Shut down RIMPAC!
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Catholic Father Moon Jung Hyun in Gangjeong village on Jeju Island |
Bruce Gagnon is coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. He offers his own reflections on organizing and the state of America's declining empire....
The collapsing US military & economic empire is making Washington & NATO even more dangerous. US could not beat the Taliban but thinks it can take on China-Russia-Iran...a sign of psychopathology for sure. @BruceKGagnon
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Catholic Father Moon Jung Hyun in Gangjeong village on Jeju Island |
“There is really no true solution to the problem of global food security without bringing back the agriculture production of Ukraine and the food and fertilizer production of Russia and Belarus into world markets despite the war.”
These blunt words by UN Secretary-General António Guterres accurately describe the present global food crisis.
In countries facing other problems, like climate change, food price increases have been catastrophic. For example, in Lebanon, “the cost of a basic food basket—the minimum food needs per family per month—[rose]… by 351 percent” in 2021 compared to 2020, according to the WFP.
In the Global North, famine is not a threat, but the populations of these countries face a sharp squeeze on their living standards as the global food crisis also raises the prices people in wealthy countries have to pay and budget for. In the United States, for example, the combination of high inflation and economic slowdown led to a 3.4 percent reduction in real average weekly earnings in the last year, as per data provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Fake Analysis by the G7 About the Reasons for the Food Crisis
Faced with this rapidly rising threat of the deepening food crisis, the G7 foreign ministers met from May 12 to May 14 to finally focus their attention on this pressing matter. They issued a statement on May 13 expressing “deep concern” about the growing food insecurity, while pointing out the next day that “the world is now facing a worsening state of food insecurity and malnutrition… at a time when 43 million people were already one step away from famine.”
But the G7 falsely claimed that the reason for this food crisis was primarily due to “Russia blocking the exit routes for Ukraine’s grain.” According to Canada’s foreign minister, Mélanie Joly: “We need to make sure that these cereals are sent to the world. If not, millions of people will be facing famine.”
Sanctions and the Global Food Crisis
This G7 statement deliberately misrepresented the present global food crisis. Instead of attempting to solve this crisis, the U.S. and the rest of the G7 used this opportunity to further their propaganda on the Ukraine war.
Certainly, Ukraine’s export restrictions make the global food problem worse. But it is not the main cause of the deteriorating situation. A much more powerful cause is Western sanctions imposed on Russia’s exports.
The first reason for this is that Russia is a far bigger exporter of essential food items and other products in comparison to Ukraine. Russia is the world’s largest wheat exporter, accounting for almost three times as much of world exports as Ukraine, 18 percent compared to 7 percent.
Second, and even more important, is the situation with fertilizers. Russia is the world’s largest fertilizer exporter, and Belarus, which is also facing Western sanctions, is also a major supplier—together they account for more than 20 percent of the global supply. Fertilizer prices were already rising before the Ukraine war due to high fuel prices—fertilizer production relies heavily on natural gas—but sanctions by the West, which prevent Russia from exporting fertilizers, have made the situation worse.
David Laborde, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, pointed out that “the biggest threat the food system is facing is the disruption of the fertilizer trade.” This is because, he said: “Wheat will impact a few countries. The fertilizer issue can impact every farmer everywhere in the world, and cause declines in the production of all food, not just wheat.”
The threat to global fertilizer supply illustrates how energy products are an essential input into virtually all economic sectors. As Russia is one of the world’s largest exporters not only of food but also of energy, sanctions against the country have a knock-on inflationary effect across the entire world economy.
Response in the Global South
This world food supply situation worsened further after the G7 meeting when on May 14, India, the world’s second-largest wheat producer, announced that it was halting wheat exports due to crop losses caused by an intense heat wave. Already in April Indonesia had announced that it was ending palm oil exports—Indonesia accounts for 60 percent of the world supply.
India’s halt of wheat exports will be a further severe blow to countries in the Global South, where its exports are mostly focused. In 2021-2022, India exported 7 million metric tons of wheat, primarily to Asian Global South countries such as Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Yemen, Nepal, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Bangladesh. But India had earlier set a target of expanding wheat exports to 10 million tons in 2022-2023, including supplying 3 million tons of wheat to Egypt for the first time.
Ending Sanctions to Prevent Worsening of the Food Crisis
The unfolding situation makes clear that António Guterres’ words were indeed accurate—the world food crisis cannot be solved without both Ukraine’s exports and Russia’s exports of food and fertilizer. Without the latter, humanity does indeed face a “catastrophe”—billions of people will have to lower their living standards, and hundreds of millions of people in the Global South will face great hardship like hunger or worse. Almost every Global South country rightly refused to support the unilateral U.S. sanctions against Russia. This refusal needs to be extended to the whole world to prevent further devastation.
~ John Ross is a senior fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He is also a member of the international No Cold War campaign organizing committee. His writing on the Chinese and U.S. economies and geopolitics has been published widely online, and he is the author of two books published in China, Don’t Misunderstand China’s Economy and The Great Chess Game. His most recent book is China’s Great Road: Lessons for Marxist Theory and Socialist Practices (1804 Books, 2021). He was previously director of economic policy for the mayor of London.
On Wednesday, US President Joe Biden announced a new military assistance package for Ukraine amid that country’s recent territorial losses to Russian forces and their allies in the Donbass. Among the weapons in the package is a multiple-launch rocket system, HIMARS, that can carry longer range missiles.
"Today, I am announcing a significant new security assistance package to provide timely and critical aid to the Ukrainian military," Biden said in a statement. "This new package will arm them with new capabilities and advanced weaponry, including HIMARS with battlefield munitions, to defend their territory from Russian advances."
The Pentagon added that the US had pre-positioned the HIMARS in Europe for rapid delivery to Ukraine. The initial tranche of HIMARS will be four. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl later said that the Pentagon had decided to honor Kiev's request for the advanced weaponry because the three-month conflict has "become an artillery duel"; the HIMARS system has superior range to Russian multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS).
The M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) is a powerful wheeled launcher system that’s seen as the lighter alternative to the older, tracked M270 MLRS. It debuted in 2010 and is today built by defense giant Lockheed Martin.
The launcher truck can carry either six smaller rockets or one larger missile, with most of their ammunition being interchangeable with that used by the M270. A major difference is that HIMARS is small enough to fit inside a C-130 transport aircraft, and can have targeting information fed to it by an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s computer system.
That number isn’t arbitrary: before the US pulled out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019, it was the maximum allowed range for land-based missiles that the US or Russia could develop. The treaty banned missiles with ranges between 310 and 3,420 miles (500 and 5,500 kilometers, respectively) after the US stationed Pershing II missiles in Europe with a flight time to Moscow of just six minutes, dramatically increasing the risk of nuclear war.
Within two weeks of the US unilaterally leaving the INF Treaty, it began testing missiles that violated the treaty’s parameters, including a ground-launched variant of the Tomahawk cruise missile capable of being fired by Aegis Ashore systems. Two such systems have been built in the years before in Romania and Poland, to which Moscow protested but which the US assured them could only fire defensive missile interceptors.
Removing those sites or allowing Russian inspections of them to verify their purely defensive nature was part of the negotiations in early 2022 that preceded Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, as the systems threatened to cross a “red line” laid by the Kremlin to defend its security interests in the region.
Another red line was the ability for Ukraine to serve as a NATO base from which to attack Russian soil; it should be noted that a PrSM fired from a HIMARS system in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Shostka would be able to strike Moscow, the Russian capital.
This is why Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov slammed the US giving HIMARS systems to Kiev as a “direct provocation.”
Already, just days after receiving these new missile launchers Kiev has announced they plan to use these weapons to attack Russian territory in Crimea.
Techno-ecocide: the systematic destruction of our ecosystem by the exploitative use of technology
While many have seen advertisements promoting 5G’s speedy wireless capacities connecting everything and everyone… and promises that these smart technologies will provide a renewable energy future, scientific research and environmental advocacy efforts shows the opposite of what these profit-driven industries promise—with hundreds of scientists, climate change activists, and public health experts demanding a moratorium on the rollout of these technologies.
Our mission is to support the global movement to rein in wireless
expansion on Earth, in the skies and in the ocean because it poses an
immediate threat to all life. It is our hope that we will bring greater
public awareness about the harms of 5G, satellites, and “smart” oceans,
and start a dialogue about wiser and more balanced technology options
for a safer and more life-affirming future.
The Problem with the Next Trillion Dollar Industry
This month's space issues video by GN board member Will Griffin explores the mostly ignored problem of space junk.
With the current plan to launch tens of thousands of new satellites into orbit for 5G by SpaceX (Elon Musk) and other aerospace corporations, the crowding of already dangerously unstable orbits is worsening by the day.
SpaceX makes rockets and satellites to build Starlink, a broadband Internet system that once is completed will cover the entire world. SpaceX has so far put 2,500 satellites into orbit with rockets carrying 50 satellites at a time and plans to place 42,000 Starlink satellites in low orbit occupying 80% of this space.
Starlink was presented as a commercial satellite system but has fundamental military applications. In fact, satellites in low orbit transmit signals at a much higher speed than those in geosynchronous orbit around the equator. The US Army and Air Force fund and test Starlink to use its military capabilities. For example, last March, the US Air Force reported that conventional and nuclear dual-capacity F-35A fighters had carried out data transmission using Starlink satellites at speed 30 times faster than traditional connections.
Scientists have long been warning about the coming Kessler Syndrome - the point when cascading collisions begin to create so much flying debris that bigger objects like the International Space Station and other satellites smash into one another creating a mine field of junk orbiting the Earth.
The space environment (like oceans, lakes and rivers on Earth) is becoming contaminated beyond our imagination.
This video raises the serious question - at what point does Earth go dark as satellites that
run much of the modern world are smashed to bits?
Regulation is needed to limit the numbers of satellite launches into these already crowded orbits.
Any war in the heavens would exacerbate the problem beyond our imagination.
Find all Global Network social media links at: https://linktr.ee/space4peace
Two experts, one Russian, the other American, discuss nuclear treaties abandoned, missile defense systems, and weapons in space. Missile Defense Systems are easily converted to offensive nuclear systems and are a great threat to Russia. There are no treaties and no agreements about developing weapon systems in space, another grave threat to humanity.
Here's the special report we discussed in the program. http://inesglobal.net/mbmds-report/
Cooler heads seem to have had enough, especially in the military, since they’re the ones tasked with dying.
Written by Drago Bosnic (Independent geopolitical and military analyst)
Group mentality is an integral part of humanity. It is so ingrained in our minds that it has been the driving force behind nearly every change we have ever made, starting from cavemen to the current early stages of a space-faring civilization. This group mentality has been bringing together entire nations and civilizations for millennia. It has also been bringing them down. One example of the latter, extremely negative group mentality, is taking place right now, in Ukraine, or soon to be, former Ukraine, if cooler heads don’t prevail.
Ukraine has numerous groups with vested interests to push the country in a certain direction. One such group has been directly supported and pushed to power by the political West to turn Ukraine into yet another (neo)colony at the imperial periphery, which would also serve as a major thorn in the side of a geopolitical rival, in this particular case, Russia. Many smaller groups joined this one, but many increasingly more powerful subgroups are emerging within the current power structure, revealing serious fault lines in the current Ukrainian establishment.
Factionalism has become so prevalent, with president Zelensky (ab)using his power under martial law to ban any non-compliant political party, including major opposition parties which have long been seen as “pro-Russian”, although they are more neutral in reality. In such a toxic atmosphere, “traitors” are springing up everywhere. If you criticize the government, if you speak Russian, if you’re a soldier complaining about faulty Western weapons which are getting other soldiers killed, if you’ve posted “controversial” opinions (such as that Russian POWs should not be summarily executed), you’re a “traitor”.
There are many other ways in which you could become a “traitor”. Some could land you in prison, others might be much more consequential, even costing you your life, as was the case with many high-profile journalists or even members of the Ukrainian government who were accused of working for Russian intelligence and then extra-judicially executed. All of this contributes to the atmosphere of fear and distrust in Ukraine, a country which has effectively turned into a failed state. This is especially true now, when various interest groups, powerful oligarchs and criminals are all trying to take “their share of the cake” before the country crumbles.
These various factions are now taking as much loot as they possibly can. At the same time, many are willing to take the risk and wait for dozens of billions promised by the political West, so long they keep sending tens of thousands of Ukrainian men to certain death. Naturally, this isn’t a problem for such “Ukrainian elites”. After all, they’re neither Ukrainian nor elites, since they see Ukraine as a place to loot and then fly off to one of the offshore heavens in which they’ve placed everything stolen from the Ukrainian people. At this point, they’re fighting for scraps, as there is very little left to steal. Due to all this, cooler heads, or should we say “traitors”, seem to have had enough, especially in the military, since they’re the ones tasked with dying to make it all happen.
Vladimir Kornilov, director of the Center for Eurasian Studies, believes that the confrontation between various Kiev regime clans has escalated. “Now in Ukraine, the intraspecific struggle has escalated, which seems to have subsided with the start of the special operation. Political clans clashed among themselves, as a new round of bickering began. Zelensky [feels] that the visible unity that was forced to form after the start of the special operation is revealing its cracks.
A military coup is brewing in Ukraine, as the opinions of the incumbent president and the commander-in-chief differ dramatically, and not for the first time. The “Moskovsky Komsomolets” reports that the popularity of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, General Valery Zaluzhny, is growing by the day. After all, it is Zaluzhny who calls for retreating Ukrainian soldiers and saving their lives at a time when the president believes that “we must stand to the end no matter what”.
Experts talk about the possibility of a direct conflict between Zelensky and Zaluzhny. And the essence of the conflict is that Zaluzhny calls for the withdrawal of Ukrainian soldiers who are nearly encircled in Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, while Zelensky rejects this. Political scientist Sergei Markov notes that the former wants to preserve the viability of the army, while the latter is guided by political motives.
Zelensky benefits from the Russian army now killing as many soldiers of the Ukrainian army as possible. For the population of Ukraine to hate Russians and Russia as much as possible. And this will give Zelensky that energy of hatred that will allow him to fulfill the main task of his American and British overlords – to make Anti-Russia out of Ukraine.
River herring may be small, but their yearly spawning migration has a huge impact on coastal ecosystems and communities along the Northeast coast. Every spring, adult river herring travel inland from the sea in schools ten thousand strong, navigating rivers and climbing man-made fish ladders to spawn in freshwater streams and lakes. Over time, these silvery fish have become interwoven in the traditions of communities along their path.
Damariscotta Mills in Maine is one such place. With the support of NFWF, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the people of Damariscotta Mills have restored their 200-year-old fish ladder, resulting in a massive increase in the number of herring making it upstream.
The Importance of Addressing the Militarization of Space, Submarines, and Threat of Biological Weapons
By Ariel Ky
According to Vladimir Kozin’s report # 72 of 5/29/2022, A TRIPLE JUBILEE: WHY TO REMEMBER?, in the current situation the United States has made it difficult for Russia to negotiate agreements on arms control. He mentions the START-III Treaty, which is still in effect until 2026. It provides for keeping in balance the strategic nuclear missiles of each party to 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads and 800 deployed and non-deployed ICBMs and SLBMs, as well as their heavy strategic bombers.
Kozin summarizes the Agreement on “prevention of incidents on and over high seas prohibited dangerous rapprochement of naval and air vessels of the USSR and the USA while moving in the World Oceans or in the international airspace. Thus, it legally enshrined the then mutual interest of Moscow and Washington to ensure the safety of naval and air vessels in international waters beyond the outer limits of the parties' territorial waters or in the airspace above them.”
He adds that it’s unfortunate that the United States has been unwilling to discuss an agreement on the operation of submarines under the seas, as there have been a number of collisions between Russian and U.S. submarines.
Kozin decries the fact that the Pentagon is nevertheless developing the American global "antimissile shield" by increasing the total stock of interceptor missiles, mainly sea-based, and by improving their guidance accuracy, increasing flight speed and fitting them with individual guided reentry vehicles.
However, he considers that “Russia now has effective means to overcome the global U.S. missile defense system from practically any direction. These capabilities will level out the U.S. ballistic and cruise missile interception infrastructure, despite the enormous sums of money that the USA has allocated to creating a multi-layered ground, sea and space-based missile defense system.”
In a nutshell, Kozin sums up Russia’s dilemma when it comes to negotiating arms control with the United States:
“In the current situation Russia has to be very cautious about addressing the multifaceted problem of arms control, given that Washington is ready, as it has demonstrated more than once, at any time to withdraw from any agreement that it does not like for whatever reason.” He refers in particular to the ABM Treaty, which was “unilaterally and initially denounced by the American side in 2002.” The Russians considered the ABM Treaty as the cornerstone of arms control agreements.
To put it bluntly, how does Russia know if the United States will honor any agreements?
Kozin addresses the shifting geopolitics that Russia must navigate with the war in Ukraine. “Unfortunately, today, when the U.S. ruling circles have set their sights on the destruction of Russia, and statements about the admissibility of nuclear war are appearing in Washington, there is no point in even talking about any new agreement in the arms control system.”
Kozin warns about the arms race happening in the world today. “Many countries have begun developing the latest types of weapons, including those in the "conventional" category, which are capable of delivering warheads to targets at hypersonic speeds while traveling at low altitudes, making them difficult to detect.” This is leading to the militarization of space.
He also mentions the threat of the creation and proliferation of biological weapons, which is growing. In his opinion, an extremely dangerous scenario is developing, fraught with the most unpredictable consequences for humanity.
Kozin then zeroes in on the war in Ukraine. “Earlier this year, the authorities in Kiev, who started talking about nuclear weapons, their drive to the accession to NATO, and their readiness to regain Crimea by military means, added fuel to the fire. The Ukrainian conflict needs to be resolved, based on the complete denazification and demilitarization of this country.”
He insists that the West should stop all military assistance to the Kiev regime and force it to sit down at the negotiating table, and that NATO countries should constructively consider last December's proposals from Moscow on mutual security guarantees.
“Only then will Moscow be able to talk about restoring trust and normalizing the situation, which will allow us to begin the process of negotiating further arms control, a crucial factor in strengthening international security and strategic stability.
Any practical success along this bumpy road, without exaggeration, will bring the well-being and survival of the entire humanity. For the benefits of all.”
To read the report referred to go here
~ Ariel Ky is an American activist living in Mexico
Even though Russia and DPR forces are pushing the Nazi-led Ukraine army further away from the city of Donetsk the shelling of civilians continues.
The reason is the US-NATO have long provided the Kiev military with stand-off weapons they can use to attack Donetsk. This war on the Russian-ethnic populations has always been about genocide of the Ukrainian people who live close to the Russian border.
The US-NATO knew that at some point Moscow had to make a decision to protect the people in the Donbass. The western trap was set long ago.
By Manlio Dinucci (CNGNN – Associazione per un Mondo senza Guerre, Italy)
Elon Musk, the richest man in the world whose wealth nearly doubled in the two pandemic years, offered $44 billion to buy Twitter, which he says would become "the platform for free speech across the country world". Elon Musk owns SpaceX, an aerospace company based in California.
SpaceX makes rockets and satellites to build Starlink, a broadband Internet system that once is completed will cover the entire world. SpaceX has so far put 2,500 satellites into orbit with rockets carrying 50 satellites at a time and plans to place 42,000 Starlink satellites in low orbit occupying 80% of this space.
Starlink was presented as a commercial satellite system but has fundamental military applications. In fact, satellites in low orbit transmit signals at a much higher speed than those in geosynchronous orbit around the equator. The US Army and Air Force fund and test Starlink to use its military capabilities. For example, last March, the US Air Force reported that conventional and nuclear dual-capacity F-35A fighters had carried out data transmission using Starlink satellites at speed 30 times faster than traditional connections.
SpaceX's Starlink satellites are already being used by the Ukrainian military to guide drones, artillery shells, and missiles into Russian positions. This is confirmed by General James Dickinson, head of the US Space Command, who declared to the Senate that "Elon Musk's Starlink demonstrates in Ukraine what the mega-constellations of satellites can do".
Elon Musk's SpaceX is part of the group of ten largest commercial satellite operators collaborating with US Space Command at the Vandenberg military Space Force base in California.
Residents of Popasna (eastern Ukraine) told Izvestia correspondent Alexei Poltoranin how the nationalists shot at houses with civilians and kept them in the basements, not letting them out of the city.
Ukrainian fighters placed firing positions right in the yards, using residential buildings as a shield.
U.S. government strategists are using sanctions as a wrecking ball to demolish the globalized economy. It is a desperate struggle to preserve their global hegemony and a unipolar world. The policy of consciously demolishing supply chains of essential products amounts to a reckless war on defenseless civilian populations. Sanctions disrupt trade worldwide and send shockwaves far beyond the countries directly targeted. This is well understood by financial planners.
“Food shortages — it’s going to be real,” President Joe Biden said in Brussels March 25 at a NATO press conference, an ominous warning reported around the world. “The price of the sanctions is not just imposed upon Russia. It’s imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and our country as well.”
For the first time this intentional disruption is rebounding against the countries imposing the sanctions. Wider sanctions are creating unprecedented inflation — the highest in 40 years — supply chain chaos and sharply higher costs of energy for industries, transport and homes.
Washington is demanding that countries act against their own economic interests and enforce sanctions passed as U.S. legislation, in which they had no voice or prior notice.
In response to the extensive sanctions on Russia, many countries have opened new forms of currency exchanges to carry out trade. This has in turn led to an erosion of dollar supremacy, a bedrock of U.S. economic hegemony.
The U.S. and EU sanctions are creating famines throughout Africa. Sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) are threatened against India and are already imposed on Turkey, a NATO member, for their continuing trade with Russia.
~ Read the rest of this article here