Military Spending | Foreign Policy Primer For U.S. Congressional Candidates

This RootsAction Zoom call from Tuesday, March 8th is the second in a series of events for the recently released RootsAction Education Fund Foreign Policy Primer for U.S. Congressional Candidates.

Download the complete foreign policy primer here: https://progressivehub.net/foreignpolicy

Hosted by Ryan Black of RootsAction and ProgressiveHub, guests Lindsay Koshgarian of the National Priorities Project, David Swanson of RootsAction and World read more

Talk World Radio: Now That War Victims and Burn Pits Matter, Meet Iraqis Who Live Near Burn Pits

AUDIO:

Talk World Radio is recorded as audio and video on Riverside.fm — except when it can’t be and then it’s Zoom. Here is this week’s video and all the videos on Youtube.

VIDEO:

This week on Talk World Radio, we’re talking about burn pits. Our guest Kali Rubaii is an assistant professor of anthropology at Purdue University, researching the environmental health impacts of war. She did research among farmers from Anbar, Iraq, in 2014 and 2015, documenting the environmental read more

Russia’s Demands Have Changed

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, March 7, 2022

Here were Russia’s demands for months starting in early December 2021:

  • Article 1: the parties should not strengthen their security at the expense of Russia’s security;
  • Article 2: the parties will use  multilateral consultations and the NATO-Russia Council to address points of conflict;
  • Article 3: the parties reaffirm that they do not consider each other as adversaries and maintain a dialogue;
  • Article 4: the parties shall not deploy military forces and weaponry on the territory of any of the other states in Europe in addition to any forces that were deployed as of May 27, 1997;
  • Article 5: the parties shall not deploy land-based intermediate- and short-range missiles adjacent to the other parties;
  • Article 6: all member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization commit themselves to refrain from any further enlargement of NATO, including the accession of Ukraine as well as other States;
  • Article 7: the parties that are member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization shall not conduct any military activity on the territory of Ukraine as well as other States in the Eastern Europe, in the South Caucasus and in Central Asia; and
  • Article 8: the agreement shall not be interpreted as affecting the primary responsibility of the Security Council of the United Nations for maintaining international peace and security.

These were perfectly reasonable, just what the U.S. demanded when Soviet missiles were in Cuba, just what the U.S. would demand now if Russian missiles were in Canada, and ought to have simply been met, or at the very least treated as serious points to be respectfully considered.

If we set aside items 1-3 and 8 above as less concrete and/or hopeless, we’re left with items 4-7 read more

40 Things We Can Do and Know for People in Ukraine and the World

By David Swanson
Remarks at Code Pink event in Washington D.C. on March 3, 2022
Image Source.

Send aid to Ukrainian friends and aid organizations.

Send aid to organizations helping refugees leaving Ukraine.

Send aid especially that will reach those being refused help for racist reasons.

Share the remarkable media coverage of war victims in Ukraine.

Take the opportunity to point out the war victims in Yemen, Syria, Ethiopia, Sudan, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc., and to question whether the lives read more

Tomgram: Nick Turse, The Forgotten People of a Fictional Country

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

Imagine this for a moment: in 2020, Brown University’s invaluable Costs of War Project estimated that, from the Philippines and Afghanistan across the Greater Middle East into northern Africa, Washington’s disastrous two-decade long global war on terror had uprooted and displaced 37 million people. That was, of course, a mind-boggling figure.

Now, having read more

Tomgram: Andrew Bacevich, Jack and Joe, The Perils of Getting Tough

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

Since we’re clearly heading into a new Cold War, if not a hot one, how appropriate today to hear at TomDispatch (via Andrew Bacevich) from, of all people, John F. Kennedy. He was the president of my youth, the one I thrilled to see once upon a time (even if at a great distance) giving a speech in New Haven, Connecticut. He was also the one who, on October 22, 1962, read more

Talk World Radio: Alfred de Zayas on Ukraine and the Rule of Law

AUDIO:

Talk World Radio is recorded as audio and video on Riverside.fm. Here is this week’s video and all the videos on Youtube.

VIDEO:

This week on Talk World Radio, we’re talking with Alfred de Zayas, author of Building a Just World Order. He is former UN Independent Expert on international order (2012-18), senior lawyer with the UN Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights, Secretary of the UN Human Rights Committee and Chief of the Petitions Department.

Total run time: 29:00
read more