Category: Human Rights

The Slippery Slope into Syrian War

The neocons and much of the mainstream U.S. news media are eager for another U.S.-sponsored “regime change” in the Middle East this time in Syria and President Obama has acquiesced to shipping guns to the rebels. But this slippery slope…

The Marriage of Libertarians and Racists

Exclusive: The modern Republican Party and its chic libertarians have dallied with white supremacists as a political necessity, because blacks and other minorities have rallied to the Democrats due to their better civil rights record. But the Right’s dancing with…

The Painful Truths Told by Phil Agee

Truly objective journalism would value facts and accuracy above all else, but the mainstream U.S. press while pretending to be “objective” treasures faux patriotism much more, as is evident with recent whistleblowers as it was with the hostility toward the…

Should Israel Be Boycotted?

When Apartheid South Africa faced boycotts in the 1980s, it often argued that some black African governments treated their black citizens worse. Now Israel is making the same case regarding its oppression of Palestinians, that Arabs are worse off in, say,…

US ‘Semi-Official’ News Agencies

After a brief flurry of aggressive journalism in the 1970s, the mainstream U.S. press has grown steadily more tame, transforming itself into what might be called the government’s “semi-official” news agencies another “secret” brought out by the case of Edward…

Supreme Court’s War on Democracy

Exclusive: The U.S. Supreme Court’s right-wing majority is a serial killer of American democracy first Bush v. Gore, then Citizens United, now gutting the Voting Rights Act but another part of this crime story is the Right’s grotesque last stand for white…

Snowden’s Case for Asylum

Despite U.S. government pressure, Russian President Vladimir Putin is balking at demands that he extradite Edward Snowden from Moscow to face espionage charges for leaking secrets about America’s global surveillance operations. Still, Snowden’s status remains dicey, as Marjorie Cohn explains…

Gunning for Anti-Gun Laws

Right-wing propaganda has duped millions of Americans into believing that the Framers devised the Second Amendment so individuals could possess personal arsenals to shoot police, soldiers and other government representatives. This false narrative has made sane gun laws hard to…

America’s Informant Society

During World War II, the U.S. military and public were told “loose lips sink ships,” perhaps a worthy wartime reminder. But the seemingly endless “war on terror” has made government hostility to openness part of America’s permanent wartime mentality, a…

Israel’s Quiet Strategy of Conquest

While paying lip service to a two-state solution, some Israeli officials bluntly acknowledge that their goal is to repress the Palestinians and eventually absorb most of the West Bank into a Greater Israel. This strategy anticipates the continued acquiescence of…