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Mel Goodman: Preconditions Necessary to End Russia’s War in Ukraine; Kathy Kelly: U.S. Weapons Feed Yemen War and Humanitarian Crisis; Ted Glick: Campaign Pushes Back Against FERC’s Rubber Stamp of Fossil Fuel Projects; Bob Nixon: This Week’s Under-reported News Summary.

Headlines right now are full of the conflict of interest represented by Ginni Thomas, spouse of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and her non-trivial role in the January 6 insurrection aimed at overturning, violently, the last presidential election. Our question is: A week or a month from now, where will we be? Will we still have one of nine Supreme Court justices declaring himself “one being” with his spouse, who declares the 2020 election an “obvious fraud”? And will the corporate press corps have reduced that to yet another partisan spat that shouldn’t interfere with our belief that all is proceeding as it should, no deep fixes necessary? We speak with Sarah Lipton-Lubet from the Take Back the Court Action Fund, about how to respond to the Thomas scandal if we really don’t want it to happen again. ...

Thich Nhat Hanh was a Vietnamese monk, peace activist, poet, author, teacher and an inspiration for engaged Buddhism. Called Thay for short, Thich Nhat Hanh was exiled from Vietnam in 1966 after expressing opposition to the war. A year later Martin Luther King nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize. After a 39-year exile, Thay was permitted to visit Vietnam in 2005. He died on January 22, 2022.

A major problem for pro-Palestinian activists is getting the Palestinian narrative, the Palestinian factual history, the Palestinian truth, or the Palestinian analysis, into the mainstream media, which is currently dominated by the revisionist Israeli narrative fueled by the multimillion dollar Israeli Lobby. This week we take the current temperature of US media on presenting Palestinian visibility, the Palestinian case for liberation, and the projection of the Palestinian voice into the mainstream conversation. We feature Sut Jhally, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, where he taught in the Communications Department. He is also the producer of many films, including “The Occupation of the American Mind.” It offers a thorough exploration of this very issue, and it’s currently available free on youtube. We hear Professor Jhally speaking at a lively forum sponsored by Washington Report on Middle East Affairs in Washington, DC. ...

As usual, Schechtman adopts the official story on US/Ukraine/Russia. Does it matter? Regardless, the current sanctions imposed on Russia by the US and Europe are unprecedented — and put all of the nations involved into uncharted and risky economic territory. So says Columbia University professor Adam Tooze. Tooze is the author of Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World’s Economy, and writes the newsletter Chartbook, which is published on Substack. This week, he offers an in-depth and far-reaching analysis of where the sanctions may be driving the world economy. While the US portion of the sanctions is relatively small, with immediate repercussions likely limited to our energy and food sectors, the impact on the global economy may be far more serious and long-lasting. For example, shipping and commodity markets will be hard-hit, with painful consequences for low-income countries, particularly in the Global South. …

This week on Talk World Radio we’re discussing the use of nonviolent activism in Western Sahara, where Morocco is the thief and oppressor. Our guest, Ruth McDonough is a 35-year-old former secondary school teacher who was born and raised in the northern mountains of Wabanaki/New Hampshire. Ruth is an educator, facilitator, and activist in service of understanding across diversity of experiences and perspectives. Right now she is one of a team of people serving as nonviolent unarmed protectors in Western Sahara.