Author: Brett Wilkins

Slamming the Saudi-led coalition’s war crimes in Yemen – which are often perpetrated with U.S.-supplied weaponry – 47 advocacy groups on Monday published a joint letter to congressional lawmakers urging them to block the Biden administration’s “wrongful” planned $650 million arms sale to the repressive Middle Eastern monarchy.

At issue is the proposed sale of 280 AIM-120C-7/C-8 advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles and 596 LAU-128 missile rail launchers in a package that would also include spare parts, support, and logistical services. The missiles, which would be fitted to Saudi fighter jets, are manufactured by Raytheon, on whose board Lloyd Austin sat before becoming US defense secretary this year.

The letter’s signatories urge members of Congress to pass resolutions by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to block the sale and end “US complicity in the Saudi-led coalition’s gross violations of international law in Yemen, including its blockade.”

Continue reading “47 Groups Urge Congress To Avert ‘Human Rights Failure’ by Blocking Biden’s Saudi Arms Sale”

A day after hundreds of Amazon and Google workers condemned their employers for complicity in Israel’s human rights violations against Palestinians, over 40 grassroots groups on Wednesday announced a campaign to amplify the efforts of activists around the world working to stop apartheid profiteers.

“As the Israeli military bombed homes, clinics, and schools in Gaza and threatened to push Palestinian families from their homes in Jerusalem this past May, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud executives signed a $1.22 billion contract to provide cloud technology to the Israeli government and military,” the campaign noted. “By doing business with Israeli apartheid, Amazon and Google will make it easier for the Israeli government to surveil Palestinians and force them off their land.”

Continue reading “‘No Tech for Apartheid’: 40+ Groups Demand Amazon and Google Ditch Israeli Military”

As the United States on Saturday commemorates the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks with plenty of patriotic zeal but perhaps too little introspection, peace advocates have marked the occasion by reflecting on the costs and bloody consequences of the so-called “Global War on Terror” as they reaffirmed that the best safeguard against further terrorism – as many warned at the time – is ending war and respecting human rights.

A sobering assessment 20 years after the 9/11 attacks lays bare a never-ending war abroad, an erosion of civil liberties and deadly neglect of dire social needs at home, and the further enrichment of corporations and wealthy investors – perhaps the only winners of perpetual conflict that progressive critics have long deemed unwinnable by design.

Just as it was on 9/11, Afghanistan is again ruled by the Taliban. The U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, opened in 2002, still holds dozens of men, many of them imprisoned without charge or trial for over a decade. Much of Iraq, whose 2003 invasion was sold on a pack of lies, has been destroyed not once, but twice, by U.S.-led wars whose toxic detritus is still killing and poisoning people years later. More than 900,000 – and possibly many more – civilians have been killed in at least seven nations in the name of countering “terrorism” – a tactic, not an enemy.

Continue reading “Twenty Years After 9/11, ‘The Only Way To Effectively Counter Terror Is To End War’”

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”

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”

In what Palestinian observers and advocates call a glaring example of settler colonialism in action, a video circulating on social media this week shows a Palestinian woman confronting an Israeli man who admits he is trying to steal her family’s home in occupied East Jerusalem.

According toAl Jazeera, Palestinian activist Tamer Maqalda recorded the footage of the exchange between Mona al-Kurd and a man with a North American accent named Jacob, whom al-Kurd knows because his family has already stolen half of her home.

“Jacob, you know that this is not your house,” al-Kurd tells the man in her backyard, who replies: “What’s the problem? Why are you yelling at me?”

“I didn’t do this,” the man insists. “It’s easy to yell at me, but I didn’t do this.”

Al-Kurd then pleads, “You are stealing my house!”

Jacob replies: “And if I don’t steal it, someone else is going to steal it.”

Continue reading “Israeli Man Trying To Take Over Palestinian Home Says ‘If I Don’t Steal It, Someone Else’ Will”