Articles by Kathy Kelly
We found 74 results.
When Starvation Is a Weapon, the Harvest Is Shame
Kathy Kelly | The Progressive Magazine – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Apr 2024
14 Mar 2024 – As Palestinians die of starvation under occupation, it brings grim echoes of another famine nearly two centuries ago in Ireland.
→ read full article
The US Must Stop Arming Israel’s Assault on Hospitals
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Feb 2024
21 Feb 2024 – If we can’t find the morality to stop, we may find we have created a world in which no one can count on upholding basic human rights.
→ read full articleTunnels for Safety and Tunnels for Death
Kathy Kelly | The Progressive – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Nov 2023
22 Nov 2023 – An underground nuclear arsenal in Israel dwarfs the tunnels alleged at a Gaza hospital.
→ read full articleTo Close All US Military Bases, We First Have to Identify Them
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 May 2023
2 May 2023 – The global infrastructure of the American military empire must be mapped before it can be properly dismantled. Meet the person who is doing just that.
→ read full articleNo Starvation for Oil
Kathy Kelly | The Progressive Magazine – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Jul 2022
11 Jul 2022 – As President Joe Biden embarks on his trip to the Middle East, those of us back home must acknowledge the suffering the United States has caused in places like Yemen.
→ read full article
War Scars the Earth. To Heal, We Must Cultivate Hope, not Harm
Kathy Kelly and Matt Gannon – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Jul 2022
8 Jul 2022 – The persistence of militarism is promoted by so-called “realists.” Nuclear armed opponents push the world closer and closer to annihilation. Sooner or later these weapons are bound to be used. Cooperation is the only way forward. The “realist” option leads to collective suicide.
→ read full articleThe Impact of Ukraine on Yemen
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Mar 2022
22 Mar 2022 – The People of Yemen Suffer Atrocities, Too – The Western economic war on Russia over Ukraine is having a spillover effect on the forgotten war in Yemen. The ghastly blockade and bombardment of Yemen, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, is now entering its eighth year.
→ read full articleAbandoning Yemen
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Oct 2021
11 Oct 2021 – Why is the UN Human Rights Council Silencing Yemeni Human Rights Victims? – Politicizing UN agencies and procedures makes it all the more difficult for people making inquiries to establish trusting relationships with people whose rights should be upheld by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
→ read full articleTo Counter Terror, Abolish War
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Sep 2021
11 Sep 2021 – On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was among a small group of U.S. citizens who sat on milk crates or stood holding signs, across from the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in Manhattan. We had been fasting from solid foods for a month, calling for an end to brutal economic warfare waged against Iraq through imposition of U.N. sanctions.
→ read full article
Why Daniel Hale Deserves Gratitude, Not Prison
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Jul 2021
6 Jul 2021 – Daniel E. Hale, a former Air Force analyst who blew the whistle on the consequences of drone warfare, will appear for sentencing on 27 July. The whistleblower acted on behalf of the public’s right to know what is being done in its name.
→ read full articleArt versus Drones
Kathy Kelly | CovertAction Magazine – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Jul 2021
29 Jun 2021 – An exhibit seeks to raise public awareness of the anonymous killing machines. People in many parts of the world can’t speak up. Comparatively, we don’t face torture or death for protesting. We can tell the stories of the people being killed now by our drones, or watching the skies in terror of them.
→ read full article
Art against Drones
Kathy Kelly | Voices for Creative Nonviolence – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 May 2021
11 May 2021 – The installation of a drone overlooking people in Manhattan can bring them into the larger discussion. Outside of many military bases safely within the U.S. – from which drones are piloted to deal death over Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Syria and other lands, activists have repeatedly staged artistic events. In 2011, at Hancock Field in Syracuse, thirty-eight activists were arrested for a “die-in” during which they simply lay down, at the gate, covering themselves with bloodied sheets.
→ read full articleWhy I Support an International Treaty to Ban Weaponized Drones and Drone Surveillance
Kathy Kelly | Covert Action Magazine – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Mar 2021
28 Feb 2021 – At a time in my life when I barely knew drones existed, a young Lebanese mother mourning the death of her six-year-old daughter, Zainab, helped me understand how monitoring by drones terrified her and her neighbors. It was the summer of 2006, during a war referred to as the Israeli-Hezbollah war.
→ read full article
About Suffering: A Massacre of the Innocents in Yemen
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Jan 2021
19 Jan 2021- For more than five years, Yemenis have faced near-famine conditions while enduring a naval blockade and routine aerial bombardment. The war has already caused 233,000 deaths, including 131,000 from indirect causes such as lack of food, health services and infrastructure. Systematic destruction of farms, fisheries, roads, sewage and sanitation plants and health-care facilities has wrought further suffering. We must not turn away. Doing so may help spare the lives of at least some of Yemen’s children.
→ read full articleLike a Rocket in the Garden: The Unending War in Afghanistan
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Nov 2020
People in the United States continue to pretend that the despair and futility we’ve caused isn’t our fault.
→ read full articleReversal
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Aug 2020
6 Aug 2020 – With survival at stake, can weapon makers change course? Today, the seventy-fifth anniversary of the atomic attack on Hiroshima, should be a day for quiet introspection.
→ read full articleYemen: A Torrent of Suffering in a Time of Siege
Kathy Kelly | Voices for Creative Nonviolence – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Aug 2020
29 Jul 2020 – By 2018’s end, Save the Children reported 85,000 children under age five had already died from starvation since the war escalated in 2015. By the end of 2020, it is expected that 23,500 children with severe acute malnutrition will be at immediate risk of death. If we cooperate with war-making elites, the most horrible storms will be unleashed. We must learn–and quickly–to make a torrent of our mingled cries.
→ read full articleBattleground States
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Jun 2020
26 Jun 2020 – The world that our global empire is swiftly creating, through our devastating oil wars in the Middle East and our arriving cold wars with Russia and China, is a world without winners. We must resist signing contracts with weapon makers profiting from endless immiseration of the Middle East and needless superpower rivalries inviting full nuclear war.
→ read full article
Weapons That Protect White Privilege Prevent Sustainable Community Change
Kathy Kelly | Voices for Creative Nonviolence – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jun 2020
10 Jun 2020 – Kathy Kelly reflects on weapons and systems white people use to protect their white privilege, recalling that Dr. King likened U.S. wars to “some demonic destructive suction tube.”
→ read full articleOur Disaster
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jun 2020
1 Jun 2020 – The policies of the United States are deeply implicated in Yemen’s suffering, through the sale of billions of dollars in munitions to Saudi Arabia and other countries that have intervened in the civil war.
→ read full article
He’s Got Eight Numbers, Just like Everybody Else”
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Apr 2020
April 3, 2020 – Trident nuclear disarmament activist Steve Kelly, a Jesuit priest and member of Kings Bay Plowshares 7, begins his third year imprisoned in a county jail as he and his companions await sentencing.
→ read full articleVigil for Peace in Yemen, a New Norm
Kathy Kelly | Voices for Creative Nonviolence – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Mar 2020
27 Mar 2020 – U.S. national security leaders and stakeholders in war, as they shelter in place, have an extraordinary opportunity to set a new norm and link with the vigil for Peace in Yemen, virtually. And, some may even join Yale students on April 9, from sunrise to sunset, in their National Fast for Peace in Yemen. They invite us to pledge support for Doctors Without Borders and other relief groups in Yemen.
→ read full article
Stop Tightening the Thumb Screws–A Humanitarian Message
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Mar 2020
17 Mar 2020 – U.S. sanctions against Iran continue a collective punishment of extremely vulnerable people. Presently, the U.S. “maximum pressure” policy severely undermines Iranian efforts to cope with the ravages of COVID-19, causing hardship and tragedy while contributing to the global spread of the pandemic. On March 12, Iran’s Foreign Minister Jawad Zarif urged member states of the UN to end the United States’ unconscionable and lethal economic warfare.
→ read full articleCamp Bucca, Abu Ghraib and the Rise of Extremism in Iraq
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Nov 2019
A sergeant told Human Rights Watch: “If he’s a good guy, you know, now he’s a bad guy because of the way we treated him.” The violence that brought the Islamic State into being has a long history. The USA created Al Qaeda, ISIS among others and will keep creating such ‘enemies’ so long as its war economy demands it. War on Terror is a marketing stunt to buy/sell death, torture, destruction, evil. Remember karma?
→ read full articleTrident Is the Crime
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Oct 2019
On 24 Oct, following a three-day trial, seven Catholic Workers who acted to disarm a nuclear submarine base were convicted of three felony counts and one misdemeanor. On April 4, 2018 the group had entered a U.S. Navy Submarine base which is a home port for the Trident nuclear missile fleet. Just one of those nuclear missiles, if launched, would cause 1,825 times more damage than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
→ read full article
Death, Misery and Bloodshed in Yemen
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Oct 2019
16 Oct 2019 – Writing about his visit to the world’s largest weapons bazaar, held in London during October, Arron Merat describes reading this slogan emblazoned above Raytheon’s stall: “Strike with Creativity.” Raytheon manufactures Paveway laser-guided bombs, fragments of which have been found in the wreckage of schools, hospitals, and markets across Yemen. How can a weapons manufacturer that causes such death, bloodshed, and misery lay claim to creativity?
→ read full article
Taking Next Steps toward Nuclear Abolition
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Oct 2019
On April 4, 2018, several of Marianne’s close friends from the New York Catholic Worker community became part of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 by entering the U.S. Navy Nuclear Submarine base in King’s Bay, GA and performing a traditional Plowshares action. Beginning Monday [21 Oct], they will face serious criminal charges and potentially harsh sentences for their action at Kings Bay. Marianne anxiously awaits their trial. “Why,” she asks, “isn’t there more coverage?”
→ read full articleThe Wounds of War in Afghanistan
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Oct 2019
30 Sep 2019 – Recovering from a broken hip, TRANSCEND member, peace activist Kathy Kelly reflects on her experiences with people disabled and traumatized by war.
→ read full article
A Morning in Afghanistan
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Sep 2019
11 Sep 2019 – On a very warm September morning in Kabul, several dozen men, women, and children sit on the carpeted floor of a room at the Afghan Peace Volunteers’ Borderfree Center. Amidst political posturing, aerial terrorism and street bombings, Afghan citizens pursue their daily work toward peace.
→ read full articleThe Ongoing Dread in Gaza: So Many Names, So Many Lives
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Jul 2019
23 Jul 2019 – Jehad Abusalim, a Palestinian now living in the United States, grew up in Gaza. In Chicago last week, addressing activists committed to breaking the siege of Gaza, he held up a stack of 31 papers. On each page were names of 1,254 Palestinians living in Gaza who had been killed in just one month of Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge” attacks five years ago.
→ read full article
Activists Walk “Cease and Desist” Order into Nuclear Weapons Base in Germany
Submitted by Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jul 2019
10 Jul 2019 — News advisory on antinuclear protests that Voices for Creative Nonviolence co-coordinator Brian Terrell is currently attending in Büchel, Germany. Included is the “Treaty Enforcement Order” presented to Büchel Air Base today and a photograph of the eleven activists’ entry to the base.
→ read full article
An Honorable Course in Iran: End Sanctions, Resume Dialogue
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jul 2019
means of aggression, the United States should heed calls for dialogue and negotiation, relying on Albert Camus’s conclusion to his profound anti-war essay following World War II: “The only honorable course will be to stake everything on the formidable gamble, that words are more powerful than munitions.”
→ read full article‘Every War Is a War against Children’
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Apr 2019
28 Mar 2019 – We, in the United States, have yet to realize both the futility and immense consequences of war even as we develop, store, sell, and use hideous weapons. The number of children killed is rising.
→ read full articleJudging U.S. War Crimes
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Mar 2019
10 Mar 2’019 – Chelsea Manning, who bravely exposed atrocities committed by the U.S. military, is again imprisoned in a U.S. jail. On International Women’s Day, March 8, she was incarcerated for refusing to testify in front of a secretive Grand Jury. Her principled and courageous actions provide guidance for us to control our fears. We must seek an end to war crimes in Afghanistan, Iraq and other areas where the U.S. terrifies and kills civilians.
→ read full articleCan We Divest from Weapons Dealers?
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Mar 2019
8 Mar 2019 – Impoverished people living in numerous countries today would stand a far better chance of survival, and risk far less trauma, if weapon manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Raytheon stopped manufacturing and selling death-dealing products.
→ read full article
Defying War and Defining Peace in Afghanistan
Kathy Kelly | Voices for Creative Nonviolence – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Feb 2019
29 Jan 2019 – On January 27th, 2019, the Taliban and the U.S. government each publicly stated acceptance, in principle, of a draft framework for ongoing negotiations that could culminate in a peace deal to end a two-decade war in Afghanistan. As we learn more about the negotiations, it’s important to remember others working toward dialogue and negotiation in Afghanistan.
→ read full articleA Shift: Repudiating War on Yemen
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Dec 2018
The Horror of the Yemen War Is Changing Minds At Last
→ read full articleSeeing Yemen from Jeju
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Dec 2018
4 Dec 2018 – Jeju, a visa-free port, has been an entry point for close to 500 Yemenis who have traveled nearly 5000 miles in search of safety. Traumatized by consistent bombing, threats of imprisonment and torture, and the horrors of starvation, recent migrants to South Korea, including children, yearn for refuge.
→ read full articleThe Long, Brutal U.S. War on Children in the Middle East
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Dec 2018
When children waste away to literally nothing while fourteen million people face conflict driven famine, a hue and cry—yes, a caterwaul —most certainly should be raised, worldwide.
→ read full articleU.S. Is Complicit in Child Slaughter in Yemen
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Aug 2018
On August 9, a U.S.-supported Saudi airstrike bombed a bus carrying schoolchildren in Sa’ada, a city in northern Yemen. The United States is deeply implicated in the appalling carnage in Yemen. It is our responsibility as citizens to do what we can to demand an end to this complicity.
→ read full article
God Only Knows
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Jul 2018
In July of 2018, an Amnesty International report entitled “God Knows If He’s Alive,” documented the plight of dozens of families in southern Yemen whose loved ones have been tortured, killed, or forcibly disappeared by Yemeni security forces reporting to the United Arab Emirates. The UAE is part of the Saudi-led coalition that, with vital US support, has been bombarding and blockading famine and disease-ravaged Yemen for three brutal years.
→ read full articleOn Purpose, in Kabul
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Jul 2018
26 Jun 2018 – War profiteers deliver hellish realities and futile prospects, but the Afghan Peace Volunteers have not given up on bettering their country. In recent visits to Kabul, we’ve listened as they consider the longer-term question of how peace can come to an economically devastated country where employment by various warlords, including the U.S. and Afghan militaries, is many families’ only way to put bread on the table.
→ read full article
Hungering for Nuclear Disarmament
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Jun 2018
19 June 2018 – In the state of Georgia’s Glynn County Detention Center, four activists await trial stemming from their nonviolent action, on April 4, 2018, at the Naval Submarine Base, Kings Bay. In all, seven Catholic plowshares activists acted that day, aiming to make real the prophet Isaiah’s command to “beat swords into plowshares.” This week, five people have gathered for a fast and vigil, near the Naval Base, calling it “Hunger for Nuclear Disarmament.”
→ read full articleA Mile in Their Shoes
Kathy Kelly - TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Jun 2018
This past Friday [8 Jun 2018], Hazara girls joined young Pashto boys to sing Afghanistan’s national anthem as a welcome to Pashto men walking 400 miles from Helmand to Kabul calling on warring parties in Afghanistan to end the war. At rest stops, they must tend to their torn and blistered feet.
→ read full articleDigging Deeper in Afhanistan
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Jun 2018
5 Jun 2018 – Ongoing battles between militants, government forces, and international allies have destroyed much of Kabul’s water infrastructure, forcing people to drill their own wells. The current population, estimated around 4.5 million, is expected to reach 9 million by 2050. The estimated groundwater potential is enough to supply only 2 million inhabitants with water.
→ read full article
Scourging Yemen
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 May 2018
On March 22, 2018, Amnesty International called for an end to the flow of arms to the Saudi-led coalition attacking Yemen. “There is extensive evidence that irresponsible arms flows to the Saudi Arabia-led coalition have resulted in enormous harm to Yemeni civilians but this has not deterred the USA, the UK and other states, including France, Spain and Italy, from continuing transfers of billions of dollars’ worth of such arms.”
→ read full articleTeen Solidarity against the Merchants of Death
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Mar 2018
1 Mar 2018 – The U.S. military remains in Afghanistan because it wants to eventually control mineral wealth and other resources. But right now, weapon manufacturers like General Atomics and Boeing — which supply the U.S. base in Kandahar with drones, missiles and bombs — are profiting from the perpetuation of war. This profit gives them common cause with arms manufacturers like Sturm Ruger and Sig Sauer earning millions from equipping U.S. police forces as well as deranged killers in U.S. classrooms.
→ read full articleA Treacherous Crossing
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Feb 2018
30 Jan 2018 – The “good guys” shaping and selling U.S. foreign policy and weapon sales exemplify the heartless indifference of the smugglers who gamble human life in exceedingly dangerous crossings.
→ read full article41 Hearts Beating in Guantanamo
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jan 2018
January 11, 2018 marked the 16th year that Guantanamo prison has exclusively imprisoned Muslim men, subjecting many of them to torture and arbitrary detention… Forty-one hearts still beat in Guantanamo prison cells. That’s forty-one too many.
→ read full articleRemaining Peaceful Was Their Choice
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jan 2018
31 Dec 2017 – People living now in Yemen’s third largest city, Ta’iz, have endured unimaginable circumstances for the past three years. Civilians fear to go outside lest they be shot by a sniper or step on a land mine… Despite their misery, they steadfastly opted for unarmed, nonviolent struggle.
→ read full articleThe Quality of Mercy
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Nov 2017
21 Nov 2017 – The comfortable nations often authorize the worst atrocities overseas through fear for their own safety, imagining themselves the victims to be protected from crime at all costs. Such attitudes entitle people in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen to look in our direction when they ask, “Who are the criminals?”
→ read full articleAfghanistan: From the Ground Up
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Nov 2017
30 Oct 2017 – On a recent Friday at the Afghan Peace Volunteers’ Borderfree Center, here in Kabul, thirty mothers sat cross-legged along the walls of a large meeting room. Masoumah, who co-coordinates the Center’s “Street Kids School” project, had invited the mothers to a parents meeting.
→ read full articleWrongful Rhetoric and Trump’s Strategy on Iran
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Oct 2017
In a time when 20 million people face starvation, it’s particularly obscene for any country to pour resources into nuclear weaponry.
→ read full articleGreat Hunger
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Oct 2017
2 Oct 2017 – In relation to conflict-driven famines, the U.S., our violence, and our delusions of being indispensable stem from accepting a belief that our “way of life” is non-negotiable. Growing inequality, protected by menacing arsenals, paves a path to the graveyard: It is not a “way of life.” We still could acquire a great hunger: a transforming hunger to share justice with our planetary neighbors.
→ read full articleAt Every Door
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jul 2017
Billions, perhaps trillions, will be spent to send weapons, weapon systems, fighter jets, ammunition, and military support to the Middle East region, fueling new arms races and raising the profits of U.S. weapon makers. But, we can choose to stand at the doors of our leaders and of our neighbors, honoring past sacrifices and the innocent lives we were unable to save, as we redouble efforts to stop war makers from constantly gaining the upper hand in our lives.
→ read full article“Ain’t No Such Thing as a Just War” – Ben Salmon, WWI Resister
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Jul 2017
If the Allies, led by France and Britain, had not won a total victory, there would have been no punitive peace treaty like that completed at Versailles, no stab-in-the back allegations by resentful Germans, and thus no rise, much less triumph, of Hitler and the Nazis. The next world war, with its 50 million deaths, would probably not have occurred.”
→ read full articleWhat Does War Generate?
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Jul 2017
What are the generals’ concerns and interests in Iraq and Afghanistan? How strong is their concern even for the well-being of their own troops? Several veterans of U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have written persuasive memoirs about the wastefulness of their deployments, accusing commanders of sending them on futile missions.
→ read full articleWould You Like a Drink Of Water? Please Ask a Yemeni Child
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Jun 2017
We, likewise, can work toward justice for those who live in communities like Flint, MI; we can seek sane approaches to the climate crisis; and we can insist that those who are targets of war, like the cholera-ridden, desperately hungry children of Yemen, be spared from aerial terrorism and given full access to clean, life-saving waters.
→ read full articleFeed the Hungry, Treat the Sick: A Crucial Training
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Jun 2017
Since entering the war in Yemen, in March of 2015, the Saudi coalition’s airstrikes, with U.S. assistance, have destroyed bridges, roads, factories, farms, food trucks, animals, water infrastructure, and agricultural banks across the north, while imposing a blockade on the territory. Saudi Arabia bombed a Yemeni hospital operated by Doctors Without Borders. The airstrike went on for two hours, reducing the hospital to rubble.
→ read full articleCourage for Peace, Not for War, in Afghanistan
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Jun 2017
“Afghanistan, for Americans, doesn’t really exist as a country and a people,” writes William Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel with the U.S. Air Force. “It exists only as a wasteful, winless, and endless war . . . . It’s a chance to test theories and to earn points (and decorations) for promotion for many officers. It’s hardly ever about working closely with the Afghan people to find solutions that will work for them over the long haul.”
→ read full articleIn Yemen, Shocked to His Bones
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 May 2017
5 May 2017 – Yemen stands as the worst-threatened of four countries where impending famine comprise the single-worst humanitarian crisis since the founding of the U.N. On 2 May 2017, the UN published a grim infographic detailing conditions in Yemen where 17 million Yemenis — or around 60 percent of the population — are unable to access food. The U.S. and its allies continue to bomb Yemen.
→ read full articleThe Shame of Killing Innocent People
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 May 2017
The U.S. Congress could put an end to U.S. complicity in the crimes against humanity being committed by military forces in Yemen. Congress could insist that the U.S. stop supplying the Saudi led coalition with weapons, stop helping Saudi jets to refuel, end diplomatic cover for Saudi Arabia, and stop providing the Saudis with intelligence support.
→ read full articleReality and the U.S.-Made Famine in Yemen
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Mar 2017
At this critical juncture, all member states of the UN must call for an end to the blockade and airstrikes, a silencing of all guns, and a negotiated settlement to the war in Yemen. The worst malefactors, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, must abandon cynical maneuvering against rivals like Iran, in the face of such an unspeakable human cost as Yemen is being made to pay. U.S. people bear responsibility to demand a radical departure from U.S. policy which exacerbates the deadly tragedy faced by people living in Yemen.
→ read full articleFriendship in Defiance of War: Review of ‘Never Can I Write of Damascus’
Kathy Kelly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Feb 2017
21 Feb 2017 – Bringing to the fore an under-told story: Before making their home in Damascus, Gabe Huck and Theresa Kubasak had regularly visited Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, where they developed lasting friendships and deepened cultural awareness. Iraq was steadily deteriorating under thirteen years of U.S./UN imposed economic sanctions.
→ read full articleHuman Rights Day: A Call to Care
Kathy Kelly | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Dec 2016
December 10th marks the U.N. Human Rights Day, celebrating and upholding the indispensable and crucial declaration of universal human rights. On the eve of this event, I visited a refugee camp housing 700 families in Kabul.
→ read full articleWhy Go to Russia?
Kathy Kelly | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Jun 2016
“Prior to the Wall’s removal, President Reagan assured Secretary General Gorbachev that if he would support bringing down the Wall separating East and West Berlin, NATO would not move ‘a finger’s width’ closer to Russia than East Germany’s border. With this assurance Gorbachev gladly signed on. Little could he or the world have guessed that this promise would soon be broken during the next administration – and that the redeveloping distrust between the countries would threaten to become a second Cold War, due to NATO’s expansion up to Russia’s borders.”
→ read full articleBuilding Trust in Afghanistan
Kathy Kelly | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Jun 2016
2 Jun 2016 – Here in Kabul, I read a recent BBC op-ed by Ahmed Rashid, urging a “diplomatic offensive” to build or repair relationships with the varied groups representing armed extremism in Afghanistan. Rashid has insisted, for years, that severe mistrust makes it almost impossible for such groups to negotiate an end to Afghanistan’s nightmare of war.
→ read full articleHammering for Peace
Kathy Kelly | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 May 2016
Their artistic project embraces a vision from the biblical “Book of Isaiah” which longs for the day when “they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they study war anymore.” Our friends quite literally enact this vision.
→ read full articleSurveillance and Surveys in Kabul
Kathy Kelly, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Jan 2016
Billions of dollars have been invested in a variety of blimps which various vendors such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, and Aeros have shipped to Afghanistan. All of this surveillance purportedly helps establish “patterns of life” and bring security to people living here …tax money to the insatiable appetite of the “defense” corporations and their illusions of omniscient security.
→ read full article“Don’t Look Away—The Siege of Gaza Must End”
Kathy Kelly – Common Dreams,
20 Jun 2011
In late June 2011, I’m going to be a passenger on “The Audacity of Hope,” the USA boat in this summer’s international flotilla to break the illegal and deadly Israeli siege of Gaza. Organizers, supporters and passengers aim to nonviolently end the brutal collective punishment imposed on Gazan residents since 2006 when the Israeli government began a stringent air, naval and land blockade of the Gaza Strip explicitly to punish Gaza’s residents for choosing the Hamas government in a democratic election.
→ read full articleHOW DO GAZANS KEEP GOING? HOW DO WE?
Kathy Kelly - Voices for Creative Nonviolence,
11 Feb 2009
People have asked me, since I returned from Gaza, how people manage. How do they keep going after being traumatized by bombing and punished by a comprehensive state of siege? I wonder myself. I know that whether the loss of life is on the Gazan or the Israeli side of the border, bereaved survivors feel […]
→ read full articleTHE STRONGEST WEAPON OF ALL
Kathy Kelly - Voices for Creative Nonviolence,
25 Jan 2009
Dr. Atallah, a physician in Gaza, invited us to meet him in his home in Gaza City, just a few blocks away from the Shifaa Hospital. Early this morning, he and his family returned to their home after having fled five days earlier when the bombing attacks on Gaza City had become so fierce that […]
→ read full articleGAZA: WORSE THAN AN EARTHQUAKE
Kathy Kelly - Voices for Creative Nonviolence,
25 Jan 2009
Traffic on Sea Street, a major thoroughfare alongside Gaza’s coastline, includes horses, donkeys pulling carts, cyclists, pedestrians, trucks and cars, mostly older models. Overhead, in stark contrast to the street below, Israel’s ultra modern unmanned surveillance planes criss-cross the skies. F16s and helicopters can also be heard. Remnants of their deliveries, the casings of missiles, […]
→ read full articleTUNNEL VISION
Kathy Kelly - Voices for Creative Nonviolence,
12 Jan 2009
Author’s note: Kathy Kelly, a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, is writing from Arish, a town near the Rafah border between Egypt and Gaza. Bill Quigley, a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola New Orleans, and Audrey Stewart are also in Egypt and contributed to this article. As I write, we can […]
→ read full article