Death by cruelty

An imprisoned man in Guantanamo Bay is told he has AIDS and authorities refuse him access to a lawyer or medical help. This is America, 2008.

Welcome to our new (future) reality?

The following MTV advertisements are designed to provoke serious thought in Western societies: are we moving towards a police state? A supposedly pro-Palestinian interpretation of one of the ads is below, denying the reality of the Holocaust and comparing Israeli actions in Palestine to the Nazis. It’s offensive and utterly counter-productive:

A tragic anniversary

It is five years since the beginning of the Iraq war. A disaster of immense proportions was unleashed on the country. The Western media are limited in their abilities to report the story. Iraqi civilians are still suffering in an unprecedented way.

Human rights first

Last week the executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, spoke in Sydney. He gave a passionate, wide-ranging talk, outlined the “rules of the game” for tyrannies around the world and a West that loves to collaborate with them: The Bush administration, for example, seems to prefer promoting a narrow conception of democracy as…

Our kind of arms dealer

One side of a sordid story: One of the world’s most notorious arms dealers, suspected of supplying weapons to the Taliban and Al Qaeda and of pouring huge arms shipments into Africa’s civil wars with his own private air fleet, was arrested by Thai authorities in a hotel here Thursday. His capture was prompted by…

Phoning the terrorists

Tony Karon, Rootless Cosmopolitan, March 4: Once upon a time, Israelis and Palestinians looked to the U.S. to intervene at moments of heightened confrontation to mediate between the two sides and contain the damage. The Bush Administration, however, has proved entirely incapable of playing this role, because its own diplomatic efforts are hidebound by the…

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