November 18, 2009 “Centre for Research on Globalization” — On January 20, a changing of the guard occurred in the United States White House with two-term president George W. Bush being replaced by former freshman senator Barack Obama.

Bush had continued the policies of his predecessor Bill Clinton in relation to the Balkans, Iraq and Latin America – with troops and a massive military base in Kosovo, regular bombings of Iraq and a monumental expansion of military aid to Colombia – and in addition launched two wars of his own, those against Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq two years later.

Obama, so thoroughly does U.S. polity predetermine individual administrations’ policies, entered office by intensifying the deadly drone missile attacks in Pakistan begun by Bush in late 2008 and announced that he was doubling the number of American troops in Afghanistan.

Already presiding over the world’s largest military budget, officially 41.5% of world expenditures in 2008 and far larger with non-Defense Department spending factored in, in April the new president requested from Congress an additional $85 billion in supplemental funding for the war in Afghanistan and the occupation of Iraq.

U.S. lawmakers were more than accommodating and on July 24 Obama signed Iraq and Afghanistan War Supplemental Appropriations amounting to $106 billion.

On October 28, he signed the $680 billion 2010 National Defense Authorization Act which includes another $130 billion to fund what his administration now calls overseas contingency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

With the authorization of $106 billion in July, the last official supplemental appropriation for the wars, and $130 billion last month for Afghanistan and Iraq the combined official spending for both wars will exceed $1 trillion. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) 2009 Year Book, total international military spending for 2008 was not much more than that: $1.464 trillion.

Eight days after the authorization of the $680 billion Pentagon budget for next year, the New York Times reported that the top American military commander, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, said “he expected the Pentagon to ask Congress in the next few months for emergency financing to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” with the newspaper estimating the size of the demand to be $50 billion. [1]

Despite the Obama administration’s pledge to the contrary, July’s war supplement may not be the last one. It will simply be renamed an emergency appropriation. The first of many more to come.

Not only does one country account for the overwhelming plurality of world military expenditures, but that nation also has troops and bases on all six habitable continents (as well as a 54-year military mission in Antarctica, Operation Deep Freeze) and eleven aircraft carrier strike groups and six navy fleets that roam the world’s oceans and seas at will. It is also expanding a global interceptor missile system on land, on sea, in the air and into space that will leave it invulnerable to retaliation.

Reports from the first twelve days of November indicate the global scope of the first attempt in history by one nation to achieve uncontested worldwide military power.

A survey of that period will trace recent trends across the globe with the alphabet as a compass.

Afghanistan

Any day now Washington may announce plans to add 40,000 or more troops to the 68,000 already there. [2] Plans are underway to accommodate that influx.

The American military compound at and fanning out from the Bagram Air Field has been expanded from 3,993 to 5,198 acres since 2001 and is in the process of further enlargement. It already hosts some 25,000 U.S. troops and contractors and “a new parking ramp supporting the world’s largest aircraft is to be completed this spring….[I]t is continuing to grow to keep up with the requirements of an escalating war and troop increases.” [3]

Regarding non-military personnel at Bagram and elsewhere in the nation, “Contractors in Afghanistan outnumber U.S. troops there” [4] as they do in Iraq.

The Army Times recently reported on the main purpose of the airbase at Bagram. Last month the number of U.S. and NATO air strikes in Afghanistan was the highest since July of 2008, with 647 bombs dropped in October compared to 752 a year ago July. “The airstrike numbers don’t include strafing runs, attacks by special operations AC-130 gunships, launches of small missiles or helicopter attacks.” [5]

Africa

A U.S. Defense Department news source reported on November 5 that Air Forces Africa commanders visited Mali and Senegal in West Africa. Vice commander Michael Callan “visited Mali’s 33d Parachute Regiment, a unit that carries out operations using tactical vehicles and communication equipment provided by the U.S. Defense and State Departments.” The Malian military is involved in a counterinsurgency war in the nation’s north aided by Washington.

A commander of Mali’s armed forces said, “Ninety-five percent of our soldiers were trained by the U.S, and we’ve engaged with you in exercises like Flintlock, Joint Planning and Assessment Teams and special bilateral training.” [6] Flintlock military exercises have been held in different locations on the African continent for years, this year’s being conducted by the new Africa Command (AFRICOM) for the first time. The U.S. also recently led multinational military exercises in Gabon and Uganda on both ends of the continent. [7]

The USS San Juan, “a fast-attack submarine,” arrived in South Africa on November 4, “setting the stage for a series of first-ever, at-sea engagements with the South African Navy submarine force.” [8]

Armenia

Robert Simmons [9], NATO’s special representative to the South Caucasus and Central Asia – former Senior Adviser to the United States Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs on NATO – was in this South Caucasus nation earlier this month and announced that he had recruited an initial contingent of Armenian troops for the war in Afghanistan. This marks the first deployment to that nation of soldiers from the Russian-led seven-nation Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a potential counterbalance to NATO in post-Soviet space.

“Simmons expressed NATO’s ‘appreciation to Armenia for its strong contributions’ to alliance missions, which he said began in Kosovo and will now be repeated in Afghanistan.” [10]

In reference to his mission of pulling yet another Russian ally into the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization orbit, Simmons said, “We are continuing cooperation with the Armenian Defense Ministry. NATO assists the implementation of reforms and the development of strategically important documents.” [11]

Baltic Sea

After participating in NATO war games off the coast of Scotland, the guided-missile destroyer USS Cole paid visits to the capitals of Finland and Estonia in the Baltic Sea. “Cole hosted a reception in Helsinki, which was joined by Adm. Mark Fitzgerald, commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe, U.S. Naval Forces Africa and Allied Joint Forces Command Naples.

“Immediately following the departure from Helsinki, Cole arrived in Tallinn, Estonia, a few hours later.” [12]

The beginning of this month the guided-missile frigate USS John L. Hall with sailors of Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron 48 “completed a theater security cooperation (TSC) port visit to Klaipeda, Lithuania.”

A U.S. Navy official stated: “We are here as part of the United States Navy’s continuing presence in the Baltic Sea….We are also here to work with the Lithuanian Navy, who has been a valuable partner and our visit here is part of the ongoing relationship between our two countries and our two navies.” [13] [14]

On November 3 Estonian Defense Minister Jaak Aaviksoo was at the Pentagon to meet with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Associated Press reported on the occasion that he was “discussing with the United States why NATO needs plans in case his region is attacked.” [15]

Bangladesh

In early November three high-ranking American military officials arrived in the country. The three – U.S. Army Lieutenant General Benjamin R. Mixon, Commanding General of U.S. Army, Pacific, Vice-Admiral John M. Bird, Commander of U.S. Navy 7th Fleet, and U.S. Marine Corps Major General Randolph D. Alles, Director for Strategic Planning and Policy at the U.S. Pacific Command – engaged in discussions focusing “on interoperability, readiness in the region, security-force assistance, and bilateral approaches to maintaining regional stability.” [16]

On November 12 the U.S.-led Tiger Shark military exercises to train Bangladeshi naval commandos ended. A press release on the operation stated: “The training demonstrates the United States government’s commitment to Bangladesh and to regional security by promoting military-to-military relationships throughout Asia and the Pacific.” [17]

Black Sea

The Pentagon’s European Command (EUCOM) reported on November 2 that its Joint Task Force-East had completed an almost three-month series of trainings in Bulgaria and Romania which began on August 7 and included Stryker and Airborne units destined for the war in Afghanistan. [18] “Nearly 600 members of the Romanian Land Forces, 500 Bulgarian Land Forces, and more than 1,500 U.S. service members participated in this year’s combined training.” [19]

After U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden’s visit to the country on October 22, a news source in Romania wrote of Washington’s new interceptor missile plans: “A strong and modern surveillance system located in Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey could monitor three hot areas at once: the Black Sea, the Caucasus and the Caspian and relevant zones in the Middle East.” [20]

Colombia

The Obama administration signed a ten-year military treaty with the Alvaro Uribe government on September 30 which “gives American military forces access to seven Colombian army, navy and air force bases, but also to major international civilian airports in the country. In addition, U.S. personnel and defense contractors will enjoy diplomatic immunity under the agreement.” [21]

A copy of the pact surfaced on November 4 and detailed that it “allows Washington access to civilian airports as well as military bases” and as a result “the US will have access to all international airports across the Andean nation including airports in the cities of Barranquilla, San Andres, Cartagena, Bogota, Cali, Medellin and Bucaramanga.” [22]

In the initial phase an estimated 1,400 U.S. personnel will be assigned to the seven bases with the likelihood that the number will be increased as Washington sees fit. [23]

Eva Golinger observed that one of the newly acquired bases, that at Palanquero, was identified by a American Air Force document as providing the Pentagon “an opportunity for conducting full spectrum operations throughout South America….” [24]

Two South American nations bordering or near Colombia, Venezuela and Bolivia, were not slow to respond.

Earlier this month Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez stated in his weekly radio and television address that “We cannot waste one day to fulfill our mission: to prepare for war and help the people to get ready for war,” [25] warning that an armed conflict with the U.S. client regime in Bogota “could extend throughout the whole continent.” [26]

Days earlier two Venezuelan National Guard troops were killed at a checkpoint near Colombia and Caracas deployed 15,000 troops to the border.

In his November 13 address Chavez added. “Don’t make a mistake, Mr. Obama, by ordering an attack against Venezuela by way of Colombia.” [27]

On the same day his Bolivian counterpart, President Evo Morales, warned “I am convinced that where there are military bases, the social peace, the democracy and the development of the nations as well as their integration are not guaranteed. These facilities are an open provocation against the peace.”

Morales also said that he failed to comprehend how the American head of state could have been awarded the Peace Nobel Price “when his country does everything to promote wars and conflicts.

“Obama must justify that award by withdrawing all the troops of his country from around the world….” [28]

Czech Republic

Following up on his visit to Prague in late October, on November 5 U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden hosted Czech President Vaclav Klaus at the White House and “they mostly discussed the U.S. plan for a new missile defence architecture.”

The two “also talked about the situation in Afghanistan and Iran” and “Klaus said the United States knows that it is necessary to continue with the anti-missile project in Europe.” [29]

The next day U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Alexander Vershbow met with Czech defense officials in their nation to discuss new American missile plans for Eastern Europe, ones intended to be “stronger, smarter, and swifter” than the previous Bush administration version and to incorporate all of Europe under a NATO umbrella.

Vershbow characterized the content of the talks as having presented “some concrete ideas to begin that process of developing the Czech role in the new approach” and said that the Czech contribution could include “potential facilities here on the territory of the Czech Republic.” [30]

On November 4 the local press announced that “A few U.S. delegations will visit the Czech Republic in November, following up on the recent visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, including an expert military team that arrives in Prague this Friday.”

One of those delegations will include Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs Ellen Tauscher, who “recently said the command for the managing and control of elements of the new version of anti-missile defence could be stationed in the Czech Republic.”

“The USA wants to build the system in cooperation with NATO.” [31]

Georgia

Earlier this week U.S. Marines completed the two-week Immediate Response 2009 military training exercises in the South Caucasus nation of Georgia. The preceding maneuvers of the same name, those of 2008 in which over 1,000 American troops participated, ended one day before Georgia started shelling neighboring South Ossetia and killed several people including a Russian peacekeeper. [32]

Days after that the U.S. client regime launched an all-out invasion of South Ossetia, triggering a five-day war with Russia.

The official purpose of this year’s exercises was to train Georgian troops to serve under NATO command in Afghanistan, but a Russian news source saw matters differently:

“Immediate Response was clearly designed not to fight against the Taliban or al-Qaeda…..Commander of US Army in Europe General Carter Ham visited Georgia to inspect the exercises but no one came from Afghanistan.

“Perhaps, the exercises were aimed at issuing a warning to Russia.” [33]

As the drills were ending Alexander Shliakhturov, chief of Russia’s military intelligence, said “that he did not rule out that Georgia might again use force against breakaway South Ossetia and Abkhazia.” [34]

A lengthier account of Shliakhturov’s concerns appeared in the Georgian media and included these quotes:

“According to our information, Georgia is still getting military aid from Ukraine, Israel and NATO. NATO countries, especially Eastern European countries, provide Georgia with arms and equipment, Israel provides Georgia with air equipment, the USA trains Georgian troops and Ukraine provides Georgia with heavy equipment, namely, tanks.”

“The Russian Intelligence Service is addressing other dangers too, namely, the efforts being made by the USA and NATO to bring Georgia and Ukraine into the alliance and the new US plan to locate anti-missile systems in Europe.” [35]

Four days later other Russian sources revealed “that the United States plans to supply weapons, including a Patriot-3 air defense system and shoulder-launched Stinger missiles, worth a total of $100 million, to Georgia.” [36]

The next day Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov “recalled the situation in the summer of 2008 when many countries ignored Russian warnings that modern arms in Saakashvili’s hands might prompt this man to unleash military aggression.” [37]

The chief of the Russian General Staff, General Nikolai Makarov, said “Georgia is getting large amounts of weapons supplied from abroad” and “Georgian military potential is currently higher than last August [2008].” [38]

India

Shortly after the Pentagon wrapped up the largest joint U.S.-Indian military exercises ever, Yudh Abhyas [Preparation for War] – which featured the first deployment of new American Stryker armored combat vehicles outside of Iraq and Afghanistan – at the end of October [39], it was announced that “India is negotiating with the United States to acquire state of the art Javelin anti-tank missiles worth several million dollars for large-scale induction.” [40]

Days earlier former president George W. Bush was in India and called on his host nation to join in the war in Afghanistan, urging the U.S. and India to “work together to win the war in Afghanistan.” [41]

Iraq

In early November Arabic language news sources revealed that “The US military has finished erecting an advanced radar system in Iraq to monitor the border with Iran, Syria and Turkey” and that “the radar is a preparatory measure aimed at providing the United States and its allies advanced control capabilities in event of a US military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.” [42]

Israel

The largest-ever joint American-Israeli military exercises, the two-week Juniper Cobra 10, ended on November 3. They concentrated on live-fire missile interception exercises described by many observers as a test run for the new continent-wide NATO missile shield planned for Europe. [43]

Over 2,000 troops from the two nations and 17 U.S. warships participated in the war games to create “the infrastructure that would be necessary in the event that the Obama administration decides to deploy US systems here in the event of a conflict.” [44]

The top military commander of United States European Command and of NATO, Admiral James Stavridis, paid a three-day call to Israel for the occasion and met with “Chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, the Deputy Chief of the General Staff, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Gantz and several other commanders.” [45]

On November 1 American arms manufacturer Raytheon Company announced that it had secured contracts worth $100 million for a joint interceptor missile program of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency and the Israel Missile Defense Organization.

The Pentagon’s European Command has over 100 troops stationed in Israel’s Negev Desert manning an advanced missile radar site there.

Korean Peninsula

The South Korean Yonhap News Agency reported on November 1 that “The US and South Korea have completed joint action plans for responding to a regime collapse and other internal emergency situations in North Korea….” [46]

Citing an unidentified South Korean official, the report contains these details:

“South Korea and the US had long worked on Concept Plan 5029, to prepare for a regime collapse and other internal emergencies in North Korea.

“Since its inauguration last year, the [South Korean President] Lee Myung-bak government has pushed to convert the concept plan into an operational plan and it was recently completed.

“If the South Korea-US combined forces intervene in North Korea’s internal instabilities, the South Korean military will assume the leading role in consideration of neighboring countries, while the US military will be responsible for the removal of the North’s nuclear facilities and weapons.” [47]

On the final day of last month Washington expressed its satisfaction at South Korea redeploying troops to Afghanistan shortly after Pentagon chief Robert Gates’ visit to Seoul and the South Korean defense ministry on October 22.

“Washington supports and welcomes South Korea’s plans to deploy troops to Afghanistan…the U.S. Department of State said.” [48]

Kosovo

This month began with former U.S. president Bill Clinton arriving in the capital of Kosovo for the unveiling of a gaudy 11-foot gold-sprayed bronze statue of himself on November 1. [49]

He was being hailed by the breakaway entity’s nominal prime minister, former Kosovo Liberation Army chieftain Hashim Thaci, for his role in launching the 78-day NATO air war against Yugoslavia in March of 1999. That sustained bombing campaign, Operation Allied Force, inaugurated the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as an active war-making machine and issued in the ten-year war cycle that continues to this day with no indication of it ever abating.

A Russian commentary of the following day put the ceremony in perspective:

“Over the course of the 10-week conflict, NATO aircraft flew over 38,000 combat missions; even the German Luftwaffe had its first taste of combat over the skies of Yugoslavia since having its wings clipped in World War II.

“The ensuing 78-day aerial bombardment campaign, which grew continuously more aggressive and reckless, spared little infrastructure: factories, bridges, roads and power stations were all bombed with deadly accuracy. As a result, thousands of innocent civilians suffered great deprivation on both sides of the battle.

“In perhaps the worst public relations disaster for NATO during the conflict, five US ’smart’ bombs severely damaged the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese journalists. NATO officials, in an effort to cool Chinese outrage, blamed the error on outdated maps. Chinese officials rejected both the apologies and explanations.” [50]

Pakistan

Over the past year the nine-year-long U.S. and NATO war in Afghanistan has been extended into Pakistan, the so-called AfPak theater of operations.

On November 4 the U.S. launched its latest drone missile attack into North Waziristan, killing two Pakistanis.

“According to independent reports, since August 2008 alone, around 70 cross-border predator strikes carried out by American drones have resulted in the death of 687 Pakistani civilians.” [51]

The Nation, a Pakistani daily newspaper, reported on November 12 that the massive increase in NATO convoys crossing the country en route to Afghanistan are overwhelming the country’s highways and that “Pakistani authorities are simply helpless in checking truckloads of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) forces badly damaging the Indus Highway, the repair of which would cost billions of rupees to the national exchequer….NATO trucks and trailers have not been [held accountable] even once for the repair and maintenance work, while cracks are developing on the Indus Highway after every three to four months due to overloading….” [52]

Persian Gulf

A local news sources wrote on November 9 that “The US has deployed a new expeditionary force in the Persian Gulf – the first time a permanent self-sustaining US naval force has been set up in the region.

“The newly established Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG) 5 will serve in the area of responsibility of the US Navy 5th Fleet Combined Task Force (CTF) 51 in Manama, Bahrain,” where the entire U.S. Fifth Fleet is based. [53]

The Philippines

Two American servicemen were killed in a mine attack in Mindanao in late September, the first official deaths in the U.S.-assisted counterinsurgency war against not only the Abu Sayyaf Group but also the Moro National Liberation Front and the New People’s Army.

Filipino senators “called for the abrogation of the [Visiting Forces Agreement], saying the US Seabees killed in the explosion weren’t supposed to be there, as…the presence of the alleged land mine constitutes the area as a war zone.” [54]

Pentagon chief Robert Gates insisted earlier in the month “that some 600 US counter-terrorism troops will remain in the southern Philippines….” [55]

An opponent of the active American military involvement in the country said that “the US military has established its permanent presence in the Philippines through the auspices of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA). Many of the US soldiers are currently deployed in Mindanao under the Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines headquartered in Zamboanga City.” [56]

On November 12 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Manila after the Philippine Senate recently passed a nonbinding resolution calling on the government to renegotiate the 1999 Visiting Forces Agreement, “which enables U.S. forces to train and assist Philippine troops” and “vowed…to continue American military support.” [57]

Poland

Before departing for the Philippines Clinton hosted Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski in Washington “to discuss the new anti-missile shield plan.” [58]

On the same day, November 2, U.S. Air Force personnel transferred five C-130 Hercules military cargo planes from the Ramstein Air Base in Germany to the Powidz Air Base in Poland.

A U.S. Air Force website offered these details: “Prepping Polish aircrews and maintainers for the transition to the larger Lockheed-Martin built Hercules has been accomplished with a blend of English language and specialty knowledge training at bases in Texas and Arkansas and through a type of work mentorship exchange between U.S. and Polish air force personnel….”

A Polish air force officer revealed the purpose of the U.S. transfer in stating “The main task for the C-130s is to support our contingency operations in Afghanistan, Chad, Africa and everywhere Polish troops and supplies are needed.” [59]

After NATO defense chiefs, including the U.S.’s Gates, met in Slovakia late last month and U.S. Vice President Biden visited Poland at about the same time, Warsaw announced that it was deploying 600 more troops to Afghanistan, bringing the nation’s total toward the 3,000 mark.

Sweden

Sweden’s Chief of Defense Staff General Sverker Goranson was in Washington, D.C. in early November and was interviewed by Defense News.

His nation, which has for decades presented itself as neutral, has 500 troops serving under NATO command in Afghanistan – Sweden and Finland are in charge of four northern provinces for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force – and five Swedish soldiers were injured in a roadside bomb explosion on November 11, two them seriously.

Goranson’s comments demonstrate how far from anything resembling neutrality Sweden has recently strayed:

“The transformation we are conducting is a huge turnaround, and as I told Adm. [Michael] Mullen [U.S. Joint Chiefs chairman], we know where we are going….The major shift is globalization and the fact that most of the things we are dealing with aren’t necessarily about national boundaries.

“What turned Sweden around is not focusing on national defense, but being a part of this globalized world and solving issues together, because wherever conflicts are, whether in the Balkans or Afghanistan….”

When asked about the potential for a showdown in the Arctic Circle with Russia, he spoke about starting “discussions between the United States, Norway, Denmark and Canada [all NATO members] about what are the borders….As part of the Nordic Battle Group, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark are already sharing the operational picture in the air and on the sea, and that can be extended to the High North.”

Lastly, the Swedish visitor, whose meetings included one with the U.S.’s top military commander, acknowledged: “We had a defense resolution in 1996 that said the Swedish armed forces should be completely NATO-interoperable, which is the standard we have worked to accordingly, to make sure that wherever we go, as we did to Afghanistan.” [60]

Yemen

The government of Yemen is waging military operations against Shiite rebels in the north of the country and neighboring Saudi Arabia started launching air strikes against them earlier this month.

On November 10 Yemen’s official news agency, Saba, announced that the U.S. has signed a military cooperation agreement with the nation.

The news agency also quoted Brigadier General Jeffrey Smith, the commander of the U.S. 5th Signal Command, “as renewing Washington’s support for Yemen’s unity, security and stability.” [61]

One account of the agreement was provided under the headline “Yemen, US sign military deal to fight rebels.” [62]

As the rebels are Shiite Muslims, Washington is exploiting the conflict to recruit Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations against Iran.

Yemen, on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, lies directly across from Djibouti where the Pentagon maintains its only permanent base in Africa, Camp Lemonier, and from Somalia, which U.S. warships periodically shell from the Indian Ocean.

Notes:

[1]. New York Times, November 5, 2009

[2]. Afghanistan: West’s 21st Century War Risks Regional Conflagration, Stop NATO, October 12, 2009
http://tinyurl.com/yfh65p7

[3]. Associated Press, November 1, 2009

[4]. Reuters, November 3, 2009

[5]. Army Times, November 11, 2009

[6]. U.S. Department of Defense, American Forces Press Service, November 5, 2009

[7]. AFRICOM Year Two: Seizing The Helm Of The Entire World, Stop NATO, October 22, 2009
http://tinyurl.com/yk4ljbx

[8]. Navy Newsstand, November 5, 2009

[9]. Mr. Simmons’ Mission: NATO Bases From Balkans To Chinese Border, Stop NATO, March 4, 2009
http://tinyurl.com/yh7cqqj

[10]. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, November 9, 2009

[11]. PanArmenian.net, November 6, 2009

[12]. United States European Command, November 3, 2009

[13]. United States European Command, November 2, 2009

[14]. Baltic Sea: Flash Point For NATO-Russia Conflict, Stop NATO, February 27, 2009
http://tinyurl.com/yccrh52

Scandinavia And The Baltic Sea: NATO’s War Plans For The High North, Stop NATO, June 14, 2009
http://tinyurl.com/yfpme5z

[15]. Associated Press, November 2, 2009

[16]. All Headline News, November 2, 2009

[17]. Financial Express, November 13, 2009

[18]. Bulgaria, Romania: U.S., NATO Bases For War In The East, Stop NATO, October 24, 2009
http://tinyurl.com/yf5f3zj

[19]. United States European Command, November 2, 2009

[20]. The Diplomat, November, 2009

[21]. AllGov, November 6, 2009

[22]. Press TV, November 4, 2009

[23]. Twenty Years After End Of The Cold War: Pentagon’s Buildup In Latin America, Stop NATO, November 4, 2009
http://tinyurl.com/ygf9eyk

[24]. VHeadline, November 5, 2009

[25]. Xinhua News Agency, November 9, 2009

[26]. Press TV, November 9, 2009

[27]. Ibid

[28]. Xinhua News Agency, November 10, 2009

[29]. Czech News Agency, November 6, 2009

[30]. Associated Press, November 6, 2009

[31]. Czech News Agency, November 4, 2009

[32]. NATO War Games In Georgia: Threat Of New Caucasus War, Stop NATO, May 8, 2009
http://tinyurl.com/ylfq2r8

[33]. Voice of Russia, November 9, 2009

[34]. Civil Georgia, November 5, 2009

[35]. Interpressnews, November 6, 2009

[36]. RosBusinessConsulting/Komsomolskaya Pravda, November 10, 2009

[37]. Voice of Russia, November 11, 2009

[38]. Voice of Russia, November 10, 2009

[39]. U.S. Expands Asian NATO Against China, Russia, Stop NATO, October 16, 2009
http://tinyurl.com/ye743gv

[40]. Daily Times, November 11, 2009

[41]. Indo-Asian News Service, October 31, 2009

[42]. Press TV, November 2, 2009

[43]. Israel: Forging NATO Missile Shield, Rehearsing War With Iran, Stop NATO, November 5, 2009
http://tinyurl.com/ydq6z57

[44]. Jerusalem Post, October 31, 2009

[45]. Israeli Defense Forces, November 3, 2009

[46]. Press TV, November 1, 2009

[47]. Yonhap News Agency, November 1, 2009

[48]. Russian Information Agency Novosti, October 31, 2009

[49]. Kosovo: Marking Ten Years Of Worldwide Wars, Stop NATO, October 31, 2009
http://tinyurl.com/yzxf3ng

[50]. Russia Today, November 2, 2009

[51]. Press TV, November 4, 2009

[52]. The Nation, November 12, 2009

[53]. Press TV, November 9, 2009

[54]. Business Mirror, September 30, 2009

[55]. Mindanao Examiner, September 13, 2009

[56]. Ibid

[57]. Wall Street Journal, November 12, 2009

[58]. Polish Radio, November 2, 2009

[59]. U.S. Air Forces in Europe, November 12, 2009

[60]. Defense News, November 2, 2009

[61]. Agence France-Presse, November 10, 2009

[62]. Daily Times, November 12, 2009

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Posted by sakerfa on October 28, 2009

(JeromeCorsi) – No ‘conspiracy theory,’ scheme hatched by CFR was sold to Bush, now Obama

The integration of the United States with Canada and Mexico, long deemed by many as little more than a fanciful “conspiracy theory,” was actually an idea promoted by the Council on Foreign Relations and sold to President Bush as a means of increasing commerce and business interests throughout North America, according to a top Canadian businessman.

Thomas d’Aquino, CEO and president of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives – the Canadian counterpart to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – confirmed in an interview recently published in Canada the accuracy of what WND first reported over three years ago: namely, that the Council on Foreign Relations was the prime mover in establishing the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, or SPP.

Published by the Metropolitan Corporate Counsel Oct. 4, the d’Aquino interview verifies that the creation of the SPP was not a “conspiracy theory” but a well-thought-out North American integration plan launched by his organization, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, along with the Council on Foreign Relations in the United States.

According to d’Aquino, President Obama wants to continue North American integration under the renamed North American Leaders Summit, provided the North American Competitiveness Council can be recast to include more environmentalists and union leaders.

In the interview, d’Aquino traced the origin of SPP to his concerns, following the terrorist attacks on 9/11, that “there was a pressing need to keep the border open for commerce while simultaneously addressing the security needs of the United States and North America as a whole.”

Get “America for Sale: Fighting the New World Order, Surviving a Global Depression, and Preserving USA Sovereignty” at the WND Superstore now.

With this goal in mind, d’Aquino explained that the CCCE by 2003 had “launched an agenda that we called the North American Security and Prosperity Initiative, or NASPI.”

As WND reported in July 2007, the term “Security and Prosperity” was first used by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives in a January 23, 2003, report titled “Security and Prosperity: Toward a New Canada-United States Partnership in North America.”

Then, in 2003, d’Aquino brought the idea to Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

“I helped convince Richard Haass at the Council on Foreign Relations that we should put together a trilateral task force to look at the future of North America,” d’Aquino said. “We recruited John Manley on Canada’s side, along with William Weld, former governor of Massachusetts, and Pedro Aspe, the former Mexican economy minister, who had been so influential in promoting NAFTA.”

The result was a CFR Task Force on the Future of North America created on Oct. 15, 2004, and chaired by Manley, Weld and Aspe, precisely as d’Aquino had recommended to Haass.

The CFR Task Force on the Future of North America issued an executive summary, titled “Creating a North American Community,” that was issued March 14, 2005, just days before the March 23, 2005, trilateral summit at Waco, Texas, in which President George W. Bush, then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and then-Mexican President Vicente Fox declared the Security and Prosperity Partnership on their own authority, without any approval from the U.S. Congress.

The final task force report, titled “Building a North American Community,” was issued in March 2005, immediately following the Waco summit. (Read highlights of the controversial 59-page CFR report – including calls for increased financial aid to Mexico, the creation of a security border perimeter around all of North America, a reduction in border security between the U.S. and Mexico, and the creation of a new North American tribunal to settle disputes.)

D’Aquino agrees that the Council on Foreign Relations task force was instrumental to the trilateral summit in Waco during which the SPP’s existence was declared, saying in the interview: “The result of all these efforts [by the CFR Task Force on the Future of North America] was that in 2005, Prime Minister Martin, President Bush and President Fox decided to sign what they called the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America – the SPP.”

WND has consistently reported that the two reports issued by the CFR Task Force on the Future of North America constituted the “blueprint” for the SPP unveiled at the Waco summit meeting.

The final CFR report included on page xvii a concise statement of purpose: “The Task Force’s central recommendation is establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community, the boundaries of which would be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter.”

D’Aquino also confirmed, as WND had previously reported, that the North American Competitiveness Council was hand-picked by the Chambers of Commerce in the three countries, without any legislative approval from any of the three nations.

“At their next summit meeting, in 2006, the three leaders invited leading members of the CEO communities in the three countries to provide private-sector input on issues related to competitiveness,” he continued. “From that idea, the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) was born, to be composed of 10 frontline CEOs from each of Canada, the United States and Mexico.” That plan was implemented.

“We produced 10 of our most senior CEOs while the Americans established an executive committee of 15 representing a broad range of large companies with rotating memberships. The Mexicans produced some heavy-duty people – many names you know well.”

As WND reported at the time, the North American Competitiveness Council dominated the third annual SPP summit meeting held in Montebello, Quebec, in Aug. 2007, a fact confirmed by the interview with d’Aquino.

“The first meeting of the NACC with the three leaders took place in Montebello, Quebec, in 2007,” d’Aquino acknowledged. “Our Mexican and American counterparts graciously asked us to write the first NACC report. It was very well received, albeit heavily criticized by unions on the left and others as elitist: ‘Why did these people have access to the national leaders while everyone else was left out?’”

The NACC continued to advise SPP leaders behind closed doors at the fourth annual SPP summit meeting held in New Orleans, in April 2008, as WND reported and as d’Aquino now confirms: “The second meeting of the NACC with the three leaders took place at their summit in New Orleans in 2008 – we were in the room with the leaders for a full hour and a half.”

Whereas Bush was sold on the SPP initiative as a means of enhancing business and commerce in North America, d’Aquino explained, Obama would continue with the SPP only if more environmentalists and union leaders were included in the private advisory group that had consisted entirely of business leaders under the aegis of the NACC.

“When President Obama came to power, he faced a lot of pressure to shelve the SPP and not follow through with the NACC because his advisers were looking for an institution that would also involve environmentalists, union leaders, et al.”

D’Aquino argued that the NACC should continue, and, as WND has reported, the Obama administration is continuing the previous administration’s pursuit of North American integration.

“But at the North American Leaders Summit in Guadalajara this summer, President Calderon and Prime Minister Harper both told President Obama that the NACC was very useful,” d’Aquino said. “In fact, the Canadian NACC group met with our prime minister and his key ministers for an hour and a half on the eve of his departure for the Guadalajara summit. He said that, regardless of whether the NACC continues formally on a trilateral basis, he welcomes our advice on trilateral issues.”

WND has regularly reported that the unannounced goal of the SPP was to create a North American Union, similar to the European Union, by advancing the trade integration realized in NAFTA into continental political integration through the creation of some 20 trilateral bureaucratic working groups and the North American Competitiveness Council, composed of 30 North American business executives hand-picked, 10 each by the Chambers of Commerce of the three countries.

The Obama administration is continuing the SPP initiative under the “rebranded” and “refocused” banner of the less controversially renamed North American Leaders Summit that first met with Obama in Guadalajara, Mexico, last August.

Source: World Net Daily

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“The developments come as the White House seeks grounds to establish a major military presence in Africa….[A]nalysts caution that similar pretexts were used to justify the US invasion of Afghanistan, the missile attacks in Pakistan, and its waning military operations in Iraq, where the civilian population continues to bear the brunt of the US intervention.”

“AFRICOM facilitates the United States advancing on the African continent, taking control of the Eurasian continent and proceeding to take the helm of the entire globe.”
—————————

October 1st marked the one-year anniversary of the activation of the first U.S. overseas military command in a quarter of a century, Africa Command (AFRICOM).

AFRICOM was established as a temporary command under the wing of U.S. European Command (EUCOM) a year earlier and launched as an independent entity on October 1, 2008.

Its creation signalled several important milestones in plans by the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies to expand into all corners of the earth and to achieve military, political and economic hegemony in the Southern as well as the Northern Hemisphere.

AFRICOM is the first American regional military command established outside of North America in the post-Cold War era. (The Pentagon set up Northern Command, NORTHCOM, in 2002 after the September 11, 2001 attacks to take in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.)

Its area of responsibility includes more nations – 53 – than any other U.S. military command. By way of comparison, EUCOM includes 51 nations, among which are 19 new nations emerging from the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia and the reunification of Germany.

The Pacific Command (PACOM) incorporates 36 countries in its theater of operations, down four since the creation of AFRICOM.

Central Command (CENTCOM) currently includes 20 nations in what is referred to as the Broader Middle East.

Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) covers 32 states, 19 in Central and South America and 13 in the Caribbean, of which 14 are U.S. and European territories.

AFRICOM is also the only new U.S. regional military command absorbing nations formerly in other commands; in fact in all other commands outside the Western Hemisphere.

EUCOM ceded 42 nations (including Western Sahara, a member of the African Union whose recognition has been virulently opposed by the West since Morocco invaded it in 1975) to AFRICOM.

The Horn of Africa region (Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan) was transferred from CENTCOM to AFRICOM, with the former picking up Lebanon and Syria from EUCOM in return. Egypt is the sole African nation still in CENTCOM. The Pentagon’s Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa, which includes Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, the Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Yemen, the last on the Arabian Peninsula, was also transferred from CENTCOM to AFRICOM. The U.S. has an estimated 2,000 troops stationed in Djibouti at Camp Lemonier which hosts the Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa.

PACOM lost the Indian Ocean island nations of the Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius and the Seychelles to Africa Command.

Africa is, lastly, the first new continent targeted by the Pentagon for a comprehensive military structure, as the U.S. created comparable commands in Asia, Europe and Latin America after World War II and during the Cold War and had fought wars in all three areas by 1918. With the exception of the bombing of Libya in 1986 and military operations in Somalia in the early 1990s and by proxy since 2006, Africa has to date escaped direct American military intervention. And until the acquisition of Camp Lemonier in Djibouti in early 2001, before September 11, there was no permanent U.S. military installation on the continent.

The beginning of AFRICOM’s second year has witnessed major military exercises on the western and eastern ends of the continent.

On September 29 AFRICOM led the militaries of 30 African nations in the ten-day Africa Endeavor 2009 maneuvers in Gabon off the coast of the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea. “The U.S. military has begun an exercise in the African nation of Gabon…to improve command and control between forces for possible peacekeeping or anti-terrorism missions.

“Africom…is sponsoring the exercise and much of the instruction is done by U.S. military personnel based in Europe and the United States.” [1]

Coordinated with the command out of which AFRICOM arose, “The AFRICOM exercise comes on the heels of a similar U.S. European Command-sponsored operation – Combined Endeavor – that tested the communication compatibility of the U.S. and its European allies.” [2]

The Gabon-based exercise reprised the previous year’s Africa Endeavor which was run by European Command before AFRICOM’s formal activation and which included “21 African nations, the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Sweden and the United States.

“Nations and organizations who participated…were Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Chad, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sweden, Uganda, the United States and Zambia….” [3]

The Pentagon participated with personnel from “U.S. Marine Forces Europe (MARFOREUR); U.S. Air Forces in Europe, Public Affairs; First Combat Communications Squadron, Ramstein Air Force Base; 8th Communications Battalion, Camp Lejeune; Marine Headquarters History, Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa; U.S. European Command (EUCOM); U.S. African Command (AFRICOM); and the Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC).” [4]

This year’s maneuvers effected the formal transfer of Africa from European Command to the new Africa Command.

From October 16-25 the U.S. is heading a multinational military exercise, Natural Fire 10, in Uganda in which “More than 1,000 American and East African troops are…deployed…as the United States carries out its biggest military exercise in Africa this year.” [5]

Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi are to provide troops to join 450 U.S. military personnel in drills which “involve live fire in the field as well as convoy operations, crowd control and vehicle checkpoints….” [6]

An African newspaper account of the exercises suggests ulterior motives: “[T]he decision to site the exercise in northern Uganda raises questions about whether it may presage a renewed US-supported assault against the Lord’s Resistance Army,” which has waged an armed rebellion against the Ugandan government since 1987.

The same source continued with these observations:

“The exercise in northern Uganda is scheduled to begin one week after the conclusion of another US-led military exercise in Gabon.

“Nearly 30 African nations – including Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda – took part in that communications-focused initiative led by the US Africa Command….Together, these exercises are cited by Africom’s critics as further indications of what they describe as the growing militarisation of the US presence in Africa.

“Situating the exercise in Uganda reflects the close military relationship that the United States has developed with that East African country….

“Worries persist in Africa that the Pentagon intends to station large numbers of US troops on the continent, despite denials by Africom’s leaders that such a move is being planned.

“The United States already maintains about 2,000 troops at a base in Djibouti. This Joint Task Force/Horn of Africa detachment is the source of some of the US soldiers, sailors and Marines who will participate in Natural Fire 10.” [7]

Two days after the above was published a Ugandan newspaper announced that “Hundreds of Rwandan and Burundi troops have arrived in the country for joint military training exercises geared towards the formation of the first Joint East African Military Force.

“The training, which will also have troops from Kenya and Tanzania with experts from the US, will be conducted in Kitgum….Last week, the UPDF [Uganda Peoples Defence Force] said it supports the formation of a joint regional army, believing this will handle conflicts in the region.

“The proposal was mooted during a meeting of delegates from the five member countries in Kampala early this month.” [8]

The Pentagon is setting up a new African regional military force.

On October 20 a Rwandan news source revealed that “The visiting US commander of US Army Africa, Maj. Gen. William B. Garrett III, has stressed that the US army is interested in strengthening its cooperation with the Rwandan Defence Force (RDF).”

Garrett was quoted as saying “We are hoping to improve the relationship between Rwandan Defence Forces and the US army – this involves increase in interaction between our forces….Likewise, we hope that the Rwandan Defence Forces can also participate in our exercises. So we are hoping to increase the level of cooperation between the US and the Rwandan Defense forces.” [9]

The U.S. and its allies previously deployed Rwandan troops they trained and armed to Darfur and Somalia.

In northwest Africa, on October 20 the U.S. ambassador to Mali presented the latest tranche of “more than $5 million in new vehicles and other equipment” to the armed forces of his host country. [10]

Two years earlier the Pentagon led a multinational military exercise, Operation Flintlock 2007, in the capital of Mali with troops from thirteen African and European nations.

In the prototype exercise, Flintlock 2005, the U.S. deployed over 1,000 Special Operations troops, Green Berets, for joint military maneuvers with counterparts from Senegal, Niger, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Algeria and Tunisia.

Flintlock 2005 was employed to launch Washington’s Trans Saharan Counterterrorism Initiative with Algeria, Burkina Faso, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal. An American news report of the exercise bore the title “U.S. Said Eying Sahara For New War Front.” [11]

An official with the U.S. Special Operations Command Europe said at the time, “This is just the start of decades worth of work in Africa,” [12] a sentiment echoed by an American armed forces publication which wrote “If military planners have their way, U.S. troops are going to be deploying to Africa for years or maybe decades.” [13]

Within days of the completion of the 2007 exercise in Mali a U.S. military cargo plane, “flying food to Malian troops fighting rebels in the far north of the country,” was hit by gunfire. The plane had remained in the nation after Flintlock 2007.

“Malian troops had become surrounded at their base in the Tin-Zaouatene region near the Algerian border by armed fighters and couldn’t get supplies….[T]he Mali government asked the U.S. forces to perform the airdrops….” [14]

The fighters in question were ethnic Tuaregs.

Tuaregs in Mali and Niger, “whose armies have received U.S. counter-insurgency training,” have “taken up arms…driven by resentment over unresolved grievances and against what they see as interference in their territories by government armies and foreign companies.” [15]

What is in fact the reason for the heightened American military role in Mali and Niger rather than the Pentagon’s by now standard claim – alleged al-Qaeda threats – was mentioned in a Reuters dispatch of last year.

“The stakes are rising. We’ve got companies, beyond gold exploration [Mali is Africa's third largest gold producer], wanting to explore for oil in northern Mali.

“There has been significant interest by investors wanting to explore for oil in Timbuktu (and other northern towns)….If oil is eventually discovered, that could of course play a role.” [16]

The report from which the above is quoted also said: “Tuareg tribesmen in neighbouring Niger…launched a fresh rebellion early last year, demanding greater autonomy and a bigger slice of revenues from French-operated uranium mines in their traditional fiefdom around the northern town of Agadez.” [17]

Last year the Red Cross reported that 1,000 Tuareg civilians fled into neighboring Burkina Faso to escape a U.S.-supported Malian government offensive.

AFRICOM’s mission in the region, as with much of the rest of Africa, is to wage counterinsurgency campaigns to secure vital resources including gold, precious stones, oil, natural gas and uranium.

The infamous Niger “yellow cake” forgeries played a decisive role in U.S. propaganda leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Off the eastern coast of Africa “The US has supplied the Seychelles with drone spy planes….Seychelles officials say the planes will be used for surveillance, but did not say how many aircraft the US would be handing over….The move comes a day after the US gave equipment to Mali to fight insurgents.” [18]

A Middle Eastern website put together several components of AFRICOM’s plans in rendering this analysis:

“The United States is taking its military venture in Africa to new levels amid suspicions that Washington could be advancing yet another hidden agenda. American operatives are expected to fly pilotless surveillance aircraft over [Seychelles] territory from US ships off its coast….Washington has also started to equip Mali with USD 4.5 million worth of military vehicles and communications equipment, in what is reported to be an increasing US involvement in Africa.

“The developments come as the White House seeks grounds to establish a major military presence in Africa….[A]nalysts caution that similar pretexts were used to justify the US invasion of Afghanistan, the missile attacks in Pakistan, and its waning military operations in Iraq, where the civilian population continues to bear the brunt of the US intervention.” [19]

The same news site reported two days earlier that a U.S. spy drone had been shot down over the southern Somali port of Kismayu. “Kismayu residents routinely report suspected US drones flying over the port. The drones are believed to be launched from warships in the Indian Ocean.” [20]

It was also reported in a feature titled “US to make Blackwater-style entry into Somalia” that “The grounds have reportedly been established for armed American presence on Somali soil with a US security firm [Michigan-based CSS Global Inc.] winning a contract in the war-ravaged country.” [21]

The development was characterised as follows: “Washington has been [increasingly] deputizing the companies, which are notorious for misusing their State Department-issued gun licenses as excuses for trigger-ready atrocities. The move has been denounced as an effort at putting a non-military face on the US pursuits in the respective countries.” [22]

Though not part of AFRICOM’s area of responsibility, the African nation of Egypt recently hosted the latest Bright Star war games.

The Pentagon’s website described aspects of this year’s Bright Star, “U.S. Central Command’s longest-running exercise”:

“U.S. Marines and sailors were part of a four-nation coalition that stormed the beaches…during a major amphibious assault demonstration Oct. 12.

“The 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit and the Navy’s Bataan Amphibious Ready Group, as well as the Egyptian army and navy and Pakistani and Kuwaiti marines, took part in the assault as part of Exercise Bright Star 2009, which began Oct. 10 and ends Oct. 20.

“As part of the simulation, Egyptian special operations forces conducted beach reconnaissance prior to the assault. U.S. Marines followed with four AV-88 Harriers. Then amphibious assault vehicles, Humvees and landing craft came ashore….Troops from the various nations, along with 30 vehicles including aircraft, landing craft, amphibious assault vehicles and amphibious tracked vehicles, participated. [23]

Another American source added: “The coalition of military forces participating in the exercises also includes France, Greece, Italy, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.

“During the past week, Fort Bragg soldiers made parachute jumps with Egyptian, German, Kuwaiti and Pakistani soldiers.” [24]

AFRICOM was nurtured by U.S. European Command since then U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2002 proposed the creation of a NATO Rapid Response Force (NRF), which was approved by NATO defense chiefs in Brussels in June 2003 and was inaugurated in October 2003. In 2006 Rumsfeld followed up on that initiative by forming a planning team to establish a new Unified Command for the African continent.

The top military commander of EUCOM is simultaneously NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, and the two generals holding those joint positions during preparations for forming and activating AFRICOM were Marine General James Jones (2003-2006) and Army General Bantz John Craddock (2006-June, 2009). The first is now National Security Adviser to the U.S. president.

“[T]he newly formed NRF [NATO Rapid Response Force] carried out its first exercise code named STEADFAST JAGUAR in Cape Verde…in West Africa from 14-28 June 2006.” [25]

“The islanders of Cape Verde are slowly getting used to German armored vehicles and Spanish helicopters descending on their sun-drenched beaches as U.S. fighter F-16 jets roar overhead.

“7,800 troops involved in the maneuvers, the alliance’s first major presence on African soil.” [26]

Reuters reported at the time that “The NATO Steadfast Jaguar exercises are the final test of a 25,000-strong rapid-reaction force due to be ready from October to dive into troublespots around the world and deal with everything from natural disasters to terrorist attacks.”

And it quoted U.S. Lieutenant-Colonel Matt Chestnutt, “whose unit of F-16 fighters was deployed in the 1991 Gulf War and later conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo,” as saying “Africa was a great choice. It is possible the NATO Response Force could come here one day.” [27]

Agence France-Presse was no less effusive in its account of the unprecedented war games, dubbing its report “Military Brass Hail ‘the New NATO’ at Cape Verde War”: “Troops, fighter planes and warships descended on the West African archipelago of Cape Verde as NATO continued major war games this week to test its global rapid-response force.

“Leading politicians and military top brass from the western alliance’s member countries hailed the maneuvers — NATO’s first on African soil — underway on the archipelago’s northern island of Sao Vicente.” [28]

Two months before NATO held a warm-up naval exercise, Brilliant Mariner 2006, ranging from the Netherlands to Norway and consisting of “sixty four ships from eighteen countries…conducting joint warfare inter-operability training in a multi-threat environment,” which was “the final preparation phase before the land, air and maritime components of the NATO Response Force come together in June for the capability demonstration exercise Steadfast Jaguar 2006 in Cape Verde, off the west coast of Africa.” [29]

A month before the NATO global strike force pilot exercise in Cape Verde, Portuguese Foreign Minister Diogo Freitas do Amaral said “the West African archipelago is interested in joining both NATO and the European Union. [30]

The test run for the NATO Rapid Response Force was also conducted off the African mainland. In 2005 the Alliance held the 16-nation Noble Javelin 2005 air force, army and naval exercises in Spain’s Canary Islands off the coasts of Morocco and Western Sahara.

U.S. warships returned to Cape Verde the following year and an American commander said of the event that “These are the types of efforts that are contributing to the CNO’s [Chief of Naval Operations] ‘1000-ship Navy’ initiative.” [31] On Washington’s 1,000-ship Navy, see Proliferation Security Initiative And U.S. 1,000-Ship Navy: Control Of World’s Oceans, Prelude To War. [32]

Also in 2007 it was reported that the “USS Fort McHenry will begin a roughly six-month deployment to Western Africa as the Navy tries a new concept it has dubbed the Global Fleet Station program.” [33]

The Global Fleet Station (GFS) program was elaborated in 2007 in a U.S. combined maritime services release, “A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower.”

In June of that year Admiral Harry Ulrich, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe, spoke at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies in Washington, D.C. and said “The Global Fleet Station concept is ‘closely aligned’ with the task to be provided by the still-developing U.S. Africa Command.” [34]

Africa, then, is a testing ground for NATO’s Rapid Response Force and the U.S.’s 1,000-ship Navy and Global Fleet Station projects.

Later in 2007, even before AFRICOM was formally announced, Defense News reported that the Pentagon had already decided to divide the continent into five regions: North, south, central, east and west.

“One team will have responsibility for a northern strip from Mauritania to Libya; another will operate in a block of east African nations – Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Uganda, Kenya, Madagascar and Tanzania; and a third will carry out activities in a large southern block that includes South Africa, Zimbabwe and Angola….A fourth team would concentrate on a group of central African countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad and Congo [Brazzaville]; the fifth regional team would focus on a western block that would cover Nigeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Niger and Western Sahara….” [35]

Before the official inauguration of AFRICOM, analysts around the world sounded the alarm that beneath the innocuous-sounding claims by Washington that it was solely interested in becoming a “security partner” to African nations lurked something more geostrategically significant. And more sinister.

The following are from Nigerian, Algerian and Chinese sources, respectively.

“From the current data on production capacities and proven oil reserves, only two regions appear to exist where, in addition to the Middle East, oil production will grow and where a strategy of diversification may easily work: The Caspian Sea and the Gulf of Guinea.

“The Caspian Sea came into the limelight after the demise of the Soviet Union, and the US has since entered the region and built up a strong military presence on both sides of the lake.

“Some of the problems linked to Caspian oil give the Gulf of Guinea a competitive edge.

“Much of its oil is conveniently located off shore.

“[T]he region enjoys several advantages, including its strategic location just opposite the refineries of the US east coast. It is ahead of all other regions in proven deep water oil reserves, which will lead to significant savings in security provisions. And it requires a drilling technology easily available from the Gulf of Mexico.” [36]

“A major focus of AFRICOM will be the Gulf of Guinea, with its enormous oil reserves in Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Angola and the Congo Republic….The U.S. is already pouring $500 million into its Trans-Sahel Counterterrorism Initiative that embraces Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria in North Africa, and nations boarding the Sahara including Mauritania, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, Chad and Senegal.” [37]

“By building a dozen forefront bases or establishments in Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and other African nations, the U.S. will gradually establish a network of military bases to cover the entire continent and make essential preparations for docking an aircraft carrier fleet in the region.

“The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) with the U.S. at the head…carried out a large-scale military exercise in Cape Verde, a western African island nation, with the sole purpose for control of the sea and air corridor of crude oil extracting zones and to monitor the situation with oil pipelines operating there.

“[The US} is also seeking to set up small military facilities in Senegal, Ghana and Mali, so as to facilitate its interference in the oil-rich African nations....[T]he African Command represents a vital, crucial link for the US adjustment of its global military deployment.

“At present, it moves the gravity of its forces in Europe eastward and opens new bases in East Europe.

“Africa is flanked by Eurasia, with its northern part located at the juncture of the Asian, European and African continents. The present US global military redeployment centers mainly on an ‘arc of instability’ from the Caucasus, Central and Southern Asia down to the Korean Peninsula….

“AFRICOM facilitates the United States advancing on the African continent, taking control of the Eurasian continent and proceeding to take the helm of the entire globe.” [38]

The third set of observations is from a director of the Chinese Army’s Academy of Military Sciences. That is, from an authority expected to be familiar with world geopolitical dynamics and trends.

He situates America’s military drive into Africa, all of Africa, within an integrated global context, as does the Nigerian commentary that preceded his analysis once removed.

The campaign to subjugate an entire continent with its more than one billion inhabitants to Western military and economic demands is an integral and milestone component of broader designs around the world. Starting with the Balkans and Eastern Europe as a whole after the breakup of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union in 1991, the U.S. and its NATO allies have relentlessly pursued plans to penetrate and dominate the former Eastern bloc, former Soviet space, the Broader Middle East, the Arctic Circle and Greater Antarctica and to reclaim and solidify control of Latin America and Oceania.

AFRICOM and complementary NATO initiatives are an exponential advancement of the campaign by the West to reassert and expand global supremacy by targeting a continent at the crossroads of north and south, west and east, and the industrial and the developing worlds. As an earlier citation mentioned, it is also the meeting place of three continents and the Middle East with coasts on two of the world’s oceans and three of its seas.

Notes

1) Associated Press, September 30, 2009
2) Stars and Stripes, October 4, 2009
3) United States European Command, July 29, 2008
4) United States European Command, July 16, 2008
5) The East African, October 12, 2009
6) Ibid
7) Ibid
The Monitor, October 14, 2009
9) The New Times, October 20, 2009
10) Associated Press, October 21, 2009
11) United Press International, December 28, 2005
12) Stars And Stripes, May 15, 2005
13) Stars And Stripes, July 17, 2005
14) Stars and Stripes, September 18, 2007
15) Reuters, May 23, 2008
16) Reuters, June 6, 2008
17) Ibid
18) BBC News, October 21, 2009
19) Press TV, October 21, 2009
20) Press TV, October 19, 2009
21) Press TV, October 16, 2009
22) Ibid
23) U.S. Department of Defense, American Forces Press Service, October 14, 2009
24) Fayetteville Observer, October 4, 2009
25) Leadership (Nigeria), November 22, 2007
26) Reuters, June 29, 2006
27) Ibid
28) Agence France-Presse, June 23, 2006
29) NATO, Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, April 5, 2006
30) Reuters, May 19, 2006
31) Navy NewsStand, April 11, 2007
32) Stop NATO, January 29, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/proliferation-security-initiative-and-us-1000-ship-navy-control-of-worlds-oceans-prelude-to-war
33) Stars and Stripes, June 14, 2007
34) Ibid
35) Defense News, September 20, 2007
36) Abba Mahmood, Country, Gulf of Guinea And Africom Leadership, November 22, 2007
37) U.S. embassies turned into command posts in North Africa Ech Chorouk, October 17, 2007
38) Lin Zhiyuan, deputy office director of the People’s Liberation Army Academy of Military Sciences, U.S. moves to step up military
infiltration in Africa
People’s Daily, February 26, 2007

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New Statesman – 2009-09-20

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by Rick Rozoff

Not content with expanding from 16 to 28 members over the past decade in a post-Cold War world in which it confronts no military threat from any source, state or non-state, and not sufficiently occupied with its first ground and first Asian war in Afghanistan, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – the world’s only military bloc – is eager to take on a plethora of new international missions.

With the fragmentation of the Warsaw Pact and the breakup of the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991 NATO, far from scaling back its military might in Europe, not to mention returning the favor and dissolving itself, saw the opportunity to expand throughout the continent and the world.

Beginning with the bombing campaign in Bosnia in 1995, Operation Deliberate Force and its 400 aircraft, and the deployment of 60,000 troops there under Operation Joint Endeavor, the Alliance has steadily and inexorably deployed its military east and south into the Balkans, Northeast Africa, the entire Mediterranean Sea, Central Africa, and South and Central Asia. It has also extended its tentacles into the South Caucasus, throughout Scandinavia including Finland and Sweden, and into the Asia-Pacific region where it has formed individual partnerships with Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea along with recruiting troops from Mongolia and Singapore to serve under its command in the eight-year war in Afghanistan.

With the upgrading of its Mediterranean Dialogue program (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia), with the Persian Gulf component of the 2004 Istanbul Cooperation Initiative partnership underway and planned for the Gulf Cooperation Council states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and with the deployment of U.S.-trained Colombian counterinsurgency forces for its Afghan war, a military bloc ostensibly formed to protect the nations of the North Atlantic community now has armed forces and partnerships in all six inhabited continents.

It has waged war in Europe, against Yugoslavia in 1999, and in Asia, in Afghanistan (with intrusions into Pakistan) from 2001 to the present and into the indefinite future, and is currently conducting military operations off the coast of Africa in the Gulf of Aden. The “Soviet menace” invoked sixty years ago to create even at the time the world’s largest and most powerful military alliance receded into history a generation ago and the gap provided by the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact and the USSR has been filled by a military machine that can call upon two million troops and whose member states account for over 70 percent of world arms spending.

But the past fifteen years’ expansion is not sufficient for NATO’s worldwide ambitions. It is now in the process of elaborating a new Strategic Concept to replace that of 1999, introduced during the air war against Yugoslavia and the first absorption of nations in the former socialist bloc. One which NATO described at the time as the Alliance’s Approach to Security in the 21st Century. In the decade-long interim the bloc has come to refer to itself as 21st Century NATO, global NATO and expeditionary NATO. (The first Strategic Concept was formulated in 1991, the year of the breakup of the Soviet Union and the Operation Desert Storm war against Iraq.}

The updated version was deliberated upon at NATO’s sixtieth anniversary summit this April, the first held in two nations: Strasbourg in France and Kehl in Germany.

Over a year in advance the bloc’s Secretary General at the time, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, “called on the transatlantic military alliance to develop a new, long-term strategy designed to tackle third-millennium concerns such as cyber attacks, global warming, energy security and nuclear threats” and demanded that it increase its budget to address a “growing list of responsibilities.” [1]

If upon its founding in 1949 NATO justified the launching of a military bloc in a Europe still nursing the wounds of the deadliest and most destructive war in human history; if after the end of the Cold War it transformed its self-defined mission to encompass military intervention in the Balkans to prove its ability to enforce peace, however one-sided; if after September 21, 2001 it obediently adjusted to Washington’s agenda of a Global War On Terror and efforts against weapons of mass destruction everywhere but where they actually exist; in the past few years NATO has announced new roles and missions that will allow, in fact necessitate, its intrusion into any part of the globe for a near myriad of reasons.

If fact myriad is the exact word used on October 1 at a conference jointly organized by NATO and Lloyd’s of London – “the world’s leading insurance market” as it describes itself – by the latter’s chairman, Lord Peter Levene, in reference to NATO’s new “third millennium” Strategic Concept.

Levene’s address included these words: “Our sophisticated, industrialised and complex world is under attack from a myriad of determined and deadly threats. If we do not take action soon, we will find ourselves, like Gulliver, pinned to the ground and helpless, because we failed to stop a series of incremental changes while we still could.”

His allusion to the character who lends his name to Jonathan Swift’s novel Gulliver’s Travels invites the opportunity of quoting a paragraph from it about the protagonist’s – and Levene’s – native land, Great Britain.

After Gulliver boasts to a foreign king of among other matters Britain’s vast colonial domains and its military prowess, his interlocutor responds:

“As for yourself, who have spent the greatest part of your life in travelling, I am well disposed to hope you may hitherto have escaped many vices of your country. But by what I have gathered from your own relation, and the answers I have with much pains wrung and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.”

Lord Levene hosted the conference on the Alliance’s updated Strategic Concept, one which was attended by what were described as “200 high-level representatives from the security and business community.” [2]

This past July NATO announced that a “group of experts” would be convened to discuss and plan its new strategy. Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, as much as anyone responsible for the Alliance’s first prolonged armed conflict, the 78-day air war against Yugoslavia, chairs the group. The co-chairman is Jeroen van der Veer, who until June 30 was chief executive officer of Royal Dutch Shell.

NATO’s Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Lord Levene co-authored a column in The Telegraph of October 1, so accommodating is the Western “free press,” to coincide with the conference of the same day.

They provided a litany of joint NATO-private business sector collaborations to protect the interests of the second party, Western-based transnational corporations, including but by no means limited to information technology, the melting of the polar ice cap, risk management for overseas investments and “storms and floods.”

The article states that “industry leaders, including those from Lloyd’s, have been involved in the current process to develop NATO’s new guiding charter, the Strategic Concept; indeed, the vice-chair of the group is the former chief executive of Shell, Jeroen van der Veer.” [3]

It also lays out far-reaching plans for military responses to a veritable host of non-military issues. “[G]overnments need to do some contingency planning…including focusing intelligence assessments on climate change, tasking military planners to incorporate it into their planning as well….They also need to step up their cyber-defences, as NATO has done in creating a deployable cyber-defence capability that can help its members if they come under attack.”

The last item is an allusion to events in Estonia in 2007, cyber attacks variously ascribed by Western government and NATO officials to Russian hackers or the Russian government itself. No proof has been offered for the accusations, though that hasn’t prevented major American elected officials from threatening the use of NATO’s Article 5 collective military force provision for use in similar cases.

That is precisely what Levene and Rasmussen meant by endorsing NATO’s “creating a deployable cyber-defence capability that can help its members if they come under attack.”

The urgency of the demand of Lord Levene of Portsoken and former Danish prime minister Rasmussen for history’s largest military bloc to protect Western commercial investments was expressed in an unadorned manner by the writers when they stated “Humans have always fought over resources and land. But now we are seeing those pressures on a bigger scale….

“We must be prepared to think the unthinkable. Lloyd’s developed its 360 Risk Insight programme and its Realistic Disaster Scenarios, and NATO its Multiple Futures project, precisely to lift our eyes from the present and scan the horizon for what might be looming.”

There will be no lack of opportunities for implementing what appears to be the heart of the new Strategic Concept.

Levene mentioned a thousand “determined and deadly threats” during his speech at the conference and Rasmussen started identifying them.

In his presentation at the conference the NATO chief framed his inventory of “deadly threats” by saying, “[T]he challenges we are looking at today cut across the divide between the public and private sectors….NATO, the EU and many Governments have had to send navies to try to defend against attacks. And it has cost insurance companies – many of which are part of the Lloyd’s market – millions.” [4]

The implication is inevitable that NATO and European Union warships are operating in among other locales the Horn of Africa so that firms like Lloyd’s will have to settle fewer claims.

Rasmussen’s speech included these pretexts for NATO interventions, these future casus belli, all in his own words:

Piracy

Cyber security/defense

Climate change

Extreme weather events – catastrophic storms and flooding

Sea levels will rise

Populations will move…in large numbers…always into where someone else lives, and sometimes across borders

Water shortages

Droughts

Food production is likely to drop

Arctic ice is retreating, for resources that had, until now, been covered under ice

Global warming

CO2 emissions

Reinforcing factories or energy stations or transmission lines or ports that might be at risk of storms or flooding

Energy, where diversity of supply is a security issue

Natural and humanitarian disasters

Big storms, or floods, or sudden movements of populations

Fuel efficiency, reduc[ing] our overall dependence on foreign sources of fuel

None of the seventeen developments mentioned can even remotely be construed as a military threat and certainly not one posed by recognized state actors.

Surely no “rogue states” or “outposts of tyranny” or “international terrorists” are responsible for climate change, yet Rasmussen’s proposals for contending with it are military ones.

“[T]he security implications of climate change need to be better integrated into national security and defence strategies – as the US has done with its Quadrennial Defence Review. That means asking our intelligence agencies to look at this as one of their main tasks. It means military planners should assess potential the impacts, update their plans accordingly and consider the capabilities they might need in future.”

He additionally advocated the inclusion of the over forty nations the 28-member bloc has individual and collective partnerships with in adding, “We might also consider adapting our Partnerships to take climate change into account as well. Right now, NATO engages in military training and capacity building with countries around the world. We focus on things like peacekeeping, language training and countering terrorism. What about also including cooperation that helps build capacity in the armed forces of our Partners to better manage big storms, or floods, or sudden movements of populations?” [5]

Rasmussen’s Pandora’s box of NATO concerns were for years adumbrated by his predecessor, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who two years ago said that “[T]he subjects that the Alliance leaders are expected to discuss at the Bucharest Summit (Spring 2008) [are] NATO enlargement, missile defence, military capabilities, energy security, maritime situation awareness, cyber defence and other new security threats” [6] in one statement, and in another in the same period “emphasised the importance of such issues as enlargement, partnerships, energy security, the fight against global terrorism, energy security, cyber and missile defence which he expects to be discussed at the Bucharest summit.” [7]

In March of 2008 Scheffer was quoted in a news report titled “NATO Chief Calls for `Atlantic Charter’ to Define Strategy” as saying, “Challenges are multifaceted, interlinked and can arise from anywhere. We need to do a better job of scanning the strategic horizon. We can’t just be reactive….If NATO is to be capable to act anywhere in world, we will need more global partners.” [8]

During a visit to Israel this past January Scheffer expounded on the theme: “NATO has transformed to address the challenges of today and tomorrow. We have built partnerships around the globe from Japan to Australia to Pakistan and, of course, with the important countries of the Mediterranean and the Gulf. We have established political relations with the UN and the African Union that never existed until now. We’ve taken in new [countries], soon 28 in total, with more in line….[W]e are looking at playing new roles, as well, in energy security and cyber defence….” [9]

In a speech on March 22, “The Future of NATO,” he spoke of “long-term, costly and risky engagement far away from our own borders” and interventions “to cover a wider range of concerns and interests – from territorial defence, through regional stability, all the way to cyber defence, energy security, and the consequences of climate change.

“From just 12 member states we went to 26 – and soon 28. And from a purely ‘eurocentric’ Alliance NATO has evolved into a security provider that is engaged on several continents, working with a wide range of other nations and institutions.” [10]

His earlier reference to the African Union is to NATO’s deployment to the Darfur region of Sudan in 2005, its first African operation, and that to “political relations with the UN” to a backroom deal reached in September of 2008 between Scheffer and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that bypassed permanent Security Council members Russia and China.

Indeed, the growing list of excuses for NATO involvement and intervention, that of Scheffer and now of Rasmussen, is a dangerous arrogation of responsibility and functions that are properly those of the UN and not that of a non-elected military cabal whose combined member states’ populations are a small fraction of the human race.

NATO’s expansion and its progressively broader operations over the past ten years indicate in a glaring manner the Alliance’s intention to circumvent, subvert and jeopardize the very existence of the United Nations, a theme dealt with in a previous article, West Plots To Supplant United Nations With Global NATO. [11]

In addition to “guaranteeing energy security” by establishing military beachheads in the Balkans, Central and South Asia, the Caucasus, the Persian Gulf, the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Guinea and retaining U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe and participating in the American-led drive for a global missile shield, NATO has claimed for itself the exclusive mandate to address virtually all problems confronting humanity. In conjunction with Western arms manufacturers and the likes of Lloyd’s of London and Royal Dutch Shell.

1) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, March 16, 2008
2) NATO, October 1, 2009
3) The Telegraph, October 1, 2009
4) NATO, October 1, 2009]
5) Ibid
6) NATO, October 9, 2007
7) NATO, October 9, 2007
8)Bloomberg News, March 15, 2008
9) Haaretz, January 10, 2009
10) NATO, March 22, 2009
11) Stop NATO, May 27, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/154

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By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) — So what’s the biggest time-bomb for Obama, America, capitalism, the world? No, not global warming. Not poverty. Not even peak oil. What is the absolute biggest, one like the trigger mechanism on a nuclear bomb, one that’ll throw a wrench in global economic growth, ending capitalism, even destroying modern civilization?

The one that — if not solved soon — renders all efforts to solve all the other problems in the world, irrelevant, futile and virtually impossible?

News flash: the “Billionaires Club” knows: Bill Gates called billionaire philanthropists to a super-secret meeting in Manhattan last May. Included: Buffett, Rockefeller, Soros, Bloomberg, Turner, Oprah and others meeting at the “home of Sir Paul Nurse, a British Nobel prize biochemist and president of the private Rockefeller University, in Manhattan,” reports John Harlow in the London TimesOnline. During an afternoon session each was “given 15 minutes to present their favorite cause. Over dinner they discussed how they might settle on an ‘umbrella cause’ that could harness their interests.”

The world’s biggest time-bomb? Overpopulation, say the billionaires.

And yet, global governments with their $50 trillion GDP, aren’t even trying to solve the world’s overpopulation problem. G-20 leaders ignore it. So by 2050 the Earth’s population will explode by almost 50%, from 6.6 billion today to 9.3 billion says the United Nations.

And what about those billionaires and their billions? Can they stop the trend? Sadly no. Only a major crisis, a global catastrophe, a collapse beyond anything prior in world history will do it. Here’s why:

Civilizations collapse fast, crises trigger, leaders clueless

“One of the disturbing facts of history is that so many civilizations collapse,” warns Jared Diamond, an environmental biologist, Pulitzer prize winner and author of “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.” Many “civilizations share a sharp curve of decline. Indeed, a society’s demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak population, wealth and power.”

Other voices are darker, shrill: “We’re past the point of no return.” “It’s already too late.” “The end is near.” As with Rome’s collapse, it happens fast. Clueless leaders are caught off-guard, like Greenspan, Bernanke and Paulson a couple years ago.

Call it “WWIII: The Population Wars.” A few years ago Fortune analyzed a classified Pentagon report predicting that “climate could change radically and fast. That would be the mother of all national security issues” Population unrest would then create “massive droughts, turning farmland into dust bowls and forests to ashes.” And “by 2020 there is little doubt that something drastic is happening … an old pattern could emerge; warfare defining human life.” War will be the end-game: For capitalism, civilization, earth?

Diamond’s 12-part equation is very simple, fits perfectly with a global warfare scenario: “More people require more food, space, water, energy, and other resources … There is a long built-in momentum to human population growth called the ‘demographic bulge’ with a disproportionate number of children and young reproductive-age people.” And if the “bulge” stops for any reason, game over. Economic “growth” ends, killing capitalism.

So look closely: Diamond’s equation has 12 time-bombs. But note, the first two are the biggest triggers in the formula. The other 10 are derivative variables.

1. Overpopulation Multiplier

According to TimesOnline: A few months before the billionaires meeting Gates noted: “Official [U.N.] projections say the world’s population will peak at 9.3 billion [up from 6.6 billion today] but with charitable initiatives, such as better reproductive health care, we think we can cap that at 8.3 billion.” Still, that’s 23% more than today’s 6.6 billion.

Can it be stopped? In a recent special issue of Scientific American, population was called “the most overlooked and essential strategy for achieving long-term balance with the environment.” Why? Population’s the new “third-rail” for politicians. So they ignore it.

Yet, if all nations consumed resources at the same rate as America, we’d need six Earths to survive. Unfortunately that scenario is unstoppable. Because by 2050, while America’s population grows from 300 million to a mere 400 million, the rest of the world will explode from 6.3 billion to 8.9 billion, with over 1.4 billion each in China and India.

2. Population Impact Multiplier

Diamond warns: “There are ‘optimists’ who argue that the world could support double its human population.” But he adds, they “consider only the increase in human numbers and not average increase in per-capita impact. But I have not heard anyone who seriously argues that the world could support 12 times it’s current impact.” And yet, that’s exactly what happens with “all third-world inhabitants adopting first-world standards.”

Folks, we oversold the American dream. Now everyone wants it. Not just 300 million Americans, but 6.3 billion people worldwide are demanding more, more, more!

“What really counts,” says Diamond, “is not the number of people alone, but their impact on the environment,” the “per-capita impact.” First-world citizens “consume 32 times more resources such as fossil fuels, and put out 32 times more waste, than do the inhabitants of the Third World.” So the race is on: “Low impact people are becoming high-impact people” aspiring “to first-world living standards.” The American dream is now the global dream.

Warning: The “Impact Multiplier” will drive the global “WWIII-Population Wars” equation even if there is zero population growth to 2050!

In Diamond’s masterpiece, “Collapse,” the two key variables are what we call the “Over-Population Multiplier” and “Population Impact Multiplier.” Now let’s closely examine Diamond’s other 10 variables that are driving our “WWIII-Population Wars” equation:

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A radical plan to raise £100 billion by privatising the motorway network has been presented to the three main political parties by NM Rothschild, the influential investment bank.

Rothschild, an architect of several privatisations, made its pitch in the weeks running up to the summer recess on July 21, Whitehall sources said. Bankers told leading politicians that the sale of the roads overseen by the Highways Agency — all motorways and most big trunk roads — could help revive battered public finances.

Toll-road companies and infrastructure funds would compete to operate and maintain stretches of the network.

In one version of the scheme, the government would pay for upkeep through a system of “shadow” tolls. A more radical, and less politically palatable, option would be for companies to charge motorists directly through toll booths or electronic card readers. The RAC Foundation, a motorists’ group, advocated privatisation in a report last week.

The Rothschild plan has already won the support of Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrats’ deputy leader and Treasury spokesman.

“This is an attractive, positive idea which could release considerable resources to the public finances and may have real environmental merits,” Cable said. “The scale of it is vast — it makes rail privatisation look like small beer.”

Theresa Villiers, the shadow transport secretary, said the Conservatives had “no plans” to back Rothschild’s proposals: “Rothschilds, like many other banks and consultancies, have approached me and my team on a range of ideas for our transport network, including their ideas for our road infrastructure, but we are not working on any proposals for privatisation of the strategic road network and have no plans to do so.”

Motorway privatisation was considered by John Major’s Conservative administration, which sold British Rail, but was rejected.

A spokesman at the Department for Transport said: “It is not unusual for organisations to suggest ideas to government departments but ultimately all policy is decided by ministers and there are no plans to sell off a stake in the Highways Agency.” Rothschild declined to comment.

The bank was behind many of the key privatisations of the 1980s and 1990s, including British Steel, British Gas and British Coal. It has close links to the Conservatives, having employed several senior Party figures including Lord Lamont, John Redwood and Lord Wakeham. Oliver Letwin, the former shadow chancellor, works there part-time.

Politicians of all Parties are seeking ways to decrease the need for large tax rises or heavy cuts in public services. The bank bailouts and a recent collapse in tax revenues has seen public sector debt rise to more than £800 billion, 56.8% of GDP — up from 35.5% just two years ago.

Road tolls are unpopular, however. When Labour mooted road pricing two years ago, more than 230,000 signed a petition on the Downing Street decrying the plan .

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The Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) has essentially been rendered inactive, yet many of its key priorities such as energy integration were part of the agenda at the recent North American Leaders’ Summit held in Guadalajara, Mexico on Aug 9-10.  Environmental concerns are being used to further advance North American integration and the U.S., Canada and Mexico have committed to a more continental approach in combating climate change.

In the North American Leaders’ Declaration on Climate Change and Clean Energy it states, “We stress that the experience developed during the last 15 years in the North American region on environmental cooperation, sustainable development, and clean energy research, development, and deployment constitutes a valuable platform for climate change action, and we resolve to make use of the opportunities offered by existing bilateral and trilateral institutions.”  The leaders offered a shared vision for a low-carbon North America and the importance of taking aggressive action on climate change, including better cooperation in reducing emissions.  In conclusion, it says, “In order to facilitate these actions, we will work cooperatively to develop and follow up on a Trilateral Working Plan and submit a report of results at our next North American Leaders Summit in 2010.”

A more North American strategy in regards to climate change is moving forward.  This includes coordination of an emissions trading system.  It is also expected that a new version of the Canadian government’s climate change plan will be released this fall which will be more comparable to U.S. efforts.  In a recent article from the Wall Street Journal, one of the creators of the cap-and trade concept, Thomas Crocker says that he is now, “skeptical that cap-and-trade is the most effective way to go about regulating carbon.”  Many critics of a cap-and-trade system argue that it could further damage the economy and lead to millions of jobs being lost.

An article from the New York Times entitled Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security states a, “growing number of policy makers say that the world’s rising temperatures, surging seas and melting glaciers are a direct threat to the national interest.”  It goes on to say, “If the United States does not lead the world in reducing fossil-fuel consumption and thus emissions of global warming gases, proponents of this view say, a series of global environmental, social, political and possibly military crises loom that the nation will urgently have to address.”  The security card is being used in an effort to further galvanize support for climate and energy legislation, including a cap-and-trade system which will be debated in the Senate next month.

It is hard to deny all the fear-mongering that has been associated with global warming.  It has become like a religion with no room for debate and those not agreeing with man-made global warming being labeled as heretics.  Although as humans we have done some harm to the planet, it is the doom and gloom of global warming that receives the most attention while other environmental issues are seemingly ignored.  Whether you believe the threat of climate change to be real or exaggerated it is being used to further integrate North America.  Global warming hysteria is a vehicle for social engineering with many solutions being offered that could radically alter our very existence.

With the decline of the SPP and cracks emerging in NAFTA, it appears as if North American integration is in disarray.  Let me remind you that the global elite pushing for a North American Union and a New World Order are masters of getting order out of chaos.  The SPP could be rebranded under a new name, but regardless, there are other initiatives that could fill its void in regards to continental integration.

Dana Gabriel is an activist and independent researcher. He writes about trade, globalization, sovereignty, as well as other issues.
Contact: newworldordermustbestopped@hotmail.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
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-After the U.S. military withdrawal from Panama in 1999, the Pentagon has been expanding the “cooperative security locations” in the region. The U.S. Southern Command also operates some 17 radar sites, mostly in Peru and Colombia. All of the above is in addition to existing U.S. bases in Latin America, including a missile tracking station on Ascension Island in the Caribbean, and Soto Cano in Palmerola, Honduras. Furthermore, the United States has small military presences and property in Antigua, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, and on Andros Island in the Bahamas.

-In the case of the latest U.S.-Colombia base deal, many Latin American leaders spoken out against such a move as a dangerous development that can lead to war in the region and act against Colombia’s neighboring countries – Ecuador and Venezuela.

WASHINGTON: Despite protests and warnings from many Latin American countries, the United States is poised to sign an agreement with Colombia to expand military presence in that country.

Colombian officials said Wednesday that negotiations on the new pact could conclude as soon as this weekend.

The move has raised ire in the Latin America region where memories of U.S. military interventions are still fresh and seems to undermine the Obama administration’s latest efforts to forge warmer ties with the region.

However, the implications of the controversy may go beyond the region and seems to suggest an unchanged U.S. policy to keep a mammoth global military presence despite the change of government, analysts said.

BASE WITHOUT FORMAL TITLE

Regional leaders have warned of the consequences of the deal.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez suggested that “the winds of war are blowing” while Argentina’s President Cristina Kirchner called the move “belligerent.”

It prompted Uruguayan President Tabar Vsquez to propose banning foreign military bases in the region and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva also expressed concern.

Confronting such concerns, Obama declared last Friday that the United States has “no intent in establishing a U.S. military base in Colombia.”

However, whether the bases in the deal will have the two letters of “U.S.” in their names, the reality is that U.S. military presence in Colombia will grow, said John Lindsay-Poland, a California-based researcher on U.S. military bases in Latin America.

According to U.S. media reports, the agreement involves the use of Colombian military bases by U.S. aircraft and troops engaged in counter-narcotics and counter-guerrilla surveillance programs.

They would make up for last month’s closure of a similar U.S. operation out of Manta, Ecuador.

U.S. officials described the Colombian bases involved in the deal as “Forward Operating Locations (FOLs)” for U.S. military.

“We’re not talking about U.S. bases at all … We’re talking about access by U.S. personnel to existing Colombian bases,” a State Department official told Miami Herald on condition of anonymity.

However, according to the Pentagon’s descriptions, such FOLs is one of the three types of U.S. overseas facilities.

By the Pentagon’s definition, FOLs are “expandable warm facilities maintained with a limited U.S. military support presence and possibly prepositioned equipment,” such as the Incirlik Airbase in Turkey and the Soto Cano Airbase in Honduras.

The second type are “Main operating bases,” with permanent personnel, strong infrastructure, and often family housing, such as the Kadena Airbase in Japan and the Ramstein Airbase in Germany.

The third is “cooperative security locations,” which are sites with few or no permanent U.S. personnel, maintained by contractors or the host nation for occasional use by the U.S. military.

Some observers argue that the FOLs are de facto U.S. bases without a formal title.

AN EXPANDING WEB

Speaking to a group of Spanish-language reporters recently, Obama said the new deal with Colombia is an “update” of existing security agreement between the two countries and is a “continuation” of existing bilateral military cooperation.

However, some analysts pointed out that it signaled a continuous trend of expanding a web of U.S. military facilities and functions in Latin America over recent years.

“New U.S. bases and military access agreements have proliferated in Latin America,” U.S. analyst John Lindsay-Poland wrote in a research paper.

He pointed out that instead of operating large bases in the region, now Washington prefers smaller and “informal” facilities such as the FOLs, in order to maintain a broad military foothold while accommodating regional leaders’ reluctance to host large U.S. military bases.

After the U.S. military withdrawal from Panama in 1999, the Pentagon has been expanding the “cooperative security locations” in the region.

The U.S. Southern Command also operates some 17 radar sites, mostly in Peru and Colombia.

All of the above is in addition to existing U.S. bases in Latin America, including a missile tracking station on Ascension Island in the Caribbean, and Soto Cano in Palmerola, Honduras.

Furthermore, the United States has small military presences and property in Antigua, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, and on Andros Island in the Bahamas.

In Panama, although all U.S. military forces left the country in 1999, the Pentagon continues to enjoy access for military flights into and out of Panama.

UNCHANGED POLICY

To maintain an unmatched military is always a national goal of the United States, thus continuing a policy of maintaining a far-reaching global military presence seems to fit that logic.

Obama made it clear in his inauguration speech that it is vital for the country to maintain the “strongest military on the planet.”

“Barack Obama shows no sign of scaling back the U.S. military presence in the world,” said Catherine Lutz, a professor at Brown University.

In fact, “many of the Obama administration’s diplomatic efforts are being directed towards maintaining and garnering new access for the U.S. military across the globe,” she pointed out.

Although Washington has been readjusting its global military presence since the Cold War, the global reach of U.S. military presence is still unparalleled.

Excluding huge presence of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are about 900 U.S. military facilities in 46 countries and territories, accommodating 190,000 U.S. troops and 115,000 civilian employees, according to official figures.

However, some analysts say the real figures may be far greater.

All together, the Pentagon owns or rents 322,000 hectares of land overseas, with an inventory of weapons worth trillions of U.S. dollars according to some estimate.

U.S. policymakers gave two sets of reasons for keeping such a vast network of global presence.

One is to enhance security of the world by deterring attacks from “rogue countries” and preventing unrest, and the other is to provide humanitarian assistance.

However, many in the world don’t see things in that way.

In the case of the latest U.S.-Colombia base deal, many Latin American leaders spoken out against such a move as a dangerous development that can lead to war in the region and act against Colombia’s neighboring countries – Ecuador and Venezuela.

Aside from political and economic consequences, the fact that U.S. military personnel in overseas facilities are not accountable to local laws have already infuriated local residents.

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With less than two weeks to go until national elections, the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, is trying to cut a secret deal with one of his rivals to knock out his leading contender and ensure a decisive victory to avoid the chaos that a tight result might unleash.

Afghanistan’s second democratic polls threaten to split the country along sectarian lines. That would risk undermining US and British-led peace efforts which are already under pressure from a resurgent Taliban.

Mr Karzai and his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, hail from different ethnic groups and different regions. If neither wins outright in round one on 20 August, officials fear Afghanistan could be engulfed by violence reminiscent of the civil war of the 1990s.

“The whole country is armed. Everybody has weapons. You have to keep everyone happy,” an Afghan analyst said. Mr Abdullah’s campaign staff have threatened to hold demonstrations should Mr Karzai win, insisting that he could only do so fraudulently.

Mr Abdullah’s supporters, who are largely Tajik, have warned of Iranian-style protests, but “with Kalashnikovs”, should the President win a second term. Although Mr Karzai, a Pashtun, is still the favourite, his supporters fear that a third candidate, Ashraf Ghani, could split the Pashtun vote, depriving the President of the 51 per cent share he needs to win, and opening the door to Mr Abdullah.

Yesterday, details emerged of how the President was trying to join forces with Mr Ghani to unite the Pashtun vote and knock Mr Abdullah out of the race. Officials said the President had offered Mr Ghani a job as chief executive – a new post described as similar to prime minister. “If Ghani agrees to the terms, Karzai will dump his team and move forward, with Karzai as President and Ghani as chief executive,” a campaign official told The Independent last night.

Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Karl Eikenberry, the US ambassador, are understood to have discussed the proposal with Mr Ghani late last month. “It makes sense,” a policy analyst with close links to the US administration said. “Holbrooke likes Ghani, and he has come round to the fact that Karzai will probably win.”

The idea of a chief executive was hatched in Washington as a way of handing the responsibility of running the government to a skilled technocrat. Mr Ghani has an impressive pedigree as a former university professor and finance minister. Two years ago, he was a contender to head the World Bank. What he lacks – and what might make the deal attractive to him – is the grassroots support that Mr Karzai and Mr Abdullah enjoy.

Sources close to the President’s inner circle confirmed that they had made an offer to Mr Ghani two weeks ago and the President’s brother, Qayum Karzai, had made the first approach.

“For Karzai it’s logical,” said a businessman with friends in the President’s team. “He doesn’t want to divide the Pashtun vote, and if it goes to a second round he’s going to lose.”

US embassy officials have denied any involvement in back-room deals. Foreign diplomats are desperate to avoid being seen to be influencing the election but the international community is equally keen to avoid bloodshed when the results are announced.

Last night, Mr Ghani’s staff said he was campaigning as usual and had no plans to pull out of the race. They said the Mr Karzai’s offer was proof of their own candidate’s strength.

The President, who has been in power since US-led troops overthrew the Taliban regime in 2001, has been criticised for his lack of control outside of the capital, the slow pace of development and endemic government corruption, but many people admire him for weaving friends and enemies together. “He has always played a game with the Northern Alliance, the Hazaras and the warlords,” said the Afghan analyst. “Giving people positions and promises, he was very clever keeping everyone together.”

During this election campaign, Mr Karzai has made deals with tribal leaders and local strongmen, promising them positions and patronage in exchange for the votes they control. International officials believe as many as 20 cabinet positions have already been pledged. It is unclear what would happen to these deals if Mr Ghani came on board. However, some observers believe the deal could signal the emergence of a unity government. “Everyone realises that winner takes all won’t work,” said one.

Violence, already at its worst since the Taliban were ousted after the September 11 attacks, has increased in the run-up to the poll. Yesterday brought news of a bomb attack on a family heading to a wedding in Garmsir, in Helmand province. Five people were reported killed. In a separate attack, in Naad Ali, five policemen died when a bomb exploded near their vehicle.

In western Afghanistan, a roadside bomb killed four US Marines, bringing the death toll of Western troops for the first week of August to at least 15.

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