Medea Benjamin
Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace, is the author of the new book, Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Her previous books include: Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection; Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control; Don’t Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart, and (with Jodie Evans) Stop the Next War Now (Inner Ocean Action Guide). Follow her on Twitter: @medeabenjamin
Articles by this author
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Views Friday, January 10, 2020 10 Ways Trump's Actions Against Iran Hurt the US, the Region, and the World The U.S. assassination of General Qassem Soleimani has not yet plunged us into a full-scale war with Iran thanks to the Iranian government’s measured response, which demonstrated its capabilities without actually harming U.S. troops or escalating the conflict. But the danger of a full-blown war... Read more |
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Views Thursday, January 02, 2020 A New Year and a New Trump Foreign Policy Blunder in Iraq It’s a new year, and the U.S. has found a new enemy—an Iraqi militia called Kata’ib Hezbollah. How tragically predictable was that? So who or what is Kata’ib Hezbollah? Why are U.S. forces attacking it? And where will this lead? Kata’ib Hezbollah is one of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) that... Read more |
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Views Monday, December 30, 2019 10 Good Things About 2019 Impeachment, Trump, impeachment, Trump. It’s hard to think of this year without obsessing about the occupant of the White House. But yes, there were lots of other events going on in the world this year. Some of them were tragic, like the coup in Bolivia, but some are hopeful and move us in a... Read more |
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Views Saturday, December 21, 2019 The Real Lesson of Afghanistan Is That Regime Change Does Not Work The trove of U.S. "Lessons Learned" documents on Afghanistan published by the Washington Post portrays, in excruciating detail, the anatomy of a failed policy, scandalously hidden from the public for 18 years. The "Lessons Learned" papers, however, are based on the premise that the U.S. and its... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, December 17, 2019 Five Years After Obama’s Cuba Opening, Cubans Are Reeling From the "Trump Effect" December 17, 2019, Havana, Cuba: Gloria Minor had been preparing her AirBnB in Havana for years, investing every penny her sister sent her from Miami in repairing and refurbishing her apartment. With President Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro re-establishing relations five years ago, Minor was... Read more |
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Views Monday, December 02, 2019 Trump Was Right Before He Was Wrong: NATO Should Be Obsolete The three smartest words that Donald Trump uttered during his presidential campaign are “NATO is obsolete.” His adversary, Hillary Clinton, retorted that NATO was “the strongest military alliance in the history of the world.” Now that Trump has been in power, the White House parrots the same worn... Read more |
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Views Friday, November 22, 2019 "They're Killing Us Like Dogs"—A Massacre in Bolivia and a Plea for Help I am writing from Bolivia just days after witnessing the November 19 military massacre at the Senkata gas plant in the indigenous city of El Alto, and the tear-gassing of a peaceful funeral procession on November 21 to commemorate the dead. These are examples, unfortunately, of the modus operandi... Read more |
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Views Thursday, November 14, 2019 Why Aren't People in the US Rising Up Like Those Elsewhere in the World? The waves of protests breaking out in country after country around the world beg the question: Why aren’t Americans rising up in peaceful protest like our neighbors? We live at the very heart of this neoliberal system that is force-feeding the systemic injustice and inequality of 19th century... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, November 06, 2019 Neoliberalism’s Children Rise Up to Demand Justice in Chile and the World Uprisings against the corrupt, generation-long dominance of neoliberal “center-right” and “center-left” governments that benefit the wealthy and multinational corporations at the expense of working people are sweeping country after country all over the world. In this Autumn of Discontent, people... Read more |
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Views Friday, October 18, 2019 Trump’s Fake Withdrawal From Endless War On Monday, October 7th, the U.S. withdrew 50 to 100 troops from positions near Syria's border with Turkey, and two days later Turkey invaded Rojava, the de facto autonomous Kurdish region of northeast Syria. Trump is now taking credit for a temporary, tenuous ceasefire. In a blizzard of tweets and... Read more |