International agencies and global movements target human rights violators from small or isolated countries, but the idea of holding accountable the powerful and well-connected who cause much greater human suffering is considered unthinkable, a paradigm that Danny Schechter challenges.
Tag: United Nations
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…
Convicting Iran Outside a Courtroom
The hard-to-believe accusation about an Iranian assassination plot in Washington may be thin on actual evidence but that has not stopped the Obama administration from using it to stir up animosity toward Iran within the American public and at the…
Why Palestine Already Is a State
Palestinian officials have appealed for membership at the United Nations, prompting angry retorts from Israel and a veto threat from the Obama administration. But the UN issue is membership, not statehood, which Joe Lauria writes is already a de facto…
Obama’s Hollow Words on Palestine
President Barack Obama struggled to explain his planned veto of UN recognition of a Palestinian state just a year after he welcomed the idea. His speech was a painful example of a leader knowing what is right and calculating that…
Obama’s Double Talk on Palestine
At the United Nations, President Barack Obama tried to square the circle of U.S. support for democracy and freedom across the Middle East with his threat to veto statehood for the Palestinians, a cause he championed just last year. In an open…
Turkey Stands Up to Israel
Often in the application of international law, it’s not what a country did but who its friends and who its enemies are that count. In that light, Israel, a close U.S. friend, got the blessings of a UN report for…
Orange Jumpsuits / Double Standards
Exclusive: The U.S. news media regularly rallies the American public to outrage when a U.S. adversary or some unpopular group is linked to a heinous crime. But a different standard applies to U.S. allies even when there is strong evidence of…
US/Israel Can Respect Palestinian Rights
The clock is ticking on what could be the next explosion in the Middle East, if Palestinians press their demand for United Nations recognition as a state and the United States and Israel continue to spurn this acknowledgement of Palestinian…
Palestine’s Bid for Recognition
With Israeli-Palestinian peace talks going nowhere and Israel still counting on the unqualified support of the United States a diplomatic clash is shaping up at the United Nations in September as Palestinians push for UN recognition of their own state. But…