NEJ TILL NATO-MEDLEMSSKAP OCH DCA-AVTAL!
Totalförsvarets Skyddscentrum i Umeå har levererat utrustning till Västernorrland, Jämtland Härjedalen och Västerbottens regioner.
Det rör sig bland annat om 3 000 så kallade C-vätskeskydd, en skyddsdräkt som är tänkt att användas mot kemiska stridsmedel, liksom skyddsmasker. Läs artikel
Se video inspelad 2017 som påminner om 9 april 1940 och den norska regeringens avvisande av det tyska ultimatumet.
USA konsoliderar nu sin militära närvaro i Irak. Man drar tillbaka några baser för att istället befästa de återstående med luftvärnsmissiler. Hittills har man lämnat tre baser.
Alltmer öppet handlar den amerikanska närvaron i Irak om att bekämpa Iran och Iranstödda miliser, medan det som ursprungligen uppgavs vara syftet – att slå tillbaka IS – blivit en sekundär fråga.
Den 7. januar rammet flere iranske missiler basen Ain al-Assad i Anbar-provinsen i Irak. Over 100 amerikanske soldater fikk hodeskader i angrepet. De norske soldatene hadde tatt dekning, men «kunne kjenne trykkbølgen fra rakettene», ifølge den norske styrkesjefen, oberstløytnant Einar Aarbogh.
Basene har tidligere ikke hatt noen form for forsvar mot denne typen angrep. Forrige uke meldte Pentagon at bakke-baserte luftforsvarssystemer skal utplasseres for å beskytte koalisjonsstyrker og amerikansk personell mot ulike typer trusler. Det er snakk om Patriot-missilforsvar, ifølge det militære nettstedet Stars and Stripes.
Disse systemer kan avskjære og uskadeliggjøre ballistiske missiler, som ble brukt i angrepet mot basen i januar. Radarsystemet kan oppdage innkommende missiler på opptil 100 kilometers avstand, mens Patriot-missilet har en rekkevidde på om lag 20 kilometer.
I følge Stars and Stripes har Patriot blitt sendt til både Erbil og Ain al-Assad. I tillegg er det ventet at ytterligere to systemer skal sendes fra Kuwait. Läs artikel
[…] Once President George W. Bush identified an ”Axis of Evil” (Iraq, Iran, and North Korea), three nations that had had nothing whatsoever to do with the 9/11 attacks, as the primary target for his administration’s ”Global War on Terrorism,” it became clear that no wholesale reevaluation of national security policy was going to occur. The Pentagon and the Intelligence Community, along with their sprawling support network of profit-minded contractors, could breathe easy. All of them would get ever more money. That went without saying. Meanwhile, the underlying premise of U.S. policy since the immediate aftermath of World War II — that projecting hard power globally would keep Americans safe — remained sacrosanct. […]
Note, however, the parallel narrative that has unfolded alongside those post-9/11 wars. Taken seriously, that narrative exposes the utter irrelevance of the national security state as currently constituted. The coronavirus pandemic will doubtless prove to be a significant learning experience. Here is one lesson that Americans cannot afford to overlook.
Presidents now routinely request and Congress routinely appropriates more than a trillion dollars annually to satisfy the national security state’s supposed needs. Even so, Americans today do not feel safe and, to a degree without precedent, they are being denied the exercise of basic everyday freedoms. Judged by this standard, the apparatus created to keep them safe and free has failed. In the face of a pandemic, nature’s version of an act of true terror, that failure, the consequences of which Americans will suffer through for months to come, should be seen as definitive. Läs artikel
Now we have the case of U.S. Navy Captain Brett E. Crozier, until recently commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, one of the 11 nuclear aircraft carriers that form the backbone of the fleet. Command of an aircraft carrier is a prize appointment, given to upwardly mobile officers. We can safely say that barring Congressional intervention on his behalf, Captain Crozier’s upward mobility has ended.
On April 2, the Navy relieved Captain Crozier of his command. Relief is a polite term for being fired. In each of the services, this happens from time to time. […]
Captain Crozier’s offense was of a different order. Soon after a show-the-flag port call at Da Nang, Vietnam, undertaken at the Pentagon’s direction, members of his crew had tested positive for COVID-19. Crozier reacted as the Trump administration, not to mention various slow-on-the-switch governors and mayors, should have: He saw the onset of the Coronavirus as posing a lethal threat to the Roosevelt’s entire crew of several thousand sailors. So he sounded the alarm, sending a letter to 19 senior military officials. The gist of that letter was a recommendation to disembark and isolate the Roosevelt’s crew, treating those infected and subjecting the entire ship to a thorough cleaning to eliminate the virus. “We are not at war,” Crozier wrote. […]
For this he was fired. Needless to say, his letter leaked. Navy officials were thereby embarrassed. While eventually taking the actions not unlike those that Crozier had recommended, they gave him the axe. According to acting Navy secretary Thomas B. Modly, himself a Naval Academy graduate, Crozier lost his job because the Coronavirus outbreak “overwhelmed his ability to act professionally.” […]
As he left his ship for the last time, in a moving display of support for their former skipper, they gathered spontaneously to give him a rousing sendoff. Crozier left with their cheers ringing in their ears. The men and women assigned to the USS Theodore Roosevelt know professionalism when they see it. Läs artikel
Fungerende marineminister trakk seg etter skipssjef-oppsigelse. Marinministern tvingades avgå på grund av avskedandet av hangarfartygets befälhavare. Läs artikel
In the Swiss Army’s biggest call-up since World War II, thousands of soldiers have been sent to support health workers in the fight against the coronavirus, but the mobilisation has not been without problems. […]
In total, some 5,000 soldiers including members of medical battalions are supporting civil personnel. They have been particularly active in Ticino, the Italian-speaking canton on the border with Italy where many of Switzerland’s 22,000 infected and 641 dead are from.
Switzerland is mobilising up to 8,000 members of the military, not only for medical service but to help seal its borders, assist with logistics and provide security support during the crisis. […]
Currently, 728 military personnel are in quarantine, Droz said, with 49 in isolation. A total of 172 soldiers have tested positive, many of them at a school for recruits in Ticino.
Only one Swiss soldier has tested positive during active coronavirus duty. Läs artikel
Regeringen har i dag beslutat om en proposition i vilken det föreslås att det i smittskyddslagen ska införas nya bemyndiganden. Syftet är att regeringen tillfälligt ska få ökade möjligheter att snabbt kunna vidta coronarelaterade åtgärder.
Den föreslagna lagen utvidgar tillfälligt regeringens möjligheter att meddela regler som krävs för att hantera coronavirusets spridning. Bemyndigandena ger regeringen tillgång till fler möjligheter att skyndsamt kunna agera om det finns behov av det.
De bemyndiganden som regeringen får ryms inom grundlagens ramar, är ett komplement till gällande regler, och gäller enbart för coronaviruset. Regeringens föreskrifter som har meddelats med stöd av bemyndigandena ska omedelbart underställas riksdagens prövning.
Regeringen ser framför sig att de åtgärder som skulle kunna bli aktuella är de som anges i författningstexten, så som tillfälliga begränsningar för folksamlingar, tillfällig nedstängning av köpcentrum och andra handelsplatser, tillfällig nedstängning av transporter och tillfälligt möjliggörande av omfördelning av läkemedel och medicinsk utrustning. Regeringen kommer alltid föra nära samtal med expertmyndigheter om vad som är effektivt för att motverka virusets spridning.
Lagen ska gälla tillfälligt under högst tre månader. Lagen ska träda i kraft den 18 april 2020 och upphöra att gälla vid utgången av juni 2020. Läs pressmeddelande
Utsatt för tårgas, delta i brandövningar och marschera 30 kilometer.
I Sydkorea måste alla ”arbetsdugliga” män genomgå två år i landets militärtjänst. Tottenhams Son Heung-Min är en av få – tillsammans med sina landslagskompisar som ledde laget till segern i Asiatiska spelen 2018 – som inte behöver gå igenom 24 månader av militära övningar.
Men Premier League-stjärnan slipper inte helt och hållet. I stället för två år väntar en kortare värnplikt – och då pandemin har stoppat ligaspelet i England har 27-åringen nu anmält sig till militärtjänsten i Sydkorea. Läs artikel
Världshälsorganisationen WHO har kallat de många falska uppgifter som sprids om coronapandemin för en ”Infodemi” – ett nytt begrepp för en företeelse med många namn som fake news. propaganda och desinformation.
Under coronakrisen har flera svenska ministrar varit ute i debatten och påpekat vikten av att hålla sig till fakta: ”Det kan bli problem om folk lyssnar på konstiga råd på Internet” sa Digitaliseringsminister Anders Ygeman i SVT:s Morgonstudion och menade att det finns onda krafter därute: ”en nation eller en grupp som vill påverka i viss riktning: Att corona beror på 5G, eller att vi äter kött – sånt ser vi ju.”
Försvarsminister Peter Hultqvist sade i Rapport ”Vi har ju grova exempel från en ryskspråkig sajt i Azerbajdan där man säger att vi har kapitulerat och att svenska forskare säger att det [corona] är ofarligt”. ”Sök information. Sprid inte rykten. Hantera din egen roll i sociala medier på ett ansvarsfullt sätt” sa Hultqvist.
Men när vi granskar ministrarna finner vi att de inte följer sina egna uppmaningar. Läs artikel
Dag Hammarskjöld Lecture given by Sture Linnér and Sverker Åström at Uppsala University on 15 October 2007
Sverker Åström, longstanding political commentator on current issues of international politics in the Swedish public domain, remained faithful to
his image. Not only did he use the opportunity to reiterate his criticism of the hegemony of the United States and its intervention in Iraq. He also took the liberty of airing a few ideas about the role of the United Nations in dealing with this challenge.
A group of 24 senior diplomats and defence officials, including four former Nato secretary generals, have urged Donald Trump to save “potentially hundreds of thousands of lives” lost to coronavirus across the Middle East by easing medical and humanitarian sanctions on Iran.
The call has the backing of the former EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini, the former director general of the World Health Organization Gro Harlem Brundtland, and senior American diplomats in the Bush, Clinton and Obama administrations.
Trump reimposed crippling sanctions on Tehran in May 2018 after withdrawing from an international deal that put curbs on Iran’s nuclear programme.
The bipartisan group is not pressing for a generalised lifting of the sanctions but instead a targeted effort to ease US rules that prevent Tehran trading in medical and humanitarian goods. The group says the move “could potentially save the lives of hundreds of thousands of ordinary Iranians and, by helping to curb the virus’s rapid spread across borders, the lives of its neighbours, Europeans, Americans and others”. […]
Signatories include the former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, former US defence secretaries William Cohen and Chuck Hagel, former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency Hans Blix, former US treasury secretary Paul O’Neill, the former US lead diplomat on the Iran deal, William Burns, and the former Nato secretary general George Robertson. Läs artikel