By Bill Van Auken and David North (Global Research) - With US politicians and the American media engaged in an increasingly acrimonious debate over the strategy guiding the latest US war in the Middle East, the United States Army has unveiled a new document entitled the Army Operating Concept (AOC), which provides a “vision of future armed conflict” that has the most ominous implications. It is the latest in a series of documents in which the Pentagon has elaborated the underlying strategy of preventive war that was unveiled in 1992—that is, the use of war as a means of destroying potential geopolitical and economic rivals before they acquire sufficient power to block American domination of the globe.
The document was formally released at this week’s Association of the United States Army (AUSA) conference, an annual event bringing together senior officers and Defense Department officials for a series of speeches and panel discussions, along with a giant trade show mounted by arms manufacturers to show off their latest weapons systems and pursue lucrative Pentagon contracts.
Much of this year’s proceedings were dominated by dire warnings about the impact of cuts to the Army’s troop strength brought about by sequestration. Gen. Raymond Odierno, chief of staff of the Army, told reporters at the AUSA conference Monday that he was “starting to worry about our end strength” and regretting having told Congress in 2012 that the Army could manage with 490,000 active-duty soldiers.
In addition to the 490,000, there are 350,000 National Guard soldiers and 205,000 reservists, for a combined force—referred to by the Pentagon as the Total Army—of well over one million American troops. The answer to why such a gargantuan armed force would seem inadequate to Gen. Odierno can be found in the new Army Operating Concept (AOC), a reckless and dangerous document laying out a strategy of total war that encompasses the entire planet, including the United States itself.
The document makes clear that in regard to the ongoing debate over “boots on the ground,” for the top brass of the US Army there is no question: there will be boots and plenty of them.
At the outset, the AOC states its “vision” for the coming wars to be fought by the US Army. In language that recalls former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s invocation of the “unknown unknowns,” the document asserts:
“The environment the Army will operate in is unknown. The enemy is unknown, the location is unknown, and the coalitions involved are unknown.”
The only logical explanation for this paranoid scenario is that the US military views every country beyond its borders as a potential enemy. Starting from the premise that the environments, the enemies, the locations and the coalitions involved in future conflicts are unknown, the US Army requires a strategy for war against all states and peoples. This strategy is derived from the unstated, underlying imperative that US imperialism exert hegemony over the entire planet, its markets and resources, and that it be prepared to militarily annihilate any rival that stands in its way.
The document states bluntly that the “character of armed conflict” will be influenced primarily by “shifts in geopolitical landscape caused by competition for power and resources.” For the Army’s top brass, such wars for imperialist domination are a certainty.
The Army’s strategic aim, according to the document, is to achieve “overmatch,” which it defines as “the application of capabilities or use of tactics in a way that renders an adversary unable to respond effectively.”
What do these words entail? In the case of a confrontation with another nuclear power, they encompass the implementation of a first-strike doctrine of mass annihilation. In regard to the subjugation and domination of other areas of the globe, they call for massive ground operations to quell popular resistance and enforce military occupation.
Significantly, after more than a decade of the so-called “global war on terror, “ when countering a supposedly ubiquitous threat from Al Qaeda was the overriding mission of the US military-intelligence apparatus, “transnational terrorist organizations” are rather low on the Army’s list of priorities.
First and foremost are “competing powers,” a category that includes China, followed by Russia. In the case of China, the document evinces serious concern over Chinese “force modernization efforts,” which it says are aimed at achieving “stability along its periphery,” something that the US military is determined to block. China’s military efforts, it states, “highlight the need for Army forces positioned forward or regionally engaged,” and for “Army forces to project power from land into the air, maritime, space and cyberspace domains.”
Based on recent events in Ukraine, the document accuses Russia of being “determined to expand its territory and assert its power on the Eurasian landmass,” precisely US imperialism’s own strategic goal. Only a powerful deployment of US ground forces, it argues, can deter Russian “adventurism” and “project national power and exert influence in political conflicts.”
From there, the paper proceeds to “regional powers,” in the first instance, Iran. It also accuses Iran of “pursuing comprehensive military modernization” and argues that “Taken collectively, Iranian activity has the potential to undermine US regional goals,” i.e., undisputed hegemony over the Middle East and its energy resources. Iran’s activities, it concludes, “highlight the need for Army forces to remain effective against the fielded forces of nation states as well as networked guerrilla or insurgent organizations.”
The document does not limit the “vision” of future military operations to war abroad, but includes the need to “respond and mitigate crises in the homeland,” which it describes as “a unique theater of operations for the Joint Force and the Army.” The Army’s mission within the US, it asserts, includes “defense support of civil authorities.”
The AOC document is stark testimony to a military run amuck. Involved in these strategic conceptions are advanced preparations for fighting a Third World War, combined with the institution within the US itself of a military dictatorship in all but name.
Ioannis Michaletos (RIMSE) - 2013 has been a year of global “transition.” It represents a later stage in the post-recession and upheaval era since 2008, in which major geostrategic shifts of power took place, in the midst of revolutions, destabilization and economic downturn nearby. Southeast Europe was a relatively stable region during that period when compared to the neighboring Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Nevertheless, a set of emerging security threats looms across the Balkans and mainly derive from the aftermath of the aforementioned global developments.
Below is a brief summary of emerging security threats in and involving the region. The threats described are hypothetical examples of how situation could unfold in the Balkans based on several present day indicators. The summaries are provided for forward planning only, but are based on a large and complex set of analyzed data. In addition to the three threats discussed below could be added the lingering threat of ethnic nationalism and its effects on politics in most Balkan states, the rise of cyber-crime, cyber-espionage and challenges to states by tech-savvy young generation of commercially and sometimes politically-minded activists, with anonymous internet commerce and cryptocurrencies usage increasing, in line with global trends that rapidly developed in 2013; there will be an increasing divide between the technological ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ which crosses generational and establishment lines, and represents a more pronounced gap than in Western countries where educational levels are higher (at least in the focus on technology).
The Syrian Connection
“European jihadists” who traveled from Western and Northern Europe, generally via Turkey, to fight in Syria on the side of the Al-Nusra Front and other Islamist militias will eventually leave the area, in larger and larger numbers. Many are likely to get “trapped” in the Balkans on their way back from the Syrian battlefront, as they make illegal crossings via land and sea as they will be wary of flying home.
French, British, Belgian, Dutch and similar authorities will likely not permit them back and/or revoke their passports. Thus they will be forced to remain in limbo on their transit routes. Yet, whatever their ethnic origin, those jihadis who hail from Western Europe do not fit the description of typical illegal immigrants- hence, they will not want to work manual labor or settle down in areas where large numbers of immigrants currently settle, such as Athens.
In this state, and given their socio-religious orientation, we might find such persons utilizing the same networks of sympathetic jihad supporters from the Balkans, some of whom they have met in the field. Indeed, over the past two years Western security agencies have become increasingly concerned as the number of Balkan Muslims from all EU candidate countries in Syria has risen.
Following the established routes, we can expect these persons to find shelter in Bosnia, as well as Albania and Kosovo, and perhaps the Sandzak region of Serbia and Montenegro. Here they could certainly stir up trouble. Already well-established Salafi-Wahhabi infrastructure in the Western Balkans has been in place for years and links have been maintained with Western-based “brethren” through joint links in cities such as Vienna and Milano.
Since 2011, more than 2,000 EU citizens ventured into Syria and security agencies estimate that 400-700 Balkan Islamists joined them as well.
In general, the number of Jihadists fighting presently (December 2013) in Syria is estimated at 100,000 people, out of which 30,000 is the “hardcore nucleus.” This is going to be increasingly supplemented by “leftover” jihadists from Libya and perhaps radicalized individuals from Egypt.
Fighters have come from at least 75 different countries across the five inhabited continents in the largest and most diverse congregation of mujahideen the world has experienced.
The long Eastern caravan
More traditional forms of illegal immigration into Greece and other Balkan transit routes will continue to rise as Syria’s humanitarian worsens. Already more than 1 million Syrian citizens are in transit through Turkey to the EU, moving across the Balkans. Border controls are not able to withstand such pressure which comes both via land routes and sea routes. At the same time and in conjunction with the previous threat, an unknown number of jihadists from the Middle East enter the Balkans “hidden” within the refugee caravans.
In general, there are at least 400,000 Syrian refugees presently (December 2013) in transit in Turkey from Syria without access to housing, jobs or medical insurance. Furthermore another 1 million of internally displaced Syrian citizens is close to the borders with Turkey and may become refugees seeking an entrance to Europe.
Cheap weapons, anyone?
The Libyan black market in second-hand small arms will see massive sales to the Balkan organized crime syndicates, due to the ending of fighting in Syria. A rapid decrease in wholesale prices of weapons such as automatic weapons, anti-aircraft missiles and plastic explosives will expedite this.
These shipments will enter the Western Balkans and assist in fuelling a resurgence of paramilitary groups, hyper-nationalistic networks, criminal enterprises, and terrorist groups. Arms profits will also result in more official corruption as organized crime gains more leverage. In the face of this, and with the continuation of existing pressures, ordinary citizens will also be more likely to arm themselves and be ready to protect themselves from perceived threats in countries like Greece.
In general, more than 70 state armament warehouses have been looted since the ousting of Libya’s Col. Gadhafi from power at the end of 2011. The weapons missing could arm a regular force of more than 20,000 men, according to some estimates. On top of that are the large amounts of weaponry donated by Qatar to Islamist militias in Libya, which no longer needed are finding their way to hotspots in Africa, Yemen and (by sea) to Greece and Italy.
At sea, it is estimated that at least 100 maritime vessels have been engaged for years in cross-Mediterranean arms contraband along with at least 1,000 intermediate companies and individuals. Intelligence indicates that a complex network of front companies expedites this illegal trade, with international and local networks also involving Southeast Europe. The world’s illicit arms market is estimated at 32 billion USD per annum.
Originally appeared in Balkanalysis on December 14th, 2013
Since the middle Ages, the Balkan region of Kosovo-Metohia has witnessed firsthand the confrontation between Christianity and Islam. Metóhia is a Greek word meaning "the Church's land," and Orthodox Christians consider Kosovo an outpost of their civilization. Muslims, on the other hand, continue to regard the region as a precious remnant of Islamic penetration into Europe. Although Christians and Muslims clashed many times in the course of the Turkish conquest of Christian Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece, two events stand out in popular memory: the Battle of Kosovo (1389) between Serbs and Turks and the fall of Constantinople (1453).
by Aleksander Rakovic
CFrom Grecoreport.com (2003)
When I visited the Ecumenical Patriarch, His All Holiness Bartholomew, in Istanbul [Constantinople], he asked me about the life of Christians in Kosovo and about the condition of their churches. We Serbs still call Constantinople Carigrad ("the emperor's city"), and I found it difficult to speak of the persecution of Christians in a city whose Christian heritage has suffered so much over the centuries. In Constantinople and Kosovo-Metohia, two sacred Christian places that were once the foundations of Greek and Serbian nationhood, there are now very few Christians. In Kosovo, even old houses and medieval churches, which once bore witness to Christian civilization, have been devastated -- many of them just in the past few years.
In June 1999, international peacekeeping forces entered Kosovo-Metohia after 79 days of NATO bombing (1). Since that time, several hundred Christian Serbs have been murdered or kidnapped, and more than 180,000 have been driven in to exile. The Serbs who remain have had to flee for their lives, abandoning their farms and villages to seek refuge in four major enclaves and several small villages. They do not expect to be able to return to their villages, which have, for the most part, been demolished and burned. In the cities, Albanians have moved into Serbian homes and apartments. Only in the northern enclave, which has access to the rest of Serbia, do Serbs have freedom of movement. Serbs who need to travel from enclave to enclave must be accompanied by peacekeeping forces; the alternative is to risk death. Serb delegates to the Kosovo Assembly travel to Pristina, the capital, in armored cars.
Albanian Muslims, backed by the international community, are now free to eradicate all signs that Christians ever lived in Kosovo. Of course, the desecration and destruction of Kosovo's Christian monuments is hardly a new story: It has been going on since the Turks first occupied the region. In 1455, the Turks destroyed the Monastery of the Holy Archangels in Prizren. This monastery and church, founded by Emperor Dusan, was one of the greatest medieval Orthodox monuments. A century and a half later, Muslims used the stones from the ruins to build a mosque in Prizren.
The destruction of the Holy Archangels Church is only one of thousands of stories that can be told of the Turkish occupation of Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece. In recent years, Albanian activists had been desecrating and pillaging Christian monuments in Kosovo. What has changed since 1999 is the resolve of the Albanians to eliminate all signs of Christianity; In less than three years, they have desecrated or ruined some 110 Orthodox churches and destroyed nearly 80 percent of Serbian cemeteries (2).
What has happened to Zociste Monastery is typical. Zociste was a medieval monastery dedicated to Saints Cosmas and Damian[os] (who are also commemorated in an ancient church near the Roman Forum). In the old days, Albanian Muslims visited Zociste to pay their respects and kiss the relics in the hope of securing recovery for their sick friends and relatives. In 1998, however, the Kosovo Liberation Army [KLA] took over the monastery and held all the monks captive. The monks were set free only when the Red Cross made a formal appeal. After the NATO bombing and the withdrawal of the Yugoslav army and the Serbian police, Albanian activists destroyed the monastery.
In July 2002, I (along with Hieromonk Jovan Culibrk) had several conversations with three high officers of the Kosovo Force (KFOR). At those meetings, which were held in the ancient center of the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Patriarchate of Pec, Brigadier General Pierluigi Torelli, commanding officer of the KFOR International Brigade West, and his executive officer, Colonel Raffaele Iubini, expressed their deepest regret both for the expulsion of the Serbian people from Kosovo and for the destruction of their monuments. Spanish Lt. Colonel Ruiz de Pascual expressed the same sentiments, adding that, for soldiers in Kosovo, the Patriarchate of Pec had the same importance as the Vatican.
Despite the moral support of KFOR officers, Albanians every day throw stones at the Patriarchate and at the nuns who reside there. Iguman (Abbot) Teodosije, the head of Visoki Decani, the largest monastery in Kosovo, told me that Albanian provocateurs had started walking naked around the monastery in order to scandalize and humiliate the monks. The reaction of the KFOR soldiers has been to look the other way, probably out of embarrassment (3).
The international authority has recently claimed that the safety of the province has improved. Those claims do not reflect the reality, however, unless "safety" is interpreted in an unusually broad sense (i.e., stay in hiding, and you may not be hurt). Serbs still do not have freedom of movement, and the destruction of churches has continued. During this "safer" period, Albanian activists burned down what was left of the Zociste Monastery after the destruction of 1999, and this second attack took place right after Bishop Artemije conducted a liturgy among the ruins, during which, on the hill above the monastery of the Holy Archangels, Albanians detonated dynamite. Under these circumstances, KFOR's decision (in November 2002) to remove guards from some churches is hard to explain, especially since, as soon as the guards were removed, two other churches were destroyed in an explosion.
To make matters worse, substantial rumors suggest that the KFOR soldiers who guard churches are to be replaced by the far less formidable UNMIK (U.N. Mission in Kosovo) troops. Eventually, so the story goes, UNMIK police would be replaced by the Kosovo Protection Corps, which is, in fact, the KLA under another name, [even] though everyone knows that members of the KLA either carried out or at least incited the destruction of most of the Christian shrines (4).
Well-meaning officers are not enough, KFOR has refused to commit sufficient resources to protecting Serbian historical sites; in fact, some of the devastation of monuments took place near KFOR positions. KFOR officers try to excuse their failure on the grounds that they have managed to protect the most important medieval shrines -- the Patriarchate of Pec, Visoki Decani, Gracanica -- as well as the Church of Bogorodica (Mother of God) Ljeviska in Prizren. But their job was to protect the entire Christian and historical heritage of the region.
The actions of Albanian activists against Christian monuments represent an attempt to eradicate Christianity from Kosovo-Metohia. It is quite strange that the leaders of the "democratic" and "Christian" West, which sent KFOR troops and the UNMIK civil administration to bring peace to the region, have been silent in the face of the destruction of monuments that are the treasures of the entire Christian world. The exodus of Christians, the demolished and pillaged churches, scattered crosses, and broken icons are a tragedy for all of Europe and for the Americas, which were settled by Europeans.
Why the West, at the end of the 20th century, attacked a Christian and European people and then calmly presided over their expulsion at the hands of Islamic terrorists is a question that will have to be answered by future generations of historians (5).
Source. Chronicles. March 2003. 37f. Aleksander Rakovic is a senior official with the Yugoslav Federal Secretariat of Religion.
Notes:
This satanic bombing of Serbian Orthodox Christian Churches took place under the dual U.S. presidency of the two moral degenerates, Bill and Hillary Clinton. The churches, historic sites, and innocent civilians were cynically bombed into the stone age DURING HOLY WEEK AND EVEN ON EASTER DAY WITH CANCER-CAUSING DEPLETED URANIUM WARHEADS. This after these two partners in crime turned a deaf ear to the many pleas by Orthodox and other Christian leaders to stop the cowardly bombing during that most holy of all of our holy observances. (There were, however, no bombs dropped on Afghanistan during Ramadan after Sept. 11th, and Bill Clinton refused to speak at a General Assembly meeting of the U.N. "out of respect" for the Jews whose Yom Kippur holiday began on the day he was scheduled to address the Assembly.)
Something that Madeleine Albright, Thomas Miller, Costas Simitis, and their ilk all worked very hard to achieve. In the case of the first two, it is understandable; both are anti-Christian Zionist Jews who -- like their fellow Zionist, Henry Kissinger -- harbor an especial hatred for anything that unites the Greek and Orthodox Christian people. As far as comrade Simitis is concerned -- notwithstanding the fact that his daughter was reported in the Greek press as having recently been married in a Synagogue -- shouldn't the fact that he was then the Prime Minister of Christian Greece have spurred him to protest the desecration of our sacred shrines? But then, perhaps we are expecting too much from a man who referred to "... the comical ridiculousness of Helleno-Christian civilization" ("Ai yeliótita tou ellinochristianikóu politismóu) in one of his speeches.
This is just the kind of behavior Jerry Rubin, a leader back in the 60s and 70s in the Youth International Party, or the Yippies for short, encouraged in his book Do It (Simon & Schuster. New York, 1970). For instance, he describes how he and his followers were kicked out of the Newport Folk Festival for distributing pornographic literature to the crowd, a good portion of which was comprised of young children. A sample of what the leaflets were all about can be gleaned by considering the following: "F**k the first nun you see." This advice was accompanied by a very graphic illustration of just how to go about executing it.
We must not forget, dear reader, that it was this marauding, America-backed, dope-smuggling, arms-dealing, white-slavery-pimping KLA that was supported so enthusiastically by so many of America's dim-witted, historically challenged politicians. Some even went so far as to compare these aficionados of rape, pillage, and conning the stupid "Anglos" to "the freedom-fighters of the American Revolution"!
While some researchers have claimed that war between nations is in decline, a new analysis suggests we shouldn't be too quick to celebrate a more peaceful world. The study finds that there is no clear trend indicating that nations are less eager to wage war, said Bear Braumoeller, author of the study and associate professor of political science at The Ohio State University. Conflict does appear to be less common than it had been in the past, he said. But that's due more to an inability to fight than to an unwillingness to do so.
"As empires fragment, the world has split up into countries that are smaller, weaker and farther apart, so they are less able to fight each other," Braumoeller said. "Once you control for their ability to fight each other, the proclivity to go to war hasn't really changed over the last two centuries."
Braumoeller presented his research Aug. 29 in Chicago at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association.
Several researchers have claimed in recent years that war is in decline, most notably Steven Pinker in his 2011 book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. As evidence, Pinker points to a decline in war deaths per capita. But Braumoeller said he believes that is a flawed measure.
"That accurately reflects the average citizen's risk from death in war, but countries' calculations in war are more complicated than that," he said.
Moreover, since population grows exponentially, it would be hard for war deaths to keep up with the booming number of people in the world.
Because we cannot predict whether wars will be quick and easy or long and drawn-out ("Remember 'Mission Accomplished?'" Braumoeller says) a better measure of how warlike we as humans are is to start with how often countries use force -- such as missile strikes or armed border skirmishes -- against other countries, he said.
"Any one of these uses of force could conceivably start a war, so their frequency is a good indication of how war prone we are at any particular time," he said.
Braumoeller used the Correlates of War Militarized Interstate Dispute database, which scholars from around the world study to measure uses of force up to and including war.
The data shows that the uses of force held more or less constant through World War I, but then increased steadily thereafter.
This trend is consistent with the growth in the number of countries over the course of the last two centuries.
But just looking at the number of conflicts per pair of countries is misleading, he said, because countries won't go to war if they aren't "politically relevant" to each other.
Military power and geography play a big role in relevance; it is unlikely that a small, weak country in South America would start a war with a small, weak country in Africa.
Once Braumoeller took into account both the number of countries and their political relevance to one another, the results showed essentially no change to the trend of the use of force over the last 200 years.
While researchers such as Pinker have suggested that countries are actually less inclined to fight than they once were, Braumoeller said these results suggest a different reason for the recent decline in war.
"With countries being smaller, weaker and more distant from each other, they certainly have less ability to fight. But we as humans shouldn't get credit for being more peaceful just because we're not as able fight as we once were," he said. "There is no indication that we actually have less proclivity to wage war."
A delegation of Greek intelligence agents (EYP) arrived on the island of Chios on Sunday to analyze the evidence that surfaced as a result of the arrest of a German 72 year-old national who was charged late last week with espionage against the Greek state.
Quite interestingly reports claim that the Greek intelligence will not only focus on the crimes committed by the German spy, such as his photographing and documenting Greek military units, the movement of Navy ships, government buildings, etc., but will also investigate the fact that the Turks were using this information and preparing blows throughout the entire mechanism of the Hellenic state.
Several news reports said that the suspect lived on Chios for the past four years and a following a search of his home revealed evidence suggesting that he had been snapping photographs of Greek military installations as well as other Greek infrastructure on the island for at least three years. Nonetheless, Greek authorities believe that he was contracted by MIT before that and this is because he had been visiting Chios for years, and was in the market to purchase a home.
It should be noted that EYP had been keeping a close eye on the German 72 year-old for some time now and had suspected that he was involved in espionage. They were just waiting for the right moment to proceed with his arrest and literally caught him in the act when he was photographing a military camp in the area
Now EYP will examine the evidence as well as its use. One of the biggest challenges is that the German spy's actions, and the network of Turkish agents who supported him -as well as paid him handsomely for his work- coincides with the opening of the borders between both countries and the free movement of Turkish citizens to Greece.
When this occurred news sites such as defencenet warned that the decision by the George Papandreou government would allow Turkish agents to operate more freely in Greece.
Obviously they were right!
In fact, Turkish agents and special forces from its shady spy agency MIT, have been hopping all over the Eastern Aegean since been allowed to do so from the Papandreou government in a move that was dubbed by GAP as an initiative to "enhance" tourism. Unfortunately it continued with the Papademos government and as sadly as this is to note it has also continued with the present government under Antonis Samaras.
The German spy is currently being interrogated and officials hope that he will give them information on possible illegal trafficking of weapons, or support material for the Turkish special forces, that were occurring in the area of Chios.
On his part, the German national requested, and received, some time to prepare his testimony before appearing in front of a Greek prosecutor.
When he was arrested last week, he said that he was approached by Turkish nationals in the summer of 2010 and contracted by them to snap the photographs of Greek military sites, government buildings and other such infrastructure in exchange for a fee, which he noted ranged anywhere from 500 to 1,500 Euros. Reports had quoted him as saying last week that the material he gathered was then sent either through an encrypted e-mail (which was then deleted), or was delivered to five unidentified Turkish nationals, either on Chios or in Turkey.
Following his arrest last week special units combed his home. After a thorough search, officials discovered that his personal computer also yielded a number of suspicious e-mails, including one detailing naval and military activity near the island. One email, say the same reports, was apparently sent to an unknown recipient a week earlier and apparently contained intelligence data on Greek warships and military vehicles located in Chios. Quite suspiciously, in the same email, the 72 year-old German also spoke about the controversial arrest of several Turkish nationals -between the area of Chios and Oinoussa- for illegally transporting various weaponry.
More precisely authorities discovered and seized:
3 laptops,
Two cameras,
14 memory cards
5 USB sticks,
5 tourist maps of Chios
2 mobile phones and
1 pair of glasses with an integrated camera
The news of his arrest has made international headlines and it has dominated the news in both Germany and Turkey.
According to the German News Agency (DPA), the 72 year-old has confessed to crimes of espionage, while the German Embassy in Athens has confirmed his arrest but has declined to give out any more information.
In one report DPA said that the German spy was from Bonn, retired and lived for four years in was living in the Armolia village in the southern part of Chios.
Editor's Note - The government must immediately alter its immigration and visa policies. If Turkish agents paid 500 -1500 Euros to a retired German national to spy on Greece, how many 20 and 25 year-old unemployed -and desperate- illegal immigrants will they enlist with 200 euros a month? And this ridiculous without boundaries tourism development model has to also be revised. In fact there should be strict checks at all the islands in the eastern Aegean, especially to visitors from Turkey. Those who think that imperialism, wars and the shifting of borders have no place in our decade, are not only naive but are bloody idiots. Take a look at what is happening around our country, in the area of Thrace, Kastelorizo, Rhodes, etc. And if you are still not convinced then look at what happened in Yugoslavia and the Middle East. Wake up Ellada!
"Sexual violence in war-time is criminal behaviour, but can nonetheless come to be seen by soldiers as something acceptable," states Inger Skjelsbæk, who authored the study. "Political psychology differs from clinical psychology in that it does not examine the deviant behaviour of the individual, but rather the context of the deviant situation in which the individual is acting. I have focused on individuals in extreme situations, which obviously applies to war."
Inger Skjelsbæk is Deputy Director at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). The study of sexual violence committed by military personnel during the Bosnian War was funded under the Programme for Gender Research (KJONNSFORSKNING) at the Research Council of Norway and was published in book form under the title The Political Psychology of War Rape by Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Barbarians – not honourable defenders
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia is the first court to systematically prosecute perpetrators of war rape. Dr Skjelbæk's is the first study of convictions for sexual violence during war, which makes it a pioneering effort in more ways than one.
"I have studied the victims of rape before, but in order to gain more insight into why sexual violence takes place and what should be done to prevent it we need to know more about the perpetrators as well," Dr Skjelsbæk explains.
Although she was not able to interview the convicted criminals directly, she has studied the judgments handed down closely in order to understand the actions of soldiers when they are behaving in the guise of being a soldier.
"The judgments provide a rich source of new and striking profiles of soldiers. The honourable defender of both country and countryman is seldom present. The picture of the soldiers that emerges is one of barbarians who have lost all sense of what is civilised behaviour in an atmosphere of absolute moral decline. The judgments from the war in Bosnia illustrate the intense indignation of the international community regarding these soldiers' actions," says Dr Skjelsbæk.
Many show no remorse
Based on the judgments, she has distinguished between three categories of war-time aggressors: the romantic hero, the opportunist and the repentant sinner. The first does not even consider his actions to be wrong. He holds his victims captive and often enters into what he refers to as a "love relationship".
"The second category, the opportunist, takes advantage of the situation and often will admit to no wrongdoing afterwards. These are typically soldiers who served as guards in concentration camps and who abuse many individuals in a variety of contexts."
The last type of aggressor feels deep remorse for what he has done and, afterwards, is unable to come to terms with the misdeeds he has committed and been convicted for, explains Dr Skjelsbæk.
Nearly half of the 161 cases tried in the court involved sexual violence. Twenty-eight persons received convictions with nine convicted for having committed rape themselves. The number of sentences is not high given that official statistics show that at least 11 000 people were subjected to sexual violence in Bosnia. The victims were not limited to women; men comprise a large proportion of those assaulted as well.
Possible to learn more from Bosnia
"The majority of those found guilty were not convicted for having committed the assault themselves, but for complicity because as superiors they should have been aware of what was happening and intervened. I think it is encouraging that military leaders are held responsible in this way for crimes committed by men under their charge," Inger Skjelsbæk says. "One lesson we can take with us from the war in Bosnia is that more stringent requirements must be imposed to ensure good military leadership. War is a chaotic situation. This makes it especially important to make clear what is acceptable behaviour and what is not when training soldiers. Sexual violence is always an unacceptable, criminal act. In Bosnia, soldiers became aggressors by virtue of their being a soldier. They were never taught otherwise," Dr Skjelsbæk points out.
Much can still be learned by studying the aftermath of the war in Bosnia. Many of the convicted soldiers were given a hero's welcome upon their return home. Many of the victims have not received the war pensions they are entitled to. Why is this?
Inger Skjelsbæk will continue her efforts on these topics in a new project she will be heading. The project has been granted support under the FRIPRO funding scheme for independent projects at the Research Council.
A Senior Russian official has leveled charges that the United States is violating the Biological Weapons Convention and doing so too close for comfort to the Russian border. As quoted in The Moscow Times, July 20, 2013, Russia's chief sanitary inspector, Gennady Onishchenko, has accused the U.S. of producing biological weapons in Georgia at a U.S. Navy facility that is run in concert with the Georgian government.
The facility, the Center Public Health Reference Laboratory (CPHR), is situated on a former Soviet military base and is located on the outskirts of Tbilisi. Here, the U.S. government is conducting activities in violation of the 1975 Biological Weapons Convention, Onischenko told Interfax on Saturday.
The facility opened amidst much fanfare on March 18, 2011. Andrew C. Weber, the U.S. assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs, Georgian PM Nika Gilauri and U.S. Ambassador to Georgia, John Bass, were among the officials present at the inauguration of the lab, which is a mere hop from the Tbilisi airport.
The U.S. has invested over 150 million dollars in the lab which, according to the Georgian and U.S. officials, aims at protecting public and animal health through dangerous pathogens detection and epidemiological surveillance.
CPHR was built by the United States Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a part of the U.S. Department of Defense. Many concerns about this lab were raised in a 2011 article by Joni Simonishvili, entitled "Bio Weapons or Bio Health Reference Lab in Tbilisi Georgia?"
According to Simonishvili,
U.S. Senator Richard Lugar - a significant player in non-proliferation work - called it a storage lab for biological weapons in one of his US Senate trip reports after visiting Georgia.
Numerous indicators that the United States, a signatory to the Biological Weapons Convention, is violating this international treaty from nearly every perspective viewed was the subject of a presentation to the 7th Review Conference of the BWC in December of 2011. (Source)
According to the Moscow Times, Amiran Gamkrelidze, head of the Georgia National Center for Disease Control and Public Health, a joint U.S.-Georgian organization, called Onishchenko's accusations "absurd."
The website for CPHRL reveals nothing as to the nature of the activities taking place at the lab. Here is a screenshot from Sunday, July 21, 2013.
A discussion paper released in 2010 by Science-Metrix Inc. examines geopolitical shifts in knowledge creation over the past three decades in the ex-USSR, the Middle East and Asia. Using information extracted from the Web of Science (Thomson Reuters) database of scientific publications spanning the last 30 years (1980 to 2009), the paper examines the effects of geopolitical change on scientific production.
"When we started this research, we expected to find Asian countries growing rapidly," says Eric Archambault, author of the Discussion Paper and president of Science-Metrix. "But we were both awed and pleasantly surprised. Asia is catching up even more rapidly than previously thought, Europe is holding its position more than most would expect, and the Middle East is a region to watch."
As one example of geopolitical change and its effects, the study cites the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. While the levels of scientific output of most of the ex-Soviet republics (with the exception of Lithuania and Estonia) have yet to recover, those of other ex-members of the Warsaw Pact surged very shortly after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
The paper also discusses the Middle East, where constant political tensions and armed conflict have led to substantially different responses in the development of national scientific systems. Iraq's system is still shattered, and Kuwait's still hasn't fully recovered. Importantly, Iran has exhibited one of the fastest growth rates in scientific production the world over. The growth and specific efforts in strategic subfields indicate that this may be the result of Iran's highly controversial nuclear technology development program.
The paper concludes with an examination of global trends in scientific production and highlights Asia's rising dominance on the research front. Over the last 30 years, Asia's share of world scientific output grew by 155% and, as of 2009, surpassed that of Northern America. China, in particular, has shown spectacular progress—its output of peer-reviewed scientific papers grew more than five times faster than that of the US, and it is set to meet the US level of output in natural sciences and engineering in 2010, and in 2015 overall.
"These data provide a lot of food for thought," says Dr. Archambault. "Science is growing in importance, but we don't know much about how politics affects science and not even how science affects policy."
The following article was originally published by the Serbian news agency (Serbianna), in December 2006. Nonetheless, it is a great analysis by Ioannis Michaletos who we feature here on HellasFrappe every once in a while. Enjoy!
After the 9/11, a worldwide “War on terror” begun in order to disband and neutralize terrorist networks across the globe. The main focus of the largest anti-terrorist campaign in history is focused in the Middle East area, as well as in Afghanistan. The Balkan Peninsula is the European area where this campaign has also taken place, with numerous arrests and a continuous effort into riding the fundamentalist of the area. The question arising though, is how did the extremists gain a foothold in South Eastern Europe in the first place, and what was the reaction of the international community over the previous years.
The presence of Islam in the Balkans dates back in the 13th century. The Byzantine Emperors in order to create the much needed mercenary armies, against the then archenemy, namely the Francs; allowed Muslim Turks into modern day Bulgaria. They were used mainly as cavalry forces due to their excellent techniques in that kind of war. Over the coming decades the antagonism between the Francs and the Vatican from one side and the Byzantium from the other, led to the final conquer of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Gradually virtually the whole of the Balkans came under Muslim dominance and were included in the Dar al Islam territory stretching from the Hindu river and up to Gibraltar. In Bosnia in particular the sect of Vogomils –Eastern Orthodox sect-, converted to Islam for a variety of societal and spiritual reasons. Since the Vogomils were the affluent class of the central Balkans they soon became the ruling class for millions of Christians of Slavic descent mostly.
In Albania the Islamic takeover had a dramatic effect and in a matter of 150 years 2/3rds of the population converted from the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Churches, to Islam. The main reason for such a large proselytism in Albania had been the traditional adherence towards the stronger ruler that the mountainous Albanians have showed since their early history. During the Roman Empire times, the Albanians served as elite corps in the Armies of the Emperors Empires –i.e. Diocletian was of Albanian descent- and tended to absorb the cultural and religious norms of their regional superintendents. The same was the case in the more or less Greek dominated Byzantium. As soon as the “Eastern Roman Empire” waned in favor of the Western one; there was a mass conversion to Catholicism in the early 13th century. The historical collective path of the Albanian people can be compared with that of the mountainous Swiss that have eloquently absorbed influences and norms by the much larger and influential neighbors (Germany, France, and Italy).
The above historical outline is presented in order to explain the infiltration in the Balkans through two Islamic influenced states, Albania and Bosnia.
In 1992 the break of the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina presented an unparallel opportunity for the international Mujahedin, to storm Europe and establish safe havens in the area. The leader of Bosnia, Alia Izebegovic was eager to obtain as much assistance as possible and didn’t hesitate in providing the necessary framework by which the Islamic ties were forged. Actually in the same year, a variety of Islamic mercenaries flowed into the Balkans in order to support the “Holy cause”, meaning the establishment of the first Islamic state in Europe. The end of the war in 1995 saw quite a few of those mujahedin, acquiring Bosnian citizenship and establishing the first Islamic community in the village of Bosinye.
The tolerance of the West towards this phenomenon proved to be one of the gravest mistakes of modern times. Articles in Serbianna and in other information sources have indicated a massive handout of Bosnian passports to hundreds of potentially dangerous individuals of Middle Eastern descent. On top of that, a well organized criminal network has already been established in Sarajevo that in a large extent facilitates illegal immigration from Asia to Europe. That activity is coupled with the narcotics trade that is being supplemented by the infamous “Balkan Drug route”. It is illuminating to note that the areas from where this route is passing are under Muslim influence mostly.
Albania was under the Communist rule during the Cold War, the most isolated country in Europe. The break of the Soviet Empire unleashed forces that were kept dormant in the society for decades, and resulted to some very interesting developments. In 1992 Albania becomes a member of the Islamic Conference, an international Islamic organization. The same year as well the government of Sali Berisha –Who is also the current P. Minister – signed a military agreement with Turkey, thus enacting a series of discussions in the neighboring states, around the possibility of an Islamic arch from Istanbul to Sarajevo. One of the main reasons the Albanian officials were eager into forming strong ties with the Muslim world; was the hope that large investments from the Gulf would ensure the uplifting of the decaying Albanian economy.
Therefore the religious sentiment of the majority of Albanians –Mostly in the North- was overplayed in order to gain capital from the Islamic world. Unfortunately no serious investment initiatives were undertaken; instead the Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, found another state to expand their illegal activities. Many different and respectable sources have indicated two visits by Bin Laden in Tirana that aimed into creating an Islamic platform for the country and the construction of terrorist networks within the territory. An Albanian called Naseroudin Albani played an instrumental role in spreading extremist Islamic values into the Albanian society.
He was a fugitive from Albania since 1963 and resided in Amman-Jordan. Sources mainly from Albania, point out to him, that he organized radical Sunni sects back in the 70’s in the Middle East that became the nucleus of the modern day Mujahedin. Another Albanian, the then head of the SHIK –Secret service-, called Bashkim Gazidente assisted into implementing a kind of Islamic agenda in Albanian domestic policies. The 1997 riots ensured his flight from Albania and he is often now accused to be an instrument of the Islamic networks. He presumably lives now in a Middle Eastern country.
The Al Qaeda factor in Albania was consolidated by the creation of the Arabic-Albanian bank, in which Bin Laden allegedly invested the sum of 11.4 million USD. This financial institution acted as a front cover for the transfer of capital for Islamic activities within the country. Just before Berisha’s political overturn in 1997, another Islamic institution called “El Farouk”, acted as a recruitment agency for young Albanians, under the pretext of a charity. Moreover one of the most dramatic indications of the establishment of an Islamic foothold in Albania was the creation of a training camp just outside Tirana, and in fact it is the same camp by which Berisha tried in 1998 unsuccessfully to overthrow the then government of Fatos Nano.
In 1998 the bombing attacks in Nairobi and Tanzania, really socked the USA administration that acted for the first time in the 90’s to seek the destruction of terrorists networks. Soon the pressure fell in Albania and in the October of the same month individuals of Middle Eastern origin mostly were rounded up and deported. The head of SHIK –Fatos Clozi-, admitted for the first the existence of extremists in Albania and promised the eradication of the terrorist nucleus.
The 9/11 attacks proved to be a fatal blow for the radicals in Albania and the USA forces have more or less neutralize any remaining cells. The government of Albania, which is more than willing to become inducted in the Euro-Atlantic security framework, has ceased to seek Islamic assistance and the current Berisha’s administration has refaced its Islamic outlook into a modern European one.
Nevertheless, the Albanian-Islamic connection is now concentrated in Kosovo, the very same province NATO forces are stationed! There is an overwhelming variety of sources and reports that indicate a well established fundamentalist presence in that area.
It is a common secret in the international community that the West kept a blind eye during the 1998-1999 Winter where hundreds of Mujahedin joined the UCK forces and helped it expand. At that period the means justified the end which was the disbandment of the Russian influence in the Balkans, as the Clinton administration viewed the Milocevic one. The result was a resurge of Islamic radical networks in the region, thus eliminating the beneficial results of previous actions against it. Moreover Russia managed to regroup and it is still viewed as a great player in South Eastern Europe. In a nutshell sometimes means justify the ends, only when the ones in charge really understand Machiavelli in spirit and not only in text.
Continuing, Montenegro nowadays faces a long term Islamic population bomb and it is certain that should current trends continue, in 2050 half of the population would be Muslim. That is not of course a prelude of terrorism action per se, but the overall turbulent Balkan history and the existence of such networks in nearby Kosovo, will most surely not assure a calm and tranquil political future for the newest Balkan state. The FYR Macedonia is also another terrain where the delicate balance between radicalism and Muslim secularism is taking place. Back in 2001, an Albanian uprising nearly resulted in the disintegration of the state, nowadays there is a pervasion of stability. However any negative developments in Kosovo will affect directly the country which is also the epicenter of the Balkans by a geopolitical point of view.
Lastly the Sanjak area in Southern Serbia is a territory to watch, where the Wahhabi strain of Islam has gained tremendous influence in the local Muslim population. Again Kosovo as the centre of radicalism in the Balkans could play the role of the powder keg for any developments in Sanjak, against the Serbian population in the region.
The European administrative and strategic community –Whatever that term might imply for the Continent- must be fully aware of the complicated Balkan reality. The region is a mostly secular one, but it has the peculiarity of hosting safe havens of terrorists and organized crime related Islamists. Moreover most of them habituate in areas of international control, thus making a ridicule of the whole of the campaign against terror by the West. In parallel the existence of criminal activities of tremendous proportions in the narcotics and the trafficking smuggling, provides those terrorist laden networks, with enough capital to influence and buy their way out in cases of crack downs and persecutions.
Therefore only a coordinated pan European operation would be able to eradicate this perilous condition. The bombings in Madrid and in London had a Balkan flavor in them –Namely the explosives used according to many-, and one wonders what might happen in the future. Islamic radicalism is an X factor in modern day Balkans and in the whole of Europe. What is certain though is that this factor will not be used for the benefit of the West and the only way of neutralize it is by disrupting its logistic and financial base.
The only obstacle so far for the successful inaction of a “Balkan war on terror” are the careers in various world capitals, that are related on the perception of half truths and half lies about the West’s involvement in the Yugoslavian wars and the use of the Islamic X factor on those. Political ambitious, international reputations and the all pervading political correctness, hinders the right actions to be taken. A great leader once said “A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject”. That surely sums up the mentality of the international officials around the “X factor”.
Sources for the article – readings
1) http://www.worldpress.org/Europe/2335.cfm Paper on radical Islam in the Balkans
3) http://www.google.com/search?q=islam+in+the+balkans&hl=el&lr=&rls=WZPA,WZPA:2006-23,WZPA:en&start=20&sa=N A Bulgarian appraisal of Islam in the Balkans
4) http://www.google.com/search?q=islam+in+the+balkans&hl=el&lr=&rls=WZPA,WZPA:2006-23,WZPA:en&start=20&sa=N An analysis of terrorism and Islam in the Balkans
5) http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35561 An article about Islam in Bosnia
6) http://www.jamestown.org/publications_details.php?volume_id=400&issue_id=2909&article_id=23538 A paper by the Jamestown Foundation on Wahhabism in the Balkans
8) http://www.history.navy.mil/library/online/islamic_terrorism.htm An assessment of the terrorism in the Balkans during the 90’s by the USA Naval historical center.
9) www.fas.org/sgp/crs/terror/RL33012.pdf A CRS report for the USA Congress for the Islamic terrorism in the Balkans
10) http://www.stormingmedia.us/31/3184/A318444.html Presentation of a FAS paper on Islamic extremism in the Balkans.
11) http://leav-www.army.mil/fmso/documents/muja.htm An article on Mujahedins in Bosnia by the Foreign Military Studies Office Publications-USA-.
12) Al-Qaida’s Jihad in Europe The Afghan-Bosnian Network, By Evan F. Kohlmann, Summary link: http://www.bergpublishers.com/uk/book_page.asp?BKTitle=Al-Qaida’s%20Jihad%20in%20Europe
13) http://www.fas.org/irp/news/1994/afghan_war_vetrans.html An analysis on the role of Mujahedins in the Bosnia conflict by the Federation Of American Scientists
14) http://www.saag.org/papers4/paper306.html A paper around Islamic terrorism in the Balkans by the South Asia Analysis Group
15) http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3724/is_200309/ai_n9253533 An analysis of the operational modus of the Mujahedin in the Balkans
16) http://128.121.186.47/ISSA/reports/Balkan/Jan1204.htm A report on Islamic terrorism in the Balkans by GIS
17) http://www.freeman.org/m_online/feb98/bodansky.htm A critique on the USA policy in Bosnia
18) http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/980000-kla-petkovic-terror.htm A report published by FAS on connections between Albania and Islamic terrorism
19) http://waronjihad.org/balkan160505.html An article on jihad in the Balkans
20) http://www.cfr.org/publication/4344/rule_of_law.html?breadcrumb=%2Fregion%2F385%2Fbalkans A report on Al-Qaeda links in the Balkans by the CFR.
21) http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=GOR20050714&articleId=692 An article around Western faults regarding Islamic fundamentalism in the Balkans by the Global Research Group
22) http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=100 Analysis on the presence of Al-Qaeda on the Balkans by DEBKA
23) http://www.balkanpeace.org/index.php?index=/content/analysis/a15.incl An article on Al-Qaeda in the Balkans by the Center for Peace in the Balkans
24) www.law.umaryland.edu/marshall/crsreports/crsdocuments/RL33012_07262005.pdf A paper by the University of Maryland on Islamic terrorism in the Balkans
25) www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2004/soccp311.doc.htm A publication of the United Nations on the connection between organized crime and terrorism in the Balkans
26) http://www.google.com/search?q=organized+crime+and+terrorism+in+the+balkans&hl=el&lr=&rls=WZPA,WZPA:2006-23,WZPA:en&start=10&sa=N A collection of resources on the mismanagement by the West of Islam in the Balkans
27) http://www.google.com/search?q=organized+crime+and+terrorism+in+the+balkans&hl=el&lr=&rls=WZPA,WZPA:2006-23,WZPA:en&start=10&sa=N An Associated Press report on Jihadist links in the Balkans
28) www.balkanalysis.com/security-intelligence-briefs/06262006-dragas-pocket-worries-terrorism-experts/ An analysis on Balkan terrorism by Balkanalysis.com
29) http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/cgi-bin/newsviews.cgi/The%20Balkans/Kosovo A variety of articles on Balkans, Islam and terrorism by the Chronicles Magazine.
The U.S. government’s military spending excess — when compared with the
rest of the world — is down somewhat due mostly to troop withdrawals
from Iraq and Afghanistan but still accounts for 39 percent of the
global total, according to a new international study.
According to a report just released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), world military expenditures in 2012 totaled $1.75 trillion. And, the report revealed that, as in all recent decades, the world’s biggest military spender by far was the U.S. government, whose expenditures for war and preparations for war amounted to $682 billion — 39 percent of the global total.
The United States spent more than four times as much on the military as China (the number two big spender) and more than seven times as much as Russia (which ranked third). Although the military expenditures of the United States dipped a bit in 2012, largely thanks to the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, they remained 69 percent higher than in 2001.
A U.S. Army lieutenant patrols a new customs yard under construction near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in the Spin Boldak district of Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, April 8, 2013. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Shane Hamann)
U.S. military supremacy is even more evident when the U.S. military alliance system is brought into the picture, for the United States and its allies accounted for the vast bulk of world military spending in 2012. NATO members, including the United States, spent $1 trillion dollars on the military.
Thus, although studies have found that the United States ranks 17th among nations in education, 26th in infant mortality, and 37th in life expectancy and overall health, there is no doubt that it ranks first when it comes to war.
This Number 1 status might not carry much weight among Americans scavenging for food in garbage dumpsters, among Americans unable to afford medical care, or among Americans shivering in poorly heated homes. Even many Americans in the more comfortable middle class might be more concerned with how they are going to afford the skyrocketing costs of a college education, how they can get by with fewer teachers, firefighters and police in their communities, and how their hospitals, parks, roads, bridges and other public facilities can be maintained.
Of course, there is a direct connection between the massive level of U.S. military spending and belt-tightening austerity at home: most federal discretionary spending goes for war.
The Lockheed Martin Corp.’s new F-35 joint strike fighter plane provides a good example of the U.S. government’s warped priorities. It is estimated that this military weapons system will cost the U.S. government $1.5 trillion by the time of its completion. Does this Cold War-style warplane, designed for fighting enemies the U.S. government no longer faces, represent a good investment for Americans?
After 12 years of production, costing $396 billion, the F-35 has exhibited numerous design and engineering flaws, has been grounded twice, and has never been flown in combat. Given the immense military advantage the United States already has over all other nations in the world, is this most expensive weapons system in world history really necessary? And aren’t there other, better things that Americans could be doing with their money?
Of course, the same is true for other countries. Is there really any justification for the nations of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America to be increasing their level of military spending — as they did in 2012 — while millions of their people live in dire poverty? Projections indicate that, by 2015, about a billion people around the world will be living on an income of about $1.25 per day. When, in desperation, they riot for bread, will the government officials of these nations, echoing Marie Antoinette, suggest that they eat the new warplanes and missiles?
President Dwight Eisenhower put it well in an address before the American Society of Newspaper Editors 60 years ago:
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. . . . This world in arms is not spending money alone; it is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. . . . This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”
That sentiment persists. On April 15, people in 43 countries participated in a Global Day of Action on Military Spending, designed to call attention to the squandering of the world’s resources on war. Among these countries was the United States, where polls show that 58 percent of Americans favor major reductions in U.S. military spending. How long will it take the governments of the United States and of other nations to catch up with them?
Dr. Lawrence Wittner (http://lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany and writes for PeaceVoice. His latest book is “Working for Peace and Justice: Memoirs of an Activist Intellectual.”
Four prominent members of the Euro-Atlantic Security Initiative (EASI) published an op-ed in the April 2, 2013 New York Times, warning of the increasing danger of nuclear war, and insisting on the urgent “Revamping of Euro-Atlantic Security.”
Contributed To HellasFrappe By
E.I.R. Strategic Alert www.eir.de
The EASI brings together a group of high-level military and political leaders from Europe, North America, and Russia, and is co-chaired by former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn, who was chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee for many years, former Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, and former German Deputy Foreign Minister and current head of the Munich Security Conference Wolfgang Ischinger, who, together with former British Defense Secretary Des Browne, signed the NYT piece.
In Feb. 2012, the initiative had published the results of a two-year study on missile defense, which begins: “No issue is more urgent or central to achieving progress toward the goal of creating an inclusive Euro-Atlantic Security Community than making European missile defense a joint project of the United States, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and Russia.”
Unfortunately, during that year, the Obama Administration and NATO have escalated their policy of provocations toward Russia. Therefore, the four signers are sounding the alarm.
Security policies in the Euro-Atlantic region, they write, “are dangerously out of date and demand urgent attention.... Cold War-era security concepts and their associated weapons and military postures continue.
Large strategic nuclear forces remain deployed on prompt launch, ready to be fired in minutes; thousands of tactical nuclear weapons are still stockpiled in Europe; a decades-old missile defense debate remains stuck in neutral; and new security challenges associated with promptstrike forces, cybersecurity, and space remain contentious and inadequately addressed....
The alarming asymmetry between military capabilities and a true Euro-Atlantic partnership is dangerous and potentially destabilizing, undermining the trust necessary for cooperative efforts to meet emerging security threats in Europe and across the world.”
The EASI, they continue, believe “today’s leaders should move decisively and permanently toward a new security strategy, one that considers offensive and defensive military forces, nuclear and conventional weapons, and cybersecurity and space.
Thinking together about these issues in an integrated way can lead to transformational change in Euro-Atlantic security and nuclear and conventional force postures from the persistent Cold War shadow of mutually assured destruction to mutual security.
Issues relating to nuclear weapons and missile defense should receive the highest priority in the first five years. It should also be possible to take steps relating to conventional forces, cybersecurity and space during the initial phase.”
Beside the extreme security threat, the authors also mention the economic benefits of reducing arsenals at a time when the U.S. plans to build “new nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines and strategic bombers at a cost of more than $400 billion, and to extend the life of nuclear weapons deployed in Europe at a cost of $10 billion.” Russia reportedly plans to spend $61 billion to modernize its strategic nuclear forces, while the UK plans to replace the Trident at a cost of some $38 billion.
Their conclusion:
“There is an historic -- and fleeting -- opportunity to act. There is no more important security issue for leaders to address.”
While the world concentrates on what is happening in Cyprus, Ankara decided to flex its muscles against Greece for yet another time by setting one of its warships to sail throughout the Aegean and even bully its way till Attica!
More specifically, a Turkish corvette -or a TCG BAFRA (F-505)- from the naval port in Izmir entered Greek territorial waters several hours ago and reached a sea area between Evia and Andros, then it sailed along the coast and even reached the eastern coast of Attica. According to reports, the ship then moved once again to the area between the islands of Kea and Kythnos and then turned southwest of Kythnos.
The Hellenic Navy is keeping a close eye on the warship and following its every move.
A Mexican judge has ruled that an exiled
Argentinian torturer must be extradited to stand trial in Spain; a
Buenos Aires court has waived military immunity against criminal
charges. And evidence mounts of decades of war by Latin American
dictatorships, with the connivance of the United States, against
leftwing dissidents.
For the Common Defense ! was a quasi-documentary short in MGM’s Crime Does Not Pay series. It was made in 1942 and featured a mysterious “Senor Castillo of the Chilean intelligence service”, who assured filmgoers that Chile was playing its part alongside the western democracies in the fight against the dictatorships and foreign agents that threatened the country. In the ruthless struggle, the main weapon, he said, was cooperation between police forces throughout North and South America.
The film was inspired by the FBI and designed as an attack on Nazi spies in Latin America and a demonstration of cooperation between police and intelligence services on a continental scale. There, in the middle of the second world war, are the seeds of Operation Condor, a continental campaign of repression waged by Latin American dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s against the new enemy – “international communism”.
The ramifications of Operation Condor were first revealed in December 1992 by several tonnes of documents from the Stroessner dictatorship, soon dubbed the “archives of terror”, discovered in a police station in Lambare, 15 miles from the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion. The tale they told was confirmed in detail by CIA documents declassified last November.
The United States had begun warning South American military commanders about the dangers of communism at the Inter-American Conference on the Problems of War and Peace, held at Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City in February 1945. Bilateral agreements on mutual military assistance followed in 1951. They covered the supply of US arms and funding to Latin American countries, the secondment of US military advisers, and the training of Latin American officers in the US and at the US army’s School of the Americas in the Panama Canal Zone.
The move towards “continental defence against communism” was speeded by the victory of Castro’s revolution in 1959. The following year General Theodore F Bogart, US Southern Command supremo, invited his Latin American colleagues to a “friendly meeting” at his base in the Canal Zone to discuss problems of common interest. The outcome was an annual Conference of American Armies (CAA), first held at Fort Amador in Panama. In 1964 it was transferred to West Point, and from 1965 it met every two years. The West Point venue, a secretive meeting place symptomatic of cold war paranoia, was the heart of the future Operation Condor.
Sharing intelligence
Apart from “international communism”, a convenient catchphrase for all political opponents, Latin American military commanders were obsessed with links between their intelligence services. At its second meeting, the CAA called for the creation of a standing committee in the Panama Canal Zone to exchange information and intelligence (1). In response, a continent-wide communication network was established and top-secret bilateral intelligence meetings were held between Argentina and Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia, and others.
Files made available by those countries were circulated through a network of military attachés known as Agremil. Most were supplied by military intelligence services (G-2), but others came from security police or shadier bodies like the Organismo Coordinador de Operaciones Antisubversivas (Ocoa), a Uruguayan death squad that carried out interrogations, torture and executions, mainly in Argentina (2).
At the CAA’s 10th meeting, held in Caracas on 3 September 1973, General Breno Borges Fortes, commander-in-chief of the Brazilian army, agreed that the struggle against communism was exclusively a matter for the armed forces of the individual countries. As far as collective action was concerned, “the only effective methods are the exchange of experience and information, plus technical assistance when requested” (3). On this basis, the CAA decided to “strengthen information exchange in order to counter terrorism and control subversive elements in each country” (4).
From the time of Juan Domingo Peron’s return to power in 1973 to the 1976 putsch, when most of South America was gradually coming under the thumb of military regimes on the Brazilian model, Argentina lived through a curious transition period. Its police and armed forces stepped up repression and authorised the establishment of death squads like the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (AAA). But, at the same time, it was the only country in the Southern Cone in which thousands of mainly Chilean and Uruguayan victims of political and social repression were able to take refuge.
In March 1974 Chilean, Uruguayan and Bolivian police leaders met with the deputy chief of the Argentinian federal police, Alberto Villar (joint founder of the AAA), to investigate ways of working together to destroy what they saw as the hotbed of subversion constituted by the presence of thousands of foreign political refugees in Argentina. The Chilean representative, a general of the carabinieri (military police), proposed that a police officer or member of the armed forces be accredited to every embassy as a security agent in order to coordinate operations with the police and security authorities of each country. He also called for the creation of “an intelligence centre where we can obtain information on individual Marxists and … exchange programmes and information about politicians. In addition,” he argued, “we must be able to move freely across the frontiers between Bolivia, Chile and Argentina and operate in all three countries without an official warrant” (5).
Villar promised that the Argentinian Federal Police’s Foreign Affairs Department (DAE) would deal with foreigners that neighbouring juntas wanted out of the way. In August 1974 the corpses of foreign, especially Bolivian, refugees started to appear on Buenos Aires refuse tips. On 30 September a bomb placed in Buenos Aires by a Chilean commando group led by CIA agent (or former agent) Michael Townley killed General Carlos Prats, commander-in-chief of the Chilean army under the Popular Unity government, who was the spearhead of opposition to Pinochet.
Police and military commando groups now crossed borders at will. In March and April 1975 more than two dozen Uruguayans were arrested in Buenos Aires by Argentinian and Uruguayan police officers, who interrogated them jointly in Argentinian police stations. Jorge Isaac Fuentes Alarcon, an Argentinian militant, was arrested on the Paraguayan border by Paraguayan police. As Chile’s National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation (the Retting commission) subsequently established in its report of 8 February 1991 to President Patricio Aylwin (6), he was interrogated not only by Paraguayan police and Argentinian intelligence officers but also by officials of the US embassy in Buenos Aires, who passed information on to Chile’s National Intelligence Directorate (Dina).
State within a state
Meanwhile, Chile had put the finishing touches to its own system of repression. Following the putsch of 11 September 1973, for which US president Richard Nixon and his secretary of state Henry Kissinger bore direct responsibility, Pinochet gave Colonel Manuel Contreras full powers to “extirpate the cancer of communism” from the country. Dina soon became a state within the state.
The Chilean dictatorship was particularly exercised by the presence of large numbers of implacable opponents abroad. It had managed to kill General Prats, but in February 1975 the anti-Castro Cubans recruited for the purpose bungled the assassination of Carlos Altamirano and Volodia Teitelboim, the leaders of the exiled Chilean Socialist and Communist parties. In early April Contreras visited the Latin American capitals in order to persuade the security services of the whole continent to set up a special anti-exile force. On 25 August he was at CIA headquarters in Washington, where he met Vernon Walters, deputy director responsible for Latin America.
Two days later he had a meeting with Rafael Rivas Vasquez, assistant director of the Venezuelan intelligence agency (Disip), in Caracas: “He explained … that he wanted to place agents in all Chilean embassies abroad and that he was already training embassy officials who were prepared to act as intelligence agents if required. He said he had already made several successful trips to obtain the support of Latin American intelligence services. Everything was based on unwritten agreements” (7). According to Rivas, the Venezuelan government ordered the Disip to reject Contreras’ overtures. It was the only refusal. All the other countries (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia) agreed.
At the same time the order was given to set up an anti-subversion network in Europe based on Italian rightwing terrorist groups. Unable to get at Carlos Altamirano, who was living under armed guard in the Federal Republic of Germany, the assassins turned their attention to Bernardo Leighton, Chile’s former vice president and a founder member of the Christian Democratic Party. On 6 October 1975 Leighton and his wife were attacked by a fascist hit squad in Rome. They survived the shooting, but Mrs Leighton was left permanently paralysed. Despite this failure, Pinochet had a meeting with Stefano Delle Chiaie, leader of the Italian commando groups, who agreed to remain at Chile’s disposal.
At its meeting of 19-26 October 1975 in Montevideo, the CAA gave the go-ahead for a first “working meeting on national intelligence services”, prepared by Contreras. It took place from 25 November to 1 December in Santiago de Chile and was classified top secret. Contreras’ main proposal was the creation of a continental database “similar to the Interpol database in Paris, but specialising in subversion”. This was the beginning of the Chilean contribution to Operation Condor.
According to the CIA, which claims not to have heard of Condor until 1976 (8), three of the countries involved, namely Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, “extended cooperation on anti-subversion activities to the assassination of high-ranking terrorists living in exile in Europe”. Although it had been accepted for years that information was to be exchanged bilaterally, “a third, top-secret phase of Operation Condor apparently involved training special teams from member countries for joint operations that included the assassination of terrorists and terrorist sympathisers. When a terrorist or sympathiser from a member country was identified, a team would be sent to locate the target and keep him under surveillance. Then a hit squad would be despatched. The special teams were made up of people from one or several Condor states who were supplied with false identity papers issued by member countries.”
The CIA claims that the operation centre for phase three was in Buenos Aires, where a special team had been set up. Meanwhile, bilateral meetings between the countries of the Southern Cone continued as usual under the aegis of the CAA, and their effects were just as devastating (9).
Many Condor meetings took place in 1976. They were often attended by the same people who took part in CAA bilateral meetings. According to the CIA, “although cooperation between the various intelligence and security services had existed for some time, it was not formalised until late May 1976 at a Condor meeting in Santiago de Chile, where the main topic was long-term cooperation between the services of the participating countries going well beyond the exchange of information. The Condor member countries identified themselves by code numbers: Condor One, Condor Two, etc.
It was a bad year for their political opponents, who had taken refuge wherever they could. Under the pretext of attacking terrorists committed to armed resistance, the murderers struck out at anyone, crossing frontiers at will. Increasing numbers of political opponents were assassinated or “disappeared”. On 8 June, in the course of a friendly chat in Santiago, Kissinger assured Pinochet that “the people of the United States are wholeheartedly behind you … and wish you every success” (10).
Flying like a condor
But the scale of repression made the existence of Condor increasingly difficult to hide. The CIA itself became a source of embarrassing rumours as staff exchanged quips about colleagues sent abroad because they could “fly like a condor”. Finally, Contreras’ own policy of targeted assassinations put paid to the operation. On 21 September 1976 he had Chile’s former foreign minister, Orlando Letelier, assassinated in Washington. It was a major blunder. The US investigators were determined to identify those responsible. The FBI’s chief officer in Buenos Aires filed a special report on phase three of Operation Condor, and extracts found their way into the American press. A Congressional committee of inquiry was quickly set up. The Chileans responded by disbanding Dina and replacing it by another organisation. Contreras was ditched.
The newly elected US president Jimmy Carter had made human rights part of his platform. He was not prepared to countenance Condor-type operations. At the very least, he did not want the US involved in them. The prevailing view is that the Carter administration pressured the Latin American countries to close Condor down.
Representatives of all the Condor member states met in Buenos Aires on 13-15 December 1976 to discuss future plans in the light of the new situation. The Argentinians, who had outstripped all the other dictatorships in the ferocity of their methods since the putsch of 23 March, took matters in hand. With help from Paraguay, they sought a more secure and discreet channel for anti-subversion operations in the form of the Latin American Anti-Communist Federation (CAL), an offshoot of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL).
The CAL held its third meeting in Asuncion in March 1977. It was attended by the top brass of the dictatorships, including General Gustavo Leigh, a member of the Chilean junta, and General Jorge Videla, the Argentinian president, together with an assortment of Latin America’s torturers and death squad members. Their main problems were the US’ new strategy of re-establishing democracy in Latin America, the spread of guerrilla movements in Central America, and the position of whole sections of the Catholic Church that appeared to be an integral part of the international communist movement.
A plan proposed by the Bolivians, named after the Bolivian dictator, was adopted. Its purpose was to “eradicate” proponents of liberation theology. Under the Banzer plan, which culminated in the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in San Salvador, hundreds of priests, monks, nuns, lay members of religious communities and bishops were executed,
An end to formal restraints
Taking charge of repression throughout Latin America, the Argentinians discarded all formal restraints. The coordination of repression was entrusted to death squads. Even though some were composed of soldiers and policemen, this was tantamount to privatising anti-subversion operations. At the same time bilateral intelligence meetings of national security agencies, as well as meetings of the CAA, continued under the aegis of the US. In 1977 the CAA met in Managua, Nicaragua, and in 1979 in Bogota, Colombia. The Argentinians also sent several missions to Central America to assist local armed forces and political police. In the spring of 1979 they started anti-subversion training courses in Buenos Aires to reduce dependence on the US war schools. The fall of the Somoza regime in July 1979 encouraged the Latin American dictatorships to standardise their anti-subversion methods.
The CAL’s fourth meeting, chaired by Argentinian general Suarez Mason in Buenos Aires in September 1980, favoured the adoption of an “Argentinian solution” throughout Latin America. From April 1980 the US Department of Defence was aware that Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil were once again pursuing the idea of an “international anti-terrorist organisation” – Condor in a new guise. Meanwhile, the CAL was coordinating massacres carried out by death squads and security forces in Central America. The Agremil files continued to circulate in the general staffs, yielding a rich harvest of cross-border arrests, exchanges of prisoners and international torture squads.
In 1981 the CAA meeting was held in Washington, following the election of a Republican president, Ronald Reagan. Developments took a new turn as the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua gave fresh impetus to anti-subversion cooperation (11). The participants decided to renew their bilateral agreements on the exchange of information about so-called terrorists and to set up a permanent CAA secretariat. This came into being on 24 May 1984 in Santiago de Chile.
When Argentina returned to democracy in 1985, the Chilean military regime was left as the last rampart against communism in South America except for Paraguay. The Reagan administration entrusted its programme of secret war in Central America to the CIA , the CAL and the private sector. The CAA remained committed to an ideology of war against international communism, except that the term now included human rights activists as well as leftwing and clerical opponents. Judges and journalists calling for torturers to be brought to trial were gradually included, as were critics of corruption, in which the military were deeply implicated..
Operation Condor as such vanished in the jungles of Central America when the US took over the struggle against the Nicaraguan Sandanistas. But it was the end of the cold war and the accumulation of its own excesses that dealt it a fatal blow. Strictly speaking, it was directed against only a few dozen or few hundred targeted victims. But the overall toll of repression in the Southern Cone alone during the period of its existence totalled over 50,000 murdered, 35,000 disappeared and 400,000 imprisoned.
Although torture and executions are no longer institutionalised on a continental scale, there is no reason to believe these practices have ceased. The crimes of the Colombian paramilitaries linked to sections of the country’s armed forces are clear evidence to the contrary. On 8 May 2000 a report by the Committee on Hemispheric Security of the Organisation of American States (OAS) reviewed 10 years of anti-subversion cooperation among the various South and Central American states. While the designated enemy is now drugs-traffickers rather than communists and there are references to human rights, the message is still the same.
Numerous Latin American states have concluded agreements among themselves and with the US aimed at greater bilateral or multilateral cooperation against terrorism, money laundering and drug trafficking. These agreements confirm the role of the armed forces in social control.
Similarly, since the mid-1990s and under the aegis of the US, the Latin American countries have increased their bilateral exchange arrangements. In the intelligence field alone, dozens of arrangements are in force, in addition to the annual conference of the intelligence services of the armies of the OAS member states. The CAA still meets (in Argentina in 1995 and in Ecuador in 1997). A multilateral military conference on intelligence services, the first since the meeting set up by Contreras in 1975, was organised by the Bolivian army on 8-10 March 1999. It was attended by representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, the US (Southern Command), Uruguay and Venezuela.
“Security in the Americas”, so dear to the US, does not necessarily give first place to democracy. It would not take much for Operation Condor to rise from the ashes.
Notes:
Permanent Executive Secretariat of the Conference of American Armies (PESCAA), Information Bulletin no. 1, Santiago, Chile, 1985
See Nunca Más (never again): a report by Argentina’s National Commission on Disappeared People, Faber in association with Index on Censorship, London, 1986.
See Diffusion de l’information sur l’Amérique Latine (DIAL), no. 125, Paris, 25 October 1973
PESCAA, Information Bulletin No.1, op. cit.
Stenographer’s record published by El Autentico, Buenos Aires, 10 December 1975.
The full text of the report is available in English translation at www.nd.edu/
Testimony given on 29 June 1979 to a Washington court during the trial of Orlando Letelier’s assassins.
Whether this claim is true or false, the fact remains that Contreras was a CIA informer from 1974 to 1977 and was on the agency’s payroll until 1975 (“by mistake”, the CIA claims), as revealed by a declassified document submitted to the US Congress at its request on 19 September 2000. See El Nuevo Herald, Miami, 20 September 2000.
The Argentinians alone did not rely entirely on the United States in their “dirty war”. In 1976 a French military mission was sent to Buenos Aires to train the Argentinian armed forces in anti-subversion operations.
Declassified document quoted in El Pais, 28 February 1999
On 1 December 1981 the US administration released $19m to fund the training of an initial contingent of 500 Contras (Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries) by Argentinian officers.
Le Monde Diplomatique (English edition), translated by Barry Smerin, August 2001 link to the original version in French: Retour sur un terrorisme d’état béni par les Etats-Unis «Opération Condor », cauchemar de l’Amérique latine par Pierre Abramovici, Le Monde Diplomatique, Mai 2001
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