One year ago, Wikileaks’ “Collateral Murder video1 created outrage over the actions of U.S. soldiers in Baghdad, including the platoon I deployed with. If that grisly video didn’t stop you in your tracks, the photographs and report on the “Kill Team,” released by Rolling Stone should be the wake-up call ...
Articles tagged with: “Afghanistan”
Under Obama, Better to Commit a War Crime Than Expose One
Written by Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis Bradley Manning is accused of humiliating the political establishment by revealing the complicity of top U.S. officials in carrying out and covering up war crimes. In return for his act of conscience, the U.S. government is holding him in abusive solitary confinement, humiliating ...
Civil Resistance to the Wars Continues
"We should not think that the destruction and suffering unleashed by war is limited to Iraq and Afghanistan. Individuals and whole cities here at home have become 'collateral damage.' Millions of people are thrown out of their jobs and then out of their homes. Pressures cascade onto state and local governments as ...
Why Don't We Anti-War Protesters DO It?
The massive protest in Wisconsin got me thinking. Why can't we do the same to end the war in Afghanistan and the occupation of Iraq? There are millions of people in the U.S. who urgently want these wasteful, tragic and unjustified conflicts concluded immediately and all troops and armaments brought ...
Call to Action: March 17-19 Iraq War Protests
I'm listening to an MLK speech from 1967, where King says that the United States, at that point, had committed "more war crimes than almost any other nation." Add 44 years of invasions, CIA-engineered coups, and occupations, from Vietnam through Afghanistan. Add the development of weapons and training for modern ...
KABUL – The NGO’s offices were sparse and well worn, but they bustled with a palpable sense of purpose. Our host’s hospitality was unerring. For reasons that will become obvious, we will call him Dr. Ahmed Hasan. Everything else about him and his work is precisely as related.Dr. Hasan is ...
U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is failing
Before wrapping up the deadliest year of the entire war, with 499 U.S. fatalities, Pres. Obama visited Afghanistan in early December and spoke to a room filled with members of the 101st Airborne Division, to tell them about the “progress” they were making in the war.“Progress” for the Obama administration ...
Young Afghans Work for Peace, Starting With Their Own Hearts
"He stares into the distance and sometimes he talks incoherently," Abdulai said, describing his older brother a decade after the Taliban killed their father and grandfather for being the wrong ethnicity. But, he recalled through a fragile smile, "When our family fled, my brother piggy-backed me into the mountains."Abdulai, 15, ...
Biden pledges Afghan support beyond 2014
Joe Biden, the US vice president, has pledged long-term American support for Afghanistan, offering a commitment to help the war-torn nation beyond the 2014 target both countries have set to have Afghans fully in charge of their own security. The day after he arrived in Kabul on an unannounced visit, ...
'Dear Afghanistan': A New Year's Call for Peace
Here are some of the e-mails from Minnesotans (beginning with my own) sent today, New Year's Day 2011, taking advantage of the "Dear Afghanistan" communication exchange opportunity organized by the Afghan Youth Voices of Peace. Given our ongoing war situation, some (like mine) probably commenced a little awkwardly but at ...
If, as 2011 begins, you want to peer into the future, enter my time machine, strap yourself in, and head for the past, that laboratory for all developments of our moment and beyond.Just as 2010 ended, the American military’s urge to surge resurfaced in a significant way. It seems that ...
"Dear Afghanistan": A Global Listening Project for Peace
Note: The five boys I met in Kabul, Afghanistan, from the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers were young – the oldest only 20 – and as charming and well-mannered as teenage boys can humanly be. Their mentor, Hakim, displayed patience and tireless compassion. I found it easy to settle into a ...
December 28th, 2010
700 NATO troops killed in Afghanistan in 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A coalition patrol fought off an insurgent attack in mountainous eastern Afghanistan Tuesday, on a day when two servicemen were killed in the country's troubled south, bringing the death toll for foreign troops in the country to 700 in 2010, according to an AP count. This ...
“Dear Afghanistan:” A New Year’s Call for Peace
While the US may be the world’s single super power in military terms, it faces another super power: the voices of war-weary millions who detest violence and killing. In Afghanistan, in the United States, and among the populations of countries whose governments have joined the NATO coalition, millions of people ...
'Raise Your Voices, Protest, Stop These Wars'
The following is a personal appeal from Ron Kovic, Vietnam War veteran and author of Born on the Fourth of July, to Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans and active-duty service members. Kovic issued the appeal to bring more veterans and GIs into the anti-war struggle and to support the work ...
During the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King called our government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” True then—and even more so today. A few years before that, in 1964 Mario Savio made his great speech at Berkeley; at the end he says, “There is a time when ...
The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
A soft landing for America 40 years from now? Don’t bet on it. The demise of the United States as the global superpower could come far more quickly than anyone imagines. If Washington is dreaming of 2040 or 2050 as the end of the American Century, a more realistic assessment ...
My group, New York City's Grandmothers Against the War, recently "adopted" the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, to provide moral and material support for their efforts to end our war in their homeland. The youngsters, who live in a mountain village 100 miles NW of Kabal, have accomplished miracles of peace-building ...
Wars Are Not Prolonged For the Good of Soldiers
An excerpt from David Swanson's new book War Is A Lie. We learn a lot about the real motives for wars when whistleblowers leak the minutes of secret meetings, or when congressional committees publish the records of hearings decades later. War planners write books. They make movies. They face investigations. ...
The True Afghanistan Withdrawal Date
The seemingly endless war in Afghanistan is now admittedly endless, as Obama has officially announced at the NATO summit in Lisbon that the U.S. military will remain heavily engaged, with “eye-watering levels of violence,” beyond 2014. (Sacramento Bee, Nov. 18)When the Bush administration launched a full-scale invasion of Afghanistan in ...
Plainfield man killed in Afghanistan
A Plainfield man was one of two soldiers who were killed Monday in Kandahar, Afghanistan, the Department of Defense announced today.Pfc. Andrew N. Meari, 21, of Plainfield, and Spc. Jonathan M. Curtis, 24, of Belmont, Mass., died of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked their unit with an improvised explosive device, ...
Belmont soldier killed in Afghanistan, DOD reports
The remains of a Belmont soldier who was killed Monday in a bomb attack in Kandahar, Afghanistan were returned to American soil today, according to a release from the Department of Defense.Spc. Jonathan M. Curtis, 24, of Belmont, was killed when insurgents attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device. ...
Drone strikes kill 8 in northwest Pakistan
[...]In the first incident, one missile was fired on a militant hideout in the area of Mir Ali of North Waziristan, one of the seven districts of Pakistan's tribal region bordering Afghanistan, the two intelligence officials said. Five were killed. Later, a second suspected U.S. drone strike killed three individuals ...
U.S. military campaign to topple resilient Taliban hasn't succeeded
An intense military campaign aimed at crippling the Taliban has so far failed to inflict more than fleeting setbacks on the insurgency or put meaningful pressure on its leaders to seek peace, according to U.S. military and intelligence officials citing the latest assessments of the war in Afghanistan.Escalated airstrikes and ...
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Mike's Blog
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June 5th, 2013
Here's How We Built a Movie Theater for the People – and Why the MPAA Says It's #1 in the World
This past week, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the main federation of Hollywood's six major studios, posted on their web site a list of what they believe ...
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March 23rd, 2013
This evening is going be a big moment in turning our country around on the issue of gun violence. That's why I desperately want you ...
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March 21st, 2013
I am hosting a nationwide series of house parties this Saturday night where tens of thousands of people will gather together in living rooms to ...
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March 15th, 2013
The response to my Newtown letter this week has been overwhelming. It is so very clear to everyone that the majority of Americans have had ...
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March 13th, 2013
America, You Must Not Look Away (How to Finish Off the NRA)
The year was 1955. Emmett Till was a young African American boy from Chicago visiting relatives in Mississippi. One day Emmett was seen "flirting" with ...
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February 26th, 2013
My Final Word on Buzzfeed and Emad Burnat's Detention at LAX
Thanks to everyone for bearing with me as I spend so much time on what happened to Emad Burnat. It's important to me because he's ...
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February 26th, 2013
Michael Moore Responds to Buzzfeed Story on '5 Broken Cameras' Co-Director Emad Burnat
On Tuesday, February 19th, Emad Burnat, the Palestianian co-director of the Oscar-nominated documentary '5 Broken Cameras,' was detained with his wife and son at Los ...
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September 11th, 2010
If the 'Mosque' Isn't Built, This Is No Longer America
OpenMike 9/11/10 Michael Moore's daily blog I am opposed to the building of the "mosque" two blocks from Ground Zero. I want it built on ...
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December 14th, 2010
Why I'm Posting Bail Money for Julian Assange
Yesterday, in the Westminster Magistrates Court in London, the lawyers for WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange presented to the judge a document from me stating that ...
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May 12th, 2011
Some Final Thoughts on the Death of Osama bin Laden
"The Nazis killed tens of MILLIONS. They got a trial. Why? Because we're not like them. We're Americans. We roll different." – Michael Moore in ...
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November 22nd, 2011
Where Does Occupy Wall Street Go From Here?
This past weekend I participated in a four-hour meeting of Occupy Wall Street activists whose job it is to come up with the vision and ...
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September 22nd, 2011
A STATEMENT FROM MICHAEL MOORE ON THE EXECUTION OF TROY DAVIS
I encourage everyone I know to never travel to Georgia, never buy anything made in Georgia, to never do business in Georgia. I will ask ...
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December 16th, 2010
Dear Swedish Government: Hi there -- or as you all say, Hallå! You know, all of us here in the U.S. love your country. Your ...
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November 2nd, 2010
This letter contains (almost) no criticisms of how the Democrats have brought this day of reckoning upon themselves. That -- and where to go from ...
