YouSaid · the spoken record

Haiphong

lines on the record
14
first
2023-08-17
most recent
2023-08-17
sittings or episodes
1
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un-security-council

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  1. “The United States and its Western partners — and anyone else who goes along with them — must learn to operate within the framework of international law, like all other Member States. Otherwise the world will face the continued threat of instability and war, whatever the efforts of the Security Council and other organs of the United Nations.”

    2023-08-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9399 (2023) · source

  2. “Ukraine therefore finds itself in the eye of a much larger storm, one created by a policy of great Power competition, or what is better termed great Power confrontation led by the United States. Peace and stability are not possible as long as the West pursues a foreign policy of unilateral interventionism in Ukraine to fulfil its larger geopolitical goal of unipolarity. That policy runs completely counter to the principles of the Charter, and the continued flow of arms to Ukraine is a violation of Article 2, paragraph 3 of the Charter, which requires Member States to resolve conflicts in a peaceful manner. Those weapons are only prolonging the conflict, with devastating consequences.”

    2023-08-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9399 (2023) · source

  3. “Indeed, it would be simplistic to claim that it is the profits from Western arms sales alone that are driving a wedge into the cause of peace. The United States, where I live, has a long record of waging unilateral military conflict on a global scale in contravention of the Charter, with more than 800 foreign military bases, 11 command structures and a public military budget of nearly $1 trillion. There is now an open conflict within the United States foreign- policy establishment over whether arming Ukraine to maximum effect is a good idea or whether other military matters deserve more attention. A leaked memorandum from Air Force top brass claims that the United States must prepare to go to war with China by 2025.”

    2023-08-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9399 (2023) · source

  4. “The top 25 Western military contractors have seen their revenues increase by 11 per cent over the past year to $212 billion. Arms sales are expected to increase to a total of $450 billion by the end of 2023, an increase of $47 billion, thanks to the Ukraine conflict. That bonanza is therefore making the slim minority of the richest people richer, while the rest of the world is left to resolve the myriad problems left in the wake of the conflict. One of the primary responsibilities of the Security Council, as stated in the Charter of the United Nations, is the maintenance of international peace and stability. The ongoing Western arms sales to Ukraine are not only a violation of the Charter of the United Nations, but they also reveal the geopolitical realities that undergird the conflict.”

    2023-08-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9399 (2023) · source

  5. “Who or what benefits from Western arms being poured into Ukraine? Certainly not Ukraine, if the results of the counteroffensive and the conflict overall are the measure, and certainly not global peace and stability, either. For all the benefits that come from an emerging multipolar world, the incessant militarization of Ukraine that the West is pushing is helping fuel a worldwide economic slowdown and the potential for conflict between major Powers conflict that could very well take on a nuclear character. A simple answer to that question, therefore, is the arms industry and those corporations that have profited mightily from the conflict. Shareholders of the largest military contractors have been paid handsomely since the conflict began, as profits have soared.”

    2023-08-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9399 (2023) · source

  6. “Zelenskyy has blamed the West again and again for its lacklustre supply of arms in conjunction with the months-long delay in the counteroffensive against Russia. That counteroffensive is now in its third month and the results have been disastrous. Around 30 per cent of the weapons that NATO has supplied to Ukraine has been destroyed. The death toll on the battlefield is staggering, with an estimated 43,000 members of the Ukrainian forces killed and reports surfacing that local morgues in Ukraine are seeing nearly double the numbers of bodies since the counteroffensive began. And for what? The optimism of Western officials and diplomats has waned, with many now acknowledging that Ukraine has not even penetrated Russia’s first defensive line. The better question, then, is cui bono?”

    2023-08-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9399 (2023) · source

  7. “And they are running out of that ammunition, and we are low on it.” I am not even touching on issues of personnel, training and other logistical problems here. All of those problems have come to a head in the past several months, in which there has been much discussion of Ukraine’s spring counteroffensive. For months, political and military officials in the West made regular mentions in broadcasts to media outlets about an oncoming victorious offensive that would take large amounts of territory from Russia. Yet at the same time Ukraine, and in particular its Head of State, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has repeatedly demanded that the West increase its supply of heavy weaponry, including air power.”

    2023-08-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9399 (2023) · source

  8. “But such experts have in recent months come clean about the limitations of Western firepower. Camille Grand, former Assistant Secretary General for Defence Investment at NATO, stated that “a day in Ukraine is a month or more in Afghanistan”. He was referencing the fact that Ukraine burns through nearly half of the artillery produced in the United States per month in a single day. Former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO James Stavridis acknowledged in May that analysts were correct to assume that Ukraine is burning through a year’s worth of United States production monthly. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and United States President Joe Biden have both acknowledged those weapon shortages, with Biden admitting during his announcement of cluster munitions for Ukraine that “[t]his is a war relating to munitions.”

    2023-08-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9399 (2023) · source

  9. “Furthermore, NATO has essentially armed Ukrainian army after Ukrainian army at the expense of its own arsenal. The New York Times sounded the alarm eight months ago that Ukraine is the location of an artillery and tank war, the likes of which the West was not prepared to fight in the long term. If that is the case, then rational minds may assume that the West would cease its supply of deadly weaponry. But the opposite has occurred. The United States approved the sending of cluster munitions to Ukraine last month — the same munitions that continue to explode on and kill civilians in Laos, decades after the United States invasion there, and which have long been condemned by more than 100 countries worldwide. I am a journalist and a geopolitical analyst, not a military expert.”

    2023-08-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9399 (2023) · source

  10. “That Russia’s security, and for that matter, the security of the entire world, has been dismissed so summarily by the West is proof enough that the ceaseless supply of arms to Ukraine endangers peace. The weapons sent to Ukraine therefore do not represent some kind of “arsenal of democracy”, as some in the United States foreign policy establishment tout. NATO countries have already provided $40 billion in weapons to Ukraine over the span of the conflict, and we have witnessed those weapons become heavier, deadlier and more provocative, stymying the possibility of a negotiated settlement to the conflict. Many of those weapons have landed on the black market and into the hands of drug cartels, criminal organizations and indeed neo-Nazi and fascist elements, many of which now make up parts of Ukraine’s armed forces.”

    2023-08-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9399 (2023) · source

  11. “By late January 2022, the United States announced 200,000 pounds of what was deemed “lethal aid” to Ukraine in an obvious signal of escalation. In April 2022, both United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin travelled to Ukraine just weeks after a peace deal fell through and admitted that the United States was all in on winning the current fight in Ukraine. What they meant by that was that the United States was fully committed to corralling its own military arsenal and that of its NATO partners in a proxy war against Russia, to the last Ukrainian. The absence of diplomacy in times of conflict can lead only to escalation.”

    2023-08-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9399 (2023) · source

  12. “Those arms have been instrumental in some of the bloodiest wars of the past two generations, including the United States-led invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. United States arms play a major role in escalating tensions in the Korean peninsula and in the military encirclement of Russia and China, which has ushered in a new Cold War and all the risks that come with it. Secondly, it was never Russia that needed to be forced to the negotiating table. Members of the Security Council may remember that back in December 2021, Russia provided draft proposals of security guarantees to the United States and NATO that were meant to serve as the basis for dialogue and negotiation. They were summarily rejected.”

    2023-08-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9399 (2023) · source

  13. “On 2 June, United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave a speech in Helsinki, in which he stated that military support for Ukraine must be prioritized over diplomacy. The argument goes that a steady supply of arms to Ukraine will turn the tide on the battlefield and force Russia to come to the negotiating table. Blinken is supposed to be the United States’ top diplomat, not a champion of escalating conflict. However, the sentiment he communicated has been a foundational feature of the justifications given for the West’s continued flow of arms to Ukraine. The facts, however, undermine Blinken’s assertions. First, United States and Western arms are anathema to resolving conflict. The United States is the biggest arms exporter in the world, accounting for approximately 40 per cent of all global arms sales.”

    2023-08-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9399 (2023) · source

  14. “Mr. Haiphong: Today I am here as a journalist who has dedicated the last 10 years of my life to writing about and speaking out against the long record of human rights abuses and war crimes committed by my country of birth, the United States. I do not consider it a hobby or even a profession, but rather a duty to all of humankind and those who want to see a better and more peaceful future. I am here too as a United States citizen who has witnessed tens of billions of United States tax dollars go to funding and arming a proxy war against Russia, while ordinary people in the United States suffer from rising levels of poverty, homelessness, suicide and economic insecurity. As Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1958, true peace is not merely the absence of tension but the presence of justice.”

    2023-08-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9399 (2023) · source