Chinese babies stolen by officials for foreign adoption Though conventional wisdom says many of the thousands of Chinese babies who have been adopted since the early 1990s were abandoned by their parents because of Chinese family-size restrictions and the traditional preference for boys, harrowing stories of coercion are emerging among parents whose children were forcefully […]
Most anyone sane who has ever had to suffer through Eurovision song contests walks away stunned. The event has gone on for something like 50 years and drives the Europeans mad. And the associated kitsch isn’t even remotely interesting. Though I’m sure someone like John Waters wouldn’t agree. Genius has no bounds and thankfully, no […]
Google Books, the ambitious plan by Sergey Brin and Larry Page to make available for free huge quantities of digitized books, suffered yet another blow on Friday as the US Department of Justice urged a federal judge to deny a settlement agreement that Google reached with authors and publishers over copyright issues. The heart of […]
In what has been called the most important death penalty case in US history, the government is seeking a 60 day delay in the joint trial by military commission of Guantanamo’s Ramzi bin al Shibh, who, along with four others, is facing war crimes charges resulting from his alleged involvement in the September 11th attacks. […]
Around the world the way to deal with the aftermath of past violence and police states has yet to come to a definitive closure or method to resolve crimes of the past. Often the ruling class in one era of a society remains in the next era, whether it be a peaceful one or a […]
The debate over Israeli and Palestinian conduct during the 2008-2009 Gaza War continues, this time with the release of the UN Human Rights Council report on the issue. Commonly referred to as the Goldstone Report after the head of the special commission, South African jurist Richard Goldstone, the 575 page report found that both sides […]
As the United Nations headquarters in New York prepares to host what is being hailed as the largest General Assembly gathering to date, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is disseminating a report designed to call attention to the plight of the world’s working poor. Mr. Ban prepared a report entitled “Voices of the Vulnerable,” and today […]
Michel Bagaragaza officially plead guilty to Genocide today at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. He had reportedly entered a plea deal last year with the prosecution ahead of his trial this month. Bagaragaza was head of OCIR-Tea which controlled the tea industry of Rwanda and used this position to facilitate Genocide against ethnic Tutsis […]
Moment Magazine, where I am the senior editor, just launched the first in a multi-part series on Israel’s Arab citizens. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the most covered conflicts in the world. But there is little media attention given to Israel’s one million Arab citizens, in spite of disturbing calls on the far Israeli […]
Guatemalan soldiers sold children in war Guatemalan soldiers forcibly abducted and sold hundreds of children for foreign adoption during the country’s prolonged civil war, a Guatemalan government report charges. When Guatemala’s war ended in 1996, the country was second only to China in the number of international adoptions. Obama Unshackles Global AIDS Work The administration […]
Today, after a much-anticipated wait, U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus laid out a health care reform plan. One of the key features of this plan is that it would prohibit private insurance companies from denying insurance to people because of preexisting conditions that they may have, and from discriminating against them because of […]
Uganda has made headlines this past week for violent clashes in the capital city of Kampala over development, property rights, and the traditional Buganda king. The unrest is unusual for Uganda, but highlights growing discontent with the government of Yoweri Museveni. The cause of the clashes was a planned trip by the Buganda king, King […]
A U.N. fact-finding mission to Israel and Gaza announced today that it has found evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity and violations of international humanitarian law committed by both Israeli Defense Forces and Hamas during the Israeli invasion of Gaza that commenced at the end of last year. “The mission finds that the […]
The Pentagon has announced it will allow those prisoners held by the US military in Afghanistan, including the Bagram military facility, to challenge their detention in a new military review system. The prisoners will be given military officials – not lawyers – to represent them and will be allowed to call witnesses and present a […]
Florence Hartmann, former spokeswoman for the prosecution at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugosavia, was found in contempt of the tribunal Monday and fined 7,000 Euros – over $10,000 U.S. dollars. She was found in contempt for revealing secret information implicating the Serbian government in massacres in her memoir “Peace and Punishment”. The […]