Human Rights

China Rebuilds its Great Firewall

As part of its bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, China pledged to expand press freedom.

Felt Up in Heaven, or Down in Hell?

"Journalists and many others (rightly) lionizing the late W.

New Federal Rule Permits Withholding of Medical Treatments, Information

The Bush administration has approved a new "conscience protection" rule that allows health care workers to opt out of administering any form of medical care they feel is objectionable on moral or religious grounds.

Reporters Help CIA Torture the Truth

"There is a fierce battle going on over what kind of a CIA director Barack Obama should appoint, when he should close the prison camp at Guantanamo, and whether there should be a full scale investigation (and possible prosecution) of the torture advocates in the Bush administration," notes Charles Kaiser in the Columbia Journalism Review. Unfortunately, reporting on this issue in the New York Times and elsewhere has been flagrantly one-sided, from a position that falsifies the facts and defends torture.

"Most of the Times's sources don't think that anyone who formulated or acquiesced in the current administration's torture policies should be excluded as a candidate for CIA director, or prosecuted for possible violations of criminal law," Kaiser writes. A recent story by Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane, for example, falsely repeated John O. Brennan's description of himself as a "strong opponent" of torture, even though "most experts on this subject agree that Brennan acquiesced in everything that the CIA did in this area while he served there."

Terrified of Nuns and Pacifists

Maryland officials now concede that its informants "wrongly listed at least 53 Americans as terrorists in a criminal intelligence database -- and shared some information about them with half a dozen state and federal agencies, in

Bell's Belarus: Never Mind Its Human Rights Record

With help from British public relations guru Lord Timothy Bell and his firm, Bell Pottinger, the country of Belarus -- where "opposition protests are regularly crushed with overwhelming force by riot police" and the domestic spy agency is still called the KGB -- is getting an image make-over.

Another Attempt to Change Brand Israel

The British "country brand capital development" firm Acanchi is crafting a "new image" for Israel. "Our research shows that Israel's brand is essentially the [Israel-Palestine] conflict," explained Israeli Foreign Ministry official Ido Aharoni.

Is This a Job for the Ethically Challenged?

The Louisiana Senate has appointed former veteran Hill & Knowlton (H&K) lobbyist and Democratic congressional aide Gary Hymel to the Louisiana Board of Ethics. The board's role is to "interpret and enforce" ethical standards for the state's government employees and electoral campaign finance and lobbyist disclosure laws. "I have seen the government from a lot of different angles," Hymel said.

Chevron Plays the Victim

The second-largest U.S. oil company sees itself as a victim, and it's going on a PR offensive to explain why.

China's Gold Medal Spin

In a scathing review of the Chinese government's handling of the Olympics, Jacquelin Magnay writes "there has been the fake singer, the fake fireworks, the fake minority kids (they were all Han, and not from the 55 different ethnic groups as portrayed), the fake press freedoms, fake internet access, fake promises. ...

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