Many U.S. pundits are blaming the Egyptian coup on the clumsy political actions of elected Islamist President Morsi. But the collapse of Egypt’s one-year democratic experiment resulted, too, from the rigid opposition of the secularists who entered an alliance with…
Category: Human Rights
The Right’s Made-up ‘Constitution’
For Tea Partiers and libertarians, it is an article of faith that the Constitution tightly constrained the federal government and gave broad powers to the states. But that is bogus history — mere propaganda — and suggests that the Right’s rank-and-file…
Gitmo’s Kafkaesque Kangaroo Courts
The Military Commissions for trying alleged al-Qaeda terrorists always had the risk of becoming Kafkaesque kangaroo courts with little credibility among people around the world, a danger that has become more and more acute as the process moves forward, Marjorie…
Another ‘War on Terror’ Casualty
Attorney Lynne Stewart aggressively defended alleged terrorists, making her a target of President George W. Bush’s “war on terror.” After 9/11, she was prosecuted for violating special security rules for dealing with a client and is now dying of cancer in…
Risky Business of Morsi’s Ouster
The military ouster of elected Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi was cheered by some anti-Islamists as a repudiation of Morsi’s autocratic rule and his Muslim Brotherhood. But the coup could further radicalize the region’s Islamists with dangerous implications for the U.S.…
Rethinking Thomas Jefferson
Exclusive: Americans are proud that their Declaration of Independence was also a declaration of universal rights. But the hard truth is that, in 1776, the words were mere propaganda cloaking the fact that a third of the signers were slaveholders,…
Flag-Waving to Death
In American politics and media, anyone who questions the concept of “American Exceptionalism” is banished to the margins of society. But this self-aggrandizing notion has always contained a large measure of self-deception, ignoring the suffering inflicted on other peoples and on…
Taking on Israeli-Palestinian Impasse
The Egyptian military has ousted President Morsi and Syria is in a civil war, but Secretary of State Kerry has invested much of his time on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some pundits question Kerry’s priorities but they ignore how corrosive the Israeli…
Gauging Sympathy for Snowden
As the U.S. media turns on NSA leaker Edward Snowden and as many Americans say they’re happy to trade some privacy for more security samples of public opinion abroad are more sympathetic. An online poll by a major German daily…
Why Snowden’s Fate Matters
Exclusive: There’s an old saying that a reporter is only as good as his sources, meaning that there’s a need for people inside government who see wrongdoing to speak up. It is also a test of a democratic Republic whether truth-tellers like…