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By Melvyn P. Leffler
$13.60
By E.J. Dionne
$18.95
$24
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Flickr / kikasso
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Some Israeli soldiers have accused military rabbis of pushing holy war in Gaza. “This rabbi comes to us and says the fight is between the children of light and the children of darkness,” said a reserve sergeant quoted by the L.A. Times.
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Flickr / danesparza
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Here’s a list of countries where you don’t want to find yourself when it comes to human rights: Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, Iraq, Pakistan and the good ol’ U.S. of A. Those six states execute more of their citizens than any others, according to Amnesty International’s latest tally. The U.S. is the fourth-worst offender.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — If President Obama’s primary task is to restore economic growth, he has also been waging a quiet, long-term campaign to ease the nation’s divisions around religious and moral questions.
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Flickr / Fillmore Photography
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The Supreme Court stood by that most American of rights Wednesday—the right to sue. By a 6-3 vote, the court decided that federal oversight and warning labels do not protect the pharmaceutical industry from lawsuits. The one-armed Vermont musician involved in the case was thrilled, and not just because she got to keep $6.7 million.
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aclu.org
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The Justice Department has released nine secret memos and opinions written by the Office of Legal Counsel that authorized some of the Bush administration’s unlawful national security policies.
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U.S. Army / Staff Sgt. Jon Soucy
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A three-year review of more than 40 countries has found that justice systems prior to 9/11 were perfectly capable of combating terrorism. The U.S. and Britain were especially opportunistic in their violations of human rights and international law and gave comfort by example to other abusive regimes, the International Commission of Jurists found.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — It took less than three weeks for the real Barack Obama to come into view. He turns out to be both a conciliator and a fighter. Update
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A new book by Lawrence Lessig asks what constitutes copyright infringement in the era of “sampling” and point-and-click downloading.
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Two recent books show how a man of reason and conservative temperament and a man of passion and radical disposition joined together, even before either knew it, to end slavery.
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U.S. Army / Staff Sgt. Jon Soucy
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President Obama has asked for a stay in all military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay while his administration figures out how to handle the legal cases of the detainees still held in the island prison. The move was welcomed by Human Rights Watch and the ACLU as a positive first step.
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AP photo / Charles Dharapak
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At noon Eastern Time, Barack Obama became the 44th president of the United States. His inauguration speech celebrated America’s history of progress, called for a new era of responsibility and rebuked the Bush administration’s abuse of the Constitution.
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AP photo
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Truthdig normally celebrates Martin Luther King Day by remembering the more complex, more subversive King—the man who railed against America as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” and “a society gone mad on war.” But a day before America inaugurates its first black president, we have other things on our mind.
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David Miliband has written a sour review of the “war on terror,” challenging the worldview pushed by George W. Bush and Miliband’s former boss, Tony Blair. War is not the answer, Miliband warns. Instead, “We must respond to terrorism by championing the rule of law, not subordinating it. ... We must uphold our commitments to human rights and civil liberties at home and abroad.”
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Flickr.com / PMorgan
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After reconfiguring its output figures, China has finally found itself on the medal podium for gross domestic product, ousting Germany from its role as third largest economy in the world. China’s economy has grown tenfold in the past 30 years, and its development, while marveled at, worries many environmental, human rights and labor activists.
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It’s amazing what happens when powerful minds get together. Take this episode of “Fox and Friends,” during which conservative luminary Glenn Beck quotes Jack Bauer, an imaginary person from the land of TV make-believe, to prove the righteousness of torture. Genius.
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Flickr / laverrue
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New England is becoming a gay marriage zone. Five of the six states already have protections for gay couples, and state lawmakers and groups like Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders are pushing for full marriage rights in all six by 2012. Beyond human rights, that could mean big bucks for the region.
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By Ellen Goodman — The standard male narrative about flying solo to the top, bootstraps in hand, energized only by your own talents, always seemed a bit cockeyed to me. The female narrative was not so much self-effacing as it was realistic.
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By Joe Conason — To understand the philosophy of government that Dick Cheney brought to Washington over the past seven years, it is most instructive to see “Frost/Nixon,” with Frank Langella’s remarkable reanimation of Tricky Dick for a generation that never knew him.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — By inviting Pastor Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation, President-elect Barack Obama has alienated some of his friends on the left, but the choice also enrages conservatives who fear the breakup of right-wing dominance in the white evangelical community.
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Rick Warren’s work on the environment, poverty and AIDS make him hard to pigeonhole, but a recent interview, during which he compared homosexuality to incest and pedophilia, crossed a line.
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AP photo / Hatem Moussa
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By Chris Hedges — Israel’s siege of Gaza, largely unseen by the outside world because of Jerusalem’s refusal to allow humanitarian aid workers, reporters and photographers access to Gaza, rivals the most egregious crimes carried out at the height of apartheid by the South African regime. It is meant to break Hamas, but will only breed future generations of militants.
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By William Pfaff — The steady expansion of nominally illegal colonies into the Palestinian territories has gone on to the point where the political parties are now incapable of disengaging from the settlement enterprise.
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By Amy Goodman — While the Nobel prizes recognize lifetime achievements in medicine, chemistry, physics, literature, economics and peace, and Sweden is a paragon among progressive, social democracies, there is another side to Sweden and the Nobels that warrants a closer look.
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By Ellen Goodman — It was a moment bound to give anyone second thoughts about Hillary Clinton’s nomination as secretary of state: Rush Limbaugh called it a “brilliant stroke.”
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filminfocus.com
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By Sheerly Avni — Gus Van Sant’s “Milk” is a movie to be thankful for. Go see it, tonight if you can, and in a crowded theater. Then open up some merlot and watch the documentary “The Times of Harvey Milk,” by Robert Epstein—because these two films belong together.
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courtinfo.ca.gov
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The California Supreme Court has agreed to examine the state’s recently adopted marriage ban, scheduling a hearing for March. The court will decide whether Prop. 8 was a sweeping revision or a simple amendment to the state’s constitution, and whether legally married same-sex couples should suffer a blanket divorce.
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By David Sirota — Bush reportedly suggested to Obama he might support an economic stimulus package and aid to struggling automakers if Democrats drop their opposition to a free-trade agreement with Colombia. Strange behavior? Yes and no.
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The New York Times / Shana Sureck
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In the face of California’s unsettling passage of Proposition 8 barring gay marriage, gay couples in Connecticut are beginning to exercise their equal rights after a final court hearing cleared the way for same-sex unions, ending a long legal battle in the Constitution State.
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AP photo / Allauddin Khan
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The legacy of George Bush’s two “wars of liberation” may already be judged as foreign policy blunders, but the real costs of war remain even after the truism of failed empire. In Afghanistan, acid attacks on at least 15 female students mark a worrisome trend in women’s rights there. And in Iraq, an Iraqi soldier opened fire on a patrol of U.S. troops, killing two.
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By Joe Conason — Obama can be expected to behave as Bush ought to have acted in a time of national crisis. That means drawing on goodwill wherever he can find it, drawing on talent regardless of party and drawing on the powerful desire of most Americans to live again in one nation.
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By Eugene Robinson — I know there’s a chance that the first African-American to make a serious run for the presidency will lose. But that is precisely what’s new: I’m talking about possibility, not inevitability. For African-Americans, this is nothing short of mind-blowing.
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AP photo / Kevork Djansezian
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By The Rev. Madison Shockley — The thousands of same-gender couples who have married in the few months since the California Supreme Court cleared the way are in fact married. The notion that a majority vote by people who are not party to these marriages of love, commitment, care and family will have the power to impose a divorce on these couples is flatly repugnant.
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Someone better give Sarah Palin a copy of the U.S. Constitution—or better yet, read it to her slowly. The up-and-coming legal scholar/vice presidential candidate is scared for her own First Amendment rights because of “attacks” from reporters who claim she is engaging in negative campaign tactics.
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By Amy Goodman — Election Day approaches, and with it a test of our election system’s integrity. Who will be allowed to vote; who will be barred?
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syracuse.com
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Want proof that the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan has brought the democracy it promised? You won’t find it in this case. An appeals court resentenced Parwez Kambakhsh, a student arrested for distributing an article on women’s rights, to a mere 20 years in prison, overturning the controversial death sentence he was given last year.
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AP photo / Henny Ray Abrams
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By Chris Hedges — Our oligarchic class is incompetent at governing, managing the economy, coping with natural disasters, educating our young, handling foreign affairs, providing basic services like health care and safeguarding individual rights. They have no concept, thanks to the educations they have received, of the common good.
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A new book by Brenda Wineapple sheds light on the little-known relationship of the reclusive genius poet with one of America’s most fervent radicals.
Posted on Sep 11, 2008
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AP photo / Matt Rourke
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By Chris Hedges — St. Paul is a window into our future. It is a future where constitutional rights mean nothing and where lawful dissent is branded a form of terrorism.
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By Marie Cocco — Here is what we have gotten with John McCain’s vice presidential selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, picked in part for her extreme anti-abortion credentials: an exquisite endorsement of the pro-choice argument.
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In Jonathan Mahler’s new book, George W. Bush emerges as the most lawless president in American history, the first to usurp the law as a matter of policy.
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An Iraqi cameraman working for such distinguished news organizations as the BBC, Reuters and NPR was recently detained by the U.S. military for nearly a month. It was but the latest questionable detention in what critics view as a pattern of intimidation.
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By Amy Goodman — Open opposition, the right to challenge those in power, is a mainstay of any healthy democracy. The Democratic and Republican conventions will test the commitment of the two dominant U.S. political parties to the cherished tradition of dissent. Things are not looking good.
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By Eugene Robinson — World attention, in addition to fixing on the spectacle of the Olympics and the Chinese economic miracle, will be cast on a record of human rights abuse and environmental degradation.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — By revoking Olympian Joey Cheek’s visa because he had the nerve to speak out about Darfur and the Chinese government’s support for Sudan’s barbarous regime, Chinese authorities guaranteed that the opening of these games would focus as much on politics as on sports.
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AP photo / Janet Hamlin, Pool
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Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s former driver, has been sentenced by a military jury to five and a half years in prison—most of which he’s already served in detention. The prosecution wanted his sentence to be 30 years or longer, but it needn’t be too upset: The military has said it can hold Hamdan indefinitely if it feels like it. Hamdan’s lawyers are expected to appeal.
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By William Pfaff — The Chinese authorities’ anxiety that the Olympic Games will be a success reflects their need to find international confirmation of their general political and economic policies of the past 20 years.
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Fighting between rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas has led to human rights abuses in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch. A Palestinian human rights organization recently drew similar conclusions. Both sides have admitted to at least some of the findings of the report.
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AP photo / EyePress
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When Beijing was chosen to host the Olympics, the Chinese government pledged to make human rights improvements, but Amnesty International says the situation has actually gotten worse because of the coming games: “Specifically we’ve seen crackdowns on domestic human rights activists, media censorship and increased use of re-education through labor as a means to clean up Beijing and surrounding areas.”
Posted on Jul 28, 2008
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By David Sirota — History books teem with six-word phrases, from the comforting (“Nothing to fear but fear itself”) to the inspiring (“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall”) to the embarrassing (“Read my lips, no new taxes”). But the six words “on the basis of union membership” could be more momentous than any of those.
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Patrick Chappatte, NZZ am Sonntag
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France’s foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, announced on Monday that his country would not recognize the government of Robert Mugabe. Kouchner, who co-founded the human rights organization Doctors Without Borders, dismissed Zimbabwe’s recent election as a “farce.”
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Marching in Chicago: Resisting Rahm Emanuel’s Neoliberal Savagery
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