Search Results for: "Human Rights Watch"

Lies and Consequences in Our Past 15 Wars

Leave a Comment /

“Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their peoples in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was their object.  This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.”–Abraham Lincoln

AFGHANISTAN

Prior to 2001, the Taliban was willing to turn Osama bin Laden over to a third country read more

The Libyan Model and the Oxymoron: Class of 2012 Queen and King

Leave a Comment /

There’s a new Atrocity Prevention Board in town, and its chief tool for preventing atrocities will be . . . wait for it . . . atrocities! 

What a breakthrough! And this clown is forming a tentative life partnership with an unbelievably beautiful model from Libya.  The key word is “unbelievably.” 

The Atrocity Prevention Board is rumored to still be married to World War II, but the primary reason to doubt the latest gossip is the grotesque hideousness of the Libyan read more

Kindness, Generosity, and Bombing Libya

Leave a Comment /

Wouldn’t it be kind and generous of us to send the US or NATO or a UN-approved military into Libya to bloodlessly prevent the vicious slaughter of masses of people by a truly evil lunatic?

Would it?

In a study called “Why Civil Resistance Works,” Maria Stephan and Erica Chenoweth examined major uses of violence and nonviolence against tyrannical governments around the world between 1900 and 2006. They found that violence succeeded 26 percent of the time. I think they were taking read more

It All Started With an American Taliban

Leave a Comment /

By David Swanson

It began with that monstrous young man so evil we needed to blindfold him and strap him to a board, that confusing young man who looked like Christ but cast us in the role of crucifiers, that treasonous young man who brought dark and heathen evils across linguistic and cultural borders and brought torture onto the list of accepted government actions.

When you hear the phrase “American Taliban” you probably think of a young American who betrayed his country, aided its read more

Liberated to Death

Leave a Comment /

May 10, 2004

Also published at http://www.truthout.org

How, reporters and pundits have asked, could good American heroes behave so badly as to become torturers? There are at least three answers that most of the U.S. media will not touch.

One is that many of our soldiers entered the Army or the National Guard or Reserves bringing with them all the frustration of a class-divided society running low on living-wage jobs. Many families have filed for bankruptcy as a result of extended service in Iraq, read more

Crime Prevention

Leave a Comment /

The Washington Post reported on April 20th that a New York-based human rights group called Human Rights Watch has found that two new super-max prisons in Virginia are marked by racism, brutality, and inhumane conditions, and that, with room to spare in these highest security prisons, state officials are rushing to fill them with prisoners “better suited to less harsh conditions.”

In the view of many advocacy groups, including Amnesty International and the ACLU, ALL prisoners are better read more