Blame the US and NATO for the Lack of Progress Toward Peace in Ukraine

In this episode of By Any Means Necessary, hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman are joined by Medea Benjamin, Co-Founder of CODEPINK: Women for Peace to discuss the double standard employed to accuse Russia of killing civilians while also ignoring the scores of civilians killed in the last twenty years of US wars in the Middle East, how the US constantly weaponizes international law and the so-called Rules-Based Order to accuse other nations of crimes and encourage intervention while it also is effectively immune from the same application of law, and the media’s role in manipulating the empathy and opinion of its viewers to support the destruction of the enemies of the US and its allies while also denouncing other nations’ actions because they happen to be targets of the US.

In the second segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Mohamed Elmaazi, a UK-based freelance journalist, and contributor to numerous outlets including The Dissenter, Jacobin, The Canary and Electronic Intifada to discuss the third anniversary of the arrest and imprisonment of Julian Assange, what the drive to punish Assange for daring to reveal the crimes of the US and its allies is about and what crimes those governments are trying to hide, where the US push to extradite Assange from the UK currently stands and what the stakes are if Assange stands trial in the US, and what the prospects are for stopping Assange from being extradited to the US.

In the third segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Miguel Garcia of the ANTICONQUISTA Collective and host and creator of the Sports as a Weapon podcast to discuss Major League Baseball’s commemoration of the anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier of baseball and what Robinson’s relationship with the MLB and baseball was like after he retired from the game, the MLB’s scarcity of Black and non-white managers and the sport’s inability to recruit Black American players seventy-five years after Jackie Robinson’s MLB debut, Brett Favre’s alleged involvement in an $8 million welfare fraud scam in Mississippi and the media’s racialized double standard on covering sports fraud schemes, and how a win-at-all-costs and celebrity culture that is imbued in superstar athletes reflects a broader indiviudalist culture that is pervasive in capitalist society.

Later in the show, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Walter Smolarek, a journalist, organizer and editor of Liberation newspaper, and managing editor of LiberationNews.org to discuss the parameters for peace in Ukraine being imposed by the US and other nations as the war in Ukraine rages and is prolonged by NATO and the US, how the effect of the conflict in Ukraine on the American economy spells trouble for the Democratic Party as it heads into the midterm elections in 2022, and why this moment in American politics presents an opportunity to build a mass movement to effect real, systemic change that benefits working and poor people.

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