The mainstream U.S. press, paying unusual attention to U.S. corporate complicity in Israel's occupation, wrote quite extensively about last week's Presbyterian campaign for corporate social responsibility. Virtually all the headlines focused on the two million-strong Presbyterian Church (USA) decision not to divest from multi-national corporations profiting from the Israeli occupation...

The Arab World Plays Dominoes with Empire

Is this how empires end, with people flooding the streets, demanding the resignation of their leaders and forcing local dictators out? Maybe not entirely, but the breadth and depth of the spreading protests, the helplessness of the U.S.-backed governments to stop them, and...

Let's start with what the WikiLeaks trove of diplomatic cables is not. It's not a collection of documents whose release will undermine all potential for solving global problems through diplomacy rather than war. It's not a set of shocking revelations of positions or opinions that completely reverse our understanding of...

The breathless will-they-won't-they coverage wasn't quite as extreme this time, but there's still been way more attention paid to the latest U.S. "settlement freeze" offer to Netanyahu than it deserves. What's supposed to be the main point of it all -- new negotiations leading to something remotely resembling a just,...

"International law is not an empty promise" - except for Palestinians

President Obama's General Assembly speech called on the international community to mobilize behind the U.S.-led "peace process." He called on the Palestinians to "reconcile with a secure Israel" and waxed eloquent on the illegality of killing Israeli civilians. He...

At its core, the controversy surrounding the proposed Islamic community center in downtown Manhattan is not about religion. It's about war.

For some years now the fear factor that followed the attacks of September 11, 2001 and fueled public support for the "global war on terror" (or the onomatopoetic...

What a coup for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon! Israel just agreed it will cooperate with a UN-backed international investigation into its lethal May 31 raid on the Mavi Marmara, the ship attempting to break the siege of Gaza. Nine Turkish nationals, one of them also a U.S. citizen, were...

This set of documents is unquestionably the most important history so far of key parts of the US war in Afghanistan. These are reports of troops and commanders in the field to other military officials -- this is where they tell the truth, to themselves. It is significant that the...

This week the State Department bragged about the really important conference on the U.S./NATO war in Afghanistan held in Kabul, hosted by the Afghan president and including dozens of international political leaders. So why was it relegated to page 10 of the New York Times and the equivalent in most...

Turning points occur in every campaign for human rights and equality. There are moments when, before victory is certain, and whether or not the effect is immediately felt on the ground, the discourse, the assumptions, the terms of reference -- not so much for supporters and opponents, as for heretofore...

AMSTERDAM--

Israeli commandoes murdered nine humanitarian aid workers in international waters. Nine were Turkish citizens; one a U.S. citizen. They wounded scores more. They imprisoned hundreds, and impounded the ships they hijacked on the high seas. Someone asked me the question: will they get away with it? So far, I...

Israel has decided that it is better to be perceived as savage than as weak. In its initial attack on the boats carrying human rights activists and humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip, Israel's commandos killed at least nine human rights activists and injured perhaps as many as eighty...

Sanctions that don't work vs. diplomacy that does

The U.S. crusade for new UN sanctions against Iran has been underway for a long time. But the new intensity, the new scurrying around to make sure China and Russia are on board, and the new scramble for an immediate public announcement...

WAR CRIMES THEN AND NOW

by Phyllis Bennis
13 April 2010

In an earlier era, in an earlier war, the recent exposés from Iraq and Afghanistan - with their shocking images, appalling laughter, video-game ethos - would have 'shocked the conscience of the nation.' In an earlier era, in...

There's a special kind of horror that comes from watching a human catastrophe escalate in front of our eyes, knowing that for most of us sending money is the only useful thing we can do. I remember seeing the terror of the Rwandan genocide explode, visible even on U.S. television,...

Barack Obama is not the first US president to find Yemen a challenge. And the current $70 million package of military and security assistance is not the first $70 million US aid program to Yemen.

Two decades ago, in 1990, then-President George H.W. Bush was preparing for his looming invasion...

There was one way in which President Obama's escalation speech brought significant relief to the 59% of people in this country, as well as the overwhelming majorities of people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East and elsewhere who oppose the U.S. war in Afghanistan: It was a pretty lousy speech....

The president had a difficult decision to make. The war had been raging for a long time. The US and its far-away enemies had fought to a stalemate -- but people just kept dying. Most of them were local civilians, but plenty of US and coalition troops, as well as...

Experienced United Nations observers uniformly noted that the US crusade to bury the Goldstone report (holding Israel and Hamas accountable for war crimes) was one of the fiercest of any waged in recent years. But somehow US Ambassador Susan Rice missed the General Assembly vote. Susan Rice, known for her...

Washington's current debate over escalation in Afghanistan, the continuing war in Iraq, and the administration's refusal, so far, to exert any serious pressure on Israel, do not bode well for Obama's foreign policy. But in another key conflict area -- Iran -- President Obama appears to be implementing, at least...