Author: Rick Rozoff

General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was in Norfolk, Virginia on July 15 to mark the second NATO command in America achieving full operational capability. NATO’s Joint Force Command – Norfolk (JFC-Norfolk) joined NATO’s Allied Command Transformation (ACT) in the same city as the only NATO commands outside Europe.

ACT, whose website is titled Allied Command Transformation: NATO’s Warfare Development Command, was inaugurated in 2003.

The new command was initially launched shortly after NATO’s Joint Support and Enabling Command was in Ulm, Germany in late 2019. Both commands at that time achieved initial operational capability (or initial operating capability). Joint Force Command – Norfolk is designed to expedite the deployment of troops and armor across the Atlantic; Joint Support and Enabling Command’s mission is to “speed up, coordinate and safeguard the movement of allied armor and infantry across European borders.” The two are thus integrally connected.

Continue reading “Battle of the Atlantic: Citing Nazi Germany as Model, US Military Chief Hails New NATO Command”

Today’s Turkish press boastfully trumpets the fact that its nation’s jets have “neutralized” two more Kurds in northern Iraq. The Turkish Defense Ministry tweeted its triumph on July, not omitting a video of the killing of the “terrorists.” (Kurdish resistance fighters.)

The announcement came a few days after Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar celebrated the fact that his armed forces have “neutralized”over 18,000 Kurds in six years. Neutralize has an antiseptic quality about it. But at root it’s a sanguinary and gruesome term in the context in which the Turkish military uses it. It belongs in the same category as eliminate, liquidate, terminate and disappear (as a transitive verb).

It means to tear a body apart with bombs, missiles or bullets. To render other people, other “terrorists,” widows, widowers, orphans and grief-stricken and soul-dead parents of the sort the poet Yehuda Amichai described when he wrote, “A man whose son died in the war walks in the street like a woman with a dead embryo in her womb.”

Continue reading “Turkish Warplanes ‘Neutralize’ More Kurds in Iraq”

Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland held a phone conversation with the Head of the Ukrainian President’s Office Andriy Yermak to discuss what the National News Agency of Ukraine reported was the situation in Belarus. The two were described as having “expressed concern” over developments in Ukraine’s northern neighbor. A nation doesn’t want Nuland to be concerned, much less gravely concerned over its internal affairs given her political track record.

Unlike her telephone conversation with then U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt in 2014 in which she dictated the composition of a post-coup government in that nation weeks before the event, the above conversation has not been recorded and placed on YouTube yet, so its exact contents remain unknown.

Continue reading “Ukraine Reprised: Victoria Nuland Discusses Belarus With Ukrainian Official”

In the United States, 18 criminal charges have been brought against Julian Assange, on which he faces up to 175 years in prison

“And after all, not a single EU or NATO summit has even touched on the fate of Assange,” she wrote in her Telegram channel. Zakharova recalled that the investigative journalist is now in a UK prison. “The term of his imprisonment, according to UK law, has long expired. But who cares about it in the West when there are so many interesting things east of liberalism,” she said.

According to Zakharova, this story is a bad look for Western liberal values. In addition, the methods, she noted, are not entirely legal. “We are talking about outright pressure, blackmail, and judicial forgery. But for the American repressive power machine, the methods are justified by the goals,” she said.

Rick Rozoff is a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. He has been involved in anti-war and anti-interventionist work in various capacities for forty years. He lives in Chicago, Illinois. He is the manager of Stop NATO. This originally appeared at Anti-Bellum.

NATO video on nuclear weapons

NATO has been a nuclear alliance since the U.S. first provided nuclear weapons to the bloc in 1953. It is the only nuclear alliance in history with the U.S., Britain and France as nuclear powers.

One billion people are under NATO’s nuclear umbrella.

“Competitors and potential adversaries” NATO maintains nuclear option against: Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.

NATO maintains the credibility and effectiveness of its nuclear infrastructure and forces.

As long as nuclear weapons exist NATO will remain a nuclear alliance.

Background:

NATO’s Secret Transatlantic Bond: Nuclear Weapons in Europe

Nuclear Weapons and Interceptor Missiles: Twin Pillars of U.S.-NATO Military Strategy in Europe

Rick Rozoff is a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. He has been involved in anti-war and anti-interventionist work in various capacities for forty years. He lives in Chicago, Illinois. He is the manager of Stop NATO. This originally appeared at Anti-Bellum.