Author: Oregon PeaceWorks

Return to an Abandoned UN Precedent for an End to the Ukraine War

LAWRENCE WITTNER – Based on both international law and precedent, the UN Security Council has the authority to impose a settlement of the disastrous Ukraine War.  What kinds of international action this would require would need to be determined by the world organization, just as the final terms of a peace agreement would ultimately need to be accepted by the contending parties.  But, given the overwhelming support in the UN General Assembly for the withdrawal of Russian military forces from Ukraine and for a lasting peace agreement, such a peace settlement is likely to be a just one.

Predicting Pestilence in Gaza

KATHY KELLY – Calling the Israeli-Gaza War a war on children, UNICEF spokesperson James Elder warned that “inaction by those with influence is allowing the killing of children.” We, the citizens of the world, are those with influence as well as our elected officials. It is the citizens of the world who came out by the hundreds of thousands in recent weeks that caused the seven day truce to happen. Now we must urgently pay heed to another persecution of Gaza’s children and families, waged by one of war’s more silent partners: disease. 

Parties to Nuclear Ban Treaty Agree Nuclear Deterrence is the Problem

INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN TO ABOLISH NUCLEAR WEAPONS (ICAN) – The Second Meeting of States Parties to the TPNW has successfully concluded and agreed that nuclear deterrence is a significant security problem, requiring urgent attention by the international community, that more research on the impacts of nuclear weapons is needed, and that the harms caused by nuclear weapons use and testing require ongoing attention.

The Brotherhood of Billionaires

LAWRENCE S. WITTNER – In recent decades, a growing similarity has developed between the Chinese and U.S. economic systems. Despite the Chinese Communist Party’s talk of “socialism,” the rapidly-expanding Chinese economy has become increasingly capitalist, with the private sector accounting for about two-thirds of China’s Gross Domestic Product in 2021. Not surprisingly, then, the two countries currently lead the rest of the world’s nations in their number of billionaires. This March, according to Forbes, the United States had 735 billionaires (worth a collective $4.5 trillion) and China had 562 (worth $2 trillion) out of a global total of 2,640.

How the National Infrastructure Program Creates Jobs for Today and Tomorrow

DAVID MCCALL – President Joe Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) on November 15, 2021, unleashing $1.2 trillion for tens of thousands of projects nationwide. It is upgrading transportation, communications, and energy systems while building back manufacturing capacity, generating hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs, and investing in the middle class.

Reactor Plans Smashed by Costs

WILL WADE – NuScale Power Corp., the first company with US approval for a small nuclear reactor design, is canceling plans to build a power plant for a Utah provider as costs surge. The move is a major setback to the burgeoning technology that has been heralded as the next era for atomic energy.

Israel’s Military Is Part of the U.S. War Machine

NORMAN SOLOMON – In January 2019, House speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi was recorded on video at a forum sponsored by the Israeli American Council as she declared: “I have said to people when they ask me — if this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid, I don’t even call it aid — our cooperation — with Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are.” Even making allowances for bizarre hyperbole, Pelosi’s statement is revealing of the kind of mentality that continues to hold sway in official Washington. It won’t change without a huge grassroots movement that refuses to go away.

Seeing Through the Economic Bait and Switch

SONALI KOLHATKAR – The values of the U.S. public are not the same as those of the wealthy and corporations. It took a UN official—an outsider—to point out the dissonance. Furthermore, evaluations of the U.S. economy by the U.S. media and politicians are based on corporate prosperity while the UN’s evaluation is based on individual prosperity.

The War in Israel: Costs and Consequences

MEL GURTOV – That Netanyahu is the only top Israeli national security official who has not accepted any blame for the Hamas attack is indicative. Will postwar Israel again be plunged into political chaos? Will the far right be empowered or discredited because of the war? Will Israel after the war continue expansion of settlements and deprivation of Palestinians’ rights in the West Bank? One outcome of the extraordinary violence seems certain: The hope for Israeli-Palestinian coexistence, not to mention a two-state arrangement, has been dashed for many years to come.

NATO’s Steadfast Noon Is Ready-made Doom

JOHN LAFORGE – Steadfast Noon is not just code language, or public relations. The event is a large-scale, psychological operation intended to teach us to pretend that nuclear attacks can do good. Of course if nuclear firestorms saved lives and ended war — as U.S. mythology goes with Hiroshima and Nagasaki — then the Pentagon would have used them in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. People love to be fooled. 

The Savagery of the War Against the Palestinian People

VIJAY PRASHAD – The many Israeli attacks on Gaza pulverize the minimal infrastructure that remains intact in Gaza and hits the Palestinian civilians very hard. Civilian deaths and casualties are recorded by the Health Ministry in Gaza but disregarded by the Israelis and their Western enablers. As the current bombing intensified, journalist Muhammad Smiry said, “We might not survive this time.” Smiry’s worry is not isolated. Each time Israel sends in its fighter jets and missiles, the death and destruction are of an unimaginable proportion. This time, with a full-scale invasion, the destruction will be at a scale not previously witnessed.

Over 5,000 actions were organized for Campaign Nonviolence Action Days 2023

RIVERA SUN – During the 10th annual Campaign Nonviolence Action Days from Sept. 21 to Oct. 2, hundreds of local, national and international groups organized actions and events to build a culture of peace and active nonviolence, free from war, poverty, racism and environmental destruction. In 2023, a staggering 5,057 actions were planned across the United States and 20 countries. Over 60,000 people took part in these actions and events.

As RFK Jr. Shifts His 2024 Strategy, He’s Bad News for Progressives

JEFF COHEN and NORMAN SOLOMON – If Robert F. Kennedy Jr. follows through on his apparent plans to run for president in the fall 2024 general election, that will make it all the more important for progressives to have a clear understanding of who Kennedy is and what he really stands for. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. offers progressives a mishmash of appealing statements, “free market” corporatism and assorted political toxins. Not a good deal.

A major win against factory farming points to a powerful new direction for the climate movement

NICK ENGELFRIED – Small farmers in Oregon, backed by a coalition of animal rights and climate activists, secured a big legislative victory over industrial factory farms, providing inspiration for wider action. “Part of our philosophy is you cannot only oppose or restrict the bad actors, although that is important,” Alice Morrison said. “You also have to lift up folks doing things that align with good stewardship of the land. Any solution to factory farming will be more viable if it puts forward that kind of positive vision.”

Finding a Way Out of the “Security Dilemma”

WINSLOW MYERS – As Stephen Kinzer argues in an op-ed in the Boston Globe: “In the coming years, China and its partners will work intensely to strengthen their military power—only to counter American threats, of course. So will the United States and its partners—only to counter Chinese threats. Each side insists that it seeks only to defend itself. Neither believes the other, so both prepare for war. That makes war more likely. Because this spiral of mistrust is so common, it has a name: the security dilemma. It tells us that steps one country takes to increase its security often provoke rivals to take countersteps. That leads to competition that makes all parties less secure.”

Fact Checking Biden’s UN Speech: Words Versus Action

TED SNIDER – US President Joe Biden’s speech before the General Assembly on September 19 spent surprisingly little time on Russia and the war in Ukraine and, in many ways, hit many of the right notes with its praise of “Sovereignty, territorial integrity, human rights . . . the core tenets of the U.N. Charter, the pillars of peaceful relations among nations. . ..” But America’s past performance on these very issues weaken the persuasiveness and sincerity of the appeal.

Celebrate September 21, the International Day of Peace

TOM H. HASTINGS – Dwight Eisenhower, broadcast with Prime Minister Macmillan in London, 8/31/1959, said, “I like to believe that people, in the long run, are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.”