Tag: Russia

China’s Peace Offer to Ukraine and Does the US Want to Avoid Ukraine Humiliating Putin With Its Upcoming Offensive?

We begin with what Ukraine’s President Zelensky described today as a “long and meaningful” conversation between him and China’s President Xi Jinping in which Xi promised to send a peace delegation to Kyiv apparently pledging that China would remain neutral in the conflict, with Xi saying Beijing “will neither watch the fire from the other side, nor add fuel to the fire, let alone take advantage of the crisis to profit”. Joining us to discuss this and assess whether the Biden administration does not want Ukraine to completely humiliate Putin with its forthcoming offensive is Charles Kupchan, who was director for European Affairs on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration. He is now a professor of International Affairs in Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, and spent the last 3 years of the Obama administration as Special Assistant to President Obama for National Security. He is the author of Power in Transition: The Peaceful Change of International Order, and How Enemies Become Friends: The Sources of Stable Peace, and his latest book is Isolationism: A History of America’s Efforts to Shield Itself from the World.

Today’s Testimony by E. Jean Carroll Describing How Donald Trump Raped Her in a Bergdorf Goodman’s Dressing Room

Then we look into the civil case in a Manhattan Federal court where Donald Trump is being sued by E. Jean Carroll who claims he raped her in a dressing room in Bergdorf Goodman’s lingerie department in 1996. Joining us to discuss today’s dramatic testimony from E. Jean Carroll is Deborah Tuerkheimer, a Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law and a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan. She teaches and writes in the areas of criminal law and feminist legal theory, and she is co-author of the casebook Feminist Jurisprudence: Cases and Materials and the author of numerous articles on rape and domestic violence. Her latest book is Credible: Why We Doubt Accusers and Protect Abusers, and we discuss her article at The New York Times, “The Importance of E. Jean Carroll’s Lawsuit Against Donald Trump.”

A Summit on Venezuela in Bogata, Colombia to Which the Former Venezuelan Opposition Leader Showed Up Uninvited

Then finally we examine yesterday’s summit involving 20 countries in Bogata, Colombia aimed at finding a way out of the deterioration of Venezuela into a failed authoritarian state from which 7 million Venezuelan refugees have fled, many into Colombia. Joining us to discuss the antics of the former Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido who showed up uninvited and was put on a plane to the US is David Smilde, a Professor of Human Relations at Tulane University, Program Co-Chair at the Latin American Studies Association and a senior fellow at the Washington Office of Latin America where he specializes in Venezuela and moderates their Venezuela Politics and Human Rights blog. He has researched Venezuela for the past thirty years, living there most of that time, and he is the co-author of the forthcoming book, The Paradox of Violence in Venezuela: Revolution, Crime and Policing during Chavismo.