by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies President Biden wrote in the New York Times in June 2022 that the US was arming Ukraine to “fight on the battlefield and be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.” Ukraine’s fall 2022 counteroffensive left it in a stronger position, yet Biden and his NATO allies still chose the battlefield over the negotiating table. Now the failure of Ukraine’s long-delayed “Spring [...]
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies As Ukraine prepared to launch its much heralded but long delayed counteroffensive, the media published a photograph of a Ukrainian soldier with his finger on his lips, symbolizing the need for secrecy to retain some element of surprise for this widely telegraphed operation. Now that the offensive has been under way for two weeks, it is clear that the Ukrainian government and its Western [...]
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies Photo: Half a million tons of methane rise from the sabotaged Nord Stream pipeline. Photo credit: Swedish Coast Guard With the Ukraine war now reaching its one-year mark on February 24, the Russians have not achieved a military victory but neither has the West achieved its goals on the economic front. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the United States and its European allies vowed to [...]
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has just issued its 2023 Doomsday Clock statement, calling this “a time of unprecedented danger.” It has advanced the hands of the clock to 90 seconds to midnight, meaning that the world is closer to global catastrophe than ever before, mainly because the conflict in Ukraine has gravely increased the risk of nuclear war. This scientific assessment should [...]
The Ukraine Crisis Is a Classic “Security Dilemma” by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies Photo: Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) meets in Lodz, Poland, on December 1, 2022. Photo credit: OSCE On December 27 2022, both Russia and Ukraine issued calls for ending the war in Ukraine, but only on non-negotiable terms that they each know the other side will reject. Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Kuleba proposed a [...]
Can the Left Disagree Without Being Disagreeable? We need to be far more generous with each other, able to hold conversations without resort to insults and abuses. Out of disagreement comes understanding. But out of malicious slander only comes disorientation. by Vijay Prashad in COUNTERPUNCH I have been a reporter for thirty years. During this period, I have been to many former war zones and to active war zones, including in Iraq, [...]
by Bryan Davies While United States infrastructure has been rotting away and entire cities don’t even have access to clean drinking water, the Biden Administration and the entire Democratic Party elite have given over $54 billion in military aid to Ukraine from February, 2022 to the present. Reading mainstream news, we’re led to believe that this invasion was unprovoked; unpredictable; and a story of a rogue, authoritarian state preying on a weaker, [...]
by Nicolas Davies and Medea Benjamin Ukraine has been wracked by shocking destruction and deadly violence since Russia invaded the country in February. Estimates of the death toll range from a confirmed minimum of 27,577 people, including 6,374 civilians, to over 150,000. The slaughter can only get more horrific as long as all sides, including the United States and its NATO allies, remain committed to war. In the first weeks of [...]
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies As NATO holds its Summit in Madrid on June 28-30, the war in Ukraine is taking center stage. During a pre-Summit June 22 talk with Politico, NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg bragged about how well-prepared NATO was for this fight because, he said: “This was an invasion that was predicted, foreseen by our intelligence services.” Stoltenberg was talking about Western intelligence predictions in the [...]
Scott Ritter & Ray McGovern on Ukraine, Russia, China By Ray McGovern https://raymcgovern.com/2022/05/28/scott-ritter-ray-on-ukraine-russia-china/ Scott and I focused initially on President Biden’s just-completed Excellent Adventure in the Far East and the U.S. effort to woo countries away from China or, at least, pre-empt closer bilateral ties. I again posed the question (see my brief talk Thursday, embedded in https://raymcgovern.com/2022/05/27/why-is-win-win-a-no-no/ ), Why must China’s “win-win” approach be dismissed out of hand — especially when [...]
by Nicholas Davies On April 21st, President Biden announced new shipments of weapons to Ukraine, at a cost of $800 million to U.S. taxpayers. On April 25th, Secretaries Blinken and Austin announced over $300 million more military aid. The United States has now spent $3.7 billion on weapons for Ukraine since the Russian invasion, bringing total U.S. military aid to Ukraine since 2014 to about $6.4 billion. The top priority of Russian [...]
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies Americans have been shocked by the death and destruction of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, filling our screens with bombed buildings and dead bodies lying in the street. But the United States and its allies have waged war in country after country for decades, carving swathes of destruction through cities, towns and villages on a far greater scale than has so far disfigured Ukraine. As [...]
