Marcy Winograd - Antiwar.com Blog

Holding the Press and White House Accountable: Solomon’s Afterword on the Gaza War

In Norman Solomon’s new Afterword in the paperback edition of his book War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, the author excoriates the White House for arming a genocide with assistance from a negligent press. Solomon tracks events following Hamas’ killings and kidnappings of Israelis on October 7th, a few months after publication of the book in hardcover. The 31-page Afterword indicts the Biden administration for complicity in Israel’s genocide, a horror facilitated by Pentagon media stenographers who covered up, ignored or under-reported U.S-Israel war crimes.

As executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, Solomon values truth in reporting, a rarity in a country where the press fails to report near trillion-dollar military budgets that defund urgent needs at home despite Americans living one paycheck away from desperation, even homelessness.

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Who Are They? The California Legislative Jewish Caucus

While University of California students chanted “Divest!” and erected “Free Palestine” encampments, a little-known pro-Israel faction of the California legislature introduced legislation to indoctrinate six million California public school children and stem the rising tide of college resistance to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

What’s in a name?

They call themselves the California Legislative Jewish Caucus and they are Democrats in the state legislature who critics describe as “progressive except for Palestine” or “PEP” lawmakers. Individually, they shepard populist bills to increase fines on white collar criminals, strengthen whistleblower protections, require AI transparency, and expand affordable housing, but collectively they work to erase Palestinians from the political and educational discourse. In the midst of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, the Caucus not only refuses to support a ceasefire, but centers the debate on the protesters’ lack of civility, often conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.

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Ukrainian Pacifist Movement: An interview With Its Leader Yurii Sheliazhenko

CODEPINK’s Marcy Winograd, Chair of the US-based Peace in Ukraine Coalition, interviewed Yurii Sheliazhenko, Executive Secretary of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, about the war in Ukraine and military mobilization against the Russian invasion. Yurii lives in Kyiv, where he faces routine electricity shortages and daily air raid sirens that send people running to subway stations for shelter.

Inspired by pacifists Leo Tostoy, Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, as well as Indian and Dutch nonviolent resistance, Yurii calls for an end to US and NATO weapons to Ukraine. Arming Ukraine undermined past peace agreements and discouraged negotiations to end the current crisis, he says.

The Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, with ten members at its core, opposes the war in Ukraine and all wars by advocating for protection of human rights, especially the right to conscientious objection to military service.

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Peace Activists Hit the Streets from DC to San Francisco

On Sunday President Biden warned Russian President Valdamir Putin "Dont. Don’t. Don’t." use nuclear weapons in retaliation for severe battlefield losses in Ukraine. While Putin dismissed Biden’s worries as unfounded, the specter of nuclear Armageddon drove US anti-war activists to the streets days before in a September Week of Action organized by the Peace in Ukraine Coalition.

Demanding a "Ceasefire now!" activists hosted anti-war events in DC, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Madison, Boston, Rockville, Santa Cruz, San Mateo, San Pedro, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles.

The Peace in Ukraine Coalition – CODEPINK, Veterans for Peace, Democratic Socialists of America, Massachusetts Peace Action, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom-US and other organizations – mobilized for negotiations, not escalation in what CODEPINK describes as a proxy war threatening a direct war between the two most heavily armed nuclear nations, the United States and Russia.

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