We feel that the U.S. owes a tremendous responsibility, not only for getting the Afghans out, as we’re trying to do now, but for the millions of Afgh… - Medea Benjamin

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We feel that the U.S. owes a tremendous responsibility, not only for getting the Afghans out, as we’re trying to do now, but for the millions of Afghans who are left behind in terrible, dire situations from this 20 years of war. You had a great program on yesterday, Amy, about the humanitarian crisis. Well, we feel like the U.S. is now going to use its economic warfare against Afghanistan to increase that humanitarian crisis by withholding $9 billion that belongs to Afghanistan in U.S. banks, by working with other countries in Europe and the IMF to withhold funding. We don’t have to be friends with the Taliban, but we can’t be the enemies, either, because the victims will be the Afghan people. We need to let go of their funds. We need to provide generous humanitarian support. In fact, the U.S. should fund the entire $350 million urgent request made by the UNHCR, the refugee agency, because that’s equivalent to just one-and-a-half days of war in Afghanistan. So, we owe a lot to the people whose lives that we have helped destroy over these last 20 years.

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About Medea Benjamin

Medea Benjamin (born Susan Benjamin; September 10, 1952) is an American political activist who was a co-founder of Code Pink and the fair trade advocacy group Global Exchange. In 2005 she was nominated for the Nobel Prize.

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Alternative Names: Susan Benjamin
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The UN Secretary General and the European Union have also both called for a suspension of the economic warfare that the US wages against other countries through unilateral coercive sanctions. Countries under unilateral US sanctions include Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, Sudan, Syria and Zimbabwe.
In his update on April 3rd, Guterres showed that he was taking his ceasefire call seriously, insisting on actual ceasefires, not just feel-good declarations. "…There is a huge distance between declarations and deeds," Guterres said. His original plea to "put armed conflict on lockdown" explicitly called on warring parties everywhere to "silence the guns, stop the artillery, end the airstrikes," not just to say that they would like to, or that they’ll consider it if their enemies do it first.

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US policy must be reversed to reflect international law and the shifting US opinion in favor of Palestinian rights. Every Member of Congress must be pushed to sign the bill introduced by Rep. Betty McCollum insisting that US funds to Israel are not used "to support the military detention of Palestinian children, the unlawful seizure, appropriation, and destruction of Palestinian property and forcible transfer of civilians in the West Bank, or further annexation of Palestinian land in violation of international law." Congress must also be pressured to quickly enforce the Arms Export Control Act and the Leahy Laws to stop supplying any more U.S. weapons to Israel until it stops using them to attack and kill civilians. The United States has played a vital and instrumental role in the decades-long catastrophe that has engulfed the people of Palestine. U.S. leaders and politicians must now confront their country's and, in many cases, their own personal complicity in this catastrophe, and act urgently and decisively to reverse U.S. policy to support full human rights for all Palestinians.

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