War
Following is an interview with Michael Christoffersen, director of Milosevic On Trial, a documentary I watched at the Tribeca Film Festival, which demonstrates the horrors that can happen when religion becomes intermingled with empire.
What attracted you to want to follow this entire trial?
By coincidence, I did the documentary Genocide: The Judgment [...]
On May 20, The Jerusalem Post reported that "a senior member in the entourage of President Bush" said during closed meetings that Bush and Cheney "were of the opinion that military action against Iran was called for." The White House denied the story, which claims that the reservations of Secretaries Rice and Gates are the remaining levies holding back the floodwaters of war. [...]
President Bush's remarks, made last week in Israel, suggesting that anyone who wishes to talk with a violent enemy is the contemporary equivalent of a Hitler appeaser, are so wide of the mark, patronizing, and simply untrue that they must be challenged.
The fact that he used the emotive context of Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations as the background for these comments is an abuse of an already misused people. And implying that Sen. Obama wishes to appease terrorism is not [...]
My fingers have been tapping out of control for more than a month and a half now. Don't worry, though -- I am not falling to the symptoms of my own PTSD just yet. At the completion of the Winter Soldier event, all Iraq [...]
All of us remember this day, where we were when we heard the news, our feelings, our fears. There has been a lot of controversy about how the memory of this day has been or is being used or misused for political purposes, but I always come back to one of my life mottoes: the best antidote to misuse is not disuse -- it is proper use.
In many ways we have run from the feelings of that day ... grief, grievance, unity, confusion, dislocation, vulnerability and solidarity. In [...]
The following is an interview with Abigail Disney, producer of the documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell, which recently won the award for best documentary feature at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival.
What sparked your interest in wanting to make a documentary about Liberia?
The fact that the newly [...]
Here is a brilliant video from an action around the 5th anniversary of the war ... Yes Lord, more holy mischief! Watch it:
How many of your friends and neighbors know, as Barbara Slavin writes in Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies, that during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini vetoed the use o
Five weeks ago, we began a series of posts on the cost of the war in Iraq. We have focused primarily on the human costs
In the Washington Post and throughout the blogosphere, debates rage about the recent spate of violence between Palestinians and Israelis, each side condemning with righteous indignation the sins of the other and proclaiming their own side's innocence. In a recent Post letters section, for example, Yaffa Klugerman wrote, "I was shocked to read [the] assertion that the [...]
In our little circles, we've been talking a lot about the need to create new holidays and rituals of remembrance as a Church
Jesus came with a job to do, to complete the work to which Israel was called. This work, from the call of Abraham onwards, was to put the human race to rights, and so to put the whole creation to rights. As the gospel writers tell the story, this task was to be accomplished by Jesus [...]
I was conscripted into the South Africa military in the late 1980s. Still in my teens, I was shipped off to do two years of "service" for my country. This included not only military training, but also indoctrination about "the enemy." I was taught about the threat of communism, of the [...]
We are told the war in Iraq is a necessary part of the "War on Terror" (WOT), and its goal is to bring democracy to the Middle East. Despite this rhetoric it is blatantly clear the US is pursuing its own interests at the cost of democracy in the region. This raises the level of [...]
"Speak to the earth, and it will teach you
The week before the invasion of Iraq, I was locked in an e-mail debate over the war with a friend of mine from my home church in Texas. I explained to him why I was opposed to the war. He responded by saying that while he understood my opposition to the war as an Iraqi, as a Christian I [...]
During the last four days, more than 100 Iraq Veterans Against the War combat veterans, academics, and international guests shared their [...]
Five years after bombs first exploded over Baghdad with a "shock and awe" display of staggering military might, the Iraq war continues with tragic costs and still-unseen consequences.
First, we mourn and honor the American and Iraqi dead whose lost lives are the ultimate reminder [...]