[Disarmo] [stopnato] Digest Number 4914

[glry <glry at ngi.it>]

-------- Messaggio originale --------
Oggetto: [stopnato] Digest Number 4914
Data: 14 Jan 2014 13:47:39 -0000
A: stopnato at yahoogroups.com


Topics in this digest:

1. Interview: Russian/Chinese prevention of Syrian invasion: historic
event – Rick Rozoff, John Robles
    From: Rick Rozoff

2. Pentagon Touts DARP's Role In Space
    From: Rick Rozoff


Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1. Interview: Russian/Chinese prevention of Syrian invasion: historic event
    Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff at yahoo.com rwrozoff
    Date: Mon Jan 13, 2014 3:28 pm ((PST))

New post on Stop NATO...Opposition to global militarism
  Interview: Russian/Chinese prevention of Syrian invasion: historic event
Voice of Russia
January 13, 2014
John Robles

Download audio file
Part 1
Part 3

On the surface it appears that US/NATO lost in Afghanistan. But did they?
According to US/NATO’s own assessments and statements Afghanistan has
proven to be the testing ground for developing interoperability between
NATO members and over 50 nations which provided military forces for the
ongoing war in Afghanistan and the consolidation of an international
military strike force.
Heroin production has also increased 40 fold and has devastated the
peoples of many countries while providing black monies for secret
operations. There are reports that there is a possible drug route from
Afghanistan, through the air base in Manas in Kyrgyzstan and into the
Balkans, probably Kosovo, which is used to get Afghan opium and heroin
to market with Hashim Thaçi directly implicated.
According to Voice of Russia regular contributor Rick Rozoff, the lack
of oversight of US military installations, such as Camp Bondsteel in
Kosovo, makes it possible, if the US wants, to place even tactical
nuclear weapons closer to the Russian or Iranian border.

In part 2 of a 2013 year end summary Mr. Rozoff discusses those issues
and more and cites Russian and Chinese moves to prevent an invasion of
Syria as a major historical turning point.

This is John Robles, you are listening to an interview with Rick Rozoff,
the owner and manager of the stop NATO website and international mailing
list.

This is part 2 of an interview in progress.
You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com


Robles: Two points I’d like to make and then you can continue any way
you’d like. You said you wanted to speak about the human toll, the
heroin wreaks on the world. The US taxpayers have spent, as far as I
know, the figures I saw were about $7 billion in fighting narcotics
production; opium production, heroin production – in Afghanistan. I
believe that figure is correct, if I’m wrong, please, tell me. So, they
weren’t there to stop heroin production. They weren’t there to get rid
of the Taliban, while making secret deals with them and they are going
to come back in power even more powerful than they were before. So, what
was the real point of 12 years in Afghanistan then?

Rozoff: Well, I mean, I know what the answer to that is, but it is not
what generally is offered as an explanation for the invasion, the
occupation, of Afghanistan. To read between the lines slightly all one
needs to do is read Anders Fogh Rasmussen or any other NATO official on
their website. I invite people to visit the NATO website, this is where
you are going to find out the truth but you may have to decipher it a bit.
And what you hear again and again is that Afghanistan has proven the
testing ground or the training ground for developing interoperability
between NATO members and partners. Again, over 50 nations provided
military forces for NATO in the ongoing war in Afghanistan. And what
NATO walks away from… the Afghans, of course, have suffered a disastrous
period, the region likewise and the world security has certainly not
gained in any manner from this, but  NATO has walked away by having
fused or integrated military units from 50 different countries.
People without any sense of history may not appreciate the significance
of that fact, but for a moment, active belligerents, even in WW II, for
example, I’d be surprised if formally there were more than 20 on the
side of the Allies and now you’ve got 50 serving in one country, under
one military command – NATO. That’s what NATO used Afghanistan for. It
was simply a training ground for consolidating an international military
strike force, what is referred to as the NATO Response Force, the
nucleus of which will be this 50-nation alliance that NATO was able to
put together inside Afghanistan.
On the question of the human toll of heroin, I’ll be brief on that but
I’ll be personal. I worked in the past as a substance abuse counselor. I
worked at methadone maintenance clinic. I know what heroin addiction
does to people. I’ve seen young women out prostituting themselves. I’ve
seen young babies left in their own feces and so forth as their parents
are hunting down a fix. I know what heroin does to people. And if you
multiply that on the level of hundreds of thousands or millions, and
this is what is happening, this is the untold cost of the Afghan war.
And you don’t have to look too far. The Russian government will tell you
what the figures are in their own country in heroin deaths and heroin
addiction. The Iranian government will tell you the same. I’m sure the
five nations of Central Asia can say something similar. I’m sure that
Pakistan and India are suffering this as well. And this is going to take
generations to rectify.

Robles: It is an insidious cycle, and I’d really like you to comment on
this as well, the whole heroin cycle includes the cultivators, the
farmers – right? It begins with them, it ends up with somebody dying in
a stairwell in Chicago with a dirty needle in their vein or something.
But in between you’ve got government officials, you’ve got even US
diplomats, maybe, you’ve got the CIA, you’ve got NATO officials and
everyone is making money of it. How much do you think the US and NATO
have profited from the entire heroin scheme in Afghanistan?

Rozoff: That’s rich ground for speculation. I would reference, I think,
as you were talking about the Golden Triangle earlier, Alfred McCoy, he
is a professor, or was at least a professor at the University of
Wisconsin, Madison. He wrote a book on just that topic, about Southeast
Asia during the war in Indo-China.

Robles: I’ve actually read that.

Rozoff: Good, talk about it. Inevitably, all the other plagues follow in
the track of war: famine, disease, drug addiction, prostitution,
dislocation. It is as sure as night follows day you are going to find
that. However, there is a more insidious side that you are alluding to,
which is that one way of, in the post-WW II period ,of financing
counterinsurgency groups that aren't officially governmental in nature
is through the drug trade.
This occurred in Central America, it has occurred in South America, it
has occurred in Indo-China, it has occurred in the Balkans, it is
occurring currently in South and Central Asia where cutthroat mercenary
outfits do the dirty work, particularly for the CIA, and in return are
allowed to run narcotics trafficking, perhaps, in conjunction with US
military forces, as a way of paying themselves outside of the
Congressionally-scrutinized budget. You know, it is a slush fund or a
secret budget of some sort. We just have to assume that’s going on.
There has been discussion, I think there’s even been some degree of
proof, that there is a drug route that goes now from Afghanistan
possibly through the air base in Manas in Kyrgyzstan fairly directly
into the Balkans, probably Kosovo. And we know that criminal gangs or
syndicates affiliated with the putative government of Kosovo, of Hashim
Thaçi, have been directly implicated in running the preponderance of the
drug trade throughout Europe. So, it would seem logical that opium,
cultivated, farmed, semi-processed in Afghanistan or even processed into
heroin and other by-products would then make their way into the drugs
circuit in the Balkans, and from there to the West. It is more than a
likely possibility.

Robles: So, this is going through… out of US military installations in
Afghanistan to the US base possibly in Kosovo you think or… ?

Rozoff: There has been a discussion about that. And it seems plausible,
at the very least. We are talking about the Transit Center at Manas in
Kyrgyzstan, which is supposed to be closed down finally next year unless
the US raises the bid, as they’ve done in the past to maintain it yet
further. But assuming that’s closed down, the US has modernized and
expanded several air bases within Afghanistan itself – the Bagram Air
Base north of the capital, Shindand near the Iranian border and other
places and the US has no intention of vacating those bases ever, I think
it is safe in assuming.
So, amongst other things that provide thems probably long enough and big
enough runways to accommodate strategic aircraft, should the US want to
position such in the Central-South Asian region, but also cargo
planes that can bring anything in or out of the country as they choose,
much as Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo. It is not under any international
supervision. The Kosovo Force, the NATO military force in [Kosovo] is at
least nominally, under the UN mandate but the US military base in Kosovo
– Camp Bondsteel - as far as I know is not inspected by anybody.
There’s been speculation by Russian officials that if the US chooses to
place nuclear weapons, say tactical nuclear weapons, closer to the
Russian border or the Iranian border, they could do so in Kosovo without
anyone being the wiser. So, why not narcotics?

Robles: This collusion in narcotics trafficking has been very well
documented and proven. And it doesn’t matter how many times Oliver North
said “I have no recollection” I mean, this is a fact of their operations.

Rozoff: Yes, war is a filthy business. It is one that by definition
really is without ethics. And if Congress puts up even a titular or
nominal opposition in any way or demands any sort of supervision of
activities, then the Oliver Norths of the world find some way of getting
it done otherwise. And that if means arms to terrorist gangs in Central
America going south and those same cargo planes coming back with
marijuana and cocaine coming north, then what is the objection from the
point of view of somebody who is willing to kill innocent people? I
mean, if murder is justifiable, then what crime is not?

Robles: And you are alluding to?

Rozoff: I mean, you were mentioning the example during the 1980s of the
dirty-tricks-operations… oh, not dirty tricks actually, but covert
operations run out of the basement of the White House.

Robles: You hit the nail on the head there. I’m sorry, go ahead Rick.

Rozoff: That's actually an allusion to the Nixon Committee to Re-Elect
the President tactics in 1972. But, you know, be it whatever it is or
however we want to call it. I don’t mean to go off on too much of a
tangent on that, that is something that, hopefully, enterprising
journalists are going to be able to dig up without spending the rest of
their life in a dungeon somewhere for revealing the truth.
But in the interim, what we do know about this past year is that it has
signaled the beginning of the slowing down of the post-Cold War momentum
of the US and its military allies around the world.
They still expanded in certain areas, we can’t deny or minimize that.
The Asia-Pacific pivot of the Obama administration starting last year,
where the new enemy transparently right at this point is China, which is
to be encircled militarily by an increased number of new US military
bases, including interceptor missile facilities throughout Asia,
aimed squarely at China, reproducing something analogous to what’s
happened with Russia through NATO expansion on the western, southern
borders of Russia.
That is something that has occurred, but we’ve seen a, I think
psychologically as well as maybe a little bit more tangibly, an
important pivot with the situation in Syria, as we talked about. And
coming out of that a clear resolve by many nations in the world, and we
have to remember that China is now assisting Russia, the Chinese navy ,
is assisting Russia right now in the removal of chemical weapons from
Syria, which a Russian official was quoted as of yesterday as saying:
“this is the first time Russian and Chinese military have cooperated
together in a real life crisis.” I think that’s almost a quote.
So, what we are seeing now is the evolution again, and this is so
important to emphasize, to underline, of a model of international
multipolarity with the basis on international law. And what that means
is if countries like Russia and China, who are simultaneously the
mainstays of two very, very important organizations – the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization and what is loosely known as the BRICS (Brazil,
Russia, India, China and South Africa  now)…

Robles: If I can make a little kind of maybe sarcastic comment, but, are
you implying that Russia and China are somehow part of the
“international community?”

Rozoff: I know they were written off some time roughly 22 years ago and
you didn’t have to consult their interests in any way or form. That has
now changed; it changed pretty demonstrably. And what is evident this
past year in particular is that because of consistency and determination
we had from both those countries, particularly Russia but China also, we
have to recall that in an unprecedented series of actions those three
countries three times in succession vetoed proposed resolutions in the
UN Security Council that would have laid the groundwork for a
replication of the Libyan model in Syria.
And the fact that Russia and China did not back down even in the face of
what is very formidable American ability to mould public opinion
internationally and even to have that reflected within the affected
countries, Russia and China, where media, either from the West or
parroting the line of the West oftentimes, is able to influence public
opinion domestically in those two countries – that despite all that
Russia and China stood their ground, refused to back down.
And we can flash back to some of our earlier programs or interviews with
the horribly insulting and condescending and contemptuous statements
made by major US political officials, for example, the former Secretary
of State Hilary Clinton, Dr. Susan Rice – the current National Security
Advisor – and others who spoke about Russia and China in terms that
really do not belong in international diplomacy in any way or form.
But not withstanding all that, the fact is a couple of very significant
nations – Russia and China – have proven thus far and no farther, I want
to say.
They allowed a resolution against Libya in early 2011 to pass the UN
Security Council and saw what occurred, which is six months of US and
NATO bombardment of the country, as you indicated, and never again is
this going to occur. And this is a very important stand that was taken
on the issue of Syria. Had it not been Syria, it may have been some
other nation. But the fact is – historically it was Syria and this is
going to be recorded unquestionably as a major historical turning point.

Robles: Thank you Rick!


That was the end of part 2 of an interview with Rick Rozoff – the owner
and manager of the stop NATO website and international mailing list.

Read
more: http://voiceofrussia.com/2014_01_13/Russian-Chinese-prevention-of-Syrian-invasion-historic-event-Rick-Rozoff-0232/
richardrozoff | January 13, 2014 at 2:52 pm | Categories: Uncategorized
| URL: http://wp.me/pCpOz-6HA

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_____________________________________________________________
2. Pentagon Touts DARP's Role In Space
    Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff at yahoo.com rwrozoff
    Date: Mon Jan 13, 2014 3:28 pm ((PST))

http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=121474


U.S. Department of Defense
January 13, 2014


DARPA Programs Create New Future for Space, Director Says
By Cheryl Pellerin
American Forces Press Service


WASHINGTON: Space is critical to understanding the planet and how the
United States safeguards national security, but the costs and
difficulties of reaching the domain have slowed U.S. effectiveness in
space, the director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
said today.

Speaking at SciTech 2014, a technical conference hosted by the American
Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Arati Prabhakar explained
that now is an important time to think in fresh ways about how to break
that paradigm.

In many ways the situation takes Prabhakar back to 1958, she said, when
DARPA was established partly because of the technological surprise
delivered in 1957 by Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite,
launched by the Soviet Union and marking the start of the space age.

...

DARPA, the Defense Department’s research and development enterprise, has
a portfolio that includes hypersonic technology in rethinking air
dominance for the future, new ways to control the electromagnetic
spectrum, new cyber opportunities, big data analytics, brain function,
outpacing the threat of infectious disease, and accelerating the
development of synthetic biology.

Another part of DARPA’s portfolio is rethinking national security space,
Prabhakar said.

“Today we are extremely effective at waging a kind of precise lethal
war,” she added. “It’s something that is a core element of our national
security today, but it is a kind of warfighting capability that’s simply
not possible without the assets that we have on orbit.”

Around the national security environment, the director said, space is
becoming increasingly congested as more commercial activity takes place
in orbit and as other nations stake their claims in space.

...

At DARPA, scientists are working on three projects – involving space
launch, satellites and real-time domain awareness - that the director
said she thinks will create a very different future for space.

It can cost tens of millions of dollars to get even a very small
satellite to orbit, and years to schedule the launch, she said, because
only a few fixed sites around the world can launch such craft.

“Today at DARPA, we’re investing in programs that we hope will change
that model and allow for the ability to launch on 24-hour call-up from
anywhere around the world,” Prabhakar said.

With DARPA’s Airborne Launch Assist Space Access program, called ALASA,
the idea is for an aircraft to carry a small satellite and its
host-booster inside the plane or externally. At the right altitude and
direction, the aircraft would release the satellite and booster and both
would continue climbing into space.

A key benefit of the system is that, within a day of being called up, a
satellite launch mission could be conducted from a runway anywhere in
the world. Another advantage is the flexibility of an aircraft to
deliver a satellite into any orbit at any time, according to DARPA.

“Our ALASA program … aims to be able to get a [100-pound] satellite to
[low-Earth orbit] for about $1 million. Our new experimental spaceplane
program, XS-1, aims to develop a reusable first stage that enables a
cost in the range of $5 million to get 3,000 pounds to 5,000 pounds to
LEO,” the director said.

These changes are dramatic, she added, because the price would be a
revolution in capability and because of the flexibility and rapid call-up.

...

DARPA’s Phoenix program is working to create a future in which space
robotics technologies can service satellites and even assemble them on
orbit, and reuse components of old or nonworking satellites perhaps on
orbit.

“As we develop those capabilities at [geostationary orbit, or GEO] we
believe that we’re going to start changing the fundamental dynamics and
economics of what’s going to be possible in terms of satellite
capability,” the director said.

The third project simply has to do with knowing what’s going on in
orbit, she added.

“Space is becoming a real-time domain, and it’s no longer good enough to
sort of know what’s up there. We really need to start moving to a future
of space traffic control, more like flight traffic control for the air
domain,” Prabhakar said.

DARPA has several programs that reach for this future, she said. One is
the Space Surveillance Telescope, or SST, that can see very dim objects
at geostationary orbit across a broad swath of the sky. DARPA has
demonstrated this telescope capability in New Mexico and now is in the
process of moving to Australia in cooperation with the Australian
government.

...


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