NewsTrust - Human Rights - Most Recent Stories: Opinion

Whose Team Is It, Anyway?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Nation - By Katha Pollitt - Nov. 20 (Opinion) - Pro-choice voters have been taking one for the team for too long now. Enough already.

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Health Care, Not Assimilation

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - By Frank Joseph Smecker - Nov. 14 (Opinion) - While the health care reform debate continues throughout the country, America's indigenous peoples suffer from some of the worse conditions imaginable.

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Israeli Rabbi's Guide to Killing Causes Firestorm

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

themedialine.org - By Benjamin Joffe-Wait - Nov. 10 (Review) - The book further states that Jews are permitted to kill children "If it is clear they will grow up to harm us." "If hurting an evil leader's children will pressure him to stop acting maliciously," Rabbi Shapira wrote, "you can hurt them."

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Rights Watchdog, Lost in the Mideast

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Robert L. Bernstein - Oct. 20 (Opinion) - Human Rights Watch had as its original mission to pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters. But recently it has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.

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My mission - and motivation

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Jerusalem Post - By Richard Goldstone - Oct. 20 (Opinion) - I begin with my own motivation, as a Jew who has supported Israel and its people all my life, for having agreed to head the Gaza mission. Over the past 20 years, I have investigated serious violations of international law in my own country, South Africa, in the former Yugoslavia, in Rwanda and the alleged fraud and theft by governments and political leaders in a number of countries in connection with the United Nations Iraq Oil for Food program. In all of these, allegations reached the highest political echelons. In every instance, I spoke out strongly in favor of full investigations and, where appropriate, criminal prosecutions. I have spoken out over the years on behalf of the International Bar Association against human rights violations in many countries, including Sri Lanka, China, Russia, Iran, Zimbabwe and Pakistan.

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Op-Ed Columnist: Fie, Fatal Flaw!

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Maureen Dowd - Oct. 18 (Opinion) - President Obama’s legislative career offers cautionary tales about the toll of constant consensus building.

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Tehran's worst fear is a sustained and well-funded human rights campaign.

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Slate - By Anne Applebaum - Sep. 29 (Opinion) - Very few security experts point out that there is another option. What do Iran's rulers truly fear, after all? I'll wager it's not sanctions, and it might not be a bombing raid. An economic boycott can be circumvented, after all, with the help of Venezuela or maybe the Russian mafia, and an attack on Iranian soil might help the regime once again consolidate power. By contrast, a sustained and well-funded human rights campaign must be a truly terrifying prospect. What if we therefore told the Iranian regime that its insistence on pursuing nuclear weapons leaves us with no choice other than to increase funding for dissident exile groups, to smuggle money into the country, to bombard the airwaves with anti-regime television programming, and above all to publicize widely the myriad crimes of the Islamic Republic of Iran?

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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 Price We All Pay: Human Trafficking in International Adoption

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

CONDUCIVE - By Kevin Minh Allen - Sep. 04 (Opinion) - ... it has quickly become apparent that there are three main roadblocks to strengthening safeguards against human trafficking in international adoption, at least where the U.S. is concerned.

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Holocaust Still a Political Football

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Ira Chernus - Sep. 04 (Opinion) - Matthew Rothschild and I both thought of Edward Said when we read about two Hamas members of the Palestinian Legislative Council insisting that Gaza's schools should not teach the history of the Nazi Holocaust. Cleric Yunis al-Astal said this would be "marketing a lie" and a "war crime." Jamila al-Shanti commented, "Talk about the Holocaust and the execution of the Jews contradicts and is against our culture, our principles, our traditions, values, heritage, and religion."

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The CEO Pay Debate: Why Reform Is Going Nowhere

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Chuck Collins, Sam Pizzigati - Sep. 04 (Opinion) - Shareholders have no reason to begrudge executives like these their fortunes. But the rest of us do. To grab those fortunes, after all, executives are making decisions that place our futures at risk. And that reality takes us right to the core of what's wrong with the current executive pay reform debate's single-minded focus on shareholders: Why should we let shareholders be the ultimate arbiters on the size of executive rewards when these rewards can and do create incentives for CEO behaviors that hurt people who aren't shareholders? In effect, all of us have become stakeholders in executive pay decisions - and we need, consequently, a stakeholder, not just a shareholder, approach to reform.

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Pakistan’s Disappeared Victims: An Interview With Amina Masood Janjua

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mystified Justice - By Sana Saleem - Sep. 04 (Opinion) - Amina represents the families of over 650 missing people of Pakistan. Those gone without a trace. Dragged out of their houses and hustled into waiting vans while their families watched terrified. Hundreds have joined ranks among the disappeared victims of Pakistan leaving loved ones appalled and helpless.

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Treatment of prisoner dents Obama promise to end such practices

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - By Leonard Pitts Jr. - Aug. 31 (Opinion) - No, this does not match the worst abuses of the Bush era, but it is close enough that it must surely disillusion and dismay those who thought a corner was turned on Jan. 20. It must leave them hoping that faith was not misplaced. Sometimes a dented promise is worse than no promise at all.

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Tumult in Iran Raises Questions About Negotiating Over Nuclear Efforts

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - Aug. 27 (Editorial) - THE PROTESTERS have been routed from the streets of Tehran, but the political turmoil in Iran continues unabated behind the scenes. The authority of both the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is being overtly challenged by religious and secular elites. Given the internal tumult and uncertainty, it looks increasingly doubtful that the regime will respond meaningfully to the Obama administration's deadline of late September to discuss curtailing its nuclear program or risk what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has called "crippling sanctions."

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Taking Women's Rights Seriously

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Gordon Brown, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf - Aug. 24 (Advocacy) - The UN has a leading role, yet its response has been too fragmented and has lacked coherence. In 2006 a High Level Panel recommended a new, powerful agency that could empower women throughout the world. Its creation has been delayed too long.

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The Gorilla Dust of Health Care

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Michael Winship - Aug. 15 (Opinion) - On Friday, Bloomberg News reported that 3,300 Washington lobbyists are working on health care: "That's six lobbyists for each of the 535 members of the House and Senate, according to Senate records, and three times the number of people registered to lobby on defense. More than 1,500 organizations have health-care lobbyists, and about three more are signing up each day. Every one of the 10 biggest lobbying firms by revenue is involved in an effort that could affect 17 percent of the US economy."

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There WIll Be Blood

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

OurFuture.org - By Terrance Heath - Aug. 13 (Opinion) - There will be blood. Turning up the heat and stirring the pot already brimming with fear, lies, anger and violence will all but ensure that.

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Speak Up to Stop Unfair Trade | OurFuture.org

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

OurFuture.org - By Leo Gerard - Aug. 13 (Opinion) - China is attacking the U.S. with a stealth weapon of mass economic destruction – unfair trade. U.S. corporations – and China – that profiteer from it prefer to label this “free trade.”

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Why Rulers Are So Cruel?

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Op Ed News - By Muhammad Khurshid - Aug. 04 (Opinion) - History is witnessed to the fact that rulers in the subcontinent have killed their fathers and brothers for keeping themselves in power. Now the same is being done by the rulers of Pakistan. They have been killing their own people for keeping themselves in power. They are the real fascists.

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Torturing Children: Bush's Legacy and Democracy's Failure

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Henry Gireaux - Aug. 03 (Opinion) - The best kept secret of the Bush's war crimes is that thousands of children have been imprisoned, tortured, and otherwise denied rights under the Geneva Conventions and related international agreements. Yet both Congress and the media have strangely failed to identify the very existence of child prisoners as a war crime.(3)

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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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Prepare to Disengage

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Elaine Elison - Jul. 23 (Opinion) - During the Vietnam War, GI dissent was both documented and nurtured by a slew of underground GI newspapers. Papers like "Up Against the Bulkhead," "Harass the Brass" and "About Face" were mimeographed and passed from base to base, hand to hand.

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First steps taken to implement preventive detention, military commissions

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Jul. 21 (Opinion) - From this interim report, it's more apparent than ever that the central excuse made by Obama defenders to justify preventive detention and military commissions -- there are dangerous Terrorists who cannot be released but also cannot be tried because Bush obtained the evidence against them via torture -- is an absolute myth. That's clear for multiple reasons:

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President Obama's Politics of Dignity

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Robert Fuller - Jul. 19 (Opinion) - America is broken. Even if we pull through the current economic crisis, recovery won't last absent an overhaul of our primary institutions. • One out of ten Americans is now unemployed and the recovery is expected to be jobless. • Fifty million Americans have no health insurance; two million, no home. • Two million Americans are in jail. • Our public schools have fallen behind those of most developed nations. • Higher education is priced out of reach of the middle class. • Our infrastructure is in an advanced state of disrepair. • We rank first in greenhouse gas emissions. • Immigration, once our pride, is now our shame. • We're living on credit and leaving the debt to our children.

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Editorial - Slain for Daring to Report - NYTimes.com

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Jul. 17 (Editorial) - New York TimesSlain for Daring to ReportNew York TimesThe murder of Natalya Estemirova, an investigator into the brutality of Chechnya's Kremlin-backed regime, has the grisly signature of a long string of murder with impunity in Vladimir Putin's Russia. Ms. Estemirova was kidnapped by gunmen Wednesday in ...Lawless Atmosphere Cited in Death of Russian JournalistVoice of AmericaAnother Death in RussiaWall Street JournalDimitry Medvedev rejects claim Chechen leader ordered killingguardian.co.ukBBC News?-Reuters?-The Associated Pressall 467 news articles??

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