Human Rights

The Geneva Conventions at 75: do the laws of war still have a fighting chance in today’s bloody world?

By Marnie Lloydd,New Zealand Centre for Public Law and Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington | – (The Conversation) – It has been 75 years since the adoption of the Geneva Conventions on August 12 1949. In theory, these rules of war are universally agreed by every nation. In practice, they are routinely […]

Israel/ Palestine

Covering Gaza: The deadliest War for Journalists

Global Voices

Written byWalid El Houri ( Globalvoices.org ) – On July 31, Al Jazeera journalists Ismail al-Ghoul and Rami al-Rifi were killed by Israel in the Shati refugee camp in the north of Gaza while reporting on the assassination of Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyya in Iran. The Israeli army admitted to killing al-Ghoul and […]

Climate Crisis

On the Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, Carbon Colonialism yet Reigns

Aviva Chomsky

By Aviva Chomsky ( Tomdispatch.com ) – On August 9, 2001, in Colombia, riot police and private security forces from the Cerrejón coal mine — one of the largest open-pit coal mines in the world — surrounded the remote community of Tabaco. They then dragged residents out of their homes and bulldozed what remained of […]

Featured

B’Tselem accuses Israeli Authorities of Systematically Torturing Thousands of Palestinian Prisoners

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The brave and meticulous Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem has issued a report aptly entitled “Welcome to Hell” on the functioning of the Israeli prison system, in which it concludes that Israeli authorities are now routinely using torture on Palestinian prisoners. This violence, B’Tselem showed, is part of Israel’s longstanding […]

Human Rights

Assassination is always unlawful – Regardless of who is Killed and on whose Orders

The Conversation

By Mary Ellen O’Connell, University of Notre Dame | – (The Conversation) – >Assassination is a particular form of murder. Regardless of who carries out the act, on whose orders or why, it is always unlawful. This is the reason Vadim Krasikov was languishing behind bars in Germany prior to being released on Aug. 1, […]

Israel/ Palestine

Israeli Lawmakers try to Block Torture Prosecutions

Human Rights Watch

By Bill Van Esveld, Associate Director, MENA, Children’s Rights Division | – A standoff at Israel’s Sde Teiman military base this week has thrown longstanding abuses against Palestinian detainees and the Israeli military’s history of impunity for torture into stark relief. On July 29, Israeli military police arrested nine Israeli soldiers at the base on […]

Africa

German Colonialism in Africa left Hundreds of Thousands Dead: Its Chilling Afterlife

The Conversation

By Henning Melber, University of Pretoria | – (The Conversation) – Germany was a significant – and often brutal – colonial power in Africa. But this colonial history is not told as often as that of other imperialist nations. A new book called The Long Shadow of German Colonialism: Amnesia, Denialism and Revisionism aims to […]

Epidemics

Israeli Total War infects 40,000 with Hepatitis A, threatens Polio Epidemic, Recalling Past Experiments on Human Subjects

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In a 2011 exposé , Mike Stobbe of NBC news revealed a long history of federal physicians from the US deliberately infecting challenged persons or prisoners with diseases so as to experiment on them. For instance, Stobbe wrote, “In the 1946-48 study, American scientists infected prisoners and patients in a […]

Food Insecurity

Starvation as a Deliberate Tool of War in Sudan

Tomdispatch

By Priti Gulati Cox and Stan Cox ( Tomdispatch.com ) – For months, we’ve all been able to stay reasonably informed about the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. But there’s another horrific war that’s gotten so little coverage you could be excused for not knowing anything about it. What we have in mind is the seemingly […]