We are pleased to share with you the February 23, 2025 interview by Bar Crawl Radio of We Are Not Your Soldiers presenters Shaniyat Turani-Chowdhury and Joe Urgo.
From the podcast website:
A conversation with two veterans of American wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan – about their work with“We Are Not Your Soldiers”– informing high school and college students about the morally unpleasant truths of the US military.
In 2008 the anti-war organization – “World Can’t Wait”— invited American war veterans to share their military experiences with high school and college students – challenging the American culture’s overly positive patriotic narratives.
Joe Urgo grew up in a white conservative, middle-class NYC neighborhood. He tells young Americans about his experiences in Vietnam in the US Air Force. In 1971 — Mr. Urgo helped organize the Winter Soldier Investigation detailing the war crimes of American soldiers in Vietnam and Cambodia.
Shaniyat Turani-Chowdhury is a freelance investigative journalist living in Queens, NY. He writes about Middle East politics, war and climate change – and most recently reported on the effect of Israeli airstrikes on the Lebanese people. In 2020 Shanityat ran for Congress on a Free Palestine platform.
Global Vigils to Close Guantanamo – March 5, 2025
London – Mexico City – Brussels – Washington – New York City – San Francisco…. more
Andy Worthington, our long-time colleague in the UK, has stayed on the matter of the U.S. torture camp at Guantanamo. He wrote after Trump’s inauguration that
we need to build a movement to expose, and to challenge Trump’s depraved efforts to replicate the failed horrors of the “war on terror” by rebranding it as a “war on migrants”, in which he seeks to extend the key components of the “war on terror” — dehumanization and indefinite imprisonment without charge or trial — to a new target of horrendous, sweeping racism, in which Latin Americans have taken over from Muslims as America’s foremost demonized community.
As we reported, the Trump regime flew more than 150 migrant men they described as “the worst of the worst” to Guantanamo and put most of them in the section of the prison built for “war on terror” prisoners. It was quickly verified by relatives and law enforcement that most of the men did not have criminal records, and court proceedings forced their removal from the torture prison. Abruptly, after two weeks, most were sent on deportation flights to Honduras. The Washington Post inteviewed some of these migrants in “Invasive frisks, suicide attempts: Three migrants describe Guantánamo detention.”
Below, photos from NYC and Brussels at February 5 vigils where we raised the demand:
