This week Habibiti Please is focused on a favorite topic of the show: disarmament. Nashwa and Geneviève host Jeremy Corbyn and Paul Rogers in advance of Selling Death: Why the International Arms Trade Must be Controlled, an upcoming event hosted by Egypt Watch and Jeremy Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project. Join Jeremy Corbyn, Paul Rogers, and Geneviève at the event on Saturday, July 17th, 2021, at 11 a.m. Eastern Standard Time and 4 p.m. London time here.
We discuss the Peace and Justice Project, an initiative that works to bring people together for social and economic justice, peace, and human rights in Britain and across the world.
This episode explores the arms trade and why we must move towards disarmament. The international arms trade fuels forever wars, bloody occupations, and the military-industrial complex. The detritus of war and occupation will linger long after militaries leave the countries they ravage. As this episode highlights, COVID-19 serves as a canary in the coal mine; a warning for how things can only get worse if change does not happen now. A virus cannot be nuked, yet the rush to create and sell arms from the imperial core has continued without challenge even during the pandemic.
The Corbyn Peace and Justice Project illustrates why domestic and international problems and injustices cannot be separated. We also explore how we build solidarity beyond borders and across communities.
This episode also draws links between the arms trade, the climate crisis, and other ongoing struggles, including the growing number of refugees. Industrialists selling weapons and war promoters are akin to the mythical hydra, where chopping off one head sprouts another. This hydra is a monster, directly supported by Western governments. And blowback is to be expected. Continued death and destruction fuelled by the imperial core through tradecraft will have global consequences,
Forward-looking movements are needed now. Join Egypt Watch and Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project for Selling Death: Why the International Arms Trade Must be Controlled this Saturday on July 17th. We look forward to seeing you there. Now, more than ever, we must stand in solidarity to stop our governments from funding mass death throughout the world.
Head over to thecorbynproject.com/armscontrol to sign up for Saturday’s event.
Habibti Please is proud to be part of the Harbinger Media Network and we are grateful to partner with Canadian Dimension on this episode.
Organizations to check out:
Egypt Watch is a media services company based in London and was founded in 2019 by Osama Gaweesh, a well known Egyptian journalist and TV Presenter.
Their mission is to put Egypt under the international spotlight and to raise global awareness about the declining situation in Egypt; to advocate for freedom of press, for human rights, and for upholding democracy.
Corbyn Peace and Justice Project
An organization founded by longtime activist for social justice and former Labour party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, to bring people together for social and economic justice, peace, and human rights, in Britain and across the world.
The Event
Selling Death: Why the International Arms Trade Must be Controlled
War is big business. The international arms trade is worth hundreds of billions, and arms deals brokered by the rich and the powerful continue to extend human misery around the world.
The UK is the world’s second-largest arms exporter in the world, fuelling conflicts like the war in Yemen which has claimed a quarter of a million lives to date.
We must come together across borders and backgrounds to fight back against this economy of war and suffering, and demand real security for all.
The Peace and Justice Project is proud to support Egypt Watch’s upcoming event: Selling Death: Why the International Arms Trade Must be Controlled, an international conference that aims to shed light on the horrific abuses of the arms trade, and help build a movement to fight back.
Join the event on Saturday July 17th, 2021, at 11 am Eastern Standard Time and 4pm London time, and sign up now.
Additional Resources:
Some resources that complement this episode:
Boris Johnson is leading the UK into an even greater COVID catastrophe by Paul Rogers
Unions must stand united to end Canada’s arms sales to Saudi Arabia by Simon Black
WESCAM controversy highlights double standards in Canadian arms controls by Lital Khaikin
100 million Egyptians at risk of going thirsty by Osama Gaweesh
Guest Information
Guests of the Week: Jeremy Corbyn and Paul Rogers
Jeremy Corbyn served as Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition from 2015 to 2020, and has represented Islington North since 1983. He is a lifelong campaigner for peace and justice, holding roles in the Anti-Apartheid Movement, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and Stop the War Coalition.
As Labour leader, he oversaw the development of a comprehensive programme to rebuild the UK economy, transfer wealth and power from the few to the many, tackle poverty and division, put Britain at the forefront of confronting the climate emergency, and pursue a peace and rights-based foreign policy.
Jeremy received the Gandhi International Peace Award in 2013 and the Seán MacBride Peace Prize in 2017.
Paul Rogers is an Emeritus Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University. He is a biologist by original training, lecturing early on at Imperial College and also working as a senior scientific officer in government service in East Africa. For the past forty years, he has worked on international and environmental security and has written or edited thirty books. He is International Security Advisor to Open Democracy.
In the late 1990s, he wrote Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century, which was years, if not decades, ahead of its time, anticipating the 9/11 attacks and the twenty-year war on terror that follows. A new edition has just been published updating and expanding the analysis. It looks forward to the 2030s and 2040s as the decades that will see a showdown between a bitter, environmentally wrecked, and deeply insecure world and a possible world order rooted in justice and peace. You can order the updated edition here.
Co-hosted by Geneviève Nevin
Originally from the West Coast, Geneviève Nevin (she/her) is a white Ashkenazi settler based in Montréal (unceded and unsurrendered Kanien’kehà:ka territory) where she is a community organizer and JD/BCL candidate at McGill University. Geneviève is passionate about politics and social justice and is actively involved in movements for migrant rights and Palestine solidarity, particularly within the Jewish community, as the former Membership & Fundraising Coordinator with Independent Jewish Voices Canada. Geneviève was also one of the organisers behind the successful Palestine resolution at the 2021 NDP Convention which called for a ban on illegal Israeli settlement products as well as an arms embargo against Israel until Palestinians are free.
Production Credits:
Hosted by Nashwa Lina Khan
Show Music by Johnny Zapras and postXamerica
Art for Habibti Please by postXamerica and Canadian Dimension
Production by Canadian Dimension
Production Assistance by Geneviève Nevin, Nashwa Lina Khan and Canadian Dimension
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