1.

Six months have passed since Barack Obama took office as President of the imperialist state of America under the boastful slogan 'Change America and change the world'. Has 'change' really been brought about in the world since the days of 'Bush's war'? Definitely not!

It is true that the Obama administration has started talks with the Russian government led by Putin and Medvedev for 'nuclear arms reduction', issuing a call for 'concrete steps towards a world without nuclear weapons'. True, also, that he has proffered 'dialogue' to North Korea, Iran and other 'enemies of America' that are promoting the development of nuclear weapons.

In actual fact, however, Obama's attempts to stop the 'spread of nuclear weapons' intended alongside 'nuclear arms reduction' talks with Russia, have suffered a setback owing to the underground nuclear test conducted by Kim Jong Il's North Korean government. They have already lost their momentum.

The Kim Jong Il regime is vehemently calling for a condemnation of the UN Security Council resolution to impose new sanctions on North Korea, including ship inspections and financial restrictions (proposed by the US and Japanese governments - after much argument aimed at brokering a compromise with China and Russia - and carried unanimously). The North Korean government is now preparing to test long-range ballistic missiles again, and even to carry out a third round of nuclear testing. Kim Jong Il, said to be in serious condition, is intending to ensure the lineal transfer of power to his third son, Kim Jong Un. The reason why he stubbornly resorts to such military brinkmanship is that he is anxious to make the Obama-led US administration acknowledge North Korea as a nuclear power to gain recognition of his and his successor's nepotistic rule, i.e. a security guarantee for his regime.

Still fresh in Kim's memory must be the fact that George W. Bush, the war-crazed former president of the militarist empire of America as the 'world's sole superpower', launched military aggression against Iraq to topple the Saddam Hussein government based on a blatant lie, namely that Saddam secretly possessed weapons of mass destruction. As in the case of Iraq, Kim's North Korea was branded as a 'rogue state' by Bush, the man who led the world's worst 'rogue state'. By drawing lessons from the 'tragedy of Iraq' and by taking advantage of Obama's policy of 'dialogue with enemy countries', the Kim regime is desperately seeking to make the world recognize that North Korea is a country with nuclear capability.

Well aware of all this, the Obama administration is giving the cold shoulder to this regime, saying that it refuses to acknowledge North Korea as a nuclear state, and that it would not reward North Korea's provocation. It has strengthened political as well as economic sanctions against this country, while at the same time having placed its forces in South Korea, together with the ROK forces, on a war footing. It is prepared once again to mobilize the missile defence (MD) system set up in Japan for actual operations, working in close cooperation with the Japanese Aso government.

Thus, military tensions between the US-Japan-South Korea and North Korea are rapidly reaching a flashpoint in East Asia, with a particular focus on the Korean Peninsula.

This is not all. The Obama administration, which ostentatiously stresses 'dialogue with enemy countries', now faces a complete deadlock in the implementation of its policies both for the Middle East and for Afghanistan.

To take the initiative in achieving 'peace' in the Middle East, Obama pressed the Israeli government to accept the 'two-state solution', based largely on the Oslo Agreement in 1993 and supplemented with proposals by Saudi Arabian King Abdullah in 2007.

The fanatic Zionist Netanyahu government is feigning compromise with Obama's initiative, but is in fact demanding the disarmament of the Hamas militias who are fighting for the liberation of Palestine. It is rejecting the US proposition that it halt Jewish settlement activities in Palestinian territories. On the contrary, it is asking for a 'removal of the threat from Iran'. By so doing, it is effectively rejecting Obama's initiative.

In Iran today, Ahmadinejad has attained the position of President again, though shaken by huge protest demonstrations staged by 'reformist' forces against the 'rigged election'. His government is intending to strengthen further the 'anti-US imperialist, anti-Zionist' front with Hamas and Hezbollah as its spearhead. Driven by a growing fear that the state of Israel may be on the verge of ruin, the Netanyahu government is watching vigilantly for a chance to strike Iran's nuclear facilities from the air.

In Afghanistan, US forces are being met with fierce attacks by Taliban fighters, despite the presence of 12,000 reinforcements. To combat this, the Americans are carrying out indiscriminate attacks on the Afghan people, even using white phosphorous shells, the 'weapons of the Devil'. This has led the US puppet Karzai government (which is today no more than a local government in Kabul) to foment a growing distrust of the US government. So profound is this distrust, in fact, that it has started asking Chinese, Russian and Iranian rulers for help, while petitioning the US forces to stop their 'brutal air strikes'.

2.

Speaking in Prague on April 5th, Barack Obama did say 'I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons'.

But this statement for 'a world without nuclear weapons' is nothing but an attempt to gild his 'arms reduction' proposal, for the greater convenience of talks with the Russian government aimed at 'nuclear arms reduction' in the immediate interests of the imperialist state of America.

In fact, Obama's statement continued: 'I'm not naive. This goal will not be reached quickly - perhaps not in my lifetime', and therefore, 'as long as these weapons exist, the United States will maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defence to our allies'. Could there be a more perfect example of an Obama-style syllogism?

The Obama administration's proposal for 'nuclear arms reduction', for which it is negotiating with Russia, merely aims to reduce the warheads of strategic nuclear weapons, which it sees as 'dinosaurian armaments of the Cold War type' (Russia's warheads exceed those of the US in number). In reality, behind the reduction talks with the Russian government, this government is bent on upgrading its tactical nuclear weapons for 'use in combat situations', which are exempted from the list of reduction. It is thus steamrollering its way to qualitatively strengthening its nuclear capability as a whole.

Another purpose of the Obama administration is to prevent North Korea, Iran and other 'anti-American' states from possessing nuclear arms under the pretext of 'nuclear non-proliferation' and contain these adversaries. This imperialist government is still maintaining the double standard, which allows India and Pakistan to possess nuclear weapons but prohibits North Korea and Iran from doing the same. Obama's so-called strengthening of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty based on US cooperation with China and Russia is only aimed at asserting the state egoism of five nuclear powers, i.e. the US, Russia, China, France and the UK - especially that of the world's greatest nuclear superpower, imperialist America.

In a word, Obama's initiative for 'nuclear arms reduction' is just one side of his two-faced policy; it goes hand in hand with US 'arms expansion', namely the qualitative strengthening of its nuclear military power against China and Russia (with its core in the deployment of missile defences, along with the upgrading of tactical nuclear weapons).

The Obama government is merely intending to lead nuclear reduction talks in a form that is advantageous to US state interests; that is, to maintain its overwhelming ascendancy in nuclear military power with a view to reviving the militarist empire of America's unipolar dominance over the world. It is also so designed, amid the unprecedented slump in the US economy, to cut down even a bit of maintenance and storage costs of nuclear stockpiles, since they have become a serious financial burden for the US government, which is already expending huge sums in bailing out financial institutions and the former Big Three auto monopolies.

3.

President Obama says, 'As long as nuclear weapons exist, the United States will maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defence to our allies.' As is clearly seen in this statement, the Obama administration is fully intending to maintain its ascendancy in nuclear military capability over Russia and China - seeing them as major 'adversaries' that block the way to a revival of its unipolar dominance - while it is trying to make use of 'reduction talks' as a means to impose restrictions on these states that are intensely reinforcing their nuclear military capabilities against US imperialism.

For this very reason, competition in the strengthening of nuclear military power has just entered a new phase between the imperialist state of America, aiming to restore its global dominance, and the governments of China and Russia, scheming to end America's domination of the world as a sole superpower.

The Obama administration is scheming to deploy more missile defences in Japan and Hawaii under the pretext of North Korea's movements for nuclear testing and ballistic missile launches. As for the deployment of missile defences in Central Europe, however, it is taking an equivocal attitude, saying that it has not yet made its final decision. The Putin-Medvedev-led Russian government, meanwhile, is politically shaking the Obama administration, stating that it is ready to accept a drastic reduction of nuclear armaments if the US abandons the plan of the deployment. By saying that 'the relationship between strategic offensive weapons and defensive weapons [i.e. missile defences] should be clearly laid out', it is demanding that the arms reduction list should include strategic delivery vehicles as well as warheads, and that the US should halt its deployment of missile defences in Central Europe. In addition, with the aim of breaking the US control of outer space, the basis of its ascendancy in nuclear capabilities, the Russian government (in cooperation with the Chinese government) has embarked on an expansion of armaments in outer space, including the joint launches of intelligence-gathering or reconnaissance satellites, etc.

Amid this situation, the Chinese government led by Hu Jintao has started building an aircraft carrier for the first time. It is also engaged in developing various armaments, including most advanced anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs). It finds itself confronted by the Obama government's offensive to reorganize and strengthen its military bases in Guam and Okinawa (and on the mainland of Japan) as frontline bases for attacking China and Russia, followed by its subordinate ally, the Aso government of Japan. In opposition to this offensive, the Chinese government is strengthening its nuclear military power against the US for the immediate purpose of securing command of the East and South China Seas. (China's military expenditure is now the second largest in the world.)

In alliance with each other, the rulers of these two states - China and Russia - are strengthening and expanding the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) as a virtual military alliance. (Russian rulers are also intent on forming a joint force of the CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization) made up of CIS member states.) The SCO summit, held in Yekaterinburg, Russia, in June, was attended for the first time by Sri Lanka and Belarus, in their capacity as 'dialogue partners'. Chinese and Russian rulers are thus steadily expanding an international encircling net against US imperialism.

Clashes between the US, on the one hand, and China and Russia on the other are not limited to such military or political rivalries. Hit by the tsunami of financial turmoil, with its hypocentre in the US imperialist economy, the world is plunged today into an unprecedented economic crisis - a synergistic aggravation of international financial bankruptcy with a simultaneous worldwide depression. In the midst of this unheard-of economic crisis, conflicts are intensifying between the three poles of (1) the US-Japan alliance, (2) the group of emerging and developing economies led by China and Russia, and (3) the European Union led by the Franco-German axis. Against US imperialism, which shows a growing tendency towards trade protectionism, as shown in the 'Buy American' provisions, Chinese and European rulers are running their course towards forming or strengthening their respective economic spheres based on the yuan and the euro, respectively. Above all, China's rulers have started to challenge the US Empire, which has until now arrogantly imposed American standards upon the rest of the world. Clearly, China now has launched an offensive to seize economic supremacy from US imperialism by strengthening ties with Russia, its ally.

Right now, Chinese and Russian rulers are challenging the dollar-based international monetary system, which has supported US domination over the world. They are even daring to undermine it. The Hu-led Chinese government maintains that SDRs (special drawing rights from the International Monetary Fund) should be made to function as an international currency of settlement, and has in fact disclosed its intention to gradually replace some US treasury bonds in its foreign currency reserves with IMF-issued bonds. Keeping step with this action taken by the Chinese government, Russian President Medvedev declared that new reserve currencies must be created in addition to the dollar (at the first summit meeting of the so-called BRIC countries, following the SCO summit). He called on the attendant leaders to give an additional, collective blow to the dollar system that is already in decline. The Russian government is determined to take the initiative in selling its US treasury bonds, which make up 30% of its foreign reserves.

Moreover, there is also an intensifying scramble between the three poles in their bid to capture natural resources, including petroleum, iron ore, copper, various rare metals (closely linked to the development of military technology) and uranium. The dispatch of troops off Somalia by US, Japanese, Chinese and other governments in the name of 'anti-piracy missions' is inseparably connected with this scramble for resources in the Middle East and Africa.

Today, our world faces a terrible crisis - that of the outbreak of a third World War - fermented from all these multiplying clashes: the newly started nuclear arms race between the US and China-Russia, the currency = economic war between the three poles, and the scramble between them for resources. Worse still, power holders and monopolies in the US, Japan, and the EU are accelerating their neo-colonialist incursion into developing countries under the cover of the 'Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)', while each imposes its own convenient measures to cope with the problems of the global environment upon the other, only to promote destruction. On top of that, competition is unfolding between the US-Japan, France and Russia in the export of nuclear plant - or, in other words, exporting the danger of nuclear disasters.

Remember the war between Russia and Georgia in August 2008! No matter how eloquently Obama speaks by stringing together flowery words, such as 'a world without nuclear weapons', nuclear 'disarmament' and 'dialogue' with enemy countries, his real intention is to restore American imperialism's domination of the world. And in rivalry with this imperialist state, China and Russia - one with the slogan 'a superpower in the 21st century' and the other under the banner 'the restoration of Russia as a great power' - are colluding with each other and now launching an offensive to seize hegemony from the US. Precisely for this reason, the seeds of conflict that could detonate another world war will surely grow all over the globe, unless people in the world rise in a struggle against war.

4.

The Obama administration has been high-handedly imposing one demand after the other on the imperialist rulers of Japan, its sole servile state in the world, with the aim of harnessing the economic and military power of this state to restore its world domination. It has been pressing Japanese rulers to give their full support for measures to revive the US economy (including the large-scale purchase of US treasury bonds), while it has repeatedly demanded that they strengthen the new US-Japan military alliance as an offensive and defensive alliance against China and Russia. Its demands include the nationwide deployment and actual use of missile defences, the dispatch of Japanese Self-Defence Force troops off Somalia to vie with China's naval dispatch, all-out assistance in redeploying US Forces (especially Japan's $30 billion grant for the same), and so on. - The Aso-led LDP government has accepted all of these demands out of a burning ambition to promote the imperialist state of Japan to a military power that is capable of engaging in war alongside the US.

Under the pretext of 'taking countermeasures against North Korea's nuclear weapons and missiles', Prime Minister Aso, together with the American imperialists, is consolidating the actual operation of the MD system, intending to place US and Japanese forces on a permanent quasi-war footing. Furthermore, he is prepared to deploy more PAC-3 and SM-3 missiles while trying to arouse fears over North Korea among the Japanese people. He does this by mobilizing the mass media to issue reports almost every day, as if a hail of Rodong and Taepodong missiles could drop on Japanese soil at any time.

By so doing, Aso is making a desperate bid to prolong the life of his Cabinet by even a single day, as its approval rating has dropped below 20%.


5.

In opposition to these last-ditch reactionary offensives mounted by the 'dying' Aso government, which is treading a relentless path to a simultaneous downfall of the US and Japan, we, workers and students in Japan, are creating antiwar and politico-economic struggles at one and the same time, by unifying these two struggles. We are advancing these struggles by exposing the fact that this government's military policies, aimed at promoting Japan to a state 'that is capable of engaging in war alongside the US', are inseparably linked to its economic policies, which are plunging the toiling masses into poverty.

Because of the Liberal Democratic Party's lengthy misgovernment of the nation, the anger of the toiling masses in Japan is rising up more furiously than ever. Yet the opposition movement remains as stagnant as ever, owing to the inexcusable degeneration of the labour aristocrats of Rengo (Japanese Trade Union Confederation) and the Fuwa-Shii leadership of the Japanese Communist Party (JCP), now distracted in expectation of the birth of a DPJ (Democratic Party of Japan) government and unwilling to issue a single call for the overthrow of the Aso government. The JCP, in particular, has gone so far as to issue an appalling statement in which it ingratiatingly 'hopes for the healthy development of capitalism', despite the fact that the great evil of contemporary capitalism has just been laid bare. These converted Stalinists have set out such nonsense in a bid to curry favour with the 'conservative stratum', out of a single-minded desire to share power in a DPJ-led government. This deplorable state of affairs must be broken through decisively with one blow. In our firm determination, we are fighting by calling on working people in this country to rise in antiwar, anti-Security Treaty (between the US-Japan) struggle and politico-economic struggles, in order to overthrow the reactionary Aso government.

Our slogans for the former struggles are: Stop the placement of American and Japanese forces on a quasi-war footing against North Korea! No to the dispatch of Japanese troops off Somalia! Oppose the deployment of missile defences! Oppose the strengthening of the new US-Japan military alliance as an offensive and defensive alliance against China and Russia!

Those for the latter are: Stop the Aso government bailing out monopolies with the money by the sweat of workers' brow! No increase in the consumption tax!

For us, working people in Japan (the only country to have suffered the horrors of the atomic bomb), the duplicity in Obama's advocacy of a 'world without nuclear weapons' is crystal clear - no matter how artfully he may have spoken when he said that, 'as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility'.

It is nothing but empty illusion to harbour expectations and imagine that the 'abolition of nuclear weapons' can be achieved through talks for 'nuclear arms reduction' between the power holders of the US and China/Russia, disregarding the confrontation between these states.

This illusion prevails due to the fallacy whereby nuclear weapons are seen as the root of the 'threat' to human society or peace. It arises when these weapons are seen in isolation from the very root cause, i.e. the confrontation between these states (the US vs. China and Russia), each of which has armed itself with nuclear weapons against the other.

The only, genuine power that can create truly permanent peace lies in the advancement of our struggle - a united struggle fought across borders by working people all over the world to smash the nuclear arms race between the US and China-Russia.

We call on you, workers of the world, people all over the world!

Expose the duplicitous nature of the talks for 'nuclear arms reduction' between the US and Russia. Stand up to fight under a united banner: 'Oppose the newly started nuclear arms race between the US and China-Russia'!

With anger we denounce the Kim-led North Korean government's policy of brinkmanship, including nuclear testing and long-range missile launches. But, at the same time, we resolutely oppose the quasi-war footing set up on the pretext of North Korea's behaviour by US and Japanese imperialists.

Never let the Obama government act to send in more reinforcements to rebuild its armed occupation of Afghanistan. Never again let it perpetrate the murder of Afghan people. Denounce the continued presence of US occupation forces in Iraq despite its promise to withdraw in the near future.

Let us advance resolute antiwar struggles in solidarity with Muslim peoples in the Middle East, who are boldly fighting 'anti-US imperialist, anti-Zionist' struggles, to stop armed attacks by the Zionist Netanyahu-led Israeli government against Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Shiite Islamic state of Iran.

We, Japanese workers and students, will hold our 47th International Antiwar Assembly on August 2nd. On this occasion, we call on you, workers and toiling people all over the world, to rise together with us.

Today's world is increasingly mired in war and poverty, taking on an aspect that we could call an era of 'new confrontation between the US and China-Russia'. We must overcome this crisis in the dark 21st-century world - a crisis rooted in the self-destruction of the Stalinist USSR that called itself a 'socialist state'. With the aim of overcoming this crisis, unite across borders and rise in struggles against war and impoverishment, on the basis of proletarian internationalism!

(July 1st, 2009)

July 31th, 2009

July 22nd 2009, London, Britain

19 „y„„|„‘ 2009, „K„y„u„r, „T„{„‚„p„y„~„p

31 July, 2009, Kabul, Afghanistan

August 1st 2009, Athens, Greece

July 26th 2009, Chicago, USA

July 9th 2009, New York, USA

July 26th, 2009, Paris, France

July 19th 2009, Minneapolis, USA

24 „y„„|„‘ 2009, „R„p„~„{„„-„P„u„„„u„‚„q„…„‚„s, „Q„€„ƒ„ƒ„y„‘

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July 29th, 2009, Durban, South Africa

August 2nd 2009, Mauritius

August 2nd 2009, London, Britain

July 30th 2009, Palestine

August 7th 2009, Argentina