New Events

International

no events posted in last week

Blog Feeds

Anti-Empire

Anti-Empire

offsite link Ukraine Buys Huge Amounts of Russian Fue... Fri Jan 20, 2023 08:34 | Antonia Kotseva

offsite link Turkey Has Sent Ukraine Cluster Munition... Thu Jan 12, 2023 00:26 | Jack Detsch

offsite link New Israeli Government Promises to Talk ... Tue Jan 10, 2023 21:13 | Al Majadeen

offsite link Russia Training Iranian Pilots Ahead of ... Tue Jan 10, 2023 15:19 | The Times of Israel

offsite link Lukashenko Abolishes Copyright Protectio... Tue Jan 10, 2023 15:05 | Nikki Main

Anti-Empire >>

Human Rights in Ireland
A Blog About Human Rights

offsite link UN human rights chief calls for priority action ahead of climate summit Sat Oct 30, 2021 17:18 | Human Rights

offsite link 5 Year Anniversary Of Kem Ley?s Death Sun Jul 11, 2021 12:34 | Human Rights

offsite link Poor Living Conditions for Migrants in Southern Italy Mon Jan 18, 2021 10:14 | Human Rights

offsite link Right to Water Mon Aug 03, 2020 19:13 | Human Rights

offsite link Human Rights Fri Mar 20, 2020 16:33 | Human Rights

Human Rights in Ireland >>

Lockdown Skeptics

The Daily Sceptic

offsite link Glasgow Low Emission Zone Bans Older Cars From City Centre ? and Penalties Are HUGE Wed May 31, 2023 17:00 | Toby Young
Glasgow's Low Emission Zone comes into force tomorrow ? and it's even worse than Ulez! Older cars are banned from the city centre and malefactors are fined £60 for a first offence and it keeps on doubling thereafter.
The post Glasgow Low Emission Zone Bans Older Cars From City Centre ? and Penalties Are HUGE appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link The West?s Hypocrisy on Uganda?s Anti-gay Law Wed May 31, 2023 15:00 | Noah Carl
The West has threatened sanctions against Uganda over its new anti-gay law. There's just one problem: most of our energy suppliers and "strategic partners" in the Middle East also criminalise homosexuality.
The post The West?s Hypocrisy on Uganda?s Anti-gay Law appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Anti-Racism Police Unit Accused of Racism Wed May 31, 2023 13:00 | Toby Young
An internal team created in the wake of George Floyd's death to make the police ?anti-racist? has itself been accused of racism by black officers. You couldn't make it up.
The post Anti-Racism Police Unit Accused of Racism appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Downton Abbey, the Corruption of the Great Families and the Future of Freedom Wed May 31, 2023 11:00 | Jeffrey A. Tucker
Jeffrey Tucker laments the declining role of Britain and America's great families in protecting our liberties against the encroachments of the state. Instead, they have allied themselves with the global technocratic elite.
The post Downton Abbey, the Corruption of the Great Families and the Future of Freedom appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link How Theresa May Made Modern Britain Wed May 31, 2023 09:00 | J Sorel
Many dismiss Theresa May's three-year term as a failure. But with her reverence for rules and procedure, her predilection for compromise and her unwillingness to confront senior officials, she transformed British politics.
The post How Theresa May Made Modern Britain appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Lockdown Skeptics >>

Voltaire Network
Voltaire, international edition

offsite link The West refuses peace in Ukraine, by Thierry Meyssan Tue May 30, 2023 07:00 | en

offsite link Armenia cedes Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan Fri May 26, 2023 04:36 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter, n°41 Wed May 24, 2023 07:15 | en

offsite link Armenia ready to abandon Nagorno-Karabakh Tue May 23, 2023 09:14 | en

offsite link The Growing War Cost on Our Shoulders, by Manlio Dinucci Tue May 23, 2023 08:40 | en

Voltaire Network >>

No To War! No To NATO! -70 Years of NATO -Time to Dismantle It

category international | anti-war / imperialism | press release author Saturday April 06, 2019 17:00author by Workers Party Report this post to the editors

Statement by the Workers Party on 70 years of NATO

Today (4th Apr) is the seventieth anniversary of the foundation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). On 3rd and 4th April foreign ministers from NATO countries are meeting in Washington D.C.

This is no cause for celebration. NATO is an aggressive imperialist war machine that expresses and serves the interests and profitability of capital and the monopolies. NATO is the enemy of peace and social progress. It exists in the interests of preserving the current social system.
nato_70_no_to_nato.jpg

Press Statement by the Workers Party on 70 years of NATO

Today is the seventieth anniversary of the foundation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). On 3rd and 4th April foreign ministers from NATO countries are meeting in Washington D.C.

This is no cause for celebration. NATO is an aggressive imperialist war machine that expresses and serves the interests and profitability of capital and the monopolies. NATO is the enemy of peace and social progress. It exists in the interests of preserving the current social system.

NATO was established seventy years ago, in 1949, in order to block the growing ideological and political influence of socialism and the Soviet Union. During the existence of the socialist states in Europe, NATO was a military instrument of imperialism amounting to a permanent threat to the peoples of the world who were building socialism. It was hostile to the national liberation struggles taking place across the globe. By the early 1960s the US had 2,230 overseas military bases. The US and NATO provided support to reactionary colonial regimes. Racist South Africa, Rhodesia, south Korea, Chile and Paraguay, for example, received NATO military aid and assistance and NATO established a long record of direct and covert aggression against genuine national liberation movements and progressive forces committed to the struggle for peace, independence, freedom and equality.

NATO actively assisted the French colonialists in Indochina, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria, Dutch colonialists in Indonesia and Portuguese colonialists in Angola and Mozambique. By the 1970s NATO was extending its field of operations to the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean.

The concept of eastward expansion into the territories of the former socialist countries was formally proposed in December 1994. In 1999 Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic became full members of NATO. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Latvia and Slovenia became full members in 2004 followed by Albania and Croatia in 2009. At the NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008 consideration was given to admitting Georgia and Ukraine to membership. In 2011, NATO officially recognised four aspiring members: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Macedonia, and Montenegro. Since 1989 all new members of the EU have become members of NATO.

In 1994 NATO also launched the so-called “Partnership for Peace” (PfP), a US initiative lauded by NATO as undertaking “an important role in enlargement of NATO”. Ireland, despite its constitutional commitment to neutrality, joined PfP.

In 2002 the EU and NATO signed a formal declaration on European Security and Defence Policy. In 2003, Javier Solana, (who had been Secretary-General of NATO, including at the time of NATO’s murderous attacks on Yugoslavia, before being appointed Secretary-General of the Council of the European Union) presented a document on strategy to the European Council, diminishing the role of the United Nations, and emphasising the importance of NATO, the World Trade Organisation, the International Financial Institutions and European and non-European regional organisations in “strengthening the international order” and advocating “the need to develop a strategic culture that fosters early, rapid … and robust intervention”.

In 2017 the European Council of Ministers established Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) under Articles 42 and 46 of the Treaty on the European Union. These commit the participating Member States to theprinciple of a “single set of forces”,to increasing their military spending to reach specific monitored target levels, and to providing troops for EU combat missions.

NATO’s 2018 Summit Declaration characterised the EU as a “unique and essential partner for NATO” and described a “strategic partnership” between the two organisations while agreeing that capabilities developed under PESCO be available to NATO and be “complementary and interoperable”. These are dangerous developments for world peace.

Imperialism has promoted the barbarism of war and genocide; exploitation and social discrimination; the abuse of science and technology; threats to national sovereignty and the territorial integrity of states; the repression of progressive political development and the perpetuation of the capitalist system. Intervention in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yugoslavia and the destruction of the state of Libya are demonstrative of actions which had no legitimacy, no humanitarian objective, and were solely related to an overarching desire of the imperialist powers to create instability and to establish control, either directly or by proxy, opening the way for the monopolies. NATO has been instrumental in those events.

NATO has enlarged rapidly and significantly and designed a global remit for its operations. It constantly strives to expand its influence both in terms of the breadth of its agenda and its global reach.

Peace is a precondition for social progress. The peoples of Europe and the world must be free to determine their own course, without capitalist exploitation and wars.The Workers Party of Ireland applauds the long-standing commitment of the World Peace Council to peace and social progress. The WPI sends a message of solidarity to the anti-war movement, including the Coalition Against US Foreign Military Bases and others participating today in the mass mobilization against the NATO meeting in Washington, DC.

Today, is not a cause for celebration but a reason for resistance.

No to War!

No to NATO!

No to PESCO and a European Army!

Yes to Peace and Socialism!

G Grainger

International Secretary

Workers Party of Ireland

Related Link: http://workersparty.ie/no-to-war-no-to-nato/
© 2001-2023 Independent Media Centre Ireland. Unless otherwise stated by the author, all content is free for non-commercial reuse, reprint, and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere. Opinions are those of the contributors and are not necessarily endorsed by Independent Media Centre Ireland. Disclaimer | Privacy