Written by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies On February 25th, President Biden ordered U.S. air forces to drop seven 500-pound bombs on Iraqi forces in Syria, reportedly killing 22 people. The U.S. airstrike has predictably failed to halt rocket attacks on deeply unpopular U.S. bases in Iraq, which the Iraqi National Assembly passed a resolution to close over[Read More...]
Amid the ongoing horror, it’s important to find ways to atone for war crimes —including reparations. Thirty years ago, when the United States launched Operation Desert Storm against Iraq, I was a member of the Gulf Peace Team. We were 73 people from fifteen different countries, aged 22 to 76, living in a tent camp close to Iraq’s border with[Read More...]
The post Blood for Oil appeared first on Countercurrents.
Every power worth its portion of salt in the Levant these days seems to be doing it. On February 25, President Joe Biden ordered airstrikes against Syria. The premise for the attacks was implausible. “These strikes were authorized in response to recent attacks against American and Coalition personnel in Iraq,” claimed Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, “and to ongoing threats to[Read More...]
Perspectives on the Storming of the Capitol from a Military Spouse “Are you okay?” asked a friend and military spouse in the voicemail she left me on the afternoon the mob of Trump supporters breached the Capitol so violently. At home with a new baby, her Navy reservist husband stationed in Germany, the thoughts running through her head that day[Read More...]
The issue of deadly racism in the USA has been brought to the attention of all Americans by the persistent efforts of impassioned activists, especially by carrying placards with photographs of African-American victims of deadly police actions. Article suggests how the greater toll of darker skinned people murdered by Americans overseas could become a burning issue of concern for American[Read More...]
It was a brisk September evening in 1983. Strolling down the street, she carried her sleeping baby in a cloth pouch that was somewhat like a backpack positioned to be at her front. The child was warm against her body and the warmth felt good as a buffer against the chill in the night air. Meanwhile all around her was[Read More...]
Written by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies In 2004, journalist Ron Suskind quoted a Bush White House advisor, reportedly Karl Rove, as boasting, “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” He dismissed Suskind’s assumption that public policy must be rooted in “the reality-based community.” “We’re history’s actors,” the advisor told him, “…and[Read More...]
Joe Biden’s got a problem — and so do I. And so, in fact, do we. At 76 years old, you’d think I’d experienced it all when it comes to this country and its presidencies. Or most of it, anyway. I’ve been around since Franklin D. Roosevelt was president. Born on July 20, 1944, I’m a little “young” to remember[Read More...]
Written by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies The first day of the 2020 school year in Taiz, Yemen (Ahmad Al-Basha/AFP) Most people regard Trump’s treatment of immigrant children as among his most shocking crimes as president. Images of hundreds of children stolen from their families and imprisoned in chain-link cages are an unforgettable disgrace that President Biden must move[Read More...]
After four years of Donald Trump’s fitful tenure, America is awakening from a long, troubled sleep to discover, like the fictional character Rip Van Winkle, that the world it once knew has changed beyond all recognition. In that classic American tale by Washington Irving published in 1819, an amiable but shiftless farmer strolls out of his colonial village to go[Read More...]
