Antiwar.com Blog

A number of years ago I was at an antiwar protest in St. Petersburg, FL where one of my fellow protesters was holding a sign that said, "The U.S. military is killing innocent people in Iraq."

Within moments, a person who said he was in the Army began screaming at the protester saying, "I just came back from Iraq where I was fighting for your freedom. Without the military you wouldn’t have the right to protest." The protester, himself an Army veteran, replied, "you look good for someone who is over 200 years old, because that was the last time the US fought a war for freedom."

The returning soldier tried to argue that the attacks on 9/11 were a threat to the Constitution, but his argument was weak and he eventually scurried off. I don’t know if he really felt he went to Iraq to protect free speech, or he was just angry that we were protesting something he believed in (which would have been ironic), but he wasn’t the first or last person I’ve heard claim that the US fights wars overseas to protect the rights of US citizens.

Continue reading “Wars Are Not Fought To ‘Protect Your Freedoms’”

“Russian operatives used Facebook ads to exploit America’s racial and religious divisions,” the Washington Post claims in a September 25 headline.

Over at The Daily Beast, Dean Obeidallah explains “How Russian Hackers Used My Face to Sabotage Our Politics and Elect Trump.”

And US Senator James Lankford (R-OK) thinks that “the Russians and their troll farms” (as opposed to Donald Trump and professional football players) are behind the current “take a knee” kerfuffle between Donald Trump and professional football players.

Continue reading “The Russia-Blamers Think You’re Stupid”

I think we do know that terrorist organizations have an interest in using drones…We’ve seen that overseas already with growing frequency. I think the expectation is that it’s coming here imminently. I think they are relatively easy to acquire, relatively easy to operate, and quite difficult to disrupt and monitor. ~ FBI Director Christopher Wray

One need not delve into the finer philosophical points about any moral equivalence when considering that what FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress yesterday is obvious. Namely, that terrorists, adversaries – call them what you will – are likely to employ weaponized drones against U.S. targets at home and abroad. Getting huffy or outraged about it won’t change anything. We use weaponized drones because we can. And so will others.

In several ways, the unparalleled technological and logistical primacy that the US has enjoyed from the 1940s through the 1990s is over. Our domestic industrial base, economic power, university system, and managerial techniques remain barriers to entry for many sophisticated intelligence, weapons, and cargo-moving systems. But some nations are still interested in the traditional military equipment and are, in a number of militarily-relevant realms, either our peers or are near-peers. Many nations buy or even build advanced surface ships, submarines, aircraft, and intelligence gathering systems and some of this equipment and the professionalism with which they are employed, is impressive.

Continue reading “Turn Away in Disgust? Dr. Frankenstein Did, But Our Leaders Can Not”

In 1967, protesters filled the streets of Oakland to stop the draft. Seven faced serious charges – and their message still resonates today

October marks the 50th anniversary of Stop the Draft Week, the largest militant anti-Vietnam War demonstration up to that time. Ten thousand people jammed into the streets of downtown Oakland to shutdown the federal draft induction center.

Demonstration organizers, who became known as the Oakland 7, faced an 11-week conspiracy trial. In a major victory for the antiwar movement, a jury acquitted them of all charges.

Erlich was one of the Oakland 7.

In October of 1967, the U.S. war effort in Vietnam was failing. In just a few months, Vietnamese rebels launched the Tet Offensive, a political defeat that proved to be a turning point in the US war.

Throughout 1967 President Lyndon Johnson sent more troops to South Vietnam, and that required bigger draft calls. The sons of the very rich and well connected always avoided the draft. Donald Trump received a medical deferment due to “bone spurs” in his heels. They didn’t prevent him from a lifetime of skiing, however.

Continue reading “Lessons From Stop the Draft Week 50 Years Ago”

The Catalan push for independence from Spain appears to be part of a larger European – and possibly worldwide – movement away from larger, more distant governance and toward more local control. Elsewhere in Europe, the old order is slowly breaking down. New parties find success in German elections, Hungary continues to defy Brussels on immigration, talk of secession on all levels increases. Will the referendum in Catalonia take place as scheduled, or will the central government successfully crack down? Will a crack-down eliminate the growing demand for independence? What’s the US position? More in today’s Ron Paul Liberty Report.

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

Media Matters published an article Wednesday with the provocative title “How Matt Drudge became the pipeline for Russian propaganda.” The explanation offered in the article for the title’s grand claim, however, would be convincing only to someone who has no familiarity with what the Drudge Report, founded and edited by Matt Drudge, is.

Here is the argument made in the article for how the Drudge Report is a Russian propaganda pipeline:

Drudge has for years used his site as a web traffic pipeline for Russian propaganda sites, directing his massive audience to nearly 400 stories from RT.com and fellow Russian-government-run English-language news sites SputnikNews.com and TASS.com since the beginning of 2012, according to a Media Matters review. Those numbers spiked in 2016, when Drudge collectively linked to the three sites 122 times.

It may seem like the people at Media Matters are onto something until you consider how the Drudge Report website works. It is a news aggregating website that, on its homepage, presents many phrases or even single words in hypertext. Click on one of the hypertext items and you immediately access a linked article, video, image, or other information at its own website. Also, these hypertext items, and the information linked from them, at the Drudge Report change frequently so the website can maintain its popularity as a source for breaking and up-to-date information.

Continue reading “Media Matters’ Goofball Argument That the Drudge Report Is a Russian Propaganda Pipeline”