Day: October 11, 2022

Your Nobel Peace Prize Winners

Speaking of peace….how about those Peace Prize winners?

All the announcements have been made for the different Nobel prizes and the final nod goes for the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize……three men got the nod for their work for peace…..Belarus, Ukraine and Russia…….

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to jailed Belarus rights activist Ales Bialiatski, the Russian group Memorial, and the Ukrainian organization Center for Civil Liberties. The winners were announced Friday in Oslo by Berit Reiss-Andersen, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, the AP reports. Memorial, one of Russia’s oldest and most prominent human rights groups, was shut down by an order issued by Russia’s Supreme Court last December, less than two months before the invasion of Ukraine. Bialiatski, 60, helped spark the democracy movement in Belarus in the 1980s, CNBC reports. He was jailed last year on tax evasion charges widely thought to be politically motivated.

Reiss-Andersen said the judges wanted to honor ”three outstanding champions of human rights, democracy, and peaceful coexistence in the neighbor countries Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine.” “Through their consistent efforts in favor of human values and anti-militarism and principles of law, this year’s laureates have revitalized and honored Alfred Nobel’s vision of peace and fraternity between nations, a vision most needed in the world today,” she told reporters in Oslo.

The Ukrainian winner is the best known to us that detest war……

In what was described as a harsh rebuke of Russia, the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Ukrainian human rights organization Center for Civil Liberties, along with Belarusian human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski and the Russian human rights organization Memorial. While at first glance, the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties might sound like a group that is well deserving of this honor, Ukrainian peace leader Yurii Sheliazhenko wrote a stinging critique.

Sheliazhenko, who heads up the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement and is a board member of the European Bureau for Conscientious Objection, accused the Center for Civil Liberties of embracing the agendas of such problematic international donors as the U.S. Department of State and the National Endowment for Democracy. The National Endowment for Democracy supports NATO membership for Ukraine; insists that no negotiations with Russia are possible and shames those who seek compromise; wants the West to impose a dangerous no-fly zone; says that only Putin violates human rights in Ukraine; never criticizes the Ukrainian government for suppressing pro-Russian media, parties, and public figures; never criticizes the Ukrainian army for war crimes and human rights violations, and refuses to stand up for the human right, recognized under international law, to conscientious objection to military service.

Supporting conscientious objectors is the role of Sheliazhenko and his organization, the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement (UPM). While we hear a lot about Russian war resisters, as Sheliazhenko points out even inside Ukraine, which is portrayed in Western media as a country entirely united in its war with Russia, there are men who don’t want to fight.

Who Deserves a Nobel Peace Prize in Ukraine?

It is a shame the the American government spends little money on aid to these types of activism and yet can throw billions at the warmongers that want to extend war for personal gain.

The only purpose of war is to make dead bodies out for live bodies.

What a damn shame that war is more popular than peace.  That is a lie….it is not a shame it is disgusting!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Advertisement

Peace For Ukraine?

The war in Ukraine is drawing close to a year long…..a peaceful conclusion is further away than it was just last month….but many Americans, me included, think that diplomacy should be the only aid in this conflict…..

Nearly 60 percent of Americans would support the United States engaging in diplomatic efforts “as soon as possible” to end the war in Ukraine, even if that means Ukraine having to make concessions to Russia, according to a new poll. 

The survey, conducted by Data for Progress on behalf of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, also found that a plurality (49 percent) said the Biden administration and Congress have not done enough diplomatically to help end the war (37 percent said they had). 

The poll’s release comes after Vladimir Putin doubled down on Russia’s war in Ukraine by mobilizing reserves and issuing threats to use nuclear weapons after recent gains by the Ukrainian military near the country’s eastern border with Russia. 

Moscow has also recently orchestrated referendums in some Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine on whether citizens there want to secede and become part of the Russian Federation, leading experts to believe that regardless of the outcome, Putin plans to illegally annex parts of Ukraine. 

Poll: Americans support quick diplomatic end to war in Ukraine

There are some that are working to a dip0lomatic end…..like retired Adm Mullen…..

Retired Adm. Mike Mullen said Sunday that the US should work quickly to bring Ukraine and Russia to the negotiating table to help bring an end to the war in Ukraine.

Mullen, who served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff for George W. Bush and Barack Obama, told ABC that President Biden should “back off” his talk of nuclear armageddon and work to end the war.

“President Biden’s language — we’re about at the top of the language scale, if you will. And I think we need to back off that a little bit and do everything we possibly can to try to get to the table to resolve this thing,” Mullen said.

He said that it was up to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other diplomats to figure out how to bring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin to the table for negotiations.

“As is typical in any war, it’s gotta end and usually there are negotiations associated with that. The sooner the better, as far as I’m concerned,” Mullen added.

When discussing the risk of nuclear war, Mullen said that he has to take Putin seriously since he could use lower-yield tactical nuclear weapons and described the Russian president as a “cornered animal.”

(antiwar.com)

There are a couple things that could end this war…..some are a bit hard and others seem like logical thinking….

Biden offered no answers to his own questions. But one way might be for the western diplomatic community to put pressure on Kyiv to rein in its battlefield advances and to accept some territorial losses to Putin. This pressure could come from withholding the western-supplied arms or through the cutting of the major overseas funding that is currently keeping the whole Ukrainian economy afloat.

The levers are there. But they would be hard sells. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has said many times that Ukraine would accept nothing less than a complete Russian withdrawal from its captured territory and many in the west would rail against any military or financial constraints being applied on Kyiv.

Another sop to Putin might be for Nato to say to Moscow that, unequivocally, Ukraine (and Georgia) will never be allowed to join the alliance. But this would have little support within NATO itself – and with countries like Sweden and Finland who also want to join.

Since there is seemingly no off ramp for Putin this could be a very long war that the US must bankroll……does Afghanistan come to mind?

Peace is always elusive….but as they say “where there is a will there is a way”….sadly there is NO will these days….and we all know why this is allowed to continue.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”