November 18, 2022 - No. 47
Halifax International Security Forum
Ban the Halifax War
Conference!
Make Canada a Zone for Peace!
|
• Shameless
Attempts to Embroil Women in War in the
Name of Peace and Security
For Your Information
• New Appointments to Halifax International Security Forum
NATO Continues Expansion of Firepower Directed at Russia
• U.S. Tests
"Unconventional" Delivery of Air-to-Surface
Cruise Missile in Norway
Halifax International Security Forum
Ban the Halifax War Conference! Make Canada a Zone for Peace!
From November 18-20, the 14th Halifax International Security Forum (HISF), aka Halifax War Conference, convenes as a platform for warmongering and empire-building of U.S. imperialism and the NATO bloc in which Canada is fully embroiled.
Canada
has submitted lock, stock and barrel to the dangerous
imperialist
concoction that the U.S. is the "indispensable nation" to which
every
country must submit or suffer war and destruction. The U.S.,
through
its warmongering North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
created the
HISF as a forum for governments, war industries, media and think
tanks
to work out plans for the use of police powers and the policy of
"Might
Makes Right" to dictate over the countries and peoples of the
world,
violating the UN Charter and international laws with impunity.
The forum is the largest annual gathering of these reactionary and dangerous forces to plan their next moves. Since 2009 Canada has spent tens of millions of dollars from public funds to subsidize it. It shows how deeply integrated Canada is into the U.S. war machine.
This is not a Canadian -- let alone a Halifax -- event. It is a U.S./NATO bloc event organized directly from Washington, DC by an entity now called HFX. The HIFS website says: "With the generous support of the Canadian government, Halifax International Security Forum was founded in 2009 as part of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. HFX became an independent organization in 2011." Following its becoming "independent" it was joined by Foreign Affairs magazine (journal of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations) as media partner, followed by Foreign Policy magazine and Politico, which was bought in August 2021 for more than a billion dollars by the German Springer monopoly. It also now holds forums in London and Taipei and operates out of Ukraine.
It carries out all its criminal, warmongering and nation-wrecking activities in the name of peace, democracy and human rights.
On March 11 this year, Peter Van Praagh, President of the HFX announced:
"The Forum is the preeminent international affairs and security gathering for leaders committed to democratic principles, including senior decision-makers from politics, militaries, media and business. Strategic cooperation among democratic nations has never been more urgent, and we look forward to advancing this vital imperative with democratic leaders in Halifax this November."
Once again the war the U.S. and NATO are waging against Russia to the last Ukrainian is blamed on Russia.
"Ukraine's brave fight to defend its democracy from Vladimir Putin's invasion is a salutary reminder that the world can change with breathtaking speed and that democracies must stand together to meet such critical challenges."
With
the overall aim of criminalizing and isolating Russia by blaming
it for
all the problems the world is facing and to corral financial,
military
and political support for this proxy war by the U.S./NATO and
allies
against Russia, the war in Ukraine is slated to take centre
stage this
year at
the Forum. This includes a campaign to raise $U.S.10 million for
the
"Ukrainian Victory Fund," the result of a direct appeal of
Ukrainian
President Zelensky to the HFX. This is a pittance given that
Ukraine
requires a subsidy of $5 billion a month to stay afloat.
According to
the promo material, the
money will be used by Ukraine "to purchase its own Dedicated
Satellite
Constellation (DSC) with multiple high-resolution satellites
registered
under the Ukrainian flag."
It is called "a strategic game changer which will allow Ukraine to track everything from the movement of Russian soldiers to identifying escape routes for millions of refugees."
The fundraising drive for this piece of military hardware illustrates the role of the HISF and HFX to militarize the life of the people. It is being spearheaded by Club HFX, a "pro-democracy business group" associated with the forum, whose stated aim is:
"[T]o create the productive environment that allows for significant education between government and industry that, in turn, leads to cooperation, action and results on matters of global concern. Club HFX members agree that when responsible industry and democratic governments work together, the result is enhanced public policy that leads to increased prosperity and greater international security."
Among the companies who are members of Club HFX are Boeing which is a builder of military planes, the hedge fund ACTO and OYAK, a pension fund owned by the Turkish armed forces. How many local businesses are targeted to cooperate on pain of exclusion from what should belong to them by right -- to carry on business in Halifax -- remains to be seen.
The problem the HISF will face is that the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine is not achieving the desperate results a faction of the U.S. ruling class desires. This will lend an air of desperation to the entire HISF proceedings this year and make its decisions all the more dangerous as they are in the service of the war profiteers and all the associated hedge funds and narrow private interests which benefit.
The "Informal" or "off the record" session of the HISF related to Ukraine include such topics as "Lessons from Ukraine's Invisible Heroes"; "UAV: Ukraine's Absolute Victory"; "Wonder Weapon: Ukraine's Women"; and "Whole, Free and at Peace: Ukraine After the War."
Discussions at the Forum this year will continue to "de-couple" China. This is a war speak euphemism for directing hostility to China in addition to the campaign against Russia. One of the topics in the "off the record" sessions is called: Decoupling: Russia, Yes. China, Next.
China is far ahead of the United States in the use of alternative sources of energy and communication. Any hope of "decoupling" i.e. cutting off, Russia and China from the economy of the U.S. and its allies, Canada included, will achieve what? The organizers do not say.
There
is nothing honourable in the way that the Trudeau Liberals are
funding
and promoting the HISF. Not only is everything related to
foreign
relations a prerogative power over which the people have no say
whatsoever, but Canada's subservient role increasingly reveals
the need
for the working
class to constitute the nation and vest sovereignty in the
people. The
current situation which makes Canada's Department of National
Defence and its
armed forces directly subordinate to the U.S. Commander-in-Chief
through both NATO and NORAD command structures is dangerous
indeed.
The "security" this conference is based on is a Cold War concept of "collective security" which does not respond to Canada's defence needs or the demand of the peoples of the world for peace and the peaceful resolution of conflicts within and between nations. It responds to the demands of the U.S. imperialists and their NATO warmongering alliance and the biggest arms monopolies and other narrow private interests to increase military spending, step up war preparations and destruction of all interests which clash with their own.
In line with the Liberal government's modus operandi, Canada's participation in the HFX and the launching of wars is presented as a factor for a "more stable and peaceful world," and a "rules-based international order." It is not. The great insecurity felt by the world's peoples today, the destruction of countries and their infrastructure, the displacement of human beings and the refugee crisis around the world are all indicative that human beings have become things which are dispensable. The U.S.-led imperialist wars have devastated and threatened countries and whole regions and continue to do so. This is certainly the case in Ukraine where Russia is blamed for everything while it is the U.S., Britain and their lackeys in Canada which use the people of Ukraine as cannon-fodder in their proxy war between U.S./NATO and Russia.
The
HISF is a block to the peaceful resolution of conflicts,
increasing the
danger of a catastrophic world war. Its agenda is a provocation
against
the people's striving for peace here in Canada and globally
which is
the indispensable condition for the well-being of all. Those
gathering
at the
HISF are enemies of humanity's striving for the recognition of
the
rights of all as the crux of their aspiration to humanize the
social
and natural environment on the world scale.
The forces for peace in Canada demand that the HISF be dismantled. Canada must get out of NATO and NORAD. The economy must be demilitarized and taken in a pro-social direction so that financial resources from the bloated military budget can be diverted to serve the basic needs of people for their security and well being. These would be important steps towards establishing an anti-war government in Canada and making Canada a zone for peace.
Ban the Halifax War Conference!
Get Canada Out of NATO and NORAD!
Organize for an Anti-War Government!
Make Canada a Zone for Peace!
Shameless Attempts to Embroil Women in War in the Name of Peace and Security
As part of its efforts to support the U.S. striving for domination and the integration of the Canadian economy into the U.S. war economy, the Trudeau government claims that it has a "feminist foreign policy," and that the involvement of more women in the armed forces will advance the cause of peace and security. That Canadian foreign policy is dictated by the U.S. and serves its aims is hidden under such banners as "humanitarian intervention" and "responsibility to protect." Canada even has an ambassador for Women, Peace and Security and now women Ministers of Defence, Foreign Affairs and Finance. None of this has addressed the need to end the abuse of women within Canada's armed and police forces or within its so-called liberal democratic institutions as a whole which are dysfunctional in any case, let alone reverse the course of the governments to integrate Canada ever more firmly into the U.S. war machine.
Five
years ago the Halifax International Security Conference (HISF)
established the Peace With Women Fellowship that brings together
"senior active duty female military officers from NATO member
and
partner countries." Each year a select group of fellows
participates in
a three week program of
meetings with "government officials, military leaders, and
experts from
a variety of fields as they travel through the political and
technological capitals of the U.S. and Canada" to "deepen their
understanding of NATO's strategic challenges, as well as the
cutting-edge technologies transforming the
realities of national security." This year for the first time
there
were two such groups, one in March and one in November. Fellows
from
both classes as well as alumnae are also attending the 2022
HISF.
Not out of sight is also the fact that NATO-educated and trained Chrystia Freeland is one of the people touted to be the new Secretary General of NATO, the first woman a faction of the U.S. ruling class may push to take that post.
The aim of the Peace With Women Fellowship is to promote women military leaders into the leading ranks of the armed forces of NATO and its partners as well as the NATO political structures. It is promoted as a mutual admiration society and support group for women military leaders who allegedly aim to be as good as their male counterparts at carrying the warmongering NATO banner. After meeting on November 16 with the Peace With Women Fellows who are participating in the HISF, Defence Minister Anita Anand tweeted "I met with these remarkable leaders today to discuss global security issues and the importance of recruiting more women leaders in our armed forces."
That is the real aim of the Peace With Women Fellowship, an aim that is hostile to the interests of the people of Canada and the world. It is no accident that each year the "women leaders" from the NATO countries and the Five Eyes intelligence agencies which are setting the agenda for governments which are complicit with their nefarious aims are trotted around the U.S. and Canada to meet with government and war industries to "deepen their understanding of NATO's strategic challenges" which are synonymous with U.S. striving for global hegemony.
Canadian
women have a proud history of opposing imperialist war and
mobilizing
for Canada to get out of NATO and NORAD, and against Canadian
interference at the behest of the U.S. and for the self-serving
interests of Canadian mining companies and others in the
internal
affairs of Haiti,
Venezuela and other countries. They have led in opposing
Canada's
participation in wars of aggression launched by the U.S. in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya among others.
The Peace With Women Fellowship has nothing to do with peace and security and everything to do with using the desire of women for peace and security for themselves, their families and all humankind to recruit women into the armed forces and to use women in leadership positions to put a softer human face on crimes against the peoples. The more it goes on, the more the anti-women and anti-Canadian face of the women who join the exclusive club is revealed.
For Your Information
Agenda 2022
Below are the agenda items for the Halifax International Security Forum. As can be seen the agenda is a reflection of the "rules-based international order" that the U.S./NATO warmongers, militarists and arms dealers wish to impose on the world's peoples by force of arms, a permanent state of war at the expense of the well-being of the peoples and the environment.
The agenda is motivated by narrow political and economic aims that endanger all humanity. It is provocative in the extreme as the U.S./NATO brazenly give themselves the right to meddle in the affairs of other countries as they please, start wars, destabilize nations through economic wars and sanctions, and organize for regime change.
The topics reveal the impotence of the U.S./NATO forces to solve any problem humanity is facing, leaving only violence and chaos and rule by police powers.
The Plenary Sessions are "on the record" while the Informal Sessions are held "off the record." The discussion in the "off the record" sessions is based on the Chatham House Rule which states that while participants are free to use the information from these sessions, neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speakers, nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.
Topical Agenda
Plenary Sessions
1. And So, Where is the Security?
2. Cold Weather, High Prices, Long War: Finding Our Winter Resilience
3. Tomorrow's Energy Needed Now
4. The Disinformation Nations: Kidnapping Our Citizens, Corrupting Our Officials, Stealing Our Stuff
5. Food Security: May We Have Some More?
6. Mind the Gap: Keeping Our Tech Superiority
7. H2O: Heatwave 2 Overflow
8. The Future of Democracy? Democracy.
Informal Sessions
1. Afghanistan: Always
2. Arctic Allies Align
3. Canada's Quiet Tech Triumphs
4. Coping with Climate: Africa Enlightens
5. Cyber Specific Strategies: Lessons from Ukraine's Invisible Heroes
6. Deadly Disease: Deal with It
7. Decoupling: Russia, Yes. China, Next.
8. Deep Sea Nodules, Clean Fusion, Dilithium Crystals: Finding Resources for Winning the Future
9. Expanding Space
10. Female Freedom Fighters: Meeting Morality in Iran
11. Finding Meaning in Europe
12. Here Comes the Son: The Philippines and Other Adventures in Southeast Asian Democracy
13. Israel and its Arab Allies Making a Modern Middle East
14. New NATO: Never Again Treaty Organization
15. The Next Quad: Japan + Aukus (Jaukus)
16. Nuclear War: 60 Years On, Preventing (While Preparing for) the Unimaginable
17. Our Extremists, Our Existential Enemies
18. Russia's Future: Russia's Past
19. Securing the Sovereignty of Smaller States
20. Still America
21. Syria: Can You See Me Now?
22. Taming Terrorists in the Sahel
23. Tanks or Tech? The 21st Century Battlefield
24. Tech Diplomacy: Statecraft or Stagecraft
25. Tik Tok, Tick Tock: Treasuring Taiwan's Time
26. Truss Me, I'm English
27. Turning Sanctions Into Strategy
28. UAV: Ukraine's Absolute Victory
29. UN: The Best the World Has Done. So Far . . .
30. Wartime Ready: Rearming Our Allied Economies
31. Western Hemisphere, Meet the World
32. Wonder Weapon: Ukraine's Women
33. Whole, Free and at Peace: Ukraine After the War
Use of Taiwan to Interfere in China's Internal Affairs, Stage Provocations and Justify War Preparations
In 2020, HFX welcomed the Taiwanese arms company, Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation (AIDC) as a sponsor. AIDC was originally founded in 1969 under the authority of the Republic of China Air Force and later privatized. AIDC is responsible for the development of Taiwan's Indigenous Defense Fighter, created when diplomatic agreements between the U.S. and China prevented the sale of U.S. fighters to Taiwan. AIDC is a partner of Boeing.
The presence of an arms manufacturer from Taiwan at the Halifax International Security Forum -- used as a cat's paw by the U.S. imperialists in their dealings with China -- is in line with the war conference's preoccupation with China as a purported "threat to democracy" in which it is striving to immerse Canada.
New Appointments to Halifax International
Security Forum
New appointments to the Halifax International Security Forum (HISF) include a new vice-chair and three new Board Members. The appointments illustrate how integrated the HISF is with U.S. military power. They illustrate how reactionaries who serve narrow private U.S. imperialist interests are recruited and also the direction of the HISF to exacerbate problems of grave concern facing the peoples, not provide them with solutions.
"HFX is honored to have such distinguished individuals join our Board," said HFX Chair Janice Stein. "Their combined experience will deepen and diversify the Board's knowledge as we carry out our work."
New Vice-Chair
The HISF appointed Mark Lippert, a Board member since November 18, 2020, as vice chair. He had attended the 2018 and 2019 HISF on behalf of Boeing. He was vice president for international affairs at Boeing, a HISF corporate sponsor, from 2017 to May 2020. Boeing is a leading contender for the multi-billion Canadian fighter jets program.
Lippert is head of Government Affairs and Public Policy, YouTube Asia Pacific (May 2020 to present) and Senior Advisor (Non-Resident), Korea Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) (2017-present); and member of the board of trustees, Asia Foundation (2017-present).
The CSIS, founded during the Cold War in 1962, has a large number of former top government officials among its ranks and is largely funded by industry and Pentagon contributions. The Asia Foundation was one of the most prominent CIA fronts for over a decade, with offices and representatives in all the major capitals of Asia. In his book, The CIA and the Cult of lntelligence, Victor Marchetti writes that one of the prime missions of the Asia Foundation was "to disseminate throughout Asia a negative vision of mainland China, North Vietnam, and North Korea."[1]
Prior assignments: Lippert's background in intelligence and diplomacy with the Obama presidency dealt principally with Asia. He was the United States Ambassador to south Korea from 2014 to 2017. Prior to that he was foreign policy advisory to Senator Barack Obama for two years and Deputy Director of the Obama-Biden Transition Team for Foreign Policy. In 2009 he was Chief of Staff for the National Security Council, under General James L. Jones Jr., former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, and later Chairman of the Atlantic Council. As Chairman he merged the staffs of the Homeland Security Council and the National Security Council into a single National Security Staff. Lippert then spent two years serving as an intelligence officer with the Navy SEALs.
In 2011 he was named Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs in the Department of Defense (DOD). Lippert's most important accomplishments are said to be "building defense relations with friends, partners, and allies in the region." Stars and Stripes reported that Lippert "played a key role in DOD's push to deepen defense ties with Asian nations as the Pentagon implements a new strategy aimed at building U.S. influence in Asia ... and has transformed our relationship in the Pacific."
In 2013 Lippert was named Chief of Staff for then Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel.
New HISF Board Members
Yun Sun, a Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the East Asia Program at the Stimson Center since March 7, 2018 and Director of its China Program which she joined in October 2012. She is a prolific commentator on Chinese foreign policy, U.S.-China relations, and China's relations with neighbouring countries in Asia. On April 12, 2018, Sun gave testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), outlining what were said to be China's contingency plans on north Korea, its desired endgame, and the role of great power competition in China's Contingency Planning on North Korea.
Sun was previously a visiting fellow at the Center for Northeast Asia Policy Studies at the Brookings Institute, where she focused on China's national security decision-making system. She was the China Analyst for the International Crisis Group based in Beijing from 2008 to 2011, where she was said to specialize in cutting-edge issues of China's foreign policy, "especially those toward conflict countries."
The International Crisis Group has as its chair Thomas R. Pickering, a former director of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Its executive committee includes former Council director George Soros and member Morton Abramowitz. The chair of its advisory board is CFR member and leading Council donor Rita E. Hauser. Hauser, a Republican, is also chair of the International Peace Institute and was appointed to the President's Intelligence Advisory Board by both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Over 50 per cent of its $20 million annual budget comes from governments, mostly NATO members; about 25 percent from big foundations like Ford, Gates, Carnegie, Hewlett, Merck, Mott, and Open Society (which is mainly funded by George Soros); and the rest from corporations, such as Chevron, BHP Billiton, and Royal Bank of Scotland, and notables like Soros.
The Stimson Center is a leading Washington think tank. CFR members Barry Blechman and Michael Krepon founded this organization in 1989. Its board includes Alton Frye, a former senior vice president of CFR, Thomas Pickering, a former CFR director, and Council member Lincoln Bloomfield.[2]
Yun Sun attended HISF 2014, 2017, 2018 and contributed to the 2020 anti-China Handbook
Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, former president of the Republic of Croatia (2015-2020). She was educated and trained in the United States, attending Los Alamos High School in New Mexico, graduate studies as a Fulbright Scholar at George Washington University in Washington and Boston and then became Croatia's Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration on February 17, 2005. Her main task was to guide Croatia into the European Union and NATO. She returned to the U.S. as Croatian ambassador (2008 to 2011). She was promoted to NATO Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy (2011-2014) -- the chief propaganda assistant to NATO Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former Danish prime minister.
Grabar-Kitarovic was elected president of Croatia on February 19, 2015 with a meagre 50.54 per cent. Her majority was enabled by receiving 21,000 votes from Croatians living abroad. She was a member of Franjo Tudjman's HDZ Party (the Croatian Democratic Union), seen by many as the successors to the Nazi Ustasha fascists. When Croatia seceded from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on June 25, 1991, Tudjman's government became the first in Europe since World War II to rehabilitate fascism. Tudjman was mainly financed with funds from the U.S. and Canada, which he visited twice during the late 1980s, including the Georgian centre in Norwich, Ontario. He named one of his funders -- a Croatian Canadian and co-owner of a pizza chain in Ottawa -- his Defence Minister.
Tudjman adopted the checker-board flag and currency that had been used by the Ustasha regime during World War II, even as he denied it had carried out genocide. Streets and buildings were renamed for Ustasha official Mile Budak, who signed the regime's anti-Semitic laws, and more than three thousand anti-fascist monuments were demolished during the 1990s. A racist campaign was launched in the Croatian mass media, depicting Serbs as sub-humans. Tudjman repeatedly called for German and U.S. intervention in Yugoslavia to break up that country in the strategic Balkans. On May 29, 1992, CNN Prime News reported that Tudjman, speaking in English, appealed for the U.S. Sixth Fleet to come to the Croatian port of Dubrovnik. The U.S. strove to supplant Germany as the leading external power in Croatia. In 1993, "retired" U.S. military officers began retraining the Croatian army, which also began receiving Pentagon-supplied arms. In return, the U.S. was given bases on Croatian islands in the Adriatic. This relationship developed into a "strategic partnership."
In May 2018 Grabar-Kitarovic paid tribute at a memorial in Bleiburg in Austria and two other locations dedicated to Croatian fascist troops and civilians killed by Yugoslav Partisan forces. She has publicly stated that she "adores" the fascist pop star Marko Perkovic, who goes by the stage name "Thompson" after the American submachine gun he toted for Croatia during the internecine Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. "Thompson" is known for his glorification of the German Nazi- and Vatican-created and racially pure puppet state of Ustasha fascism during World War II and praising the mass murder of Serbs in World War II. In his songs, "Thompson" has verses such as "Oh, Neretva, flow down, drive the Serbs into the blue Adriatic Sea," and "Shining star above Metkovic, send our greetings to Ante Pavelic."[3] During the FIFA World Cup in 2018, members of the Croatian national football team, who had competed in Ukraine, were caught on video singing a song with well-known fascist lyrics -- originally a song from the same "Thompson" whose concerts are banned in The Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland.
Croatia's support of the rehabilitation of fascism extends to Canada. After attending the 2016 HISF, Grabar-Kitarovic was said to have gratefully accepted the gift of an old Ustasha checkered Croatian state flag from a University of Toronto professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy during a visit to Ontario. Croatia finances the despicable "Victims of Communism" monument in Ottawa which now includes the fascist Ustasha who ruled a Nazi puppet state as such a "victim."
The Three Seas Initiative
Grabar-Kitarovic's appointment reveals that the U.S-NATO subversion of Central and Eastern Europe in opposition to Russian and German takeover is high on the HISF agenda. She is closely associated with the Three Seas Initiative. This refers to the creation of a "North-South corridor" from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic and the Black Sea. It was initiated in November 2014, by the Atlantic Council in Washington, headed by General Jones, together with Central Europe Energy Partners (CEEP), a lobbying organization for Polish, Lithuanian and Romanian energy companies. They published a detailed analysis entitled "Completing Europe" which led to the creation of this "North-South corridor."[4]
On September 29, 2015, at the initiative of Grabar-Kitarovic, the Atlantic Council co-hosted an informal high-level Adriatic-Baltic-Black Sea Leaders' Meeting in New York City which would later grow to be the Three Seas Initiative. The Three Seas Initiative was launched that autumn by Poland's President Andrzej Duda and Grabar-Kitarovic. It met for their first summit in Dubrovnik, Croatia in August 2016.
It is a platform to which twelve predominantly eastern European countries belong -- from the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) via the Visegrad countries (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary) and Austria to Slovenia and Croatia or Romania and Bulgaria. It gets its name from the fact that its members connect three seas: the Baltic Sea, the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea. A central motive in founding the Initiative was that a good decade after the EU's eastward expansion, a clear east-west prosperity gap persists. In 2018 the twelve countries -- the data still included Great Britain -- accounted for 28 per cent of EU territory and 22 per cent of the EU population, but only 10 per cent of the EU's gross domestic product.[5] In addition, today -- 30 years after the system change in Eastern Europe -- the traffic routes are still dominated by east-west connections; these have been systematically expanded since 1990 in the interests of German industry, which has relocated a large part of its production to countries with low wages in the east of the continent. North-South connections, which favour the establishment of economic relations between the eastern countries and could offer alternatives to one-sided economic dependence, especially on Germany, are still relatively poorly developed. The Three Seas Initiative is intended to remedy this to the benefit of the U.S., not Germany.
Grabar-Kitarovic is also a member of the private, by invitation-only Trilateral Commission (TC), an elite body of oligopolies from Europe, North America and Japan. It was founded by David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1972. Brzezinski agreed to serve as the director of the new organization, with Rockefeller as the North American chair. David Shoup, author of a major study of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes that its role lies in "identifying the central ideological and programmatic problems of the larger U.S. alliance system (roughly corresponding to the U.S. informal empire) and formulating neo-liberal policy proposals to address them. These proposals included a concerted offensive against third world revolution by pursuing the integration of the neocolonies into the international capitalist system and developing a common front against challenges from the left. The TC, like the CFR, privately brings together key capitalist-class leaders, especially those representing transnational finance capital and their professional-class allies to identify and handle developing conflicts and develop consensus on maintaining and expanding the system."
She is an independent member of the International Olympic Committee, and was Chair of the Council of Women World Leaders from 2019 to 2020.
Joshua J. Omojuwa is founder and Chief Strategist at The Alpha Reach, one of Nigeria's foremost Digital Media companies, as well as the convener of The Conversations On Democracy & Development (CODED). He was an HISF participant 2014-2020.
He is founder and chief strategist, Alpha Reach; and founder and volunteer, Omojuwa Foundation, Nigeria.
In 2019, he became a British Council Chevening Scholar and recently bagged a Master's degree from University College London where he studied Behaviour Change at the Faculty of Brain Sciences.
He is the author of the best-selling book, Digital: The New Code of Wealth.
Notes
1. Victor Marchetti and John Marks, The CIA and the Cult of lntelligence (New York, 1975), p.178; see pp. 178-9 for a description of the Asia Foundation.)
2. See Four New Faces at the Stimson Center.
3. Ante Pavelic was the Croatian who founded and headed the fascist ultranationalist organization known as the Ustase in 1929 and served as dictator of the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Drzava Hrvatska, (NDH), a fascist puppet state built out of parts of occupied Yugoslavia by the authorities of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, from 1941 to 1945. Pavelic and the Ustase persecuted many racial minorities and political opponents in the NDH during the war, including Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascists, becoming one of the key figures of the genocide of Serbs, the Porajmos and the Holocaust in the NDH.
4. Completing Europe. From the North-South Corridor to Energy, Transportation, and Telecommunications Union, Washington 2014.
5. The Three Seas Initiative Summit: European Commission Investments in Connectivity Projects, European Commission, July 2018.
NATO Continues Expansion of Firepower Directed at Russia
U.S. Tests "Unconventional" Delivery of Air-to-Surface Cruise Missile in Norway
On November 9, U.S. Special Forces tested the "unconventional" delivery of an air-to-surface cruise missile over Norwegian airspace in the Arctic, from the Andoya Space Range. The test involved pushing a "palletized munitions system" contained in a steel cage out the cargo ramp at the rear of a Lockheed C-130 Hercules military transport aircraft. The cage stabilized under parachutes, then a sling gate opened and the missile dropped out before its engine ignited to carry it toward its target.
Wikipedia states, "The size of the deployment boxes is configurable to fit mission or dropship dimensions supporting the launch; ranging from four to 45 AGM-158 JASSM-ER cruise missiles to strike targets at a range of 925 km (575 mi) to 1,900 km (1,200 mi) when large numbers of JASSM-XR become available in 2024."
Stars and Stripes states that this was the "first-ever demonstration in Europe of Rapid Dragon, an experimental program that uses standard air drop procedures to launch air-to-surface cruise missiles."
Special Operations Command Europe's (SOCEUR) Lt. Col. Lawrence Melnicoff told Stars and Stripes that this method of delivery puts such offensive weaponry within range of Russia. The location of this particular test underscores this aim, as the Andoya Space Range is roughly 500 km from Russian territory and about 1,900 km from Moscow, while the eastern limit of Norway's Arctic shares a border with Russia and is roughly 1,500 km away from Moscow.
"We are intentionally trying to be provocative without being escalatory," said Melnicoff, who further claimed that this escalation of arms is meant to be a deterrent against "Russian aggression, expansionist behaviour." In trying to portray Russia as an aggressor nation, he did not provide the context that the unchecked expansion of the aggressive NATO war alliance toward Russia since the end of the Cold War is destabilizing all of Europe.
The Norway exercise coincided with similar drills in Poland and Romania, part of U.S. European Command's Atreus program, which aims to expand the options for weaponry available to U.S. allies. While these allies may lack the long-range bombers of the U.S., the use of cargo aircraft equipped with the Rapid Dragon system can give them similar capabilities. According to Melnicoff, the system also has the potential to be paired with other types of materiel, including hypersonic weapons and swarm drones.
(To access articles individually click on the black headline.)
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca