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Anti-war Movement

Renewed Peace Movement Lauded As Protesters Marched In Washington

March 23, 2023 Julie Varughese, Toward Freedom. , , , ,
Washington, D.C.—An estimated couple of thousand of people to “several thousand” marched on March 18 in downtown Washington D.C., calling for an end to the U.S. imperialist project that they hold responsible for 20 years of a “War on Terror” on millions of people. The weekend marked the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. U.S. interference in the form of military invasions and other types of activities since 2001 have caused the global displacement of 38 million people and the death of at least 900,000 people, according to the Costs of War Project. Those are conservative estimates.

Which Way Forward For The Antiwar Movement?

March 15, 2023 John Catalinotto, Workers World. , , ,
On March 10 President Joe Biden’s administration submitted a military budget to Congress of a record $886 billion. With add-ons from Congress, funds hidden in veterans’ benefits and research, and supplements for arms to Ukraine, the costs will easily top $1 trillion. That same day a major regional bank, the Silicon Valley Bank in California, failed and was taken over by federal regulators. It was the largest U.S. bank to collapse since the 2008 financial crisis. And that same day, China hosted negotiations in Beijing between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which ended with an agreement between the two major West Asian countries.

Making Politicians Uncomfortable, With Anti-War Activist Medea Benjamin

January 25, 2023 Lee Camp, Mintpress News. , , ,
In this livestream interview, Lee Camp speaks with Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of the female-led anti-war group CODEPINK. Benjamin has been on a tour of late, discussing her most recent book, “War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict.” The book delves into the ongoing conflict and aims to raise awareness and inspire grassroots activism to prevent a potential World War III. The interview begins with Camp mentioning some of his previous interviews with notable figures such as Julian Assange’s wife, Stella, and Julian’s father, John Shipton. Camp then plays a video of Benjamin’s most recent disruption, which took place at an event hosted by a Washington think tank and featuring Adam Smith, the hawkish head of the House Armed Services Committee. In the clip, Benjamin can be heard shutting down Smith’s speech and bringing attention to the dangers of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and the potential for nuclear war.

What Next For The Anti-War Movement, With Brian Becker

January 16, 2023 Lee Camp, Mintpress News. , ,
Brian Becker’s commitment to social and economic justice began at a young age, shaped by his religious upbringing and his desire for fairness and equality for all people. Throughout his career, he has been a vocal critic of U.S. imperialism and the capitalist system, which he sees as inherently exploitative and oppressive. His advocacy for socialism stems from his belief that a socialist system would be more just and equitable for all people. Becker has also been an active voice in the anti-war movement, opposing U.S. led interventions in foreign countries and advocating for peaceful negotiation as a solution to conflicts. He has been a chief organizer of nationwide protests against the endless war state for over two decades, and is considered one of the most experienced activists in the United States. Today, he joins Behind The Headlines host Lee Camp about the history of anti-war organizing in the United States and what is in store for the anti-war movement in 2023.

The Trillion Dollar Silencer

January 8, 2023 Jeremy Kuzmarov, Covert Action Magazine. , , ,
Tens of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets across the U.S. in the last few years to decry police brutality, to oppose the Supreme Court’s decision to restrict abortion rights, and to contest what they believed was a rigged election (the January 2021 Capitol riots). Only small hardy bands by comparison have taken to the streets to protest record military budgets—approaching $1 trillion under Joe Biden—or the illegal bombing of Syria, expansion of U.S. troops in Africa, provision of $20 billion in U.S. military aid to Ukraine, and military provocations directed against China. Joan Roelofs’ new book The Trillion Dollar Silencer: Why There Is So Little Anti-War Protest in the United States (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2022), starts with an important question: “Why is there so much acceptance and so little protest against our government’s illegal and immoral wars and other military operations?”

Peace Activists Take On The Pentagon’s Corporate ‘Merchants Of Death’

January 8, 2023 Kathy Kelly, Truthout. , , ,
Days after a U.S. warplane bombed a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing forty-two people, twenty-four of them patients, the international president of MSF, Dr. Joanne Liu walked through the wreckage and prepared to deliver condolences to family members of those who had been killed. A brief video, taped in October, 2015, captures her nearly unutterable sadness as she speaks about a family who, the day before the bombing, had been prepared to bring their daughter home. Doctors had helped the young girl recover, but because war was raging outside the hospital, administrators recommended that the family come the next day. “She’s safer here,” they said.

Stop US Wars: MLK Week Of Actions – Jan 13 – 22, 2023

December 18, 2022 United National Antiwar Coalition. , , ,
As Martin Luther King, Jr. so correctly reminded us, the U.S. is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.  Since WWII, the US has initiated more than 60 military interventions in foreign countries.  The US/NATO proxy war in Ukraine, whose origins reside in the 2014 US-backed-fascist led coup that replaced the elected Ukrainian government, brings the US in direct confrontation with a major nuclear power as does the U.S. provocation against China over Taiwan. 

‘Say NO To US Wars!’: Back To The Streets, October 15-22

September 11, 2022 United National Antiwar Coalition. , , ,
Today working people face escalating costs of food and energy, recession, growing insecurity and attacks on efforts to unionize. The continuing wars and military provocations have brought us to the brink of nuclear war. Yet, during this election period, imperialist foreign policy has been getting little attention.  It is time for us to be back in the streets to demand an end to US wars and provocations. While the U.S. pours more weapons into the proxy war in Ukraine–holding open the possibility of direct confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia - the war fanatics in Washington seem determined to start even more fires around the world.

The Poor Peoples Campaign Dishonors Martin Luther King

May 6, 2022 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
On April 4, 1967 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave one of the most significant speeches of his career. In “Beyond Vietnam - Time to Break Silence ” King declared his unequivocal opposition to the war in Vietnam. His very public break with Lyndon Johnson was greeted with derision, including from his own allies, who believed that the president was an ally who should not be attacked. The NAACP board passed a resolution calling King’s statement a “serious tactical mistake” that would neither “serve the cause of civil rights nor of peace.” The media joined in the condemnation, with the New York Times characterizing his comments as “facile” and “slander.” Even Black newspapers such as The Pittsburgh Courier judged his remarks to be “tragically misleading.”

An Antidote To The ‘Split’ In The US Peace Movement: Anti-interventionism

April 7, 2022 John V. Walsh, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Massachusetts Peace Action, a venerable part of the US Peace Movement, has been around since the 1980s and its predecessors date back to the 1950s.  Its voice is heeded and it represents most of the shared opinions of the liberal and progressive US peace movement. A recent piece by its Assistant Director, Brian Garvey,  provides an astute analysis of the ideological differences in the progressive part of the US peace movement and properly criticizes its inability to unite around a common program.  He asks the two crucial questions: “What do we do now? and “How do we make a difference?” “Making a difference” to end the war is crucial.  We in the US peace effort want to be effective.

Breaking: Activists Scale Roof Of Raytheon Facility To Protest Wars

March 21, 2022 RAM INC, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Right now a group of activists with Resist and Abolish the Military Industrial Complex (RAM INC) are taking over the roof of Raytheon's facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Raytheon’s parking garage has also been blockaded and there is a disruption happening in the facility's main lobby. They are there to demand that Raytheon stop profiting from war, genocide and colonial violence. Raytheon is the largest producer of guided missiles in the world and is the second largest military contractor. They have made billions in profits from Israel’s occupation of Palestine, Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen, the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They also have numerous contracts with ICE and other border enforcement agencies around the world.

The Antiwar Movement That Wasn’t Enough

February 7, 2022 Nan Levinson, Tom Dispatch. , , , ,
When I urge my writing students to juice up their stories, I tell them about “disruptive technologies,” inventions and concepts that end up irrevocably changing industries. Think: iPhones, personal computers, or to reach deep into history, steamships. It’s the tech version of what we used to call a paradigm shift. (President Biden likes to refer to it as an inflection point.) Certain events function that way, too. After they occur, it’s impossible to go back to how things were: World War II for one generation, the Vietnam War for another, and 9/11 for a third. Tell me it isn’t hard now to remember what it was like to catch a flight without schlepping down roped-off chutes like cattle to the slaughter, even if for most of the history of air travel, no one worried about underwear bombers or explosive baby formula. Of course, once upon a time, we weren’t incessantly at war either.

Desmond Tutu Opposed Capitalism, Israeli Apartheid And US/UK Imperialism, Too

December 27, 2021 This Week With David Rovics. , , ,
Being a leader in the movement to end apartheid in South Africa was probably the greatest achievement of the man's life work, and it should come as a surprise to no one that this is the focus of his many obituaries, along with the Nobel he was awarded in 1984.  After Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, he was remembered by the establishment in much the same way, as a leader of the movement against apartheid in the US.  The fact that he had become one of the most well-known and well-loved voices of the antiwar movement in the United States and around the world at the time of his death has largely been written out of the history books, a very inconvenient truth.

What Will It Take To Transform Canada’s Foreign Policy For The Better?

June 30, 2021 Bianca Mugyenyi,, Canadian Dimension. , ,
This Thursday will mark one year since Canada was defeated in its bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council. The Trudeau government’s loss marked a rejection of its pro-Washington, militaristic and anti-Palestinian policies. In the months before the vote, a half-dozen activists launched #NoUNSC4Canada. The social media campaign criticized Canada’s climate, nuclear and mining policies as well as its destructive role across the Global South in countries like Bolivia, Haiti and Venezuela. The campaign also included a widely circulated public letter focused on Canada’s anti-Palestinian policies as well as letters sent to African and Caribbean ambassadors critical of Canada’s role in those regions.

Whatever Happened To Americans’ Moral Compasss

May 1, 2021 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. , , ,
The Vietnam War is one of many heinous stains on American history that to this day often is told through a revisionist lens or outright ignored. Yet the truth remains beneath the layers of whitewashing that the U.S. government sent thousands of Americans to slaughter and be slaughtered over a conflict that had everything to do with Cold War ideologies and nothing to do with justice or freedom. The death tolls are still shocking to read: it is estimated that 2 million Vietnamese civilians were killed during the war, along with 1.1 million  North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters and 58,220 American soldiers. The conflict also inspired an anti-war movement described as “one of the largest and most successful youth-led resistance movements in American history” in the 2020 film “The Boys Who Said NO!”
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