Exclusive: In this season of graduations and the rush to bestow honorary degrees on the “great and powerful” one ironic moment will play out at Fordham University, where Jesuits are giving top billing among its honorees to White House counterterrorism…
Category: Human Rights
Democracy Fights Austerity
Much of Europe has swallowed the bitter medicine of austerity on orders from conservative economic theorists, only to find that the supposed cure has made matters worse. Now, elections in France and Greece indicate that Europeans want a new approach that…
How US Hubris Baited Afghan Trap
Exclusive: Despite what Official Washington thinks it knows, the real error on Afghan policy after the Soviets left in 1989 was not the abrupt cutoff of U.S. aid but nearly the opposite, continued CIA support for the Islamist mujahedeen and…
The Rebirth of May Day’s Message
Since the rise of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, America’s rich have been on a roll, with their tax rates slashed by more than half and a concentration of both wealth and power at the top, a restoration of an…
Not Explaining the Why of Terrorism
Exclusive: President Obama signed a U.S.-Afghan strategic agreement on May 1, committing U.S. combat forces to withdraw by the end of 2014 while leaving behind U.S. counter-terrorism teams for another decade. But Obama and his aides still duck a full debate over the causes of terrorism, writes…
Rejecting War-Crime Rationales
Since the Fourth Century A.D., Christian churches have sanctified nationalism and wars rather than insist on the non-violent teachings of Jesus, leaving many misguided Christians to explain later why they became implicated in war crimes, a predicament that Gary G.…
Some Israelis Resist Netanyahu
Exclusive: In the past week, several senior Israelis have criticized the extremism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toward Iran and the Palestinians, but his American supporters continue to escalate their denunciations of anyone who won’t march in lockstep, as Robert…
Slandering Critics of Israel
Even as some ex-officials in Israel question the “messianic” behavior of Prime Minister Netanyahu, his hard-line American supporters are escalating a propaganda war against U.S. academics who challenge Israel’s abuse of Palestinians. One ugly smear appeared on the New York…
About the bin Laden Anniversary
This week, there will be plenty of retrospectives on the U.S. Special Forces raid into Pakistan a year ago to kill al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. But the focus on that one attack and one man may obscure the larger threat from…
The ‘Drone War’ Expands
Military technology continues to spill over into domestic law enforcement as unmanned drones used to hunt down and kill suspected “militants” abroad are now touted as the latest tool for monitoring Americans, a development that has drawn scant attention, writes…