee in Brussels included the armed forces chiefs of 63 nations, almost a third of the world's 192 countries.
By 2008 the former Yugoslavia has been fragmented into six recognized nations (the former federal republics of Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia) and a semi-recognized province of Serbia, Kosovo.
NATO to consider joint defense system with Russia
NATO Foreign Ministers say the alliance is ready to explore NATO-Russian anti-missile defense systems. The statement came on Friday after a long chill in relations over the 2008 war in South Ossetia
A NATO for the Middle East?
After the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq the U.S. and British governments gave up their excuses about bringing democracy to the people of the Middle East and started slowly talking about their strategic interests in the region. Fighting terrorism and bringing democracy were mere pretexts for military assaults. The Anglo-American game plan exposed itself in the summer of 2006 after the Israeli aerial seige of Lebanon. France and Germany were also implicated in the Anglo-American designs and the whole venture began to appear as a combined project, with NATO representing all four powers
 Afghan War: NATO Builds History's First Global ArmyNever before have soldiers from so many states served in the same war theater
Two months before the eighth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the beginning of NATO's first-ever ground war the world is witness to a 21st Century armed conflict without end waged by the largest military coalition in history.
With recent announcements that troops from such diverse nations as Colombia, Mongolia, Armenia, Japan, South Korea, Ukraine and Montenegro are to or may join those of some 45 other countries serving under the command of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), there will soon be military personnel from fifty nations on five continents and in the Middle East serving under a unified command structure.
NATO Holds Large-Scale, Multinational Exercise In Scandinavia Trained to be used against protestors!
More than 7000 soldiers from 13 nations will this year participate in Exercise Cold Response. The exercise takes place in Troms and Nordland in Northern Norway between March 16 and 25.
This year the participants will be trained at deploying military quick reaction forces into an area of crisis. They will have to handle situations ranging from high intensity warfare to terror threats and mass demonstrations, the Norwegian Defence writes on its web site.
Land, naval and air forces will be well represented at the exercise. In addition, Cold Response has traditionally been visited by a great number of special forces. This year, about 700 of the participants are special forces
Read more >>
Stop NATO Black Sea:
Pentagon's Gateway to Three Continents and the Middle East
The Black Sea region connects Europe with Asia and the Eurasian land mass to the Middle East through Turkey on its southern rim, which borders Syria, Iraq and Iran. The northern Balkans lie on its western shores and the Caucasus on its eastern end, the latter a land bridge to the Caspian Sea and Central Asia.
Ukraine, Russia and the strategic Sea of Azov are on its northern perimeter.
Given its central location, the Black Sea has been coveted for millennia by major powers: The Persian and Roman empires, Greeks and Hittites, Byzantines and Huns, Ottoman Turkey and Czarist Russia, even by Napoleon's France and Hitler's Germany in their wars to unite Europe to Asia and the Middle East.The famed Trojan War was fought for control of Troy/Dardania/Ilium, the entrance to the Sea of Marmara which connects the Mediterranean to the Black Sea. The strait connecting the two is still called the Dardanelles after ancient Dardania.Going back to Antiquity a third continent has also been involved, Africa; the Greek historian Herodotus claimed that the Black Sea city of Colchis, now in modern Georgia, was founded by
NATO Targeting Russia in Baltic War Game?
There’s a massive, U.S. Navy-led exercise taking place on the Baltic, this week, involving 11 European nations plus the U.S. — but, notably, not Russia. Despite participating in previous incarnations of the annual BALTOPS war game, Moscow is sitting out, this year. And depending on who you ask, Russia is even the target of the 12-day training event, which is hosted by Sweden and includes Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania. “Another provocation against Russia,” one Russian tabloid calls BALTOPS 2009
NATO Bases From the Balkans To the Chinese Border
The death of American sociologist C. Wright Mills at 45 years of age in 1962 was an irreparable loss not only to the United States but to the world, and not only to his generation but the three that have succeeded it and on into the indefinite future.
He was as at home quoting Rousseau, Balzac and Jacob Burckhardt, always to good purpose, as he was formulating such concepts and models as military metaphysics, mass society, the higher immorality and the cult of celebrity as early as 1955.
Mills did so in his mature, post-university writings with a simplicity of style and expression matching the profundity and perspicacity of his observations and conclusions.
In his work of the same name Mills defined the sociological imagination as the intersection of biography and history
 Forty-three years after General de Gaulle threw American forces out of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, his political descendant, is expected to explain to a sceptical nation today why he is taking the country back into the core of the US-led Nato alliance.
Mr Sarkozy's decision, outlined after his 2007 election and to be consummated at Nato's 60th birthday summit next month, will restore France's voice in the alliance command that de Gaulle expelled from its Paris headquarters in 1966, along with 100,000 French-based US personnel.
The French military are delighted. They look forward to raising their Nato command contingent from 100 to 800 and taking up the two top posts that Washington has allocated France: The Allied Command Transformation (ACT), the future strategy unit, in Norfolk, Virginia, and the Lisbon command, which is in charge of Nato's rapid reaction force.
On the political front, however, critics say that Mr Sarkozy is renouncing an independent status that was followed by French presidents of all stripes since de Gaulle. Even members of his own Gaullist camp are accusing him of selling out a cherished heritage
NATO-led troops killed around 100 civilians in Afghanistan in 2008
BRUSSELS, Jan. 28 (Xinhua) -- The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan killed around 100 civilians in 2008, said the alliance on Wednesday.
"In 2008 NATO-ISAF was responsible for 97 -- let's say, around 100 -- civilian casualties (deaths)," NATO spokesman James Appathurai told reporters.
In contrast, the Taliban and al-Qaida insurgents killed 973 civilians last year, he said. These figures are based on an assessment by the military with the help of a new tracking system, said the spokesman.
The figures are not supposed to be 100 percent accurate as civilian deaths are difficult to track given the fact that there are neither birth certificates, nor death certificates in the country and that the dead are buried quickly according to tradition in Afghanistan, noted Appathurai. NATO-ISAF was ordered to take new measures last December to minimize civilian casualties as they were affecting popular support for ISAF in Afghanistan.
Nato is creaking
Natois at risk. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's principal purpose is preserving the peace in Europe. In maintaining that peace it has been arguably the most successful international organisation to date. But as we approach its 60th anniversary in April, its historic effectiveness is now being put in jeopardy.
Defence secretary John Hutton has indicated that he would be willing for a European army to sit alongside Nato. This is not a proposal for new forces, simply a new organisation. By definition it will have different aims, and so will only deplete Nato and undermine its efforts. It would also deplete Britain's ability to use its national army. For every soldier under European Union command, there is one less soldier able to fulfil British military obligations.
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