AN insidious trend has developed over this past third of a century. A country that experienced shared growth after World War II began to tear apart, so much so that when the Great Recession hit in late 2007, one could no longer ignore the fissures that had come to define the American economic landscape. How did this “shining city on a hill” become the advanced country with the greatest level of inequality?
Author: WHES
Class war: Thailand’s military coup. Outnumbered by the country’s rural voters, Thailand’s once vibrantly democratic urban middle class has embraced an elitist, antidemocratic agenda.
This article is a joint publication of Foreign Policy In Focus and TheNation.com.
After declaring martial law on Tuesday, May 20, the Thai military announced a full-fledged coup two days later.
Food’s big-picture guy
I wish Olivier de Schutter had the power to match the acuity of his analysis, but it’s great that we’ve had an advocate whose vision is as broad as that of the corporations who have for the last 50 years determined global food policy. Since 2008, the human rights lawyer has had the title of United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food.
The Case for Reparations. Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
And if thy brother, a Hebrew man, or a Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee.
South Sudan has failed to justify its existence: Thus far, South Sudan has failed to distinguish itself in anything but human rights violations, refugees, and hunger
Earlier in May, the South Sudanese government resumed its negotiations with the rebels. That very week, The Sudan Tribune reported that numerous civilians, who had sought shelter at a United Nations base in Bor, were killed by an unknown mob. Also, trainee soldiers were shot in Mapel, and several other civilians were killed in Bentiu, allegedly by the rebels.
Always hungry? Here’s why
FOR most of the last century, our understanding of the cause of obesity has been based on immutable physical law. Specifically, it’s the first law of thermodynamics, which dictates that energy can neither be created nor destroyed.
What is Boko Haram and whence did it arise?
The kidnapping of hundreds of schoolgirls by Boko Haram has outraged the world; particularly after their captors promised to sell the girls as slaves. They are portrayed as Muslim fundamentalists seeking to impose a harsh Sharia Law over the whole of Nigeria. They have murdered over a thousand Nigerians in the past few years and are acting with utter impunity against the pathetic forces arrayed against them by the Nigerian State.
What we’re reading now
Poisons: Scientists condemn a new F.D.A. study claiming BPA, a chemical present in certain plastics, is safe, saying it borders on scientific misconduct.
Guatemala: Suppressing dissent at home and abroad. Human rights defenders in Guatemala are facing the worst environment since the civil war.
It’s a rare occasion when the president of a small Central American country tries to get a U.S. Senate aide fired. But Guatemala’s Otto Pérez Molina is not having the typical term.Pérez Molina presided last year over the sharpest escalation in targeted attacks on human rights defenders since Guatemala’s armed conflict ended in 1996. Attacks on human rights defenders—a term encompassing journalists, judicial workers, unionists, indigenous leaders, and others working for basic rights—increased last year by 126 percent, by far the greatest jump recorded in any year in post-war Guatemala. Eighteen human rights defenders were assassinated, a 72-percent increase over 2012, even as the country’s general murder rate has decreased. Also last year, President Pérez Molina was accused of participating in genocide. A former soldier testifying during the trial of former dictator General Efrain Ríos Montt swore under oath that President Pérez Molina had committed atrocities.
North Korea’s crimes against humanity demand action
THE UNITED Nations Security Council will hold an informal meeting this week about the findings and recommendations of the Commission of Inquiry into human rights abuses in North Korea, one of the most significant and startling investigations into human depravation of recent times.
