January 19 has been declared “Gun Appreciation Day” by a coalition of right-wing groups who adore the second amendment (and apparently loathe all the others). The group’s press release calls on America’s gun lovers to “show their support for gun ownership by turning out en masse at gun stores, ranges, and shows from coast to coast” […]
Author / Rania Khalek
In the backdrop of President Obama’s nomination of Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense and John Brennan for CIA Director, the US war machine was busy dropping bombs on Pakistan, just one of the many countries where the US is waging an undeclared war. On Sunday, 17 people were killed in Pakistan’s tribal region in […]
The Los Angeles Times reports that two veteran police officers from the Los Angeles Police Department are under investigation for using the threat of jail to force several women they had previously arrested to have sex with them. Though the crimes committed are horrific, this wouldn’t be the first time rapists disguised as police officers […]
The repeated rape of an unconscious 16-year-old girl in the small football-loving town of Steubenville, Ohio, in August is making national headlines thanks to the diligence of Alexandria Goddard, a crime blogger, and the internet vigilanteism of the hacktivist group Anonymous. Yet, in spite of all the new attention focused on this horrific act, the media is […]
In my last post, I forgot to include, as an example of rape culture, a gang rape that took place in Steubenville, an Ohio football town where at an August end-of-summer party, members of the Steubenville football team raped a passed out 16-year-old girl, who was from a nearby West Virginia town, and then dragged her […]
The public gang rape of a college student in India has rightly sparked global outrage about violence against women, forcing rape to become a topic of discussion for even US media outlets. For the first time that I can recall, mainstream publications are using the phrase “rape culture” to describe the environment that fosters and […]
The Washington Post published an excellent article yesterday highlighting the creeping expansion of the CIA’s paramilitary force, better known as Global Response Staff (GRS). The Post describes the GRS as “an innocuously named organization that has recruited hundreds of former U.S. Special Forces operatives to serve as armed guards for the agency’s spies.” It’s “designed […]
Back in the day, Christmas brought with it an unofficial truce during times of war, allowing troops to celebrate the holiday, maybe even with their families back home. Thanks to technological advancements in warfare, this is no longer necessary. Armed drones enable soldiers to extrajudicially assassinate their targets from the safety of military bases thousands […]
For most of us in the US, the National Rifle Association (NRA) is viewed as an exclusively domestic obstacle to gun regulation. But, as it turns out, the NRA’s obstructionism extends far beyond our borders, impacting the safety of the entire world. In the US, it’s more difficult to purchase a car than a gun […]
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