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Jonathan Schell Dies at 70; Author and Anti-nuclear Activist

Times Staff and Wire Reports Los Angeles Times
With unrelenting rage and idealism, Schell focused on the consequences of violence in essays and books that conveyed a hatred of war rooted in part in his firsthand observations of American military operations in Vietnam.

BDS: Non-Violent Resistance to Israeli Occupation

Marjorie Cohn Marjorie Cohn
The BDS movement is spreading throughout the world. European pension funds are divesting from banks and companies that operate in settlements, and European markets are labeling Israeli goods made in the West Bank. Special UN Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Richard Falk, called on the international community to comprehensively investigate the business activities of companies and financial institutions which profit from the settlements in Israel.

Obama Wrong to Isolate Venezuela

Oliver Stone and Mark Weisbrot The Boston Globe
The Obama administration seems surrealistically unaware that this is a very different hemisphere than it was 15 years ago. Governments representing the majority of Latin America are now from the left. These governments emphatically reject Washington’s depiction of the recent events in Venezuela as a government trying to “repress peaceful protesters."

Do We Need Public Education?

Beatrice Lumpkin Citizen Action Illinois
If we think privatization through to its logical conclusion, it becomes clear that the school closings and massive spread of private charter schools is more than an attack on public education. It is an attack on the whole idea of education for all. And sadly, it goes beyond education to the destruction of whole communities.

Why Does Mississippi Want to Execute Michelle Byrom?

Andrew Cohen The Atlantic
Mississippi wants to execute a 56-year-old mentally ill woman Thursday even though no one now seems to believe that she murdered the husband who had battered and abused her for years. Mississippi wants its pound of flesh. But why from Michelle Byrom?

Spy Agencies, Not Politicians, Hold the Cards in Washington

William Greider The Nation
The plot begins in the bad years after 9/11 when the CIA embraced global torture in the war against terrorism. Official Washington was traumatized by the attack and looked the other way, pretending not to know what the spooks were doing. The men in black plucked various "terrorists" off the Arab Street shipping them to less squeamish countries around the world where the US agents used medieval methods for pain and punishment, techniques officially prohibited by US law.

It's the Racism, Stupid: Meet the Press's Epic NCAA Fail

Dave Zirin The Nation
It is March Madness, after all, when the NCAA makes 90% of its billion-dollar budget. As the business of college football and basketball expands, and as more and more players find themselves used up and spit out with neither compensation nor education to show for their time, this is the moment to talk about the future of the so-called "student-athlete."