blog

October 20, 2018

Khashoggi’s Murder and Saudi War Crimes in Yemen Were Facilitated by US

The alleged torture, dismemberment and killing of Saudi citizen and US permanent resident Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul has triggered justifiable outrage throughout the United States and around the world. But amid the outcry over Khashoggi’s death, many media and public figures still fail to acknowledge the war crimes Saudi Arabia is committing in Yemen with US assistance.

Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post, had written critically about the Saudi government and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The Post reported that Mohammed had recently attempted to lure Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia in an operation resembling an extrajudicial “rendition,” where a person is forcibly removed from one country and taken to another for interrogation. Bloomberg reported that the United States knew the Saudis planned to seize Khashoggi because US intelligence services had intercepted communications between Saudi officials discussing the plan. According to Turkish sources, participants in Khashoggi’s killing and dismemberment were Saudi operatives.Read more

October 5, 2018

Five Reasons Why the GOP Is Rushing to Confirm Kavanaugh

After Donald Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court, Trump and the GOP leadership mounted a full-court press to ram through his confirmation before October 1, the first day of the Court’s new term.

Why the rush?

In part they want Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court before the November 6 midterm elections. If the Democrats achieve a majority in the Senate, there may not be sufficient votes to confirm him.

But the hurry to get Kavanaugh confirmed has more to do with the cases on the Supreme Court’s docket: Republicans are hoping to ensure the outcome of several hot-button cases, including those involving double jeopardy, immigration, age discrimination and the Endangered Species Act. Moreover, there is the possibility that the Supreme Court could also decide to take up additional cases affecting gerrymandering, gay and transgender rights, and the separation of church and state.Read more

September 29, 2018

Aggressive Kavanaugh Portrays Himself as Victim

Judge Brett Kavanaugh learned a lesson from his weak appearance on Fox News last week. Testifying at the September 27 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on sexual assault allegations leveled against him by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, Kavanaugh became belligerent and aggressive. Displaying outrage at the process, he portrayed himself as the victim and painted a conspiracy against him by the Democrats, the Clintons and left-wing opposition groups.Read more

September 15, 2018

John Bolton Escalates Blackmail to Shield US War Criminals

Once again, the United States is blackmailing countries that would send Americans to face justice in the International Criminal Court. Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton is leading the charge to shield US and Israeli war criminals from legal accountability.

On September 10, Bolton told the right-wing Federalist Society that the United States would punish the ICC if it mounts a full investigation of Americans for war crimes committed in Afghanistan or of Israelis for human rights violations committed in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.Read more

September 10, 2018

Brett Kavanaugh is a Threat to Racial Justice and Voting Rights

Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s record on racial issues and his answers to questions posed by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee this week raise red flags about how he would rule on voting rights if confirmed to the Supreme Court.

During his confirmation hearing to become a Supreme Court justice, Kavanaugh bragged about hiring people of color as law clerks and decried the use of the “n” word. But this proved mere window dressing as his answers to the senators’ questions brought his racist views into sharp focus.Read more

August 22, 2018

US Leaders Aid and Abet War Crimes in Yemen

US leaders who provided military support to the Saudi-led coalition that bombed civilians in Yemen this August could be charged with aiding and abetting the commission of war crimes under customary international law, which is part of US law.

The 500-pound laser-guided MK 82 bomb, which the coalition dropped on August 9, killed 51 people, including 40 children. The bombing constituted a war crime.

“They came to the hospital in cars and ambulances. Dozens of children with an array of grisly wounds,” Marta Rivas Blanco, a nurse from the International Committee of the Red Cross who works at the Al Talh hospital, wrote in the Guardian. “Some were screaming, some were scared, many went straight to the morgue.”

Lockheed Martin, one of the leading US defense contractors,manufactured the bomb, which was part of a US-Saudi arms deal last year.Read more

August 14, 2018

Will Trump Be Charged With Conspiracy to Violate Federal Election Law?

In addition to the case for Donald Trump’s obstruction of justice by firing former FBI Director James Comey, evidence is mounting that the president participated in a conspiracy to violate the federal election law. Mueller could either ask a grand jury to indict Trump as a co-conspirator or to name the president as an unindicted co-conspirator.Read more

August 7, 2018

Did Trump Break the Law by Ordering Sessions to End Mueller Investigation?

Since the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, Donald Trump’s fury has steadily mounted. Trump has railed against Mueller’s investigation, repeatedly calling it a “witch hunt.” But last week, as Paul Manafort’s trial got underway and Trump expressed fear that his son, Donald Trump Jr., may be criminally implicated, the president’s rage boiled over.

Was Trump’s tweeted order that Attorney General Jeff Sessions “should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further” permissible under the “unitary executive” doctrine, or is it evidence of obstruction of justice by the president?Read more

August 1, 2018

Trump Threatens Iran to Distract From Russia Criticism and Appease Israel

Donald Trump’s all-caps tweet threatening Iran with “CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE” sounds much like his warning last fall that North Korea would be “met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

Will Trump deliver on his threats against Iran, but not against North Korea? There is a striking disconnect between his policies toward the two countries.Read more

July 25, 2018

Israel Illegally Enshrines Apartheid in Its “Basic Law”

On July 19, 2018, the Israeli Knesset enacted a law that illegally enshrines a system of apartheid. The legislation, which has the force of a constitutional amendment, strips away any pretense that Israel is a democracy. Moreover, it violates customary and treaty-based international law.

The “Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People” says, “The State of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people, in which it fulfills its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination.” It continues, “The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.”

Absent is any guarantee of self-determination for the 1.8 million Arabs who comprise 20 percent of Israel’s population. But, “we refuse to be second-class citizens,” said Ayman Odeh, chairman of the Joint List, the Palestinian parties in the Knesset. Odeh added that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s regime is “digging a deep pit of fear, racism and authoritarianism to divide us from each other. But they can never erase us from the homeland we share.”Read more