Antiwar.com Blog

Bob Costello: Farewell to my dear old friend, RIP

I just found out that my old friend Bob Costello died in late November.

Bob and I met in the late 1970s in the Libertarian Party. We worked closely at the San Francisco Montgomery Street complex that included the LP, Libertarian Review, Cato Institute, and Students for a Libertarian Society.

Bob and I became fast friends and worked on a number of projects together. Along with Justin Raimondo, Colin Hunter, Murray Rothbard, Chris Weber, Jonnie Gilman, and others, Bob was part of the original central committee of the original Libertarian Party Radical Caucus.

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Conflicts of Interest: Biden Approves $8 Billion Weapon Sale to Israel

On COI #740, Kyle Anzalone discusses the latest news from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Ukraine.

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Rights Group Finds Israel Uses Gaza ‘Safe Zones’ to ‘Hide a Genocide’

A report published last Wednesday details how Israel forcibly expels Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in order to facilitate – and hide – genocidal attacks in evacuated areas, while forcing refugees into alleged humanitarian “safe zones” that are “intentionally designed to ensure the destruction of all life sheltering there.”

The Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq published the report, titled How to Hide a Genocide, which examines “the role of evacuation orders and safe zones in Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza.”

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Far-Right Israeli Lawmakers Demand ‘Complete Cleansing’ of Northern Gaza

At least seven far-right members of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, are calling on the country’s defense minister to order the total destruction of northern Gaza’s food, water, and energy sources – most of which have already been obliterated by 15 months of relentless attacks – and the killing of any Palestinian who isn’t clearly surrendering to the attackers.

In a letter to Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz dated December 31, the lawmakers assert that the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) campaign to forcibly expel Palestinians from northern Gaza – which critics have called ethnic cleansing – “isn’t being done properly” and is not “achieving the war objectives as defined by the government, which is the dismantling of Hamas’ governing and military capabilities.”

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When a Famous War Reporter Stood Up to Rumsfeld

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Between Rock and a Hard Place.

Friday afternoon, President Biden posthumously awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to my old friend Joe Galloway. No one could accuse veteran war reporter Galloway of being anti-military or unpatriotic (although some tried). He served four journalistic tours in Vietnam and was the only civilian awarded the Bronze Star during that war, for rescuing wounded American soldiers. He covered numerous conflicts after that, including the Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and co-authored the book “We Were Soldiers Once and Young, “ which was made into a popular movie, starring (ahem) Mel Gibson but with Barry Pepper playing Joe.

Along with a team of fellow writers for Knight Ridder, he provided the most skeptical coverage of the invasion of Iraq – a sadly rare thing – and wrote for me when I was the editor of Editor & Publisher. In a more recent movie, Shock and Awe, on that Knight Ridder team, Joe was played by Tommy Lee Jones.

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