Noam Chomsky discusses Ukraine and Russia

[polly7]

Very, very interesting.

[Pooka Fey]

1. K&R

[swilton]

2. Clinton's

Last edited Sat Feb 14, 2015, 12:44 PM - Edit history (1)

invasion of Yugoslavia (twice in the 1990's and in violation of UN policies) was the first use of NATO- originally crafted as a defensive alliance- offensively.

NATO should have been abolished when the Berlin Wall fell, but in 2012, the Veterans for Peace called for the abolishment of NATO.

http://www.veteransforpeace.org/pressroom/news/2012/05/10/veterans-for-peace-calls-for-an-end-to-nato

Veterans for Peace works for the abolition of war, and while that process will take many steps, one that should be taken immediately is the dissolution of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

NATO has always been a war-making institution lacking in accountability to the peoples of the nations it claims to represent. But NATO at least once claimed a defensive purpose that it neither claims nor represents any longer.

NATO has militarized the nations of Europe against the will of their people, now maintains hundreds of nuclear weapons in non-nuclear European nations in blatant violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and is threatening Russia with missile base construction on its borders.

Having fought aggressive wars in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, NATO remains in Afghanistan, illegally, immorally, and to no coherent purpose. The people of the United States, other NATO nations, and Afghanistan itself, overwhelmingly favor an end to NATO's presence, while Presidents Obama and Karzai, against the will of their people, work to commit U.S. forces to at least 12.5 more years in Afghanistan.

NATO provides the United States with a pretense of global coalition and legality. Approximately half of the world's military spending is U.S., while adding the other NATO nations brings the total to three-quarters. The head of the Pentagon, Leon Panetta, recently testified in Congress that a war could be made legal by working through either the United Nations or NATO. While no written law supports that claim, it is a claim that has served its intended purpose. NATO also serves as a false legal shield, protecting the U.S. military from Congressional oversight.

The U.S. dominated NATO holds up the past year's war on Libya as a model for the future, with an eye on various potential victims, including Syria and Iran. In so doing, NATO serves as the armed enforcer of the exploitative agenda of the G-8, which has fled Chicago for the guarded compound at Camp David.

NATO's interests are neither democratically determined nor humanitarian in purpose. NATO does not bomb all nations guilty of humanitarian abuses. Nor does NATO's bombing alleviate human suffering, it adds to it. Saudi Arabia is not a target. Bahrain is not a target. Ben Ali and Mubarak were not targets. An analysis of NATO's real motivations reveals a desire to control the global flow of oil, to support dictators who have supported U.S./NATO wars, prisons and torture operations, to back Israel's expansionist agenda, and to surround and threaten the nation of Iran.

The killing and destruction engaged in by NATO in Libya was illegal, immoral, and counter-productive as is its aggression in Afghanistan. NATO’s wars have not brought democracy, peace, or human rights anywhere.

Libya is not a model for future NATO action. There is no model for future NATO action. NATO has lost its reason to exist if it ever had one. Veterans For Peace joins with our brothers and sisters in Europe, who are also rallying nonviolently against NATO, in calling for its elimination.

[cheapdate]

3. So, what did you think about the siege of Sarejevo?

For four years, the Yugolsav army stationed thousands of soldiers in the hills encircling the city and fired at will with rifles, mortars, and artillery upon the citizens of Sarajevo, killing thousands as they tried to go about the most basic functions of life in a besieged city.

The whole world wrung its hands and watched while the people of Sarajevo died in the streets, day after day, week after week, year after year. It ended when Bill Clinton ordered US warplanes to strike the Yugoslav positions in the hills -- unilaterally, without NATO, the UN, or anyone's approval.

What did you think about that?

[swilton]

7. To reference

Chomsky who quotes James Peck, "The worst human rights tragedies are always committed by someone else -- never us."

Both the 1995 and 1999 bombing campaigns of Serbia - both, if I'm not mistaken - were labeled humanitarian interventions were violations of international law. They both set a precedent (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya) for military interventions w/o Security Council and UN General Assembly approval. The fact that two new US military bases were established (one Camp Eagle near Tuzla, the other, Camp Bondsteel near Kosovo) in the aftermath and that fact that other cases of genocide in other parts of the world are virtually ignored, it suggests to me that this was a preamble to establish-perpetuate US empire under the guise of NATO expansion. This NATO expansion indeed was a violation of promises made to Russian President Gorbachev during the first Bush Administration.

Far from the humanitarian pretexts, the Yugoslavian war provided a laboratory to test technologically advanced weaponry...but it also was (per Chomsky) about establishing 'credibility' - not anything to do with the truthfulness kind and everything to do with establishing willingness to use force....regardless of international norms.

Between the Serbs and Croats and Kosovars - all were committing atrocities.

In both cases the bombing campaign made the situation worse by not only creating more civilian casualties, but also creating refugees (greater than a million) and degrading health care (statistics show increases in infant mortality to have nearly doubled, out migration of physicians and health professionals, thus lowering health care as well as education). The degradation of health care is significant considering that casualties (immediate and long term) grow exponentially with war, especially use of then state of the art sophisticated weaponry like DU and cluster munitions. The US and Britain used cluster munitions in this campaign were so severe was criticism by Human Rights Watch and others that President Clinton eventually halted their use but Britain continued to utilize them. Genera Wesley Clark has an interview with Amy Goodman where he is unapologetic about utilizing those weapons.

To quote York University Law Professor Mandel (2004) - The UN Charger put all its emphasis on outlawing war between states, whatever the motive. "The exception of self defense against an armed attack proved the rule."...."The notion of a 'humanitarian war' would have rang in the ears of the drafters of the UN Charter as nothing short of Hitlerian, because it was precisely the justification used by Hitler himself for the invasion of Poland just six years earlier." An aggressor for the purposes of this Article, is that state which is the first to commit any of the following actions: 'Declaration of war...Invasion by its armed forces...of the territory of another state.....Attack on the territory, vessels, or aircraft of another state....No political, military economic or other considerations shall serve as an excuse or justification for such actions.....

[cheapdate]

18. Fine points for discussion,

but I was wondering about the Siege of Sarajevo. I'm not convinced one could credibly claim that the citizens of Sarajevo "all were committing atrocities".

Regarding the wider Bosnian-Serbian conflict I'm not sure there was an official "labeling" of it as a "humanitarian intervention". A host of justifications were given, chief among them was the argument for "stability" and the need to contain the worst conflict seen in Europe since WWII.

But on the subject of "humanitarian intervention" there is, in fact, a strong ethical position that would say that there are cases where humanitarian intervention is a moral obligation, subject to certain conditions. Of course it's more complicated than that. I'm not an expert in the ethics of "just war". The fact that the United States is a powerful country, and one that has made many mistakes and done many misdeeds in the past, doesn't negate all arguments for intervention, although it does complicate them.

[MrMickeysMom]

11. A few other details to think about...

… was the meeting of six U.S. generals with the leaders of the Bosnian army to plan the military offensive that broke the nine-month cease-fire in Bosnia and opened the fighting in the UN-declared "safe zone" of Bihac.

As is the usual question, this raises the question, how long had the CIA been involved in that action?

What is the CIAs purpose?

The budget of the CIA is today three times the budget of the U.S. State Department. That' provides long term strategic planning to instigate as needed, by any means necessary military theaters of operations through and any coup d'état to sustain it.

The CIA's budget is black ops and doesn't need anybody's approval. We don't fucking know, and they have completely gotten out of control.

Oh, there is so much to think about right there.

[swilton]

14. Good details

It would not surprise me (and we'll never know) that FRY (former Yugoslavia) also proved as a test laboratory for the covert utilization of special forces to create such civic/domestic instability (ethnic, however) that the use of military intervention was required. Victoria Nuland has now perfected this to an art form.

[MrMickeysMom]

4. I was reading this paragraph in interest from Veterans for Peace...

NATO provides the United States with a pretense of global coalition and legality. Approximately half of the world's military spending is U.S., while adding the other NATO nations brings the total to three-quarters. The head of the Pentagon, Leon Panetta, recently testified in Congress that a war could be made legal by working through either the United Nations or NATO. While no written law supports that claim, it is a claim that has served its intended purpose. NATO also serves as a false legal shield, protecting the U.S. military from Congressional oversight.

How damning is it that Leon Panetta (2012) admits that our own constitutional powers can be usurped , or "made legal" when working under a different goal of a treaty organization.

What a lie… Instead of a world peace concept, it's the world domination of shipping lanes and nukes for oil.

[cheapdate]

6. Isn't the NATO agreement a ratified, signed treaty, and therefore law?

[MrMickeysMom]

9. Law… in whose land do you mean?

Is there ratification of law over the Western hemisphere we decide in America?

For further discussion, if you wonder what actual NATO parliamentary discussions are on for the week ahead -

On Monday, 16 February 2015, the Members of the Standing Committee of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly will meet for the annual joint meeting with the North Atlantic Council at NATO Headquarters.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg will also have a bilateral meeting with the President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, Mr. Mike Turner.

There will be no media opportunity.

Still imagery will be available after the event on the NATO website.

Ever since the Monroe Doctrine was formulated to state further efforts by European nations to colonize land or interfere with states in North or South America would be viewed as acts of aggression, we seem to have had a different mission in mind where U.S. intervention is called for.

So, what law are you talking about, and how is it indoctrinated?

During the presidency of James Monroe, the Monroe Doctrine stipulated that the U.S. would view attempts by European colonial powers to interfere in the affairs of the newly independent countries. If by declaring itself hegemon of the Western hemisphere, the U.S. was creating space for Latin American nations to choose their own destiny, free of foreign intervention.

That last sentence is most important of all. We don't seem to know what NATO is supposed to do regarding the North Atlantic. We already recognize that giving military power to sea lanes and developing nukes along the border is not in our own Doctrine… The one that somehow is morphing into military hegemony without the U.S's consent.

[cheapdate]

10. Under the U.S. constitution, a ratified and signed treaty becomes U.S. law,

the same as any other. The provisions of the treaty become provisions of U.S. law.

The Monroe Doctrine was not law, it was a statement of U.S. foreign policy objectives from 1823.

NATO is a mutual defense agreement. I'm not opposed to that fundamental mission -- to protect the territory of the member states from foreign invasion -- but I agree with you in opposing expanding the mission to protect "economic interests" or to confront other "indirect threats".

[MrMickeysMom]

12. That may be the process...

… but the treaty must be advised and consented to by a two-thirds vote in the Senate. So, now I'm asking you when the President submitted such a treaty to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to be considered by the Senate.

The FF's Monroe Doctrine was to have been the spirit of any law behind foreign policy passed under any treaty. There is good reason not to develop sudden amnesia over this.

We do go on with our hypocrisy as a nation. What drives that?

[cheapdate]

13. The NATO treaty was ratified by a wide majority in the senate in 1949.

"What drives that?" Big question. Complex answers. Simple answer fear and greed.

[MrMickeysMom]

16. It's not your Founding Father's treaty anymore...

My previous posts alluded to what will take place this next week.

Fear and greed DO drive people, but power drives the next iteration of what WHAT NATO seems to stands for…

The vote in 1949 has little to do with what NATO Parliamentary procedures and the media ain't invited.

[swilton]

15. Which takes precedence

the UN Charter or the NATO charter?

[cheapdate]

17. I suppose it's a judgement call.

[Lionel Mandrake]

5. Chomsky is awesome.

He makes you think in new ways. He is as brilliant in politics as he is in linguistics. I listen to him whenever I get a chance. I have never been disappointed by his commentary.

[polly7]

19. Yes, he is. I could listen to him all day. nt.

[DeSwiss]

8. K&R

- The walls are caving-in upon the 1%ers. They needed Ukraine for the debt it would create, but they won't get it. Vlad's said no.

Soon.



''The true value of a conflict is in the debt it produces -- you control the debt, you control everything''.

[polly7]

20. +1000. nt.

[KoKo]

21. Recommend!