Tag: Marjorie Cohn

Obama’s Gitmo Failure

As President Obama approaches his final year in office, he has yet to fulfill one of his earliest promises, closing the Guantanamo Bay prison. It remains a grievance used by terror groups as a recruiting tool, but the prison has other legal…

Obama’s Criminal Drone War

President Obama has relied on the lethal drone program as a “low cost” way to eliminate “terrorists,” but the project has institutionalized an imprecise strategy of human slaughter that violates international law and creates more enemies, writes Marjorie Cohn at Truthdig.

Obama’s Half-Hearted Cuba Detente

President Obama’s “normalization” of relations with Cuba have been more tell than show, with much of the half-century U.S. embargo left in place and some “relaxations” designed to coerce Cuba into “privatizing” its economy, as Art Heitzer and Marjorie Cohn…

In Case You Missed…

Some of our special stories in September focused on how the Syrian crisis careened out of control, how the Mideast troubles are now destabilizing Europe, how info-war manipulates public opinion, and how hypocrisy played out at the UN General Assembly.

The Kunduz Hospital Atrocity

The U.S. bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, blipped on and off the mainstream media’s radar, catalogued as just one more unfortunate mistake in the last 14 years of war. But there is probable cause to…

The ‘Tempest-tost’ Syrian Refugees

Like its predecessor in Iraq, the “regime change” war in Syria has killed hundreds of thousands and uprooted millions more, with many now seeking refuge in the West. But political forces have resisted providing safe haven, an affront to international…

Solitary Confinement Under Attack

One of the cruelest aspects of American prisons is the excessive use of solitary confinement, especially in “supermax” facilities, leaving inmates without normal human contact for years and even decades, a form of cruel punishment now under challenge in the…

Philippines’ Terror-Inducing ‘War on Terror’

A largely forgotten front in George W. Bush’s “global war on terror” has been the Philippines where military campaigns to crush various rebel groups and political activists have led to charges of extrajudicial killings, torture and other war crimes, reports…

In Case You Missed…

Some of our special stories in April examined the expanding conflicts in the Middle East, the prospect of a peaceful nuclear agreement with Iran, and the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.

Fear and Loathing in Baltimore

Freddie Gray’s fatally broken spine, while trundled up in a Baltimore police van and taken for a “rough ride” to hurtle him around and inflict pain, was just another case of an unarmed black man’s fate in modern America, except that…