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https://corbettreport.substack.com/p/france-pretends-nato-is-about-the

France Pretends NATO is About the North Atlantic

Someone must have bought Emmanuel Macron a map. How else to explain his amazing geographical discovery that Japan is not, in fact, located in the North Atlantic?

For those not keeping up with the wild, wooly world of geopolitricks, this latest round of cartographic confusion began to unfold last month when the increasingly inaccurately named North Atlantic Treaty Organization announced it was planning to open a "liaison office" in Japan despite the fact that (by all accounts) the Japanese archipelago remains firmly situated in the Pacific. Earlier this month, French president Macron lodged his reservations about the plan, warning that if NATO enlarges its geographic reach too much, "we will make a big mistake."

That NATO would seek to extend its reach beyond its supposed North Atlantic regional remit is hardly surprising. In fact, as anyone following the rise of the Evil Empire will know all too well, NATO has been involved in a process of truly global expansion for decades now. But still, France's objection to this brazen attempt by NATO to stray from its nominal North Atlantic confines presents a new twist on the story.

So, what does all of this mean? And if it isn't reined in, where will NATO be heading next? Let's find out, shall we? . . .

NATO: The Myth

In April 1949, as the Iron Curtain descended across Europe and the Western powers geared up to fight the (phoney, engineered) Cold War, representatives of Belgium, Canada, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States came together to sign The North Atlantic Treaty. The signing of that treaty gave birth to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the intergovernmental military alliance we now know as NATO.

The preamble to the treaty affirms the signatories' "faith in the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and their desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments" and their desire "to promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area" before resolving "to unite their efforts for collective defence and for the preservation of peace and security." It then goes on in 14 short articles (seriously, you can read the entire treaty for yourself in under 10 minutes) to commit its members to a number of flowery, noble-sounding ideals, including:

"to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means" (Article 1);

to "contribute toward the further development of peaceful and friendly international relations by strengthening their free institutions" (Article 2);

to assist other member states in the event of an attack on Europe or North America, but only until such time as the United Nations Security Council "has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security" (Article 5);

&c.

Of course, as we all know by now, every word of the document is a lie.

NATO's reign of terror and bloodshed during its 1999 bombing of the then-Federal Republic of Yugoslavia—a military intervention that did not have the authorization of the UN Security Council and that included the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, untold environmental damage, and, oh yeah, by the way, hundreds of civilian deaths—gave the lie to assurances that NATO is committed to peaceful conflict resolution and that it is subordinate to the determinations of the UN Security Council.

NATO's invasion and nearly two-decades-long occupation of Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks—an operation based on a single briefing containing no actual proof of Osama bin Laden's complicity in 9/11 and no justification for invading Afghanistan—gave the lie to NATO's promise to act militarily only in the name of "collective self-defense" and only until such time as the immediate threat is contained.

NATO's campaign of carnage in Libya in 2011—a campaign that, once again, was based on utterly fictitious grounds and that resulted in chaos, bloodshed and open-air slave markets—gave the lie to the vow that NATO's military power would be used only to defend member states from armed attack.

And NATO's relentless expansion in recent decades—including its "Mediterranean Dialogue" and its "global partners" program and its signing of security agreements with non-NATO members like Qatar and, infamously, Ukraine—gives the lie to the pretense that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is really about the North Atlantic (not to mention the lie that NATO would not expand "one inch to the east" after the fall of the Soviet Union).

But now that we sit here in 2023, in the shell holes of NATO's bloody bombing campaigns and in the wake of its trail of lies and broken promises, no one can deny the self-evident truth any longer. Far from a "mutual self-defense" organization committed to defending the North Atlantic region from outside attack, NATO is the military tool of the American Empire, willing and able to wage aggressive wars around the world at the behest of its Washington string-pullers.

So, where does that leave us today?

NATO: The Reality

No, no one who is being honest could look at the world-bestriding military aggressor that NATO is today and maintain that it is the same European/North American defensive alliance that was sold to the public in 1949.

Why, then, is Macron now suddenly pretending that NATO is about North Atlantic security and that the organization should avoid geographic overreach? In a word: China.

You see, just as NATO was originally sold to the public as the answer to the (engineered) threat of the (Western-backed) Soviet bogeyman, the new, global militarily alliance currently masquerading under the NATO moniker is being sold to the public as the answer to the (engineered) threat of the (Western-backed) Chinese bogeyman.

In fact, NATO is no longer even bothering to hide the fact that it's gearing up for a confrontation with China. As I reported three years ago, NATO's (outgoing?) Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg turned the corner on NATO's Pacific ambitions in 2020 when he made a speech laying out his 10-year vision for the military alliance. In his remarks, the NATO leader explicitly called on the alliance's members to take a more "global approach" and to stand up to China's "bullying and coercion."

The rise of China is fundamentally shifting the global balance of power, heating up the race for economic and technological ­supremacy, multiplying the threats to open societies and individual freedoms and increasing the competition over our values and our way of life. They’re coming closer in cyberspace, we see them in the Arctic, in Africa, we see them ­investigating in our critical infrastructure [sic]. And they’re working more and more with Russia. All of this has security consequences for NATO allies.

Lest there be any doubt about this Sino-centric shift in NATO's strategic thinking, the organization spelled it out in black and white in its NATO 2022 Strategic Concept—a document issued at irregular intervals that "specifies the elements of the Alliance’s approach to security and provides guidelines for its political and military adaptation." The 2022 edition of the document—the eighth such "Strategic Concept" in the alliance's history—included for the first time specific references to the Chinese threat, noting that China's "stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values."

However, NATO is not a monolith. Stoltenberg may be saying one thing, but the (mis)leaders of the various NATO member states have their own ideas about how best to serve their geopolitical (not to mention economic) interests. The European NATO states, for example, are straddling the line between kowtowing to Washington (and thus maintaining the old Pax Americana world order) and aligning with the Chinese dragon (and thus tipping the balance in favour of the new, multipolar world order).

For the last few years, we have seen Germany moving closer to Washington and inching away from Beijing and Moscow, with outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel having identified China as a rising threat on her way out the door in 2021 and current German Chancellor Olaf Scholz having shelved the Nord Stream 2 project in 2022, long before <sarc>the dastardly Russkies blew up their own pipeline for no readily identifiable reason</sarc>.

France, on the other hand, appears to be moving the other direction. French President Macron made waves earlier this year when he visited Xi Jinping in Guandong for some old-style meet-and-greet diplomacy. The trip was ostensibly meant to promote Airbus sales and pork exports, but inevitably included much talk of the "multipolar world" and a joint statement committing both countries to a "strategic global partnership" (along with all the usual globalist nonsense about the importance of the UN's sustainable development goals and the "climate transition" and health security, etc.). Predictably, the Old Gray Presstitute framed this as France "Undercut[ting] US Efforts to Rein China In."

And now Macron has the temerity to openly object to NATO's plan to open a "liaison office" in Japan, calling it a "big mistake." An anonymous French official went even further after news of Macron's position broke, stating:

Nato [stands for] north Atlantic, and both article V and article VI [in its statutes] clearly limit the scope to north Atlantic. There is no Nato liaison office in any country in the region. If Nato needs situational awareness in the region it can use the embassies designated as point of contact.

So are NATO's global ambitions about to be reined in? And what are the next steps from here?

NATO: The Future

As James Evan Pilato and I covered on our latest edition of New World Next Week, NATO's next summit is due to take place in Vilnius, Lithuania, next month, and it's shaping up to be a big one.

Of course, the China question will be front and centre at the proceedings, with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida set to attend the event in person. His presence is presumably meant to coincide with some sort of formal announcement of the creation of NATO's liaison office in Japan—though, according to The Financial Times, "[t]he resistance from France has complicated months of discussion within NATO to create the alliance’s first outpost in the Indo-Pacific region."

But it isn't just the China/Japan/France tension that will be on the table in Vilnius. The Ukraine war on NATO's (increasingly easterly) doorstep is still the alliance's largest immediate concern, and the latest developments on that front—including the deployment of nuclear-capable F-16s by NATO countries and the potential thermonuclear Apocalypse that portends spoken of in the aforementioned NWNW episode and the attempted coup in Russia that seems to have fizzled out just as I am writing these words—will doubtless be heavily discussed.

And it isn't just France that has its reservations about NATO's endless expansion. For those who have forgotten about the organization's European enlargement, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is signaling that Sweden's entry into the alliance—a move that requires the unanimous approval of NATO's existing member states—will not be going ahead at this upcoming summit as planned.

So, yes, there are definite obstacles in the path for those seeking NATO's total global domination. Unfortunately, these obstacles are not roadblocks being thrown up by people in positions of power who reject NATO itself or who reject the (phoney) Cold War mentality that engendered such a military compact in the first place. Instead, these obstacles are mere speed bumps being placed by political puppets who have calculated that the interest of their elitist friends would be better served by forming different alliances or holding out for a better deal from NATO.

Having said that, given that we do stand on the brink of nuclear war in Ukraine and on a hair trigger for WWIII in Taiwan, and given that NATO has already declared OUTER SPACE ITSELF to be part of its "operational domain," any obstacle to NATO's expansion is to be welcomed at this point.

Regardless of how it turns out, the upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius should provide plenty of fireworks and perhaps even some clues as to where our world is heading in the next few years. Stay tuned . . 

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https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/06/26/australia-keeps-escalating-its-censorship-and-propaganda-campaign/

Australia Keeps Escalating Its Censorship And Propaganda Campaign

There’s a frenzied rush by the Australian political/media class to both propagandise Australians as quickly as possible into supporting preparations for war with China, and to ram through legislation that facilitates the censorship of online speech.

Australia’s Communications Minister Michelle Rowland is set to release draft legislation imposing hefty fines on social media companies who fail to adequately block “misinformation” and “disinformation” from circulation in Australia, a frightening prospect which will likely have far-reaching consequences for political speech in the nation.

Sydney Morning Herald reports:

Under the proposed laws, the authority would be able to impose a new “code” on specific companies that repeatedly fail to combat misinformation and disinformation or an industry-wide “standard” to force digital platforms to remove harmful content.

The maximum penalty for systemic breaches of a registered code would be $2.75 million or 2 per cent of global turnover — whichever is higher.

The maximum penalty for breaching an industry standard would be $6.88 million, or 5 per cent of a company’s global turnover. In the case of Facebook’s owner, Meta, for example, the maximum penalty could amount to a fine of more than $8 billion.

Those are the kinds of numbers that change a company’s censorship protocols. We’re already seeing social media censorship of content in Australia that the Australian government has ruled unacceptable; here’s what the transphobic tweets embedded in a right-wing article about Twitter censorship looks like when you try to view them on Twitter from Australia, for example:

These tweets were reportedly hidden from Australians on the platform at the behest of the Australian government. Australians could wind up seeing much more of this sort of Australia-specific censorship from social media platforms if this “misinformation” legislation goes through. Or they could just start censoring it for everyone.

The problem with laws against inaccurate information is of course that somebody needs to be making the determination what information is true and what is false, and those determinations will necessarily be informed by the biases and agendas of the person making them. I can substantiate my claim that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was provoked by NATO powers using an abundance of facts and evidence, for example, but there’s still a sizeable portion of the population which would consider such claims malignant disinformation with or without the supporting data.

When the government involves itself in the regulation of speech, it is necessarily incentivized to regulate speech in a way that benefits itself and its allies. Nobody who supports government regulation of online mis- and disinformation can articulate how such measures can be safeguarded in a surefire way against the abuses and agendas of the powerful.

Under a Totalitarian Regime, your government censors your speech if you say unauthorized things. Under a Free Democracy, your government orders corporations to censor your speech if you say unauthorized things.

At the same time, Australian media have been hammering one remarkably uniform message into public consciousness with increasing aggression lately: there is a war with China coming, Australia will be involved, and Australia must do much more to prepare for this war as quickly as possible.

Australians are remarkably vulnerable to propaganda due to the fact that ownership of our nation’s media is the most concentrated in the western world, with a powerful duopoly of Nine Entertainment and Murdoch’s News Corp controlling most of the Australian press.

Both of these media conglomerates have been involved in the latest excuse to talk about how more military spending and militarisation is needed, this time taking the form of a war machine-funded think tanker publishing a book about how we all need to prepare for war with China.

Nine Entertainment’s Sydney Morning Herald and The Age have an article out titled “Military expert warns of ‘very serious risk’ of China war within five years” by the odious Matthew Knott, who is best known for being told to drum himself out of Australian journalism by former prime minister Paul Keating for his appalling war-with-China propaganda series published earlier this year by the same papers. Readers who follow Australian media would do well to remember Knott’s name, because he has become one of the most prolific war propagandists in the western press.

The “military expert” who warns of the need to prepare for an imminent war with China is a man named Ross Babbage, who as Knott notes is “a non-resident senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.” What Knott fails to disclose to his readers is that the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments is funded by every war profiteer and war machine entity under the sun, the majority coming straight from the US Department of Defense itself.

As we’ve discussed many times previously, it is never, ever okay for the press to cite war machine-funded think tankers for expertise or analysis on matters of war and foreign policy, and it is doubly egregious for them to do so without at least disclosing their massive conflict of interest to their readers. This act of extreme journalistic malpractice has become the norm throughout the mainstream press, because it helps mass media reporters do their actual job: administering propaganda to an unsuspecting public.

The Murdoch press has also been using Babbage’s book release as an excuse to bang the drums of war, with multiple Sky News segments and articles with titles like “Military analyst Ross Babbage warns Australia of potential war with China in coming years,” “National security expert Ross Babbage warns ‘strong possibility’ of war with China in latest book,” and “‘Running out of time’: Xi may move on Taiwan in next few years.” Again, not one mention of Babbage’s conflict of interests.

All for a news story that (and I cannot stress this enough) is not a news story. A war machine-funded think tanker saying he wants more war is not a news story — it’s just a thing that happens when the war machine is allowed to pay people to be warmongers.

“War Machine-Funded Warmonger Wants More War.” That’s your headline. That’s the one and only headline this non-story could ever deserve, if any.

Propaganda and censorship are the two most important tools of imperial narrative control, and it’s very telling that Australia is ramping them both up as the nation is being transformed into a weapon for the US empire to use against China. Steps are being taken to ensure that the Australian populace will be on board with whatever agendas the empire has planned for us in the coming years, and judging from what we’re seeing right now, it isn’t going to be pretty.

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https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2023/06/23/as-i-said-a-nano-second-to-midnight/

As I said, A Nano-Second to Midnight

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova admits, as I predicted would happen, that the Kremlin’s preference for a war of minimum Russian force has resulted in the West raising the stakes and becoming drawn ever deeper into military confrontation. She says, “It is obvious that such a policy, which we see as reckless, is capable of leading to a direct armed clash between nuclear powers.”

So why did the Kremlin pursue a course that leads to “direct armed clash between nuclear powers.”

And why did Washington get ever more deeply involved in a conflict that leads to “direct armed clash between nuclear powers.”

Both governments are guilty, the Russians by refusing to use sufficient force to quickly end the conflict and Washington by starting the conflict and egging it on.

Zakharova says that Russia is fully aware of the seriousness of the situation and “systematically sends sobering signals to the Western countries. The problem, however, is that the West is simply obsessed with anti-Russian hysteria and a total hybrid war against our country. It shows no willingness to adequately perceive our position. The entire responsibility for the further degradation of the situation lies with the Western capitals. For our part we can only firmly reiterate that Russia is determined to defend its security interests, and we would not recommend the West to doubt this.”

It is extraordinary that during the Cold War when Washington and Moscow were cooperating in reducing tensions there were abundant peace demonstrations, while today with the work to restrain use of nuclear weapons in ruins, there are no peace movements. We actually have members of the House and Senate agitating for war with Russia, with China, and with Iran.

We have become disconnected from reality.