For the past three years, several dozen New Yorkers have gathered each Saturday at Union Square, at 11:00 a.m. to vigil for peace in Yemen. Now, however, due to the coronavirus, the vigil for peace is radically altered. Last week, in recognition of the city’s coming...
Stop Tightening the Thumb Screws, A Humanitarian Message
U.S. sanctions against Iran, cruelly strengthened in March of 2018, continue a collective punishment of extremely vulnerable people. Presently, the US"maximum pressure" policy severely undermines Iranian efforts to cope with the ravages of COVID-19, causing...
Camp Bucca, Abu Ghraib, and the Rise of Extremism in Iraq
Sunday morning, President Trump announced the death of Abu Bakr Al- Baghdadi and three of his children. President Trump said Al-Baghdadi, the founder of ISIS, was fleeing U.S. military forces, in a tunnel, and then killed himself by detonating a suicide vest he wore....
The Plowshares 7 Found Guilty: Nuclear Weapons Are the Real Crime
On October 24, following a three-day trial in Brunswick, GA, seven Catholic Workers who acted to disarm a nuclear submarine base were convicted on three felony counts and one misdemeanor. The defendants face 20 years in prison, yet they emerged from their trial...
Death, Bloodshed, and Misery in Yemen
Writing about his visit to the world’s largest weapons bazaar, held in London in October, journalist Arron Merat describes reading the slogan emblazoned above Raytheon’s stall: "Strike With Creativity." Raytheon manufactures Paveway laser-guided bombs –...
The Wounds of War in Afghanistan
Its economy gutted by war, Afghanistan’s largest cash crop remains opium. Yet farmers there do grow other crops for export. Villagers in the Wazir Tangi area of Nangarhar province, for example, cultivate pine nuts. As a precaution, this year at harvest time, village...
The Ongoing Dread in Gaza: So Many Names, So Many Lives
"I felt shaky and uneasy all day, preparing for this talk" – Jehad Abusalim, a Palestinian from the territory of Gaza Jehad Abusalim, a Palestinian now living in the United States, grew up in Gaza. In Chicago last week, addressing activists committed to...
An Honorable Course in Iran: End Sanctions, Resume Dialogue
Last week, Elham Pourtaher, an Iranian graduate student at the State University of New York in Albany, wrote about how US policies cause suffering and trauma far beyond US borders. Her diabetic father, for example, is in danger of losing access to medicines because...
‘Every War Is a War Against Children’
At 9:30 in the morning of March 26, the entrance to a rural hospital in northwest Yemen, supported by Save the Children, was teeming as patients waited to be seen and employees arrived at work. Suddenly, missiles from an airstrike hit the hospital, killing seven...
Judging US War Crimes
Chelsea Manning, who bravely exposed atrocities committed by the U.S. military, is again imprisoned in a US jail. On International Women's Day, March 8, 2019, she was incarcerated in the Alexandria, VA federal detention center for refusing to testify in front of a...