Pentagon upgrades to target China – JADC2 and Space Force – At what price? Part 3

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From Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space
June 28, 2021
by Koohan Paik-Mander

Pacific Pivot and the First Island Chain

Military planners have been nurturing this Rubicon moment with China for at least a decade, beginning when Obama announced his “Pacific Pivot” toward Asia. Since then, communities in the Asia-Pacific region have been confronted with elaborate, ecocidal preparations for full-scale war with China. Natural resources have been destroyed to construct a globe-sweeping, networked infrastructure of missile deployment and satellite tracking.

That was the first phase of laying the groundwork for 21st century warfare. Biden’s current request for funding will expand this strategic rebalance of military forces into its second phase.

Most of the Pentagon-ravaged spots have been concentrated so far on the string of archipelagos that fringe China’s coastline. These islands are politically controlled by Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines—nations themselves already heavily militarized.

War strategists call this the “First Island Chain.” The JADC2 system is being developed with this particular geography in mind. “Project Convergence,” a U.S. Department of Defense war exercise, takes place over a span stretching from Washington state to North Carolina, replicating the distance along the First Island Chain.

The First Island Chain is one of three chains of Pacific islands that ring China at varying distances. Further east, the Second Island Chain is comprised of Guam and the other Mariana Islands. The Third Island Chain, even further east in the mid-Pacific, is the Hawaiian archipelago.

In war strategy, these chains serve several functions: as a barrier to be breached by an attacker, as a protective wall to be strengthened by a defender, and as a springboard from which to mount an invasion. They also serve as geopolitical benchmarks for measuring regional influence, which is why control of Taiwan is so critical. If the United States loses Taiwan to mainland China, it would signal the unravelling of U.S. domination in the region.

The delicately beautiful islands of the First Island Chain have languished mostly unknown to the rest of the world. They are home to many endemic species such as the Yonaguni pony, the Ryukyu damselfly, the Amami rabbit, and a newly designated species of pufferfish that builds sand mandalas on the ocean floor to attract a mate. At the tiny airport on Ishigaki Island, local butterflies flutter in a terrarium behind the check-in counter. In town, decorative trees lining the road support sleeping bats hanging like furry ornaments.

Environmentalists fear these species are now doomed. A radar tracking station has been built, despite public protest, over the watering hole for the Yonaguni ponies. Its high-frequency radar will likely kill the bountiful insect-life found on the island, like the butterflies and the Ayamihabiru moth with its 10-inch wing span.

Amami-Oshima, an island that has remained virtually untouched since primeval times, has now been desecrated. Its old-growth forest, dense with unique flora and fauna, was razed in two areas for missile deployment, while associated development is disfiguring the coastline and other inland areas. On the islands of Ishigaki and Miyako, more missile deployment facilities have been erected against the will of locals.

Meanwhile, on Okinawa, tens of thousands of residents have been protesting the U.S. presence for decades. The latest barbarity: soil that contains an untold number of bones of Okinawan ancestors as well as U.S. soldiers—all killed in the Battle of Okinawa during World War II—is slated to be used as landfill for the bottom of Oura Bay. For four years, locals have ferociously objected to construction here of a new U.S. air base, intended to be a key JADC2 hub. The beloved bay has been home for millennia to the largest rare blue-coral colony in the world and 5,334 documented species of wildlife.

U.S. militarism continues to beleaguer Jeju Island off the coast of South Korea as well. There, villagers, fishers, and tangerine farmers have been ferociously protesting for over a decade the construction of a navy base to port Lockheed Aegis-missile bearing destroyers. The base was completed in 2015, but plans are in the works to construct a constellation of new facilities to complement the navy base, including a new airport, a missile tracking station, a weather radar station, and a satellite operations facility.

The famously drinkable streams of Jeju are now contaminated, its UNESCO-celebrated corals have been dredged, and wetlands have been smothered with concrete. Jeju Island is morphing, in real time, from one of Asia’s most cherished natural wonders to another key hub for JADC2 space-war operations

http://space4peace.org/countering-the-china-threat-at-what-price/

Pentagon upgrades to target China – JADC2 and Space Force – At what price? Part 2

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From Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space
June 28, 2021
by Koohan Paik-Mander



The Opium Wars were two wars waged between the Qing dynasty and Western powers in the mid-19th century. The First Opium War, fought in 1839–1842 between Qing China and Great Britain, was triggered by the dynasty’s campaign against the British merchants who sold opium to Chinese merchants. The Second Opium War was fought between the Qing and Britain and France, 1856–1860. In each war, the European force’s modern military technology led to easy victory over the Qing forces, with the consequence that the government was compelled to grant favorable tariffs, trade concessions, and territory to the Europeans. It was during this time that John Kerry’s and FDR’s fore-bearers made their fortunes in the Opium trade. The profits built Yale, Harvard and Columbia universities and funded the construction of the railroads to the west.

China Threat = Yellow Peril

The Pentagon has a billion dollars a year to spend on public relations, and vilifying China has become Lloyd Austin’s top priority. He paints a picture of urgency so dire that it seems the only way to meet the challenge is to fund his comprehensive Weapons New Deal.

Once the new military infrastructure is fully in place, the Space Force will be equipped to dominate the planet. Until now, the INF Treaty’s cap on missile range prevented the implementation of this vision, given the hemispheric distance between China and the United States. Now that the treaty is no longer in effect, however, the Indo-Pacific theater is the ideal geography to debut this new way of warfare that relies on satellites to deliver strikes clear to the opposite side of the planet.

Thousands of satellites are already in place; thousands more will follow, thanks to private efforts by the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. The United States is currently working through the UN to standardize 5G internationally. Algorithms are now being written to remove human decision-making from warfare. Pacific reefs have already been dredged, forests razed, and protestors arrested on islands encircling China to make way for destroyer berths and rocket launchpads—nodes of the global war infrastructure.

One of the those “nodes” is at Soseong-ri village, 200 kilometers southeast of Seoul. The melon farmers there have painful, first-hand experience of South Korea’s complicity with the Pentagon’s agenda. In mid-March, after five years of community protests against the deployment of a THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) missile system, Lloyd Austin strongly protested the poor conditions of the THAAD base, calling them “unacceptable.”

After Austin’s disparaging remark, the South Korean government sent around a thousand riot police to Soseong-ri to forcefully remove residents from blocking components of the THAAD base construction material from entering the military installation. This took place on four occasions immediately following Austin’s statement and has since accelerated to twice a week, according to peace activist Sung-Hee Choi.

Choi points out that the THAAD system is made by Lockheed Martin and the associated radar is manufactured by Raytheon, where Austin previously served on the board. Choi adds that she is nervous about the intensifying military tension in her country and in northeast Asia: “I think recent anti-Asian hate is like a preparation for war against North Korea and China, just like when the Bush administration exploited anti-Muslim sentiments just before the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Elder woman manhandled in the melon farming village of Soseong-ri, South Korea as Washington enforces deployment of the controversial THAAD ‘missile defense’ base at a converted golf course next to the village. The government sends in thousands of police to pull the sitting villagers from the road so that the US Army can move hardware and supplies into the base. The villagers understand they are now a primary target in any war with China.

http://space4peace.org/countering-the-china-threat-at-what-price/

Pentagon upgrades to target China – JADC2 and Space Force – At what price? Part 1

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From Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space
June 28, 2021
by Koohan Paik-Mander

The Pentagon is upgrading its full-spectrum dominance, with China as the primary target.

In early June 2021, in a classified directive to Pentagon officials, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin slammed the former Trump administration for talking big but never taking action to counter “the China threat.”

Austin made it clear that things would be different under President Biden. His “tough guy” rhetoric strikes just the right tone for a massive, costly, military-infrastructure overhaul that would render the conventional warfare of the twentieth century unrecognizable: more nukes, fewer troops, and an omnipotent 5G network.

The goal of this overhaul is to give the United States and its allies the ability to summon, at once, unmanned military forces to rain terror down on any spot in the world—a swarm of drones, hypersonic missiles, submarine torpedoes, and bombers—all with the ease of calling an Uber.

This game-changing metamorphosis of how wars are fought is already underway. It’s called the JADC2 (Joint All-Domain Command & Control), a globally networked, cloud-based command center, overseen by the recently anointed U.S. Space Force.

It was for this that the Space Force was created—not as a jokey Trump trifle.

However, targeting China with this new paradigm for mass destruction will not bring about global security. Even if it were to somehow not culminate in a nuclear conflict, the ecological and climate costs of commanding war from outer space would be devastating. And yet, ever-more-mammoth military preparations are being staged in ever-more-numerous locations on Earth.

President Biden is in lockstep with Austin’s anti-China mission. Much of Biden’s $715 billion Pentagon budget request for 2022 is for investment in hypersonic weapons, artificial intelligence, micro-electronics, 5G technology, space-based systems, shipbuilding and nuclear “modernization” (read: expansion). The request seeks $28 billion to “modernize” the nuclear triad (the ability to launch nukes from land, sea, and air). The budget also includes the largest research-and-development request—$112 billion—in the history of the Pentagon.

Imagine that kind of support for healthcare.

Each line item is a deadly weapon, which, discretely, already carries terrifying implications. But, taken together, as part of the JADC2—an integrated, multi-dimensional system with machines responsible for pulling the trigger—the whole is far more chilling than the sum of the parts.

Among the types of missiles on Biden’s wish-list are some whose range exceeds the limits in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty of 1987. But the INF Treaty is no longer in effect, after President Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement in August 2019, just four months before the creation of the Space Force. That means that Biden and Austin are now free to spend taxpayer money on these perilous weapons.

Policy analyst Michael Klare has observed that this year’s budget subordinates all perceived threats to a single bogeyman-du-jour: China. War with China, specifically, means more nukes, long-range missiles, and unmanned weapons. These weapons are not just to be used by the United States, but are also for export to allies as well—much to the financial gain of weapons industrialists like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.

For example, a declassified U.S. Department of Defense report from 2018 provides a directive to sell more arms to India, to “enhance India’s status as a Major Defense Partner,” and to “support India’s membership in the Nuclear Supplier’s Group.” The essence of the Pentagon’s massive global vision is to construct, from the ground up, a hard and soft infrastructure upon which the newly created Space Force can operate.

Just as the continent-spanning interstate highway system was laid during the 1950s to ensure a profitable future for the automobile industry, this new infrastructure—comprised of 5G, artificial intelligence, rocket launchpads, missile tracking stations, satellites, nukes, and internet-connected fleets of unmanned ships, jets, subs, hypersonic, and other craft—will ensure a reliably profitable assembly-line output of arms for the weapons industry.

In tandem with the military infrastructure will come a continued expansion of associated security infrastructure, such as increased surveillance and data collection of every individual on the planet. As a former board member at Raytheon, Lloyd Austin is perfectly positioned to pull this off. In fact, during his first three months as defense secretary, he awarded over $2.36 billion in contracts to the missile manufacturer he once faithfully served.

http://space4peace.org/countering-the-china-threat-at-what-price/

Petition – Stop Canadian Government funding of groups that glorify Nazi collaborators

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From the Action Network
Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade


TO PRIME MINISTER JUSTIN TRUDEAU, AND CHRYSTIA FREELAND (DEPUTY PM AND MINISTER OF FINANCE)

“We call on the Canadian government to stop giving financial support to East European ethnonationalist associations that whitewash their forebears’ complicity in the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity.

As taxpayers we oppose our government’s continued funding to the monuments, publications, events and meeting centres which are now used by these Canadian groups to glorify the memory of their Nazi-collaborating founders, leaders, activists and war heroes.”

SIGN HERE: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/defund_nazi-glorifying_grps/

After signing, please let others know about this petition and encourage more organizations to endorse it.  Thanks!

The research published in Issue #70 of Press for Conversion! magazine led to the creation of this petition. You can read all of its articles for free here:

Defunding the
Myths and Cults
of Cold War Canada:
Ongoing state support for East European
émigré groups with deep fascist roots
(Collaborators, Crusades and Coverups
in an era of “truth and reconciliation”)

Why this petition is important:

  • Government funding to groups that revere their communities’ fascist war heroes is an insult to the memory of Canadian troops who fought against the Axis powers in WWII. Continuing this state support is a betrayal of the stand taken by Canada and our allies in the fight against fascism.
  • After centuries of financing genocide against First Nations, and perpetrating other forms of systemic racism, the Canadian government is facing widespread demands for truth and reconciliation. (Read more…)
  • In light of these calls for justice regarding Canada’s role in genocide, the government should stop funding organizations that whitewash and exalt racist, antisemitic and fascist war heroes who aided Nazi Germany’s genocidal programs of political- and ethnic-cleansing.
  • This process will require Canada to account for its decades of support for émigré associations whose founders and leaders included top officials of Nazi puppet regimes, officers of the Waffen SS, veterans of ethnonationalist guerrilla armies, and other apologists for fascism who welcomed Germany’s invasion of Eastern Europe as a liberating force. These groups represent right-wing diaspora communities in Canada of  Czech,  Estonian,  Latvian,  Lithuanian,  Slovak and Ukrainian heritage.)
  • Some of the groups in these communities, while obfuscating their forebears’ complicity in the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity, still receive generous government funding for their:
    (a) publications and other media outlets,
    (b) parades and festivals where racist/antisemitic leaders and movements are honoured,
    (c) renovations to their cultural centres, where symbols, portraits and statues often venerate fascist statesmen, racist ideologues and Nazi-collaborating military commanders as “freedom fighters.”
  • Government funding to groups that glorify their fascist heritage, includes grants to the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, the League of Ukrainian Canadians and its youth and women’s affiliates: the Ukrainian Youth Association and the League of Ukrainian Women. (Learn more about these four groups and their government funding.)
  • Canada is also bankrolling 80% of a $7.5-million, national monument to anti-communism . Initiated and organized largely by East European groups with roots in fascist movements, this memorial — in Ottawa’s sancrosanct Parliamentary precinct — is used to venerate leading Nazi collaborators as “Victims of Communism.” For example, when the General Cttee. of United Croats of Canada donated to this monument they honoured fascist Croatian leaders Mile Budak and Ante Pavelić , Croatia’s wartime dictator. Having founded the fascist Ustaša, Pavelić ran Croatia as a Nazi puppet state. His Ustaša regime organized the genocidal mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Serbs, and tens of thousands of Jews and Roma. (Read more here.) In 2021, then-finance minister Chrystia Freeland — who has been deeply engaged with ultranationalist Ukrainian organizations since childhood — approved an extra $4 million for this monument.
  • Besides defunding fascist-rooted groups and their monuments, the Canadian government should:
    (a) acknowledge its shameful history of refusing to accept refugees (Jews and leftists) fleeing the Holocaust, but then going out of its way to welcome Nazi sympathizers, apologists and collaborators, including veterans of fascist military formations. (Read more here and here.)
    (b) atone for its efforts to protect Nazi-collaborating war criminals from prosecution and extradition, and (c) make amends with communities that were victimized during Canada’s Cold-War era of US-style McCarthyism.
  • Throughout the Cold War, ultranationalist East European groups rallied their communities’ support for Canadian complicity in US-led invasions and occupations, such as the wars in Korea and Southeast Asia. Millions of innocent civilians were killed in each of these wars.
  • More recently, in Latin America, then-Foreign Minister Freeland took a lead role in The Lima Group. Through this multilateral state network, Canada’s government has been working since 2017 to oust Venezuela’s democratically-elected socialist government.
  • Knowing our Cold War history is useful in understanding Canada’s current pro-US/pro-NATO foreign policies, particularly in Eastern Europe. Since 1991, extremely Russophobic movements, parties and governments there have fought for the “freedom” to celebrate their Nazi-collaborating heritage. In this context, Canada has continued to become an increasingly strident voice in the dangerous escalation of tensions between NATO and Russia.

https://coat.ncf.ca/P4C/70/Spirit-of-45.htm
https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/defund_nazi-glorifying_grps/

Russian Foreign Ministry statement on urgently needed dialogue and the necessity of legally binding comprehensive and indivisible security

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Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation
December 10, 2021

We note US President Joseph Biden’s readiness expressed at the December 7, 2021 talks with President Vladimir Putin to establish a serious dialogue on issues related to ensuring the security of the Russian Federation. Such a dialogue is urgently needed today when the relations between Russia and the collective West continue to decay and have approached a critical line. At the same time, numerous loose interpretations of our position have emerged in recent days. In this connection we feel it is necessary to once again clarify the following. 

Escalating a confrontation with our country is absolutely unacceptable. As a pretext, the West is using the situation in Ukraine, where it embarked on encouraging Russophobia and justifying the actions of the Kiev regime to undermine the Minsk agreements and prepare for a military scenario in Donbass.

Instead of reigning in their Ukrainian protégés, NATO countries are pushing Kiev towards aggressive steps. There can be no alternative interpretation of the increasing number of unplanned exercises by the United States and its allies in the Black Sea. NATO members’ aircraft, including strategic bombers, regularly make provocative flights and dangerous manoeuvres in close proximity to Russia’s borders.  The militarisation of Ukraine’s territory and pumping it with weapons are ongoing. 

The course has been chosen of drawing Ukraine into NATO, which is fraught with the deployment of strike missile systems there with a minimal flight time to Central Russia, and other destabilising weapons. Such irresponsible behaviour creates grave military risks for all parties involved, up to and including a large-scale conflict in Europe.

At the same time, statements are made that the issue of Ukraine’s hypothetical NATO membership concerns exclusively Kiev and the Alliance, and that nobody should interfere in this process. Let us recall, however, that NATO countries, apart from the Washington Treaty, have obligations regarding the indivisible security in the Euro-Atlantic and the entire OSCE space. This principle was initially proclaimed in the Helsinki Final Act and was later reaffirmed in the Charter of Paris for a New Europe of 1990, which states: “Security is indivisible and the security of every participating State is inseparably linked to that of all the others”, whereas in 1999, The Charter for European Security was adopted at the OSCE Istanbul summit, which stressed that the participating States “will not strengthen their security at the expense of the security of other States.” 

All these documents were signed by the leaders of the OSCE member-states, including all NATO countries. However, in violation of the principle of indivisible security – as well as in violation of the promises given to the Soviet leaders – NATO has been persistently moving eastwards all these years while neglecting Moscow’s concerns. Furthermore, each new member added to NATO’s frenzied anti-Russia charge.

We have been saying for a long time that such developments are inadmissible. Over the past decades we have offered a number of times to render the principle of comprehensive and indivisible security in the Euro-Atlantic a legally binding status since the West is obviously inclined to disregard its political obligations. However, we were invariably refused. 

In this connection, as President Vladimir Putin stressed, we insist that serious long-term legal guarantees are provided, which would exclude NATO’s further advancement to the east and deployment of weapons on Russia’s western borders which are a threat to Russia. This must be done within a specific timeframe and on the basis of the principle of comprehensive and indivisible security. 

To ensure the vital interests of European security, it is necessary to officially disavow the decision taken at the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest about “Ukraine and Georgia becoming NATO members” as contrary to the commitment undertaken by all the OSCE participating States “not to strengthen their security at the expense of the security of other States.” 

We insist on the adoption of a legally binding agreement regarding the US and other NATO member countries’ non-deployment of strike weapons systems which threaten the territory of the Russian Federation on the territories of adjacent countries, both members and non-members of NATO. 

We also insist on receiving a concrete response from NATO to our previous proposals on decreasing tension in Europe, including the following points:

– withdrawal of regions for operative military exercises to an agreed distance from Russia-NATO contact line;

– coordination of the closest approach point of combat ships and aircraft to prevent dangerous military activities, primarily in the Baltic and Black Sea regions;

– renewal of regular dialogue between the defence ministries in the Russia-US and Russia-NATO formats.

We call on Washington to join Russia’s unilateral moratorium on the deployment of surface short- and intermediate-range missiles in Europe, to agree on and introduce measures for the verification of reciprocal obligations.

Russia will shortly present draft international legal documents in the indicated areas to launch talks in respective formats. 

In particular, we will submit a comprehensive proposal on legal security guarantees as part of preparations for the next round of the Russia-US dialogue on strategic stability. We will advocate holding an in-depth discussion of the military aspects of ensuring security via defence ministries with the engagement of the foreign ministries of Russia and NATO countries.

We believe that the OSCE, which includes all countries of the Euro-Atlantic region, should not to stay on the sidelines of discussions on addressing the issues of Europe’s security. 

We urge our partners to carefully examine Russia’s proposals and start serious talks on agreements that will provide a fair and sustainable balance of interests in our common space. 

https://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/4991520

2019: Venezuela speech to UN Security Council on U.S. coup d’état and “blatant and gross intervention,” reviews U.S. interventions in Latin America; Iran Contra’s Elliot Abrams speech, Russia and Venezuela response – transcript (VIDEO)

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Written speech of Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza: http://mppre.gob.ve/discurso/discurso-arreaza-en-el-consejo-de-seguridad-onu/

English dubbed videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mubL1aVaG8I
https://www.c-span.org/video/?457308-7/un-security-council-meeting-situation-venezuela

Unofficial translation, edited from UN and C-Span translations

Venezuela Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza:
“Thank you, Mr. President. At last we have a chance to speak.

We have a written text, but before that, I wanted to share some thoughts with you. Indeed, we can even thank Mr. Mike Pompeo because in the face of failure at the OAS Organization of American States on the 24th of January, they [the United States] didn’t have enough power to impose a resolution, and they convened a meeting of the Security Council of the United Nations. In fact, we, including President Maduro, thought of appealing to this body to debate not only the case of Venezuela but rather the blatant and gross intervention and gross mechanisms of interference by the United States in our country. We have to say, in this case, the United States is not behind the coup d’etat. It is in advance, it’s in the forefront of the coup d’etat. They give and dictate the orders, not only to the Venezuelan opposition but also to the satellite governments of the United States in the region, and it seems in Europe and other parts of the world.

As proof, we have tweets here from social media. We have appeals to the Bolivarian National Armed Forces to speak out against the legitimate authorities, against the constitutional government of President Nicolas Maduro, on the part of Secretary (of State) Mike Pompeo and from Vice President Pence. It was a tweet with a video of Vice President Pence on the 22nd. He in a tweet gave the green light for a coup d’état in Venezuela. And as Under Secretary Rosmary said, a citizen would proclaim himself. No one swore him in nor did any institution. There was no ceremony. It was self-proclaimed — self-proclamation by a member of Paliament at a public rally, at a peaceful public rally, one of many that there’ve been in Venezuela over the past few years.

Where is the legality? I ask you: let’s review the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Read Article 133 word by word, provision by provision, sentence by sentence. Where is the legality? This is internal to our Constitution.

But where is the legality in terms of the fundamental principles of Public International law? Or are we simply setting aside international relations based on international law, and imposing international relations based on force, and instrumentalizing multilateral international organizations to achieve your commission and your goal. If any of you can tell me in which article and in which provision of the United Nations Charter you find the legal basis for the self-proclamation of a man who wasn’t elected by anyone as president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, then we can open the legal debate. I think you won’t be able to do it.

We were also reviewing, because we have to ask ourselves, Since when? Secretary Rex Tillerson, before he was dismissed, and then President Trump himself, himself, here in the General Assembly, members, the first day of the debate before this sacred podium of multi-lateralism, he announced sanctions that are not only coercive unilateral measures which are not based on international law, but he actually, he had the nerve to announce a series of measures against Venezuela in flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter – the sacred charter of multilateralism.

How is it possible that a president that threatened the use of military force – he wasn’t John Bolton who did it; it wasn’t Marco Rubio – it was Donald Trump himself who threatened the use of military force directly against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela – how is it that he wasn’t even challenged by the world’s entities of multilateralism? And that you pretend to sit in judgment on the accused — the republic of Venezuela — because its people and its government have fully complied with its constitution and respected international law. How is that possible? I mean, we can speak for a long time.

Here we have 1911 in Mexico, an invasion

1912, U.S. Marines invade Nicaragua, my dear neighbor here, and they began an occupation that continued until almost 1933; Augusto Cesar Sandino and the Nicaraguan people threw them out.

1914 Mexico

1915 Haiti

1916 Dominican Republic

1918 Panama

1924 Honduras

1925 Panama

1926 Nicaragua

1927 Nicaragua

1930 Dominican Republic

1933 Nicaragua

1934 Nicaragua

1941 Panama

Then, the School of the Americas,

In Cuba, 1952

1954, the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala

1956 Nicaragua

In 1960 the President of the United States authorized the execution of covert actions on a great scale to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro. and after, the Bay of Pigs in 1961

That is to say, we can go on, João Goulart 1964 in Brazil.

In 1965, dear President of the Security Council, how many died in the Dominican Republic by the invasion endorsed by the OAS to overthrow a government that they didn’t agree with, because they didn’t ideologically like the government of the great Dominican that was Juan Bosch?

The Monroe Doctrine. It should be the United States that should be evaluated and subjected to a permanent investigation for its disrespect for international laws, interference, meddling, and invasions, behind the coup d’etats.

Next came the coup d’etat in 1973 against Salvator Allende, then Guatemala as well. In 2002 President George Bush in Venezuela. They denied it but they recognized the dictator Carmona. This has precedents. What is occurring today in Venezuela has a direct precedent.

In 2002 they were behind the coup d’etat. They weren’t as much in the forefront as this time, They recognized Carmona, the dictator, who lasted for 47 hours, and afterward, an investigation by North American experts proved with declassified documents the participation of the United States in that foolhardy attempted coup.

Or 2004 in Haiti, Jean Bertrand Aristide

Or 2009, in Honduras, that in the beginning, it wasn’t even suspected that the United States was behind it until Hillary Clinton admitted through a book that she had given the orders to overthrow the president of Honduras because she wanted to call a national election.

Meanwhile, other presidents were selected in Central America without the authority of being candidates [or], having lost elections. There were reports from the European Union, from the Organization of American States that said there was fraud, but afterward Donald Trump called. They promised that they would move their embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and they are recognized not only by Trump but by all the satellite governments in the region.[uncertain translation]

Look, I wanted to show you (holds up chart) the trend in social media just from Twitter (I’m not going to other social media) – the official spokespersons of the United States. See how the trend in January was going up on the 22nd, the 23rd (January 2019), that day they expected a coup and a military uprising that is not considered in Venezuela because the National Bolivarian Armed Forces defend with their life this Constitution. They (the United States government) could neither finance nor extort, nor provoke, nor convince our military to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro. They won’t be able to do it. They won’t be able to do it.

Once again, the United States has taken a false step and which is summed up at once — look, it is incredible — when President Trump tweeted, that was the recognition. It was like the United Nations’ deposit of a recognition of a state. President Trump tweeted that he recognized the member of Parliament as dictator of Venezuela. Automatically, Argentina, Colombia, Chile [followed suit]; that is, they waited for the order so that they could also start recognizing him.

This coup d’etat is too obvious. It is too shameless by all parties. That cannot be accepted by the United Nations. Better still, it must be condemned. I hope to have a meeting of the Security Council to evaluate who was behind this coup d’etat. And it wouldn’t be necessary to have much wisdom because there’s excessive evidence proving it on social media, on the declarations, in the communications. This very day, here comes proof in their own Wall Street Journal, like was last year in September in the New York Times, that showed there were meetings of Venezuelan soldiers who were supposedly going to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro, with United States, with United States government officials.

It wasn’t the intelligence agencies of Venezuela, or of Cuba, or of Russia. It was the New York Times and newspapers of Spain. Today it is the Wall Street Journal.

A North American agency examines very clearly information that this member of Parliament traveled to Colombia clandestinely, traveled to the United States, met with officers and these are very clear strategies but not very well executed. It was very harmful. There is much evidence [of involvement by] satellite governments in the region, governments with business, presidents subject to the interests of the United States, subordinates. Not like the dignified governments, the small states of the Caribbean. Many dignified governments that have not yielded to the United States nor have let the United States extort from them nor in the OAS nor in the UN or anywhere else despite public threats even from Vice President Pence or of the Secretary of State or from some congressmen. It is understandable that satellite governments in Latin America could cede their power in this way. But Europe get in line behind the United States? Not so much the United States, but the government of Donald Trump? Europe, giving us 8 days of what?

From where do you obtain equal power to give deadlines or ultimatums to a sovereign nation? Where does such an interventionist action occur? I would say it’s almost infantile.

Why doesn’t President Pedro Sanchez hold elections, as President Nicolás Maduro said yesterday. Or who elected Pedro Sanchez? Hold elections in the United Kingdom (Great Britain and Northern Ireland). Interfere!

Why does President Macron, instead of dedicating himself to the permanent protests of the yellow vests of the French working people, dedicate himself to attacking Venezuela? Today a worker in a yellow vest near the Elisee Palace, and the guards come out practically scared because they are afraid of their people. Dedicate yourselves to your affairs. We do not meddle in your affairs. Respect, comply with the Charter of the United Nations. Respect the self-determination of nations.

Here last year was the candidate Henri Falcon (Venezuelan, in presidential elections of May 20, 2018); Henri Falcon was the president of the electoral campaign of Henrique Capriles (Venezuelan, presidential candidate) in 2012. Henrique Capriles lost with Commander Hugo Chávez. Henri Falcon was the candidate of the year 2018, but as they pressured Henri Falcon to withdraw his candidacy, all the way to presidents of Europe and of course all the spokespeople of the USA, he did not withdraw. But do you know what he did? He came to the United Nations and told Secretary General, Antonio Guterres that an observation by the United Nations in the elections was needed. He did not grant that. Why wasn’t this observation carried out? He even communicated with Federica Mogherini; I myself sent an invitation to Federica Mogherini, to come as observers of the elections in Venezuela. They refused outright. Because already the plan was underway, the process was already clear. Three months before the elections were held, Under Secretary Sullivan was the first to say that those elections would be fraudulent, and then the presidents of Colombia, of Chile, of Europe came to say “we will not recognize the results of the elections.”

When have you seen something like that? Months before the elections.

How many challenges are there of the Venezuelan elections? Go ahead. Show that there was fraud of a single vote in Venezuela. Mr. Duncan said that manual votes were being sold. Venezuela has an electronic voting system, automated. Its accounting is not in Venezuela. The vote is not manual; simply (the machine prints) a voucher to then check with the electronic vote, and in 100% of the cases, the comparison perfectly matches.

The United States wants to build a wall with Mexico. It’s building an ideological wall; A good part of the intercession of Secretary Pompeo today corresponds to the language of the Cold War of Nixon. He is bringing back the Cold War. They are bringing back the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 of which the Liberator Simón Bolívar said in 1829: “The United States seems destined by fate to plague America with misery in the name of freedom.” That was a fulfilled prophecy; that is, it was a prediction, because that is what the United States has done.

Do you know how much it has been estimated to have cost Venezuela since the implementation of unilateral coercive measures that are in breach of International Law in Venezuela? In 2017 until December of 2018, the cost to Venezuela is 23 billion dollars, thanks to the blockade, to the persecution against the goods of Venezuela, to undermining our resources. The Venezuelan economy would not be in the problematic situation it is in if it had had these resources. 20 million dollars was offered to the OAS, which they took from us. Nothing more in Euroclear in Belgium, Mr. Ambassador of Belgium, there are 1.2 billion dollars frozen, blocked, Venezuelan gold, assets. We cannot conduct any banking transaction, any banking transaction that passes through New York or London does not happen. It ends up returning the money or freezing the money. Is that just to the Venezuelan nation?

The representative of Russia was very clear here, but the others believe that the blockades do not exist, that it is a lie … these 18, 19 rounds of sanctions against Venezuela don’t exist. I think that reflection has to take place. It is an ideological wall you are constructing against Venezuela.

We support the initiatives of dialogue as at the time was the initiative of the Dominican Republic. It didn’t come out of nowhere. President Nicolás Maduro – allow me to speak in first person- I was appointed Foreign Minister in August of 2017, and two days later, I was meeting at the home of Mr. Miguel Vargas, and afterwards at the Governmental Palace with the president, Danilo Medina, calling the opposition leaders (from Venezuela), calling President Maduro, to accomplish dialogue in Venezuela. And what happened? We reached an agreement. You know it. There is a record that is guarded securely in some archive of the Dominican Republic presidency where he has signed a pre-accord. And when they had to go to sign the agreement, they made President Danilo Medina look like a fool, they made the former president (Spanish, José Luis) Rodriguez Zapatero look like a fool; they made a fool of the foreign ministers they supported, and made their followers in Venezuela ridiculous. And they did not sign the agreement. And strangely enough, Rex Tillerson was in Bogota at the time, and it’s said from a reliable source that the Chief of the Venezuelan delegation, who today is hiding in Colombia, received a telephone call to not sign and to complicate the situation in Venezuela. These are truths, dear companions. Further, let me tell you that what has been discussed here is without a sturdy foundation.

There are many lies that have been said here, and I tell you this with respect, ask the International Monetary Fund about information that Venezuela provided. Those figures do not come close, not even remotely, to the inflation numbers that you have given here today. Ask the Director of the International Monetary Fund. Be a little more rigorous in investigations in order to discuss this in this authoritative international body which is the essential forum for the future, peace and the security of humanity.

But also ask from those 3 million migrants. There is a new migratory situation that we did not have before. It has a lot to do with the economic blockade, has a lot to do with the financial restrictions against Venezuela and with the economic situation in Venezuela, that we do not deny and that we are going to recover from with the nation and with the Economic Recovery Plans that already are underway.

But how many times have we requested data from the governments of Colombia, Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Argentina? How many times have we told them, send it (the data)? If a Venezuelan leaves by a bridge to Colombia and ends in Chile, how do I know? In these days, do you know what happened? Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno called for brigades to be established to persecute the Venezuelan migrants in Ecuador, and the embassy (from Venezuela in Quito) was filled with Venezuelans. And we help them leave Ecuador because of the xenophobic and racist persecution against them.

In the city of Ibarra in the north of Ecuador and do you know what happened on Wednesday? On the same Wednesday, three planes, including the presidential plane (Venezuelan), went to search for more than 230 Venezuelan migrants. Today three planes were also going because the Embassy was paying for accommodation in hotels, with the difficulty of sending resources due to the blockade to our Diplomatic Missions. And they did not give overflight authorization to these planes that had the humanitarian goal of going to search for Venezuelans who were going to return to their home and their families in the face of persecution.

How are you dealing with this war against Venezuela? We are waiting for the visits of: Mr. Eduardo Stein, which should take place this week. We are waiting for the visit of the former president and friend Michelle Bachelet.

Violence. You say here that “the dictatorship is repressing and killing”. Please study the history of Venezuela in recent years. The insurrectional marches of the opposition with deaths put on by them (the Venezuelan opposition, which) gave rise to and facilitated the coup d’etat in the year 2002, using snipers. Research how many people died in those days, died at truly peaceful demonstrations. Who assassinated them? There are investigations of Venezuelan Court of Justice, the agencies of Venezuelan Citizen Power, the Prosecutor’s Office, which have sovereign authority, which does not need any intervention from any independent body. We will tell the truth about each one of the deceased because Venezuela is respected. I tell you who sponsored the coup on January 23, you were pursuing a tragedy in Venezuela, of deaths, that blood ran through the streets of Caracas, and it did not happen, because measures were taken, despite the fact that in the night, there were outbreaks in the popular sectors of Caracas. Groups of 10, 12, 13 people went to plunder, to destroy private property, and those were situations we prevented. We prevented another tragedy like the one on April 11. Another tragedy happened like that in 2014. Another tragedy like that happened in 2017, when the Venezuelan opposition took to the streets financed by some countries that are sitting here, to overthrow by means of a coup, by means of force, President Chavez at the time, and now President Nicolas Maduro.

We support dialogue initiatives as we support that of Dominican Republic at that time. We support that Mexico, Uruguay and Caricom have expressed their willingness for Venezuelans to sit down with their facilitation and achieve our own way out without any imposed solutions. Here no one is going to give us deadlines nor are they going to tell us if elections should be held or not. The decisions that are made will be made by Venezuelans, those of the opposition and the government, sitting together.

On January 22, the president of the National Constituent Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, met with this member of Parliament Juan Guaido, to open a channel of dialogue. From there, they reached agreements, and on another day, Mr. Juan Guaido did everything the opposite because, well, he was under pressure. He had Pence’s tweets, Trump’s tweets, all the pressure from his people that what they want to ttigger civil war in Venezuela. You won’t achieve it. The North American presidents call for war when they have domestic problems and wars. Look, President Trump has already repented, has said that Iraq was better off with Saddam Hussein. He has said that Libya was better off with Gadaffi that they overthrew and brutally assassinated and laughed at that assassination, the Secretary of State (American) at the time.

The savagery, the force — that cannot be allowed in today’s world. And the United States is even withdrawing its troops from Syria. What is Venezuela? A war trophy of Mr. Trump? We are not going to give Donald Trump a war in Venezuela. In Venezuela, peace is going to prevail. Stability and understanding will prevail between Venezuelans, despite many of the countries seated here that are pursuing war.

I also wanted to tell you that the deadline Europe is trying to give us, we also remember the Liberator Simon Bolivar in 1818, the first argument he had with an agent of the United States. You remember that the United States did not support the fight for freedom of our countries. Factually, they had already been independent by their own means and winning a war against the British Empire, but when the colonies of South America confronted the Spanish Empire, they declared themselves neutral. Interesting, no? Then afterwards, they not only declared they were neutral but they helped the royalists, the Spaniards clandestinely. And in one of those clandestine aids in the (Rio) Orinoco in Venezuela, they went against the legitimate government of then president Simon Bolivar. They sent boats, United States vessels with ammunition, preparations that were stopped and a controversy arose and the Liberator finally told the agent of the United States: “… it is the same thing for Venezuela to fight against Spain as to fight the whole world if the whole world offends her”. And we can repeat that here today. Fortunately we have great friends. But whoever ill-treats Venezuela will have to deal with the people of Venezuela, President Nicolás Maduro, the Communal Councils, the People’s Power standing up, to defend our sovereignty and our integrity.

I want you to read (article of the Venezuelan Constitution) 233 — with this I close — because you have tried to give a constitutional varnish, developed in the laboratories of Washington, of course, to the self-proclamation of this gentleman (Juan Guaido) that even in Venezuela his name is known. These days the president of Paraguay could not pronounce his surname. But let me read article 233:

“The absolute offenses/defects of the President of the Republic would be” … listen … “his death, his resignation or his dismissal decreed by the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, his permanent physical or mental incapacity certified by a medical board appointed by the TSJ and with the approval of the National Assembly, the abandonment of his position declared as such by the National Assembly as well as recall by popular vote “… that in Venezuela there is a recall referendum in the middle of the period if the people are not happy; that occurred in 2004 with Commander Hugo Chávez and was ratified … “when an elected president becomes permanently unavailable to serve before the inauguration, a new, direct, and secret universal election will be held within the 30 consecutive days. Pending election and inauguration of the the new president, the president of the National Assembly will be in charge of the presidency of the Republic “

In Venezuela there was no takeover. In Venezuela there were no elections. If there is a discrepancy of one of the powers — there are five legitimate powers in Venezuela — if there is a disagreement of the National Assembly, well then, go to the other institutions, go to the Supreme Tribunal of Justice. But what is this self-proclaiming a Member of Parliament as “interim president” and the governments in the world begin to recognize him? These are serious governments, that have legal departments in the chancelleries, that are attached to this Charter (of the United Nations) and that know the constitutions of the States, recognizing him. You are imposing force against the Law. That is very dangerous for humanity, and we have to stop that today in the United Nations.

I think it is enough with what we have outlined, and we want to tell you that the people of Venezuela are listening to us. And it’s been shown here that Venezuela is not alone and this will continue to be demonstrated in this debate and as demonstrated in other international organizations: the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries, which we chair. Venezuela is not alone. And do you know why it is not alone? Because Venezuela is upholding its Constitution and the Charter of the United Nations. We will continue advancing along the path of our democracy. We will not allow anyone to impose on us any decision or any order. The Secretary told them that this member of Parliament “self-proclaimed”. Where is a self-proclamation in the Constitution (of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela)?. I ask them, where? Look for it and show me, and we can debate it.

On behalf of President Nicolas Maduro, on behalf of the Venezuelan public powers, the People’s Power of Venezuela, the communities and community leaders, we want to insist that Venezuela is as the Constitution says: irrevocably free, independent, and no power, however powerful it may be, can dictate to our country its destiny and its steps to follow.

Thank you.

United States Ambassador Elliot Abrams:
I cannot [respond] to every attack that was made on every country here, the insults that were made by calling many countries here satellites.

In fact, it was interesting that every country here that was attacked or criticized was a democracy. Every single one that was criticized was a democracy.

It was just a series of insults that reflected that today. There is a satellite here — that is Venezuela which is unfortunately which has become a satellite of Cuba and Russia.

The regime is hiding and its spokesman is hiding behind the laws and Constitution of Venezuela while imprisoning opponents, preventing free elections, and killing Democrats like Fernando Albay.

This is not about foreign intervention in Venezuela. It is not an attempt to impose result on the Venezuelan people. Democracy never needs to be imposed. It is tyranny that has to be imposed.

This discussion in the council is about the right of the Venezuelan people to direct their own internal affairs and the future of their country democratically. Thank you.

Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia:
Perhaps I will surprise you, distinguished representative of the United States, but when we discuss certain issues in the Security Council, we never try to force any country to behave as we wish it to behave, as we need, as it is in our interest for it to behave. We always respect the sovereignty of any country, whether it’s a member of the Security Council or whether it speaks in this room.

We respect its own opinions, its own policy. But that policy or those views that correspond to our policy, then we’re happy. If not, we basically respect that any member of the council or any member of the UN can have its own views or positions. It is their sovereign right to have their own foreign policy.

But unfortunately, we know many of, many, many episodes that the country that you represent not only uses its satellite states to promote its own interests but in fact, forces them to be in lock-step with you.

So to discuss who has satellites and who doesn’t, I wouldn’t suggest you get into that. Thank you.
….

Venezuela Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza:
Now we’re involved in many difficult negotiations for our part, but I would recall that Mr. Abrams represents a tradition that has been tried and duly indicted for similar such attempts in the past, such as the Iran-Contra affair. He is the face of a well-worn path of interfering in democracy. Perhaps a fresher face could have been chosen to have spoken on behalf of the United States of America.

And we see it as being part of the same, parroting the same line, permanent insults leveled against Venezuela – whether there are dictators, drug traffickers, I mean, what are you trying to convince us of?

I think all that these people have to do is all of them focus their attention on Venezuela. Is there nothing else going on in the world other than the one situation in Venezuela? There are other things you could be doing, probably in Venezuela, and we would like to make the point here, bluntly and we would have made it if Pompeo were still here in his face, we make it abundantly clear, we echo a point that President Maduro has made, and it is our intention to establish communication and dialogue with the government of President Trump. That offer stands, and it’s still on the table.

That is what we have sought to do since the very first day of office, since Commandant Chavez took office in February 1999. It’s an approach we’ve attempted to continue since President Maduro took the reins of power. Either the response to our offer of dialogue has been blockade, prosecution, persecution, sanctions, violence, aggression, insults, interventions, interference, and now, this attempted coup d’etat. To date, despite all these insults that we have suffered, that offer still stands on the table. We stand ready to dialogue to keep the peace if you would treat us as civilized partners and equals as indicated in the charter of the United Nations we all have to respect and uphold.

Thank you.

Video shows Ukrainian soldiers violating ceasefire with French weapons

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From Donbass Insider
22 November 2021

n a video published on TikTok, showing them violating the ceasefire in the Donbass, Ukrainian soldiers accidentally reveal that they have French weapons in their possession. The presence of these weapons is all the more disturbing as France is the guarantor of the Minsk agreements, and therefore of the peaceful resolution of the conflict.

The analysis of the numerous videos published on TikTok by Ukrainian soldiers stationed in the Donbass, showing them firing, not only confirms that they are violating the ceasefire, but also sometimes reveals even more interesting information.

For example, on 20 November 2021, a video showing Ukrainian soldiers firing machine guns and then rocket launchers was posted on Tiktok [A]

The soldiers in the video are soldiers of the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade of the Ukrainian Army [1], as shown by the chevron on the guy on the right, firing a rocket launcher.

Chevron - 128e brigade des FAU - Patch - 128th brigade AFU

At first sight the video may seem quite banal, the guys are filming themselves shooting against a background of pro-Ukrainian songs. The keywords associated with the video show that the account that published it belongs to a Ukrainian neo-Nazi, since next to the famous “Glory to Ukraine” we can read “Bandera our father”. When one attributes a Nazi collaborator as one’s spiritual father, there is little doubt about the ideology of the person who did it. The keywords also indicate that the video was filmed in the area of the Joint Forces Operation, i.e. in the Donbass.

No, where it gets really interesting is when you look at the details of the video more closely. Indeed, at 3 seconds and then at 6 seconds we clearly see on the left side of the picture a rocket launcher that does not look like the RPG, nor the Javelin, that Ukraine now boasts of having used for the first time in the Donbass [2]. No, the rocket launcher visible between the two Ukrainian soldiers in the picture is none other than an APILAS [3]: a French anti-tank rocket launcher!

APILAS

Clearly, this video shows that the Ukrainian soldiers stationed in the Donbass have French weapons at their disposal! The question that immediately arises is how they obtained them.

Either the Ukrainian soldiers stationed in the Donbass were able to obtain these French weapons from jihadists coming from Syria [4](and there too the question arises as to how they were able to obtain them) via the links between Ukrainian neo-Nazis and Islamist terrorists, or France secretly sold these weapons to Ukraine, in complete violation of its role as guarantor of the Minsk agreements.

For France cannot be both a guarantor of agreements allowing for a peaceful resolution of the conflict, and at the same time provide Ukrainian soldiers with French weapons, which only aggravate the escalation in the Donbass.

However, in March, 2021, the LPR People’s Militia announced that France had reached an agreement with Ukraine to supply 60 APILAS rocket launchers to be deployed in the Donbass [5], after Ukrainian soldiers had tested the weapon for two months.

It seems that France secretly sold these weapons to Ukraine, in order to help Ukrainian soldiers continue their killing game in the Donbass, while publicly claiming to want the conflict to be resolved peacefully by implementing the Minsk agreements. This is perhaps the famous “at the same time” that Emmanuel Macron has been applying since the beginning of his presidency.

Christelle Néant

[A] tiktok[dot]com/@vov4ik.myrjak/video/7032325778884791557

[1] en.wikipedia[dot]org/wiki/128th_Mountain_Assault_Brigade_(Ukraine)

[2] gordonua[dot]com/news/war/glava-gur-minoborony-ukrainy-zayavil-chto-ukrainskie-voennye-primenyali-javelin-na-donbasse-smi-1582516.html

[3] en.wikipedia[dot]org/wiki/APILAS

[4] armamentresearch[dot]com/french-apilas-anti-tank-weapon-in-syria/

[5] lug-info[dot]com/news/kiev-postavit-iz-frantsii-granatomety-dlya-diversii-vsu-v-zone-oos-narodnaya-militsiya-65319

Webinar, Korea’s Struggle for Independence, Peace and Reunification — 21 November, 2021

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From International Manifesto Group

Sun, November 21, 2021

8:00 AM – 10:00 AM PST

Register here

Our webinar takes a timely look beneath and behind western stereotypes of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

About this event

North Korea seems only to hit Western headlines when it conducts weapons tests and that was so again this fall. As usual, media reports were stripped of context and North Korea presented as a threat to peace.

Our webinar takes a timely look beneath and behind western stereotypes of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – as totalitarian, autarkic, economically bankrupt, led by a dynasty and a cult, and a nuclear bad-boy – to probe the realities, old and new, by addressing key questions including the ongoing Korean War; the nature and motivations of the Workers’ Party of Korea governments; the reasons for its nuclear arsenal; the need to end sanctions; the history and present of the US nuclear threat in East Asia; and the path to national reunification, to which the Korean people, whether in the north, south or diaspora, remain committed.

Speakers

Dr. Kiyul Chung is a lifelong fighter for Korean reunification and anti-imperialist causes generally. He is the Editor-in-Chief at The 21st Century and a Visiting Professor at a number of universities, including Beijing’s Tsinghua University, Tokyo’s Korea University and Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung University. Earlier, he was also Visiting Professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Dr. Chung was born in Korea and left to pursue his graduate studies in the United States in 1980. He was based in the USA for the next quarter century, where he earned his MA and PhD degrees, and played a leading role in the progressive Korean communty. He returned to Korea in 2005 as Adjunct Professor at the Methodist University and Senior Lecturer at Hanshin University, both in Seoul, but moved shortly to Beijing, to take up academic posts there. Dr. Chung was a key organiser of a 1989 international peace march for Korean reunification that aimed to march from the northernmost to the southernmost points of the Korean peninsula, but was prevented from crossing the DMZ by the US occupation forces and the south Korean authorities, as well as the Korea Truth Commission’s International War Crimes Tribunal, held in New York in 2001. With a background in religious philosophy, Dr. Chung’s books include ‘The Donghak Concept of God/Heaven: Religion and Social Transformation’, which, by presenting Donghak (the origin of the indigenous Korean Chondoist religion) as a case study of religion for social transformation, examines why Korean religious and intellectual traditions have been almost nonexistent and, if existent, distorted, misrepresented, or misunderstood in Western religious and philosophical studies.

Xiangyu Zhong Xiangyu is a Marxist-Leninist political commentator and a Chinese hip hop artist based in Taiwan Province. Anti-imperialism and class struggle are common themes in his music.

K.J. Noh is a peace activist, independent scholar, teacher and expert in the geopolitics of Asia. He is a frequent contributor to CounterPunch and Dissident Voice and a member of Veterans For Peace.

Dr. Hugh Goodacre is a lecturer in the Department of Economics, University College London and Director of the Institute for Independence Studies (IIS). The IIS promotes the study and application of ideologies of national and social emancipation, particularly those created by oppressed peoples through their own struggles, locating them in a non-Eurocentric conception of scientific socialism. He founded the Korea Friendship Committee (KFC) in the UK in 1982 and served as its Joint Secretary for many years. He first visited the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in 1983 and is one of a handful of UK citizens to have engaged in extensive discussions with President Kim Il Sung. His decades of work on Korean affairs have embraced people-to-people exchanges, anti-sanctions campaigning and research on and study of the Juche idea. His most recent publication is, ‘The Economic Thought of William Petty – Exploring the Colonialist Roots of Economics’, published by Routledge.

Sara Flounders is a longstanding political activist and author based in New York City. She is a leader of the United National Antiwar Coalition and the International Action Center, and is the author of numerous books, including Capitalism on a Ventilator: The Impact of COVID-19 in China and the US (co-authored with Lee SiuHin) and NATO in the Balkans: Voices of Opposition (co-authored with Ramsey Clark). She writes regularly for Workers World.

Keith Bennett is an active member of the International Manifesto Group and a consultant specialising in Chinese and Korean affairs. He is the Deputy Chair of the Kim Il Sung Kim Jong Il Foundation (KKF) and the Deputy Secretary General of the European Regional Society for the Study of the Juche Idea. He has closely followed events in Korea and the Korean road to socialism for nearly half a century and first visited the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in 1983 as a delegate to the World Conference of Journalists Against Imperialism. He has subsequently visited the country on some 50 occasions and was twice awarded the DPRK Order of Friendship by President Kim Il Sung. He has delivered papers on the Juche idea and on Korean reunification at conferences in Europe, Asia and Latin America.

Derek R. Ford is assistant professor of education studies at DePauw University, Indiana, USA. Ford has written six books, the latest of which is Marxism, Pedagogy, and the General Intellect: Beyond the Knowledge Economy (Palgrave, 2021), and is currently the editor of LiberationSchool.org. He led the last US delegation to the DPRK before the travel ban in 2017, organized the only US university exchange program with Korea University in Japan, and served on the program committee of the Global Peace Forum on Korea.

Moderator – Radhika Desai is a Professor at the Department of Political Studies, and Director, Geopolitical Economy Research Group, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. She is the author of Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire (2013), Slouching Towards Ayodhya: From Congress to Hindutva in Indian Politics (2nd rev ed, 2004) and Intellectuals and Socialism: ‘Social Democrats’ and the Labour Party (1994), a New Statesman and Society Book of the Month, and editor or co-editor of Russia, Ukraine and Contemporary Imperialism, a special issue of International Critical Thought (2016), Theoretical Engagements in Geopolitical Economy (2015), Analytical Gains from Geopolitical Economy (2015), Revitalizing Marxist Theory for Today’s Capitalism (2010) and Developmental and Cultural Nationalisms (2009).

This panel discussion is organized by the International Manifesto Group. The IMG began discussing the fast-changing political and geopolitical economy of the world order and its national and regional components at the beginning of the pandemic. We are from around the world – North and South America, Europe and Africa, West Asia, Russia, China, East, South East and South Asia – and aim to be even more inclusive. We represent a diversity of currents of socialist thought. We meet fortnightly and hold zoom events on major issues. These are published on this website. The core of our analysis is our Manifesto, ‘Through Pluripolarity to Socialism’, and we believe engagement with its themes to develop them further is important for further left advance.

Co-sponsors include:

Nodutdol is a New York-based community of first through fourth generation Koreans living in the U.S. We are a community that has families in both, the south and north of Korea. They are diverse in our backgrounds and perspectives, but bound together by our shared sense of the Korean homeland that continues to suffer under division [with the understanding that the concept of ‘home’ may vary]. They are part of the Korean diaspora spread throughout the globe made up of artists, filmmakers, teachers, students, workers, professionals, young families, etc. who believe in social justice.

Qiao Collective is a diaspora Chinese media collective challenging U.S. aggression on China. Qiao aims to challenge rising U.S. aggression towards the People’s Republic of China and to equip the U.S. anti-war movement with the tools and analysis to better combat the stoking of a New Cold War conflict with China. They seek to be a bridge between the U.S. left and China’s rich Marxist, anti-imperialist political work and thought in order to foster critical consideration of the role of China and socialism with Chinese characteristics in contemporary geopolitics. Qiao aims to disrupt Western misinformation and propaganda and to affirm the basic humanity, subjectivity, and political agency of Chinese people.

Friends of Socialist China is a platform based on supporting the People’s Republic of China and promoting understanding of Chinese socialism.

The deadly connections between space, militarization and the climate crisis.

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From United National Anti-War Coalition:

A UNAC sponsored a webinar in conjunction with the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space on November 12

To view the webinar, click here or the image below

As COP26 met in Scotland during this year of extreme weather due to climate change, it is more important than ever that the Climate Change and Antiwar movements work together to end these threats to humankind.   This important webinar helped make some of these connections and explained the danger of the new US initiated arms race in space.

Speakers included:
Dave Webb (UK) – Board chair of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space and current chair of UK’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), 

Koohan Paik-Mander – a Hawaii-based journalist and media educator. She is a board member of the Global Network and the CODEPINK working group “China is Not Our Enemy.” She formerly served as campaign director of the Asia-Pacific program at the International Forum on Globalization,

Bruce Gagnon -Coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space

unacpeace.org

space4peace.org