Obama’s Moral Bankruptcy Regarding Torture by Andy Worthington June 28, 2010 Saturday was the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, established twelve years ago to mark the day, in 1987, when the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Punishment or Treatment came into force, but you wouldn’t have found out about it through the mainstream U.S. media. No editorials or news ...
Endless Occupation? by Sheldon Richman June 28, 2010 So Gen. Stanley McChrystal is out and Gen. David Petraeus is back at the helm in Afghanistan. I don’t like hackneyed phrases, but if this isn’t rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, what is it? America’s occupation of Afghanistan has no end in sight. The July 2011 date for the beginning of withdrawal is something that even President Obama ...
Obama Thinks about Releasing Innocent Yemenis from Guantánamo by Andy Worthington June 21, 2010 Three weeks ago, I wrote a bitter commentary about the repeated failures of the U.S. government to release an innocent Yemeni prisoner in Guantánamo — a student, Mohammed Hassan Odaini, now aged 26, but just 18 when he was seized — even though he was cleared for release by a military review board under President Bush in 2006, ...
Did Bush & Co. Do Medical Research on Detainees? by Sheldon Richman June 21, 2010 As time goes by, the record of the Bush administration gets worse and worse. It could turn out that the most egregious offense of the Bush-esque Obama administration will be that its Justice Department let Bush-Cheney & Co. off scot-free. It’s not enough that the last gang to occupy the Executive Branch got us into two illegal wars, accumulated autocratic powers, ...
UN Human Rights Council Discusses Secret Detention Report by Andy Worthington June 14, 2010 On June 3, unnoticed by most of the U.S. media, the UN Human Rights Council held an interactive dialogue to discuss the “Joint Study on Global Practices in Relation to Secret Detention in the Context of Counter-Terrorism,” prepared by Manfred Nowak, the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, Martin Scheinin, the Special ...
Suicide or Murder at Guantánamo? by Andy Worthington June 7, 2010 On June 2 last year, the Pentagon announced that a Yemeni prisoner at Guantánamo, Mohammed al-Hanashi (also known as Muhammad Salih) had died, reportedly by committing suicide. He was the fifth reported suicide at Guantánamo, following three deaths on June 9, 2006, and another on May 30, 2007, and he was the sixth man to die at ...
Serving the Empire, Killing for Lies by Sheldon Richman June 3, 2010 We made it through another Memorial Day. Thankfully, most people think of it as just the start of summer. They don’t seem to use it as America’s political leaders have long wanted: as a day of reverence for America’s world domination. In his radio address this past Saturday President Obama urged all Americans to “serve” the members of the armed ...
Leading Humanity out of the Darkness, Part 1 by Jacob G. Hornberger June 1, 2010 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 The ancient Chinese symbol for “crisis” perfectly depicts the situation currently facing the American people. That symbol was actually composed of two separate symbols. One was the symbol for “danger” and the other was the symbol for “opportunity.” The danger we face as Americans comes in the ...
Capitalism and the Free Market, Part 2 by Sheldon Richman June 1, 2010 Part 1 | Part 2 The taint of government intervention into economic activity carried over to the British North American colonies. The radical nature of the American Revolution has masked the class struggle within American colonial society between what historian Merrill Jensen called “radicals” and “conservatives” in his book The Articles of Confederation: An Interpretation of the Social-Constitutional History ...
Federal Make-Work Jobs Betray Teenagers by James Bovard June 1, 2010 Politicians now pretend that government spending can solve any and all ills. Sloshing out federal funds for local summer job programs exemplifies this delusion. Uncle Sam first began bank-rolling summer jobs for urban teens in 1964. It was decided that government should hire any low-income teen who couldn’t find a job on his own. Soon, with the usual bureaucratic imperialism, ...
Unnatural Law, Natural Tyranny, Part 3 by William L. Anderson June 1, 2010 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 It is not surprising that the viewpoints discussed in Part 2 also would transform criminal law. Americans had inherited from Great Britain the common law, in which the criminal portion was based on the doctrine of malum in se. That meant that criminal acts, such as murder, robbery, and other ...
Lessons for America from Germany’s Hyperinflation, Part 2 by Jim Powell June 1, 2010 Part 1 | Part 2 By November 1922, the German economy was collapsing. Industries shut down. The government committed itself to paying money to the thousands of workers who became unemployed. Within six months, the government was providing a trillion marks a month in emergency credits to failing banks, railroads, manufacturing businesses, and agricultural cooperatives. On July 1, 1923, ...