…to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other countries in the Saudi-Emirati-led coalition which is attacking Yemen.   The U.S. military refuels Saudi and Emirati warplanes through midair exercises. And, the United States helps the Saudi coalition warmakers choose their targets.   Isa Blumi, an associate professor at Stockholm University and author of the book Destroying Yemen, has said the United States is “front and center responsible” fo…

…vestigation is done, drone operators and intelligence analysts are given a pass on responsibility for extra-judicially assassinating innocent civilians. One of the most recent and most publicized drone strike on innocent civilians was in the city of Kabul, Afghanistan in August 2021, during the botched U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan.  After following a white car for hours that intelligence analysts reportedly believed to be carrying a possible I…

…r each day for work, I got a lot of guided tours of Tijuana, and these back-and-forth visits exposed me to just how blatant vast disparities in wealth can be.   Later, I met Rosa (not her real name) while working in a restaurant in Chicago, where I now live. We worked at the same prep station each day, and over the months, I met her husband and kids. Eventually Rosa became comfortable enough to tell me she had crossed the desert as a teenager to a…

…n so easily manipulate the ordinary and even secular Israeli (96% supported Israeli action in Gaza) by understanding how desperate they are to feel secure in their identity and have a homeland to go with it. As an example of the confused convoluted Escher-like mind-set, I give a quote from Golda Meir: “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the A…

…n experienced three decades of war,” said Esmatullah. “I wish that one day we’ll be able to end war. I want to be someone who, in the future, bans wars.” It will take a lot of “someones” to ban war, ones like Esmatullah who become schooled in ways to live communally with the neediest of people, building societies whose actions won’t evoke desires for revenge. Kathy Kelly ([email protected])co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org)…

…water well has dried up,” 18-year-old Surkh Gul said. “Ours too,” echoed 13-year-old Inaam. A distressed Surkh Gul lamented, “We have to fetch water from the public well along the main road, but that water is muddy, not fit for drinking. I get bottled water for my two-year-old daughter. At least someone in the family should stay healthy.” Inaam chipped in, “Fortunately, for now, the water that we fetch from a nearby mosque is clean.” A U.S. and Af…

…e made when a U.S. weaponized drone killed my friend Raz Mohammed’s brother-in-law and five of his friends? The young men were enjoying an early evening gathering in their orchard in Wardak province Afghanistan. All the men were unarmed, none of them were involved with the Taliban. Their instant deaths were the result of a ‘signature strike’ – a targeted killing based on racial profiling, the men ‘fitted’ the demographic of the Taliban – they were…

…who wrote and shared with us her heartache over being unable to help needy neighbors. “Thank you for hearing our Afghan pain,” she and her spouse responded. Now is a crucial time to listen and not to look away. Kathy Kelly, (Kathy.vcnv@gmail.com) co-coordinates the BanKillerDrones.org campaign (bankillerdrones.org) and serves on World Beyond War’s advisory board.  This link has information on the Valentine’s Day Love to Afghanistan Vigils and acti…

…War was published by the Stop the War Coalition (London, ISBN 978-0-9927166-0-8). The book not only commemorates the centenary of the so-called Great War, it criticises the British government’s cynical efforts to capitalise on the War in order to justify a bellicose foreign policy in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere. Faulkner begins by quoting Harry Patch, Britain’s last WWI soldier who died in 2009, aged 111. Patch refused to kill, an act…

…lf in an isolated little village with limited food and fear from angry anti-refugee protesters who might come and invade the camp and threaten his life again…The guard told us to keep the windows closed and keep silent even if the protesters come and break the windows. He remembered the day when the gunmen in Baghdad opened fire on my car. Omar has lost many of his friends and he saw many explosions in front of his eyes. His teacher was killed in…