House Progressives Swiftly Walk Back Letter Asking Biden to Pursue Russia Diplomacy

ON MONDAY MORNING, 30 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus sent a letter to the White House that attempted to gingerly open a conversation about a potential diplomatic end to Russia’s war on Ukraine. The door was slammed shut by the evening, met with enough fury to elicit a “clarification” in the form of a statement from caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal.

House Progressives Swiftly Walk Back Letter Asking Biden to Pursue Russia Diplomacy

They need to grow a backbone!

Meet Our New “Secretary Of State”…Nancy Pelosi

Meet Our New “Secretary Of State”…Nancy Pelosi

Pelosi has also complicated Biden’s role by calling on the White House to designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. The terrorist designation would complicate any possible efforts to address a resolution of the war in Ukraine or the current imbroglio in the Caucasus. The United States should be looking for ways to effect greater cooperation with Russia in order to advance conflict resolution around the world; arms control and disarmament efforts; and easing the consequences of the climate and Covid crises. The terrorism designation would also lead to secondary sanctions that would drive up global prices and worsen an inflationary situation that could lead to an international recession.

As a result of Pelosi’s meanderings, we now have the worst tensions in the Taiwan Strait in nearly 30 years; greater Ukrainian expectations of expanded U.S. largesse; and a threat to the fragile truce in the Caucasus that Putin has tried to engineer. Can we look forward to more travel from Pelosi to the tense Central Asian border between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, where 100 or so were killed in fighting over the past weekend; to the West Bank; or to Northern Ireland, which is facing renewed tensions? So many crises; so little time.

A New Study Suggests That Black Southerners’ Access to Firearms Reduced Lynchings

In her 1892 pamphlet Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, the journalist Ida B. Wells argued that firearms were an essential tool in preventing the deadly white supremacist violence that she chronicled. “Of the many inhuman outrages of this present year, the only case where the proposed lynching did not occur, was where the men armed themselves in Jacksonville, Fla., and Paducah, Ky, and prevented it,” she wrote. “The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense.”

A New Study Suggests That Black Southerners’ Access to Firearms Reduced Lynchings

Ex-UN Expert: Stop Lying, Pentagon’s War Budget Has Nothing to Do With US ‘Defence’

The Biden administration’s new Pentagon budget spells danger to the world’s peace, says retired UN Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, explaining how US interventions, subversive ops, and endemic corruption have resulted in Washington’s excessive military spending.

Sputnik News: Ex-UN Expert: Stop Lying, Pentagon’s War Budget Has Nothing to Do With US ‘Defence’