Friday, July 28, 2023
Cornel West for President
CornelWest2024.com
[email protected]

Cornel West

I am running for President because these are urgent times, not times for business as usual, not times for shutting down debate, including debate on the existential questions of war and climate.

If we want to end Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and alleviate the suffering of our Ukrainian brothers and sisters, we must find ways to end the conflict, not fuel it with cesspools of weapons. Instead of seeking solutions at the negotiating table, President Biden is sending barbaric cluster bombs that will blow off the hands of Ukrainian children for years to come. He has authorized 3,000 U.S. reservists to be deployed to Europe, adding to the over 100,000 U.S. service members already stationed there, including 15,000 on Russia’s doorstep in Romania and Poland. As Ukraine’s counteroffensive continues to falter, will Biden end up sending our sons and daughters to fight and die in Ukraine? 

Biden is walking us into a nuclear WWIII, while robbing money from poor and working people to fatten the bank accounts of war profiteers at the Pentagon trough.

It is unconscionable to spend over $100 billion to continue the war in Ukraine, while 34 million people at home are food insecure, 1 in 4 Americans are saddled with medical debt, 60% live paycheck to paycheck, millions lack access to clean water and hundreds of thousands of homeless people sleep in tents on our city streets. It is unconscionable to spend over $100 billion to continue the war in Ukraine while our ecosystems collapse and extreme weather envelopes us in 112 degree heat, wildfires, hurricanes and floods.

This is thievery in plain sight--thievery. Let’s look at who is profiting from this carnage. Raytheon. Northrop Grumman. Lockheed Martin. Why is the Biden administration hurling our money at the CEO of Raytheon, who makes 22 million dollars a year?

War is a racket. 

And so is the fossil fuel industry.

The corporate criminals who knew about global warming but lied, telling us that burning fossil fuels would not burn up the planet, are profiting lavishly from this war by replacing Russian-sanctioned energy with our own exports of dirty fossil fuels. The U.S. is now Europe’s top crude oil supplier. Not only that, but Biden’s domestic policies have worsened the climate crisis. The man who ran on a platform to rescue us from climate catastrophe has issued more oil drilling permits than Trump, another climate enemy. Last year, ExxonMobil made $56 billion, an all-time record for an oil company, while Shell raked in $40 billion. Chevron and Total also made out like bandits, pocketing $36 billion each. 

We must get serious about the climate crisis that is making our planet uninhabitable.

If I were President, I would sit down with China’s President Xi to talk about these existential crises of climate and war. I would urge him to use his leverage as Russia’s number one trade partner to push Putin to the negotiating table, and I would promise to do the same with Zelensky so we can end this senseless carnage with a diplomatic resolution that addresses neutrality for Ukraine, referendums for the Donbas and Crimea, a demilitarized border, nuclear disarmament and security guarantees for all.

I would also stop the ridiculous and dangerous saber-rattling against China, the world’s largest exporter and owner of a trillion dollars of US debt. This saber-rattling only benefits the same war profiteers raiding our treasury for endless war in Ukraine. Instead, I would work with Chinese leaders to stop our planet from burning up in flames. 

Yes, we need collaboration, not competition. We need dialogue, not cluster munitions. We need to tamp down the existential threat of nuclear war so that we can ramp up our solutions to the existential climate threat.

These are urgent times, indeed, and that is why I am running.

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