Pardiss Kebriaei on Guantánamo Prisoners
We are a long way from understanding the full meaning of Guantánamo. But we can get the remaining detainees out.
‘US Companies Can Be Sued for Involvement in Child Slavery’
“Being able to buy cocoa at a lower cost, because the farms lowered their cost by using slaves, that’s ‘benefiting from.'”
Hassan El-Tayyab on US Out of Yemen, Kate Bronfenbrenner on Labor Board vs. Labor
US media bring images of Yemen’s suffering, but you could think it was happening on Mars, if the dots are not connected between the bombs and the hunger and the cholera, and elected US congressmembers voting again and again to be part of it.
On Gun Violence, ‘We Need the Federal Government to Take Bold Steps’
“We can’t continue to work in silos of doing this gun violence work, that urban areas’ gun violence, domestic violence, suicide rates from gun violence, all talked about in the report, all tie together, and you have to come together as one human community to really address these issues.”
Ernest Coverson on Guns & Human Rights, Carey Gillam Under Attack From Monsanto
Vast majorities of Americans support serious regulation, but corporate media debate still seems to revolve around the supposed “rights” of the few, rather than the right of the many to live a life free from this scourge.
Dictator: Media Code for ‘Government We Don’t Like’
The “dictator” label is also a powerful cue, used by media to prime the reader to see a particular country or leader a certain way.
When They Don’t Ignore, US Media Often Disparage Palestinians’ Right of Return
When the right of return is mentioned in media, pundits and other journalists often baselessly call its legitimacy into question.
‘When Governments Fail to Take Action, They Step In’
“These wrongs and these crimes, if they are not investigated and prosecuted, then most likely this will happen again in the next armed conflict the United States will be involved in.”
From Venezuela to McCain, Media and Human Rights Industry on Same Page
On August 20, the Economist ran an article on Venezuela saying that “forced migration from the country might surpass the Syria crisis.” The magazine reported: The UN’s International Organization for Migration estimates that at the end of 2017 approximately 1.6 million Venezuelans were living outside their country. Today that number is likely to be far […]
‘They Have a Systematic Campaign to Ethnically Cleanse the Entire Rohingya Population’
“They know exactly what they’re doing; they want to ensure that the ethnic cleansing of the entire Rohingya population is complete before anybody finds out.”
‘If We Don’t Have Accountability, There’s Nothing to Stop It From Happening Again’
“The Court simply—or a majority of the Court—doesn’t seem to feel as though it’s their responsibility anymore to make sure that the Constitution is enforced.”
Rachel Meeropol on Illegal Detentions, Dan Zukowski on Climate Disruption
The Supreme Court has just denied the right to sue officials for unlawful detentions. What does that mean for accountability when powerful people make unconstitutional policy?
Vox’s CIA-Backed ‘Democracy’ Standard Is OK With Slavery and Women Not Voting
Vox, which constantly tells its readers that life is actually swell, with the momentum of history indisputably on the road to justice, decreased poverty and less war, consistently uses a method of ranking countries to prop up its argument that “democracy” is on the rise. But dig into the criteria being used and you find a troubling definition of “democracy” that serves the interests of US power—and wealthy elites.
With Obama in Cuba, Pro-Torture Pundits Suddenly Concerned With Human Rights
While American human-rights hypocrisy is nothing new, a string of Bush-era, pro-torture, pro-Guantánamo pundits expressing indignation at Cuba’s human rights failings was still remarkable.
A Shared Culture of Conflict of Interest
Human Rights Watch’s conflicts of interest contribute to a culture of normalizing and accommodating the extreme power that the United States arrogates to itself.
Vijay Prashad on IS and Iraq, Emira Woods on Africa Summit
This week on CounterSpin: With the Islamic State, or IS, occupying large swathes of Iraq and Syria, a common refrain from politicians and pundits is to suggest that the group would not be a menace had the US intervened earlier and more deeply in the Syrian civil war. Author and professor Vijay Prashad will join us to address that canard and other misconceptions about Iraq, the US and the Islamic State.
Also on the show: The recent summit of African leaders in Washington DC was criticized by some for soft-pedaling human rights issues, but that only meant in African nations; media seemed to have no question at all about the beneficent goals of the policy of increased ‘investment’ on the continent by US corporations. We have some questions; we’ll ask them of Emira Woods of ThoughtWorks and the Institute for Policy Studies.
Industry as Victim in Workers’ Deaths
What should be done to prevent incidents like the January 26 fire at the Smart Fashion Export factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in which at least seven garment workers (three of them teenage girls) were killed, their escape impeded by a blocked exit and the absence of the most rudimentary fire safety equipment? The answer for […]
Drone Kill List: Not News?
The New York Times‘ lengthy report (5/29/12) on Barack Obama’s drone “kill list” should provoke serious questions: Is such a program legal? How does it square with Obama’s criticism of the Bush administration’s “war on terror” policies? Is the White House covering up the killing of civilians by labeling them “militants”? Why is the United […]
CBS Revises Iraq Death Toll
After a FAIR Action Alert (12/2/11), the CBS Evening News has changed its count of civilian deaths–citing a new figure that is roughly twice their original count. On December 1 the CBS Evening News reported: It is estimated that more than 50,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in the war. As FAIR pointed out, this was […]
CBS Undercounts Iraqi Deaths
A December 1 CBS Evening News report about the Iraq War managed to mislead viewers about the start of the war and severely diminish the loss of civilian lives. Reporting on the handover of the U.S. military headquarters to Iraqi forces, anchor Scott Pelley announced: What began in 2003 as an effort to overthrow Saddam […]
