Jim Lobe

In a victory for human and civil rights groups, a federal judge has given the government 30 days to turn over or identify all documents relating to the treatment of detainees held by the United States at military bases and other detention facilities overseas, including at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at … Continue reading “Judge Orders Govt to Hand Over Detainee Documents”

This week’s debate on a draft UN Security Council resolution submitted by the United States last Thursday that, if passed, would increase pressure on the government of Sudan to stop violence in Darfur that has killed at least 50,000 people since last year, is shaping up as a major test of U.S. influence in the … Continue reading “US Darfur Resolution Met With Skepticism”

The practice of profiling by race, religion, and national origin on the part of U.S. law-enforcement agencies not only violates the human rights of its targets, but is also often counterproductive, according to a new report released here Monday by Amnesty International. Heralding a public campaign against profiling, the 50-page report, "Threat and Humiliation," charges … Continue reading “Amnesty Intl.: Racial Profiling Much Worse Since 9/11”

"The American political system has never been as sick as it is today," says Belgian philosopher Lieven De Cauter, in a wide-ranging interview where he discusses his theories about the "state of exception" in the context of the Bush administration’s "war on terror." De Cauter’s ideas are especially timely in light of the continuing revelations … Continue reading “Bush ‘Exceptionalism’ Led to Abu Ghraib”

Three years after al-Qaeda-commandeered planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon, the leaked ruminations of Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld seem more pertinent than ever. "Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror," he wrote in a memo to his … Continue reading “After Three Years, War on Terror Looks Like a Loser”

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell Thursday declared that the past 18 months of attacks by government forces and Arab militias on black African farmers in the western region of Darfur amounted to "genocide" and pledged to push hard at the UN Security Council for tough measures against Khartoum to stop it. Following a two-month … Continue reading “Powell Declares Darfur Situation ‘Genocide’”

The Bush administration’s three-year "war on terrorism" has amounted to a "major failure of leadership and makes Americans more vulnerable rather than more secure," according to a new report by Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF), a network of mainly progressive policy and security analysts. The report, "A Secure America in a Secure World," concludes that … Continue reading “‘Realist’ Group: War on Terror a Failure”

A 10-member international task force of prominent analysts and former diplomats has warned that recommendations by a special commission on the Bush administration’s plans for Cuba, released last May, “will poorly serve U.S. interests in Cuba and the wider region”. In an open letter to the commission’s co-chair, Secretary of State Colin Powell, the task … Continue reading “Think Tank Blasts Bush Commission Report on Cuba”

Adding their voice to a steadily growing clamor, eight retired generals and admirals have called on President George W. Bush to appoint a bipartisan, independent commission to conduct a comprehensive investigation of U.S. detention and interrogation practices in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. In a letter to Bush, the former flag officers, most of whom reached … Continue reading “Retired Brass Call for Independent Torture Probe”

The burgeoning scandal over claims that a Pentagon official passed highly classified secrets to a Zionist lobby group appears to be part of a much broader set of FBI and Pentagon investigations of close collaboration between prominent U.S. neoconservatives and Israel dating back some 30 years. According to knowledgeable sources, who asked to not be … Continue reading “Spy Probe Scans
Neocon-Israel Ties”