NewsTrust - Genocide - Most Recent Stories: Opinion

Goldstone report: Israel's failings

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By George Bisharat - Sep. 19 (Opinion) - Will Israel's decades-long impunity from international law finally come to an end? That is the question facing the international community in the aftermath of the just-released Goldstone report.

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Fear was no excuse to condone torture

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Miami Herald - By Charles C. Krulak, Joseph P. Hoar - Sep. 15 (Opinion) - In the fear that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Americans were told that defeating Al Qaeda would require us to ``take off the gloves.'' As a former commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps and a retired commander-in-chief of U.S. Central Command, we knew that was a recipe for disaster. But we never imagined that we would feel duty-bound to publicly denounce a vice president of the United States, a man who has served our country for many years. In light of the irresponsible statements recently made by former Vice President Dick Cheney, however, we feel we must repudiate his dangerous ideas -- and his scare tactics.

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The Other End of the Abu Ghraib Camera

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By William Quinn - Jul. 25 (Opinion) - DESPITE demands by human rights advocates that photos documenting abuse of military detainees be made public, the Senate last month passed legislation to block their release. The legislation is now before the House. President Obama supports these efforts. This is all good news. Classifying the photos would help protect those detainees’ basic rights to dignity and privacy.

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You can Stop War

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

current.com - By Jon Raymond - Jul. 22 (Opinion) - We stopped the Vietnam war, purportedly with two pictures, Execution by Eddie Adams, and Nick Út's photo of a naked girl running with her clothes burned off by napalm. We were so outraged by these photos that we pressured our government to get out of Vietnam.

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Yo, America, The Jig is Up

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

stopwar.lafilmonline.com - By Jon Raymomd - Jun. 14 (Opinion) - The United States of America was founded as a racist, sexist, classicist, bigoted nation. From the start, our government only recognized wealthy white male landowners as having a voice in government. Yet their words in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution declared all “men” as equal.

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Obameter: Did Obama Break His Promise to Armenians?

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Katie Connolly - Apr. 28 (Opinion) - The bottom line is this: even though he says his views haven't changed and yes, his previous views did clearly articulate his acknowledgment of the genocide, his campaign promise was that as President he would acknowledge the Armenian genocide.

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Timidity Derails Obama Intel Choice

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Ray McGovern - Mar. 11 (Opinion) - Foreign policy analyst Chris Nelson described the imbroglio as a reflection of the “deadly power game on what level of support for controversial Israeli government policies is a ‘requirement’ for U.S. public office.” Before the flip-flop on Freeman was announced, Nelson warned, “If Obama surrenders to the critics and orders Blair to rescind the Freeman appointment, it is difficult to see how he can properly exercise leverage, when needed, in his conduct of policy in the Middle East. That, literally, is how the experts see the stakes in the fight now under way” — the fight that is now over.

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Charles Freeman fails the loyalty test

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Mar. 10 (Opinion) - In the U.S., you can advocate torture, illegal spying, and completely optional though murderous wars and be appointed to the highest positions. But you can't, apparently, criticize Israeli actions too much or question whether America's blind support for Israel should be re-examined.

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Israelis for peace speak out

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Amy Goodman - Jan. 08 (Opinion) - Israeli professor Neve Gordon is chairman of the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in southern Israel, the region most impacted by the Hamas rockets. Speaking over the phone from Beersheba, Gordon said: "We just had a rocket about an hour ago not far from our house. My two children have been sleeping in a bomb shelter for the past week. And yet, I think what Israel is doing is outrageous. ...

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How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Avi Shlaim - Jan. 07 (Opinion) - This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones. Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so.

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Another round of bloodletting

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

aljazeera.com - Jan. 06 (Opinion) - Act two of the Gaza slaughter has begun. Death from above now continues on the ground. Overwhelming firepower from tanks, artillery and aircraft are killing women and children indiscriminately. Reports speak of civilians cowering inside as battles rage, terrified residents in other areas fleeing in fear, the windows of the house being blown out, people living without electricity, surviving without heat and eating cold food.

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Factor human rights into Gaza crisis

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

al.com - By David Gespass - Jan. 05 (Opinion) - I am proud of my Jewish heritage. I know that we have been victims just because we are Jewish. But to me, when we say "Never again!" we cannot mean that never again will we accept Jewish suffering. It must mean never again will we permit a people to suffer persecution because of race, religion or ethnic identity. Today, it pains me to acknowledge, the state of Israel is betraying everything about my heritage in which I take pride. Even more painful, the country of my birth is its principal enabler.

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'The Worst Place'

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New Republic - Dec. 22 (Editorial) - The Congo war is killing tens of thousands of people per month and is widely believed to be the world's gravest humanitarian emergency. For that reason alone, we in the West should be doing everything possible to end it.

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Naive faith in Congolese ballot box

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Paul Collier - Nov. 03 (Opinion) - ... in societies at very low levels of income, democracy does not appear to enhance the prospects of peace: I wish it did, but instead it seems to make them more dangerous. And in post-conflict situations elections appear both to increase and to shift the risks of a resurgence of conflict, sharply increasing them once the election is over. Presumably, as in Congo, the loser doesn't accept the result, and the winner recognises the opportunity to be vindictive with impunity.

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How can we stand by as genocide again threatens the Congo?

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

The Age - By Andre Renzaho - Nov. 03 (Opinion) - With the international financial situation becoming the main priority for world leaders, little attention has been given to what is unfolding in Congo. Rwanda has seized the opportunity to join Nkunda to complete unfinished business: the "ethnic cleansing" of Hutus of Rutshuru and Masisi districts.

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Print: The New Humanitarian Order

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Mahmood Mamdani - Sep. 27 (Opinion) - Human rights fundamentalists argue for an international legal standard regardless of the political context of the country in question. Their point of view is bolstered by the widespread and understandable popular outrage, not just in the West but throughout Africa, against the impunity with which a growing number of regimes have been resorting to slaughter to brutalize their populations into silence. The realization that the ICC has tended to focus only on African crimes, and mainly on crimes committed by adversaries of the United States, has introduced a note of sobriety into the African discussion, raising concerns about a politicized justice and wider questions about the relationship between law and politics.

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The War We Don't Know

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Mark Ames - Aug. 14 (Opinion) - While Russia and America see the conflict in abstract terms about spheres of influence and protecting allies, for Ossetians, who still recall the centuries of massacres Georgians committed against them, it is highly personal. They will still recall the Georgian massacres in the early 1920s, when Georgia was briefly independent, which exterminated up to 8 percent of the Ossetian population.

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Radovan Karadzic: Hold him accountable

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Post Intelligencer - Jul. 23 (Editorial) - The Associated Press quoted German Chancellor Angela Merkel, "The victims need to know: Massive human rights violations do not go unpunished." She's right. And perpetrators of human rights crimes need the same knowledge. The world must support the International Criminal Court in charging Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes in Darfur. Eventually, too, the ICC must have the full participation of the United States, which did so much to advance international law to the point where someone like Karadzic must answer charges.

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It's Time To Test The Karadzic Myth

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Radio Free Europe - By Aleksandar Hemon - Jul. 22 (Editorial) - Karadzic fully existed only when organizing the genocide. He was invisible and irrelevant before it, and has been invisible ever since. This is why Karadzic is still popular among the Serbs in the Republika Srpska and Serbia proper: like a mythological being, he came out of nowhere to do what needed to be done -- wipe out the "Turks" and create an eternal, heavenly kingdom, completing the mythological job started hundreds of years ago at the Battle of Kosovo.

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Indictment for genocide

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Boston Globe - Jul. 15 (Editorial) - WHEN THE chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court presented evidence yesterday in support of an arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan, he touched off a clash between two principles. The bedrock of the ICC is the pursuit of justice for genocide and crimes against humanity. That differs from the mission of the peacekeeper, the humanitarian aid worker, and the peace negotiator, who must often overlook past crimes in order to end wars and save lives in the future.

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The West still isn't taking the Iraqis into account

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Adrian Hamilton: - Jul. 10 (Opinion) - Right from the beginning of this enterprise, none of the invading powers has ever taken any interest in the Iraqis themselves or their interests. True, their name has been called on to give moral colour to all the baser mix of motives that lay behind Washington's initial decision to invade and London's decision to support it. Nor, in ordering the occupation, were their views ever taken into account. If they had been, the last five years might have been rather more fruitful.

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for the children

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

WordPress - By J. Michels (myself) - Feb. 12 (Opinion) - Despite good intentions, the only real products of the drug war have been crack, meth and terrorism (not to mention gang violence, overcrowded prisons, deepening racism...) Statistics have proven that the billions spent fighting this war have never impacted either supply or demand, instead we have created a black market that undermines the very freedom of this country. What the children need are adults who act responsibly, they need to grow up in a country where the laws are just. By enacting sensible drug policy, as proposed by Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (www.leap.cc), we will open the door to a much better future for our children and ourselves...

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Vote for Change? Atrocity-Linked U.S. Officials Advising Democratic, GOP Presidential Frontrunners

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Allan Nairn, Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, Amy Goodman - Jan. 03 (Interview) - Investigative journalist Allan Nairn and American Conservative Correspondent Kelley Beaucar Vlahos discuss a little-addressed facet of the 2008 campaign: many of the top advisers to leading presidential candidates are ex-U.S. officials involved in atrocities around the world.

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Let the Americans Try and Stop Us! ...

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 10:17:49 -0700

Hurriyet - By Ertugrul Ozkok - Oct. 23 (Opinion) - Yes, we must now address Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish regional authority in northern Iraq. We need to deliver this final message to him in the strongest fashion possible: "You have two paths before you. Either you will be our neighbor, or our target."

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Turkey's War on the Truth

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 09:05:21 -0700

Washington Post - By Richard Cohen - Oct. 16 (Opinion) - So contemporary Turkey is entitled to insist that things are not so simple. If you use the word genocide, it suggests the Holocaust -- and that is not what happened in the Ottoman Empire. But Turkey has gone beyond mere quibbling with a word. It has taken issue with the facts and in ways that cannot be condoned. Its most famous writer, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk, was arrested in 2005 for acknowledging the mass killing of Armenians. The charges were subsequently dropped, and although Turkish law has been modified in some ways, it nevertheless remains dangerous business for a Turk to talk openly and candidly about what happened in 1915.

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