John McCain’s demand that Pakistan pardon Dr. Shakeel Afridi, convicted of treason for helping the CIA locate Osama bin Laden, may not even be possible. Afridi was tried by a tribal court where Islamabad is constitutionally barred from interfering.
As NATO chiefs in Chicago broached negotiations with the Taliban, Amnesty International convened a “Shadow Summit” where women’s groups rejected the idea—while supporting the US/NATO occupation that collaborates with fundamentalist warlords.
Two anti-NATO protesters in Chicago are slapped with terrorism-related charges—days after Human Rights Watch issued a report calling for an investigation into possible war crimes by NATO in last year’s air campaign in Libya.
An exorbitantly priced “Citibike” bicycle-sharing program named and colonized by Citibank is unveiled in New York—a perverse betrayal of the legacy of Amsterdam’s radical Provos, who pioneered the first bike-sharing initiative in 1967.
A federal judge strikes down provisions of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act in a legal challenge by Chris Hedges. But does the ruling protect journalists, while legitimizing indefinite detention of “advocates of violence”?
Julia Ward Howe conceived the holiday as an anti-war statement in 1870, in response to the Franco-Prussian carnage. But the pacifists who rescue this legacy from oblivion unfortunately engage in their own historical revisionism…
US military advisors to Yemen, pulled out last year due to human rights abuses by the crumbling regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh, are set to return—as drone strikes continue on territory controlled by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
While mainstream accounts emphasize the defendants’ refusal to respect the court, the ACLU points out that the Gitmo tribunal for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-defendants falls short of international standards for justice.
Media are suddenly full of voices plugging hydro-fracking as the key to finally achieving US "energy independence"—in undoubted response to a drop in energy consumption, and to modest federal efforts to regulate the industry.
The demolition of a mosque near the Golden Temple of Dambulla—a Buddhist cave-temple in central Sri Lanka—bears echoes of the 1992 destruction of the Ayodhya mosque in India, which ultimately led to the Gujarat genocide.
As the Taliban announce the start of their spring offensive, Obama signs a Strategic Partnership Agreement with Hamid Karzai allowing a major US military presence in Afghanistan beyond the supposed withdrawal deadline of the end of 2014.
