U.S. Africa Command
June 26, 2013

CJTF-HOA Prepares Mobile Forward Command Post
Staff Sergeant Rachel Waller
CJTF-HOA Public Affairs

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With the testing phase of the FCP complete, the current focus is preparing the tent system for future use in CJTF-HOA’s 2.4-million-square-mile combined joint operations area in East Africa.

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CAMP LEMONNIER, Djibouti: The first of its kind, Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa’s forward command post gives U.S. Africa Command and CJTF-HOA an eyes-on capability that amplifies the ability to rapidly respond to a crisis or humanitarian incident in Africa.

“Our mission is to effectively counter violent extremists in Somalia and East Africa,” said U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Robert Hunter, CJTF-HOA Operations, Planning and Training operations chief….

The command’s newly established joint FCP environment brings together Marines, Airmen, Soldiers and Sailors in the fields of intelligence, communications, personnel, operations, logistics, plans, comptroller, training and exercises.

Once the FCP and its components reach the geographical location in which they’re most useful, Hunter said it can be assembled and configured in various ways to optimally accommodate mission requirements.

All FCP configurations use the same central tent, HDT Global’s AirBeam Shelter. According to the HDT company web site, the AirBeam Shelter can support command and control operations, which is perfect for a joint operations center.

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After the FCP is fully built, the number of personnel required to operate it depends on the type of operations it will be used for.

“For a full operation, you’re looking at 25 to 35 personnel, but a minimal operation would require only 8 to 12 people,” said Hunter.

With the testing phase of the FCP complete, the current focus is preparing the tent system for future use in CJTF-HOA’s 2.4-million-square-mile combined joint operations area in East Africa.

“This brand-new system has never been used before,” said Hunter, “so we’re taking time now to make sure we’ll have no issues with it when the time comes to use it in the real world.”

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

Roger Martin du Gard: Selections on war

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Roger Martin du Gard
From Summer 1914 (1936)
Translated by Stuart Gilbert

“Just listen to this! Do you know who distributes those Russian subsidies among the leading French newspapers? It’s our Finance Minister himself…[E]ver since the last Balkan wars the press in Western Europe has come to be almost entirely in the pay of the powers that are out for war. That’s why the public in those countries is kept in such ignorance of the abominable rivalries which, in Central Europe and in the Balkans, have for the past two years have been bringing war nearer every day – for those who have eyes to see. But that’s enough about the press. There’s more to tell. Wait a bit!…One could go on talking about Poincaré for hours – I can’t explain everything to you, off-hand, like that. Let’s turn to his policy at home. It lines up with the other. Naturally enough. To begin with, a general speeding up of armaments – a godsend for the steel and iron industries, whose power behind the scenes is simply tremendous. Next, the period of military service has been increased to three years. (I suppose you followed the debates in the Chamber? You remember Jaurès’s speeches?) Then, they’ve been working on public opinion. You were saying just now: ‘Nowadays no one in France dreams of military glory.’ Do you mean to say you haven’t noticed how a jingoistic, war-mongering spirit has been gaining ground in France during the last few months, especially among the younger generation? Here, too, I’m not exaggerating, I assure you. And this, too, is Poincaré’s doing. He has his scheme. He knows that when mobilization does come the government will need the support of a public opinion heated to fever-pitch and ready not only to accept and follow his lead but to back him up and cry him on. The France of 1900, the France of the Dreyfus affair, was too peace-minded. The army was under a cloud; people had lost interest in it. They took security for granted. Somehow, then, the nation had to be roused, alarmed. The young folk, especially of the middle class, provided a favourable soil for sowing the seeds of chauvinist propaganda. And they were not long in striking root.”

“That a certain number of youngsters have turned nationalist, I won’t deny,” Antoine broke in. He was thinking of his young assistant Manuel Roy. “But they’re a very small minority.”

“A minority that’s growing larger every day. A very truculent minority. Their greatest joy is forming in groups, wearing badges, waving flags, marching in military formation. On the slightest pretext, nowadays, you will find them staging a demonstration round Joan of Arc’s monument or the Strasbourg statue. And there’s nothing more catching. The man in the street – the petty clerk, the small shopkeeper – is not indefinitely proof against such sights, such appeals to fanaticism; particularly as the press, at the bidding of the government, is working on people’s minds along the same lines. It’s gradually being hammered into the French people that they’re in danger, that their security depends upon their ability to use their fists, that they’ve got to show their force and put up with a huge rearmament plan. The country has been deliberately infected with what you doctors call a neurosis – a war neurosis. And once that collective apprehension, that frenzied panic, has been injected into a nation, it’s child’s play to drive it into the most suicidal follies.”

Ministry of Defence of Georgia
June 28, 2013

Georgian Defence Minister met with General Dunford

Defence Minister of Georgia Irakli Alasania held a meeting with the Commander of the International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A), General Joseph F. Dunford and US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence, Dr. Evelyn Farkas. The meeting was held within the framework of the “Georgian Defence and Security Conference”.

At the meeting the sides talked about the participation of Georgian military servicemen in the NATO-led international mission in Afghanistan and Georgia’s role in post-ISAF period. Defence Minister discussed the existing circumstances in Afghanistan and future cooperation prospects with ISAF Commander.

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Ministry of Defence of Georgia
June 28, 2013

Levan Dolidze’s Meeting with Evelyn Farkas

Within the framework of the “Georgian Defence and Security Conference”, First Deputy Defence Minister Levan Dolidze held a meeting with US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence Evelyn Farkas.

At the meeting the sides referred to the US-Georgian bilateral cooperation issues in defence sphere and ongoing reforms in the Georgian MoD. Georgia’s NATO integration prospects and the next NATO summit were also topics of the discussion. The sides talked about Georgia’s contribution in international missions, Georgia’s role in post-ISAF period and transit proposals from the Georgian side.

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence thanked the Georgian side for the contribution in ISAF mission and once more expressed readiness to render Georgia assistance in achieving NATO interoperability and enhancing defence capabilities.

Ministry of Defence of Georgia
June 29, 2013

Meeting with General Shirreff

Defence Minister of Georgia Irakli Alasania held a meeting with Deputy Supreme Allied Commander of Europe, General Sir Richard Shirreff.

At the meeting the sides discussed Georgia’s participation in international missions and role in post-ISAF period, also Georgia’s transit capabilities. General Shirreff thanked Georgian Defence Minister for Georgia’s contribution in the ISAF mission and praised the professionalism of Georgian military servicemen.

Deputy Supreme Allied Commander of Europe General Sir Richard Shirreff also met with Minister of Foreign Affairs of Georgia Maia Panjikidze and Chief of Joint Staff of GAF, Colonel Irakli Dzneladze today. Bilateral meetings were held within the framework of the “Georgian Defence and Security Conference” in Batumi.

Hungarian News Agency
June 28, 2013

NATO Secretary General to visit Hungary on Monday

Secretary General of NATO Anders Fogh Rasmussen is scheduled to visit Hungary on Monday at the invitation of Defence Minister Csaba Hende.

Rasmussen will pay a visit on the occasion that a heavy airlift unit was moved to the Papa air base in western Hungary under the arrangements of the Strategic Airlift Capability (SAC) programme four years ago, the Defence Ministry said in a statement on Friday.

Rasmussen and Hende will consult in Papa about the strategic airlift capabilities as well as other development projects at the base, and Rasmussen will open a new hangar construction area.

President Janos Ader will meet Rasmussen in his office in Budapest on Monday afternoon, Ader’s office said.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban is also scheduled to meet the NATO General Secretary, his press chief Bertalan Havasi said.

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

H.G. Wells: Selections on war

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H.G. Wells
From The Salvaging of Civilization (1921)

What else has to go if war is to go out of human life? and the problem of what has to be done if it is to be banished and barred out for ever from the future experiences of our race. For let us face the truth in this matter; the abolition of war is no casting of ancient, barbaric, and now obsolete traditions, no easy and natural progressive step; the abolition of war, if it can be brought about, will be a reversal not only of the general method of human life hitherto but of the general method of nature, the method, that is, of conflict and survival. It will be a new phase in the history of life, and not simply an incident in the history of man.

***

It has been argued that such highly organized and long prepared warfare as the world saw in 1914-18 is not likely to recur again for a considerable time because of the shock inflicted by it upon social stability. There may be spasmodic wars with improvised and scanty supplies, these superficially more hopeful critics admit, but there remain no communities now so stable and so sure of their people as to prepare and wage again a fully elaborated scientific war. But this view implies no happier outlook for mankind. It amounts to this, that so long as men remain disordered and impoverished they will not rise again to the full height of scientific war. But manifestly this will only be for so long as they remain disordered and impoverished. When they recover they will recover to repeat again their former disaster with whatever modern improvements and intensifications the ingenuity of the intervening time may have devised. This new phase of disorder, conflict, and social unravelling upon which we have entered, this phase of decline due to the enhanced and increasing powers for waste and destruction in mankind, is bound, therefore, to continue so long as the divisions based upon ancient ideas of conflict remain; and if for a time the decadence seems to be arrested, it will only be to accumulate under the influence of those ideas a fresh war-storm sufficiently destructive and disorganizing to restore the decadent process.

Unless mankind can readjust its political and social ideas to this essential new fact of its enormously enlarged powers, unless it can eliminate or control its pugnacity, no other prospect seems open to us but decadence, at least to such a level of barbarism as to lose and forget again all the scientific and industrial achievements of our present age. Then, with its powers shrunken to their former puny scale, our race may recover some sort of balance between the injuries and advantages of conflict. Or, since our decadent species may have less vitality and vigour than it had in its primitive phases, it may dwindle and fade out altogether before some emboldened animal antagonist, or through some world-wide disease brought to it perhaps by rats and dogs and insects and what not, who may be destined to be heirs to the rusting and mouldering ruins of the cities and ports and ways and bridges of to-day.

***

I believe that all these conflicts and all such current conflicts are so irrational and destructive that it is impossible for a sane man who wishes to serve the world to identify himself with either side in any of them. These conflicts are mere aspects of the gross and passionate stupidity and ignorance and sectionalism of our present world…The capitalist, the employer, the property-owning class, as a class, have neither the intelligence nor the conscience to comprehend any moral limitations, any limitations whatever but the strong arm of the law, upon what they do with their property. Their black and obstinate ignorance, the clumsy adventurousness they call private enterprise, their unconscious insolence to poor people, their stupidly conspicuous self-indulgence, produce as a necessary result the black hatred of the employed and the expropriated. On one side we have greed, insensibility and incapacity, on the other envy and suffering stung to vindictive revolt…

The present system, unless it can develop a better intelligence and a better heart, is manifestly destined to foster fresh wars and to continue wasting what is left of the substance of mankind, until absolute social disaster overtakes us all…

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Allied Command Transformation
June 26, 2013

NATO Partner Sweden Hosts 2013 Strategic Military Partner Discussions on Alliance Future
Written by US Navy Reserve Officer, Commander Steve Zip

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Currently, there are 41 countries that partner with NATO through a series of frameworks: the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, the Mediterranean Dialogue, the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative and many other bilateral agreements across the globe. Host nation Sweden provides an example of the long-term value of NATO partnership.

In Afghanistan, for example, of the 50 contributing nations, 24 are non-NATO members. The momentum for this collaboration is vital to the future capabilities of NATO as it shifts to a contingency posture.

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Amidst long sunny days of the Scandinavian summer, 55 NATO allies and partner nations from as far away as New Zealand gathered in Stockholm, Sweden to discuss the future security environment and share ideas.

A key theme of this Strategic Military Partner Conference (SMPC) that kicked off June 25 is that the complexity of the global security environment requires an evolution of cooperation between NATO members and their many partners. The continued success of NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP) program – first started 1994 – is very important to alliance members as evidenced by the high level priority given to organising the annual SMPC event.

Partner nations were well represented to dialogue and give their input during this event hosted by PfP partner Sweden. “Partners are security providers that add to NATO output, and also provide unique expertise in many of the challenges that lay ahead of us,” said General Sverker Göranson, Supreme Commander Swedish Armed Forces,

NATO and partner nations live in the same increasingly complex world with more and different challenges along with emerging threats such as: ballistic missiles, energy security, access to the global commons [i.e. space], proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and most recently cyber-attacks.

Given the pressure on today’s defence budgets, leveraging the intellectual capital of both allies and partners can help them better address these threats. “A true and enduring partnership must be a win-win relationship…I believe that Allies and Partners are more than ever united by the common nature of emerging strategic challenges which in turn will help them improve their military efficiency, through interoperability,” said General Jean-Paul Paloméros, Supreme Allied Commander Transformation.

Currently, there are 41 countries that partner with NATO through a series of frameworks: the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, the Mediterranean Dialogue, the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative and many other bilateral agreements across the globe. Host nation Sweden provides an example of the long-term value of NATO partnership. “The transformation of the Swedish Armed Forces during the last 20 years would not have been possible without Sweden’s partnership with NATO and our active participation in the EU. Our partnership with NATO has been valuable when it comes to building capabilities, including reaching the required standards. Not only the Planning and Review process, but also for example NATO evaluation tools have been and are of utmost important to us,” said General Göranson.

With regard to operations, the support of NATO partners cannot be understated. In Afghanistan, for example, of the 50 contributing nations, 24 are non-NATO members. The momentum for this collaboration is vital to the future capabilities of NATO as it shifts to a contingency posture. “With the end of ISAF, our operational tempo is likely to decrease for now. This means that we will need to shift our emphasis from operational engagement to operational readiness – from a ‘deployed’ NATO to a posture of a ‘prepared’ NATO…partners will need to be part of this shift,” said Mr. Patrick Auroy, the Alliance’s Assistant Secretary General for Defense Investment (ASG DI).

United States European Command
June 28, 2013

Hagel, Sweden’s Defense Minister Meet at Pentagon

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel met with Sweden’s Minister of Defense Karin Enström at the Pentagon today, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said.

During the meeting Hagel praised Sweden for its role as a key partner to the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Little said.

In particular, he added, Hagel thanked Minister Enström for Sweden’s commitment and sacrifices in Afghanistan, and for its key leadership in other NATO operations such as Libya and Kosovo.

“Secretary Hagel reiterated the United States’ steadfast commitment to standing together with U.S. allies and partners,” Little said.

And Hagel affirmed “that the Defense Department will continue to seek ways to enhance our bilateral defense relationship with Sweden,” Little added, “and that our two nations will continue to work closely together to advance our common interests around the world.”

Midland Reporter-Telegram
June 28, 2013

NATO delegation visits Permian Basin to study oil’s impact on economy, security
By Mella McEwen

The Permian Basin’s booming oil patch has drawn the attention of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Midland College on Thursday hosted a delegation of 28 dignitaries representing NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly Subcommittee on Transatlantic Economic Relations and Subcommittee on Energy and Environmental Security.

There were presentations on the area’s shale oil boom and its economic impact.

Hoxie Smith, director of Midland College’s Petroleum Professional Development Center, discussed the area’s unconventional resource plays, how they were being developed and their impact on the economy. He and Willie Taylor, chief executive officer of the Permian Basin Workforce Development Board, discussed labor issues in light of the present economic boom. Both men said they were quite impressed with the visitors’ grasp of the issues and the questions they asked.

The delegation included representatives from Turkey, Romania, Canada, Italy, Norway, France, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Estonia, the Czech Republic and United Kingdom. Among the members were Lamberto Dini, a former prime minister of Italy, and Baroness Ann Taylor of Bolton from the United Kingdom.

Leon Benoit, head of the Canadian delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, said the delegation was interested in going beyond “the big picture” and connecting with people affected by events on the ground. Their findings will be woven into their reports that will focus on the emerging unconventional oil and gas plays on the global economy and global security, he said.

The Permian Basin “could be Alberta near Lloydminster, where new methods are bringing new production, or the Oil Sands three miles from my home,” Benoit said.

Like Midland, he said businesses in Alberta are struggling to find enough skilled workers.

The question is whether this new-found oil and gas production will result in a more stable world or a less stable world, Benoit said. He said he believes the world will be more stable and will result in the United States being less involved in international matters. Reducing American involvement in the Middle East will be especially beneficial, he said.

Tudor Barbu, secretary of the bureau of the senate in Romania, said his country is very interested in hydraulic fracturing.

“We have huge reserves of oil and gas in shales,” he said. “It’s a big issue. Parliament and the people are split. People don’t approve of the method because it leads to earthquakes and water lighting on fire. Others see Romania’s future could be in shales.”

He said he saw a similar debate during the group’s two days in Austin, when two speakers from academia and non-governmental organizations denounced the technology.

“My question is, why, don’t we put, at the same table, on the same screen, the two sides of the issue?” Barbu asked. “I remember, as a boy in Romania, watching Joe Frazier debate. ‘I’m the best.’ ‘I’m the best.’ They had to prove it in the ring. Why don’t organizations, local and national, debate the question? They can bring their arguments, their images, their props and once and for all settle the question?”

While Romania knows a lot about hydraulic fracturing technology, “we want to understand more,” Barbu said. “Texas is one of the most important points in the world concerning fracturing. We want to know if what we know is true.”
While in Austin the group heard about conventional oil and gas energy and renewable energy and toured the Webberville Solar Farm.

Benoit said that two years ago he led a a similar delegation on a tour of Alberta’s oil sands and oil mining and natural gas production facilities in British Columbia.

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A strong regulatory framework will be vital, said Taylor, noting that the most recent report from the British Geological Survey showed the nation’s shale gas potential could be phenomenal.

“Obvious the context is different because we’re a small, crowded island and there are genuine environmental concerns,” she said. “If we go ahead with developing these shales, there needs to be a strong regulatory framework. One of the messages here is there are dangers so everything needs to be done to a high level of specification.”

After Thursday morning’s presentations at Midland College’s Carrasco Room, the delegates were to tour Chevron’s training facility and Fasken Oil and Ranch field operations. Their visit will conclude this morning with a visit to the Petroleum Museum.

Voice of Russia
June 28, 2013

Kosovo is Serbia and Russia has not evacuated personnel from Syria

The information war and information operations by the West appear to have been geared up to full capacity in Serbia as the West tries to force the Serbian people into accepting the independence of Kosovo and European Union integration.

From a geopolitical point of view Serbia may not seem like that big of a country but it is of great importance for the United States and its NATO allies because right in the heart of Serbia, in Kosovo, a territory the US and NATO planners have literally stolen from the Serbian people, is the largest U.S. military installation outside of the continental United States.

From hundreds of contacts, interviews, documents and observations regarding Serbia and the Serbian people, it is clear that the government of Serbia is not following the wishes of the majority of the Serbian people when it comes to Kosovo, European integration and relations with the Russian Federation.

The vast majority of the Serbian people in no way recognize the independence of Kosovo and for almost every single Serbian Kosovo is viewed not only as an integral part of the sovereign territory of Serbia but also as the heart of the Serbian people.

When I first started reporting about Kosovo and Serbia I was at first confronted with claims and even evidence that there was a complete and total media blackout in effect when it came to Serbia and the views of the Serbian people. This has not gone away and until now the western media operations seemed to be limited to stifling dissent and muzzling the voice of the Serbian people. Like I just said, that is, until now.

Now there is increasing evidence that U.S. and NATO led media and information operations in Serbia are taking the form of sinister PSYOPS, the abbreviation for covert Psychological Operations.

It is important to note that the former Yugoslavia and Serbia in particular have been something akin to a geopolitical laboratory since the first invasion of Yugoslavia by the U.S. and NATO. Here it is important to recall that it was in fact Yugoslavia that served as the first blueprint for the “humanitarian” based US/NATO tactic of aggressive invasion. A blueprint that has since gone on to be used in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and other countries. Serbia was the first such invasion and as the guinea pig for everything since from massively covered up genocide (Srebrenica), to the taking away of sovereign territory (Kosovo). It seems that the U.S., NATO and their allies are testing the limits of evil once again. Before it was things like murdering for organs, human trafficking and illicit trade in everything from narcotics to gold, now it seems they are testing the limits of PSYOPS and media operations attempting to manipulate and force the people of the country into sheepish submission.

The level and nature of the way the media is Serbia is being manipulated has reached a shocking level with the push for the Serbian people to accept what has already been decided on as being the fate of their country by those pulling the strings behind the scenes.

Recently I was contacted by several of my contacts in Serbia who were alarmed and asked me if it was true that Russia had pulled all of its military and other personnel out of Syria. I checked around using my confidential channels, searched for media reports and the like, and came back with the answer that this was nonsense.

Reports that there were currently no staff of the Russian Armed Forces in Tartus which appeared in the Al-Hayat pan-Arabic had been twisted and misconstrued to paint the picture of an evacuation or other sudden removal of personnel. Taking the point out of context, inflating it and spinning it into something it is not is a specialty of many in the western press.

It is important to note that the maintenance facility in Tartus is not a base and it was staffed by only several dozen civilian personnel. The Russian Defense ministry has stated that it was concerned with the safety of the civilian personnel but there was no evacuation of any personnel and the ridiculous assertion by the Western media and in particular certain Serbian media outlets, that Russia had evacuated soldiers and had left civilians behind is outrageous and a fabrication. There was no evacuation.

One might also ask the question: Why would Russia be pulling its personnel out of Syria if Assad is winning? This is usually done only if an invasion is imminent or the government is about to fall, or perhaps if there is an imminent threat to the lives of the personnel due to natural or other causes.

Then one of my sources in Serbia who had sent me a link to the story made the logical conclusion that with the Snowden story currently showing the world the true impotence of the United States, the West about to obtain complete and total victory in Serbia and the fact that the only hope for many of the Serbian people is Russia, the West needs a way to make Russia looks weak and incapable, especially in light of its unyielding support for president Assad and the Syrian people.

The parallels between the situation in Syria and the former Yugoslavia are almost so many that it appears that the US has used the same blueprint and like Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, and in every other country it has invaded or destroyed by causing revolutions or coup d’états, and as the latest country where a military base or other objective is the key and is being subjected to western global remapping and geopolitical manipulation, Syria is of particular interest but more so because of the staunch support by Russia.

Some may say that Syria is the final litmus test for Russia. Russia was tricked out of Serbia although it stood up to the West and has maintained, even more so than some Serbians, that Kosovo is Serbia and there is no legitimate “other” power that can control the sovereign territory, other than the Serbs.

Stories that Russia has failed in Syria would then further help top demoralize and throw the Serbian people in grudging acceptance that giving up Kosovo and following the sell out of Serbia that many of the Serbian leaders are pushing through even though more than 80% of the people of Serbia are against European Union integration and even more against recognizing any kind of independence from Kosovo.

The students at Belgrade University, many of whom I have spoken to and who are typical well-educated intelligent and proud patriotic Serbian young people, sent me a statement regarding the Prime Minister of Serbia’s recent statements which have attempted to paint a picture of the broad (although nonexistent) popular support for European integration and the recognition of the independence of Kosovo.

These statements and recent media reports regarding the Kosovo Parliament, the very recognition of such a body existing on the Sovereign territory of Serbia an admission as to the independent nature of Kosovo, are all part of a clever yet so obviously patently fabricated, information war campaign, to legitimize the illegal and egregious meddling in Serbia by the West, and the abomination that is Western recognition for the separation of the heart of Serbia from Serbia proper.

The students at Belgrade University sent me the following statement through one of their fellow students on the Political Science Faculty and a student protest organizer named Nenad Uzelac:

The statement by the Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic, that he hopes that Serbia will become a member of EU in four or five years is nothing but cheap propaganda for the economically, socially and mentally numbed Serbian people. He is serving us an illusion on a silver platter.

Every country of the ex SSSR has experienced a fiasco upon entering the EU with regard to at least four economic parameters: growth of the external debt, growth of unemployment, growth of poverty and the destruction of the agricultural sector.

The EU is an American protectorate, as Bzezinski would say, therefore it serves the American interests in the modern colonization of the Eastern European countries, with the goal of ”surrounding” Russia, and Serbia plays an important factor, as the pivot of the Balkans.

Entering the EU today, is a ticket for a voyage on the Titanic. Serbia will never become a member of the EU, or at least not for decades to come, and this road is a road to disaster.

It has been said to us by former German ambassador Cobel, that we will not become a member before 2030-2035, and Angela Merkel recently stated that ”The door of the EU will close for a longer period of time, and that Serbia can gain membership, at the earliest in 2019”.

Serbia has yet to meet a lot of ”conditions”, besides Kosova and implementation of the agreement: it will have to accept and convince Serbian Republic of it’s own annulment and the unification of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Besides that, there is no doubt that the EU has designs for Vojvodina as well as the internationalization of the Vojvodina issue.

What is interesting is that Croatia is about to become a member of EU, and we shouldn’t be surprised if Croatia demands an admission by Serbia that it is to blame and in fact the aggressor in the last war, admitting to the accusations of genocide, and thus dealing with border and territorial issues in favor of Croatia.

In conclusion, I’ll mention a detail from the letter in which Willy Wimmer wrote to Gerhard Shroeder: ”Serbia has to be permanently excluded from European development, thus securing the military presence of the USA”.

Ivica Dacic knows all this, but, as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung stated: ”Dacic is a politician who loves money”.

His statement can thus be better understood in the context of him being, a small, corrupted politician, who has to tell fairy tales about the EU to his own people.

The students of Belgrade University

Russian Information Agency Novosti
June 28, 2013

Deputy PM Expects Sabotage Attempts Against Russia in Arctic

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“NATO has long been discussing plans to reinforce the naval grouping in the Arctic region under the pretext of safeguarding commercial navigation,” Rogozin, who is Russia’s former envoy to Brussels, said…

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MOSCOW: Russia’s oil and gas extraction infrastructure in the Arctic could become a target for sabotage attempts by other countries as the race to exploit the Arctic shelf leads to conflicts of interest between competing nations, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Friday.

“The settlement of these conflicts could very easily exceed the boundaries of diplomacy. It’s quite possible that Russia’s oil and gas production facilities might see secret sabotage attempts by rival countries,” Rogozin, who is responsible for the defense industry in the government, said on Friday.

He added that Russia is not yet ready for such threats, which would require modern monitoring equipment able to operate both above ground and underwater.

According to Rogozin, Russia would need to identify the nature and source of the threat in order to strike back accordingly.

“NATO has long been discussing plans to reinforce the naval grouping in the Arctic region under the pretext of safeguarding commercial navigation,” Rogozin, who is Russia’s former envoy to Brussels, said without giving further details.

The race in the Arctic to exploit previously inaccessible resources, accounting for an estimated 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30 percent of its untapped natural gas, has accelerated in recent years. Russian energy giants Gazprom and Rosneft have obtained licenses to explore the Russian continental shelf – an initiative that has been strongly opposed by environmentalists.

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

Georges Duhamel: Selections on war

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Georges Duhamel
From The Heart’s Domain (La Possession du monde) (1919)
Translated by Eleanor Stimson Brooks

I remember seeing hills that had been disemboweled by a bombardment and were sown with long splinters of twisted iron; the base of a monstrous shell appeared before me, one day, under these conditions, and it seemed to me truly inhuman, this product of the work of men: the noble metal, with which so many good and beautiful things can be made, took on a hateful appearance. Man had achieved the mournful miracle of denaturing nature, rendering it ignoble and criminal.

***

An unhealthy curiosity and the taste for anomalies incline us to take pleasure in seeing a creature perform an action for which its own organism seems unsuited. It palls very quickly. For a long time now, for example, the flight of aviators has ceased to excite our interest: we know all about that unmysterious machine; its very sound and its presence in the sky defile the silence and the space whose virginity was a refuge for us.

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When beauty seems to have abandoned the world, we must realize that it has first deserted our own hearts.

***

It may be that the philosophy which absorbs you is one that leaves no room for indulgence. Perhaps you feel yourself full of bitterness for your fellows, perhaps you have made up your mind not to see in the activity of the living any but motives of greed and covetousness. Do not laugh! Do not be in too great haste to prove yourself right! Above everything, do not rejoice in being right in so dismal a fashion.

I say it again, if certain pages of Beethoven were better known to those who suffer and slaughter one another they would succeed in disarming many a resentment, they would restore to many a tense face a soft, ineffable smile.

If you do not believe this, you are not accustomed to living among simple people, you have never watched an irrepressible class of little children whom their master dominates and calms by making them sing, you have never heard a multitude of people intoning a hymn in some cathedral, you have never seen a great flood of workingmen, in some foul slum, break into the rhythm of a revolutionary song, perhaps you have never even seen a poor man weeping because a violin had just recalled to him his youth and the obscure thoughts he believed he had never in all his life confessed to anyone.

Think of all these things and then form some notion of what it is the thoughts of the great masters can do with the soul. Why, why is it not better known, this thing which is, indeed, knowledge and revelation itself? Why does it not reign over the empires, this which is sovereignty, grandeur, majesty? Why is it not more ardently invoked in the hour of crisis, this that teaches, equally well, fruitful doubt and serene resolution?

***

The war, which has crushed such great masses of men, has brought us face to face with this melancholy evidence, it has enabled us thoroughly to examine many individuals and to put many experiences to the proof. It has permitted us to measure the whole humiliation of moral civilization before that other, the scientific and industrial civilization which we might still better call practical civilization.

Gifted, serious, good men have said to me, “First of all one has to live. You can see, in the midst of this hurricane, what would become of a people weakened by idealism and given over to the works of the spirit. My son will study chemistry. The coming century will be a hard one, my son will perhaps never have the time to read Emerson or acquaint himself with the works of Bach! Too bad! But first of all one has to live.”

Does it not seem as if error had a dazzling power to seduce us and overwhelm us? Men are always hoping to conquer it by yielding to its demands. No one has the courage to turn his own steps away from its shifting shore. No one, for example, says to me: “The moral culture of the world is in peril. Mechanical progress monopolizes and swallows up all human energy. The generous soul of the best men is forgotten, in exile. Let us, with a common voice, with all our strength, summon it to come back to us, or let us go and die in exile with it, in an exile that is noble and pure.”

Russian Information Agency Novosti
June 27, 2013

NATO Lambasts Russian Fences in Breakaway Georgian Region

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[Rasmussen] commended Georgia for being a “strong supporter of shared security” and having “more troops in Afghanistan than any other of NATO’s partner nations.” He hailed the country’s progress “on the path to Euro-Atlantic integration, including in NATO,” adding that “Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic integration will only be a matter of time.”

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TBILISI: NATO on Thursday once again harshly criticized Russia’s construction of barbed-wire fences along an ex-Georgian region’s 350-kilometer border with that country.

Georgia lost control of a fifth of its territory in 2008 after fighting a five-day war with Russia over the breakaway region, South Ossetia. Russia subsequently granted independence to that region and the nearby province of Abkhazia, but reportedly gave the residents Russian passports.

Speaking in Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, on Thursday, NATO’s secretary general reiterated, nearly word-for-word, comments that he made early this month when the fences were reported.

“Fence-building impedes freedom of movement. It can further inflame tensions. It is not acceptable and should be reversed,” Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at the opening of Georgia’s National Parliamentary Library.

He commended Georgia for being a “strong supporter of shared security” and having “more troops in Afghanistan than any other of NATO’s partner nations.” He hailed the country’s progress “on the path to Euro-Atlantic integration, including in NATO,” adding that “Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic integration will only be a matter of time.”

Late last month, the Georgian Foreign Ministry said Russian border guards had installed barbed-wire fences along Georgia’s border with South Ossetia and had even pushed the border line inside Georgia.

Georgia maintains its claim to sovereignty over both Abkhazia and South Ossetia, whose Russia-proclaimed independence has been recognized by only a handful of other nations.

Rasmussen on Thursday urged Russia to maintain peace in the area, in keeping with an agreement signed in the wake of the August 2008 conflict. “Such moves [building fences] are contrary to international law, and they are contrary to the ceasefire agreement,” he said.

In November 2010, Georgia’s president declared that his country would never use force to restore the territorial integrity of the breakaway republics.

“We have welcomed Georgia’s commitment not to use force, and we have called on Russia to reciprocate,” Rasmussen said Thursday, adding that “it takes two to tango” and “Russia has to help in this regard.”

Under an interstate agreement with Russia signed on April 30, 2009, South Ossetia delegated its border protection functions to Russia until the republic established its own border guard service.

Rasmussen arrived in Tbilisi on Wednesday for a two-day visit to assess steps that Georgia has taken to fulfill requirement for joining NATO.
Georgia will become a full-fledged member of NATO, but further work is needed to meet the requirements of membership, he said, adding that, for example, Georgia should continue to work to ensure the highest democratic standards.

“You are on the right path. Because it’s the path to NATO’s open door,” he said. “You are making real progress. With consistent and determined efforts, you will reach your destination. And you will walk through that open door.”

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
June 26, 2013

Georgia: now the top non-NATO troop contributor in Afghanistan

Georgia has been assisting the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan since 2004. Following a substantial increase of its deployment in October last year, Georgia currently has over 1,500 troops deployed there, making it the largest non-NATO contributor to ISAF and the fifth largest contributor overall.

“We greatly appreciate the active support that Georgia has made to our operations – past and present,” said NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen at the NATO-Georgia Commission meeting of defence ministers on 5 June…

Georgia is currently providing two infantry battalions serving with US forces in Helmand Province, an infantry platoon serving with the US contingent in Kabul, medical personnel to assist ISAF within the Lithuanian Provincial Reconstruction Team, and a number of staff officers serving at various locations.

A difficult mission in Helmand

In the volatile district of Musa Qala in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan, Georgian soldiers partner with Afghan National Security Forces to conduct patrols…

Committed to the post-2014 mission

Georgia indicated its willingness to continue to support the development of the Afghan security forces, after the completion of ISAF’s mission at the end of 2014, when responsibility for security will have been fully transferred to the Afghan authorities and security forces.

Known as “Resolute Support”, the post-2014 mission will not be a combat mission. It will be significantly smaller and its aim will be to train, advise and assist the Afghan forces.

The Georgian government has also pledged financial support for the future development of the Afghan National Security Forces.

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

Henri Barbusse: Selections on war

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Henri Barbusse
From Light (1918)
Translated by Fitzwater Wray

The valley has suddenly filled with tumult. On the road which goes along the opposite slope a regiment is passing on its way to the barracks, a new regiment, with its colors. The flag goes on its way in the middle of a long-drawn hurly-burly, in vague shouting, in plumes of dust and a sparkling mist of battle.

We have both mechanically risen on the edge of the road. At the moment when the flag passes before us, the habit of saluting it trembles in my arms. But, just as when a while ago the bishop’s lifted hand did not humble me, I stay motionless, and I do not salute.

No, I do not bow in presence of the flag. It frightens me, I hate it and I accuse it. No, there is no beauty in it; it is not the emblem of this corner of my native land, whose fair picture it disturbs with its savage stripes. It is the screaming signboard of the glory of blows, of militarism and war. It unfurls over the living surges of humanity a sign of supremacy and command; it is a weapon. It is not the love of our countries, it is their sharp-edged difference, proud and aggressive, which we placard in the face of the others. It is the gaudy eagle which conquerors and their devotees see flying in their dreams from steeple to steeple in foreign lands. The sacred defense of the homeland — well and good. But if there was no offensive war there would be defensive war. Defensive war has the same infamous cause as the offensive war which provoked it; why do we not confess it? We persist, through blindness or duplicity, in cutting the question in two, as if it were too great. All fallacies are possible when one speculates on morsels of truth. But Earth only bears one single sort of inhabitant.

It is not enough to put something on the end of a stick in public places, to shake it on the tops of buildings and in the faces of public assemblies, and say, “It is decided that this is the loftiest of all symbols; it is decided that he who will not bend the knee before it shall be accursed.” It is the duty of human intelligence to examine if that symbolism is not fetish-worship.

As for me, I remember it was said that logic has terrible chains and that all hold together — the throne, the altar, the sword and the flag. And I have read, in the unchaining and the chaining-up of war, that these are the instruments of the cult of human sacrifices.

***

The idea of motherland is not a false idea, but it is a little idea, and one which must remain little.

There is only one common good. There is only one moral duty, only one truth, and every man is the shining recipient and guardian of it. The present understanding of the idea of motherland divides all these great ideas, cuts them into pieces, specializes them within impenetrable circles. We meet as many national truths as we do nations, and as many national duties, and as many national interests and rights — and they are antagonistic to each other. Each country is separated from the next by such walls — moral frontiers, material frontiers, commercial frontiers — that you are imprisoned when you find yourself on either side of them. We hear talk of sanctified selfishness, of the adorable expansion of one race across the others, of noble hatreds and glorious conquests, and we see these ideals trying to take shape on all hands. This capricious multiplication of what ought to remain one leads the whole of civilization into a malignant and thorough absurdity. The words “justice” and “right” are too great in stature to be shut up in proper nouns, any more than Providence can be, which every royalty would fain take to itself.

National aspirations — confessed or unconfessable — are contradictory among themselves. All populations which are narrowly confined and elbow each other in the world are full of dreams vaster than each of them. The nations’ territorial ambitions overlap each other on the map of the universe; economic and financial ambitions cancel each other mathematically. Then in the mass they are unrealizable.

And since there is no sort of higher control over this scuffle of truths which are not admissible, each nation realizes its own by all possible means, by all the fidelity and anger and brute force she can get out of herself. By the help of this state of world-wide anarchy, the lazy and slight distinction between patriotism, imperialism and militarism is violated, trampled, and broken through all along the line, and it cannot be otherwise. The living universe cannot help becoming an organization of armed rivalry. And there cannot fail to result from it the everlasting succession of evils, without any hope of abiding spoils, for there is no instance of conquerors who have long enjoyed immunity, and history reveals a sort of balance of injustices and of the fatal alternation of predominance. In all quarters the hope of victory brings in the hope of war. It is conflict clinging to conflict, and the recurrent murdering of murders.

Voice of Russia
June 26, 2013

Self-defense has become act of war for the U.S. and NATO – Rick Rozoff
Recorded on June 10, 2013

AUDIO

The delivery of S-300 defensive missile batteries to Syria would protect the country from the types of attacks carried out by Israel and the U.S. but the West views such self-defense measures as an act of war and says that the ability of countries not friendly to the U.S. and its allies to defend themselves, in particular Syria, would upset the “balance of power”. Regular Voice of Russia contributor spoke about this, Manning and more in his latest interview with the Voice of Russia.

You are listening to an interview with Rick Rozoff, the owner of the Stop NATO website and international mailing list.

Part 1

Part 2

Robles: What is your opinion on S-300s? What can you tell us about S-300s? How will that change the situation?

Rozoff: A retired general stated that with batteries, I think the estimate was 10 to 12 S-300 missiles, that the territory of Syria as a whole would effectively be protected from what are the likely sorts of attacks the United States and Israel would launch against it, which are cruise missiles and missiles launched from aircraft, fixed-wing aircraft, and in that sense give Syria something that previous victims of US-NATO attacks – Libya, Yugoslavia, Iraq – surely did not have, which is effective control of their airspace and the ability to defend their air force and other military assets from marauding Western war planes bombing them.

So, it is very significant if they obtain them. Of course, like most of your listeners, I have heard disparate and at times conflicting accounts of how imminent the arrival of the S-300s is: everything from next year to they’re on their way, there is probably misrepresentation of statements by President Bashar Assad that they are already there.

Then of course there have been statements by Israeli government officials that they “would not tolerate” that. Can you imagine? They “would not tolerate” a sovereign nation, Russia, delivering on a contractual agreement to supply strictly defensive weapons.

Robles: That was a 2010 agreement. I just wanted to remind everybody out there. That agreement between Russia and Syria that goes back to 2010 and these are defensive weapons as well. Russia stated that all the contracts were legal, they’re transparent, they don’t go against any international sanctions or anything. These were long ago in the making.

You’ve mentioned Israel as well and several statements were made by prominent politicians and officials in the west that this would upset the balance of power between Israel and Syria. What do you make of that statement? In other words, Israel can’t just bomb Syria with impunity any time it wants or what?

Rozoff: That is exactly how I would interpret that statement, and what a hubristic statement, and the fact that comments like that would be reported dutifully and uncritically by the major press wire services of the West, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if U.S. government officials echoed sentiments of that sort.

The balance of power means: My side has uncontested superiority over yours, and I can strike your side without having to worry about retaliation.

Anyone who upsets that balance of power – I mean it is not an equal balance of power, is it? – it is a very one-sided one. It suggests that, heaven forbid somebody had the audacity to try to defend themselves, because once they do that then it is a call for direct military attack on them because we can’t allow them the ability to defend their own territory. This is what I hear.

So that means that the old-fashioned notions, if you will, that each country has the right to defend its own territory are no longer operational and that now if you are with the U.S., or one of its major allies, you have the right not only to set up impenetrable missile shields over your country, but you have the right to demand that bordering nations they not protect their skies and they not protect themselves and if they do, that is seen as what? An act of war?

Robles: Unbelievable. Rick we haven’t talked about Bradley Manning before but I’d like to get some of your opinions because he did attempt to expose a lot of the stuff that we talk about all the time. What is your opinion on the Bradley Manning case it just started off, his so-called trial, if you want to call it that?

Rozoff: It is a travesty, not a trial and it’s drumhead justice, with “justice” in italics or quotation marks.

He is being prosecuted as an example to others, so that anyone within the military with a shred of decency that is appalled by atrocities of the sort that he, the noted video that I think most people are familiar with, was able to help Wikileaks expose will think twice about it because they can see the example that has been made out of Manning.

And this is, for a country that prides itself or dictates rather to the rest for the world the need of transparency and so forth, and command responsibility, to the leaders of other nations to conduct trials of this sort is a self-indictment and I think it will go down in history as some of the most infamous show trials.

Robles: They are trying to say that he aided the enemy. Do you know any actual damage that he did or in some way that he actually aided the enemy? Some damage he did to NATO or the West other than revealing crimes and the criminality of their behavior?

Rozoff: I do not. You know, that what I’ve read, this is very basic synopsis of it, but the prosecution is claiming that he directly or indirectly, at first hand or second hand, I can’t see how it could be at first hand really, delivered information directly into the hands of our enemies, or words to that effect. That is what I’ve read earlier today.

I don’t know what they could conceivably be speaking about that out there. Unless they are suggesting by releasing information to Wikileaks and that in turn somehow getting on the Internet, that anyone in this world of seven billion people who has access to the internet could see…

Robles: So, basically what they are saying, is if you have some information, you publish it, if Osama bin Laden had read it, then you are guilty of aiding the enemy.

Rozoff: That’s the sort of perverse and reverse logic they are using right now. And first of all that excludes motive; if I have no motive to provide information that would in any way or form embolden so-called enemy combatants anywhere in the world, but if, inadvertently, through no intention and no action on my own, such is the result then I am held accountable for it as though I deliberately intended that to come about.

Robles: We are on the short wave here, probably going out to anybody in the world, penguins in Antarctica and little green men on the moon could probably listen to us if they wanted to. Are we giving the enemy information if somebody in al-Qaeda has a short wave tuned in or they get on a satellite radio or something and tune us in?

Rozoff: I think there’s a distinction between information and encouragement, and I think what we are getting dangerously close to right now is that government privacy is now paralleling in many ways very dubious concepts of copyright infringement, the intent of which is to make the dissemination of almost any kind of information illegal. Either it is branded as espionage or as piracy and the idea that something I say may be heard by somebody who passes it on to ten generations of other people through different links in the chain and eventually somebody says; “That encourages me to go out and do something violent or illegal”, that is no justification for preventing free speech.

Nobody can control what happens with comments – innocent, peaceful comments – that a person makes, how they could be distorted and passed on and viewed inaccurately by a third or a tenth or a hundredth party who then acts on it in some manner.

That is so farfetched. Really it shouldn’t be even discussed but in the case of Bradley Manning, unfortunately, this is what I understand pretty much to be the case.

If he were the conduit through which information that might not otherwise have appeared on the Internet, appears there, and then months or years later somebody sees it and uses that as the pretext, if not as the reason, for doing something that he is ex post facto held accountable for what somebody he has never met has done seems ludicrous to me, it really does. But it is a frightening precedent of course. And it has a chilling effect on anyone who wants to disseminate information that the government might find to be inexpedient.

Robles: Are you getting any blowback or feedback or anything from your efforts?

Rozoff: As with anyone in this situation, you can well imagine, I have a website Stop NATO and every so often somebody posts comments from the U.S., somewhere from the Defense Department or the British Ministry of Defense most recently, and these are people who try to be very chummy as if that they just happened across the website in the course of their reading and take issue with an article or something that is there. But they are clearly information officers and it is their job to troll the Internet and to find…

Against the billions of dollars they have to propagandize, billions of dollars they have to conduct operations both overt and covert and to influence people’s thinking, heaven forbid there’s one individual sitting with a website someplace trying to disseminate contrary information, that person has to be silenced, in the name of “democracy” or “freedom” or “free flow of information” or something.

Robles: They watch everybody. It is crazy.

Rozoff: They have a zero tolerance towards dissent, and that is what the Bradley Manning and the Julian Assange cases really should demonstrate to the world: is that somebody who uses freedom of expression and so forth as an excuse to criticize other governments around the world, will tolerate absolutely no dissent in their own country, and will brand any kind of dissent as being espionage.

Robles: But any dissent anywhere else is ok, it is freedom of speech and democracy.

Rozoff: It is to be applauded. As a matter of fact we were speaking of Hillary Clinton earlier, announcing that she was going to tweet in Russian, Chinese, Hindu and Farsi.

Robles: That never worked out, did it?

Rozoff: Evidently the governments of those countries know how to combat a propaganda campaign.

Robles: I mean the State Department couldn’t get the word “restart” right,the wrote “overload” so I don’t see how they could actually come up with a legible and intelligent tweet once a day. I think that would be too much.

Rozoff: I believe you’re right.

Robles: Especially in four or five languages. I mean come on, they couldn’t translate one word right.

Rozoff: I’ve seen the State Department stumble over standard English on occasion. I can only imagine what they would do with the foreign tongues.

Robles: Okay. Let’s not…They deserve to be bashed Rick. Anyway, are you still there or what?

Rozoff: I’m still here.

Robles: I thought maybe they cut the line already. All right, anyway. So we are probably going through Menwith Hill to the NSA and all this so, do you want to say hi to the spooks? No it’s okay, just kidding.

Rozoff: I’ve known them for so long that it’s almost…but who knows?

But you know, there are figures right now, I just saw the NATO analysis of the Syrian situation that even though something like 80 percent of the Syrian population now supports Assad even if they didn’t before – the ratings have never been higher – that 20% supports the opposition.

So, the numbers are shifting. This is a pragmatic consideration. This is somebody who may have opposed the government two years ago but that given the alternative of a bunch of armed gangs running around the country, better the government than anyone else.

Robles: What about the minority populations? There are certain Jewish parts of the population in Syria, Christians, there are Coptics, a host of…There is an Armenian population. How do they all feel about arming these Islamic lunatics? I’m sorry.

Rozoff: I mean the armed extremists, who are in large part foreign mercenaries, that is something else we have to recollect. These are not just domestic extremists and others, including cannibals as we have established. But these are in many cases from around the Islamic world. This very much parallels what happened in Afghanistan in the 1980s where the United States and Saudi Arabia helped organize jihadis from around the world to come to Northwest Pakistan to fight in Afghanistan and against Afghanistan.

And we are seeing a parallel of that now, they have an international mercenary squad with combat experience not only in Afghanistan and Pakistan but in the Russian North Caucasus and the Balkans and North Africa, and the minorities, we have to recall that Syria is an extremely diverse mosaic of cultures and traditions and religions, confessions, going back millennia, going back as a matter of fact to 6-7 thousand years. Syria is in Mesopotamia. There are a good number of ethnic Assyrians to this day in the country.

Robles: What is going to happen to all these…To this wonderful mosaic of humanity? What is going to happen if these insurgents come into power?

Rozoff: We know exactly what is going to happen based on the experiences in Kosovo and Iraq. It’s that the ethnic and religious minorities are going to be terrorized into fleeing the country; they are going to be murdered and persecuted in large numbers.

Several weeks ago two Orthodox bishops were kidnapped in Syria and they are still being held incommunicado. One was a Greek Orthodox bishop, another was a Syriac, which is to say Assyrian, Orthodox Christian bishop and for all we know they could be dead.

And this is what other religious and ethnic minorities within the country know to expect, in the event of a so-called rebel victory in the country.

Much as what we’ve seen in Iraq where prior to the invasion of the country ten years ago you had an estimated population of half a million Christians, for the most part Assyrians, that number has been cut by 50 percent with 250,000 who have fled or been killed. And what you see is an ethnic and confessional purging of a country.

The just horrid mass killings in Iraq, which are also similarly motivated, the attacks tend to be overwhelmingly against Shiite Muslims and against Christians, perpetrated by the same kind of Wahhabi extremists backed by Saudi Arabia, backed by the United States.

Similar things have occurred in Kosovo. We do know that groups, apparently the premier fighting force within that armed opposition is al-Nusra, which is a Wahhabi extremist, Saudi-oriented or -backed Sunni theocratic fighting force, one the U.S. even dissociates itself from, essentially considering it a terrorist organization. But that’s been exactly the model that was used in Afghanistan in the 1980s and subsequently in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s and was used in Libya two years ago and is being used in Syria now.

You were listening to an interview in progress with Rick Rozoff, the Owner of the Stop NATO website and international mailing list. You can find the previous parts of this interview on our website at english.ruvr.ru.

Ministry of Defence of Georgia
June 26, 2013

North Atlantic Council (NAC) visit to Georgia/Meeting of the NATO-Georgia Commission 2013

At the invitation of the Georgian authorities, the North Atlantic Council will visit Georgia on 26-27 June 2013. The NATO Delegation will be chaired by NATO Secretary General Mr. Anders Fogh Rasmussen. It will be the third visit of the NAC to Georgia in the last five years. The NAC visit attests to the intensive relations and successful cooperation between Georgia and the Alliance.

In the framework of the visit, the NATO-Georgia Commission will be held with the participation of Georgian Prime-Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili. The NAC will meet with the President of Georgia and members of the Parliament. In the framework of the visit, the Secretary General will hold bilateral meetings with the Georgian Prime-Minister, the President, the Chairman of the Parliament, the leader of the Parliamentary minority and the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The Secretary General will have a working dinner with the Minister of Defence and the Secretary of the Security Council. The NATO Secretary General will also deliver a speech at the National Library in a meeting with students, and will greet Georgian soldiers prior to their departure for participation in the ISAF mission in Afganistan.

NATO Ambassadors will also hold meetings with the representatives of non-governmental and international organizations and the media.

The North Atlantic Council held its first visit to Georgia on 15-16 September 2008. In the framework of the visit, the frame document establishing the NATO-Georgia Commission was signed, and the first meeting of the Commission was held. The NATO-Georgia Commission serves as a forum for both political consultations and practical cooperation between Georgia and the Alliance to assist Georgia in achieving its goal of integration into NATO. The Commission facilitates political dialogue between the Alliance and Georgia and deepens cooperation on all relevant levels.

The second NAC visit to Georgia was held on 9-10 November 2011. The meeting of the NATO-Georgia Commission adopted a joint statement wherein 28 NATO members welcomed the achievements of Georgia’s reform process, reaffirmed their commitment to the decision of the Bucharest Summit and their strong support for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Georgia.

The North Atlantic Council is the principal political decision-making body within NATO. The Council is chaired by the NATO Secretary General. It brings together high level representatives of each member country to discuss policy or operational questions that require collective decisions. All members have an equal right to express their views and share in the consensus on which decisions are based. The NAC meets at least every week, and often more frequently, at the level of permanent representatives; it meets twice a year at the level of ministers of foreign affairs, three times a year at the level of ministers of defence, and occasionally at the summit level, with the participation of prime ministers and heads of state and government.

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

Jules Romains: Selections on war

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Jules Romains
From Verdun: The Prelude (1938)
Translated by Gerard Hopkins

Now they preferred to conclude that if victory couldn’t be achieved in conditions which they, in their sterling good sense, had regarded as almost perfect, then it could never be achieved at all. There was no reason why this unnatural war should ever stop, or rather it will only stop when everybody, on both sides, had been killed, There was going to be another winter, that was obvious; but one winter more or less wouldn’t change matters. The soldiers were beginning to think that they were in for a life sentence. The end of the ordeal would come only with the end of their lives.

***

Why had morale fallen to such a low pitch? Because the men felt that the lives of their comrades had been just thrown away wantonly (and who would say that they were wrong?); and also because they had lost all faith in the war’s ever ending (again, who would say that they were wrong?). Absurd, childish perhaps; yet not so absurd as might at first appear. What was much more absurd was the attempt to see this war in the light of arguments drawn from the lessons of earlier wars. All the wars of recent history of course had ended, had, as a matter of fact, been fairly short, including those of Napoleon. No doubt they had begun again almost at once, but they had ended. But the records of humanity did not hold memory of wars that had practically been endless, practically, that is to say, when reckoned by the scale of human life. If this war was going on in ten years’ time, it would, for those taking part in it, be to all intents and purposes eternal. Most of them would be dead. As to the rare survivors…well, the arguments in favour of a short war drawn from the deadliness of modern weapons, from considerations of economy and finance, had been shown to be worthless. After fifteen months of fighting didn’t the prospects of peace seem just as far off as they had done on the day of mobilization? The nations of Europe were so fast caught in the toils of war that they no longer knew how to break free. The only thing they thought about now was how they might involve the few countries that had so far remained outside.

***

If he was to get any sleep at all, he must find a grain of moral comfort somewhere. He needed much more than the illusion of his own personal security. He must create for himself the further illusion that the world was somehow to remain habitable, that, in some way or other, it would be possible to come to turns with it. Otherwise the human spirit, shaken and torn to its ultimate depths, would simply refuse to provide the minimum of vitality which human beings require if they are to remain animate at all, if they are even to sleep, since the act of sleeping implies the willingness to face tomorrow and the days that are to follow, assumes a degree of confidence sufficient to force the sleeper into the effort required by renewed wakefulness.

Voice of Russia
June 24, 2013

Snowden would be better off in Cuba, chance of coup d’état is much less than elsewhere – Blum

AUDIO

Speaking about the latest Edward Snowden’s travel ‘plans’ and the confusion the world has been exposed to in the media on the subject of his whereabouts, Mr. William Blum, an American author, historian and a longstanding critic of US foreign policy claims that Cuba would be Snowden’s best bet, as it’s “the most guaranteed place not to buckle to any kind of American pressure” and “the chance of coup d’état is much less than elsewhere”. He also thinks the American whistleblower allegedly chose Ecuador “because of their record with Julian Assange” and says the Russians are purposefully making the confusion in the media to make it difficult for the CIA to capture or assassinate NSA leaker.

Robles: I’d really like to get your opinion on the whole Snowden affair, since this is something I think you are pretty close to, as far as the whistleblowing. What do you make of the whole situation? And what do you think his chances are of making it to Ecuador, and why Ecuador?

Blum: This is a very brave man. I hope he makes it somewhere. I think that Cuba would be his best bet, as it is the most guaranteed place not to buckle to any kind of American pressure. Where is he now, I have no idea. I think all the confusion that we’ve been exposed to in the media is not by chance. I think the Russians are purposely doing this to make it difficult for the CIA to capture or assassinate Snowden, which in fact they would love to do. This is all I know about it.

Robles: You know a lot about the South American countries, Latin American countries and the instability in a lot of those countries. Why would he go to Ecuador, I mean it is a small country? I’m sure the knowledge he has, I don’t see what real huge use it would have to Ecuadorian intelligence.

Blum: His knowledge concerning who was being spied upon by the U.S. Government honestly would not be of much value to any foreign nation. I don’t think that’s the issue.

I think he chose Ecuador because of their record with Julian Assange. They have proven themselves to be capable protectors of someone like him. And so, that’s probably the only reason he chose Ecuador. Of course, President Correa is a leftist and the people under him in high positions are also leftist, so that’s a protection.

Robles: Latin American countries can be very volatile. What if Correa is voted out of office next time and some right-wing president comes in?

Blum: Correa was re-elected as president within the past six months I think.

Robles: Yes, he was.

Blum: So, he stays for a few years. Although, I would not shut out the CIA instigating a coup. They tried in the past to do the same. But now they may be more serious about it. They could certainly pour their heart and soul into it, and use all the assets and all their wealth, and their wealth is their main asset and they can buy almost anything and anyone. So, that’s the reason I think Snowden would be better off in Cuba, the chance of coup d’état is much less than elsewhere.

Robles: Yes, sure, I mean they’ve been trying to assassinate Castro… what was it?

Blum: Yes they’ve been trying to assassinate Castro 600 times or so, but haven’t succeeded.

Robles: Why didn’t he stay in Russia, I mean there is a very little chance that Russia would buckle the U.S.?

Blum: Russia does not want to have all these headaches that might cause. And keep in mind, this is not quite the Cold War. Russia is not a Communist country, it is not at war ideologically with the US. It is at war on a different level. The US has surrounded Russia with military bases. It’s incorporated many of the former Soviet republics into the NATO and all of them are not far from Russia.

So, the US is really threatening Russia and Russia has a reason to be hostile towards the U.S., not as much as it has been in the Cold War, but enough. They could have kept Snowden there. I don’t know. He may even still be there, as far as we know he’s still there.

Robles: I think if Russia made a decision to give him an asylum, and the Russian officials have said he would have been granted it had the he requested it, I’m sure Russia would be much more in a position to protect him. It is not that easy for the CIA to operate here and manipulate the politicians and everything, as I think it is in many Latin American countries. And the same thing is for China. First, I thought maybe he went from Hong Kong to mainland China, but, apparently not.

Blum: The point is that I don’t know what’s going to happen. He could wind up in Russia or in Ecuador, or Cuba, or Venezuela. But he is not going to wind up in California, I’m sure of that.

Robles: What do you think the CIA or and NSA is going to try to do to get him back? How far do think they are going to go?

Blum: Physically get him back?

Robles: Or get rid of him.

Blum: It depends on how many opportunities they have. The Russians and the other countries we’ve mentioned have to be super careful to avoid giving the CIA any special opportunity, which probably is why we have all this confusion. This is a some kind of master plan.

Robles: Once he gets to Ecuador, if that’s where he’s going, what do you think is going to happen?

Blum: It is hard to imagine him living a peaceful life there. He will always be looking over his shoulder. The CIA can have 1000 assassins induced with a large reward. So, I can’t see him having a peaceful and stable life there. But he must have sorted out all this in advance, I hope he has a master plan.

Robles: Well, I think he was very clever in getting out of their clutches and getting to Hong Kong. That was actually a pretty wise move, because he was able to get there without a visa or anything. So, I guess he fell off the grid for a while. What’s your opinion of the revelations that he’s made? And how do you see his case in contrast to an average espionage case?

Blum: Compared to the WikiLeaks, it is not quite as dramatic as WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks exposed all kinds of very-very embarrassing things concerning the US foreign policy. The Snowden’s revelations, it is just one big embarrassment, it is not 100 different small embarrassments. It is just the embarrassment that they were spying even more than most people thought. I’ve seen many people who assumed that the NSA was covering everyone, those people would not be surprised. To me, it was not quite as embarrassing to the US foreign policy as the WikiLeaks revelations were.

Robles: To the world’s public though, I mean I have always had this suspicion and I think you had, and any thinking person on the Internet has had this suspicion that they are being watched or something. But this is right in our face now – we are all being watched, we are all being spied on, they are into absolutely everything. Do you personally feel uncomfortable getting online anymore? What effect do you think this is going to have on the Internet?

Blum: I was always careful about what I said online and emails. That’s not going to change… well, it brings more cautiousness than usual, but not much. So, to me it is not going to be a big change.

You can find part 2 of this interview on our website at english.ruvr.ru

Voice of Russia
June 23, 2013

U.S. courts Taliban to keep nine bases in Afghanistan – Zalmay Gulzad

AUDIO

The situation in Afghanistan after more than 12 years of U.S. occupation is getting worse by the day. The United States continues to support and make deals with the Taliban in order to guarantee that their designs for the country are fulfilled, most importantly keeping 9 military bases in the country after the official withdrawal of troops in 2014. President Karzai and the Afghan people are tired of the U.S. double-dealing and have decided to stop all negotiations.

Hello! This is John Robles, I’m talking with Dr. Zalmay Gulzad. He is a Professor at Harold Washington College in Chicago in the Political Science Department.

Robles: Hello Sir! How are you this evening?

Gulzad: Very good, thank you very much.

Robles: First question: can you give our listeners a little bit of an update? And we’d really like to hear what you think about this situation currently in Afghanistan, especially with this kind switch of events that are happening right now, as far as Russia supporting Karzai etc?

Gulzad: The situation is that the area is totally in chaos. Afghanistan, Iran, Syria and Turkey and all these areas are in trouble.

What Afghanistan really wanted to have is: the Afghans must lead the peace talk, that was the goal. What happened was that the United States as usual, we have seen the history, the United States has this very strong alliance with the Pakistani military, and also with the Pakistani secret police, the ISI. Everybody in the world knows that Talibans are supported by the Pakistani military and by the ISI secret police of Pakistan.

So, Americans made a deal with them like: “Okay, we want to have nine bases in Afghanistan. This negotiation is going on and while it is going on, we want you to create a situation for us, to tell the Taliban to come to Qatar and sit down with us and talk, we could create something that they would not attack the American bases in Afghanistan and also would not attack the United States from Afghanistan.”

So, if that is happening, America and Taliban are going to talk, the Pakistani military and the ISI, because they are good allies and the United States is giving $2 billion a year to the Pakistani military, they said “Fine!”, they created this.

Robles: Karzai, wasn’t he agreeing to the same thing, to allow bases to remain in Afghanistan? So what happened there?

Gulzad: Karzai has agreed mostly that nine bases should be given to Afghanistan. One condition isd there that most Afghans are asking the United States, that the United States should push the Pakistani military not to support any more, while the Americans and the NATO are leaving, they should not support the Taliban, so that Afghanistan has peace. But the United States is largely saying to Afghans that we cannot do that. So, the objective is this: America wants to make a secret deal, to sell Afghanistan to Pakistan and to the Taliban and the Afghans are not going to accept it.

The other thing is the building which was dedicated to the Afghan Taliban, they’ve put the name on it: Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, and they were flying the Taliban flag. Immediately the Afghan Government and the Afghan officials, they objected to that, that is why Karzai got mad.

Okay, this is supposed to be: you are recognizing Taliban as an entity. And Taliban also used that office to send their delegation to Iran. They were trying to use it. So, that’s why today’s situation got very bad.

Karzai says that we are not going to talk to you anymore about the American troops staying in Afghanistan until things change. So then Kerry, called Karzai in Kabul and he said that the Taliban will not fly the American, I mean the Taliban flag over the building and also they will not call it the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

So, the problem is this: the mistrust between the Afghan Government, the Afghan people and the United States, is because the United States always supported the Taliban, (Al Qaeda is supported by the Taliban), and the United States is having this secret alliance with the Pakistani military, even though there was some sort of election in Pakistan after which the Muslim League, which is a very religious party, won the election. But still, the military is in control.

Nawaz Sharif will become the Prime Minister, he was overthrown by Gen Musharraf in 1991. He was in jail, he was in exile in London and Saudi Arabia but he’s back now, he is the Prime Minister, but he is afraid of the military. The military is calling all the shots in Pakistan.

Robles: What are the chances right now of things being worked out, I mean where do you see the Taliban going? What is the future looking like right now?

Gulzad: The future looks like this: United States wanted to make a deal with Pakistan and with Taliban in order to get their bases, because the United States always looks for their own interests, short term.

As I said before, the nine bases are very important because they are in the north of Afghanistan, west Afghanistan, central Afghanistan, out of Afghanistan and east Afghanistan.

East Afghanistan, northeast Afghanistan is for China, north Afghanistan is for Russia, the west of Afghanistan is for Iran and the south Afghanistan is for the Persian Gulf, because it is 150 miles and they could keep an eye on the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and all this.

The other thing is that if you look throughout the history at what the United States has done, they made quick deals with the Taliban. If you look at the Clinton Administration, when the Taliban was in power I had the pleasure to go to the White House and talk with Clinton and his wife and I told them: “What you are doing in Afghanistan, with Taliban is killing these people?”

Because the Unocal Company, which is a California-based company, contributed money to his election. Clinton made a deal with them, they said: “Okay, as long as Taliban could bring stability in Afghanistan, then there will be this pipeline which is coming from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean.

So, Clinton didn’t give a damn about what Taliban was doing to the Afghan people and Afghan women, and all this. All he was concerned about was how this pipeline should go. He didn’t care about Democracy, he didn’t care about anything. The only thing he cared about was that this pipeline could go so that he could pay back the Unocal who gave him a lot of money in his election.

Right now, this Obama regime is doing exactly the same thing. They want to make a deal with the Devil and they are selling the Afghan people. And then…

Naturally I don’t blame Russia, I don’t blame China, I don’t blame India and all these big powers, they are very nervous because if they leave a lot of these countries such as Pakistan, everybody will arm their own ally, there will be a war. And this war is going to spread, it has already spread to Pakistan and it’s going to spread to the former Soviet Republics, Islamic Republics of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, and that will have a major impact on the future of Russia.

Robles: And what role do you see for Russia right now, in the short term and in the long term?

Gulzad: Russia has a major role. I don’t care what people say that Russia is finished and all this kind of stuff. The people in Afghanistan and in the area are looking forward to see Russia play a major role in the politics of that area. The people of Afghanistan always had good relations with Russia.

You were listening to an interview with Dr. Zalmay Gulzad. He is a Professor at Harold Washington College in Chicago. You can find part two on our website at english.ruvr.ru

Interfax
June 25, 2013

Russian Federation Council member anticipates new leaks concerning U.S. security services

MOSCOW: The drama involving NSA leaker Edward Snowden and the disclosure of classified information regarding the operation of U.S. special services will not be the last of its kind, says Igor Morozov, a veteran of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and currently a member of the Federation Council international affairs committee.

“We can talk about a trend with some degree of certainty today. There is the case of WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, who has been taking refuge at the Ecuadorian embassy in London for more than a year for fear of extradition. There is the case of Pvt. Bradley Manning, who has confessed to passing classified documents to the website WikiLeaks, and now we have Edward Snowden. It looks like these people will not be the last to disclose classified information on U.S. special services,” Morozov said in a Tuesday interview with Interfax.

“These people position themselves as lone fighters and see their mission in informing society of unsanctioned access to people’s private lives by special services,” he said.

Snowden has done a civic deed, and his actions are motivated by the desire to defend human rights and freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. constitution, Morozov said.

“Snowden is a model of a U.S. citizen raised in respect for the right of inviolability of privacy, and from this viewpoint, he is a hero to many Americans, and this is why a movement in his defense is gaining momentum in the U.S., which already numbers dozens of thousands of supporters,” he said.

Morozov pointed out that Snowden is acting not for financial gain. “And this circumstance is appealing to a lot of people. But, at the same time, making public unlawful actions of special services, Snowden has doomed himself to spend the rest of his life underground, because American special services will do everything possible and even impossible to find him and bring him to justice at home,” he said.

Morozov suggested that Snowden is working with professionals who have carefully planned the route of his travel and will ensure his legal defense.

“The fact that the not unknown jurist Baltasar Garzon, who became famous after issuing an arrest warrant for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, is a consultant to WikiLeaks speaks for itself. This man thoroughly knows all nuances of international law,” Morozov said.

There is a reason why Snowden has chosen the transit zone of the Sheremetyevo Airport, Morozov said. “In this transit zone, neither a passenger nor their luggage can be subjected to additional searches or inspections. Moreover, access to the transit zone is available only to someone with a special pass issued by the airport administration,” Morozov said.

The Russian Justice Ministry has repeatedly invited the U.S. to conclude a bilateral extradition agreement or join identical international treaties, Morozov said. “However, all of our initiatives have remained unanswered,” he said.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Allied Command Operations
June 25, 2013

Exercise Anatolian Eagle is a huge success for the E-3A Component
Story by Staff Sgt. R. Michael Longoria
Public Affairs Office, E-3A Component

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Hundreds of participates [sic] from several nations, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and The United Arab Emirates, attended the exercise.

The scenarios for the exercise consist of a “Blue Team” which attacks tactical and strategic targets in a “Red Land” during Combined Air Operations. The Red Land is defended by opposing combat aircraft and surface-to-air missile systems.

====

The E-3A Component is pleased with the outcome of an exercise in Konya, Turkey, which has resulted in an improved working relationship with their international partners. Exercise Anatolian Eagle 13-2 saw the participation of two NATO AWACS and more than 50 fighter jets from various nations. The operation took place from 10 June to 21 June.

“We are here to provide you with a full-spectrum of airborne command and control capabilities,” said 2nd Lt. Eric Lundberg. “As NATO’s eye in the sky, we can provide a 360 degree air picture of the battle space.”
Hundreds of participates from several nations, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and The United Arab Emirates, attended the exercise.

“I’m excited to see all the faces from NATO and our brother nations,” said Turkish Lt. Gen. Abidin Ünal, 1st Air Force commander.

Anatolian Eagle, which started in 2001, is an air force exercise hosted by the Turkish air force. These exercises simulate a war-time environment with a variety of difficulty. After detailed planning, all training is monitored with a computer to help test knowledge, abilities and find deficiencies of the participants.

“Sharing our experiences will help us work together in the future,” said Turkish Maj. Gen. Yilmaz Öskaya, 3rd Main Jet Base commander.

The scenarios for the exercise consist of a “Blue Team” which attacks tactical and strategic targets in a “Red Land” during Combined Air Operations. The Red Land is defended by opposing combat aircraft and surface-to-air missile systems.

During the exercise, AWACS aircraft gave command and control support to Blue Forces while a land-based radar gave support to the Red Forces.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
June 25, 2013

NATO and Colombia open channel for future cooperation

NATO Deputy Secretary General Ambassador Alexander Vershbow and the Defence Minister of Colombia, Juan Carlos Pinzon Bueno, on Tuesday (25 June 2013) signed an Agreement on the Security of Information, an accord that will allow NATO and Colombia to explore future cooperation and consultation in areas of common interest. “As an Alliance of democracies, we are gratified when countries sharing similar values reach out to us,” the Deputy Secretary General said during his meeting with Minister Pinzon Bueno.

Ambassador Vershbow said that Allies have agreed to pursue tailored cooperation with Colombia on a case-by-case basis, in areas of common interest and that by signing this accord, NATO and Colombia stress their shared interest in consultation and cooperation. The Security of Information Agreement does not formally recognise Colombia as a NATO partner but constitutes a first step for future cooperation in the security field. It will facilitate the participation of Colombia in a number of NATO activities. Colombia has already participated in the 2011 NATO Conference on Building Integrity, which was held in Monterey, California. “Colombia’s expertise in enhancing integrity in the military is precisely the kind of substantive contribution that exemplifies the added value of cooperation,” the NATO Deputy Secretary said.

The Ambassador added that NATO has a wide range of partners because global challenges require global solutions. “Cooperative security, through the development of partnerships, is one of the Alliance’s key priorities. NATO’s partnerships over the past two decades have been a real success story,” the Deputy Secretary General underlined. He added that the Alliance has a large network of partners engaged with us in a variety of ways.

U.S. European Command
June 25, 2013

BALTOPS ’13 culminates at Kiel Week
By Lt.j.g. Loren M. Terry Expeditionary Strike Group TWO, Public Affairs

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“For 41 years, this exercise has provided EUCOM the interoperability necessary to continually improve and maintain security in the Baltic region and demonstrates our steadfast commitment to NATO.”

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USS Mount Whitney leads formation during Baltic Operations 2013

KIEL, Germany: Baltic Operations (BALTOPS) 2013, a multi-national forces exercise, drew to a close June 22 in Kiel, Germany.

In Kiel, BALTOPS’ events include a post exercise discussion; ship tours of the BALTOPS Maritime Force by local government officials, military members and the public; a reception aboard USS Mount Whitney (LCC 20); as well as participation in Kiel Week.

Kiel Week is a nine-day sailing festival. The event has a history of more than 200 years, attracts many world famous participants and draws more than 2,000 sail boats and 5,000 participants yearly.

“As a complement to a successful BALTOPS, we are able to participate in Kiel Week, which provides an exciting opportunity to continue developing and enjoying relationships with our coalition partners. Those relationships contribute to a successful BALTOPS and future military operations,” said Cmdr. Lance Lesher, acting afloat deputy commander, Expeditionary Strike Group 2.

Focusing on interoperability and team building, BALTOPS promotes and fosters maritime security and cooperation among regional partners.

…

BALTOPS ’13 began in Ronne, Denmark and Ventspils, Latvia with pre-sail conferences followed by an at-sea phase that included exercises focused on maritime interdiction operations, mine countermeasures, undersea warfare and seamanship. This was followed by a wargame phase which placed participants in an asymmetrical threat environment, allowing them to showcase procedures, training and cooperative efforts honed during the exercise.

“BALTOPS allows participating nations to do combined training and learn from the experiences of the partner nations,” said Cmdr. Gerald Liebich, commanding officer of the German frigate FGS Brandenburg (F215). “The whole purpose of BALTOPS is the team spirit that joint exercises bring out; the Baltic Sea is an outstanding playground for this type of training.”

“The magnitude of BALTOPS provides a unique chance to expand military interoperability and to enhance and strengthen partnership not only among NATO members, but with regional neighbors alike,” said Lt.Cmdr. Egidijus Oleskevicius, commander, Task Unit .50.

With more than 40 multi-national surface and air units participating, BALTOPS ’13 also allowed for numerous opportunities to conduct cross-deck training.

…

“No nation can confront today’s challenges alone,” said Lt.Col. David Bussel, director, Joint Training, Readiness and Exercises at U.S. European Command. “For 41 years, this exercise has provided EUCOM the interoperability necessary to continually improve and maintain security in the Baltic region and demonstrates our steadfast commitment to NATO.”

Regularly scheduled by Commander, U.S. European Command, BALTOPS ’13 was directed from aboard USS Mount Whitney by Rear Adm. Ann Phillips, commander, ESG 2, on behalf of Vice Adm. Frank Pandolfe, commander, U.S. 6th Fleet. Participating nations included Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, the United States and NATO.

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

Coleridge: All our dainty terms for fratricide

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Fire, Famine, And Slaughter: A War Eclogue

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge
From The Destiny of Nations (1817)

‘When Luxury and Lust’s exhausted stores
No more can rouse the appetites of kings;
When the low flattery of their reptile lords
Falls flat and heavy on the accustomed ear;
When eunuchs sing, and fools buffoonery make,
And dancers writhe their harlot-limbs in vain;
Then War and all its dread vicissitudes
Pleasingly agitate their stagnant hearts;
Its hopes, its fears, its victories, its defeats,
Insipid Royalty’s keen condiment!
Therefore, uninjured and unprofited
(Victims at once and executioners),
The congregated Husbandmen lay waste
The vineyard and the harvest. As along
The Bothnic coast, or southward of the Line,
Though hushed the winds and cloudless the high noon,
Yet if Leviathan, weary of ease,
In sports unwieldy toss his island-bulk,
Ocean behind him billows, and before
A storm of waves breaks foamy on the strand.
And hence, for times and seasons bloody and dark,
Short Peace shall skin the wounds of causeless War,
And War, his strainéd sinews knit anew,
Still violate the unfinished works of Peace.’

Trend News Agency
June 24, 2013

NATO delegation to attend seeing off ceremony of Georgian soldiers to Afghanistan
N. Kirtzkhalia

Tbilisi: A NATO delegation within its visit to Georgia will take part in a seeing off ceremony of Georgian soldiers to Afghanistan.

The visit of the NATO delegation led by Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen is scheduled for June 26-27.

The delegation will hold meetings with the Georgian President, Prime Minister, Speaker of the Parliament, foreign minister, defense minister and secretary of the Security Council.

A meeting of the NATO-Georgia commission with Georgian Prime Minister will be also held.

Delegation members will meet with representatives of international, non-governmental organizations and the media.

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

Romain Rolland: Selections on war

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Romain Rolland
From A World In Birth (L’enfantement) (1933)
Translated by Amalia de Alberti

Throughout the war, while the nations were tearing at each other, had not the Money of the Franco-German Forges, which fattened on the carnage, imposed on both States, and the Chief Headquarters of both armies, the obligation of religiously respecting their hen that laid the golden eggs, the Briey basin? And the contract had been loyally respected on both sides, when all other treaties of sovereigns, ministers and States, and the laws of Man and God were no more than scraps of paper.

***

It was clear that Europe and the world were delivered over to the hidden might of monstrous industrial and financial powers. They manipulated the states, democracies and Fascisms; made everything serve their purpose: kings of the Balkans, princes bribed to sell their people, helped; so did the heroes of dagger, bludgeon and castor oil, condottieri and duci with eyes blazing, and great jaws breathing war and pogroms; and also the noble fathers of the Immortal principles of ’89, those overripe pears with their pettifoggery about Parliaments; Hitler, Horthy, Mussolini and Pilsudski; – and why not? the loud-speakers of Paris, Prague, London, Geneva and Washington. Everything can be used, brigandage and idealism, noble candor and infamy; it is only a matter of paying the price: glory, money or crime. Something for every taste! The simplest and the most artful were caught: once a finger was snarled in the machinery, the whole animal was drawn in. Fear completed the capture of which flattery and little friendly presents had been the bait. The big fish were caught on the hook.

***

When the war came, and the intellectuals (led by the members of the University) enrolled of their own accord in the service of their country, the Maréchal of the University, automatically appointed to power in spite of his age, naturally entrusted his favorite with a leading part on the staff of the new Arm he was organizing: Intelligence, militarized for the first time, and requisitioned for service in the factories of intellectual munitions and cannon.

Ministry of Defence of Georgia
June 22, 2013

Course closing ceremony

The Basic Mountain Training Summer Course has officially finished at the Sachkhere Mountain Training School today.

A solemn closing ceremony of the course was held at the drill ground of the Sachkhere School. Trainings and Military Education Commander LTC Shalva Bajelidze and U.S diplomats attended the ceremony.

The exercise, which was held within the frames of NATO Partnership for Peace (PfP) Program, went on for three weeks. 45 attendees of the U.S Reserve Officers` Training Corps took part in the course.

During the Basic Mountain Training Summer Course the American cadets performed various technical-mountaineering tasks by the help of instructors.

The third week was completely dedicated to practice. The cadets were trained in the movement technique across mountains, in crossing rivers and ravines, in technical methods of evacuation and provision of first medical aid. At the final stage, the course participants passed special tests.

At the closing ceremony the graduates were awarded with certificates.

Russian Information Agency Novosti
June 22, 2012

US Boosts Military Presence in Jordan after Exercises

WASHINGTON: Along with US with missiles and fighter jets, about 700 US troops will remain in Jordan after training exercises which ended this week, US President Barack Obama said in his letter to the Congress.

The troops and military equipment took part in the Eager Lion exercises in Jordan.

“This detachment that participated in the exercise and remained in Jordan includes Patriot missile systems, fighter aircraft, and related support, command, control, and communications personnel and systems,” Obama said in a letter to House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner.

“The deployment of this detachment has been directed in furtherance of U.S. national security and foreign policy interests, including the important national interests in supporting the security of Jordan and promoting regional stability, pursuant to my constitutional authority to conduct U.S. foreign relations,” the US president said in his letter.

Jordan, Washington’s longtime ally, sees an inflow of refugees fleeing the ongoing civil war in Syria and possible cross-border missile attacks as a possible threat.

“The detachment will remain in Jordan, in full coordination with the government of Jordan, until the security situation becomes such that it is no longer needed,” Obama’s letter reads.

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

Louis Aragon: Selections on war

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Louis Aragon
From Residential Quarter (Les Beaux Quartiers) (1936)
Translated by Haakon Chevalier

“Liseron, my darling, there are people who want war…”

He had said this in a hollow, breathless voice. The woman raised herself up on her elbows and leaned over him. His head was against her breasts, he felt their panting movement.

“Richard! What are you saying? Who could? The Germans, the Kaiser?”

He felt the uplifted flesh. The living being. The woman. He passed his hand slowly, familiarly, down along her body.

“No,” he said finally. “A lot of people. A lot more than you would think. And not riff-raff. People like you and me. Frenchmen…It seems extraordinary to me…”

“But what? What happened?”

“Oh! It would be difficult to explain to you…For months, now, I’ve been pushing this idea out of my mind…I’ve been telling myself that it’s a stupid business…But it’s there just the same, I can’t help seeing it. No, it’s not one thing more than another. Nothing that I can really tell you. But it’s as if everything…Anyway, the fact is that the idea of war seems to frighten certain circles less and less. There are even people who speak of war as an eventuality to be desired, or at least as something that it would be better to precipitate so that it won’t be too terrible, so as to have everything in our favor…”

“But, Richard, what are you saying? Why, it’s abominable…Who?”

“Abominable…I think it’s abominable, too. Yet it’s so difficult to decide, to know. Not bad people, you know. Very human, very kind people. People I esteem…Sometimes one wonders what to think. It’s the double man, chances are. The social man coldly faces the necessary catastrophes. Man pure and simple can’t make up his mind to it…It’s very strange…”

“Richard, you don’t think that way? No, not you. Listen. War! Why, just imagine what happens to the Lises and the Ricos, to all the Lises and the Ricos, in a war! Good God, you saw in the moving pictures what it was like in the Balkans! The horror of it! Richard, after that you can’t be a double man, can you?”

***

War! That specter has slumbered, forgotten, with the werewolves. Is it possible that it is at hand, making ready for the approaching tragedy? Down with the Three Years! Down with the Three Years! The roar prolongs the speech and fills the implacable sky. For one hundred and fifty thousand men the Three Years and the war are one and the same thing. They know that the vote of the men who claim to be their representatives, a vote that will send the young men to the barracks for three years, will be the signal for the race, the signal for the coming massacre. They have hope only in themselves, they know themselves to be betrayed on all sides. They refuse to become the sacrificial herd for the incomprehensible maneuvers of the rich. Down with the Three Years! Their imprecation made cloudless Paris tremble, and the whole landscape extending toward the Northern dunes. They cry out against those absurd parades which will end one day in a famous dispatch: “We are holding fast from the Somme to the Vosges…” They shout: Down with the Three Years! before the shady dealers in iron, dynamite, and oil. Before the Clemenceaux, one of whom will lead them to the end of the butchery while the other, the brother, piously administers the Nobel Company – oh, irony of a pacific name! – for the manufacture of explosives. Before the de Wendels of France and the von Wendels of Germany. Before the faceless underworld whose crimes are quoted on the stock markets, and not on the calendars of the law-courts. They shout: Down with the Three Years! because that is still all they can think of to say, they who have not understood the example of 1905, and the great lesson of the days of the Russian-Japanese war. Down with the Three Years! nevertheless sums up perfectly the great will to peace of the people of France, and their mad desire to live, and to conquer their masters, the ones who unleash the tempests, whom they fear no less than their Gallic ancestors feared the thunder-wielders.

***

Where was this France, on which side of the fiery gesture that cleaved the rows of the Chamber – on the side of the Schneiders, the Quesnels, the Schoelzer-Bachmanns, the Finalys, the Wendels, who win on all the tables of Europe where people are being killed, from the bloody mines of the Lena to the Dardanelles, from Macedonia in flames to the Pennaroya of Spain, who win on German blood and on French blood, on Morocco and Tripolitania, on the side of Poincaré, who speaks in the name of the industrialists of the Meuse, of Millerand, jack-of-all-trades of the Comité des Forges, of Tardieu, whose shark-head appears over Africa and Asia Minor?

Progressive Radio News Hour
June 21, 2013

Stephen Lendman
Interview with Rick Rozoff

AUDIO

Rozoff’s an activist, anti-war supporter, and editor of the web site Stop NATO.

It “document(s) and oppose(s) global militarist trends and an expanding theater of war that began” by balkanizing Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

It then expanded to South Asia, and now ravages the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia.

Major world and national issues will be discussed.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
June 21, 2013

Training for logistics cooperation in Slovakia

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“Standards, common procedures and compatible equipment are key to interoperability. Without interoperability, there is no effective cooperation in logistics, and that can have an impact on the sustainability of a mission and the effectiveness of forces in combat, particularly in the case of out-of-area operations.”

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Logisticians from several Allied and partner countries are being put to the test in NATO’s largest-ever logistics exercise from 8 to 26 June. Capable Logistician 2013 is centred around a scenario where NATO-led multinational forces are deployed to a fictitious country to manage a simulated crisis involving inter-ethnic conflict and floods of refugees.

The exercise is providing an opportunity for participants to test and develop collective logistics solutions and to assess the interoperability of their equipment, systems and procedures. Logisticians will then be able to make recommendations to improve the overall interoperability of coalition forces.

Developing interoperability for effective cooperation

“Capable Logistician 2013 is the largest event of its kind in last two decades,” says Col Miroslav Pelikán, Director of the Prague-based Multinational Logistics Coordination Centre (MLCC), which organised the exercise in cooperation with the host nation Slovakia. An international military organisation, the Multinational Logistics Coordination Centre was established in January 2011 following a decision taken by Allies at the 2008 Riga Summit to develop multinational logistics solutions. “Standards, common procedures and compatible equipment are key to interoperability,” says Pelikán. “Without interoperability, there is no effective cooperation in logistics, and that can have an impact on the sustainability of a mission and the effectiveness of forces in combat, particularly in the case of out-of-area operations.”

…

Logistics form the backbone of any military operation and, until very recently, their provision was considered to be a national responsibility. In today’s security and economic environment, the need for more mobile forces and multinational operations calls for improved coordination and the pooling of resources in new areas.

Voice of Russia
June 21, 2013

Will Syrian “rebels” swear they’re not going to eat someone’s organs? – Rozoff
Recorded on June 10, 2013

AUDIO

The US and its NATO allies are backing what can only be described as murderous cannibalistic savages in Syria but according to Voice of Russia regular contributor Rick Rozoff: “Apparently, nobody is too gruesome, too ghoulish, too fiendish for the US and its NATO allies not to portray them as freedom fighters, fund them, arm them, train them and bomb the country they’re attacking on their behalf.”

Hello, this is John Robles. I’m speaking with Rick Rozoff, the owner of the Stop NATO website and international mailing list.

Robles: Advance planning for after these invasions and stuff: they don’t do that anymore, do they? They just go in, take out the leader and who cares what happens afterwards, right?

Rozoff: Yes, you know, after me the deluge (Après moi, le déluge) or after me the catastrophe, and that’s in fact, that’s a good description of it John. That’s what the Balkans look like, that’s what Iraq looks like, Afghanistan and now Libya, and should the West have its way that’s what Syria would look like in short order; you’d have gangs like Al Nusra and others running rampant, running riot, throughout the country and throwing it into complete chaos and pandemonium.

Robles: I’m glad you mentioned Syria. Before we began recording, you mentioned something about President Vladimir Putin and something he said, which I think reflects really well on the situation that the West is promoting in Syria.

Rozoff: Yes, I didn’t get to read the entirety of it but on Interfax today Russian President Vladimir Putin, in discussing the upcoming Geneva meeting on Syria, the one negotiated by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and American Secretary of State John Kerry, made the comment, I don’t know off the cuff or quite directly perhaps, that he hopes that the Western-backed opposition forces don’t include in their numbers any cannibals.

And that was clearly an allusion to a videotape that has been making the rounds for the last month or so, where a commander of a so-called rebel outfit in Syria (I assume it was a corpse at the time they got started on it) carved up the body of a Syrian soldier, identified it and condemned the victim as having been a member of another branch of Islam, Alawite, and apparently thought he was eating the heart, I mean he needs some remedial anatomy lessons, but the people who watched the video (I’ve seen it and it it is enough to sicken one) but people watching suggest he actually cut out part of a lung and ate it, red and steaming.

Robles: Oh my God!!

Rozoff: And from what I’ve read subsequent to that, somebody interviewed this very same person about it and he defended that action and suggested in so many words that the Alawite religious minority in Syria as a whole could face such a fate.

Robles: And these are…? I just want to underline this. These are the same “opposition freedom fighters” quote unquote, that the US wants to arm to the teeth and deliver weapons to?

Rozoff: That’s it, exactly. When the US Senator John McCain, self-appointed ambassador of war around the world…

Robles: Didn’t McCain say that they’ll make sure the weapons are only going to the hands of those…what word did he use? The…?

Rozoff: Moderates or responsible forces?

What do they do? Take the Scouts pledge? I mean, they put their hand in the air and swear that they are not fanatics and they are not going to ingest and eat somebody’s internal organs? How does he know who’s going to receive the weapons.

I think they obviously know who’s going to receive the weapons. But again, if the lessons of Libya or Kosovo or Afghanistan tell us anything, it is that the US not only cannot and will not prevent weapons going into the hands of the most extreme and brutal elements, it will exactly select those elements for the lion’s share of the weapons, as it did with the likes of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and others in Afghanistan in 1980s, as it did with Hashim Thaçi and Ramush Haradinaj and creatures like that in Kosovo in the late 1990s and since.

So, this is not to be taken seriously. But the fact is, yes, these are exactly the elements that would likely be the beneficiary of US and European arms, with the European Union also dropping the ban on weapons for opposition forces within Syria, a move that has been condemned rightly by Russia amongst other nations.

In the “proud” tradition of the Afghan Mujahidin supported by the US in the 80s that skinned Soviet conscripts alive and threw acid in the face of female teachers while being funded to the tune of billions by the US government.

Or the organ-harvesting and sex-slaving and drug-smuggling Kosovo Liberation Army in the Balkans.

And now we are seeing something quite similar in Syria.

Apparently, nobody is too gruesome, too ghoulish, too fiendish for the US and its NATO allies not to portray them as freedom fighters, fund them, arm them, train them and bomb the country they’re attacking on their behalf.

Robles: My goodness!

John Kerry, he’s made some pretty reasonable sounding statements regarding Syria. He also made some pretty harsh statements to Israel which I found refreshing, I might say.

Rozoff: Yes, he could hardly not appear to be comparatively better coming on the heels of Hillary Clinton. You know, the devil incarnate, if he were to succeed Clinton, would probably have the world’s sympathy for a short period of time only because of how horrendous his predecessor would have been.

And we have to keep in mind this is Hilary Clinton who roundly condemned Russia and China, saying not long ago – a year ago – that Russia and China would have to “pay a price”, that’s a quote from her, vis-a-vis Syria.

Who condemned the Russian federal elections in December of 2011 as “being neither free, nor fair”. This is somebody who was on a rampage almost every week ordering some head of state to step down, from Ivory Coast to Yemen, from Libya to Syria, so that any modicum of moderation or civility, as Kerry, I agree with you, is exhibiting currently, appears all that is much better and contrast to what came before him.

I’m a little bit upset about the statement, however, that the US has now entered late and perhaps so belatedly as to be ineffectual in the process of reaching a political decision in Syria, because that certainly leaves open the prospect that as no diplomatic solution of the crisis inside the country is possible, the US may reserve a military option and intervene in some other manner. But I think you’re absolutely correct that those comments were at least an indirect jibe at his predecessor Hillary Clinton, who instead of demanding a regime change and taking the most hostile and uncompromising and recalcitrant position on the issue, had she even gone through the motions of suggesting genuine diplomatic measures, including at the UN…

Robles: Oh no, she constantly went on and on about the “forceful removal”…. And that’s all she wanted to talk about.

Rozoff: That’s true. And even if that was the US objective, and clearly it was and remains so, there are certain diplomatic protocols one can abide by in civilized nations, where you don’t make it so overtly obvious and you don’t insult other people in the way that she did Russia and China.

I mean truthfully in my life, I’m 60 years of age, and I can remember Secretaries of State going back to the Kennedy administration and perhaps the Eisenhower one, and I can’t remember anyone making statements quite as insulting and uncompromising, and just gratuitously hostile, as Clinton, the one I just cited about “Russia and China would have to pay a price.”

Robles: Oh yes! Well, that was one of the more I think moderate ones coming from her.

Rozoff: Yes, this is the same person who, you know, the day after she had gone to Tripoli to order the hit on Muammar Gaddafi, who was in hiding and the following day was killed in a very brutal and appalling manner, and she was shown the picture of his battered and mutilated corpse, and her first comment was: “Wow!” You know, as though you are talking about some 11-year-old girl seeing a new dance step or something. And shortly thereafter she was shown something else on a cell phone and her exact comment was: “We came, we saw, he’s dead”.

Robles: This was the one she did I think with Barbara Walters, where she was giggling and seemed to be beside herself with joy, right?

Rozoff: That’s it. You know, some pretty adolescent girl on her first date or something, but you are talking about the gruesome murder of a head of state and a man who was almost 70 years of age. This is the sort of person we are talking about.

We also have to recall that Kerry was the Democratic Party nominee for the Presidency in 2004. He lost. And Clinton, I think it’s no secret, is the front runner for the democratic nomination three years from now for the presidency. And there may be a certain amount of professional rivalry or resentment on the behalf of Kerry towards Clinton.

He certainly cannot appreciate coming into the State Department and inheriting a good deal of what Ms. Clinton I’m sure has left him. Not that the world, unfortunately, really holds Foggy Bottom to account the way it ought to and Hillary Clinton still has celebrity status around the world for reasons that really defy my imagination.

But, yes, I agree that Kerry’s statement seemed to be in some manner an admission that the US diplomacy had been dismally unsuccessful on the question of Syria and that perhaps it’s too late to really do much diplomatically. But I don’t think it’s the best statement to say ahead of the Geneva meeting that was agreed upon by him and by the Russian foreign minister. I think holding out some optimism might not be a bad idea.

Robles: Coming into this Geneva conference, the Foreign Minister of France made statements that he had “no doubt” that chemical weapons” were used” in Syria.

Gennady Gatilov, he’s the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, said he doubted the likelihood that there were chemical weapons used in Syria, so far these have been mostly media reports. He’s also shed doubts on reports that chemical weapons were intercepted in Turkey that were supposed to have gone to the Syrian opposition.

What do you make of all this chemical weapons talk right before the summit? Mr. Gatilov said all that stuff should be put on a back burner and we should concentrate on convening this summit.

Rozoff: It may be an effort of sabotage the meeting, in fact. And we have to recall two things: President Barack Obama several months ago talked about the use of chemical weapons by the government forces. He said nothing about the opposition ones.

In Syria, his expression, “a red line” that would have been crossed by the government in Damascus with the unavoidable conclusion, that weapons of mass destruction or chemical weapons argument, exactly, is an integral part, and really the major justification of the US attack on and the invasion of Iraq ten years ago.

And we are not talking about people who are terribly imaginative or innovative, they are going to use the same casus belli, the same excuse they used last time for a war, if they can do it.

And the accusation of the sarin gas or some other chemical weapon is being used by Syrian government forces would provide as close an approximation to the excuse of a rationale used to the attack on Iraq ten years ago as any I can think of.

And then, moreover, as it’s already been identified, as you’ve mentioned, by the Secretary of State and by the President of the United States as being the so-called red line that cannot be crossed, a line on the sand, which would then I suppose permit the United States to circumvent traditional alleys or avenues of resolution like the United Nations and perhaps just plunge in militarily claiming, it was such an emergency situation they had no choice but to act unilaterally. So, it is fraught with dangers certainly.

You were listening to an interview in progress with Rick Rozoff, the owner of the Stop NATO website and international mailing list.

Visit our website in the near future for the continuation of this interview with Rick Rozoff.

Al.com
June 20, 2013

MEADS demonstrates ability to successfully network with NATO systems
By Leada Gore

The Medium Extended Air Defense Systems, or MEADS, successfully demonstrated the ability to network with NATO systems during Joint Project Optic Windmill exercises held in May and June.

MEADS tactical battle command, control, communications, computers and intelligence software connected to a NATO test site in the Netherlands using a transportable air defense test bed at the German Air Force Air Defense Center at Fort Bliss, Texas.

MEADS demonstrated its ability to receive and process Link 16 messages, as well as other elements of threat engagements and target intercept.

“The MEADS battle management software combined with its netted-distributed architecture and plug-and-fight network are extraordinary advancements over the stovepipe systems in use today. In addition to implementing 360-degree coverage to protect our citizens, forces and assets, MEADS provides an integrated air picture taking advantage of organic and external sensor data,” MEADS International Executive Vice President Volker Weidemann said.

During a November 2012 test at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., MEADS demonstrated its 360-degree…capability by tracking, intercepting and destroying an air-breathing target.

MEADS International, a multinational joint venture headquartered in Orlando, Fla., is the prime contractor for the MEADS system. Major subcontractors and joint venture partners are MBDA in Italy and Germany, and Lockheed Martin in the United States. The MEADS program management agency NAMEADSMA is located in Huntsville.

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

Henri Barbusse: Selections on war

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Henri Barbusse
From Light (1918)
Translated by Fitzwater Wray

If, from the idea of motherland, you take away covetousness, hatred, envy and vainglory; if you take away from it the desire for predominance by violence, what is there left of it?

It is not an individual unity of laws; for just laws have no colors. It is not a solidarity of interests, for there are no material national interests—or they are not honest. It is not a unity of race; for the map of the countries is not the map of the races. What is there left?

***

But I do not know what will become of us. All the blood poured out, all the words poured out, to impose a sham ideal on our bodies and souls, will they suffice for a long time yet to separate and isolate humanity in absurdity made real? History is a Bible of errors. I have not only seen blessings falling from on high on all which supported evil, and curses on all which could heal it; I have seen, here below, the keepers of the moral law hunted and derided, from little Termite, lost like a rat in unfolding battle, back to Jesus Christ.

***

Excitement grows around that bayonet. The young girl, who is beautiful and expansive, cannot tear herself away from it. At last she touches it with her finger, and shudders. She does not disguise her pleasant emotion:—

“I confess I’m a patriot! I’m more than that — I’m a patriot and a militarist!”

All heads around her are nodded in approval. That kind of talk never seems intemperate, for it touches on sacred things.

And I, I see — in the night which falls for a moment, amid the tempest of dying men which is subsiding on the ground — I see a monster in the form of a man and in the form of a vulture, who, with the death-rattle in his throat, holds towards that young girl the horrible head that is scalped with a coronet, and says to her: “You do not know me, and you do not know, but you are like me!”

The young girl’s living laugh, as she goes off with a young officer, recalls me to events.

All those who come after each other to the bayonet speak in the same way, and have the same proud eyes.

***

When you see that fever, that spectacle of intoxication, these people who seize the slightest chance to glorify their country’s physical force and the hardness of its fists, you hear echoing the words of the orators and the official politicians:

“There is only in our hearts the condemnation of barbarism and the love of humanity.”

And you ask yourself if there is a single public opinion in the world which is capable of bearing victory with dignity.

I stand aloof. I am a blot, like a bad prophet. I hear this declaration, which bows me like an infernal burden: It is only defeat which can open millions of eyes!

***

But they who govern Thought take unfair advantage of that agreement, for they know well that when the simple folk have said, “German militarism,” they have said all. They stop there. They amalgamate the two words and confuse militarism with Germany — once Germany is thrown down there’s no more to say. In that way, they attach lies to truth, and prevent us from seeing that militarism is in reality everywhere, more or less hypocritical and unconscious, but ready to seize everything if it can. They force opinion to add, “It is a crime to think of anything but beating the German enemy.” But the right-minded man must answer that it is a crime to think only of that, for the enemy is militarism, and not Germany. I know; I will no longer let myself be caught by words which they hide one behind another.

***

The visitors have gone away. I linger to look at the beflagged front of the War Museum, while night is falling. It is the Temple. It is joined to the Church, and resembles it. My thoughts go to those crosses which weigh down, from the pinnacles of churches, the heads of the living, join their two hands together, and close their eyes; those crosses which squat upon the graves in the cemeteries at the front. It is because of all these temples that in the future the sleep-walking nations will begin again to go through the immense and mournful tragedy of obedience. It is because of these temples that financial and industrial tyranny, Imperial and Royal tyranny — of which all they whom I meet on my way are the accomplices or the puppets — will to-morrow begin again to wax fat on the fanaticism of the civilian, on the weariness of those who have come back, on the silence of the dead. (When the armies file through the Arc de Triomphe, who is there who will see — and yet they will be plainly visible — that six thousand miles of French coffins are also passing through!) And the flag will continue to float over its prey, that flag stuck into the shadowy front of the War Museum, that flag so twisted by the wind’s breath that sometimes it takes the shape of a cross, and sometimes of a scythe!

NATO Communications and Information
June 20, 2013

NATO contracts major missile defence upgrade

​On 20 June, the NATO Communications and Information (NCI) Agency signed with ThalesRaytheonSystems a 136 million Euro contract for a significant upgrade to NATO’s current theatre missile defence command and control capability.

By bringing new capabilities to NATO’s Air Command and Control System (ACCS), the upgrade will strengthen and expand NATO’s existing theatre missile defence command and control system, which allows the Alliance to link national sensors and interceptors to defend against short and medium range ballistic missile threats. The upgrade also improves the capacity of NATO’s Air Command in Ramstein to plan and execute a missile defence battle.

“The execution of this contract will be a major technical milestone forward for NATO’s theatre missile defence,” said Patrick Auroy, NATO’s Assistant Secretary General for Defence Investment, “This contract links two of NATO’s largest common funded investments – air and missile defence – paving the way for an integrated approach. What is important now is its timely execution.”

NCI Agency General Manager Koen Gijsbers and ThalesRaytheonSystem CEO Jack Harrington signed the contract at the Paris Air Show. The project involves companies from 8 nations and 15 industry partners across Europe and North America.

The contract is NATO’s largest common-funded security investment in 2013.

Increased capacity

The contract, called ACCS Theatre Missile Defence 1, will bring new capabilities to NATO’s Air Command and Control System for receiving and processing ballistic missile tracks, including integration of additional radar and satellite feeds, major enhancement to data communication capacity and improved correlation features.

The upgrade is expected to be completed by 2015.

The NCI Agency is responsible for executing and managing NATO’s priority technology projects, including cyber, air and missile defence.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Allied Command Operations
June 20, 2013

STRIKFORNATO Participates in U.S. Naval Exercise

Oeiras, Portugal: STRIKFORNATO will participate in the U.S. Fleet Synthetic Training-Joint 2013/2 (FST-J 13-2) Exercise as the Combined Force Maritime Component Headquarters on board USS Mount Whitney (LCC 20) later this month.

FST-J 13-2 is a key event in STRIKFORNATO’s training programme this year, sharpening its skills to plan and execute the command and control of multiple carrier strike groups in the delivery of joint effects into multiple domains – including land, maritime, air, cyberspace, and space – from the sea. In order to maximize the training benefit, STRIKFORNATO will deploy from Lisbon onto the USS Mount Whitney, STRIKFORNATO’s designated command and control platform. The move will exercise the headquarters in maintaining the skills required for a quick, seamless transition to a deployed Headquarters afloat.

FST-J 13-2 is a certification exercise for the HARRY S TRUMAN Carrier Strike Group aimed at determining their ability to integrate into joint operations. “By participating into this U.S. Navy exercise, STRIKFORNATO will refresh its ability to integrate US maritime forces into Alliance operations, the key role of STRIKFORNATO,” said Rear Admiral Lowe, STRIKFORNATO’s Deputy Commander.

STRIKFORNATO is NATO’s immediate response, deployable Maritime Battle-staff and the Alliance’s primary link for integrating US Maritime Forces into NATO operations. Managed by a Memorandum of Understanding comprising 11 Nations, STRIKFORNATO is a rapidly deployable, Maritime Headquarters that provides scalable command and control across the full spectrum of Alliance fundamental security tasks.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Allied Command Operations
June 20, 2013

Albania-US Team mentors Afghan Army
Story by Albanian Army Lt. Zamir Sadikaj, NTM-A Public Affairs

“If they fail, it’s because of us!”

Such is the unofficial slogan of the Albanian-U.S. Military Advisor Team “Striking Eagles-3,” which currently provides mentorship and advice to an Afghan combat support battalion at Camp Blackhorse in Kabul, Afghanistan.

The team mentors and advises the Afghan 4th Battalion 2nd Brigade 111th Division in the planning and execution of a detailed yearly training and exercise plan, while also training battalion staff and companies in how to conduct operational-level staff work and perform troop leading procedures.

“We are following Afghan doctrine and respecting their military tradition, while sharing the best of our experiences,” said the Striking Eagles-3 commander, Albanian Army Col. Isuf Hamati…

The team is training and tracking the execution of a wide variety of special courses and concepts like troop leading procedures, map reading, vehicle maintenance, computer operations, tactical communication, lifesaving skills and effective and safe weapons use.

…

“I have found a hard working counterpart; we have found a way to solve problems together. The biggest challenge is finding the parts for repairing vehicles,” said Albanian Army 1st Lt. Mirel Ziu. He has served as a logistics officer for six years and is the current maintenance platoon mentor for Striking Eagles-3…

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“Apart from the role of nuclear weapons and issues related to the ceilings in the nuclear arms area,” the Russian leadership will also take into account the missile defense situation, the creation of non-nuclear precision weapons, the possibility of deploying weapons in space, to which Moscow categorically objects…

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Russian Information Agency Novosti
June 20, 2013

Moscow Links More Nuclear Cuts to Missile Defense – Minister

ST. PETERSBURG: Russia-US strategic nuclear arms cuts cannot be pursued without also addressing missile defense systems, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday.

Strategic stability is affected by the role of defense systems, in particular “the US plans to build non-nuclear weapons” which will be “far more effective than the existing strategic nuclear arms,” he said in an interview with Rossia-24 TV.

Further cuts in nuclear weapons can only be discussed in a multilateral, not bilateral format, with the participation of other nuclear powers, Lavrov said.

In a wide-ranging speech Wednesday in Berlin, US President Barack Obama said he has concluded after “a comprehensive review,” that the United States can cut its deployed strategic nuclear weapons by one-third while still ensuring the nation’s security. “And I intend to seek negotiated cuts with Russia to move beyond Cold War nuclear postures,” Obama said.

Lavrov also said the US review of its missile defense program for Europe does not address Russia’s concerns because “the system remains global” and its components “are being deployed along the perimeter of our borders.”

Russia and NATO formally agreed to cooperate over the European missile defense system at the 2010 NATO summit in Lisbon, but talks foundered, in part over Russian demands for legal guarantees that the system would not undermine its strategic nuclear deterrent. In mid-March, the US announced that it was modifying its planned missile defense deployment to Poland, dropping plans to station SM-3 IIB interceptors in the country by 2022.

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Interfax
June 20, 2013

Russia to take time to thoroughly analyze Obama’s arms cuts proposal – diplomat

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“Apart from the role of nuclear weapons and issues related to the ceilings in the nuclear arms area,” the Russian leadership will also take into account the missile defense situation, the creation of non-nuclear precision weapons, the possibility of deploying weapons in space, to which Moscow categorically objects…

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MOSCOW: Russia will thoroughly examine U.S. President Barack Obama’s proposals on more radical cuts of nuclear weapons, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said.

“We will coordinate our reasons with our objectives in ensuring our national security and strengthening peace. Analysis will be interdepartmental and will take some time,” Ryabkov said in an interview published in Kommersant on Thursday.

Asked what factors Moscow will take into account in making its decision, Ryabkov pointed out that “the notion of strategic stability today significantly differs from concepts that existed in the past.”

“Apart from the role of nuclear weapons and issues related to the ceilings in the nuclear arms area,” the Russian leadership will also take into account the missile defense situation, the creation of non-nuclear precision weapons, the possibility of deploying weapons in space, to which Moscow categorically objects, and refusal of a number of countries to take part in key arms control agreements, he said.

“Without taking all these circumstances into account, it is wrong to talk only about the role of nuclear weapons as a factor affecting strategic stability,” he said.

Some media outlets reported that the U.S. expects a reply from Moscow before a Russian-U.S. summit in Moscow in September.

Obama proposed on Wednesday that the U.S. and Russia further reduce their strategic nuclear weapons.

Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov suggested on Thursday that other countries possessing nuclear weapons should be engaged in nuclear arms reductions after the implementation of the New START treaty.

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

Roger Martin du Gard: Selections on war

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Roger Martin du Gard
From Summer 1914 (1936)
Translated by Stuart Gilbert

Antoine shook his head. “Interests at stake, I grant you,” he said. “But however acute it may be, competition between those interests might quite easily go on for ages without leading to a war! I’m a believer in peace, and yet to my mind conflict is an essential factor of life. Fortunately we have other forms of conflict available for the nations than a recourse to arms. That sort of thing may be all right in the Balkans, but every government – I am thinking of the great powers – even in the countries which spend most money on armaments, obviously agrees that war is the worst thing that could happen. I’m only repeating what responsible statesmen themselves declare in their speeches.”

“Oh, of course, when talking to their own people, they’re bound to pay lip-service to peace. But most of them are still convinced that war’s a political necessity, something that’s bound to happen now and again, and which, when it does come, must be turned to the best account, and made as profitable as possible. For it’s always the same old story: the root of the whole evil is profit.

Antoine was deep in thought. Just as he was about to voice a further objection, his brother spoke again.

“You see, Europe is just now under control of half a dozen of those poisonous ’eminent patriots,’ who under the noxious influence of their General Staffs are shepherding their several countries straight toward war. That’s what everyone should realize. Some of them, the more cynical-minded, know perfectly well what they’re about; they want war, and they’re preparing for it, like criminals plotting a new exploit, because they’re convinced that, sooner or later, events will play into their hands. This is notably the case with Berchtold, in Austria. With Isvolsky and Sazanov in St. Petersburg. As for the rest of them, I won’t go so far as to say they actually want war; in fact, they’re mostly scared of it. But they’re resigned to war, because they think it’s bound to come. And no more dangerous belief can take root in the mind of a statesman than the belief that war’s inevitable. Those who hold that belief, instead of moving heaven and earth to avert it, can think of one thing only: how best to increase their chances of victory, at all risks and as rapidly as may be. Such, no doubt, is the case with the Kaiser and his ministers. It may be the case with the British government. It is certainly the case with France, under Poincaré.”

***

“Do you suppose a man like Delcassé, a pawn in the hands of the English diplomats, was working for peace when he schemed to encircle Germany? The result was simply to bolster up, to develop, to intensify that Prussian militarism you talked of. The other result was a cut-throat competition throughout Europe in preparing for war, putting up fortifications, building battleships and strategic railways, and all the rest of it. In France, ten billion francs have been voted for war credits in the last four years. In Germany, the equivalent of eight billions. In Russia, six hundred millions, borrowed from France for the purpose of building railways that will enable her one day to move her armies westward against Germany.”

“‘One day,'” Antoine murmured. “Yes, one day, perhaps. But a very distant day.”

Jacques took no notice of the interruption. “All over the Continent,” he went on, “these competitive armaments are being piled up in frantic haste, and they’re ruining every country, causing the vast sums that ought to be devoted to social welfare to be spent on preparations for war. It’s sheer madness, and bound to end in disaster. And we Frenchmen bear our share of responsibility. Yes, we make no secret of it! Was it in order to satisfy the world of our good intentions that we sent to the Elysée that stubborn patriot of a Lorrainer, Poincaré, whom every nationalist trouble-maker at once set up as a symbol of jingoism; whose election promptly started our ‘revenge’-mongers off on a ‘lost provinces’ crusade and roused mercenary hopes across the Channel, where the British shopkeepers would love to see their German competitors laid by the heels, and in Russia whetted the appetite of the imperialists, whose everlasting dream is to annex Constantinople?”

Russian Information Agency Novosti
June 19, 2013

Russia Skeptical Over Obama’s New Nuclear Reduction Proposal

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“How can we take seriously this idea about cuts in strategic nuclear potential while the United States is developing its capabilities to intercept Russia’s nuclear potential?”

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Standard Missile-3 launch

MOSCOW: Russian officials on Wednesday expressed doubts over new nuclear arms reductions proposed by US President Barack Obama in light of US global missile defense plans and attempts by other counties to boost their nuclear arsenals.

Obama said in a speech in Berlin earlier Wednesday that he would negotiate to cut another one-third of US and Russian nuclear arsenals and seek “bold reductions in US and Russian tactical weapons in Europe.”

Shortly before Obama’s speech, Yury Ushakov, senior foreign policy adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said the Kremlin had been informed in general about the new US proposal but reiterated Russia’s position that other nuclear powers would have to make steps on further nuclear arms reduction in order for Obama’s plan to work.

“The situation now is not like in the 1960s and 1970s, when only the United States and the Soviet Union held talks on reducing nuclear arms,” Ushakov told reports in Moscow.

“Now we need to look more broadly and expand the circle of participants in possible contacts on this matter,” he said.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin was even more brazen in his response, saying Russia could not “take seriously” Obama’s nuclear cuts proposal while the United States was developing its missile defense system.

“How can we take seriously this idea about cuts in strategic nuclear potential while the United States is developing its capabilities to intercept Russia’s nuclear potential,” Rogozin told reporters in St. Petersburg.

Rogozin, who oversees Russia’s defense industry, said an arms race involves both offensive and defensive weapons in a vicious circle.

“To show the lack of understanding of this [by proposing further nuclear cuts] – means either openly lying, bluffing and deceiving, or demonstrating a deep lack of professionalism,” Rogozin said.

Russian independent military experts on Wednesday also described Obama’s initiative as “unrealistic” saying it could potentially destroy the existing nuclear parity and ultimately hurt Russia’s national security interests.

Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

Roger Martin du Gard: From Nobel Prize in Literature speech

Roger Martin du Gard: All the pageantry of war cannot redeem its beastliness

Roger Martin du Gard: “Anything rather than the madness, the horrors of a war!”

Roger Martin du Gard: Be loyal to yourselves, reject war

Roger Martin du Gard: Deliberately infecting a country with war neurosis

Roger Martin du Gard: “Drop your rifles. Revolt!”

Roger Martin du Gard: General strike for peace

Roger Martin du Gard: A hundredth part of energy expended in war could have preserved peace

Roger Martin du Gard: How make active war on war?

Roger Martin du Gard: Launch against the war-mongers a concerted movement to force the governments to bow to your desire for peace

Roger Martin du Gard: No more dangerous belief can take root in the mind than the belief that war’s inevitable

Roger Martin du Gard: Nothing worse than war and all it involves

Roger Martin du Gard: Romain Rolland

Roger Martin du Gard: Secret commitments which from one day to another may plunge you, every man of you, into the horrors of war

Roger Martin du Gard: A thousand times more honor in preserving peace than waging war

Roger Martin du Gard: Tragedy of war, like that of Oedipus, occurs because warnings are ignored

Roger Martin du Gard: War breeds atmosphere of lies, officials lies

Roger Martin du Gard: War is at our gates, dooming millions of innocent victims to suffering and death

Roger Martin du Gard: War’s “serviceable lie” costs tens of thousands of lives

Roger Martin du Gard: When you refer to war, none of you thinks of the unprecedented slaughter, the millions of innocent victims it involves

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Allied Command Operations
June 19, 2013

EXERCISE ARRCADE DEPLOYEX 13 IS WELL UNDERWAY IN CORSICA

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Exercise ARRCADE DEPLOYEX 13, which will continue through 21 June, was directed by Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), the military ‘arm’ of NATO.

The exercise is designed to simulate a real NRF deployment…HQ ARRC is now on stand-by for short-notice call-up and subsequent rapid deployment in support of any potential NATO Response Force (NRF) missions that may develop during 2013.

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Close to 40 multinational troops assigned to Headquarters, Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (HQ ARRC) completed the first part of their rapid deployment exercise in Corsica last weekend.

Exercise ARRCADE DEPLOYEX 13 is far from over, however, as more than 100 troops from the Gloucestershire-based NATO headquarters will continue at Solenzara Airbase throughout the remainder of this week, returning home to the United Kingdom on 21 June.

Remaining in Corsica are troops assigned to the ARRC’s Enabling Command (EC) and Forward Main elements, who will continue the work begun by the command’s Operational Liaison and Reconnaissance Teams (OLRTs), most of whom deployed to Corsica on 10 June.

…

The ARRC has 4 OLRTs; consisting of 6 personnel, including a team leader, two communications officers, and three specialists (engineers, logistics experts, etc.), each team has been augmented in Corsica with interpreters, either from the local area or from the French Foreign Legion.

Designed to deploy in advance of the rest of the headquarters, the OLRTs are given a set of Requests for Information, or RFIs, before they depart. Upon arriving in theatre, they must find answers to all of these questions, particularly those that involve the movement of troops, equipment, and supplies into the country.

Using state-of-the-art satellite communication kit, the OLRTs travel around the area, completing recces of sea and air ports, roads, etc. as well as meeting with administrative and political leaders, then make assessments that are forwarded directly back to the ARRC’s commander and his staff.

In Corsica, this has meant many long days driving around the mountainous Mediterranean island for OLRT personnel. “The terrain and roads have been challenging…(Corsica) has given us a good awareness of potential challenges we could find on a real, operational deployment,” explained Bjornerud.

…

Exercise ARRCADE DEPLOYEX 13, which will continue through 21 June, was directed by Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), the military ‘arm’ of NATO.

The exercise is designed to simulate a real NRF deployment, at the beginning of which the ARRC would traditionally deploy its Operational Liaison and Reconnaissance Team (OLRT) and Enabling Command (EC) elements in advance of the rest of the headquarters in order to get everything ready and coordinate any/all logistics/transportation/etc. needs before the rest of the multinational headquarters deploys.

This exercise will mirror what the ARRC would do if the multinational headquarters were called-up by NATO to deploy in a real-world scenario.

HQ ARRC is a NATO Rapid Deployment Corps headquarters, founded in 1992 in Germany, and headquartered in Gloucestershire since August 2010.

Although HQ ARRC’s ‘framework nation’ is the United Kingdom, comprising approximately 60% of the overall staff, the ARRC is fully multinational in nature and organization, with 15 Partner Nations contributing the remaining complement of personnel (Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, and the United States).

HQ ARRC is now on stand-by for short-notice call-up and subsequent rapid deployment in support of any potential NATO Response Force (NRF) missions that may develop during 2013.

As an NRF Land Component Command, or LCC, the ARRC will essentially be in command of all land combat troops on the ground during an NRF deployment.

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

H.G. Wells: Selections on war

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H.G. Wells
What is Coming?
A Forecast of Things after the War (1916)
Excerpts

The first, most distinctive thing about this conflict is the exceptionally searching way in which it attacks human happiness. No war has ever destroyed happiness so widely. It has not only killed and wounded an unprecedented proportion of the male population of all the combatant nations, but it has also destroyed wealth beyond precedent. It has also destroyed freedom – of movement, of speech, of economic enterprise. Hardly anyone alive has escaped the worry of it and the threat of it. It has left scarcely a life untouched, and made scarcely a life happier. There is a limit to the principle that “everybody’s business is nobody’s business.”

…

Peace organisation seems, indeed, to be following the lines of public sanitation. Everybody in England, for example, was bored by the discussion of sanitation – until the great cholera epidemic. Everybody thought public health a very desirable thing, but nobody thought it intensely and overridingly desirable. Then the interest in sanitation grew lively, and people exerted themselves to create responsible organisations. Crimes of violence, again, were neglected in the great cities of Europe until the danger grew to dimensions that evolved the police. There come occasions when the normal concentration of an individual upon his own immediate concerns becomes impossible; as, for instance, when a man who is stocktaking in his business premises discovers that the house next door is on fire. A great many people who have never troubled their heads about anything but their own purely personal and selfish interests are now realising that quite a multitude of houses about them are ablaze, and that the fire is spreading.

That is one change the war will bring about that will make for world peace: a quickened general interest in its possibility. Another is the certainty that the war will increase the number of devoted and fanatic characters available for disinterested effort. Whatever other outcome this war may have, it means that there lies ahead a period of extreme economic and political dislocation. The credit system has been strained, and will be strained, and will need unprecedented readjustments. In the past such phases of uncertainty, sudden impoverishment and disorder as certainly lie ahead of us, have meant for a considerable number of minds a release – or, if you prefer it, a flight – from the habitual and selfish. Types of intense religiosity, of devotion and of endeavour are let loose, and there will be much more likelihood that we may presently find, what it is impossible to find now, a number of devoted men and women ready to give their whole lives, with a quasi-religious enthusiasm, to this great task of peace establishment, finding in such impersonal work a refuge from the disappointments, limitations, losses and sorrows of their personal life – a refuge we need but little in more settled and more prosperous periods. They will be but the outstanding individuals in a very universal quickening. And simultaneously with this quickening of the general imagination by experience there are certain other developments in progress that point very clearly to a change under the pressure of this war of just those institutions of nationality, kingship, diplomacy and inter-State competition that have hitherto stood most effectually in the way of a world pacification. The considerations that seem to point to this third change are very convincing, to my mind.

Global Times
June 18, 2013

US, Russia square off over Syria conflict
By Wang Zhaokun

US President Barack Obama met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Monday at the G8 summit in Lough Erne, Northern Ireland, as the two leaders sought to narrow their differences on the Syrian conflict that was set to top the conference’s agenda.

The meeting between Obama and Putin at the summit of some of the world’s most powerful nations came days after the US alleged that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons in the Syrian conflict and announced that it would offer direct military support to the Syrian rebels.

China said Monday the Syrian issue can only be solved via political means, urging the relevant parties to push for a political solution and not take actions that could lead to further militarization of the crisis.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said Monday his country will not permit no-fly zones to be imposed over Syria.

“I think we fundamentally will not allow this scenario,” Lukashevich said, according to Reuters. “All these maneuvers about no-fly zones and humanitarian corridors are a direct consequence of a lack of respect for international law.”

Summit host British Prime Minister David Cameron said Monday his priority was to ensure that a peace conference on the Syria conflict take place later this year, according to an AFP report.

Speaking to reporters in London after his Sunday meeting with Cameron, Putin voiced Russia’s disapproval of the US plan to arm the Syrian rebels.

“One does not really need to support the people who not only kill their enemies, but open up their bodies, eat their intestines in front of the public and cameras,” Putin said, referring to video released last month showing a Syrian rebel commander eating the heart of a dead soldier, Reuters reported.

Putin also insisted that Moscow had abided by international law when supplying weapons to Syria. “We are not breaching any rules and norms and we call on all our partners to act in the same fashion,” he said.

Russia said earlier this month that it had not yet delivered the S-300 missiles, fearing that this would “disturb the balance in the region.”

Russia is unlikely to make concessions on the Syrian issue at the summit, Xiao Xian, head of the Institute of International Studies at China’s Yunnan University, told the Global Times.

“I don’t think there will be any major breakthrough on the issue following the discussion by the two sides through the conference as Russia and the West hold entirely different views on the Syrian government and rebels,” he said.

“And now more importantly, Assad’s forces have already seized the initiative in its fight against the militants at home. So under the circumstances, Russia would of course dig its heels in,” Xiao noted.

Benjamin Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, said Thursday Washington determines with “high certainty” that the Syrian regime “used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year.” But he said Obama has “not made any decision” to impose a no-fly zone in Syria and ruled out the possibility of deploying US ground troops.

Russia said it is not convinced by the US claim and the Syrian foreign ministry also dismissed Washington’s allegations that it used chemical weapons as “full of lies.”

Li Weijian, director of the Institute for Foreign Policy Studies at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, told the Global Times Monday that although it is hard for Russia and the US to bridge their differences, the two sides might seek more joint efforts to push for an international peace conference on the Syria conflict.

“It is impossible for the West to gain UN approval if they want to impose no-fly zones or other military actions in Syria. So a peace conference seemed to be the only option accepted by both Russia and the West to seek a solution to the Syrian issue, and Moscow and Washington had an agreement on such a meeting,” Li said.

Agencies contributed to this story

The Taylor Report
June 17, 2013

NATO Maneuvers and Countries of Clay
“What we’re seeing is a new attempt to divide up the MENA region.”

Featured Guest: Rick Rozoff

AUDIO

Description:

The New Sykes-Picot

The carving-up of the old Ottoman Empire continues 100 years later. Iraq exists as an entity on a map, but it is already de-facto at least two. We know why. NATO is moving its regional headquarters from Spain to Turkey, consolidating two military commands.

In Jordan, NATO is leaving behind a bevy of troops and missiles for later unspecified use. Ideas of sovereignty and states are becoming almost mythical in that region. Whole countries are treated like clay.

While NATO gobbles up Eastern Europe, it is moving into the Middle East, and recruiting “aspiring” countries from the former USSR to South America. Any obscure conflict involving the Dniester area could bring NATO into a European war.

The finger is on the button to launch strikes on Syria. It can happen at any time. The largest conflict since the second world war is looming into view.

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

Georges Duhamel: Selections on war

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Georges Duhamel
From The Heart’s Domain (La Possession du monde) (1919)
Translated by Eleanor Stimson Brooks

The possession of the world is not decided by guns. It is the noble work of peace. It is not involved in the struggle which is now rending society.

Even so, men will find themselves engaged in an undertaking that will threaten to overwhelm them with suffering and despair.

Fate has assigned to me during the war a place and a task of such a character that misery has been the only thing I have seen; it has been my study and my enemy every moment. I must be forgiven for thinking of it with a persistence that is like an obsession.

The whole intelligence of the world is absorbed by the enterprise and the necessities of the war; there is little chance of rousing it now from this in favor of the happiness of the race, in favor of that happiness which is compromised for the future and destroyed for the present. It is to the heart one must address oneself. It is to all the generous hearts that one must make one’s appeal.

So, if I am spurred by an ambition, it is to beg the world to seek once more whatever can lighten the present and the future distress of mankind, to seek the springs of interest that exist for the soul in a life harassed with difficulties, perils and disillusionments, to honor more than ever the faithful and incorruptible resources of the inner life.

The inner life!

It has never ceased to shine, a precious, quivering flame, devoting all its ardor in a struggle against the breath of these great events, resisting this tempest which has had no parallel.

It has never ceased to shine, but its shy and faithful light trembles in a sort of crypt into which we fear to venture.

What has happened has seized upon us as upon its prey. During the first months of the war, during the first years perhaps, all our physical and moral energies were overwhelmed in this maelstrom. How, indeed, could one refuse oneself to the appetite of the monster? We did not even try to snatch from him our hours of leisure, our dreams. We simply abandoned such things, as we abandoned our plans, our welfare, and the whole of our existence.

You remember! It was a time when solitude found us more shaken, more disarmed, than peril. We reproached ourselves for distracting a single one of our thoughts from the universal distress. We gave ourselves day and night to this agonizing world; and when our work was suspended, when the wild beast unloosed its clutch, as if in play, and we returned for a few minutes to ourselves, we did not always dare to look the quivering inner flame in the face. What it lighted up in us seemed at times too foreign to our anxiety, or too filled with limpid serenity. And so we returned to our wretchedness, experiencing it to the point of intoxication, to the point of despair.

When I think of the year 1915, it seems to me that I still hear all those noble comrades saying to me with a sort of dejection: “I can’t think of anything else! I can neither read, nor work, nor seek to distract myself to any purpose. When I ‘m off duty I think about these days, I think about them unceasingly, till I feel seasick, till I feel dizzy. I’ve just had two hours of liberty. Once upon a time I should have given them to Pascal or to Tolstoy. Today I have employed them in reading some documentary works on the manufacture of torpedoes and on European colonial methods. They are subjects that will always be outside my line, subjects I shall never be interested in. But how can I think of anything else? ”

Ministry of Defence of Georgia
June 16, 2013

Basic Mountain Training Summer Course

A Basic Mountain Training Summer Course is underway in the Sachkhere Mountain Training School under the NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PFP) program. 45 listeners of U.S. Reserve Officer Training Corps are invited to the course. Trainings began on June 2 and will continue until June 23. During the course American cadets are improving their mountain-technical skills.

During the Basic Mountain Training Summer Course American cadets performed various mountain-technical tasks with the assistance of Georgian instructors. The third week will be focused on practical exercises. Listeners will pass special tests. During the course cadets will learn the crossing technique over mountains, high mountains, rivers and ravines. They also practiced in providing first medical care and technical methods for providing evacuation.

Successful graduates will be awarded with the relevant certificates after completion of the training.

After graduating Basic Mountain Training Summer Course foreign partners will have opportunity to attend further stage of summer and winter courses in Sachkhere Mountain Training School.

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

Jules Romains: Selections on war

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Jules Romains
From Verdun: The Prelude (1938)
Translated by Gerard Hopkins

The event to which all this elaboration was leading up to would be a sort of combination of large-scale industry and sport. The battle was going to be a game based on material equipment comparable to that employed by great blast-furnaces and giant factories. A game in which the balls would be made of steel and and explosives and would weigh anything from from half a pound to half a ton; in which the teams would be composed of three hundred thousand men; in which scattered brains and torn guts in abundance would take the place of falls and sprained ankles…

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For once allow that this million [of deaths per year], by reason of its very elasticity, has imposed on warfare its seemingly impossible aspect, how can the wheels be reversed when numbers began to melt away like snow?

It is possible, of course, to go through the country with a small-tooth comb, to rout out the men with soft jobs at the depots and in the administrative services, lower the standards of the medical boards, diminish the number of non-combatants, call up and train the younger classes; in short, bring pressure to bear upon the civilian population in order to increase the number of front-line troops, of men capable of being killed – squeeze the country to its last drop. Unfortunately, such methods, when used on either side, soon reach the exhaustion point. The hope is that the enemy will reach its first, and it is always permissible to believe they will, short of conclusive evidence to the contrary. At any rate, the great thing is to kill as many of the “fellows opposite” as possible, even though to do so may serve no strategic end nor exploit any particular tactical theory. Just kill because the more dead there are, the fewer living will remain.

War of attrition carried to its maximum. Attrition of flesh and blood, but also of all that depends for its existence on flesh and blood, of all the work of men’s hands, of everything he has accumulated and made.

The economists had argued that the war must be short, because all their calculations had been worked out on a basis of real money. If there had been nothing but that to fall back on, the available funds would have been exhausted ages ago. But the peoples of Europe had learned how to keep the war going on a diet of fictitious gold, of something they called credit. Just as in the old romantic tales gamblers fumbling in their empty pockets would say suddenly: “Ah, there’s that ring of mine…that field…that house. Why shouldn’t I stake them?” so now the nations, even while ruin stared them in the face, realized that they were richer than they had ever guessed, and that, having turned all their real money into guns and shells, they could transform into paper wealth the soil, the forests, the houses, the harbours, the railways, the lighting system of their native land – and so produce still more guns and still more shells.