The Speech Biden Won’t Give

The Speech Biden Won’t Give

by Dan Fischer

Nov. 11. President Biden could prevent many further Palestinian and Israeli deaths by giving this speech insisting on an immediate ceasefire in Gaza along with a release of hostages. It would be widely popular among the two-thirds of eligible voters—including 80% of Democrats, 57% of independents, and 56% of Republicans—who favor a ceasefire. It’s unlikely that Biden will give such a speech, since he sees Israel as an enforcer for the U.S. and global elite. Thus, massacres will likely continue and the “genocide” designation could become less and less ambiguous. If there’s anything that might force Biden to stop the bloodshed, it’s the peaceful uprisings worldwide demanding mutual security and a swift transition to a democracy between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea.

Good evening. Earlier this month, I was challenged by one Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg: “Mr. President, if you care about Jewish people, as a rabbi, I need you to call for a ceasefire right now.” I have been thinking about these words ever since.

When I ran for vice president in 2008 and for president in 2020, I promised to be a steadfast friend of the Israeli people. Being a good friend sometimes means stepping up to offer criticism. It means not enabling self-destructive behaviors. As true friends of the Israeli people, we Americans must demand an immediate end to the massacres of Palestinians, a mutual release of all Israeli and Palestinian hostages and prisoners, and a policy shift toward respecting universal human rights as guaranteed under international law.

It’s been nearly five weeks since October 7, and it’s estimated that more than 1,200 Israelis and 11,000 Palestinians are dead. The full death toll may be higher, with many Palestinian bodies lying under the rubble of destroyed and damaged homes, schools, hospitals, mosques, and marketplaces. It is clear that the vast majority of fatalities on each side were civilians. In Gaza, more than two-thirds of the dead are estimated to be women and children.

Around 240 Israelis were taken hostage on October 7, and we can only hope that they have survived the past month’s often indiscriminate crossfire. Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinians are detained without any charge or trial, in Israeli prisons where they’re tortured and ill-treated.

My fellow Americans, I apologize for not being more honest with you. Over the past weeks, I have amplified Israeli propaganda points even when they contradicted the best available evidence. I claimed I saw photos of babies beheaded by Hamas, even though I had not seen them and was relying on the words of Israeli officials. I accused Hamas of routinely using “human shields,” although Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and UN fact-finders have time and again found no evidence supporting the claim. I disputed the integrity of the Gaza’s Health Ministry death toll estimates, despite their numbers being historically reliable and even though my administration’s assistant secretary Barbara Leaf had informed me the death toll could be significantly higher.

I should have forthrightly told the Israelis that recent history suggests that Hamas won’t likely be defeated by military means. Gazan support for Hamas significantly increased after Israel’s bombardments in 2014 and 2021. There’s nothing like war and massacre to harden one’s heart. As Palestinian anti-Hamas activist Rami Aman has explained, Israeli missiles are “creating more Hamas, more Hamas more Hamas.”

I have failed to denounce the frankly genocidal incitement coming out of the mouths of Israeli leaders. I should have spoken up when Netanyahu invoked a Biblical instruction to “slay both man and woman, infant and suckling” and when President Isaac Herzog declared, “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible.” I should have said something when Defense Minister Yoav Gallant dehumanized Palestinians as “human animals” and military spokesperson Daniel Hagari explained “the emphasis is on damage and not accuracy.” I should have voiced outrage when the New York Times reported “Israeli leaders believed mass civilian casualties were an acceptable price,” and officials cited “the dropping of the two atomic warheads in Hiroshima and Nagasaki” as a model.

In truth, Israel has clearly been committing war crimes with U.S. weaponry and support. This will no longer happen. Collective punishment, disproportionate attacks, targeting of civilians, and use of white phosphorus will no longer be tolerated. The vicious cycle of bloodshed and bitterness needs to end. In the words of Representative Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian member of Congress, millions of Americans have protested because they “don’t believe the answer to war crimes is more war crimes.”

On October 24, an Israeli pilot dropped a U.S.-supplied missile on a three-story house in southern Gaza where the poet and journalist Ahmed Abu Artema and dozens of his extended family members resided. The blast injured Abu Artema and instantly killed his two aunts, a cousin and a stepmother. Abu Artema’s 12 year-old son Abboud and 10 year-old niece Joud were critically injured and would both die in intensive care over the following days. From his hospital head, Abu Artema asked harrowing and important questions.:

“Israelis are claiming and saying that it’s a war against Hamas. But where is Hamas? Take my house as [an] example. Four women and two children were killed in this Israeli strike. And this is what’s happening every day. Thousands, the vast majority, of the victims of this Israeli war until now are innocent women and men and children, complete families. Israel is targeting the families.”

I say to Mr. Abu Artema that the attack on his family is an example of the atrocities that Israel will no longer be allowed to commit with impunity. I hereby announce that I will be working with Congress to immediately end military aid to Israel.

There is thankfully a path toward peace. Families of Israeli hostages have already said they support an all-for-all prisoner swap. Hamas has already said they would agree to such an exchange. The Israeli and U.S. governments have been standing in the way.

We should also speak about a longer-term vision, one that provide lasting peace and security for Palestinians and Israelis. With steadfast U.S. support, Israel’s decades of settlement expansions have fragmented the West Bank and made a two-state solution obsolete. The status quo is also a nightmare for Israelis and Palestinians, and neither population cannot afford decades of more negotiations over a two-state plan that hasn’t and won’t work.

My administration will therefore be urging Israeli and Palestinian leaders to establish a unified democratic state with one vote for each person from the river to the sea.. In 2007, Palestinians were asked if they would support “a one-state solution in historic Palestine where Muslims, Christians and Jews live together with equal rights and responsibilities.” 70 percent said yes, they would. Many Israelis would share this aim if Palestinians could convince them it’s a real possibility.

Finally, there is much that needs to be done here at home. It is a disgrace that my predecessor Franklin Roosevelt didn’t do much more to stop the extermination of the Jews and prioritize rescue of Jews during the Holocaust. The White House will host a press conference tomorrow with leading immigrant and interfaith advocates. There, I will announce a plan we have drafted to ensure that the United States and our allies, including the future joint Israeli-Palestinian state, will collectively open our arms to Jewish and other refugees of any religion or race who need to seek safety. Never again will refugees be sent back to their exterminators as happened to hundreds of passengers on the St. Louis in 1939.

We will replace the 3.8 billion dollars in annual military aid to Israel with aid for sustainable reconstruction and a just implementation of Palestinian refugees’ right of return. By further slashing the U.S. military budget, we will also redirect money toward enacting a Just Transition here on Turtle Island, as many Native Americans have called North America before Europeans arrived. We will move together beyond the wasteful extraction-based economy of infinite growth, fossil fuels, nuclear power, factory farms, commercial ranching, pollution and deforestation. Indigenous and People of Color-led initiatives will help defend Native sovereignty and build a low-energy, renewable-powered economy with fresh and local plant-based food made available and affordable to all. America and Israel have colonial pasts, but we can share a decolonial journey going forward.

Gaza

Videos

Thousands march in New Haven against genocide and for Palestinian rights

more coming

Statements and Articles

PEP Administrator Heller tears up Israeli rationale to bomb Gaza's biggest hospital in this New Politics article.

Useful articles about Palestine/Israel

While we support Palestinian rights 100% we, of course, cannot support gross human rights violations by Palestinians such as what happened on Oct. 7 when the justifiable break out from the Gaza "prison" was accompanied by atrocities against

Israeli civilians in which perhaps 1,000 civilians were slaughtered.

We urge you to join in demonstrations demanding "Ceasefire" and an end to the siege of Gaza

Some chants in rallies may at first seem to allow no place for Israeli Jews in a democratic future, but "Free Palestine" means democracy and human rights for all between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

How Israel and Netanyahu in Particular Helped Hamas

It was seen as a useful rival to the Palestinian Authority

How Israel Helped Create Hamas - The Intercept Feb. 20, 2018

Former Israeli official Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s, told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat.

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Why Did Netanyahu Want to Strengthen Hamas?

article in the Israeli paper Haaretz on 10/11/23 by Dmitry Shumsky

"That’s because since he took office as prime minister a second time in 2009, that same Netanyahu developed and advanced a destructive, warped political doctrine that held that strengthening Hamas at the expense of the Palestinian Authority would be good for Israel."

"This is solidly documented. Between 2012 and 2018, Netanyahu gave Qatar approval to transfer a cumulative sum of about a billion dollars to Gaza, at least half of which reached Hamas, including its military wing."

"In an interview with the Ynet news website on May 5, 2019, Netanyahu associate Gershon Hacohen, a major general in reserves, said, “We need to tell the truth. Netanyahu’s strategy is to prevent the option of two states, so he is turning Hamas into his closest partner. Openly Hamas is an enemy. Covertly, it’s an ally.”

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For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces

The Times of Israel - Tal Schneider, October 8, 2023

"The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state."

"Meanwhile, Israel has allowed suitcases holding millions in Qatari cash to enter Gaza through its crossings since 2018, in order to maintain its fragile ceasefire with the Hamas rulers of the Strip."

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A Shaken Israel Is Forced Back to Its Eternal Dilemma

Roger Cohen, New York Times, Oct 8, 2023

"The assumption was...that it could even be a useful vehicle for weakening the more moderate Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, thus burying talk of a Palestinian state."

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Thomas L. Friedman on Israel’s ‘Morally Impossible Situation’

"Prime Minister Netanyahu really had a very intentional policy of strengthening Hamas and weakening the Palestinian Authority. So strengthening the Palestinian group that would never recognize Israel while weakening the one that would."

Oct 20, 2023

Friedman is a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist

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We also have to mention what was perhaps the founding atrocity of Hamas, a massacre of Palestinians in Khan Younis camp in Gaza in 1956 on November 3. Historian of Palestine Zachary Foster recounts how on that day between 275 and 525 Palestinian men and youths were stood against walls and executed. The IDF probably thought they were dealing with the problem "once and for all".

Funny how those "solutions" never work out. Abdulassiz Rantissi, then 8-years-old lived in that camp and decades later co-founded Hamas.

Foster's source for the above was Jean-Pierre Filiu in " Gaza: A History. Oxford University Press" published in 2014, p. 271. Also look at the graphic "Footnotes in Gaza" by Joe Sacco. He depicts the massacre extensively.

Hartford Rally for Syrians Monday 8-21

Monday August 21 will see demonstrations, rallies and vigils remembering the mass murder of 1400 people by Assad forces ten years ago in Ghouta Syria

The Hartford event will be held on the sidewalk near the Old State House at noon. It's the area facing the highway. Tell your GPS to go to 1 Market Street. Parking on the street or in a garage a block up at 19 Market St.

Attorney Maryam Bitar will lead the event.

The event is sponsored by the Syrian American Council, Promoting Enduring Peace and the Middle East Crisis Committee

Cluster Bombs, the Russian Invasion, Ukrainian Resistance

"Cluster Bombs, the Russian Invasion, Ukrainian Resistance - a Broad Discussion"

Wed. August 2

8:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time

on Zoom (see below for link)

Our main goal is an open discussion. To get things going we'll hear from Ted Zuur who is in Bogota Columbia and Joanne Sheehan from Eastern Connecticut. Most of the session, though, will be thoughts from those attending.

Ted Zuur is a semi-retired teacher, translator, waiter, and small farmer who lives in Bogotá. He is originally from the San Francisco Bay Area where he was a student and later a trade union activist. He was the Peace and Freedom Party candidate in San Francisco's 5th congressional district twice, and debated his opponent Nancy Pelosi numerous times. She won both elections.

Joanne Sheehan is a nonviolent activist and educator who has worked for decades with organizations like the War Resisters' League and Voluntown Peace Trust

Moderator: Stanley Heller

Administrator

Promoting Enduring Peace

PEPeace.org

More details and suggested background reading coming

You are invited to a Zoom meeting.

When: Aug 2, 2023 08:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUkf-qvqzItGtambH7hA0igESJ1_G5f7PAV

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Some articles you may wish to read beforehand:

With Ukraine's Cluster Bombs Killing Its Own Citizens, Biden Readies order to Send More

https://theintercept.com/2023/07/05/ukraine-cluster-bombs-biden/

Russian Mines in Ukraine - The Threat is Pervasive

https://www.dw.com/en/russian-mines-in-ukraine-the-threat-is-pervasive/a-63214795

Cluster Munition Coalition | CMC (stopclustermunitions.org)

Human Rights Watch

Cluster Munitions | Human Rights Watch (hrw.org)

Ukrainian Use of Cluster Bombs is Both Legal and Just - Kyiv Independent

Cluster Bombs and Morality - Anthony Boynton

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Cluster Bombs and Morality by Anthony Boynton

Why are cluster munitions immoral. Because a bunch of governments have signed a treaty banning their use? Because civilians, especially children have been killed and wounded by cluster munitions? (See for example Alex Shephard’s New Republic article of July 11, 2023: Biden’s Immoral, Indefensible Decision to Send Cluster Bombs to Ukraine https://newrepublic.com/article/174218/bidens-immoral-indefensible-decision-send-cluster-bombs-ukraine)

By the second standard, war itself is immoral, and all weapons of war are immoral. Most pacifists believe this. The first standard is laughable because it assumes that a large number of today’s governments actually have moral standards.

In the Marxist tradition aggressive war with the intent to conquer and destroy is immoral, but defensive war is justified and eminently moral. So too is a revolutionary war by the oppressed against their oppressors.

If the Ukrainians defensive war is moral, then there is the issue of their usefulness.

There are three principal Russian-made obstacles to that counteroffensive right now:

· Extensive Russian minefields throughout occupied Zaporizha, Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea.

· Extensive systems of entrenchment in these same area.

· Helicopter gunships armed with missiles that are capable of destroying Ukrainian demining equipment and soldiers from a safe distance (These helicopters could easily be destroyed IF the USA and NATO would supply Ukraine with the aircraft it needs.)

Next to aircraft and longer range missiles, they are exactly what the Ukrainian counter offensive needs right now to clear the Russian’s systems of fortified entrenchment.

The kind of munitions the Ukrainians will receive are 155 mm artillery (and possibly 105 mm howitzer) shells rather than missiles or bombs dropped from aircraft.

These munitions can kill soldiers protected by trenches much more effectively than conventional unitary artillery ammunition, and they can destroy vehicles and groups of soldiers on open roads. They can be targeted to relatively small areas of just a few meters, or to larger areas of as much as 200 meters in diameter.

However, how effective cluster munitions are at demining operations is an important question, especially for destroying antitank mines (See David Walters’ post.) Other explosive devices are effectively used for demining. Bombs dropped from aircraft and missiles can destroy large percentages of anti-tank mines, and several existing demining vehicles use rocket launched, explosive packed tubes to destroy anti-tank mine fields and reportedly destroy 90% of mines. Most interestingly, The Ukrainian military is reportedly successfully using hand grenades dropped from drones to destroy Russian anti-tank mines.

Nevertheless, there is no evidence how effective cluster munitions are at demining operations easily available online. These munitions were not designed for this task and have not been field tested for this task as far as I can tell.

One point that has to be considered is that cluster munitions effectiveness for this job can probably be varied since they can be loaded with different numbers and size of bomblets. A cluster shell containing fewer, larger, more powerful bomblets might do the job that conventionally packed cluster shells cannot do.

Since Ukraine’s airpower deficit makes it difficult to take out the Russian helicopter gunships, they will try to use cluster munitions to replace human engineers and demining vehicles or at least to supplement them. Ukraine will provide the world with the data we now lack, only because the United States and NATO leave it no other option.

There are a few myths about cluster munitions that should be addressed:

· Cluster munitions deliver dozens of smaller bombs across a huge territory, the very definition of indiscriminate bombardment.

· Many go unexploded, leaving bombs—many of which are oddly shaped and colorful and thus appealing to children—littered behind.

· They could fall on areas where Ukrainian civilians live.

· In the long-term, they represent a tremendous threat to Ukraine’s own civilian population.

1. The area to be covered by cluster bomblets is determined in advance by setting the altitude at which the shell will release its bomblets. It can be as large as 200 meters in diameter, or it can be only a few meters in diameter. Cluster munitions have been deliberately and intentionally used for indiscriminate bombardment of civilian populations, but they can be used in other ways depending on the decisions of the military unit using them.

Ukraine has pledged that they will use these munitions to clear the Russian invaders from their entrenched positions in occupied Ukraine. Why would they do otherwise?

2. The munitions the United States is providing are not oddly shaped and colorful, but some fail to explode upon impact. Some are designed not to explode on impact, instead acting as mines.

Unexploded ordinance including mines is a terrible remnant of war in every country that has suffered any warfare since the early 20th century. Demining operations are long, expensive, time consuming and dangerous.

However, Ukraine is now the most heavily mined country in the world. Russia has extensively mined the entire land bridge between Donbas and Crimea, and much of Donbas and Crimea, too.

These are exactly the areas in which Ukraine will use any cluster munitions they receive.

Arguably, they will add very little to the danger already presented by Russian minefields.

3. The entire region has already been partially depopulated by the Russian invasion and occupation, but the areas the Ukrainians are likely to use cluster munitions on are the Russian minefields and trenches, not the towns and cities. Why would they do otherwise?

4. Cluster munitions do represent a long term threat to Ukraine’s population, but a lesser threat than the Russian jackboot, and a lesser threat than Russian landmines. Ukraine is being destroyed slowly and relentlessly by Russian missiles. Why shouldn’t the Ukrainians have the weapons they needed to stop that destruction?

War is terrible. Ask the Ukrainians. They think losing a war to Russia would be worse. They also have shown that leaving Russia in control of any Ukrainian territory would be a Russian victory that would most likely lead to another invasion in the future.

The moral thing to do, here, now, today, is to give Ukraine the arms it needs to win: F-16s and other aircraft, longer distance missiles, and cluster munitions.

Anthony Boynton

https://rstudio-pubs-static.s3.amazonaws.com/175739_d1a8dc3d159249b6a2968c20adb81115.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-purpose_improved_conventional_munition

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/07/europe/cluster-munitions-us-ukraine-aid-explainer-intl-hnk-ml/index.html

https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/giving-ukraine-cluster-munitions-necessary-legal-and-morally-justified

https://www.csis.org/analysis/cluster-munitions-what-are-they-and-why-united-states-sending-them-ukraine

The Peril and an Idea

Ukrainians Government Warns

The Peril:

Ukraine holds disaster drills amid fears Russia could sabotage nuclear power plant - ABC News July 1 - Chief of Military Intelligence Budanov "told The New Statesman magazine that Russian troops had rigged the station's cooling ponds with explosives, that if destroyed could lead to the reactors melting down. He also said Russia had moved explosives-laden vehicles into four of the plant's six power units."

Zelenskiy: Russia may be preparing to trigger nuclear plant explosion - The Guardian (UK)

Russia reducing personnel at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant - Ukrainian intelligence

Also note The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)also warns that as a result of the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam, the nuclear plants have only about two months of water for those cooling pools. [destruction almost certainly caused by Russia]

The Idea:

Get the UN General Assembly to order an international unit under its command to take over control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant complex, a peace-keeping force. Establish a demilitarized zone around the plants.

See this petition created by the Ukraine Socialist Solidarity Campaign

Let anti-nuclear, anti-war and trade unions know about this idea

Alternatives to destroying social programs

Update May 29. Biden and McCarthy worked out a deal. Federal programs except military will be basically frozen at 2023 levels (because of inflation that means about a 5% cut a year.)

So we have a debt ceiling, an ingenious reactionary weapon to prevent the exploited classes from getting government help. Biden can certainly just ignore the ceiling and say it violates the 14 Amendment to the Constitution. The problem is that the Trump Supreme court may slap him down.

There is a very sensible alternative. Cut the military budget starting with the nukes and all the imperial military bases. Take a look at the program of "Defuse Nuclear War".

Also, take a look at our no-nukes archive.

the so-called brics: The Global South and Ukraine

Sunday 5/21 at 11 a.m. Eastern a panel sponsored by the Ukraine Socialist Solidarity Campaign

Fabio Bosco is a transit worker and a member of the independent Brazilian union federation Conlutas. He is also a member of the Unified Socialist Workers Party of Brazil. Fabio has a long history of worker organizing and writing about the workers struggles in Brazil.

Kavita Krishnan was a leader of the student movement in India. She led the campaign against rape of Indian woman, and then she joined and became a leader of the Communist Party of India Marxist Leninist. In September of this year, she spoke out against that party support for the Xi and the Putin regimes, especially in regard to repression of Uighurs, and regarding the invasion of Ukraine.

Patrick Bond is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg. He teaches and writes about political economy, political ecology and social mobilization. He has also taught in Britain, South Korea and the United States. A theme over the years has been his views on South Africa’s move from racial to class apartheid, in the form of “Neoliberalism”. He has also written extensively about BRICS.

Why have governments of formerly colonialized countries not unconditionally condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?
What do the roles of the Brazil, India and South African governments have in common and how do they differ?
What is the role of the BRICS governments in their own countries’ domestic politics and class struggle?
What is the attitude of the working class in those countries towards the invasion? How about the attitude of the left in those countries?
How can the left in the “global north” that supports Ukraine work more closely with the left in the BRICS countries?

Restore #1145

In Connecticut, SB #1145 contained a section to use a money incentive to get people to buy electric-powered equipment rather than smelly noisy gas-powered machinery. Without a vote or even public discussion the language was stripped from the bill. Bring it back! (see the wording below)

We're told the key person to reach is Senator Rick Lopes. His web email is senatedems.ct.gov/lopes-contact. If you've only got time for a short message write, "Restore the subsidies for electric-powered equipment tp SB #1145."

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This link get's you to the emails of legislators on the committee. Here's a model letter you might use or send your own thoughts:

Subject: Please restore to SB #1145 the subsidies to retailers for rebates on electric-powered equipment

April , 2023

We need to quickly replace noisy, polluting, greenhouse gas emitting gas engines with electric-powered machines for the sake of lawn care workers, people who live where they use that equipment, and the entire planet (global warming effects). #1145 is a step in the right direction. Please support the incentive to electrify. Bring back the sections that were stripped out of #1145

Sincerely,

Your name

address

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Here's the original language that needs to be restored:

(NEW) (Effective from passage) There is established an account to be known as the zero emissions small off-road engine account which shall be a separate, nonlapsing account within the General Fund. Moneys in such account shall be used by the Department of Revenue Services to reimburse retailers for rebates provided by such retailers pursuant to section 8 of this act. Such account shall contain all moneys required by law to be deposited in such account. Such account may receive funds from private or public sources, including, but not limited to, any municipal government or the federal government. Raised Bill No. 1145 LCO No. 4605 11 of 11 308

(Effective July 1, 2023) The sum of ten million dollars is appropriated to the Department of Revenue Services from the General Fund, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2024, for the purpose of funding the zero emissions small off-road engine account established pursuant to section 9 of this act.

And if you'd like more information on the subject click here

Tell the CT Treasurer to Break with Apartheid

There were rallies in 12 cities to protest the appearance of Israeli Finance Minister and self-proclaimed "fascist homophobe" Bezalel Smotrich at an Israeli Bonds dinner on March 12. The rallies called for disinvestment in Israel.

Connecticut has over $100 million invested in Israel. Activists will protest on 3/16 in front of the Treasury Building. Reach CT's Treasurer at: state.treasurer@ct.gov or @TreasRussell You could simply say: Sell Off the Israel Bonds

Over 500 groups support Atlanta Forest defenders

Promoting Enduring Peace was one of the groups that signed on to this statement which begins:

On January 18, in the course of their latest militarized raid on the forest, police in Atlanta shot and killed a person. This is only the most recent of a series of violent police retaliations against the movement. The official narrative is that Cop City is necessary to make Atlanta “safe,” but this brutal killing reveals what they mean when they use that word.

Forests are the lungs of planet Earth. The destruction of forests affects all of us. So do the gentrification and police violence that the bulldozing of Weelaunee Forest would facilitate. What is happening in Atlanta is not a local issue.

Politicians who support Cop City have attempted to discredit forest defenders as “outside agitators.” This smear has a disgraceful history in the South, where authorities have used it against abolitionists, labor organizers, and the Civil Rights Movement, among others. The goal of those who spread this narrative is to discourage solidarity and isolate communities from each other while offering a pretext to bring in state and federal forces, who are the actual “outside agitators.” The consequence of that strategy is on full display in the tragedy of January 18...

See the full statement by clicking here

A Strategy on Ukraine and on Nukes

The danger of nuclear war is no joke, but that doesn't mean countries should just fold in the face of Russian (or U.S. government) threats.

We've developed some ideas on how to proceed: 1) Calling for support for Ukraine and defeat for Putin and immediate withdrawal of Russian troops; 2) Working to lessen the threat of nuclear war through support of ideas from Defuse Nuclear War (get rid of the ICBM's, take nuclear weapons off "hair trigger" alerts, declare "no-first-use" of nuclear weapons, rejoin nuclear treaties with Russia); 3) Explaining that the West's hypocrisy (Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sahrawi, etc.) is a gift to Putin; 4) Calling for a crash program to stop using fossil fuels and nuclear; 5) material support for Syrians in areas not yet conquered by the Assad regime (as a good in itself and as a “second front” against Putin’s imperialism.)

In terms of action, we have a petition calling for a halt to U.S. import of Russian uranium (you’d never know it was happening with all the guilt-tripping of Europe for buying Russian gas.) The measure could both weaken Putin and force the U.S. to replace dangerous nuclear power plants with sustainable electric power sources. See the next panel.

Campaign to Stop importing Russian Uranium

Watching Democracy Now in mid-November 2022 many were surprised to learn that while the U.S. tells the world not to import Russian natural gas, U.S. companies freely import Russian uranium.

In response the Ukrainian Socialist Solidarity Campaign organized a petition to call for the U.S. to ban Russian uranium imports. It started on 12/3. There are two major reasons 1) to take profits away from the Putin government (whose Roskam sells uranium) and 2) to swiftly wean the U.S. away from nuclear power

Read the Greenpeace article entitled, "Nuclear exception leaves gaping hole in EU Russia sanctions as uranium ship reaches France"

A report on the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

US and EU imports of Russian uranium and enrichment services could stop. Here’s how.

The Greatest nuclear threat right now

Russia is occupying Europe's largest nuclear power plant, in southern Ukraine. In the words of Rafael Grossi of the International Atomic Energy Agency the situation there "is completely out of control" and "Every principle of nuclear safety has been violated.”

Russian President Putin has threatened to use nuclear weapons to get his way in Ukraine

We say,

Putin, get your soldiers and weapons out of Ukraine Nuclear Plants
Russia, US, Pledge NOT to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, no matter what
Russia out of Ukraine
Remember Hiroshima, Never Again

Watch Democracy Now 8/4/2022

Disappeared for 10 years

Everyone you see in the picture on the right was kidnapped by Assad forces on March 9, 2013. The mother depicted, Rania Alabbasi, was a dentist and Syria's most famous chess champion. In addition to the 8 people shown here the secretary of Ms. Alabbasi was also taken.

Nothing has been heard about any of these 9 people since they were taken.

Click here to watch a 3/7/22 interview with Hassan Alabbasi, Rania's brother who is in Ottawa.

Ask your local media or Congress to raise this issue.

Write to producers@democracynow.org and ask DN! to cover the story.