The sentencing of Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison came because he leaked government documents, mostly with a low level of classification that probably shouldn’t have been classified in the first place. Some of the leaked documents showed the US government or other governments behaving badly, in ways the American people had a right […]
Syria: Will Killing of Hundreds with Sarin Gas force Obama’s Hand?
Syrian sources on the ground and expatriate human rights organizations are alleging Wednesday morning that Syrian aircraft have killed hundreds of people in rebel-held East and West Ghouta and some other areas outside the capital with bombings and poison gas. The attack comes as international observers are in the country to investigate past alleged use […]
Alleged Torturers sue Abu Ghraib Torture Victims (Lazare)
Sarah Lazare writes at Commondreams ‘Defense’ contractor CACI International has taken the shocking step of suing four former Abu Ghraib detainees who are seeking redress in U.S. courts for the company’s role in [allegedly] torturing, humiliating and dehumanizing them, with the U.S. corporation recently requesting that the judge order the plaintiffs—- all of whom are […]
Egypt’s Revenge of the Leftovers: Mubarak to be released, Muslim Brotherhood leader Badie Arrested
Too much could easily be made of the pending release from prison of former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, who is still facing charges of complicity in killing some 900 young protesters during the Jan. 25, 2011, uprising. The courts couldn’t find evidence tying him to corruption (which either means that Mubarak’s accountants hid their trail […]
Greenwald Partner falsely detained as Terrorist: How to Create a Dictatorship
How to turn a democracy into a STASI authoritarian state in 10 easy steps: 1. Misuse the concept of a Top Secret government document (say, the date of D-Day) and extend classification to trillions of mundane documents a year. 2. Classify all government crimes and violations of the Constitution as secret 3. Create a class […]
Climate Change Activism as a Nonviolent Movement without Leaders (McKibben)
Bill McKibben writes at Tomdispatch.com The history we grow up with shapes our sense of reality — it’s hard to shake. If you were young during the fight against Nazism, war seems a different, more virtuous animal than if you came of age during Vietnam. I was born in 1960, and so the first great […]
Has Military Suppression of Political Islam ever Worked?
The Egyptian military’s obvious determination to crush the Muslim Brotherhood involves serious human rights violations, apparent in the appalling scenes of the siege of members in a mosque on Saturday. A separate question, which any political pragmatist would ask, is, can it work? If we look at long term attempts to limit political expressions of […]
New Hot Zones now cover 5% of Earth; Only Fix is Halting CO2 (Lazare)
Sarah Lazare writes at Commondreams.org A new study dishes out some very bad news about the global warming crisis. It is too late to stop a “several folds” increase of deadly heat waves caused by greenhouse gases—and the floods, fires, and storms they bring. The report comes as a record heat wave hits North Asia, […]
It’s not about Democracy: Top Ten Reasons Washington is Reluctant to cut off Egypt Aid
another 80 people died in violence in Egypt on Friday, as Muslim Brotherhood crowds protested the military crackdown on their sit-ins that cost hundreds of lives this week. Some of the violence resulted fro police heavy-handedness, some from an armed Brotherhood attack on a police station. The continued unrest upped the pressure on the Obama […]
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