(June 25, 2022)
Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the Army’s 10th Special Forces Group, which before the war had been training Ukrainian commandos at a base in the country’s west, quietly established a coalition planning cell in Germany to coordinate military assistance to Ukrainian commandos and other Ukrainian troops. The cell has now grown to 20 nations.
The sweet faces of children make an incongruous accompaniment to the genocidal lyrics of the so-called Friendship Song 2023.
“Autumn night falls over the beach of Gaza, planes are bombing, destruction, destruction,” the children sing in angelic voices. “Within a year we will annihilate everyone, and then we will return to plow our fields.”
The lyrics were translated for The Electronic Intifada by independent writer and filmmaker David Sheen and you can watch a subtitled video of the song above, or in the tweet below:
On Wednesday, the oil-rich nation of Gabon became the eighth Central or West African country to be hit by a military takeover in the last three years. The EU has not been training Gabon‘s armed forces -– although French troops have -– but it has funded and taught troops in Mali and Niger.
Gen. James Hecker, commander of US Air Forces in Africa and Europe, said it could take anywhere from 4-5 years for Ukraine to achieve “proficiency” in flying F-16s.
A group of 11 countries was due to begin training Ukrainian pilots on the aircraft this month in Denmark, with the Danish acting Defense Minister Troels Poulsen saying last month that his country hoped to see “results” from the training in early 2024.
(03.05.2023)
Die Bundeswehr will aber auch nach dem Abzug aus Mali in der Sahel-Region präsent bleiben – mit steigender Entwicklungshilfe im Rahmen einer neuen Sahel-Strategie, sowie militärisch im Nachbarstaat Niger. Mit bis zu 60 deutschen Soldatinnen und Soldaten will sie sich an einer EU-Mission zur Ausbildung der nigrischen Streitkräfte beteiligen.
(12 July 2023)
A coalition of 11 nations decided during the recent NATO summit in Lithuania to start training Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16 fighter jets in August in Denmark. A training center will also be set up in Romania for the same purpose.
NATO members Denmark and the Netherlands have been leading international efforts to train pilots as well as support staff, maintain aircraft and ultimately enable the supply of F-16s to Ukraine in its war with Russia, according to Reuters.
(11.07.2023)
The Ministry of Defence of Denmark reported that Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden and the UK agreed to start the training of Ukrainians on the F-16 fighters.
The training is expected to start at the end of the summer and will be conducted in Denmark.
(June 25, 2022)
Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the Army’s 10th Special Forces Group, which before the war had been training Ukrainian commandos at a base in the country’s west, quietly established a coalition planning cell in Germany to coordinate military assistance to Ukrainian commandos and other Ukrainian troops. The cell has now grown to 20 nations.
(June 28th 2022)
The extent of Western material support was perhaps best symbolised by Ukrainian special forces operating in the contested Donbas regions, which the Times highlighted had American flag patches on their equipment and carried new Western-supplied portable surface to air missiles and both Belgian and American assault rifles. Efforts on the ground in Ukraine were supplemented by considerable support provided to Ukrainian personnel in NATO member states themselves, an example being training for Ukrainian commandos in Germany provided by the U.S. Army’s 10th Special Forces Group. At Ramstein Air Base in Germany, U.S. Air Force and Air National Guard personnel simultaneously trained the Ukrainian Air Force.
(January 14, 2020)
Their tasks could include slowing the advancing units of an aggressor nation by destroying key transportation infrastructure such as bridges, attacking enemy forces at choke-points and potentially serving as forward observers for NATO aircraft responding with air strikes.
(October 8, 2019)
The State Partnership Program (SPP) is a National Guard Bureau initiative that links states and territories with partner countries around the world to foster mutual interests, establish long-term relations, enhance U.S. national security interests, and promote political stability. Through the SPP program, the Illinois National Guard is partnered with Poland and the Michigan National Guard is partnered with Latvia.
(July 3, 2019)
West Virginia Army National Guard (WVARNG) Special Forces Soldiers with the 2nd Battalion, 19th Special Forces Group (Airborne) recently completed the first irregular and unconventional warfare training iteration for members of the Polish Territorial Defense Forces and Latvian Zemmessardze as a part of the Ridge Runner program in West Virginia.
Ridge Runner is a WVARNG training program that provides various National Guard, active duty, and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ally nation armed forces training and experience to in irregular and asymmetrical warfare tactics and operations.
(27.05.2023)
Als eine wahrscheinliche Option gilt inzwischen die Verlegung einer kleinen Anzahl von US-Truppen, die sich bereits in Kolumbien und Panama aufhalten, in den Darién-Streifen, um die einheimischen Streitkräfte zu beraten. In der Biden-Administration soll jedoch auch diskutiert werden, die Präsenz weiter auszubauen.
Der sozialistische Politiker und frühere Außenminister des linken Präsidenten Pedro Castillo, Héctor Béjar, kritisierte das Gesetz scharf: „Es ist offensichtlich, dass die Anwesenheit dieser Soldaten der Abschreckung dient und Teil einer Politik ist, die darauf abzielt, die peruanische Bevölkerung zu terrorisieren, die für den kommenden Juli neue Proteste angekündigt hat.“ Er warnte zugleich, dass die Präsenz ausländischer Truppen Peru auch zu einer potenziellen Bedrohung für Nachbarländer mit fortschrittlichen Regierungen wie Bolivien und Kolumbien mache.
Demnach sollen sich bis zu 60 deutsche Soldaten an der EU Military Partnership Mission Niger (EUMPM Niger) beteiligen, die die nigrischen Streitkräfte ausbilden und sie beim Ausbau ihrer Strukturen unterstützen wird. Niger, dessen Präsident Mohamed Bazoum klar prowestlich orientiert ist, soll sich als Anker für den Westen in der Sahelzone erweisen, nachdem Mali eine enge Kooperation mit Russland eingegangen ist und sich auch Burkina Faso von den Mächten Europas ab- und Moskau zuzuwenden beginnt.
(May 10, 2012)
The U.S. military taught its future leaders that a „total war“ against the world‘s 1.4 billion Muslims would be necessary to protect America from Islamic terrorists, according to documents obtained by Danger Room. Among the options considered for that conflict: using the lessons of „Hiroshima“ to wipe out whole cities at once, targeting the „civilian population wherever necessary.“
The course, first reported by Danger Room last month and held at the Defense Department‘s Joint Forces Staff College, has since been canceled by the Pentagon brass. It‘s only now, however, that the details of the class have come to light. Danger Room received hundreds of pages of course material and reference documents from a source familiar with the contents of the class.
(18.April 2015)
Für die Öffentlichkeit, auch in Deutschland, ist es diesbezüglich ebenso wichtig, nicht nur einen weiteren Aspekt der Denke klandestin vorgehender Gruppen – gerade aus dem Militär und dessen (geheimen) Diensten und Verbänden – zu verstehen, sondern sich selbst: als größtenteils passive, durch Aktive und Willensstarke manipulierbare Masse von “Zivilisten”, auf die als solche herab geschaut wird.
In einem Handbuch für “unkonventionelle Kriegführung” für Sondereinheiten des U.S.-Militärs aus 2010 (hier gespiegelt) wird verdeutlicht, wie eine kleine, gut organisierte (politische oder militärische) Gruppe, Partei oder Einheit, die zunächst in der Minderheit ist, gegen eine passive Mehrheit ein ganzes System stürzen kann.
“Eine passive Bevölkerung ist manchmal alles, was ein gut unterstützter Aufstand (Anm.:”insurgency”, s. oben) braucht um die politische Macht zu erlangen. Wie der Level von Unterstützung für den Aufstand anwächst, wird die passive Mehrheit schrumpfen.”
Dieses Vergleichsbild kann auf jede beliebige Situation im Kleinen wie im Großen angewendet werden, z.B. in einer Gewerkschaft, Partei oder Organisation, egal ob auf lokaler oder landesweiter Ebene. Zumeist gibt es zwei Seiten, die entschlossen und willensstark sind und die Sache untereinander ausfechten. Der Rest verbleibt passiv und richtet sich nach dem Stärkeren aus.
Ein Leitspruch im “Kommando Spezialkräfte” (K.S.K.) der Bundeswehr soll der Öffentlichkeit hierbei nicht verborgen bleiben:
“Der Wille entscheidet”.
Auch im Hinblick auf den Putsch in der Ukraine Anfang 2014 und die ab 2011 als “Bürgerkrieg” verkaufte Invasion Syriens, wird so manches deutlicher und für Außenstehende nachvollziehbarer.
VII – Symbiose im Krieg ohne Sieg
Als Rechtfertigung für ihre Lehre im “Joint Forces Staff College” der “National Defense University” führen die Trainer der Militärkader im 2012 bekannt gewordenen Material durchweg keinerlei Fakten z.B. aus Militäraufklärung, verdeckte Informationsgewinnung durch Spionage, etc an – sondern ausschließlich Aussagen aus öffentlich zugänglichen Publikationen bzw Propaganda genau der Gruppen, die es gilt zu bekämpfen. Ein verheerender Effekt.
Der Kreis der Selbstbeweihräucherung und Selbstbestätigung, von beiden sich angeblich so entschlossen und unerbittlich bekämpfenden Seiten, wird durch folgende Doktrin geschlossen, faktisch ein Rechtfertigungs-Perpetuum mobile von (endlosem) Krieg durch Propaganda:
“Im Krieg, muss `Geheimdienstinformation` (“intelligence”) zuerst mit einer Einschätzung der Schablone der Doktrin des Feindes beginnen – nicht mit dem was wir sagen was sie sind, sondern mit dem was DIE sagen was sie sind.”
(Papier “So what can we do? Counter-Jihad Op Design Model”, Juli 2011, hier gespiegelt, Autor Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley)
So verschwinden Fakten. Eigene Mutmaßungen und wilde Behauptungen umgeht man elegant, um sich nicht selbst in den Stallgeruch des selbst geschaffenen Kriegsbegriffs “Verschwörungstheorie” zu begeben, zentralem Schild und Schwert im seit Jahrzehnten strategisch geführten Informationskrieg (Link zur C.I.A., hier ein anderes Dokument, ein auf Cryptome.org veröffentlichtes Handbuch des Army War College über “Information Warfare” aus 1999).
Durch solche, hier im Artikel beleuchteten, Schulungsmaterialien wird die Propaganda das eigenen “Gegners” die selbst anerkannte und akzeptierte Realität. Und solange es Propaganda – ob echte, falsche, “schwarze Propaganda” spielt keine Rolle mehr – kann entsprechend auch der Terrorkrieg nie enden oder gewonnen werden.
Terror (Übersetzung des lateinischen Wortes: Schrecken) und Krieg “gegen den Terror” gehen, nach der eigenen Lehre des Terrorkrieges, eine Symbiose ein.
„Von Verschwörungstheorien und Desinformationen – zum Beispiel aus Russland – können große Gefahren ausgehen“, sagte der Kommandeur des Zentrums Innere Führung in Koblenz, Markus Kurczyk, der Nachrichtenagentur dpa. Man müsse „in diese Themen rein, wir müssen hier die Soldatinnen und Soldaten sensibilisieren“, so der 58 Jahre alte Generalmajor. „Wir erleben auch bei ihnen das Risiko, in falschen Informationsblasen des Internets gefangen zu sein.“
Die dpa berichtet, wie die militärische Ausbildung afghanischer Regierungstruppen auch nach dem Ende des Einsatzes außerhalb fortgesetzt wird:
Auf massiven Widerstand stoßen Pläne der chilenischen Regierung, ein 2,7 Millionen US-Dollar teures Trainingszentrum für die Militärpolizei Carabineros auf Mapuche-Gebiet einzurichten. Dort sollen Polizisten aus dem ganzen Land theoretisch und praktisch ausgebildet werden.
U.S. military plane crashed near an airport in Alabama on Friday while on a training exercise, killing two people aboard including a member of the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force, the Japanese Defense Ministry said Saturday.
Salford MP Rebecca Long-Bailey has been sacked from the shadow cabinet after she tweeted a link to an interview with actress Maxine Peake.
The shadow education secretary was forced out of her job by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who said the interview contained an ‚antisemitic conspiracy theory‘.
(Nov. 22, 2004)
You have statistics in your book. … Talk to me about the 2 percent statistic and what that means.
Naturally speaking, there‘s 2 percent who after 60 days of continuous day-and-night combat are not driven insane. And this 2 percent keeps bubbling up. Two percent of all fighter pilots in World War II killed more than the rest put together, something along those lines. This 2 percent keeps bubbling up.
And it‘s really not a percent. It‘s not a yes or no. It‘s a continuum. It‘s the old bell-shaped curve. [At] one end of the bell-shaped curve there‘s people, at the tail of it, with great capacity for violence. [At] the other end there‘s people over here with no capacity for violence. And there‘s most of the people right in between. But you can choose to go one way or another. Israel is a nation that has shifted their bell-shaped curve. Israel is a nation who‘s chosen a warrior path.
So what‘s happening in the psychology of those 2 percent?
Well, those 2 percent are people with a capacity for aggression. And then they divide into two parts. Those who have the capacity for aggression and an absence of empathy, we call those psychopaths, sociopaths, aggressive sociopaths. Those who have a capacity for aggression and empathy for their fellow citizens, we call those warriors, heroes, cops, soldiers, Marines, spec ops.
(February 2017)
Last summer, after a black man named Philando Castile was shot and killed during a traffic stop outside Minneapolis, it was revealed that two years earlier the officer, Jeronimo Yanez, had attended “The Bulletproof Warrior,” a two-day training taught by Grossman and his colleague Jim Glennon.
(December 2, 2011)
Back in New York, the NYPD set up a secret “Demographics Unit” designed to spy on and monitor Muslim communities around the city. The unit was developed with input and intensive involvement by the CIA, which still refuses to name the former Middle East station chief it has posted in the senior ranks of the NYPD’s intelligence division. Since 2002, the NYPD has dispatched undercover agents known as “rakers” and “mosque crawlers” into Pakistani-American bookstores and restaurants to gauge community anger over US drone strikes inside Pakistan, and into Palestinian hookah bars and mosques to search out signs of terror recruitment and clandestine funding. “If a raker noticed a customer looking at radical literature, he might chat up the store owner and see what he could learn,” the Associated Press reported. “The bookstore, or even the customer, might get further scrutiny.”
The Israeli imprimatur on the NYPD’s Demographics Unit is unmistakable. As a former police official told the Associated Press, the Demographics Unit has attempted to “map the city’s human terrain” through a program “modeled in part on how Israeli authorities operate in the West Bank.”
(September 15 2017)
In the aftermath of 9/11, Israel seized on its decades-long experience as an occupying force to brand itself as a world leader in counterterrorism. U.S. law enforcement agencies took the Jewish state up on its expertise by participating in exchange programs sponsored by an array of pro-Israel groups, like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and the Anti-Defamation League. Over the past decade and a half, scores of top federal, state, and local police officers from dozens of departments from across the U.S. have gone to Israel to learn about its terrorism-focused policing.
Yet Israel’s policing prowess is marred by its primary purpose: occupation.
(August 25, 2016)
Baltimore law enforcement officials, along with hundreds of others from Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Georgia, Washington state as well as the DC Capitol police have all traveled to Israel for training. Thousands of others have received training from Israeli officials here in the U.S.
Many of these trips are taxpayer funded while others are privately funded. Since 2002, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs have paid for police chiefs, assistant chiefs and captains to train in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).
(03.06.2020)
Neta Golan, co-founder of International Solidarity Movement (ISM), said: “When I saw the picture of killer cop Derek Chauvin murdering George Floyd by leaning in on his neck with his knee as he cried for help and other cops watched, I remembered noticing when many Israeli soldiers began using this technique of leaning in on our chest and necks when we were protesting in the West Bank sometime in 2006.
“They started twisting and breaking fingers in a particular way around the same time. It was clear they had undergone training for this. They continue to use these tactics—two of my friends have had their necks broken but luckily survived—and it is clear that they [Israel] share these methods when they train police forces abroad in ‘crowd control’ in the U.S. and other countries including Sudan and Brazil.”
(June 26, 2012)
About 100 Minnesota law enforcement officers attended a counter-terrorism training conference in Minneapolis Monday.
The conference was put on by the Israeli consulate in Chicago, the FBI and Minnetonka police.
Deputy Consul Shahar Arieli said Israeli law enforcement officers shared techniques to prevent terrorist acts, such as suicide bombings.
Long-Bailey had tweeted an Independent article written about British actress and anti-capitalist activist Maxine Peake writing „Maxine Peake is an absolute diamond.“
In the story, Peake alleges that „the tactics used by the police in America, kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, that was learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services.”
Speaking to the top-selling Bild newspaper, Wong said: “It makes me furious that the German Bundeswehr is apparently helping to train Chinese soldiers. Given the riots in Hong Kong, the defence ministry should have ended this programme long ago.”
It includes terrifying pronouncements by unnamed “intelligence officials,” unprovable, overblown, or outright fake statistical assertions about the threat (like the oft-cited claim that fake election news had more engagement than real news), open conflation of legitimate domestic dissent with foreign attack, and routine dismissal of experts downplaying the problem (here are two significant studies suggesting the “fake news” phenomenon is overstated).
Of course, the final, omnipresent ingredient in most major propaganda campaigns is the authoritarian solution. Here, it’s unelected, unsupervised algorithmic control over media. We’ve never had a true news regulator in this country, yet the public is being conditioned now to accept one, without thinking of the consequences.
1.7.2019 – During a routine training mission, an A-10C Thunderbolt II assigned to the 23d Fighter Group suffered a bird strike which caused an inadvertent release of three BDU-33s, a small non-explosive training munition, today at approximately 1:15 p.m.
Die Mission der Folterer sei es, die Auszubildenden an ihre Grenze zu bringen, erklärt ein Soldat. Ein Hauptmann sei bereits bei einem solchen Training gestorben, prangerte Petro bei der Parlamentsdebatte an. Im Parlament wurde zum Thema illegale Hinrichtungen diskutiert, als der ehemalige Präsidentschaftskandidat die Videos zeigte. Bisher seien keine Ermittlungen aufgenommen worden.
The Pentagon quietly ended a program to train Afghan Air Force pilots in the United States after nearly half of the course attendees disappeared, according to a Defense Department watchdog report released this week.
More than 40 percent of the Afghan pilots sent to train on the AC-208 Combat Caravan lightweight reconnaissance aircraft went absent without leave while in the United States, according to a quarterly report of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR. The report, which was released Tuesday, did not detail precisely how many Afghan pilots deserted the training program, which has been conducted at the Fort Worth Meacham Airport in Texas.
With large segments of the American public so readily and regularly enticed by the bipartisan glorification of war and all things military, the world’s largest association of psychologists could play an important moderating and cautionary role. Unfortunately, the APA instead often acts like the “impaired professional” who is unable (or unwilling) to intervene because they too suffer from the same addiction. Here are several examples.
Vom 21. bis 24. Januar fand im mittelfränkischen Fürth ein besonderes Einsatztraining der bayerischen Polizei statt. Offensichtlich ging es darum, die Polizeikräfte auf kommende soziale Auseinandersetzungen vorzubereiten.
(7.3.2017) As part of a study, we interviewed 15 current and former members of the U.S. military who were between 24 and 35 years old to understand the role violent first-person shooter games played in their recruitment and training.
The majority of interviewees told us it was important to stay in the mindset of a soldier even when not on duty. To them, first-person shooters were the perfect vehicle for doing this.
(10.3.2003) With “Full Spectrum Warrior,” currently in testing at Fort Benning, Ga., squad leaders learn how to command nine soldiers in complex, confusing urban warfare scenarios. The game isn’t not about sprinting, “Rambo”-like, through alleys with guns blazing.
“It’s not really about shooting at things,” Macedonia said. “Learning how to shoot your weapon is easy. The challenging thing is leading.”
The game the Institute for Creative Technologies has been working on with the CIA for about a year — at a cost of several million dollars — will let agency analysts assume the role of terror cell leaders, cell members and operatives.
“Our analysts would be accustomed to looking at the world from the perspective of the terrorists we are chasing, and learn to expect the unexpected,” CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said.
(17.7.2018) Privacy International has today released a report that looks at how powerful governments are financing, training and equipping countries — including authoritarian regimes — with surveillance capabilities. The report warns that rather than increasing security, this is entrenching authoritarianism.
Countries with powerful security agencies are spending literally billions to equip, finance, and train security and surveillance agencies around the world — including authoritarian regimes. This is resulting in entrenched authoritarianism, further facilitation of abuse against people, and diversion of resources from long-term development programmes.
The report, titled ‘Teach ’em to Phish: State Sponsors of Surveillance’ is available to download here.