Politics & Prose at Busboys and Poets 14th & V welcomes Medea Benjamin to discuss her new book Kingdom of the Unjust:Â Behind the US-Saudi Connection.
The United States and Saudi Arabia have radically different views on global geo-politics, human rights, and much else. Saudi Arabia is a major funder of terrorist organizations worldwide, is ruled by a repressive regime, and supports an extreme interpretation of Islam. Yet the two countries in are allies, if sometimes wary ones. In her brisk yet detailed analysis of the history of U.S.-Saudi relations, Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink, Global Exchange, and a former Green Party candidate for California senator, lays bare the contradictions at the heart of this unlikely alliance, looking beyond the diplomatic rhetoric to explore what it really rests on. Winner of the 2014 Gandhi Peace Award, the 2010 Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace Prize from the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the U.S. Peace Memorial Foundation´s Peace Prize, which praised her "creative leadership on the front lines of the anti-war movement," Benjamin proposes alternative ways that the U.S. can accomplish its objectives in the Middle East, including reassessing its goals.
