Category: Human Rights

Rethinking Watergate/Iran-Contra

Special Report: New evidence continues to accumulate showing how Official Washington got key elements of the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals wrong, especially how these two crimes of state originated in treacherous actions to secure the powers of the presidency, writes Robert Parry.

Ramsey Clark’s Long Trek for Justice

There was a time in America when someone like Ramsey Clark could be Attorney General and assert the power of the federal government on the side of civil rights, but that now seems like ancient history, as Clark reflects on…

Neocons Escape Accountability

Nearing the Iraq War’s tenth anniversary, an overriding truth is that few of the key participants in government, media or think tanks have faced accountability commensurate with the crime. Indeed, many of these Mideast “experts” are still go-to people for advice, writes ex-CIA analyst…

Mother of the Sit-Down Strike

From the Archive: During the late-Nineteenth-Century struggles against America’s Robber Barons and the Ku Klux Klan, Lucy Gonzales Parsons was a brave fighter for human rights. In recognition of International Women’s Day, we are re-posting William Loren Katz’s account of…

Recalling the Fight for Indian Rights

The genocide against Native Americans remains one of the worst blots on the collective U.S. conscience, but the crime was widely ignored until four decades ago when a movement of Indian activists returned to the historic massacre site at Wounded…

Can Christians Turn Away from War?

Despite originating in Jesus’s messages of peace, Christianity has been arguably the world’s most violent religion with its adherents committing genocide on all continents except unpopulated Antarctica. Again and again, Christian churches have blessed warfare, but a new generation is…

Dangerous ‘State Sovereignty’ Myth

Exclusive: In the U.S. system, the “supreme law” of the land is set by the Constitution and the federal government, though states, counties and cities have wide discretion over local matters. But problems arise when right-wingers start espousing the notion of “state…

Breeding Anti-US Suspicions

When U.S. policymakers throw their weight around internationally, they may think their actions are justified and perhaps in a narrow sense some are but the U.S. also building up a reservoir of resentment and suspicion that hurts American interests in the long…

Inviting a Return to Jim Crow Racism

After the Civil War, Reconstruction tried to suppress white racism but was aborted prematurely leading to a near century of Jim Crow segregation in the South. Now, five right-wingers on the U.S. Supreme Court are contemplating a replay by stabbing…

Does John Brennan Know Morality?

Sen. Barbara Mikulski and other defenders of CIA Director-nominee John Brennan say they are reassured by his Jesuit education at Fordham that he must be well-grounded in moral philosophy. But two Fordham alumni, Scott McDonald and Ray McGovern, disagree in…