Category: Human Rights

The Lost History of ‘J. Edgar’

A film about someone as controversial and mysterious as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover forces the filmmakers to make judgments about key historical events, including some still cloaked in secrecy. But the movie J. Edgar ducks those tough choices in…

Smearing Israel’s ‘Peace Now’ Movement

Patriotism was once famously called “the last refuge of a scoundrel,” but it’s also used to discredit citizens who dare question their own country’s wrongheaded policies, as is now the case for Israelis who advocate for a fair peace with the…

NATO’s Law of the Jungle in Libya

Exclusive: The murder of Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi was widely hailed in the West as a just outcome. But it involved powerful nations making up the rules as they went along, the law of the jungle disguised as international justice, observes Peter…

How US Policy Risks More 9/11s

Though the U.S. military is no longer inflicting large-scale slaughters in Afghanistan and Iraq, the more selective “drone” campaigns continue to kill the families and neighbors of the targets, a reality that is stirring more anti-Americanism in the region, as Lawrence…

When Guns Defeat Butter

History is filled with cautionary tales about militarily powerful empires that collapsed because they spent far too much on guns over butter. The United States is now tempting a similar fate behind a ruling elite that uses fear and propaganda…

The Risk of the ‘Cheap’ Libya Victory

The Western powers achieved violent “regime change” in Libya under cover of a UN resolution to “protect civilians” and by relying mostly on air power to isolate and then kill Muammar Gaddafi and doing it all at a much lower…

Looming Crisis of Climate Chaos

Amid the anti-science fervor on the American Right, Republican presidential contenders either shy from the worsening crisis of global warming or deny the problem exists. But the crisis of climate chaos is already spreading across the earth, warns Richard Lee Dechert.

Occupy Wall Street’s Tough Challenges

Occupy Wall Street has succeeded far beyond its early dreams, but the protests face challenges, from the coming winter to troublemakers acting to discredit the movement. But Danny Schechter notes that changing a well-entrenched status quo is never easy.

Dehumanizing Late-Stage Capitalism

Occupy Wall Street (OWS) — and similar protests — don’t fit into the trite frames of America’s mainstream news, but rather represent a collective message of people laying their bodies down against the depredations of modern-day capitalism, as poet Phil Rockstroh…

Reagan and Guatemala’s Death Files

From the Archive: A 9-foot-high bronze statue honoring President Ronald Reagan has been unveiled at National Airport, continuing the deification of the right-wing icon. Left out of the celebration was anything about Reagan’s dark side, as Robert Parry recounted in…