In this wide-ranging conversation, Malalai Joya takes us through the trauma that has engulfed her country from the Soviet invasion in 1979 to the rise of the first Taliban regime in 1996 through to the 2001 US-led invasion and the Taliban’s subsequent return in 2021.
In April 1941, four years before he was to become President and eight months before the United States entered World War II, Senator Harry Truman of Missouri reacted to the news that Germany had invaded the Soviet Union: “If we see that Germany is winning the war, we ought to help Russia; and if that Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and in that way let them kill as many as possible.”
In his State of the Union address, U.S. President Joe Biden praised unarmed Ukrainians stopping tanks. He did not praise them enough. Nonviolent resistance to oppression, occupation, and invasion is more likely to succeed than violent; the successes tend to be longer lasting; and — added benefit — the chance of nuclear war is decreased rather than increased.
We go to Kyiv to speak with Yurii Sheliazhenko, executive secretary of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, who says “support of Ukraine in the West is mainly military support” and reports that his country “focuses on warfare and almost ignores nonviolent resistance to war.”
This week on Talk World Radio, we’re talking with Alfred de Zayas, author of Building a Just World Order.
In 2019, the RAND Corporation tentacle of the U.S. Military Industrial Congressional “Intelligence” Media Academic “Think” Tank Complex published a report claiming to have “conducted a qualitative assessment of ‘cost-imposing options’ that could unbalance and overextend Russia.”
Unarmed Ukrainians changing road signs, blocking tanks and confronting the Russian military are showing their bravery and strategic brilliance.
The defenders of Ukraine are bravely resisting Russian aggression, shaming the rest of the world and the UN Security Council for its failure to protect them.
