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Enemy land force: U.S. leads live-fire exercise in Poland

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112th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment
March 6, 2015
Joint live-fire exercise kicks off in Poland
Story by 1st Sgt. James Wagner

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DRAWSKO POMORSKIE, Poland: Shots rang out on a blustery, cold winter morning as Polish infantrymen kicked off the first of a three-day joint live-fire exercise with U.S. dragoons at the Drawsko Pomorskie Land Forces Training Center here March 4.

The exercise is the latest iteration in U.S. and Polish land force exercises since the middle of last year, when Operation Atlantic Resolve began. OAR is a NATO exercise led by the U.S. to test the alliance’s interoperability with Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian military forces…

The live-fire exercise is the culminating event of collaborative training held between the Dragoons of K Troop, 3rd Squadron, 2nd Cavalry Regiment, and Poland’s 3rd Company, 1st Battalion, 12th Mechanized Brigade. Since early February, the two units have been conducting multinational platoon level training as they work to fully integrate their operations in a combat environment.

The goal, according to 1st Lt. Geoffrey Hamilton, a 2 CR operations officer, is to increase the interoperability of Polish and U.S. land forces through shared training.

“The whole purpose is to make sure we can work with the Polish army side-by-side,” he said…

For the next three days, three platoons of 2 CR troopers and six platoons of Polish infantrymen will cycle through an exercise scenario – using live rounds and munitions – designed to test their skills in working together as allies facing an enemy land force.

In the scenario, a Polish forward operating base is attacked by an enemy force. The Poles defend their position while a quick reaction force and a U.S. infantry platoon is called up to make contact with the enemy while also mounting a hasty defense when enemy reinforcements arrive. The U.S. also employs its mortars during the exercise.

The allied units have communicated daily and undergone regular side-by-side exercises since February, honing their ability to fight effectively as one joint force. Overcoming the daily challenges of different languages, different doctrine and different tactics between the dragoons and Polish infantrymen is the goal, and after weeks of joint training, there is very little difference between the two allied units when training and fighting together.

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Also in attendance at the launch of today’s exercise were a dozen journalists from various television stations and media outlets in Poland. According to a U.S. embassy official, spreading the word of the joint exercise provides mainstream Poland with a demonstration of the critical allied effort being conducted in their country to ensure safety and security in Eastern Europe.

The live-fire exercise is expected to conclude March 6.

https://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2015/03/06/enemy-land-force-u-s-leads-live-fire-exercise-in-Poland/

Turchynov: War in Ukraine will not stop integration with EU and NATO

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Ukrinform
March 5, 2015
Russia’s aggression not to stop Ukraine’s integration into NATO – Turchynov

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KYIV: Russia’s aggression in Crimea and eastern Ukraine will not stop the process of Ukraine’s integration into the EU and NATO.

Secretary of National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Oleksandr Turchynov said this at a media briefing in Warsaw, an Ukrinform correspondent in Poland reported.

“There is no alternative to European and Euro-Atlantic integration for Ukraine and we are very grateful for Poland’s support in this direction. Russian aggression in Crimea and eastern Ukraine will not stop the process of Ukraine’s European and Euro-Atlantic integration,” Turchynov said.

He stressed that Ukraine “in any case, would return the temporarily occupied territories.”

According to him, Kyiv today counters a very strong aggressor, and therefore the support of partners from the EU is “very important.”

“Russian aggression against Ukraine should be considered in the context of aggression against the European security and therefore cooperation [with the West] in the field of security and defense is very important,” he said.

Turchynov also expressed his gratitude “to the Polish government and people for their support to Ukraine.

https://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2015/03/05/325-day-war-not-to-stop-ukraines-nato-membership-defense-official/

Enhanced partners: Ukraine to participate in NATO exercise

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Ukrinform
March 3, 2015
Ukraine to take part in NATO crisis management exercise

KYIV: The NATO begins Annual Crisis Management Exercise, the NATO headquarters has told an Ukrinform correspondent in Brussels.

“Australia, Finland, Japan, Sweden and Ukraine will participate alongside Allies in the exercise. South Korea, New Zealand and Georgia chose to observe the exercise,” the NATO press office says.

The exercise is designed to test the North Atlantic Council procedures at the strategic political-military level.

The scenario for the crisis management exercise consists of a crisis developing between two non-NATO states at distance from Alliance territory. It contains a humanitarian and maritime dimension, with implications for the security of the Allies.

The exercise will take place between 4 and 10 March 2015.

https://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2015/03/03/enhanced-partners-ukraine-to-participate-in-nato-exercise/

U.S. decision to arm Ukraine “99% ready”: Saakashvili

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“Saakashvili noted that in the U.S. ‘almost everybody is on our side.’”

UNIAN
March 2, 2015

US decision to give Ukraine defensive weapons ‘99% settled,’ says Saakashvili

The United States has “99% settled” the question of giving Ukraine defensive weaponry, former president of Georgia and current freelance adviser to the President of Ukraine Mikheil Saakashvili has told Ukrainian news broadcaster Channel 5.

“The main thing we are trying to achieve in the United States is that Ukraine receives defensive weapons,’ Saakashvili said.

“Almost everyone is standing by us – public opinion on our side. Giving defensive weapons to Ukraine is a powerful signal to save thousands of lives, to stop further Russian aggression: We all know that now Putin will try to capture not only Mariupol, but the whole southern flank [of Ukraine, and] then he will try to bring down the government in Kyiv. The Ukrainian state needs to defend and protect its security.”

“America is a democratic country, so it was very important to hear publicly voices in the Congress and the Senate, and to see a strong call next week regarding provision defensive weapons for Ukraine. This issue is in the spotlight of all U.S. media. When [Ukrainian] President [Petro] Poroshenko raised this issue in the Congress in his triumphal speech in September last year, for many it was a surprise and a lot of people refused even to listen to it. Now, the decision is practically settled – 99%. I don’t know when the last and most significant 1% will come – I hope soon, because Ukraine is running short of time.”

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Ukrinform
March 2, 2015

U.S. decision to provide Ukraine with weapons is 99% ready – Saakashvili

KYIV: The decision of the United States to provide Ukraine with defensive weapons is 99% ready.

Non-staff adviser to the President of Ukraine, president of Georgia in 2004-2013 Mikheil Saakashvili said this on the air of Ukrainian Channel 5.

“America is a democratic state, so it is very important that the strong demand to provide Ukraine with weapons has been stated in the Congress, in the Senate, and it will be stated the next week. This demand is now covered by all the U.S. media. When President Poroshenko said about this in the Congress in his triumphal speech in last September, it was a surprise for many and many did not even want to listen to that. At the moment, this decision is practically 99 per cent ready. I do not know when there will be the last, the most significant per cent. I hope that will happen soon, because Ukraine is short of time,” he said.

Saakashvili noted that in the U.S. “almost everybody is on our side.” Providing Ukraine with defensive weapons will be the strongest signal in order to save thousands of lives and stop further Russian aggression.

https://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2015/03/02/u-s-decision-to-arm-ukraine-99-ready-saakashvili/

U.S. paratroopers held largest Arctic war games in decade

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The name of the plane shown below tells the whole story. It is a C-17 Globemaster III.

This is the race to get all the pieces in place, to achieve global empire and complete “command and control” before the people of the world, particularly of America, realize what’s going on.

With all jumpers and gear safely on the tundra, the airborne team within USARAK once again demonstrated USARAK’s ability to work closely with joint military partners to respond to emergencies and contingencies in the harsh, Arctic environment in Alaska and other parts of the Asia-Pacific region.

Why would a Northern Warfare Training Center be needed except to prepare for invasion of Russia and Asia from the north?

Posted on Stop NATO, March 1, 2015

U.S. Army
February 26, 2015
Exercise Spartan Pegasus demonstrates joint military partnership
By Sgt. 1st Class Jeffrey Smith

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Spartan Pegasus demonstrates rapid Arctic airborne insertion, mobility Paratroopers, with U.S. Army Alaska’s 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, await their exit as they fly inside a C-17 Globemaster III aircraft during Exercise Spartan Pegasus on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska.

DEADHORSE, Alaska: Paratroopers, with U.S. Army Alaska’s 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, performed the largest U.S. airborne mission north of the Arctic Circle in more than a decade during Exercise Spartan Pegasus 15, Feb. 24.

This exercise demonstrated their unique ability to rapidly mass power on an objective in extremely cold and austere environments.

The airborne operation, spearheaded by the Spartan Brigade’s 6th Brigade Engineer Battalion, or BEB, inserted nearly 150 paratroopers along with arctic-mobility equipment, including a small unit support vehicle and arctic sustainment gear.

The large-scale exercise involved intricate planning and coordination amongst several military components including U.S. Army Alaska, or USARAK, the Air Force, the Alaska National Guard, and the state of Alaska.

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The purpose of Spartan Pegasus was to validate Soldier mobility across frozen terrain, a key fundamental of U.S. Army Alaska’s capacity as the Army’s northernmost command.

The air support package included two Air Force C-17 Globemaster III aircraft and two Alaska Air Guard C-130 Hercules aircraft to fly the task force more than 800 miles north from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, or JBER, Alaska.

Pegasus was a joint operation. U.S. Air Force Maj. Kirby Chacon, with the Alaska Air National Guard at JBER, said working closely with the Army for Spartan Pegasus helped further relations, and that just being able to practice for real-world applications is important for both branches.

Air Force Capt. John Kline, commander of Bravo Company, 6th BEB, Spartan Pegasus, said the exercise demonstrated USARAK’s unique airborne and arctic skill sets and the unit’s ability to work closely with joint military partners.

“We do a lot of joint partnership missions,” Kline said. “We work with our Air Force brethren out of JBER and the Alaskan National Guard as well as many other partners from across Alaska.”

“This exercise showcases the rapidly-deployable capabilities of the paratroopers,” Kline said. “The arctic paratrooper can really survive in extreme conditions and can [deploy] in very short response time.” Continue reading →

Upton Sinclair: U.S. invasion of Russia: nothing but wholesale murder; American army and navy as a world police-force

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Posted on Stop NATO, February 28, 2015

Upton Sinclair
From Boston (1928)

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It was time to get excitable young rebels out of the country; the family realized that clearly more and more every day. For it appeared that the signing of the armistice was not going to mean peace; not even the signing of a treaty would mean it. Our troops were to stay in Germany; worse yet, they were to stay in Siberia and Archangel, and wage President Wilson’s private war upon the Russian people. The American army and navy were to service as a world police-force for the capitalist system. Exactly what Cornelia had seen the Boston police do in Plymouth, the national police were going to do all over Europe and Asia, sometimes under our command, sometimes under British command. And any persons at home who objected to this program would be hit over the head with the so-called espionage act; a law enacted to punish enemy spies, and now serving to jail American citizens for protesting against attacks upon a friendly people without a declaration of war.

It was the White Terror. Conducted partly by mobs, and partly by police and government agents acting as mobs, it had for its aim the destruction of every means through which the American people might learn how their blood and treasure were being wasted. It stopped at no crime; the law-enforcers of city, state and nation became the leading criminals. In New York four Russian boys and a girl, all of them under age, attempting to distribute a circular against the invasion of Russia, were seized by the police and tortured until one of them died; the rest were prosecuted in the federal courts and received sentences of twenty years’ imprisonment.

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“It is nothing but a coward’s attempt to frighten and distress us. Joe was connected with the American legation in Russia, when President Wilson begin his private war on the Russian people, which was nothing but wholesale murder for the benefit of the British Tories. Joe said what he thought about it, and he may actually have done something to try to stop it. If he has a ‘criminal record,’ that is it. I’m sure.”

Upton Sinclair: U.S. invasion of Russia: nothing but wholesale murder; American army and navy as a world police-force

NATO allies Turkey, U.S. to train 15,000 fighters for war in Syria

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Xinhua News Agency
February 27, 2015

Turkey, U.S. to start training Syrian rebels on March 1

ANKARA: Turkey and the United States will launch a program for training and equipping Syrian rebels on March 1, spokesman for the Turkish Foreign Ministry Tanju Bilgic said on Friday.

On Feb. 19, Turkey and the U. S. signed an agreement for providing training and equipment for the Syrian opposition forces.

The program aims to train a total of 15,000 Syrian opposition fighters in a three-year period, 5,000 of them will be trained at a military base in the central Turkish city of Kirsehir.

The Syrian rebels will be trained and equiped to fight both the Islamic State (IS) militants and Syrian government forces, Turkish Foreign Minister Cavusoglu said.

https://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2015/02/28/nato-allies-turkey-u-s-to-train-15000-fighters-for-war-in-syria/

John Pilger on modern fascism and the lies of America’s warmongers

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Why the rise of fascism is again the issue
By John Pilger
February 26, 2015

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The recent 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was a reminder of the great crime of fascism, whose Nazi iconography is embedded in our consciousness. Fascism is preserved as history, as flickering footage of goose-stepping blackshirts, their criminality terrible and clear. Yet in the same liberal societies, whose war-making elites urge us never to forget, the accelerating danger of a modern kind of fascism is suppressed; for it is their fascism.

“To initiate a war of aggression…,” said the Nuremberg Tribunal judges in 1946, “is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

Had the Nazis not invaded Europe, Auschwitz and the Holocaust would not have happened. Had the United States and its satellites not initiated their war of aggression in Iraq in 2003, almost a million people would be alive today; and Islamic State, or ISIS, would not have us in thrall to its savagery. They are the progeny of modern fascism, weaned by the bombs, bloodbaths and lies that are the surreal theatre known as news.

Like the fascism of the 1930s and 1940s, big lies are delivered with the precision of a metronome: thanks to an omnipresent, repetitive media and its virulent censorship by omission. Take the catastrophe in Libya. Continue reading →

NATO’s Vershbow says EU-NATO “deeper cooperation” needed to fight Russia — a merger perhaps?

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The Deputy Secretary General noted that while NATO-EU cooperation has intensified in recent years, “the logic of closer cooperation between NATO and the EU is more compelling than ever before.” He added that the two organisations should “further coordinate our approaches to counter hybrid warfare, dispel propaganda and misinformation, and defend our shared democratic values.”

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
March 5, 2015
Deputy Secretary General: NATO-EU cooperation is more important than ever

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NATO Deputy Secretary General Ambassador Alexander Vershbow has called for deeper cooperation between NATO and the European Union in the fight against new security threats. “We need to work together to manage crises, bring relief, and project stability beyond our borders,” he said. Ambassador Vershbow made his remarks in Riga, Latvia on Thursday (5 March 2015) in a speech to the Interparliamentary Conference for the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the Common Security and Defence Policy. “This is a critical time for the security of all our nations,” Ambassador Vershbow said.

The Deputy Secretary General warned that the Euro-Atlantic community faces “new threats and challenges both on our eastern and our southern borders”. To the east, we see “an angry, revisionist Russia that breaks international rules” and continues to destabilise Ukraine and intimidate its neighbours, he said. Meanwhile, to the south, across the Middle East and North Africa, “ISIL’s violent ideology has poured oil on the fire of extremism and sectarianism”. Ambassador Vershbow noted that migrants fleeing turmoil have placed strain on countries like Italy and Turkey, and that violent ideologies have inspired terrorism on the streets of Europe.

The Deputy Secretary General stressed that NATO and its partners must also be ready to counter hybrid warfare, which combines military intimidation, economic and diplomatic duplicity, and media manipulation. Ambassador Vershbow noted that hybrid warfare has been “central to the Russian strategy” in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. He underlined that any response to hybrid threats should be “multi-faceted”, leveraging the complementary hard and soft power tools of NATO and the European Union.

Ambassador Vershbow also pointed to other areas ripe for deepened cooperation between NATO and the European Union, including support for partners like Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova; as well as for nations to the south. “There is a key role for the European Union to help these countries with political and economic reforms, to build strong institutions, and to fight corruption,” he said.

The Deputy Secretary General noted that while NATO-EU cooperation has intensified in recent years, “the logic of closer cooperation between NATO and the EU is more compelling than ever before.” He added that the two organisations should “further coordinate our approaches to counter hybrid warfare, dispel propaganda and misinformation, and defend our shared democratic values.”

https://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2015/03/06/real-nato-boss-nato-eu-merger-needed-for-war-with-Russia/
Real NATO Boss: NATO-EU Merger Needed For War With Russia

Russia concerned as U.S. military moves into Ukraine, Black Sea

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Xinhua News Agency
March 6, 2015

Russia concerned with U.S. military deployment in Ukraine

MOSCOW: Russia is concerned with arrival of U.S. military personnel on Ukraine soil, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Thursday.

“Up to 300 U.S. troops reportedly have been deployed to a peacekeeping center in Ukraine’s western Lvov region,” the ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told reporters.

Noting that those U.S. military instructors would train Ukrainian soldiers from March 5 to Oct. 21 on western military hardware operations, Lukashevich said that U.S. military presence in that country has become a fact.

He also highlighted danger of U.S. plans to start massive arms supply to Ukraine despite successful implementation of the ceasefire agreement reached in Minsk, the Belarusian national capital, on Feb. 12 between Ukrainian government and Donbass insurgents in eastern Ukraine.

Moreover, the U.S. Congress has been drafting a bill on allocating one billion U.S. dollars for Ukraine’s army training and armament equipment, according to Lukashevich,

“It seems like Washington decided to take (Ukrainian armed forces) under full maintenance,” Interfax news agency quoted Lukashevich as saying.

Meanwhile, the spokesman blamed the U.S. for its military presence in the Black Sea, as NATO Maritime Command said Wednesday in an online announcement that six NATO warships had arrived in the Black Sea for joint exercises.

“This somehow contradicts the public statements of the U.S. administration supporting political settlement of conflict in Ukraine,” Lukashevich said.

He warned that such actions might lead to “the most serious consequences” for the peaceful settlement of the crisis.

Lukashevich also urged the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe monitoring mission in Ukraine to verify implementation of Minsk agreements, especially to monitor the weapon withdrawal by conflicting parties in the “impartial, well- organized and systemic way.”

 

https://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2015/03/06/u-s-nato-move-military-into-ukarine-black-sea-russia-mildly-perturbed/