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Europe's Refugee Crisis Was Made in America

the Editors of The Nation The Nation
Washington helped create the conditions with its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The numbers keep on growing. The authorities are overwhelmed, as are the solidarity networks. The refugee crisis has revealed a different rift: between thousands of ordinary citizens, from Greece to Germany to Britain, ready to share their bread their homes, and governments determined to fortify their borders and protect their power, backed by both the anxious and the frankly xenophobic.

The Surge Fallacy

Peter Beinart The Atlantic
Having misunderstood the Iraq War, U.S. Republicans are taking a dangerously hawkish turn on foreign policy.

The Kurdish Elephant

John Feffer, Foreign Policy in Focus
In their latest deal to fight ISIS, Washington and Turkey are treating the Middle East's largest stateless minority like pawns. That's a huge mistake.

Fear and Learning in Kabul

Kathy Kelly teleSUR
Physicians for Social Responsibility recently calculated that since 2001 in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. wars have killed at least 1.3 million and quite possibly more than 2 million civilians. Their report chides U.S. political elites for attributing on-going violence in Afghanistan and Iraq to various types of internecine conflicts as if the resurgence and brutality of such conflicts is unrelated to the destabilization caused by decades of military intervention.

Memorial Day: Let Us Remember the Forgotten War Dead

H. Patricia Hyne Portside
This Memorial Day, let us remember the men and women soldiers who have suffered and died from war-caused conditions called variably soldier's heart in the Civil War, shell shock in the First World War, PTSD in the Vietnam War, and moral injury in the Iraq War...Let us not forget those who died from the nightmares of war - at their own hand.

How to Turn a Nightmare into a Fairy Tale - 40 Years Later; The Forgotten Power of the Vietnam Protest, 1965-1975

Christian Appy; Tom Hayden
April 30 is the 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. The end of that war - a time of devastating defeat for the United States and relief for the Vietnamese - has been rebranded and offers a hint of what may come when our crash-and-burn policy in the Middle East ends. That war had a lasting impact on American foreign policy, culture, and national identity and draws attention to the lessons it offers for today and the many tomorrows to come.

The Revolution in Rojava

Meredith Tax Dissent Magazine
While the Syrian opposition is understandably bitter that the YPG and YPJ withdrew most of their energy from the war with Assad, leftists worldwide should be watching the remarkable efforts being made by Syrian Kurds and their allies to build a liberated area where they can develop their ideas about socialism, democracy, women, and ecology in practice.

Tidbits - February 5, 2015 - Football, Domestic Workers, Greece, Keystone XL, Ukraine, movies, and more...

Portside
Reader Comments- Sports, NFL, Tax Subsidy; Unions Today; Domestic Worker Organizing; Students Against Sweatshops; Greece, Germany & the EU; TPP; Israel, Iran, Iraq; Keystone XL; Cuba; Ukraine; Selma; American Sniper; Resource: Where Do We Go from Here? Mass Incarceration and the Struggle for Civil Rights; After the Greek Elections New York forum- Feb 6 - new location Hold the Date- Fighting Corruption in America and Abroad - Fordham Law School - New York - Mar 6

"American Sniper" - Dishonest, Racist Film Spawns Death Threats against Arabs and Muslims

Alex von Tunzelmann; Rania Khalek; Zaid Jilani
The film piles on Bush-era propaganda and sharp-shoots the facts. The message of American Sniper is that Kyle is the real victim of the war. The Iraqis he shot deserved it, because - as it has established to its own satisfaction - they were savages. As for non-savage Iraqis who may have reasonable grounds to complain about what happened to their country following the invasion, they must be in some other movie.
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