NATO says plans in place to defend Turkey from Syrian attacks so goes the corporate reporting of the US instigated war on the Syrian government. The phrasing of this report is all bullshit because Syria is not attacking Turkey but rather defending itself from attacks launched against itself from Turkish territory with the full complicity and aid of the US, Nato, and Turkey itself. But the US press knows that is readers are none too bright, so away flies the insipidly stupid formulation of this pro- more war for all of us, propaganda.
Tag: North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
NATO is training the new police force in counter-revolutionary Libya
Turkey, a member of NATO, is now training the new police force in LIbya for the new counter revolutionary government the US and NATO have established there. 'A total of 817 Libyan police academy students arrived in Istanbul last week to train at the Adile Sadullah Mermerci Police Centre, where they will spend seven and a half months before returning to home to take up police duties.' Turkey Boosts Role in Libya by Training Police.
‘The Long March’ from Lahore to Islamabad to kick NATO out of Pakistan
US-NATO out of Pakistan and Out of Afghanistan, too!
Pakistanis protest NATO route reopening. We have no right to be killing people in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Precendent for US covert intervention in Syria, is less Libya than Cambodia
OCCUPIED COLORADO SPRINGS- While antiwar traditionalists remain stymied about Syria, let's recognize that the US-EU intervention has already begun. Stop the escalating covert destruction of Syria. Bring our Special Forces boys home now.
Do as we say and not as we do? -D.C. slaughters civilians in Afghanistan even as it lectures Assad of Syria
There is nothing more sickening than Hillary and Barack lecturing others about their supposed slaughter of civilians even as they slaughter them themselves in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Afghan leader: NATO airstrike killed 18 civilians ___Just who are Clinton and Obama to be lecturing Assad of Syria about anything involving Human Rights?
Chicago is my kind of town, say police
Russia and China reject the US-Israeli-Western European push for war against Iran and Syria
The propaganda is now flowing full time, all designed to convince the US and European populations that a war against Syria and Iran is a necessary imperialist intervention. BUT IT IS NOT, and Russia and China are blocking the geo-political attack of the US Empire against them, by way of the US fomenting war against Syria and Iran as well. Vladimir Putin's spokesman has said Russia is not considering changing its stance on Syria and that any attempts to apply pressure on Moscow are "hardly appropriate". What is most disgusting is to see that much of the US and European Left is also engaged in a campaign of hatred against the Syrian government of Assad, too, along with the corporate Pentagon fed press. While the guy Assad is hardly any sort of saint, the pathetically tiny US Left which has utterly failed in showing any of its own participation in building an Antiwar Movement against the militarism of their own governments, now is actively mobilizing itself in support of the imperialist campaign for more war and against the Syrian government of Assad! How sad is this? In contrast, there is a section of the US Antiwar Movement that has mobilized its forces against the NATO Summit in Chicago, and by extension against the US plans for war against Iran and Syria. See Thousands march against NATO summit: Stop US and NATO war plans for Syria VIDEO: Brian Becker speaks on US and NATO War Plans for Syria ANSWER represents the activist portion of the US Left, as opposed to the sit around and do mainly nothing section of the armchair ex Troskyist Left Overs, that at one long distant time ago in the past actually were anti-imperialist in their organization and once led the Movement against the Vietnam War way back then. But that was yesterday and today is today. Stand up to the US government and oppose imperialist war against Iran and Syria! Don't just sit around the comp and babble about how bad Assad seems to you. Where were you 'socialists' when it came time to build the antiwar movement? Were you asleep? Luckily the Russian and Chinese governments are not as stupid as the liberal and Socialist Democratic mindset Western Left seems to mainly be.
Art Institute of Chicago mocks antiwar protest sit-in with Roy Lichtenstein redux: “Oh Brad… I forgot stop NATO.”
CHICAGO- Leaving the Hoi polloi to wonder: "How will we stop NATO?"
For suppression of NATO protest voice, Obama campaign HQ salutes Chicago Police Department
OCCUPIED CHICAGO- President Obama got last weekend's protest message loud and clear, he's lost that voter to antiwar favorite Vermin Supreme. A week after the NATO Summit, his Democratic Party headquarters in the Prudential Building leaves the office lights on for the law enforcement vote. Or was it to compensate for Mayor Rahm Emanuel stiffing the CPD on their overtime pay for quelling popular dissent at the summit?
NATO troops led by US forces kill 6 more kids
Even while imperialists are screaming that Assad, head of the Syrian government, is a child murderer, Obama's forces are killing kids in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Pakistan. Here's the latest... Afghan authorities: NATO air strike kills eight civilians May 27, 2012 | 4:12 am
Birds Egg Blue v Black, police brutality colors from Selma ’65 to Chicago 2012
OCCUPIED CHICAGO- That sea of light blue helmets protecting the NATO summit in Chicago last weekend may be a novel visual to those accustomed to police state armor black, but that's because most 60s era news images were black & white. Color photos from Life Magazine remind us that light blue was the team color of the Alabama state troopers who brutalized the Civil Rights marchers trying to march from Selma to Montgomery.
Chicago Police Infiltrators less for law enforcement than media intervention
CHICAGO- The Chicago Police Department congratulates itself for using undercover officers to monitor activists, even though protester violence was negligible, but don't admit the active role they played in dampening mood, fouling media images, and disrupting grassroots.
Chicago NATO Summit
The Occupy Movement highlights opposing NATO in its coming protest
NATO, like the United Nations itself, has become nothing more than a military appendage to the Pentagon and D.C.'s imperialist foreign policies. As such, it is a wide open gullet where our tax monies are fed to promote continuous warfare around the globe. The Occupy Movement is 100% right to make NATO the central target for its next protest against the 1% Establishment. Occupy Chicago NATO Week of Actions Preview
Spinning US atrocities, words matter: shooting sprees & shopping rampages
Headlines about Sunday's midnight massacre in Kandahar transformed quickly from NATO FORCES RAID to become LONE GUNMAN KILLS 16, as the attributed sources shifted from Afghan locals on the scene to US military spokesmen. One might argue it's in the interest of national security to attribute the murders in Balandi and Alkozai to a solitary stalker, to tamp the swelling anger of the Afghan populace, but what's the truth? Making a rare concession, the NYT has revised its headline a 3rd time to read LONE SOLDIER SAID TO BE KILLER OF 16 AFGHANS, and the BBC puts "ACTED ALONE" in quotes. (UPDATE: AP adds "allegedly" and LA Times "apparently") Pundits stroke our soldiers' egos by asking could one special forces soldier alone kill so many (?!), but more difficult to imagine is how a rogue fighter can equip himself and pass through multiple security defenses unobserved. Also doubtful is how and why a stealth assassin would burn the victims' bodies as he moved about. Easier to believe is that damage control decided it best that one man take the fall for his comrades, God and country, probably the one too drunk to object.
Visit Chicago for mirth and adventure
MoveOn wants to mobilize the world's largest nonviolence movement, calling on the 99% to teach-in itself in time for their American Spring. That's certain to sound more palatable to America's unbaptized middle-roaders, than the invitation above, invoking the reception likely awaiting protesters who plan to converge on Chicago in May. The G8 has been relocated to Camp David, but the larger NATO summit is still scheduled to warrant a two mile wide security perimeter around downtown Chicago. What does this poster communicate to you? I'm guessing the menacing image wasn't chosen at random, it says to me the unadventurous need not apply.
Oops, troops don’t get memo, kill kids
SUNDAY- Drunken US soldiers kill 16 Afghanistan civilians, nine of them children. The US military is claiming the massacre was the work of one soldier who "wandered" inside homes in Kandahar's Panjwayi district, but witnesses report it was a squad who laughed as they shot the families and tried to burn the bodies. US Army defenders might argue mouths agape that it doesn't make sense, what would US NATO forces accomplish by doing that? State terrorism is no accident. Whether by directive, unleashing berserkers, or enlisting young men with mental deficiencies, TROOPS KILL KIDS. For our remedial readers I'll note that Tony and I are under fire for raising that point at an Occupy GA. What's the vigilante posse got to say about the US soldiers in the village of Zangabad? Just part of the ugly job of war? Happens everyday? Yes it does.
NATO troops kill 8 children in Afghanistan
How long will the US and European populations sit back passively allowing their governments' troops to kill children repeatedly in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere in Asia and Africa? Here is the latest atrocity by US/ NATO troops... NATO airstrike killed eight children: Karzai
Occupy Wall Street mentor Adbusters issues latest tactical briefing. Chicago. May. Occupy.
Vancouver's Adbusters Magazine sent the initial callouts to occupy Wall Street, to be the natural successor to unfinished revolutions in Tahrir Square and Madrid. Quickly enough it escaped their grasp. Adusters has issued two dozen "Tactical Briefings" since before September 17 to advise the growing rebellion, to be interpreted coming from a valued mentor, albeit an outsider, technically now, a non-occupier. The distinction was never more obvious than when one of their briefings advised striking the camps and waiting out the winter. But their briefing #25 offers more than retreat, it sets OWS sights on the joint NATO-G8 summit to be held in Chicago this May, against which very large demonstrations are already being planned. No specific advice on the other hand for local occupies, wisely perhaps, where tacticians can add no more to the strategy than hold your ground, by definition, occupy. ADBUSTERS TACTICAL BRIEFING #25 Hey you redeemers, rebels and radicals out there, Against the backdrop of a global uprising that is simmering in dozens of countries and thousands of cities and towns, the G8 and NATO will hold a rare simultaneous summit in Chicago this May. The world’s military and political elites, heads of state, 7,500 officials from 80 nations, and more than 2,500 journalists will be there. And so will we. On May 1, 50,000 people from all over the world will flock to Chicago, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and #OCCUPYCHICAGO for a month. With a bit of luck, we’ll pull off the biggest multinational occupation of a summit meeting the world has ever seen. And this time around we’re not going to put up with the kind of police repression that happened during the Democratic National Convention protests in Chicago, 1968 … nor will we abide by any phony restrictions the City of Chicago may want to impose on our first amendment rights. We’ll go there with our heads held high and assemble for a month-long people’s summit … we’ll march and chant and sing and shout and exercise our right to tell our elected representatives what we want … the constitution will be our guide. And when the G8 and NATO meet behind closed doors on May 19, we’ll be ready with our demands: a Robin Hood Tax … a ban on high frequency ‘flash’ trading … a binding climate change accord … a three strikes and you’re out law for corporate criminals … an all out initiative for a nuclear-free Middle East … whatever we decide in our general assemblies and in our global internet brainstorm – we the people will set the agenda for the next few years and demand our leaders carry it out. And if they don’t listen … if they ignore us and put our demands on the back burner like they’ve done so many times before … then, with Gandhian ferocity, we’ll flashmob the streets, shut down stock exchanges, campuses, corporate headquarters and cities across the globe … we’ll make the price of doing business as usual too much to bear. Jammers, pack your
Execution of anti-Western al-Gaddafi suggests he wasn’t strongman enough
I know very little about the dark side of Colonel Gaddafi. I've never seen him outside the filter of Western media. For all I know he emptied baby incubators, hid WMDs and ran rape camps. He wasn't responsible for Lockerbie, the CIA knows that much. The deposed leader's execution yesterday was nothing to celebrate. It was sad, brutal and shrouded in mystery. Hugo Chavez hailed Gaddafi as a fallen hero, and I've never had occasion to disagree with Chavez. Nor have I ever taken issue with George Galloway and he hated Gaddafi. Probably the aging revolutionary was both heroic and corrupt, eccentric and lunatic. Gaddafi was the most powerful protector of Africa, and the only leader to have apologized for Arab role in African slave trade. Naturally he had to be booted from the club. Is the US only ever up against evil strongmen? Isn't it obvious that any leader who opposes US hegemony has to be a strongman? Putin is as formidable as any former Soviet foe, and by comparison, Gaddafi was fey. He let down his guard, thought he could sell out to the New World Order and keep his nationalized oil. But the Capitalist jackals do not respect ideologues and will exploit it as weakness. Captured alive, Gaddafi was brutally mobbed, although the predominant Arabic voices urged keeping him alive. Multiple video angles contradict the official statement that Gaddafi succumbed to crossfire. Video images seem to show special uniformed soldiers heading against the flow of Libyan fighters converging on Gaddafi after the fatal shots. Was this a Mussolini moment? Hardly. To the last moment Gaddafi seemed incredulous that his people would betray him. I'm not really sure they did. He railed against the CIA and al-Qaeda backed "rebels" who were tearing Libya asunder. NATO's strength undoubtedly tipped the balance, and Gaddafi's demilitarization of Libya left him with insufficient defenses. Looking at a video still of the final moments of Libya's deposed leader, I'm reminded of the picture we once posted of Silvio Berlusconi's bloodied face. We took it down I believe because it celebrated violence I suppose. I regret caving to whatever bastards took offense. Their timid sensibilities keep fascists like Berlusconi in power. Since that one glorious grasp at justice populi the Italian despot has stayed out of the public grasp, the Prince of Wales nearly didn't it. The Western press is pitching Gaddafi's undignified death as a warning to all leaders who challenge white rule. I think it's significance reaches much further. Summary execution at the hands of a mob. Could happen to the highest of the well heeled.
Chicago G8 protest planners offer city guarantees of usual ineffectual actions
Organizers meeting today to plan against next year's G8 summit in Chicago hit the ground running --backward. On Friday a spokesperson for one of the coalition partners offered this assurance to the Chicago Tribune: “Our goal is a legal, permitted, family friendly march where people can come and have their voices heard in a safe environment.” Interesting. The objective of successful past anti-globalization protests has been no less than to shut the undemocratic summits down. Nine months out, it appears activism's old guard is determined to blunt all real resistance welling in American youth. The Tribune found another normalizing voice from UNAC which disavowed any recourse but nonviolence. WTF? It's one thing not to encourage violence, another to promise to "back off from any violence.” Hello? Activists with broken spirits need to STFD and STFU. Let younger, hotter heads give you a lesson in courage and purpose. If you are over thirty, hold yourselves among the fucks responsible for this mess. Who are you to deny the young their righteous rage? As elder activists, precisely what wisdom is it you think you can impart? Have you stopped one war? Slowed imperialism? Ended nukes? Saved the whales? Halted global warming? Attended to anything but the erosion of democracy, the social safety net and the environment? Your exalted nonviolence neither delivered India from class exploitation nor ended racism in America. Stick with fundraising, educating, inspiring others, drawing your peers into social networking; lead, but not by edict, and not by a consensus dominated by your peers. Put your dogma aside for the young leaders, let them make their own mistakes. I hope you will at least admit they can't fail more miserably than you. At Sunday's meeting, the United National Antiwar Committee spokesman acquitted himself when confronted by a young gentleman representing an anarchist entity. Committee member Ashley Smith's full quote had been: "We will not be the ones to initiate or perpetrate any violence.” And: “We will back off from any violence.” But when pressed at the meeting, he explained that organizers hoped the event would be safe for families, but that younger militants could exercise their freedoms like anybody else. I paraphrase. I'll qualify my criticism by pointing out that a number of the organizers were personal victims of recent FBI home invasions, so they are fully justified in having to distance themselves from being interpreted as advocating violence. An additional challenge is presented by an adversarial corporate press determined to squeeze whatever soundbite it wants to discredit or hobble protest. Of course I'd prefer activists recused themselves from addressing the subject of violence/nonviolence, instead of alienating potential allies by being deliberately exclusionary. And by potential allies, I mean the only allies that will get the movement anywhere, the NEXT GENERATION, because who else are you expecting?
The US Special Forces as a lily-white military career, a post-mortem survey
The US Department of Defense finally released the list of US soldiers killed on the NATO MH-47 Chinook helicopter downed in Afghanistan. Median age was in high 30s, which is unsurprising for highly trained Special Ops, but isn't it interesting that the usual disproportionate percentage of Americans of Color as cannon fodder (see casualty figures) doesn't extend to the higher-paid military career jobs? Huge props of course to African Americans who decide against being career hitmen. And let's not neglect the exclusively white composition of the Abu Ghraib snap shot perps, and the docket, however sparse, of other US soldiers accused of war crimes.
“Red Dawn” a classic? Gag me…
I was researching why (I already know, just looking for confirmation) this piece of cinematic sewage keeps replaying on certain channels.To drum up war business of course. But I came across a review on a Right Wing website that the "classic" Red Dawn and Extreme Prejudice and a couple of other Death-Porn flicks by the same production company only show on "conservative" Cable channels and no MSM channel would touch them. "Lefty Censorship". How about this scenario instead? They sucked when they first came out and they've been sucking ever since. Assassination and "Kill Immigrant" flicks belong in the same genre as the "Six Days in Fallujah" and "Call of Duty" porn games where the players or viewers get to masturbate to images of people being murdered. "Red Dawn" and "Extreme Prejudice" were made to bolster the Reagan/Bush Administrations' use of the Murdering Contra Mercenary Terrorists against the People of Nicaragua. Meanwhile REAL soldiers gave me this review of it, back then... "Man that is f...in' retarded. We're sitting there in Germany facing the Soviets, Reagan and Bush playing games trying to make them paranoid, telling them AND the German people that a limited tactical nuclear exchange in Germany would be "winnable"... doing everything possible to convince the Soviets that they're crazy, and they put this piece of shit into the mix. Get them thinking EVERYBODY in America is just as goofy as they (Reagan) are". See, you can't sustain a war without Hate. You can't justify spending more money than your nation will ever hope to have on "defense" spending if you don't have at least a perception of a war. If you don't have the "America Under Constant Attack" for real, you have to Make Shit Up. Otherwise the "Defense" industry would shut down and the bastards would have to actually EARN money through actual work. facing a shortage of hordes of brown-skinned terrorists out to Destroy America, they have to conflate Immigrant Workers with the increasingly mythical al Qa'eda. Re-enter: Red Dawn. Where the Haters can sit on their couches with the remote in one hand and the pecker in the other, masturbating to the idea of killing "illegals".
US vexed Swiss will support peace not peacekeeping or peace enforcement
In a Dec 2, 2008 diplomatic cable released by Aftenposten, the US ambassador to Switzerland reports that US-Swiss relations "lack the natural intimacy and trust" because, he laments: "U.S. and Swiss soldiers never fought side-by-side in a war, no Swiss town felt an emotional bond to the U.S. for a past liberation or economic assistance program," which creates the vexing obstacle that the Swiss Army won't lend their knives to NATO or other USG non-multilateral projects: "The Swiss military is limited by law to participating only in peace support operations (PSOs) -- as opposed to peacekeeping or peace enforcement --" I'll interrupt here to highlight the distinction which the historically-neutral, tri-lingual, direct-democracy Swiss nation makes, perhaps like the Inuit and their fabled hundred words for snow. Americans are sold only one kind of peace, which has to be kept and enforced. We have only one word for peace and it's not peace.