Category: Human Rights

Turkish Voters Rebuke Erdogan

A surprise election setback for Turkish President Erdogan’s party reflected growing public resistance to his dictatorial style, his aggressive behavior toward Turkey’s neighbors and an economic downturn, as Alon Ben-Meir explains.

On the Trail of Turkey’s Terrorist Grey Wolves

From the Archive: Turkey, as a NATO country near Russia’s border, developed a powerful “deep state” where intelligence operatives, terrorists and gangsters crossed paths and shared political alliances, a grim reality that author Martin A. Lee explored in 1997 and…

Neocons Urge Embrace of Al Qaeda

Exclusive: The latest neocon gambit is to build support for “regime change” in Syria by downplaying the evils of Al Qaeda, rebranding it as some sort of “moderate” terrorist force whose Syrian affiliate is acceptable to Israel and supported by Saudi Arabia. But…

Selective Outrage on ‘Terrorism’

America’s view of “terrorism” is distorted by politics and bias, with intense hostility toward the Islamic variety but with much more tolerance of other forms, such as Cuban “anti-communist” violence and right-wing extremist murders, as underscored by a new study examined…

Shaking Off the Symbols of Racism

A century and a half after the Civil War, many U.S. politicians still pander to Confederate sympathizers and hesitate to object to the South’s racist symbols, an attitude shaken by the murders of nine African-Americans in a Charleston church, as William Loren…

Forgetting Reagan’s Worst Scandal

The mainstream U.S. media shies from direct criticism of conservative icon Ronald Reagan, so the history of the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages deal often gets forgotten even amid discussions about the U.S. policy against negotiating with terrorists, as Sam Husseini notes.

Turkey’s Troubling War on Syria

In Syria, the war to overthrow the secular government in Damascus has attracted Islamic militants from around the world, but they have relied on funding and support from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and perhaps most importantly Turkey, where an election reflected…

War on Whistleblowers, After Obama

The war on whistleblowers has injected fear of prosecution into all honest communications between national security officials and reporters, meaning that the public instead gets a steady diet of U.S. government lies, propaganda and self-serving rhetoric, a problem addressed by…

Was Race a Factor in Sterling Case?

President Obama’s war on whistleblowers grinds on with ex-CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling dispatched to a federal prison in Colorado, far from his home and family. In Sterling’s case, there’s also the disturbing issue of race, as Norman Solomon explains.

The Nitwits Are in Charge

Exclusive: Pundit Thomas Friedman laments that the new Cold War isn’t funny enough for him, but there really isn’t anything funny about the U.S. plunging into an unnecessary nuclear showdown with Russia over Ukraine while Friedman and his fellow VIPs misreport what’s happening, writes…