NATO’s oily Shell new strategy

This 11 April 2017 video says about itself:

Shell admits dealing with money launderer – BBC News

The oil company Shell has admitted that they dealt with a convicted money-launderer when negotiating access to a vast oil field off the coast of Nigeria in 2011. Shell went ahead with the deal even though they were on probation for their involvement in a separate corruption case in Nigeria. Our business editor Simon Jack has this report.

From DPA news agency:

Mon, 03 Aug 2009

Brussels – Madeleine Albright, the first woman to serve as US secretary of state, is to lead a group of 12 experts debating NATO’s future strategy, the alliance’s new secretary general said Monday.

Ms Albright became known as a prime mover towards the 1999 Yugoslavia war. And, about the mass deaths of Iraqi children, she infamously said:

[TV journalist] Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.

–60 Minutes (5/12/96)

Albright’s vice-chair in her new NATO job may be even more ominous, according to the DPA item:

Albright and her vice-chair, Jeroen van der Veer, former head of Royal Dutch Shell,

Royal Dutch Shell is, according to CNN, after the General Motors bankruptcy, the biggest corporation in the world. It has profited from George W. Bush’s Iraq war. Shell under Van der Veer has a record of greenwashing, not of really being green. As wars are also anti-environment, cynically, Van der Veer fits into his new NATO job. So, expect an “oily” and bloody new NATO strategy.

will therefore lead a debate on what challenges NATO will have to deal with over the next decade and how it should respond to them.

Their 10 expert colleagues include Britain’s former defence minister Geoff Hoon,

Mr Hoon is up to his neck in the British politicians’ expenses scandal

Turkey’s former ambassador to NATO Umit Pamir,

The Turkish ruling class, well-known for respecting the human rights of workers, Kurds, etc. … NOT! However, Turkey is, conveniently for NATO, close to the Middle East oil.

and the president of the French national library Bruno Racine, as well as a number of career diplomats.

NATO will also launch an online forum where ordinary citizens can make their suggestions, Rasmussen said.

The various suggestions will be passed on to NATO member states, with final approval of the new strategy expected at the alliance’s next summit in Lisbon in late 2010.

I hope very many ordinary citizen contributors to that NATO online forum will suggest to NATO to abolish itself. Abolish that militarist organization, which, certainly since the demise of the Soviet Union, has spectacularly outlived its usefulness (if it ever had any). Sack Rasmussen, Albright, Van der Veer of Shell, Hoon, and other fat cat bureaucrats. Save the taxpayers money which might then be used for peaceful purposes.

Humanitarian awards are surely taking on a whole new meaning. The end of April brought the obscenity of the announcement that Madeleine Albright was to be awarded the highest US honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for her role as a long-time champion of human rights all over the world: here.

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• Madeline Albright on Morality and War: ‘Drones Very Effective’ (commondreams.org)
• Madeleine Albright Says 500,000 DEAD IRAQI CHILDREN WAS “WORTH IT” Wins Medal Of Freedom [VIDEO] (youtube.com)
• Several NATO, Afghan troops killed in latest insider attack (edition.cnn.com)