Exclusive: The pre-trial hearing on Pvt. Bradley Manning’s court martial for leaking classified documents about U.S. government wrongdoing has turned up evidence that even Manning’s Marine jailers were worried about the controversy over his degrading treatment in their custody, reports…
Category: Human Rights
Origins of Israel’s Anti-Arab Racism
The anti-Arab racism that increasingly pervades modern Israel surfaces in the non-human images applied to Palestinians, such as the metaphor “mowing the grass” when targeting militants in Gaza. This tragic development traces back to the attitudes of old European imperialism, argues Lawrence…
Ron Paul’s Appalling World View
Exclusive: There was buzz on the Internet after libertarian Ron Paul delivered what was billed as his final address in Congress. But his near-hour-long speech sounded more like the ramblings of a right-wing crank than the coherent thoughts of the…
Congo’s Troubled Future
A Congolese rebel group, M23, has won a series of victories against the disorganized troops of the central government, raising the prospect of more turmoil in that troubled African country. But more division of Congo and even partitioning may not…
Biblical Economics
An irony of modern politics is that many conservative Americans view themselves as devout believers in the Bible yet they ascribe to right-wing, dog-eat-dog economic theories that Jesus and other Biblical figures would condemn. The contradiction has pushed Biblical economics…
US-Israel Ties at a Crossroads
Cracks are forming in the old U.S. political paradigm of support for Israel whatever it does. Israeli leaders may compare mowing down each new generation of Palestinian militants to a chore like trimming the grass, but the moral depravity and…
Thanksgiving or Day of Mourning?
For many Americans, Thanksgiving is a time of family get-togethers around a traditional turkey dinner, with vague recollections of Pilgrims sharing a meal with Native Americans in eastern Massachusetts nearly four centuries ago. But for the remnants of those indigenous…
Muzzling an Anti-Nuke Trial Defense
Federal prosecutors, who are seeking long prison terms for three anti-nuclear-bomb activists as punishment for entering the government’s Oak Ridge bomb-making complex, want all moral and legal questions about nuclear weapons excluded from the trial, reports John LaForge.
FBI Snooping on the CIA’s Petraeus
The U.S. news media pretends to shy away from sex scandals but actually looks for any excuse to cover them. A case in point has been the ouster of CIA Director David Petraeus, but the press may have missed the…
Corrupting US Democracy
The United States tends to view itself as the gold standard for democracy and bristles at international criticism of its electoral flaws. But recent corrosion of democratic principles, caused mostly by Republicans, has lowered the quality of U.S. democracy, writes ex-CIA…