Search Results for: 2015-01-21

In the wake of the deadly Hamas terrorist attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, many of Israel’s supporters, myself included, have succumbed to the understandable impulse for violent retribution. Israel is a land that I love, both culturally as a Jew — and third-generation Holocaust survivor — and spiritually as an ordained cantor. It follows that [...]

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The year 2024 is an important one for Sri Lanka. It is a presidential election year, and a resolution adopted by the UN Human Rights Council to gather evidence of international crimes for use in future prosecutions is due for renewal. After the public ousters of the former-elected President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in 2023, Ranil Wickremesinghe [...]

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The current conflict engulfing Israel and Palestine raises significant issues of international law and policy. This is part one in an anticipated two-part series that will discuss some of the relevant legal questions before the International Criminal Court (ICC; Part I) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ; Part II).  With both courts located in [...]

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The US government has again desecrated the memory of the late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In the latest example of the Biden administration having broken its promise to work to end the death penalty, it announced its intention to seek a federal death sentence against Peyton Gendron, the 19-year-old who horrifically murdered 10 [...]

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On Jan. 25, the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) plans to execute Kenneth Smith by forcing him to breathe pure nitrogen gas, an untested execution method with profound legal and ethical consequences. Death penalty abolitionists worldwide have railed against this form of capital punishment, but these efforts have thus far failed to alter the state’s [...]

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The Russian Ministry of Justice designated Dmitry Muratov, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and reputed journalist, as a ‘foreign agent‘ on Friday. This classification was justified on the grounds that Muratov “used foreign platforms to disseminate opinions aimed at forming a negative attitude towards the foreign and domestic policy of the Russian Federation.” The “foreign [...]

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The UK Government formally acknowledged on Tuesday that atrocities committed against the Yazidi people in 2014 by Daesh, commonly known as ISIS, constituted genocide. The UK government’s statement follows a January 2023 German Federal Court of Justice ruling which found a former Daesh fighter guilty of acts of genocide and crimes against humanity. The determination by the UK [...]

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The Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), an organization that tracks online censorship, found Wednesday that access to social networks and messaging services had been restored to Ethiopia after five months of restriction. An Agence France Presse (AFP) journalist in Addis Ababa confirmed the block was removed, accessing Facebook, Instagram and TikTok without a Virtual [...]

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The Organization of American States’ (OAS) was presented with a crucial opportunity to reaffirm its commitment to democracy last month, as its Permanent Council turned its attention towards Haiti. The nation’s current crisis is one that is directly connected to the actions taken by members of its ruling Tèt Kale party (PHTK), which for the [...]

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