September, 08 2022, 12:27pm EDT
New Peace in Ukraine Coalition Kicks Off Nationwide Week of Action Monday, Sept 12 in D.C.
From DC and across the nation, CODEPINK & the Peace in Ukraine Coalition will rally inside and outside congressional offices to call for a ceasefire in Ukraine and investments in climate, not weapons to fuel endless war.
WASHINGTON
CODEPINK: Women for Peace, along with the Peace In Ukraine Coalition, will kick off a nationwide Week of Action Monday, September 12th, to demand a ceasefire in Ukraine, direct talks between the US and Russia and a freeze on weapons shipments to resolve a war in which the stakes have never been higher since the Cold War.
As the war on Ukraine enters its 7th month, the United States continues to escalate the conflict that threatens to kill thousands more Ukrainians and Russians, worsen global famine, further devastate the climate and push the two most heavily armed nuclear nations, the United States and Russia, to the brink of nuclear annihilation.
The launch for the week of action will be held at 1pm ET in front of the Cannon Building at Independence Way SE and New Jersey Ave SE. The action will feature CODEPINK co-founder, Medea Benjamin, and retired United States Army colonel and U.S. State Department official, Ann Wright.
"The White House and Congress are fueling this war with a steady stream of weapons instead of pushing for talks to end the conflict," said Medea Benjamin. "That's why we, the people, have to rise up with a demand of Negotiations, Not Escalation." Benjamin, who has authored 10 books, is gearing up for a book tour for the release of her latest book, War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, co-authored with Nicholas Davies.
Also speaking at the launch is Ann Wright, who resigned from her position with the State Department on the eve of the invasion of Iraq by the United States in 2003 stating that the invasion would be a violation of international law. Since then, she has been writing and speaking out for peace.
Rather than push for a protracted war, the White House and Congress should support a diplomatic solution along the lines of the MINSK II Peace Accord, signed by both Ukraine and Russia in 2015, to declare Ukraine a neutral non-NATO country and hold elections in the eastern region of Ukraine. Instead the US government has budgeted $40 billion to escalate the war with weapons, military equipment, troop training and intelligence, with zero accountability or oversight for taxpayer dollars. The same amount of money could have paid for 350,000 nurses or 400,000 elementary school teachers.
Other events planned for the week include peace actions in Rockville, MD; Milwaukie, WI; Nashville, TN; Philadelphia, PA, Newton, Quincy and Maiden, MA, as well five cities in California: San Francisco, San Pedro, Los Angeles, San Mateo and Santa Barbara. Peace delegations will meet inside and outside the congressional offices of Representatives Jaimie Raskin (MD-08), Katherine Clark (MA-05), Jake Auchincloss (MA-4), Stephen Lynch (MA-08), Judy Chu (CA-27), Salud Carbajal (CA-24), Jim Cooper, (TN-05), Adriano de Jesus Espaillat Rodriguez (NY-13), and Ted Lieu (CA-33), as well as Senators Padilla and Feinstein (CA).
Partner organizations in the Peace in Ukraine Coalition include CODEPINK; Veterans for Peace; World Beyond War; Women's Women's International League for Peace and Freedom-US; Peace Action, International Committee-Democratic Socialists of America (DSA); Foreign Policy Team-Progressive Democrats of America; Peace, Justice and Sustainability Now, as well as others.
For a list of events, please visit https://www.codepink.org/events
CODEPINK is a women-led grassroots organization working to end U.S. wars and militarism, support peace and human rights initiatives, and redirect our tax dollars into healthcare, education, green jobs and other life-affirming programs.
(818) 275-7232LATEST NEWS
Sabreen, Baby Girl Rescued From Mother's Womb After Israeli Airstrike, Dies
The baby was born last week via an emergency Caesarean section, but doctors were ultimately unable to save her.
Apr 26, 2024
A grieving family and a team of medical providers in Rafah, Gaza were desperate this week for a miracle, hoping that newborn Sabreen al-Rouh Jouda would survive after being delivered prematurely moments after her mother died of injuries sustained in an Israeli airstrike.
On Friday, it became clear that the family's hopes would not be realized as doctors announced Sabreen's death.
Dr. Muhammad Salama, head of the emergency neonatal department at Emirati Hospital, where Sabreen was born last week via a Caesarean section that was caught on film and widely reported as outlets searched for any bit of hopeful news out of Gaza, said the baby's lungs were not able to fully absorb oxygen because she was born at just 30 weeks' gestation.
"Every day we have a sad story; every day we have a horrible story," Salama toldNBC News, gesturing to other babies whom doctors and nurses are struggling to care for amid Israel's destruction of the territory's healthcare system. "This baby right here, his father has died. This baby's mother has died. Another two babies in the ICU, one of them came and we cannot know, sadly, if his mother or father is alive."
Sabreen is now one of 16 children killed in two airstrikes last weekend at a housing complex in Rafah, where Israeli officials have said they plan to move forward with a planned ground invasion.
Sabreen's parents and their three-year-old daughter, Malak, were also killed.
Her mother, Sabreen al-Sakani, was rushed to the hospital on Saturday night with extensive injuries that she succumbed to just before doctors performed the emergency Caesarean section.
Sabreen weighed just 3.1 pounds at birth and was in severe respiratory distress, but doctors were able to temporarily stabilize her condition.
Her grandmother was filmed speaking to her as she lay in an incubator earlier this week.
"I swear I will lock you inside my heart," she said. "You will live in blessing."
At least two-thirds of the 34,356 Palestinians who have been killed in Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) since last October have been women and children, according to the local health ministry. Israel and the U.S., which has contributed billions of dollars in weapons to the IDF, have repeatedly claimed the military is precisely targeting Hamas fighters.
As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, the IDF has relied on an AI targeting system to identify Hamas targets, but considers bombing suspected militants in their homes "a first option," and has officially considered the killing of up to 100 civilians for every Hamas target an acceptable level of precision.
Israel has also claimed it has designated so-called safe zones, but Palestinians have been killed after moving to areas where the IDF said it wouldn't carry out bombings.
"There are no safe places at all, they are liars, liars," Sabreen's uncle, Rami Jouda, told NBC News. "There is no safe place in Gaza. We are all living under the menace of death."
Keep ReadingShow Less
ACLU Sues to Uncover 'What the NSA Is Hiding' About Its Use of Artificial Intelligence
"AI tools have the potential to expand the NSA's surveillance dragnet more than ever before," the civil liberties group warned.
Apr 26, 2024
The ACLU on Thursday sued the National Security Agency in an effort to uncover how the federal body is integrating rapidly advancing artificial intelligence technology into its mass spying operations—information that the agency has kept under wraps despite the dire implications for civil liberties.
Filed in a federal court in New York, the lawsuit comes over a month after the ACLU submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking details on the kinds of AI tools the NSA is using and whether it is taking any steps to prevent large-scale privacy abuses of the kind the agency is notorious for.
The ACLU said in its new complaint that the NSA and other federal agencies have yet to release "any responsive records, notwithstanding the FOIA's requirement that agencies respond to requests within twenty working days."
"Timely disclosure of the requested records [is] vitally necessary to an informed debate about the NSA's rapid deployment of novel AI systems in its surveillance activities and the safeguards for privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties that should apply," the complaint states, asking the court for an injunction requiring the NSA to immediately process the ACLU's FOIA request.
In a blog post on Thursday, the ACLU's Shaiba Rather and Patrick Toomey noted that AI "has transformed many of the NSA's daily operations" in recent years, with the agency utilizing AI tools to "help gather information on foreign governments, augment human language processing, comb through networks for cybersecurity threats, and even monitor its own analysts as they do their jobs."
"Unfortunately, that's about all we know," the pair wrote. "As the NSA integrates AI into some of its most profound decisions, it's left us in the dark about how it uses AI and what safeguards, if any, are in place to protect everyday Americans and others around the globe whose privacy hangs in the balance."
"That's why we're suing to find out what the NSA is hiding," they added.
BREAKING: We just filed a FOIA lawsuit to find out how the NSA — one of America's biggest spy agencies — is using artificial intelligence.
These are dangerous, powerful tools and the public deserves to know how the government is using them.
— ACLU (@ACLU) April 25, 2024
The ACLU filed its lawsuit less than a week after Congress approved a massive expansion of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), warrantless spying authority that the NSA has heavily abused to sweep up the communications of American journalists, activists, and lawmakers.
With their newly broadened authority, the NSA and other intelligence agencies will have the power to enlist a wide range of businesses and individuals to participate in their warrantless spying operations—a potential catastrophe for privacy rights.
Rather and Toomey warned Thursday that the growing, secretive use of artificial intelligence tools has "the potential to expand the NSA's surveillance dragnet more than ever before, expose private facts about our lives through vast data-mining activities, and automate decisions that once relied on human expertise and judgment."
"The government's lack of transparency is especially concerning given the dangers that AI systems pose for people's civil rights and civil liberties," Rather and Toomey wrote. "As we've already seen in areas like law enforcement and employment, using algorithmic systems to gather and analyze intelligence can compound privacy intrusions and perpetuate discrimination."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Right-Wingers Plot to Give Trump Control Over Federal Reserve If Reelected
"Under such an approach, the chair would regularly seek Trump's views on interest-rate policy and then negotiate with the committee to steer policy on the president's behalf," The Wall Street Journal reported.
Apr 26, 2024
Right-wing allies of former U.S. President Donald Trump are reportedly crafting a plan to give the executive branch control over Federal Reserve policy decisions, an effort that comes as the presumptive GOP nominee continues to signal his authoritarian intentions for a potential second term.
The Wall Street Journalreported Thursday that former Trump administration officials and other supporters of the ex-president "have in recent months discussed a range of proposals, from incremental policy changes to a long-shot assertion that the president himself should play a role in setting interest rates."
"A small group of the president's allies—whose work is so secretive that even some prominent former Trump economic aides weren't aware of it—has produced a roughly 10-page document outlining a policy vision for the central bank," the Journal reported. "The group of Trump allies argues that he should be consulted on interest-rate decisions, and the draft document recommends subjecting Fed regulations to White House review and more forcefully using the Treasury Department as a check on the central bank. The group also contends that Trump, if he returns to the White House, would have the authority to oust Jerome Powell as Fed chair before his four-year term ends in 2026."
During his first four years in the White House, Trump repeatedly criticized Powell—whom the former president appointed in 2017—over the central bank's interest rate policy and insisted he had the authority to oust the Fed chair before the end of his term. The Fed is an independent body subject to limited congressional oversight.
"I have the right to do that," Trump said in 2019 of ousting Powell. "I'm not happy with his actions, I don't think he's done a good job."
The Fed, still under Powell's leadership, has since jacked up interest rates to their highest level in decades in an attempt to combat inflation—an approach that progressive lawmakers and economists have criticized as misguided, arguing that prices were elevated primarily by pandemic-related supply chain disruptions and corporate profiteering and that hiking rates would harm workers. (Progressives have historically pushed for Fed reforms that would make the powerful central bank more accountable to the public.)
Late last year, Trump said interest rates were "too high" but did not say he would pressure the central bank to lower them, saying: "Depends where inflation is. But I would get inflation down."
More recently, Trump suggested the Fed's indication that rate cuts are coming in the near future as inflation cools is a political ploy to "help the Democrats."
"It looks to me like he's trying to lower interest rates for the sake of maybe getting people elected, I don't know," Trump said in a Fox Business appearance in February.
Economist Paul Krugman predicted in his New York Timescolumn earlier this year that "Trumpist attacks on the Fed for cutting interest rates are coming."
"What we don't know is how the Fed will react," Krugman wrote. "In a recent dialogue with me about the economy, my colleague Peter Coy suggested that the Fed may be inhibited from cutting rates because it'll fear accusations from Trump that it's trying to help Biden. I hope Fed officials understand that they'll be betraying their responsibilities if they let themselves be intimidated in this way."
"And I hope that forewarned is forearmed," he added. "MAGA attacks on the Fed are coming; they should be treated as the bad-faith bullying they are."
The Journal reported Thursday that "several people who have spoken with Trump about the Fed said he appears to want someone in charge of the institution who will, in effect, treat the president as an ex officio member of the central bank's rate-setting committee."
"Under such an approach, the chair would regularly seek Trump's views on interest-rate policy and then negotiate with the committee to steer policy on the president's behalf," the newspaper continued. "Some of the former president's advisers have discussed requiring that candidates for Fed chair privately agree to consult informally with Trump on the central bank's decisions... Others have made the case that Trump himself could sit on the Fed's board of governors on an acting basis, an option that several people close to the former president described as far-fetched."
According to earlier Journal reporting, Trump's team has discussed several possible replacements for Powell, including former White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett and Arthur Laffer, a former Reagan adviser and notorious tax-cut enthusiast.
Trump allies' plot to help the former president exert control over Fed policy if he's reelected in November provides further insight into the presumptive Republican nominee's likely approach to a second term.
During his 2024 campaign, Trump—who is facing 88 charges across four criminal cases—has vowed to be a dictator on "day one," wield federal authority to go after his political opponents, launch the "largest domestic deportation operation in American history," and use the U.S. military to crack down on protests.
"If a president is truly determined to make himself a dictator, the question at the end of the day is whether the military and other force-deploying agencies of the federal government are willing to go along," Josh Chafetz, a constitutional law professor at Georgetown University, toldThe Washington Post in a recent interview. "If they are, there's not much Congress or the courts could do about it."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular