Ukraine War protestors: "Negotiations Now!"

 

By Reginald Johnson

 

 

    MIDDLETOWN, CT ---   Peace activists took to the streets here on Saturday to protest the war in Ukraine and warn people that the conflict threatens to become a nuclear holocaust.

Gathering on the corner of Main and Washington, the demonstrators held signs and passed out fliers which said “Prevent Nuclear War” and “Negotiations Now.”

“We’ve gotten a number of horn honks and people have taken leaflets,” said Steve Krevisky, one of the organizers.

  As parents walked by with their children dressed up in halloween costumes, Krevisky added, “We know there’s a halloween celebration down the street and you don’t want to spoil a good mood, but the threat of nuclear war should bother people. So considering, we’ve had a pretty good response.”

 The Middletown protest was one of more than 70 actions that took place around the country and Canada in the past week sponsored by an umbrella peace group, the United National Anti-war Coalition (UNAC).

 “We did not expect such an overwhelming response from our movement, but we learned people are ready to hit the streets and build a strong unified antiwar movement,” a UNAC official said.

 The protests erupted as the Ukraine-Russia war, now seven months old, has reached a more dangerous phase. Neither side seems to have the upper hand in the war and leaders of both nations have talked of the possibility of using nuclear weapons.

 NATO, the US-led military alliance which is aiding Ukraine, recently began nuclear war training exercises in eastern Europe and Russian President Vladimir Putin said his country may do the same.

Protestors in Middletown warn of nuclear war danger in Ukraine.

 Over the months, the US and NATO have pumped billions of dollars in lethal aid into Ukraine and military observers believe the weaponry has allowed Ukraine to launch effective counter attacks against Russian forces and prolong the war. Thousands of combatants have died in the conflict and there’s been massive damage to civilian infrastructure.

 Meanwhile, there is no movement towards negotiations to achieve a peaceful settlement. While several European leaders including France’s Emanuel Macron as well as Putin and Ukrainian leader Volodomyr Zelensky have indicated at different times that they were open to peace negotiations, the United States has been a roadblock.

  The administration of President Joseph Biden has rebuffed the idea of peace talks several times, including in April shortly after the war began when a tentative settlement was on the table, but the US rejected it.

 Recently, Biden reaffirmed American opposition to negotiations when he told CNN that he had no interest in meeting with Putin at an upcoming G20 summit and he was not interested in negotiations to end the war.

  Nonetheless, Biden himself commented recently on the gravity of the present situation. He said the risk of a nuclear “Armageddon” was higher now than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

 The US refusal to get behind peace talks is a sore point for activists like Krevisky.

  “I feel from my own perspective that I have to be critical of the Biden administration not only because they still refuse to negotiate, but in fact they seem to be upping the ante,” he said.

  A member of the Connecticut Peace and Solidarity Coalition, Krevisky said that he and others in the group are also trying to make people understand the “connections” between US war policy and military spending and the fact that domestic needs are not being met at home.

   “One of my favorite slogans is,  ‘money for jobs and education, not war and occupation.’ So we wanted to connect issues and get people to recognize the danger of the situation especially since a lot of us think that the corporate media is brainwashing people to go along with a war that many of us think the West wanted a long time ago,” he said.

                                        

Congressional candidate Dr. Amy Chai takes a stand on the Ukraine War.

  Also protesting the war --- at the same time she was campaigning --- was Dr. Amy Chai of New Haven who is running for Congress as an independent against long-time Democratic incumbent Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro in the Third Congressional District. DeLauro has, like other Democrats, fully backed the massive military aid packages being sent to Ukraine.

 “I’m against all proxy wars --- the war in North Africa, sending arms to Yemen and sending arms to Ukraine,” said Chai. “I’m against the US being the arms dealer for the world and I’m against that because I don’t want people using my tax dollars to kill people --- that goes against everything I believe in as a doctor.”

  Asked about the administration’s claim that the American support for Ukraine was about defending Ukrainian democracy and freedom, she said, “That’s baloney. That’s baloney. It’s about corruption and money --- making money for the arms dealers. It’s a corrupt scheme that serves some people’s interest but not ours,” she said.

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

Protests target Ukraine War

By Reginald Johnson 

    Peace activists will take to the streets in the coming days to demand that the Biden administration pursue a negotiated settlement to end the war in Ukraine and avert a nuclear confrontation with Russia.

 The United National Anti-war Coalition said more than 40 actions will take place around the country from Oct. 15-21 as  part of a campaign to bring about a cease-fire in Ukraine and end the war, which has cost tens of thousands of lives so far.

 In Connecticut, a protest against the war will take in Middletown on Saturday, October 22. The demonstration will be held at the corner of Main and Washington Streets and run from 12 noon to 2 pm.

  The possibility of the war going nuclear has been growing as Russian President Vladimir Putin recently said his nation might be forced at a certain point to use nuclear weapons and Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky has suggested bluntly that the West should fire nuclear missiles at Russia right now.

  A flier announcing the Middletown protest quotes President Biden’s recent comment that for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, “we have a direct threat of the use of nuclear weapon...there is no ability to use a tactical weapon and not end up with Armageddon.”

  But the flier notes, “Yet the US government intends to prolong the war in Ukraine as long as it takes to weaken and ultimately destroy Russia, a country with thousands of nuclear weapons. This is madness!”

  The Middletown action is sponsored by the Connecticut Peace and Solidarity Coalition and the Greater New Haven Peace Council, among others.

  For further information contact Steve in Middletown at  Skrevisky@mxcc.commnet.edu; Alex in Hartford at koskinasa175@gmail.com; or Henry in New Haven at grnhpeacecouncil@gmail.com.

 

 

 

Nuclear Brink?

   By Reginald Johnson

 

                  Commentary

 

 

                  The eastern world, it is explodin’

                  Violence flarin’ bullets loadin’

                   You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’

                  You don’t believe in war, but what’s that gun you’re totin?

                  And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin’

                  But you tell me, over and over again and over again, my friend

                 Ah, you don’t believe

                  We’re on the eve of destruction.’

                      (Barry McGuire, The Eve of Destruction, 1965)

 

   The spirit of this song, sadly, is so apt today.

  We’ve reached a very dangerous point in the war in Ukraine, where there’s a real chance of a direct confrontation between Russia and US-NATO forces. And if such a confrontation takes place, nuclear weapons will likely be used.

 Humanity cannot survive a nuclear war.

 Russian President Vladimir Putin has said not once, but twice recently that if Russia feels its territory is threatened by NATO, then they may resort to using nuclear weapons. In the beginning, that might mean using only short-range tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

  But how will the West respond to that? NATO may in turn fire tactical nukes at Russian forces.

  Can the field of combat be limited to tactical weapons? It's doubtful. Russia might well say at a certain point --- particularly since it has a larger arsenal of strategic nuclear weapons than NATO --- that it was time to go all the way and win what they perceive as an existential conflict with the West by firing long-range nuclear missiles at the US and NATO countries. Then, all bets are off and it's full-out nuclear war.

  Whole cities would be leveled during nuclear strikes and tens of millions of people would be instantly killed. Just multiply the devastation of Nagasaki and Hiroshima by 50 times. Those who were able to survive in rural areas would eventually die of radiation poisoning and cancer.

Armageddon.

Tens of millions of people will die instantly in a nuclear attack.

 Now I know, many people are likely to reject this dark, apocalyptic scenario and say,  ‘Come on, it’ll never get to that point. They’ll stop it.’

 But will they?

 The Biden administration has been resisting getting behind negotiations between Ukraine and Russia to bring an end to this war right from the start. In April, Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France agreed on a framework for a tentative peace agreement and it was rebuffed by Washington. US officials, using former UK leader Boris Johnson as their intermediary in talks with Ukraine’s president Volodomyr Zelensky said they had no interest in a negotiated settlement.

 Right now there is absolutely no evidence of any push for negotiations by Washington. And billions more in military aid keeps being sent to Ukraine to prolong the war.

 It’s clear to everyone with eyes to see that the US does not want peace in Ukraine and instead is using the Ukraine war as a means of weakening Russia and eventually bringing about regime change in Moscow. The Ukrainians are being used as cannon fodder in a US proxy war. Biden and other officials are apparently willing to engage in nuclear brinksmanship ---- and put the world at risk --- while they pursue this wild and morally reprehensible geopolitical objective.

  Biden this week went off script in a speech to donors and warned that the situation in Ukraine presented the greatest risk of nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. He was right. But the question needs to be asked, just who put the world in this situation?

  It’s a little bit like an arsonist that runs into a dry forest, lights a match, starts a fire and then runs out and yells, 'Fire! Fire! Hurry, call the fire department!

  It is troublesome that so many in the media have not been taking the situation in Ukraine as seriously as they should and have done little in recent months to question US policy in Ukraine and ask why the United States and NATO continue to pump weapons into Ukraine, without any corresponding push for negotiations, while the danger of an all-out war with Russia continues to grow.

 One commentator who has been sounding the alarm about the Ukraine policy is Tucker Carlson of FOX who since the beginning of the war has sharply criticized American policy.

  On a recent show --- after reporting Zelensky’s rash comment that it was time for the West to nuke Russia --- Carlson said: "If there was a moment for the Biden administration to shut this whole thing down and force negotiated peace, which they could do in an instant, that moment is right now before huge numbers of people die." 

  "But that’s not what the Biden administration is doing. They are moving in the other direction at high speed and doing all they can to bring the West to the brink of destruction,” he said.

  Scott Ritter, a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet union implementing arms control treaties and also oversaw the disarmament of WMDs in Iraq, wrote recently in Consortium News that the situation in Ukraine is dire and it is absolutely necessary for both President Biden and President Putin to step up to the plate and engage in serious talks to make sure that the war in Ukraine doesn’t become a nuclear holocaust.

  “We are, literally, on the eve of destruction," he wrote. "Now is the time for the kind of political maturity leaders rarely demonstrate. The onus is on Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin to make sure that even while events on the ground in Europe devolve into chaos and violence, the leaders of the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals do not allow emotion to get the better of reason.  The consequences of failure in this regard are, for humanity, terminal,” 

  It's clear we are heading in a deadly direction and everyone who cares about the fate of the planet needs to step up. Call your senators and congress people and demand that they push the administration to stop fueling the war with more weapons and instead work for a negotiated peace settlement. The Capitol switchboard is 202-224-3121. Call the White House line at 202-456-1111 and tell them you don't want nuclear war and you want the administration to help bring an end to the Ukraine war. You can also write a letter to the local newspaper and demand peace. 

   Also, various peace and anti-war groups are planning events to protest the US policy in Ukraine. Check them out. One is CODE Pink and another is the United National Anti-war Coalition (UNAC).

 In Connecticut, the Connecticut Peace and Solidarity Coalition and the Greater New Haven Peace Council are also taking actions to build support for peace in Ukraine.

  About 20 years ago, I attended an anti-war rally in Times Square in New York City just before a congressional vote on authorizing an American invasion of Iraq --- something that led to the disastrous Iraq War, which killed over 1 million people. Ramsey Clark, the former Attorney General and noted peace activist, was urging people to raise their voice in opposition to war.

  "Your life may depend on it... believe me," he said.

So it is today. Speak out against prolonging the Ukraine War  and demand peace. 

 Your life may depend on it.