An American was arrested in Russia last week after airport security found cannabis gummies in his luggage.
The 28-year-old man, who arrived from Istanbul, was detained at Moscow’s Vnukovo International Airport on Feb. 7, according to Russian state media, after a sniffer dog discovered the contraband.
The man — who was not named in state media reports — explained he had been prescribed the gummies by a doctor in the United States. He was taken into custody and charged with drug smuggling, with a potential prison term of five to 10 years as well as a fine of 1 million roubles, which amounts to roughly $11,000.
Another American, schoolteacher Marc Fogel, was arrested for possessing medical marijuana in 2021 and sentenced to 14 years. He was freed earlier this week, this time in exchange for a Russian cybercriminal.
The U.S. said both Griner and Fogel were wrongfully detained.
Western officials have accused Moscow of taking foreigners hostage to use as bargaining chips in prisoner swaps. At least 10 Americans remain in prison in Russia.
Researchers went back to check Palestinian casualty reports from October 2023. They found a deadlier month for civilians—and children—than any other chapter of the “war on terror.”
How many people in Gaza have been killed by the Israel-Hamas war? For a long time, the only source of information was the Palestinian Ministry of Health. And the accuracy of their death rolls became the subject of a morbid political debate. Is it fair to call the ministry “Hamas-run“? Did they tell the truth about the Ahli Hospital bombing? What to make of the discrepancy between identified and unidentified corpses?
It’s an ethical question not just for Israelis carrying out the war, but also for Americans, who are providing both the funding and weapons that make the war effort possible.
Airwars, a team of conflict researchers affiliated with the University of London, went back and cross-checked the casualty lists from the first 25 days of the Israeli air campaign against news reporting, social media, and other local sources. And unlike the Palestinian ministry, they differentiated between civilians and fighters, using data such as social media funeral notices to determine Hamas affiliation.
The Airwars report, released on Thursday, shows a rate of civilian slaughter “incomparable with any 21st century air campaign. It is by far the most intense, destructive, and fatal conflict for civilians that Airwars has ever documented.” The Palestinian ministry reported 8,525 wartime deaths, including 3,542 children, from October 7, 2023, to October 31, 2023. Airwars was able to verify a minimum of 5,139 civilians killed by Israeli air raids in that timeframe, including at least 1,900 children.
Most of them were not the collateral damage of combat against Hamas. Out of 606 incidents of civilian casualties studied by Airwars, only 26 overlapped with the death of a militant. And in those 26 incidents, the killing was still incredibly lopsided, with 32 militants killed in total, at a cost of 522 civilian lives.
For example, the Israeli military killed Hamas commander Ibrahim Biari on October 31, 2023, by dropping American-made 2,000-lb bunker buster bombs on the Jabalia refugee camp. The attack also killed at least 126 civilians, including 69 children, according to Airwars. “Children were carrying other injured children and running, with grey dust filling the air. Bodies were hanging on the rubble, many of them unrecognized. Some were bleeding and others were burnt,” Palestinian eyewitness Mohammad Al Aswad told CNN at the time.
Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht called the deaths in Jabalia a “tragedy of war” in a CNN interview. “About the civilians there, we’re doing everything we can to minimize. Sadly they [Hamas] are hiding themselves within the civilian population,” Hecht told CNN. “We’re going to go after every one of these terrorists who was involved in the hideous [October 7, 2023] attack.”
Hamas raided Israeli towns and villages on October 7, 2023, killing 815 civilians, including 36 children, and 380 military personnel. Its fighters shot Israelis and foreigners in their houses, bomb shelters, and music festivals at close range, returning to Gaza with 251 captives, about 96 of whom are still being held hostage. The human rights organization Amnesty International said that Hamas “flagrantly violated international law and displayed a chilling disregard for human life by carrying out cruel and brutal crimes including mass summary killings, hostage-taking, and launching indiscriminate rocket attacks into Israel.”
The chief executive of the company behind Ikea furniture stores says tariffs make it more difficult to keep its prices low, joining a growing chorus of business leaders in warning of a potential hit to people’s wallets from Donald Trump’s planned import levies.
“In general, we don’t believe tariffs will support international companies and international trade. At the end of the day, that risks ending up on the bills of customers,” Jesper Brodin, Ingka Group CEO, told CNN Wednesday when asked about Trump’s tariffs. He was speaking ahead of the opening of Ikea’s pop-up store on London’s Oxford Street Thursday.
“Tariffs make it more difficult for us to maintain the low prices and be affordable for many people, which in the end is our goal,” he added. “We have never experienced a period of benefit when we had high tariffs,” he said, referring both to Ikea and the global economy. “But it’s beyond our control. We will need to understand and adapt.”
On Monday, President-elect Trump promised massive hikes in tariffs on goods coming from Mexico, Canada and China. In response, officials from those countries warned that the tariffs would harm the economies of all involved, including the United States.
“One tariff will be followed by another in response and so on until we put common enterprises at risk,” Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum said Tuesday during a regular press conference.
Business lobby groups for the US retail and consumer goods industries have also sounded the alarm. Tom Madrecki, vice-president of campaigns and special projects at the Consumer Brands Association, told CNN tariffs were a “clear and present danger” to its members. The group represents Coca-Cola, General Mills, Molson Coors and dozens of other packaged goods companies.
On Monday, Trump said he would impose an additional 10% tariff on goods from China until the country prevents the flow of illegal drugs into the US.
Ikea’s Brodin did not directly answer a question about whether Ingka Group, which runs most Ikea stores, plans to relocate any of its production in light of Trump’s tariffs but emphasized that it has longstanding relationships with suppliers of more than 10 years on average.
“(We) stick to long-term relationships, for better or worse,” he said.
Last year, Ikea cut prices on roughly 2,000 products — at a cost of more than €2 billion ($2.1 billion) — to give inflation-weary consumers a break. As a result, it posted a fall in annual revenue in value terms, even though it sold a higher volume of items.
On October 7, 2023, Palestinian armed groups in Gaza carried out devastating attacks on southern Israel, committing numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity against civilians. Israel responded with a military offensive against Palestinian armed groups in Gaza. This offensive, which includes a massive bombing campaign and ground attacks across Israeli-occupied Gaza, continues to this day. There have been ongoing attacks on military targets, but there have also been significant amounts of unlawful airstrikes and destruction of civilian infrastructure and housing, a tight blockade of Gaza that has led to a humanitarian catastrophe and amounts to collective punishment of the civilian population, and the use of starvation as a weapon of war. Since the first days of the offensive, Israel has carried out these acts in conjunction with an evacuation system that has flagrantly failed to keep Palestinians in Gaza safe, and in fact put them in harm’s way. Nowhere in Gaza is safe. As this report will show, Israel’s actions have intentionally caused the mass and forced displacement of the majority of the civilian population of Gaza.
According to the United Nations, 1.9 million people were displaced in Gaza as of October 2024 out of a population of 2.2 million people. This report examines the Israeli authorities’ conduct which has led to this extraordinarily high level of displacement and finds these actions amount to forced displacement. Given the evidence strongly indicates that multiple acts of forced displacement were carried out with intent, it amounts to war crimes. The report further finds that the Israeli government’s acts of forced displacement are widespread and systematic. Statements by senior officials with command responsibility show that forced displacement is intentional and forms part of Israeli state policy and therefore amount to a crime against humanity. Israel’s actions appear to also meet the definition of ethnic cleansing.
On February 24, 2022, the Russian government, led by Vladimir Putin, launched an aggressive war against Ukraine. In the eyes of the world, this war crime has been committed by the whole country; by all Russians.
As a result, against our will we, citizens of the Russian Federation, have been held responsible for this violation of international law; a military invasion and massive loss of life. The enormity of the crime committed leaves no room for silence or passive dissent.
The Russian Anti-War Committee was created in order to oppose this bloody war — to develop a common position, to help people coordinate their efforts, and to resolve the enormous number of problems that have arisen because of Putin’s aggression.
We are convinced of the absolute value of human life, and that individual rights and freedoms are inviolable. Putin’s regime is a threat to these values. We see our task as uniting all forces to resist this.
It was not the Russians who started this war, but a mad dictator. But it is our civic duty to do everything we can to stop it.
Note: The Russian Antiwar Committee has no connection with Antiwar.com, based in San Francisco, California. Antiwar.com has been a vocal supporter of Russian aggression and the Putin Regime since before Russian tanks and troops entered Ukraine.
A U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon approaches a U.S. Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker to conduct an aerial refueling operation above the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, April 23, 2020. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Daniel Snider)
It’s been a good week for the weapons industry. President Joe Biden signed off on order after order allowing American weapons to flow to Middle Eastern regimes. On Tuesday, TheWall Street Journalreported that the Biden administration will sell shipments of bombs worth $750 million to Saudi Arabia, breaking its ban on selling “offensive weapons” to the kingdom.
On the same day, the State Department announced over $20 billion in new arms sales to Israel, including fighter jets, armored vehicles, and ammunition. And the Friday before, the administration removed several major barriers to arming the Israeli military. It released $3.5 billion in U.S. taxpayer money for the Israeli military, unfroze a $262 million munition shipment that had been held up since May, and decided not to restrict U.S. aid to an Israeli army unit accused of beating an American to death.
Biden came into office promising to end “forever wars” in the Middle East. He pulled U.S. forces out of Afghanistan and oversaw a truce in the Yemeni civil war. Over the past year, however, Biden has reopened the war in Yemen and overseen the deadliest explosion of Israeli-Palestinian violence in history. His legacy may be ensuring that American weapons continue to fuel these conflicts after he leaves office.
The Saudi government has not stopped pushing for U.S. military support. This week, they got their wish, with Biden approving a sale of 3,000 Small Diameter Bombs and 7,500 Paveway IV bombs over the next few months. Biden administration officials have said that shipments would not affect the Saudi-Houthi truce and hinted that they were meant to signal tighter U.S.-Saudi military cooperation in the future, The Wall Street Journalreported.
Biden has been a much more consistent supporter of the Israeli military campaign in Gaza following the October 7 attacks on Israel. Although he has verbally called for a ceasefire and held up a single shipment of bombs to the Israeli military, Biden has also worked to remove legal roadblocks and conceal the full amount of U.S. military support to Israel, including sending dozens of small shipments just below the threshold that would require congressional approval.
Earlier this year, Congress passed a $14 billion aid package for Israel. It included funds to replenish weapons that had been sent to Israel from U.S. military warehouses and direct financial grants to the Israeli government. On Friday, the Biden administration released $3.5 billion in those grants.
Most of the Israeli military spending bonanza announced over the past few days is not intended for use in Gaza. The largest portion of this expenditure is an $18.82 billion deal for F-15 fighter jets and related accessories, with deliveries scheduled for 2029.
The $262 million munition shipment, however, is immediately useful for the Israeli military. It includes 6,500 joint direct attack munition (JDAM) kits and a GPS guidance system for aerial bombs. Biden had held up the JDAM sale after the Israeli army invaded Rafah, displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
On Saturday, the Israeli military bombed a school and mosque with at least one American-made guided bomb, killing 93 people at dawn prayers. Israel claims that the attack killed 31 militants; the nonprofit Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor and Al Jazeera report that several of the “militants” on Israel’s list were either people who had died several days before or had no Hamas ties
In February 2021, Biden announced that he was “ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arm sales,” although he would continue to provide “defensive” support. In April 2022, the United Nations successfully brokered a ceasefire between the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthis that has held up so far.
But after a series of Houthi attacks on Israeli and foreign shipping in the Red Sea, the Biden administration launched the first direct U.S. strikes on Houthi forces—and the first airstrikes by anyone on Yemen in more than a year—in January this year.
Last month, Israeli forces dropped eight 2,000-pound bombs with JDAM kits on a tent city, killing Hamas commander Mohammad Deif along with 90 bystanders.
In addition to freeing up more money and munitions, the Biden administration moved to lift restrictions on how Israel can use this aid. A rule known as the Leahy Law forbids U.S. military aid from going to human rights abusers. In April 2024, the U.S. State Department announced a Leahy investigation into Israel’s Netzah Yehuda Battalion.
Netzah Yehuda had been accused of abusing Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, including Palestinian-American retiree Omar Assad, who died in their custody in January 2022. No soldiers were charged in connection with Assad’s death. In October 2021, Israeli police arrested four Netzah Yehuda troops for sexually assaulting a Palestinian detainee; one soldier pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four months in prison.
The Israeli government opposed any kind of “sanctions” on soldiers who are “fighting terrorist monsters.” So did Republicans in Congress. Sen. Marco Rubio (R–Fla.) called the investigation “an effort by President Biden to appease Israel’s enemies, including the antisemitic mobs terrorizing college campuses across America.”
On Friday, the State Department said that Israel had “effectively remediated” the problems with Netzah Yehuda by giving the troops a “two-week educational seminar.” The unit is now free to continue receiving weapons paid for by the American taxpayer.
Liberal International strongly condemns the Venezuelan regime’s brazenly fraudulent election results, which falsely declare Nicolás Maduro as the winner, allegedly, with 51.20% of the vote. These results, announced by the regime-controlled National Electoral Council (CNE), starkly contradict the voting records from the tables by the unified democratic opposition. The opposition, led by the unjustly disqualified candidate Edmundo Gonzalez and Maria Corina Machado – leader of LI member party Vente Venezuela – reported a decisive victory with 70% of the vote.
LI further calls upon the National Electoral Council (CNE) to release the full results down to the polling division level and to conduct a hand count of all the printed vote slips. This hand count should be done and to do so in a transparent way, complete with independent and international observers.
LI stands firmly with the Venezuelan democratic opposition under the MUD, whose meticulous monitoring of all voting centers aligns with analyses from expert polling firms.
Dr. Hakima el Haite, President of Liberal International, emphasised, “We support the courageous efforts of Maria Corina Machado and Vente Venezuela. The people of Venezuela have spoken clearly in favor of democracy, peace, and against dictatorship. The regime must count all the votes fairly and transparently and respect the will of the people.”
Politico has a news post based on reports by volunteer medical personal at the Gaza European Hospital. They tell of the civilian carnage that has resulted from the conflict in Gaza. It includes photos to illustrate the horror. Too terrible to summarize, please read @ https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/07/19/gaza-hospitals-surgeons-00167697
From the headlines, you would think that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance were committed to overthrowing the national security establishment.
“Trump Picking Vance Widens Rift With Foreign Policy Old Guard,” reported Bloomberg.
“Trump’s VP pick spells ‘disaster’ for Europe and Ukraine,” fumed Politico.
For all of Trump’s rhetoric about “endless wars” and Vance’s attacks on “neoconservatives,” however, the two politicians are all-in on some of the establishment’s most destructive military adventures. And in some ways, Trump and Vance are even more hawkish than the baseline.
“A lot of people recognize that we need to do something with Iran—but not these weak little bombing runs,” Vance said in a Fox News interview at the Republican National Convention on Monday. “If you’re going to punch the Iranians, you punch them hard, and that’s what [Trump] did when he took out [Iranian Gen. Qassem] Soleimani.”
Vance praised Trump for trying to “enable the Israelis and the Sunni Arab states” to fight back against Iran. In a speech to the Quincy Institute in May, Vance tried to sell a U.S.-Israeli-Arab alliance as a way for the United States to “spend less time and less resources in the Middle East.”
But that’s exactly the strategy that got us here in the first place, and the proof is in the pudding. Trump’s shows of force against Iran did not decisively end U.S.-Iranian conflict, nor did the Abraham Accords get Israel and the Arab states to pick up the military slack.
Vance even wants to add another counterinsurgency to America’s “forever war” roster. In July 2023, he told NBC News that he would “empower the president of the United States, whether that’s a Democrat or Republican, to use the power of the U.S. military to go after these drug cartels” in Latin America.
Trump and Vance also share the establishment view that the United States needs to get ready for a conflict with China over Taiwan. At the convention, Vance told Fox News that China is the “biggest threat” to America, and he has voiced support for building up the Taiwanese military with American weapons in the past.
Human Rights Watch has issued a 66 page report “Education under Occupation: Forced Russification in Occupied Ukrainian Territories” which documents violations of international by Russian authorities in formerly occupied territories of Ukraine’s Kharkivska region, and other regions which remain under Russian control.
Human Rights Watch interviewed 42 educators, school staff. and other officials in Kharkivska region after Russian forces left the area, and interviewed teachers who had been displaced or escaped from the areas of Khersonska, Zaporiska, Donetska, and Luhanska regions that are currently under occupation.
California Libertarian Report 