Watching retired Gen. Colin
Powell refer to the parable of the Good Samaritan during Sunday's
Memorial Day ceremonies on the Mall in Washington, it struck me that
Powell was giving hypocrisy a bad name.
Those familiar with the Good
Samaritan story and also with the under-reported behavior of Gen. Powell,
comeback kid of the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM), know that the two
do not mesh.
Sudan:
The two F-16s caught the trucks deep in the northern desert. Within
minutes, the column of vehicles was a string of shattered wrecks
burning fiercely in the January sun. Surveillance drones spotted a few
vehicles that had survived the storm of bombs and cannon shells, and
the fighter-bombers returned to finish the job.
'Every government assumes deeds and misdeeds of the past," writes Hannah Arendt in Eichmann and the Holocaust.
"It means hardly more, generally speaking, than that every generation,
by virtue of being born into a historical continuum, is burdened by the
sins of the fathers as it is blessed with the deeds of the ancestors."
MADRID -- Spanish judges are boldly declaring their authority to
prosecute high-ranking government officials in the United States, China and Israel,
among other places, delighting human rights activists but enraging
officials in the countries they target and triggering a political
backlash in a nation uncomfortable acting as the world's conscience.
The judge hadn’t even finished reading his verdict before Désiré Munyaneza put his head in his hands and bent over in the prisoners' box. He stole a look at his wife and sister sitting in the front row of the courthouse and shook his head, slightly smiling in disbelief.
All three defence lawyers looked increasingly dismayed, while Munyaneza’s relatives wiped tears from their eyes.
Have you ever asked yourself what you would have done if you had found yourself in
Paris on June 14, 1940, when the German army rolled into town?
Collaboration so quickly became the norm that this fundamental question
— would I have run, fought, played ball or just kept my head down? —
rarely gets posed in public. Of course, the answer would have depended
largely on whether you were Jewish, or French, or both. But whatever
your origins, or your politics, the practical and moral choices
presented that day still trouble the conscience and demand debate.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, one of that
city's two major daily newspapers, is in the news itself these days
after hiring controversial former Bush administration lawyer John Yoo
as a monthly columnist.
GENEVA - A UN human rights inquiry on Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip five months ago will hold public hearings, the inquiry's head Richard Goldstone said Wednesday, marking a first for the United Nations.
"A number of days would be dedicated to public hearings," of witnesses, said the former international war crimes prosecutor.
Goldstone said the four-member mission was ready to hold hearings outside the region in Geneva if necessary, especially to hear Israeli witnesses who might not be able to enter Palestinian territory.
As Americans are inundated with revelations about the lies, torture and other crimes that
accompanied the US-led war in Iraq, many who resisted continue to be
punished for refusing to participate in those crimes.
Think back six years. How often
did we hear then-Secretary of State Colin Powell tout his intense four-day
vigil at CIA headquarters preparing the speech he would give to the
United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003? Retired Army
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Powell's chief of staff, who was asked by
Powell to herd cats in putting that speech together, recently threw
light on why it turned out to be such an acute embarrassment.
