Philip Gourevitch puts in writing his ideas re: Abu Ghraib and Obama’s release of the torture memos (I had mentioned some of these in an earlier post):
The natural first reaction on seeing the photographs of American soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners in Saddam Hussein’s old dungeons was to ask: Why are we doing such things to [...]
This op-ed piece in the New York Times by law professor George Bisharat provides a precise summary of all of Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. Bisharat concludes his account with these words:
Israeli political and military personnel who planned, ordered or executed these possible offenses should face criminal prosecution. The appointment of Richard Goldstone, the former [...]
This sentence became the rallying cry for George Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his support for the war crimes of Arik Sharon and his successors. Except the United States is far more authoritarian than many of its citizens and certainly its politicians care to admit. A shining exception is Senator Jim Webb:
Let’s start [...]
As a follow up to yesterday’s post, one might ask why does this type of news article only appear in the UK’s Guardian? Is it not fit to print in the New York Times?
Israel’s military fired white phosphorus over crowded areas of Gaza repeatedly and indiscriminately in its three-week war, killing and injuring civilians and [...]
It angers me that Guatanamo has become the focus of “liberal” outrage in this country. Every day thousands of people are tortured in US prisons in various ways. Yet little is written condemning these practices. On the contrary, they are glorified and justified in popular culture (cf. Con Air for one of thousands of examples) [...]
Amira Haas, whose writing often appears on this blog, interviews Gaza residents:
n the midst of all of this were plastic bottles of urine and many closed bags – in some houses, olive-colored ones – of excrement. People assumed that the commanders stayed there. There are houses where excrement was smeared on the walls, or where [...]
Last week a Spanish court opened a war crimes investigation into the Shehada bombing incident. Ehud Barak said “Anybody calling the liquidation of a terrorist a ‘crime against humanity’ is living in an upside-down world.” But of course, the investigation is not about the killing of Shehada himself. The investigation is about dropping a one [...]
Despite all the evidence out there that the Israeli army consistently resorts to lies and disinformation to justify its actions (cf. the Shehada story), many US media outlets continue to quote Israeli army spokespeople as if they are Moses conveying God’s own truth. However, for anyone with the slightest bit of objectivity, the Israeli army MO is [...]
Horrific images of the fighting Gaza. The comments make fascinating reading. I’ll comment on the comments later.
The war in Yugoslavia was a turning point in the human rights movement. Appalled by the atrocities they saw, many Western war correspondents advocated for military intervention by the US and the EU. The rallying cry was “how can we stand by and let another Holocaust happen?” Eventually (not soon enough for what would soon be known as the [...]
Continue reading about Feature: Humanitarian Intervention – Part I