Views: 1052

General James Mattis, the US Secretary of Defence, visited Macedonia on September 17 and declared that “We do not want to see Russia doing [in Macedonia] what they have tried to do in so many other countries. No doubt that they have transferred money and they are also conducting broader influence campaigns.”
His observations were made in the run-up to the referendum to be held on September 30 in which Macedonians will vote on a deal reached in June with Greece that would change the country’s name to the Republic of Northern Macedonia. The referendum question is “Do you support EU and NATO membership by accepting the agreement between Macedonia and Greece?” and the outcome will be interesting, but Mattis failed to see the supreme irony in the fact that his visit to Macedonia was specifically to conduct a “broader influence campaign” by standing next to its prime minister Zoran Zaev as he announced that “There is no alternative for the Republic of Macedonia than integration into NATO and EU.”

Influence, anyone?
Although Macedonia (population two million) is not a member of NATO it has 244 soldiers in Afghanistan as part of the futile US-NATO-“coalition” mission and Washington wants the military bonds to be closer. It isn’t exactly a great military power, with an army of about 8,000, and it isn’t close to the border with Russia, along which there is an increasingly confrontational US-NATO military presence, but the Pentagon and its sub-office in Brussels always welcome more members to their alliance. And who better than General Mattis to exercise “broader influence” on Macedonia to encourage it to join the team confronting Russia.
While in Macedonia Mattis declared the vote to be the “most important” in Macedonia’s history, and assured everyone that a pro-NATO result would result in “economic prosperity and increased foreign investment.” It would “unlock the Nato accession process and allow you . . . to determine your own future in institutions made up of like-minded countries.”
Predictably, Mattis was in line with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who also visited Macedonia in September and announced that “We are ready to welcome your country as NATO’s 30th member,” telling its people that the referendum “is a once in a lifetime opportunity to join the international community . . .” Was he trying to influence anyone?
General Mattis is rabidly anti-Russian and hostile to a great many other countries, people and organisations. It is now almost forgotten that he is the man who replied to a question in 2005 about the US war in Afghanistan by uttering the psychotic pronouncement that “Actually it’s quite fun to fight them, you know. It’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right up there with you. I like brawling.” He is obviously a person who can bring balance and sympathetic understanding to international affairs.
As recorded in the New Yorker, “on January 22nd, two days after President Trump was inaugurated, he received a memo from his new Secretary of Defence, James Mattis, recommending that the United States launch a military strike in Yemen.”
Yemen was then and still is in a state of civil war. The country has nothing to do with the United States, but in 2017 the intelligence community in the US said they had discovered that a group of alleged anti-American terrorists were in a small village called al-Ghayil and it was decided by the Best and the Brightest in Washington to attack the place.
The operation Mattis wanted the president to authorise was intended to kill people, of course, and specifically a supposed leader of Al Qaeda; so Mattis and the National Security Adviser, General Michael Flynn, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joe Dunford had dinner with President Trump, who then decided to go ahead with what turned out to be a totally disastrous military operation.
It was a tragic farce. As reported in the Washington Post, instead of a clean quick special forces’ attack on the village, “a massive firefight ensued, claiming the life of an American sailor and at least one Yemeni child, and serving as an early lesson for President Trump’s national security team about the perils of overseas ground operations.”
“An elite Special Operations air regiment was then sent in to pull the team and its casualties out of the fray, banking into the night under heavy fire to link up with a Marine quick-reaction force that had taken off in MV-22 Ospreys from the US ship Makin Island floating offshore.” In the course of the operation, Chief Petty Officer Ryan Owens, a navy commando, was killed, and one of the $75 million Ospreys was destroyed.
In other words, the whole thing was an utter shambles.
But the spin doctors in Washington couldn’t admit that their operation had failed, and Trump announced that Mattis had told him it had been a “highly successful raid that generated large amounts of vital intelligence that will lead to many more victories in the future against our enemies.” The brawl had been a ball.
Thank you, General Mattis, the man who declared “It’s fun to shoot some people” and alleges that Russia carries out “broader influence campaigns” and then does his best to influence Macedonia by declaring to its citizens that “You would join an alliance in which countries large and small work together to uphold shared principles of national sovereignty, territorial integrity, and freedom from coercion, while others seek to diminish these very values, sowing discord from Syria to the Ukraine.” This is from the defence secretary of a nation that has sowed catastrophic discord in Afghanistan, then in Iraq and through the whole Middle East, to Libya which the Pentagon and NATO bombed and blitzed to a state of utter chaos in what General Mattis might call a “broader influence campaign.”
Macedonia will probably become a member of the US-NATO anti-Russia military alliance, along with Ukraine, and the confrontation with Russia will continue to escalate in the new US-NATO Cold War. And who knows what else might be planned by those attending a future military dinner with Trump. After all, “It’s fun to shoot some people.”

Originally published on 2018-09-14
About the author: Brian Cloughley is British and Australian armies’ veteran, former deputy head of the UN military mission in Kashmir and Australian defense attaché in Pakistan
Source: Strategic Culture Foundation
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection & Pinterest.
Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!
Donate to Support Us
We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.

READ MORE!
In April-May of 1944, the Crimean Tatar battalions took part in battles against the Red Army in the Crimea. The units that were evacuated from the Crimea in June 1944, were compiled into the Tatar mountain-Jaeger three-battalion SS Regiment. A month later, the group became the first Tatar-mountain-Jaeger SS Brigade (2,500 troops) under the command of SS Standartenführer Fortenbah. On 31 December 1944, the unit was disbanded to become a part of the East Turkic branch of SS as the Crimea battle group: two infantry battalions and one hundred horses.German Field Marshal Erich von Manstein testified: "Most of the Crimean ...
READ MORE
Historically and intuitively, Russia has fought for the survival of humanity. Of course, things are not always pronounced or defined in such terms. However, already on several occasions, this enormous country has stood up against the most mighty and evil forces that have threatened the very survival of our Planet.During the Second World War, the Soviet people, mainly Russians, sacrificed at least 25 million men, women and children, in the end defeating Nazism. No other country in modern history has undergone more.Right after that victory, Russia, alongside China and later Cuba, embarked on the most awesome and noble project of ...
READ MORE
The new coronavirus and its accompanying disease Covid-19 has stopped the globe in its tracks. Governments, markets and news cycles have become dominated by the pandemic. Europe is now the epicenter for the disease, with reportedly more fatal cases of infection than China where the virus first erupted in December.Several European Union countries have declared themselves states of emergencies, including Belgium, France, Portugal, Spain and Italy. The 27-member bloc has sealed off external borders. Some states, such as Poland, have begun closing borders with other EU members. Brussels, the administrative center of the EU, is alarmed because the much-vaunted single ...
READ MORE
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]
READ MORE
A Unified Europe: Born In the USAWhile Brexit versus the continuation of the European Union is a hot news topic, few know the secret who and why of the EU’s creation.The lead financial writer at the Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, wrote in 2000:Declassified American government documents show that the US intelligence community ran a campaign in the Fifties and Sixties to build momentum for a united Europe.***The head of the Ford Foundation, ex-OSS officer Paul Hoffman, doubled as head of ACUE [below, we’ll explain who these players are] in the late Fifties. The State Department also played a role. A memo ...
READ MORE
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]SaveSave
READ MORE
TerminologyA meaning of the term Great Power(s) (GP) in global politics from the beginning of the 16th century onward refers to the most power and therefore top influential states within the system of the international relations (IR). In other words, the GP are those and only those states who are modelling global politics like Portugal, Spain, Sweden, France, the United Kingdom, united Germany, the USA, the USSR, Russia or China. During the time of the Cold War (1949−1989) there were superpowers[1] as the American and the Soviet administrations refered to their own countries and even a hyperpower state – the ...
READ MORE
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics, and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]
READ MORE
Jomo Kenyatta (c. 1891 – 22 August 1978) was a Kenyan politician and the first President of Kenya. Kenyatta was the leader of Kenya from independence in 1963 to his death in 1978, serving first as Prime Minister (1963–64) and then as President (1964–78). He is considered the founding father of the Kenyan nation. Kenyatta was a well-educated intellectual who authored several books, and is remembered as a Pan-Africanist. He is also the father of Kenya's fourth and current President, Uhuru Kenyatta (Source: Wikipedia)Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate ...
READ MORE
Canada has a reputation for being a relatively progressive state with universal, single-payer health care, various other social benefits, and strict gun laws, similar to many European countries but quite unlike the United States. It has managed to stay out of some American wars, for example, Vietnam and Iraq, portrayed itself as a neutral “peace keeper”, pursuing a so-called policy of “multilateralism” and attempting from time to time to keep a little independent distance from the United States.Behind this veneer of respectability lies a not so attractive reality of elite inattention to the defence of Canadian independence from the United ...
READ MORE
Israel’s Maariv newspaper has revealed that the government of the Zionist state is planning to drop a political bombshell in the coming weeks by presenting a bill in the Knesset (parliament) calling for the annexation of land occupied since 1967. It is likely to have the support of the majority of Knesset members. The newspaper added that the right wing has chosen this time for the move ahead of the US presidential election; America, it is believed, will be too preoccupied to care about what is happening in the occupied Palestinian territories.Preliminary talks about a first stage have been held, ...
READ MORE
If anyone needed another reminder that Black lives simply don’t matter in the United States of America, the police in Minneapolis have clearly demonstrated that fact.It will be a long time before I will forget the picture of Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck. Even that statement is shocking. I still have not forgotten a very similar picture from 2014: a Black man on the ground being choked by a white policeman. In that earlier time, the victim was Eric Garner. His murderer, Daniel Pantaleo, faced no charges. Chauvin has been charged with third degree murder three days after ...
READ MORE
On August 9 [2020], presidential elections were held in Belarus with five candidates bidding to be head of state. According to the Central Election Commission, the incumbent president, Alexander Lukashenko, won in the first round with over 80% of the votes. Mass protests began in Belarus right after the announcement of the preliminary election results. People went to the streets, expressing their dissatisfaction with the results of the elections that they believe were unfair. Mass protests turned into riots and there were clashes between rioters and the police. Many people were detained and injured, and two protestors died.Representatives of the ...
READ MORE
In Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (Metropolitan Books. New York. 2013), Turse writes that the US military’s official position, and the popular understanding in the US, is that leadership “has never condoned wanton killing or disregard for human life.” (2) On the rare occasions when atrocities are brought to light, they are blamed on low-level individuals and are said to be aberrations having nothing to do with official policy. The My Lai massacre, for example, was blamed on Lieutenant William Calley, who is said to have gone “crazy” (4,5) – although he and his unit ...
READ MORE
On December 7, 1941 the U.S. naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was attacked by Japanese forces. President Roosevelt, in his well known Infamy speech delivered on December 8, claimed the attack was “unprovoked” and, on this basis, asked for and received a declaration of war from the U.S. Congress. But the evidence suggests the attack was not unprovoked. On the contrary, it was carefully and systematically provoked in order to manipulate the U.S. population into joining WWII. This provocation game, spectacularly successful in 1941, is currently being played with North Korea. The stakes are high.Many good people are reluctant to look critically ...
READ MORE
With Monday’s procedural vote in the U.S. Senate to allow Montenegro into NATO, the Washington elite proved once more that heightening tensions with Russia might not just be inevitable, but actually desirable. With the exception of Rand Paul (R-KY) and Mike Lee (R-UT), the entire 100-strong body of the Senate rallied behind the motion that would see the tiny Adriatic state admitted into the Atlantic alliance over the objections of many Montenegrins . The vote set off a 30-hour countdown, during which Senators will debate before putting the issue to a final vote.If you needed more proof that US foreign ...
READ MORE
Millions of white people glorify mass murderers because their sense of identity and place in society is deeply tied to white supremacy.“It is important to name and shame the mass murderers.”The perpetrators of crimes against humanity are often elevated to positions of respect and admiration. It all depends on who did the killing, and who was killed. Now the murderers are being called to account. The new movement in the United States against police and other state violence has inspired this welcome change taking place all over the world. The criminals are being exposed decades and even centuries after their atrocities ...
READ MORE
It only took a few months under Donald Trump’s presidency for the US to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, impose new sanctions on Russia, reverse the normalisation of diplomatic relations with Cuba, announce its intention to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, warn Pakistan, threaten Venezuela with military intervention, and declare a readiness to strike North Korea with ‘fire and fury … the likes of which this world has never seen before.’ The Philippines, Saudi Arabia and Israel are the only countries on better terms with the US since Trump’s arrival in the White House on 20 January.Trump is ...
READ MORE
NATO - The North Atlantic Treaty - was formed by the US and European countries after WW2 as a defensive alliance with the simple goal of deterring a Soviet Russian attack or invasion of western democracies. However, ever since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO has been used in several aggressive and offensive military campaigns against countries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. NATO bombed a European country, Serbia (as part of then Yugoslavia), invaded an Asian country, Afghanistan, and attacked and destroyed a Middle Eastern country Libya.In 1995 NATO launched its first offensive bombing campaign ...
READ MORE
Andrew Bacevich has written a series of books on the topic of U.S. imperialism and U.S. military power. His latest work, America’s War for the Greater Middle East [the GME War] is the latest in this series and as with the previous works is clearly written and logically presented. It covers more narrowly than the previous works the military aspects of U.S. military endeavours in the Middle East (greater – as in including East Africa and Afghanistan et al). Generally he succeeds well and this work is a good ‘primer’ for anyone interested in a quick historical overview of U.S. ...
READ MORE
Jamala’s 1944: Song for Nazi Tatars
Why the West can Never Defeat or “Forgive” Russia
Covid-19 Shatters the Facade of the European Union
Brexit: A Challenge to America’s Domination of Europe
How to Keep People Passive
The Great Powers and Global Politics
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin Honors in Kremlin Afghan Mujahedin Fighters
Jomo Kenyatta on Africa and Europe
Why Canada Defends EuroUkrainian Fascism?
Reviving the Greater Israel Scheme
Racism in the United States
Poland and Lithuania are Escalating Events in Belarus