Saudis Are Buying Nuclear-Capable Missiles From China [video]
by Mort Amsel
Before It’s News
July 4, 2012
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that Saudi Arabia has set its feet on the path to a nuclear weapon capability and is negotiating in Beijng the purchase of Chinese nuclear-capable Dong-Fen 21 ((NATO-codenamed CSS-5) ballistic missile.
China, which has agreed to the transaction in principle, would also build a base of operations near Riyadh for the new Saudi purchases.
As we reported last year, Saudi Arabia has struck a deal with Pakistan for the availability on demand of a nuclear warhead from Islamabad’s arsenal for fitting onto a ballistic missile.
Read more here: www.debka.com/article/22155/Saudis-are-buying-nuclear-capable-missiles-from-China
Clinton: Russia and China “will pay” for supporting Syria [video]
Russia Today
July 6, 2012
Hillary Clinton’s demand that Russia and China pay the price for “blockading” the Syrian peace process may lead to more global strife. Will opposition to US policy now equate to supporting tyranny and evil?
On Friday, Friends of Syria sought ways to press a transition plan on official Damascus. Assad regime officials forming a unity government with the opposition to lead the Arab country to presidential elections had been a key outcome of global talks in Geneva the previous week.
In a sudden turn, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pounced on Moscow and Beijing for “holding up progress” in the Syrian crisis. Clinton urged the 100-plus nations gathered in Paris to make it clear to Russia and China that the two will “pay a price” for supporting the Assad government.
RT talks to James Corbett of The Corbett Report.
“Fictitious Enemies” and “Combat Scenarios”: The Pentagon and NATO Rehearse for War against Russia?
by Rick Rozoff
Global Research
July 3, 2012
Stop NATO – 2012-07-02
Last month was a busy one for U.S.-NATO military exercises in the Baltic Sea. Three major multinational training exercises, including naval maneuvers, amphibious landings and preparation for deployment to Afghanistan, occurred in the region in June, in one case overlapping.
From June 10-22 the U.S. Seventh Army’s Joint Multinational Training Command (JMTC), based in Grafenwöhr, Germany, conducted this year’s Saber Strike, the largest multinational military exercise in the area. Approximately 2,000 troops from seven NATO nations – the U.S., Britain, France, Canada, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – participated in training to “engage the enemy, as they overcome challenges in interoperability, ” according to the JMTC’s account of the drills in Estonia and Latvia.
The former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are the rotating sites for Saber Strike exercises and “share resources and capabilities to meet the training requirements of organic units and elements, who may deploy in support of contingency operations in Afghanistan. ”
JMTC’s lead exercise planner, Tony Bonarti, said of the training: “In pursuing operational cohesiveness, these nations expect to achieve vast improvements in their respective defense and host-nation governments that allow them to be prepared to address both national and international crisis events.”
Live-fire and field training exercises were conducted at the Ādaži Training Area in Latvia and other events were held at facilities in Estonia. The scenario employed for the live-fire exercise was “defending a Forward Operating Base.” A U.S. Army Europe website report of a war game simulation held at the Tapa Training facility said: “Working cooperatively with allied partners, the Estonian forces are exercising a combat action scenario in a fictitious country that is undergoing civil unrest and facing an invasion by neighboring foreign forces sympathetic to the civil unrest.”
During an exercise in Estonia, a local brigade was joined by multinational forces from several NATO and NATO partner nations. The Ämari Air Base in Estonia, recently upgraded to accommodate NATO warplanes, hosted airmen from the Michigan Air National Guard who operated fighter and aerial refueling aircraft.
American units participating in the war games were personnel from the 21st Theater Sustainment Command, the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, the Michigan Air Guard and the 4th Marine Division as well as a Joint Terminal Air Controller (in charge of directing air combat operations) team from the Washington Air Guard.
During Saber Strike 2012 the website of the JMTC, the only U.S. Army training command that regularly trains U.S. and multinational forces jointly, disclosed that its Joint Multinational Simulation Center conducts approximately 40 NATO exercises annually.
From June 1-16 the U.S.-led annual Baltic Operations (BALTOPS), the largest multinational maritime exercise held in the Baltic Sea, occurred in the territorial waters of Estonia, Lithuania, Germany and Poland. Thirty warships, as many aircraft and an estimated 1,500 marines and sailors from the U.S., Denmark, Estonia, France, Georgia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia and Sweden participated.
For the first time in the exercise’s 40-year history a major amphibious landing operation was conducted in this year’s host nation, Lithuania (in Palanga). It involved the U.S. Marine Corps (including its Black Sea Rotational Force 12), Lithuanian Special Operations Force troops, personnel from Lithuania’s Iron Wolf Motorised Infantry Brigade, the USS Normandy guided missile cruiser, two B-52 strategic bombers, two German Pa 200 Tornado fighter jets, two Lithuanian Mi-8 helicopters, a joint battalion of the Estonian-Latvian- Lithuanian Baltic Naval Squadron (BALTRON), a Dutch diving team and two Polish Lublin class amphibious warfare ships.
The scenario used for the exercise was described as a crisis in a fictitious nation named Arcadia which “affects the entire region of the Blue Sea.” Acting on a United Nations Security Council mandate, international forces are deployed to the imaginary (or only slightly disguised) Blue Sea region which enforce an arms embargo, a blockade, a stabilization operation in Arcadia and “assistance in counter-terrorism actions.”
Though separated from the Baltic Sea by Lithuania, Belarus could well be the scenario’s Arcadia.
An amphibious landing operation was also held in Estonia on the coast of Paldiski. Estonian Defense Forces Chief of Staff Peeter Hoppe said before the event that “Paldiski’s southern harbor will have a pre-positioning exercise, where a large array of various allied military vehicles will be brought ashore.”
The exercise was observed and led by the U.S. Marine Corps’ Lieutenant General Richard Tryon, Lieutenant General Frank Panter, Jr., Brigadier General Charles G. Chiarotti and Brigadier General Roger Machut as well as Britain’s Rear Admiral Russell Harding.
Estonian Public Broadcasting published a report on June 4 which said of the exercise that “The aim is to practice bringing an over 1,000-strong battalion battle group to Estonia and readying it for combat.”
Estonia’s Hoppe further spoke specifically on his nation’s armed forces working with U.S. Marines:
“They will learn survival skills from us, as we have a special climate, wetland landscape, which cannot be found everywhere. In return, we will learn from them patrolling, an ability that we do have, but which they are extremely skilled at.”
“The common denominator is [the] receiving of allies, cooperation between units, combined effort of civilian authorities and [the] private sector. All this strengthens Baltic cooperation with America and [other] allies. Naturally it also strengthens regional partnership in the northern region of the Baltic Sea and allows cooperation procedures to be tested.”
The integrated U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Expeditionary Strike Group Two website stated this year’s BALTOPS was “designed to promote regional cooperation and foster multinational interoperability to train for joint combat of regional and transnational threats.”
Vice Admiral Frank Pandolfe, commander of the U.S. 6th Fleet and of Naval Striking and Support Forces NATO (“a rapidly deployable Maritime Headquarters to plan, command and control maritime operations including if necessary a Maritime Expanded Task Force for larger scale operations”) , stated:
“BALTOPS has one common goal – to improve maritime security in the Baltic Sea through increased interoperability and collaboration among regional allies.
“As in past years, our sailors and Marines will be working side-by-side with their colleagues from partner nations, both on land and at sea, becoming familiar with each other’s military operating procedures and practices. That partnership – that collaboration – leads to increased understanding and increased interoperability.”
On June 28 the Baltic Host 12 NATO Host Nation Support exercise began simultaneously in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania with the involvement of military personnel from Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, U.S. European Command and Naval Striking and Support Force NATO.
The fourth annual Baltic Host exercise is providing the U.S. and NATO the opportunity to increase military interoperability with the armed forces of the three Baltic nations and to prepare those nations for hosting NATO forces for assorted missions, including armed conflicts. That is, war. War close to home is the most likely prospect.
This year’s exercise will prepare for a NATO Response Force exercise codenamed Steadfast Jazz to be conducted in 2013.
The Baltic Sea region is an expanding theater for Pentagon and NATO operations. From regular ground, air and sea exercises to the training of multinational forces for deployment to Afghanistan and the beginning of the Northern Distribution Network to move supplies and equipment to that nation. From the eight-year-old NATO Baltic air patrol to the opening of a NATO cyber warfare center of excellence in Estonia and the upgrading of air bases in Estonia and Lithuania. From the deployment of Patriot Advanced Capability-3 interceptor missiles to Poland two years ago to the scheduled stationing of Standard Missile-3 interceptors there in 2018.
USS Normandy, which participated in this year’s BALTOPS, is equipped to fire Standard Missile-3s, and may well join other American guided missile cruisers and destroyers in the Baltic Sea as part of the U.S.’s global missile interception system.
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If the US Loses Syria, the US Loses its Empire
US threatens Russia, China for not supporting campaign of terror in Syria.
by Tony Cartalucci
July 6, 2012 – The US’ increasingly unhinged rhetoric reached a new level of absurdity this week as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Western nations and their Arab proxies to “make it clear that Russia and China will pay a price because they are holding up progress” in regards to the US’ premeditated campaign of terrorism and violent regime change in Syria.
It was made public as early as 2007 by Seymour Hersh in his report “The Redirection” published in the New Yorker that the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and others were gathering, funding, arming, and deploying a front of violent sectarian extremists, many with ties to Al Qaeda, to undermine, destabilize, and eventually lead to the overthrow of the governments of Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. The violent campaign was rolled out publicly in the wake of a similarly premeditated geopolitical ploy, the so-called “Arab Spring,” and has since then been clearly exposed as the work of violent terrorist networks. Ironically, these terrorist networks are those allegedly the impetus of the “War on Terror,” now paradoxically being funded, armed, and politically backed by the West.
It was reported that Libyan terrorists led by Abdul Hakim Belhaj, commander of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a US State Department-listed “Foreign Terrorist Organization,” had joined the so-called “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) along with sectarian extremists from Iraq who specialize in the indiscriminate terrorist bombings now ravaging Syria.
In fact, the true nature of Syria’s “rebels” has become so well known, that recent attempts to sway public opinion with continued, but unsubstantiated reports of “atrocities” aimed at demonizing the Syrian government have been met with skepticism, doubt, and even indignation by the public – giving nations like Russia and China not only the opportunity to defy Western dictates, but a moral imperative to do so as well.
Collapsing Legitimacy Leads to Collapsing Empires
The global hegemony of Wall Street and London has been built behind a facade of “human rights,” “freedom,” and “democracy.” As these principles are eroded back home in the West, their use for dressing up otherwise naked imperialism, corporate monopolization, and military aggression abroad has become overt and increasingly ineffective.
While the US Secretary of State attempts to blame Russia and China for “holding up progress” in the West’s campaign of premeditated destabilization in Syria, it is more likely that the West’s own loss of legitimacy is the true reason it has not successfully convinced the world to go along with what is increasingly appearing to be a self-serving and very untenable agenda.
Should the US fail in its attempts to overthrow the government of Syria, and quite likely even if it does manage to succeed at this late hour, so much damage has been done to the West’s credibility, as well as to the credibility of its allegedly independent institutions, that future gambits will be even more difficult to execute. As the West’s economy and geopolitical power crumbles and its reach becomes less subtle and more adversarial, shareholders will seek more secure investments, financially, politically, and even tactically.
Maintaining an empire relies on an immense global infrastructure the West still possesses – but it is an infrastructure that is meeting competition from not only rival hegemonies, but from within individual nations as well, on both a national and grassroots level. Empires are also built on psychological factors such as faith in one’s institutions and fear of one’s military prowess. The West has been increasingly faltering in all respects in a world where these concepts are becoming increasingly challenged by shifting social, economic, and technological paradigms.
What the West should be doing is positioning itself for this changing world – instead it is clinging to a crumbling empire, scrambling to build a global paradigm rendered antiquated long before it has even been implemented. Boycotting the corporate-financier interests behind this attempt at establishing global hegemony will accelerate and ensure its failure – while resolving ourselves to creating genuine institutions on a local and national level for and by the people will ensure that we are not left in disarray once these corrupt globalist institutions are rendered moot.
HALIFAX ANTI-WAR PROTEST — HANDS OFF IRAN & SYRIA! NO WESTERN INTERVENTION (weekly pickets every Friday)
Potent News
July 6, 2012
[UPDATE: We now start 30 minutes earlier. See here for the more accurate schedule. Ignore the times you see below.]
also
5:30-6:30 discussion @ Paperchase
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Click here to see Potent News coverage of the July 2nd protest.
Syrian insurgents throw man from window for being pro-government [video]
Syrian Girl
July 5, 2012
The Fake Syrian Army (FSA) terrorists, so called freedom and democracy fighters by the likes of CNN and Al Jazeera, throw man out of balcony for being pro syrian government.
PN 