Progressive news feed

The Ugandan authorities must end an attack on freedom of expression that has left several media outlets shut by security forces for a fifth day, Amnesty International said today after several activists were arrested for protesting against the crackdown.

By Matthew Behrens - May 21, 2013

"Taking away humanitarian discretion, which we have never not had, is a fundamental change in the way we look at non-citizens...I believe there should have been a national debate about whether or not we want to go there in terms of being a mean, petty, disgusting country."

- Refugee Rights Lawyer Barb Jackman

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By Robert Stevens - 24 May 2013

The killing of...Lee Rigby...near London’s Woolwich army barracks on Wednesday was a horrific act. Rigby was first run down by two men in a car, who then set about him with knives and a cleaver...One of the men who carried out the killing was identified as Michael Adebolajo, a 28-year-old British citizen of Nigerian descent. The other has only been identified as a naturalized Nigerian. Both were shot by police and are in hospital, one in critical condition.

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Activist Adam Adli is escorted by police at a courthouse in Kuala Lumpur on May 23, 2013.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder sent a letter to Congress on Wednesday that admitted for the first time that the Obama administration has killed four U.S. citizens in drone strikes overseas. Today we learn more about one of them: Jude Kenan Mohammad. Until this week, the FBI had Mohammad listed on its Most Wanted website, even though he was secretly killed by the United States in November 2011. Mohammad was born in Florida and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. Friends say he grew radicalized under the influence of a local man named Daniel Boyd, who had converted to Islam at a young age and was later charged as the ringleader of a group of men — including Mohammad — who were accused in 2009 of stockpiling weapons and plotting to carry out terrorist attacks overseas. His name next surfaced on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, when the FBI warned of an unconfirmed tip that al-Qaeda planned to set off a car bomb in New York City or Washington, D.C. About a month later, his wife called his mother from Pakistan to say he had been killed in a drone strike in Pakistan. We speak with Khalilah Sabra, director of the Muslim American Society Immigrant Justice Center, who knew Mohammad as a child and stayed in touch with him when he moved to Pakistan as a teenager after dropping out of high school.

We speak with CodePink co-founder Diane Wilson, who is on day 25 of a water-and-salt-only hunger strike in solidarity with Guantánamo prisoners. Earlier this month, she was arrested after chaining herself to the White House fence in a CodePink demonstration urging the president to close Guantánamo. We are also joined by Pardiss Kebriaei, senior staff attorney with Center for Constitutional Rights. Her client, Ghaleb al-Bihani, is one of the Guantánamo detainees currently on a hunger strike. She is lead counsel for CCR in the Al-Aulaqi v. Panetta case, which seeks accountability for the killing of three American citizens in U.S. drone strikes in Yemen.

Less than 24 hours after she interrupted President Obama’s major speech on the future of the secret drone war and Guantánamo, CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin describes why she repeatedly interrupted Obama’s address. Benjamin, the author of "Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control," criticized Obama for failing to explain why a U.S. drone in Yemen killed the teenage U.S. citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki in 2011. "I was very disappointed. He said that his policy is to capture, not kill. That’s just not true. I know personally of many incidents where it would have been very easy to capture people, like the 16-year-old Tariq Aziz in Pakistan, who was in Islamabad at a well-known hotel, but instead was killed by a drone strike two days later," Benjamin says. "I think the president is really justifying the use of drones, which will continue to happen under his administration and be passed on to the next."

During President Obama’s first major counterterrorism address of his second term, he said the United States cannot continue waging what he described as a boundless global war on terror. He also discussed his administration’s efforts to close down the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay. He was repeatedly confronted by CodePink’s Medea Benjamin in the audience, ultimately stopping his speech to address her directly. We air the complete exchange between them. "The voice of that woman is worth paying attention to," Obama said in response to Benjamin. "Obviously, I do not agree with much of what she said. And obviously she wasn’t listening to me in much of what I said. But these are tough issues, and the suggestion that we can gloss over them is wrong." Click here to see our interview with Benjamin about her act of civil disobedience.

• Report: Obama Speech Appears to Expand Who Could Be Targeted by Drones
• CodePink Founder Medea Benjamin Repeatedly Interrupts Obama Speech
• U.S. Special Operations Command Prepares to Launch Eight Satellites
• Holder OK'd Seizing Personal Emails from Fox News Reporter
• Antiwar.com Website Sues FBI over Agency Monitoring
• Boy Scouts Lift Ban on Gay Scouts; Gay Adult Leaders Still Barred
• Lois Lerner of IRS Placed on Administrative Leave
• Billionaire Backer of Obama Penny Pritzker Set to Become Commerce Secretary
• Citigroup Lobbyists Help Write House Bill to Deregulate Trading
• Wall Street Attempt to Use Trade Deals to Gut Dodd-Frank Act
• In Farm Bill Debate, Congress Considers Drastic Food Stamp Program Cuts
• Jailed Pussy Riot Begins Hunger Strike in Russia
• Honor Student Expelled for Science Experiment Receives Space Academy Scholarship
• Salvadoran President Meets Pope Urging Sainthood for Slain Archbishop
• Coalition of Immokalee Workers Rally Outside Wendy's Shareholder Meeting

Russian police have searched the homes of two opposition activists as part of an investigation into the criminal case against protesters allegedly involved in unrest during the anti-Kremlin rally on Moscow's Bolotnaya Square on May 6 last year.

The U.S. expressed concern Thursday over increased attacks on religious minorities in Indonesia, but human rights groups accused Washington of downplaying the problem as it looks to forge stronger relations with Jakarta.

US imperial wars reflect mass slaughter, widespread destruction, ecocide, resource theft, exploitation, unspeakable human pain, suffering and misery, as well as permanent occupation.

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Stockholm was braced for a fifth night of riots as violent unrest that began almost a week ago in the northern suburbs of the Swedish capital continued to spread to other corners of the city.

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Washington bears full responsibility for planning and implementing over two years of proxy war. It's illegitimate. It's lawless.

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Israel's Operation Pillar of Cloud was naked, premeditated aggression.

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“There is a group called City Life/Vida Urbana. They are an anti-foreclosure group in Boston. They have an incredible success rate. They have staged more than 30 foreclosure blockades. They have been successful at almost every single one of them.”

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KUALA LUMPUR: Student activist Adam Adli Abd Halim has pleaded not guilty in a Sessions Court to a charge of uttering seditious words at the Kuala Lumpur and Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall.

By Alejandro López - 23 May 2013

Last Saturday, the government delegate in Catalonia of Spain’s Popular Party (PP) government...handed a diploma of honour to a representative of the Brotherhood of Combatants of the Blue Division...The Blue Division was a unit of Spanish volunteers that served in the German Army on the Eastern Front during the Second World War. The Brotherhood is composed of veterans of the unit, family members and revisionist historians involved in a project to rehabilitate the fascist regime of General Francisco Franco.

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Apache Corp. isn't waiting for Carl Icahn to tell the energy company how to reverse a two-year decline that's erased $14 billion from its market value.

A Ukrainian court on Thursday banned what would have been Ukraine's first-ever gay pride demonstration, upholding a suit by city authorities, who argued the rally would disturb annual Kiev Day celebrations and could spark violence.