Andrea Germanos – UN Experts to United States: Stop DAPL Now

Backing up the Standing Rock Sioux and its allies, a United Nations expert has called on the United States to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. Echoing pipeline opponents’ concerns, the statement from the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, cited the pipeline’s threats to drinking water and sacred sites. She also admonished the U.S. for failing to protect …

Sarah Lazare – How Draconian Programs to ‘Counter Violent Extremism’ Are Eroding Human Freedoms Across the World

A United Nations official is warning that worldwide programs to counter and prevent violent extremism rely on discredited theories of radicalization, and elusive definitions of terrorism, to implement intrusive state measures that stigmatize entire ethnic, religious and indigenous groups. Ben Emmerson, the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, concluded …

Deirdre Fulton – Crackdown on Manning Intensifies Days Before Confinement Hearing

Military prison authorities are allegedly denying whistleblower Chelsea Manning access to the facility’s legal library, just two days before a disciplinary board hearing that will decide whether she is placed in solitary confinement for what her supporters and lawyers say are innocuous offenses—like possession of a tube of expired toothpaste. As Common Dreams reported, the Chelsea Manning Support Network revealed …

U.N. Remains Barred from Visiting U.S. Prisons Amid Abuse Charges By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 22 2015 (IPS) – When U.S. President Barack Obama visited the El Reno Correctional Facility in Oklahoma last week to check on living conditions of prisoners incarcerated there, no one in authority could prevent him from visiting the prison. Obama, the first sitting president to visit a federal penitentiary, said “in too many places, black boys and black …

G7’s Unrelenting Burning of Fossil Fuels Called ‘Weapon of Mass Destruction’ – Jon Queally

As G7 leaders gather in Germany this weekend, Oxfam International was among the scores of groups and thousands of people in the street in protest on Saturday as they slammed the world’s top industrialized nations for continuing to push energy and financial policies that are dooming the planet to climate misery and growing inequality while leading millions of people towards …

Vaccines: The Battle for Informed Consent by Norma Erickson

As we have previously published, the current vaccine debate in America is not a debate between extremists positions, pitting extremist anti-vaccine doctors (doctors who do not give any vaccines at all) against extremist pro-vaccine doctors (all vaccines are good, and should be given to all people, all the time, by force if necessary.) Most medical professionals do not hold either of …

The illegality of high tech war – Robin Hensel and Coleen Rowley

Why has the United Nations Special Rapporteur called drone strikes extrajudicial killing? Why has a Pakistani judge recently filed criminal charges against a former top CIA lawyer who oversaw its drone program and a former station chief in Islamabad over a 2009 strike that killed two people? The Islamabad High Court ruled CIA officials must face charges including murder, conspiracy, …

Cruel and Inhuman: UN Slams US as Only Nation that Sentences Children to Die In Prison

A United Nations human rights expert strongly condemned the U.S. on Tuesday for being the “only State in the world that still sentences children to life imprisonment without the opportunity for parole,” thereby imposing cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment. Juan Méndez, the Special Rapporteur on torture, made the comments in a report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva—building from his …