Antiwar.com Blog

Israel’s military faced war crime accusations Tuesday after carrying out an airstrike that completely destroyed a high-rise apartment building in densely populated Gaza City, prompting a massive barrage of retaliatory rocket fire as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to further escalate violence that has already left over 30 people – almost all of them Palestinians – dead.

Israeli media and a United Nations official report residents of the 13-story apartment building in the Al-Rimal neighborhood of western Gaza City were repeatedly warned – including by telephone and a “roof-knocking” airstrike – of the impending attack, which occurred around 8:30 pm local time.

Video of the Israeli strike shows multiple explosions followed by the tower’s collapse. International observers promptly noted that the deliberate destruction of homes when not “imperatively demanded by the necessities of war” is a war crime.

Continue reading “Israel Condemned for ‘Unambiguous War Crime’ After Destroying Gaza Apartment Tower”

At the High Line, a popular tourist attraction in New York City, visitors to the west side of Lower Manhattan ascend above street level to what was once an elevated freight train line and is now a tranquil and architecturally intriguing promenade. Here walkers enjoy a park-like openness where they can experience urban beauty, art, and the wonder of comradeship.

In late May, a Predator drone replica, appearing suddenly above the High Line promenade at 30th Street, might seem to scrutinize people below. The “gaze” of the sleek, white sculpture by Sam Durant, called “Untitled (drone),” in the shape of the U.S. military’s Predator killer drone, will sweep unpredictably over the people below, rotating atop its twenty-five-foot-high steel pole, its direction guided by the wind.

Unlike the real Predator, it won’t carry two Hellfire missiles and a surveillance camera. The drone’s death-delivering features are omitted from Durant’s sculpture. Nevertheless, he hopes it will generate discussion.

Continue reading “Art Against Drones”

Antiwar activism met corporate gaslighting Wednesday as General Dynamics CEO Phebe Novakovic refused to acknowledge the deadly consequences of her firm’s arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other nations after CodePink cofounder Medea Benjamin interrupted a company shareholder meeting.

Benjamin attended the annual meeting in Reston, Virginia and calmly confronted Novakovic about her company’s weapons sales to countries including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt. She specifically mentioned a March 25, 2016 Saudi-led airstrike that hit a crowded marketplace in the Yemeni village of Mastaba, killing scores of civilians.

Continue reading “Peace Activist Interrupts General Dynamics Shareholder Meeting To Blast the Business of War”

Guess what. Those highly embarrassing Democratic National Committee emails published by WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016 were not hacked by the Russians, or by anyone else. This was revealed in sworn, horses’-mouth testimony of Dec. 5, 2017 before he House Intelligence Committee by the head of the cyber security firm CrowdStrike.

The testimony was published exactly a year ago on May 7, 2020. "Mainstream media" deep-sixed it.

House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff was forced to release testimony given on December 5, 2017 by Shawn Henry of CrowdStrike, the outfit to which FBI Director James Comey deferred to investigate the theft of DNC emails. The emails showed how Hillary Clinton and top DNC officials had tipped the scales against Bernie Sanders. To divert attention from that, a major campaign was launched to blame the theft on the Russians. Russia-gate was launched in earnest; Sen. John McCain called the "Russian hack" an "act of war".

But wait. Testimony taken at the end of 2017? But that’s three and half years ago. Yes.

Continue reading “Swallowing Russia-Gate Hook, Line, and Sinker”

From The Grayzone:

Glenn Greenwald on the decline of left media in the Russiagate era, where bastions of dissent have gone from challenging the national security state to promoting it.

Glenn Greenwald discusses how Trump and Russiagate has changed progressive media for the worse. Greenwald has recently been frozen out by the progressive news broadcast Democracy Now! after being a longtime, regular guest.

As it shuts out longtime guests like Greenwald, DN! recently gave a warm reception to a former George W. Bush aide who praised, without challenge, Bush’s “compassionate conservatism.” Greenwald also discusses leaving The Intercept after it tried to censor his reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop affair, all while parroting evidence-free, anonymous intelligence claims that the story was “Russian disinformation.”

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After 21 months in the Hawaiian Islands, the historic anti-nuclear sailboat Golden Rule has departed from Honolulu, Hawai’i for the West Coast of the U.S. The Golden Rule first sailed from California to Hawai’i 63 years ago, in 1958, on her way to interfere with U.S. atmospheric nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, the site of 67 U.S. nuclear bomb blasts from 1952 to 1958. Under orders from the Atomic Energy Commission, U.S. Coast Guard stopped the boat from leaving Honolulu. The arrest and jailing of Golden Rule’s captain Albert Bigelow, a retired World War II Navy Commander, and his crew of Quaker peace activists garnered international media attention and increased opposition to nuclear testing and nuclear weapons.

Atmospheric nuclear testing was stopped by the U.S., the UK and the Soviet Union in 1963 with the signing of the Partial Test Ban Treaty. Golden Rule crew member George Willoughby was among a delegation of Quaker peace activists that met with President Kennedy before he signed this historic treaty, banning nuclear bomb testing in the atmosphere, underwater, or in space (but allowing it to continue underground).

In July 2019, Veterans For Peace, who owns and manages the Golden Rule, sailed the 34-foot ketch from San Diego to Hawai’i, with the intention of proceeding on to the Marshall Islands, the original destination of the 1958 crew. But once again, the Golden Rule’s voyage to the Marshall Islands was stymied, this time by COVID-19. Because of the global pandemic, the Marshall Islands, already beset by outbreaks of measles and dengue fever, remains closed to international boats.

Continue reading “Golden Rule Peace Boat Sets Sail from Hawai’i for California”