Ever since its inception there have been those who have warned that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, far from offering a simple “collective security” pact to ensure the integrity of its member nations’ borders, would in fact be used as an offensive tool of imperial adventurism and conquest. Since the NATO-led Kosovo bombing campaign of 1999 at the very least, those fears have appeared more and more justified.

Since that time, NATO has continued to take a lead role in more and more overtly offensive campaigns of aggression in theatre after theatre. By now it is commonly understood to be an extension of the Pentagon itself, a convenient international military instrument for Washington to wield whenever the pretense of an international consensus cannot be achieved at the UN Security Council.

NATO’s role in the 21st century has so far been defined by its decade-long invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. The decision to invade was made as early as the day after 9/11, 2001, when a meeting of the North Atlantic Council determined that “if it is determined that this attack was directed from abroad” the Council would take the unprecedented step of invoking Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, the so-called collective defense clause which stipulates that an armed attack on any of its member nations would be treated as an attack on all of the nations. The proof that this was an “attack directed from abroad” as required by the Council was supposedly provided by Frank Taylor, a US State Department official who gave a secret presentation that “conclusively” proved that Al-Qaida was behind the attacks.

To this day, the Taylor report upon which the Council made its decision to invoke Article 5 and begin the bombing, invasion and occupation of Afghanistan for the past 10 years has never been made public. It is still considered to be classified information.

Reports continue to emerge on a weekly basis of atrocities committed against civilians in the NATO-led Afghanistan occupation, further inflaming the ire of Afghanis, Pakistanis, and many others throughout the region, but these atrocities, to the extent that they are ever dealt with in the Western media are inevitably dismissed as examples of lone wolves and bad apples and quickly discarded from the 24/7 news cycle.

NATO forces have also been stationed in Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan over the past decade and participated in Operations as far afield as Macedonia, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Gulf of Aden. NATO also took a lead role in last year’s bombardment of civilians in Libya, which so far has resulted in the decimation of that country’s infrastructure and led to a system of tribal conflict and partisan strife that leaves the country in a precarious, destabilized position. In all, millions of troops have served under NATO command in countries outside of NATO member’s territory.

Recently, Admiral James Stavridis the commander of the US Military’s European Command and NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, lauded NATO and EUCOM as critical entities in the furthering of the Pentagon’s goals and objectives:

“This is an alliance of enormous resources,” he said of NATO during an interview with the American Forces Press Service earlier this month, “and it represents those that stand with us today in Afghanistan, in the Balkans, in the Libya operation and in [the Horn of Africa]. So these strategic, enduring partnerships in Europe are going to underpin the strategic focus on the challenges in Asia and in the Middle East.”

Earlier this week I talked to Rick Rozoff, director of Stop NATO, about Stavridis’ comments and what they reveal about the true nature of NATO.

Now, the citizens of Chicago, Illinois are bracing for the next NATO Summit, a periodic gathering of heads of state of the member countries to discuss policy and set the NATO agenda for the coming years. Perhaps fittingly, Chicago is increasingly being turned into a war zone in preparation for the meeting.

In February, it was first revealed that preparations for the summit would include the use of snipers and aerial surveillance, and that Mayor Rahm Emanuel had been given special powers in the lead-up to the summit, including the ability to contract directly for goods or services without the approval of City Council. In April, Chicago’s “Office of Emergency Management and Communication” announced military training exercises including blackhawk helicopter drills as part of “routine training” in the city’s Loop business district. Last month it emerged that the Milwaukee Red Cross was being encouraged to prep for evacuations that might take place as the result of violence or unrest at the summit, and it has since emerged that other locations including Benedictine University have been told to prepare evacuation shelter for as many as 1,000 evacuees. Unconstitutional clampdowns on free speech are also underway, with a rally of the National Nurses United Group that was scheduled to take place in Daley Plaza days before the summit being shut down by the city, which is trying to redirect the march to Grant Park.

Recently I talked to Julio Rausseo, a local Chicago activist, about the preparations for the summit and the protests that are expected to take place.

The NATO Summit is due to be held on May 20th and 21st. Doubtless on the agenda will be the envisioned drawdown of NATO forces in Afghanistan that is expected to take place in the next two years, as well as opportunities to expand NATO’s influence in other parts of the globe with the implicit aim of countering the growing influence of Beijing and Moscow in the key areas of Central Asia and the Caucasus. The Brits and Americans are also expected to lecture junior partners of the alliance on the necessity of sharing the burden of future assaults.

What will almost certainly not be discussed, however, is the fundamental question of NATO itself. Why this alliance exists decades after the Soviet menace that was the ostensible reason for its creation has been consigned to the dustbin of history, and why it has been more active in recent years than in the entire history of its existence, in far flung parts of the globe and on missions that admittedly have nothing whatsoever to do with the protection of its member states.

Instead, it falls yet again to the public to force these issues onto the table. In addition to the usual hurdle of gaining the attention of the world through a controlled establishment media that would not dare to raise these questions about such an institution, however, would-be protesters now face all the weaponry and pain-compliance technology of a 21st century police state.

As always, those who are interested in finding out more about the Summit and its true agenda are encouraged to seek out coverage in the alternative online media and to completely eschew the talking heads of the corporate news who will dutifully report NATO press releases as their takeaway from the meeting.

Story #1: France, Germany on Collision Course Over Austerity Treaty
http://ur1.ca/97ke5
Meanwhile, Greek Left Leader Renounces Bailout Deal
http://ur1.ca/97ke9
Related: Goldman Secret Greece Loan Shows Two Sinners as Client Unravels
http://ur1.ca/97kea
Background: Coalition of the Radical Left
http://ur1.ca/97keg

Story #2: Activists Mock Syria Elections In Online Videos
http://ur1.ca/97kek
Video of Syrian rebel buried alive and ‘missile’ strike prompt fresh calls for UN intervention
http://ur1.ca/97kfb
Related: Egypt Low Court Orders Suspension of Elections
http://ur1.ca/97kfc
Algerians Skeptical Election Will Bring Change
http://ur1.ca/97kfe
Putin Again Takes Reins of a Changed, Agitated Russia
http://ur1.ca/97kfg

Story #3: Inmate Wins 40% of Vote Against Obama In West Virginia Primary
http://ur1.ca/97kfh
Felon Beats Obama In Ten West Virginia Counties
http://ur1.ca/97kfk
Related: Romney Closing In On Nomination
http://ur1.ca/97kfl

Bonus: ‘Food World Order’ Episodes from Corbett Report Radio
http://ur1.ca/8khqu

Visit http://NewWorldNextWeek.com to get previous episodes in various formats to download, burn and share. And as always, stay up-to-date by
subscribing to the feeds from Corbett Report http://ur1.ca/39obd and Media Monarchy http://ur1.ca/kuec Thank you.

Previous Episode: Chicago Summit, Virginia Bilderberg, London Olympics
http://ur1.ca/97kfn

Welcome to http://NewWorldNextWeek.com — the video series from Corbett Report and Media Monarchy that covers some of the most important
developments in open source intelligence news. This week:

Story #1: France, Germany on Collision Course Over Austerity Treaty
http://ur1.ca/97ke5
Meanwhile, Greek Left Leader Renounces Bailout Deal
http://ur1.ca/97ke9
Related: Goldman Secret Greece Loan Shows Two Sinners as Client Unravels
http://ur1.ca/97kea
Background: Coalition of the Radical Left
http://ur1.ca/97keg

Story #2: Activists Mock Syria Elections In Online Videos
http://ur1.ca/97kek
Video of Syrian rebel buried alive and ‘missile’ strike prompt fresh calls for UN intervention
http://ur1.ca/97kfb
Related: Egypt Low Court Orders Suspension of Elections
http://ur1.ca/97kfc
Algerians Skeptical Election Will Bring Change
http://ur1.ca/97kfe
Putin Again Takes Reins of a Changed, Agitated Russia
http://ur1.ca/97kfg

Story #3: Inmate Wins 40% of Vote Against Obama In West Virginia Primary
http://ur1.ca/97kfh
Felon Beats Obama In Ten West Virginia Counties
http://ur1.ca/97kfk
Related: Romney Closing In On Nomination
http://ur1.ca/97kfl

Bonus: ‘Food World Order’ Episodes from Corbett Report Radio
http://ur1.ca/8khqu

Visit http://NewWorldNextWeek.com to get previous episodes in various formats to download, burn and share. And as always, stay up-to-date by
subscribing to the feeds from Corbett Report http://ur1.ca/39obd and Media Monarchy http://ur1.ca/kuec Thank you.

Previous Episode: Chicago Summit, Virginia Bilderberg, London Olympics
http://ur1.ca/97kfn

By the time the ACLU immortalized FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds as the “most gagged person in the history of the United States of America” for the unprecedented lengths that the government went to to suppress her story, she had already been fighting for years to bring her remarkable tale to the attention of the government’s own supervisory and investigative bodies.

When she brought the story of the malfeasance, gross misconduct, and foreign infiltration she had witnessed in the FBI’s Washington Field Office translation department to the attention of her FBI supervisors, she was harassed and eventually hounded out of her position.

When she brought her story to the Justice Department’s Inspector General, they delayed their report on the criminal conduct of the FBI for over two years. When it was finally finished, the entire report was classified.

When she tried to pursue her case via the courts, Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked the State Secrets Privilege and filed a motion to dismiss the case because “the litigation creates substantial risks of disclosing classified and sensitive national security information that could cause serious damage to our country’s security.”

When she turned to Senators Grassley and Leahy to help draw attention to her case, the DOJ retroactively classified anything that any member of Congress or the House had said or written on the case, including material that was on their websites, or statements they had made and had been published by media organizations like CBS or The Washington Post.

Despite these remarkable efforts to suppress the story, or perhaps because of them, the narrative of what Sibel Edmonds had to say finally began to emerge, less due to the occasional efforts of mainstream media organizations or supposed whistleblower organizations than through the diligent, painstaking efforts of independent journalists and documentary filmmakers who were willing to persist despite overwhelming odds.

After a decade of bringing this remarkable story out, however, Sibel Edmonds finally came to the decision to publish the details of her story in a memoir. Joining independent radio host Peter B. Collins on air earlier this month, Edmonds recounted the narrative of how and why she came to this decision.

Given the shocking details of Edmonds’ story and the viciousness with which the DOJ has attempted to keep that story under wraps, it should come as no surprise that the publication of the book has been doggedly (and illegally) opposed by the FBI.

Edmonds submitted her manuscript for FBI pre-publication clearance in accordance with established procedures on April 26, 2011. According to the applicable regulations, the FBI has 30 days to review the submission. Over one year later, the FBI still has yet to comply with the law and clear the book.

On top of this, it was discovered that the employee contract that the FBI required its employees to sign at the time of Edmonds’ hiring is in fact illegal and unconstitutional. Rather than allowing the FBI to censor books written by its employees based on the classification of the relevant material, the FBI instead required employees, including Edmonds, to allow the Bureau to censor them on issues of policy.

Stephen M. Kohm, Edmonds’ lawyer and the Executive Director of the National Whistleblowers Center, explained the case in a television appearance last month.

In the end, Sibel Edmonds made the decision to self publish her memoir, Classified Woman: The Sibel Edmonds Story, for the precise same reasons that she started the Boiling Frogs Post website: because the technology and the means to do so are in the grasp of the ordinary citizen, perhaps for the first time in human history, and because all of her experience has proven that waiting for someone else to come along and tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is a futile endeavor.

In this brief window of opportunity, whistleblowers like Edmonds can circumvent the entire government/media/NGO conglomerate that has dominated the entire institutional infrastructure of “approved whistleblowing” by doing an end run around these institutions and self-publishing. In many ways, books like these can be seen as a proof of concept: if it can be done and the information can be disseminated, whistleblowers, mavericks and truthtellers of all types will perhaps have the best shot at a level playing field in the modern media environment that they are ever likely to get. If it fails, then the window of opportunity will close and stories that truly challenge the mainstream will be safely swept under the rug, effectively memory holing the citizenry’s last hope of combating the 21st century Orwellian Big Brother state.

Surely there have been times like this before, moments during which truly incendiary information was made public. But never before has the public been directly responsible for the success or failure of this form of whistleblowing. In the past, the public would have had to passively accept what little information they could from the scraps that came out of the opaque processes of court proceedings or governmental oversight bodies, been thankful for the occasionally successful efforts of the officially sanctioned Beltway-insider “watchdog” NGOs, or dutifully paid the big-name publishers for the pleasure of reading the stories of those “whistleblowers” who were able to make it through the editorial vetting process. Even in the WikiLeaks model, what information comes to the public is completely at the whim of those in charge of the process, including the time and manner in which the information is released, and how it is released (usually in conjunction with the very same mainstream media entities like The New York Times that have so long been so visibly in bed with the political institutions they laughably claim to be holding accountable).

But now for the first time, individual whistleblowers and authors are able to make their stories widely and instantaneously available all around the world for relatively little cost. And now it is up to the public to ask themselves whether they are willing to put forth the negligible time and effort to familiarize themselves with the information that the government has been fighting for years to suppress in any and every way possible.

It remains to be seen whether or not the Sibel Edmonds story will finally be able to break through the walls that have kept it from the public for so long, although this time the wall is not a bureaucratic one, nor even one of censorship, but a wall built by the public’s own apathy.

In a play on the old adage about the tree falling in the forest, one might well ask: If Sibel Edmonds blows the whistle in a media forest and no one is there to read it, will that whistle make a sound?

This is the GRTV Feature Interview with your host James Corbett and our special guest Joseph Trento.