Nine years ago, as President George W. Bush and the neocons prepared to invade Iraq, Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American woman concerned about the region’s deepening violence, was in Gaza watching Palestinian homes being destroyed and put her body in…
Category: Human Rights
‘War on Women’ Breaches Global Norms
Republican bills taking aim at women’s reproductive freedoms have raised alarms about a “war on women,” a development that is shaking up the American political scene. But some of the legislation also is putting the U.S. outside the bounds of international norms,…
Banks Are Called on to Repent
America’s banks remain under fire, including a public resignation by a Goldman Sachs executive disgusted by the firm’s abuse of its clients. New protests also include calls by some Christian churches for the banks to repent for their roles in the…
Tragic Lessons of Afghan Massacre
The massacre of 16 Afghans, including nine children, allegedly by a deranged U.S. Army sergeant has stirred more anger toward the decade-long, U.S.-led occupation of Afghanistan, but it also underscores how the stresses of endless war are shattering the psyches…
America’s Crimes of War
A decade into the Afghan War, the atrocities by U.S. forces whether accidental or intentional keep piling up along with assurances from American leaders that “this is not who we are.” But the unwillingness to impose serious penalties and the failure…
Losing Faith in a Democratic Israel
Since its founding in 1948 as a refuge for Holocaust survivors and other Jews, Israel has called itself a democracy but has restricted rights of Arabs inside Israel and under Israeli military occupation. This tension and the rise of Jewish fundamentalism are now…
America’s ‘Core Values’ in Afghan War?
U.S. officials are expressing outrage and regret over the slaughter of 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children, allegedly by a deranged U.S. staff sergeant. But the terrible rampage was not an isolated atrocity in the decade-long war in Afghanistan, as Nat…
Reclaiming the Commons
A new law, known as H.R. 347, expands the power of the Secret Service and police to arrest protesters near a “protected person” or at special public events like nominating conventions, a further intrusion on the right of Americans to…
How Dangerous Is Iran?
Israeli threats of war on Iran are not aimed at eliminating a nuclear bomb or even the imminent building of one, but rather to destroy Iran’s “capability” to build one in the future because Iranians are deemed irrational. But filmmaker…
Slovakia Defies the Kochs and Cato
Exclusive: For the past decade, the people of the small central European nation of Slovakia have suffered under a harsh and corrupt “privatization” scheme devised by the Koch Brothers’ Cato Institute. However, in weekend elections, they defied their oligarchs by…