Tag: human rights

During April, May and June of 2010 I traveled to the Occupied West Bank (also known as the Occupied Palestinian Territories). I wished to...

The big powers got together in Istanbul to discuss what to do about what they claim is the 'problem' of Iran and its 'controversial' nuclear energy program. Iran in effect made...

Discussing Israel, Nazism, comparisons, German guilt, Palestine and multiculturalism. What do human rights mean when a nation of human beings are officially 'less-than'? What...

The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva yesterday released its draft report on the first Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the U.S. human rights record. The report called for greater transparency and accountability in U.S. foreign military aid and programs. On Thursday, November 4, Gina Patnaik spoke at UN headquarters in Geneva, representing the Rachel Corrie Foundation in a side panel to the U.S. review, and called upon the U.S. Government to enforce two existing mechanisms for monitoring human rights abuses - the "Leahy Amendment," and the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.

Conspiracy of silence: American and European silence towards these atrocious Israeli crimes, even their absolute support of the racist government in Israel gave Israeli soldiers and settlers a free hand to kill, torture and run over unarmed Palestinian civilians.

By Adam Goldman at Huffington WASHINGTON — A former CIA officer accused of revving an electric drill near the head of an imprisoned terror suspect...

By Charlie Savage in the NYT WASHINGTON — After working for a year to redeem the international reputation of military commissions, Obama administration officials are...

- Israel's demand that Palestinians recognize it as a Jewish state sounds reasonable -- unless you understand 1948 - By Ben White in Salon The refrain...

 - "We don't torture," squawked George W. Bush time and again; he was lying. Murat Kurnaz in  Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man...

- WMDs and the War on Terror: Lies that won't die - By Jim Staro Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) has become the new mainstream term...

Imagine this, imagine that Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress negotiated a deal with the South African Apartheid regime and settled for a...

Until the Brentwood facility was finally condemned by the CDC, Brentwood postal workers handled all of the mail for Washington, DC, including the ‘official mail’ that contained the anthrax-laden envelopes addressed to Senators Daschle and Leahy. While Capitol Hill workers received prompt medical care, Brentwood postal workers were ordered by USPS officials to continue working in the contaminated facility. Two Brentwood workers died from the inhalation of anthrax, and dozens more are suffering from a variety of ailments related to the anthrax attacks. For decades U.S. presidents have gone all over the globe lecturing world leaders on human rights. Yet, our very own United States Postal Service is among the worst abusers of workers' rights outside of the third world.

- And why should ye not fight in the cause of Allah and of those who, being weak, are ill-treated (and oppressed)?― men, women,...

But the Republicans told us to not to worry. They said, if you'll just give up the right to write off the interest on your credit cards and other debts temporarily, the rewards that the rich are enjoying will eventually "trickle down," and you'll all be showered with the benefits of a robust economy. But their promise never came to past. The only thing that trickled down was our having to pay the tax burden of the rich - and even as I write, the rich are enjoying additional tax breaks while we still haven't regained the simple right to write off the interest on our debts .

At 600,000 strong, plus family, friends, and neighbors - and in an election year where incumbents are hanging on by their fingernails - postal employees are in the driver's seat of a tank. Yet, they're allowing themselves, and their families, to be robbed by a guy with a butter knife - and not just once outside a liquor store, but repeatedly in what is supposed to be the sanctity of their workplace. This has got to come to an end.

The Gaza blockade has nothing to do with Israel "defending itself." Apologists for the brutal siege of Gaza base their defense largely on a single, spectacularly dishonest argument: that Israel is only trying to keep arms out of Gaza -- arms that Hamas might use against Israeli civilians.

The mainstream media never becomes interested in a story until there's an explosion - twenty-nine mineworkers trapped in a poisonous coal mine, eleven oil workers vaporized in the Gulf, or when a postal worker snaps from abuse and walks into the post office with an M16 and brings death and destruction to his co-workers. But what's happened to the families of the twenty-nine mineworkers, eleven oil workers, or victims of postal mayhem since? We'll never know, because they've been relegated to the trash bin of yesterday's news.

But there is an upside to the ledger. Postal employees don't have to beg for justice - they can demand it. They have both the law, and the numbers on their side. There are 600,000 postal employees in America, then when you add all of their family and friends, that's a formidable political group. In addition, in today's political environment up to 76% of the American people are unhappy with incumbents. So postal employees can very easily pull together to make a politician's willingness to fight for workers' rights a litmus test in order to be elected - and that goes for your union officials as well.

The document reads, "We the people," not we the government. This is a covert encroachment on the American middle class that the people simply must repeal, or the rights of all Americas will be placed in dire jeopardy. Once the government declares open season on its employees, who's left to protect us from private exploitation?

The American people have always been comfortable in their belief that while the citizens of many other countries are routinely victimized by their government that 'it can't happen here.' But what the comfortable middle class fail to understand is the comfort that they take so easily for granted is under dire threat. They've been so mesmerized by MTV and their hedonistic pursuits that they're totally oblivious to the fact that under the new global economic structure the standard of living of the American middle class has become a liability to American business. While many may not feel the pinch yet, if they don't wake up, their carefree way of life is going to become a thing of the past.

More video from Al Walaja and the direct nonviolent action that the village is creating in order to stop the construction of the wall through their farmlands. This is what direct nonviolent action looks like in Palestine. This video was taken on 27 April 2010 by Activestills photographers.

An unprecedented Israeli campaign to silence dissidents, intellectuals and human rights organizations is gaining momentum in the wake of Israel's December 2008 assault against Gaza that caused intense international outrage...

Popular pressure is the difference between progress and oppression.