|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By Carla Kaplan
$ 13.57
By Ellen Goodman, Patricia O'Brien
$18.85
$23
|
|
|
|
White House photo by Eric Draper
|
Just weeks after publicly fretting about Pervez Musharraf’s dictatorial power grab, George W. Bush has decided that the Pakistani president “hasn’t crossed the line” and “truly is somebody who believes in democracy.” It’s an assessment that would be comical if it didn’t have to do with the freedom of millions of people and the security of dozens of nuclear weapons.
|
current.com
|
If the combined power of thousands of Buddhist monks staging a nonviolent protest isn’t enough to oust Burma’s oppressive junta, one American hero (cue movie trailer voice-over) is coming to fight for democracy in a faraway land—or at least stick his nose in another nation’s business.
|
guardian.co.uk
|
The British government’s Foreign Affairs Committee will look into charges by a number of sources, including human rights groups and a retired U.S. general, that sovereign British land has been used as a CIA “black site” prison. The island of Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, has been leased to the United States and is the site of an American military base but remains British territory.
|
|
Aside from fatty foods that are somehow good for you, a laissez-faire attitude toward religion and a decidedly more relaxed approach to reproduction, the biggest cultural difference between Europe and the United States could be Europeans’ general disdain for the death penalty. Lest we forget that all 27 European Union states have abolished the practice, the entire continent has taken a day to reflect upon the barbarity of execution.
|
|
The British prime minister has warned that the number of dead in Burma is probably “far greater than is being reported so far.” The world community has widely condemned the Burmese government’s violent response to the thousands of protesters who’ve been flooding the streets of Yangon.
|
AP Photo
|
An estimated 100,000 people marched through the streets of Yangon on Monday in an ongoing protest that has rapidly swelled from just dozens of people. Burma’s notoriously inhumane military government has traditionally been quick to stanch dissent but has yet to seriously confront the demonstrators, who were led by roughly 20,000 Buddhist monks.
|
AP Photo
|
Thousands of Buddhist monks and supporters have taken to the streets of Yangon (Rangoon) and elsewhere, as the biggest demonstration against Burma’s brutal military government in nearly 20 years continues to gain momentum. (Updated)
|
|
The United Nations hasn’t had much of a presence in Iraq since a car bomb blew up its headquarters back in 2003, but that could soon change. The U.S. and Britain have begun pushing a Security Council resolution that would expand the U.N.‘s mandate in Iraq, with a focus on diplomacy and human rights.
|
|
By Amy Goodman — Sometimes it takes a brave, idealistic young person (or nearly 50 of them) to break all the rules of pomp and circumstance, pass the president a note, and school him about human rights.
|
the-net.dk
|
An independent Cuban human rights organization says Cuba has taken fewer and freed more political prisoners under the rule of Raul Castro, compared with his brother, Fidel. But the group says human rights abuses by the government are still a problem, as is the U.S. embargo, which it says imposes unnecessary hardship on the Cuban people.
|
|
The Vatican is urging Catholics not to donate to Amnesty International because, it says, the group selectively promotes abortion. The human rights organization says the church has misrepresented its policy and, in the process, imperiled human rights. The World Health Organization estimates that 70,000 women die every year from unsafe abortions.
|
|
A Saudi prisoner at the detention center in Guantanamo Bay has apparently committed suicide, the U.S. military said in a statement. Human rights organizations have repeatedly warned that indefinite detentions—some now longer than five years—combined with harsh “interrogation techniques” and unfair trials could drive detainees to take their own lives.
|
AP Photo / Mark Wilson, Pool
|
Jumana Musa, advocacy director for domestic human rights and international justice at Amnesty International, speaks with Truthdig about the war on human rights, why conditions at Guantanamo have only gotten worse and why she has hope for the future.
|
AP Photo / Mark Wilson, Pool
|
Jumana Musa, advocacy director for domestic human rights and international justice at Amnesty International, speaks with Truthdig about the war on human rights, why conditions at Guantanamo have only gotten worse and why she has hope for the future.
|
|
A human rights organization is suing Yahoo for assisting the Chinese government in arresting dissidents by providing information on its users. Like Google and Microsoft, Yahoo has defended the practice of handing over data to China as a necessary evil mitigated by the benefits of the Internet, crippled and corrupt though it may be.
|
|
The newly formed U.N. Human Rights Council is debating whether to do away with the special rapporteurs whose job is to investigate global human rights abuses. A group of countries typically subjected to such scrutiny, with Cuba and China at the helm, argues that domestic reports should be sufficient.
|
|
The State Department recently released its regular report of human rights abuses around the world and, as expected, listed China as one of the worst offenders. But Beijing fired back with its own report and a long list U.S. violations, including everything from disregard for civilian casualties to treating racial minorities as an underclass.
|
|
Free-speech and human rights groups are decrying an Egyptian court’s decision to jail blogger Abdel Karim Suleiman for criticizing Islam and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on his online forum. Critics and fellow bloggers fear Suleiman’s four-year sentence will set the stage for more arrests and fewer alternatives to state-controlled media outlets in his country.
|
hrw.org
|
A preliminary investigation by the State Department has found that Israel’s cluster bombing of civilian areas of Lebanon violated terms of an arms agreement with the United States. Israel receives roughly $2 billion annually in military assistance from the U.S., but Washington places classified conditions on how American munitions can be used.
|
msnbc.com
|
A damning report making its way through the European Union Parliament says a number of EU countries knew of CIA abductions and operations in Europe related to the practice of extraordinary rendition, including more than 1,000 covert flights over European airspace. The report also says the UK, Italy and Poland resisted the investigation.
|
AP / Khalil Hamra
|
By Chris Hedges — The N.Y. Times’ former Middle East bureau chief, writing about Israel’s unrelenting attack on the Gaza Strip, argues: “It is a sad commentary on the gutlessness of the American press and timidity of the Democratic opposition that most Americans are not aware of the catastrophic humanitarian crisis they bear so much responsibility in creating.”
Above: Water mixes with blood in a street of a northern Gaza Strip town after an Israeli tank shelling in November.
|
wikipedia.org
|
Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has expressed her sorrow following the death of brutal Chilean dictator Agusto Pinochet, a friend until the end. Victims of Pinochet’s atrocities have also expressed sadness, now that the tyrant will escape trial for years of abuses against his people, including torture and the disappearance of some 3,000 individuals.
|
|
By Christian Parenti — With the resurgence of the Taliban, women in Afghanistan are once again rated by the United Nations as being “among the worst-off in the world.” Learn more about their plight in the companion piece to Christian Parenti’s larger article, “Afghan Autopsy.”
|
Scotsman.com
|
A new report from Human Rights Watch accuses the British government of softening protections against torture, abdicating its responsibility to pressure the U.S. against the practice and knowingly deporting terror suspects to countries where they are likely to suffer abuse.
|
|
Truthdig salutes Rocky Anderson, the Salt Lake City mayor who spoke out against the war and reminded the world that “blind faith in bad leaders is not patriotism.” Anderson welcomed Bush to his city with a fiery protest speech and these searing lines: “A patriot does not tell people who are intensely concerned about their country to just sit down and be quiet; to refrain from speaking out in the name of politeness or for the sake of being a good host; to show slavish, blind obedience and deference to a dishonest, war-mongering, human-rights-violating president.”
|
|
The former president lashes out at the int’l community over its stance on Iranian nuclear research. | story
Posted on Jan 10, 2006
READ MORE 
|
|
Condi Rice is so tired of Old Europe and its human rights complaints. Big deal, so the CIA is using Soviet era torture camps in Eastern Europe to stash “war on terror” prisoners. Don’t those fusspots in the EU understand that our use of torture is fundamentally different because we are the good guys and that Eastern Europe has been liberated? That outmoded European slogan of “friends don’t let friends use torture” is so over.
|
|
It is time we called a halt to our mindless messing in the Iraqi people’s lives.
|
View the most popular tags overall?
|
|
Quelle Surprise! Haiti on the Mend
Newsletter 
Like Us
Follow Us
Get Our Feed
