Easy civilian access to powerful weapons is a recipe for greater domestic violence, just as an over-emphasis on military force leads to more wars, a conundrum that requires a greater commitment to both arms control and systems for resolving disputes peacefully,…
Category: Human Rights
How FBI Monitored Occupy Movement
The FBI and other federal agencies coordinated with banks and local authorities in reacting to the Occupy Movement, which was put in the category of a domestic terrorist threat despite the group’s advocacy of nonviolence, Dennis J. Bernstein reports.
At Year’s End, the ‘News’ Fails
The end of the year brings reflection on what happened in the past 12 months and what lies ahead. But these retrospectives usually offer no more context and often less than the thin gruel of news as the events played out,…
Kicking the Vietnam Syndrome
From the Archive: With Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf’s death on Thursday and the declining health of ex-President George H.W. Bush an era of war and intrigue is coming to an end, a time of resurgent U.S. imperialism that saw this warrior seeking peace and the…
The Price of Revolutionary Illusions
Exclusive: A number of Americans on the Right and Left embrace fantasies about fighting some glorious revolution in the future, requiring them to maintain arsenals of weapons today, even if the cost of their violent illusions is the brutal murder of children…
Learning from Endless War
The backdrop of the Newtown massacre and similar slaughters across America is how frequently the U.S. government opts for violence to settle problems around the world, a message that might influence a troubled individual with access to a gun, says Laura…
America’s Frontier Mentality
Much as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once opined that the sanctions-related deaths of Iraqi children was “worth it,” many Americans seem to believe that the periodic slaughter of children at home is just the price for their “liberty” to own…
NRA Suggests a Police State
Exclusive: The irony of the NRA’s crackpot idea for protecting America’s children by dramatically expanding the use of armed guards is that the proposal would push the U.S. further down the path toward a police state, threatening the “liberties” that…
Christmas Eve Freedom-Fighting in 1837
Americans often romanticize the early years of the Republic, averting their eyes from the crude racism in the U.S. Constitution and the cruel treatment of blacks and Native Americans in those decades. Overlooked are brave freedom fighters who resisted arrogant…
The Right’s Second Amendment Lies
Exclusive: A big obstacle to commonsense gun control is the Right’s false historical narrative that the Founders wanted an armed American public that could fight its own government. The truth is that George Washington looked to citizens militias to put down revolts and…