US is Isolated in Backing Gaza Massacre

by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies [Photo credit: canada talks israel palestine - Life in Gaza under Israeli bombardment.] On Friday, October 27, the nations of the world voted in the UN General Assembly, by a vote of 120 to 14, for an “immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities” in Gaza. The resolution was sponsored by the government of sometime U.S. ally King Abdullah [...]

Global Leaders Plead for Peace in Ukraine at UN

by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies As it did last year, the 2023 United Nations General Assembly has been debating what role the United Nations and its members should play in the crisis in Ukraine. The United States and its allies still insist that the UN Charter requires countries to take Ukraine’s side in the conflict, “for as long as it takes” to restore Ukraine’s pre-2014 internationally recognized borders. They [...]

The Silent Slaughter of the Flower of Ukraine’s Youth

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 [...]

When Will US Join Global Call to End Ukraine War?

by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies When Japan invited the leaders of Brazil, India and Indonesia to attend the G7 summit in Hiroshima, there were glimmers of hope that it might be a forum for these rising economic powers from the Global South to discuss their advocacy for peace in Ukraine with the wealthy Western G7 countries that are militarily allied with Ukraine and have so far remained deaf to [...]

Who’s winning and losing the economic war over Ukraine?

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 [...]

What Can the US Bring to the Peace Table for Ukraine?

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”

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 [...]

Nuclear Extortion?  Abolish Nuclear Weapons

By Marcy Winograd and Medea Benjamin In a moment of candor, President Biden told Democratic Party contributors the risk of nuclear “Armageddon” is the highest since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the Soviet Union installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, 90 miles from Florida. Referring to Russian President Putin’s veiled threats to use short-range nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the President added it was the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis such [...]

From Mosul to Raqqa to Mariupol, Killing Civilians is a Crime

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 [...]

After a Year of Biden, Why Do We Still Have Trump’s Foreign Policy?

by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies President Biden and the Democrats were highly critical of President Trump’s foreign policy, so it was reasonable to expect that Biden would quickly remedy its worst impacts. As a senior member of the Obama administration, Biden surely needed no schooling on Obama’s diplomatic agreements with Cuba and Iran, both of which began to resolve long-standing foreign policy problems and provided models for the renewed emphasis [...]

The High Stakes of the US-Russia Confrontation Over Ukraine

by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies https://www.codepink.org/the_high_stakes_of_the_us_russia_confrontation_over_ukraine A report in Covert Action Magazine from the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic in Eastern Ukraine describes grave fears of a new offensive by Ukrainian government forces, after increased shelling, a drone strike by a Turkish-built drone and an attack on Staromaryevka, a village inside the buffer zone established by the 2014-15 Minsk Accords. The People’s Republics of  Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR), which [...]

Afghan Crisis Must End the US Empire of War, Corruption and Poverty

by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies People have been shocked by videos of thousands of Afghans risking their lives to flee the Taliban’s return to power in their country - and then by an Islamic State suicide bombing and ensuing massacre by U.S. forces that together killed at least 170 people, including 13 U.S. troops. Even as UN agencies warn of an impending humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, the U.S. Treasury [...]

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