Category: Human Rights

NFL, ESPN and Big-Dollar Secrecy

Pro football is big business and America’s fascination with often violent sports has made Disney’s ESPN a lucrative franchise. So there is much money on the line over the issue of concussion-related disabilities, explaining the NFL’s desire to keep the…

Risks from Big-Power Bullying

Across Official Washington from liberal to neocon, from pol to pundit the conventional wisdom on Syria’s crisis is that threats of military force work. But that simplistic notion misses the disasters that can follow if the threat is ignored or how bullying might…

The Mysterious Death of a UN Hero

Exclusive: More than a half-century ago at a pivotal moment in the emergence of independent African states UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold was brokering peace in a divisive civil war in Congo when he died in a plane crash, leaving behind…

Do Syrian Rebels Have Sarin?

Exclusive: A U.S.-Russian agreement calls for the Syrian government to disclose and dispose of its chemical weapons, but that doesn’t resolve the mystery of who was behind the Aug. 21 attack outside Damascus or the question of whether Syrian rebels…

How War on Syria Lost Its Way

Exclusive: What looked like another U.S. march to war in the Mideast has turned toward a peaceful accord that carries hope of getting Syria to relinquish its chemical weapons and achieving a cease-fire, maybe even an end to the civil war.…

The Cuban Five Case at 15 Years

The hypocrisy of the U.S. “war on terror” jumps out in how Cuban-exile terrorists are protected in Miami as U.S. officials hunt down Islamic terrorists across the globe. The U.S. even imprisoned five Cuban spies who sought to disrupt terror attacks being…

Rewarding ‘Group Think’ on Syria

Exclusive: “Group think” is alive and well in Official Washington, with virtually all the important pundits marching in lock-step with the Obama administration’s accusations against the Syrian government and everyone fuming over an Op-Ed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, observes…

Putin Touches an ‘Exceptional’ Nerve

Official Washington is in full outrage mode over a New York Times opinion article by Russian President Vladimir Putin who dared question the idea that the U.S. has a special indeed “exceptional” right to intervene militarily anywhere it wishes around…

Why Syrian Rebels May Block CW Plan

Exclusive: Ironically, the biggest threat to plans for destroying the Syrian government’s chemical weapons may come from Syrian rebels if they balk at a ceasefire and target UN inspectors removing poison gas canisters, a possibility that the rebels may hope would…

How ‘Local’ Interests Trump Survival

The future of mankind is at risk from the worsening threat of global warming, but this scientific reality has been put in “doubt” by Tea Party and libertarian activists who profit from oil-industry largesse, just one example of how short-term…