Chicago anti-NATO demonstrations

This video from the USA is called Police prepares in Chicago as thousands join anti-NATO demonstration.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

US protesters join forces to say No to Nato

Sunday 20 May 2012

by Our Foreign Desk

Thousands of protesters gathered in Chicago on Sunday for a march to the lakeside convention centre where Nato leaders are meeting.

Several hundred demonstrators wound through the US city’s streets for hours on Saturday, testing police who barricaded streets and used horseback officers.

Tense clashes between protesters and police resulted in 18 arrests.

A later march stretched for hours as protesters zigzagged through the city centre, decrying terrorism-related charges levelled against three men earlier in the day.

Organisers pledged a larger crowd as protesters from the Occupy movement joined forces with an anti-war coalition.

“We want the world to focus on Nato – it’s not important and has no mandate any more,” said Occupy Chicago spokesman Micah Philbrook.

Three activists who traveled to Chicago for the summit were accused on Saturday of manufacturing Molotov cocktails in a plot to attack Obama’s campaign headquarters and other targets.

But defence lawyers argued that the police had trumped up the charges to frighten peaceful protesters away.

They told a judge it was undercover officers who brought the firebombs to an apartment in Chicago’s South Side where the men were arrested.

As the Nato mission in Afghanistan winds down after nearly 11 years, the so-called insurgents remain undefeated, corruption runs rife and the peace process is stuck in the mire.

Such is the bleak reality of Afghanistan as Nato leaders met to map their way out of a futile, failing and ultimately unpopular war.

None of the Nato countries have the stomach to pursue the futile war much longer and the only viable option they can conceive of is to leave behind an Afghan army and police force capable of defending its puppet regime against the Taliban and its allies after the Nato combat mission ends in 2014.

That would require no less than $4.1 billion (£2.6bn) a year.

The war has already claimed the lives of at least 3,000 Nato service members and thousands of Afghans.

Support for the war has eroded in Europe and hit a new low in the US, where only 27 per cent say they back the war.

Nato is training a 352,000-member force, but the size is to shrink to about 230,000 sometime after 2015.

England: Anti-war protesters are planning more demonstrations after a hugely successful gathering in London at the weekend in solidarity with mass action in the US against Nato: here.