On June 18, 2018, US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley stood beside Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the State Department to announce the US’ withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council (HRC). Haley spoke of the hypocrisy of countries with abhorrent human rights records sitting on the Council and criticized its “chronic […]
In July 2013, Miwa Sado logged 159 hours of overtime work and took only two days off. She then died of heart failure. Less than two years later, Matsuri Takahashi died by suicide after consistently logging more than one hundred overtime hours per month. Before her suicide, she tweeted “I want to die” and “I’m […]
In 2010, Cargill, a US private multinational corporation, pledged a zero net deforestation goal in all production sites by 2020. Last year, the company announced it would not achieve this aim. It wasn’t surprising. In 2017, Cargill was “one of the two largest customers of industrial-scale deforestation” because of its soy production sites. Some of […]
A Hong Kong Police Department riot officer brandishes his weapon at protesters in a metro car. On June 4, thousands of Hongkongers defied a ban on large gatherings to commemorate the thirty-first anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s infamous violent crackdown on protesting students and workers. The anniversary comes one […]
The American legal system allows low-merit cases and easy settlement money. The loser-pays rule could help to fix this problem. In 2005, Judge Roy L. Pearson Jr. filed a $64 million civil suit against three owners of a Washington D.C. dry cleaners, Custom Cleaners, for losing a pair of pants that he claimed cost over […]
As the world combats COVID-19, China has been increasing its maritime activities in the East China Sea. On May 10, the Japanese foreign ministry lodged an official complaint with China over an incident where two Chinese ships chased a Japanese fishing boat close to the Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands. A month later, four Chinese vessels, one […]
America’s executive branch has systemically failed to evaluate state stability when sending billions of dollars of weapons abroad. The country’s defense trade lacks cogent rationale, amplifies risks, and results in countless unintended consequences. The trade exacerbates conflicts and costs American lives. Between 2002 and 2018, the US sold a conservative estimate of $560 billion in […]
American prisons are founded on punishment over rehabilitation and profit over humanity. They maintain slavery under the guise of criminalization. And they have only worsened over time. Our prison practices exploit, neglect, and kill incarcerated people. California’s incarceration rate alone is higher than the United Kingdom, Portugal, Canada, Belgium, and Italy combined. California’s prisons are […]
On June 6, amid a global pandemic, J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, took to Twitter to air her grievances about an article concerning menstrual health hygiene in a “post-COVID-19 world.” Rowling’s initial tweet made a point about the lack of the word “women”: Despite immediate backlash, Rowling doubled down on the rhetoric, […]
American elections are a disaster. On the surface, they’re viewed as the perfect model of democracy, one that all developing countries should follow. But if you lift the lid, it’s a horrible, dark, slimy mess, from the continued existence of caucuses, to voter disenfranchisement, to the undemocratic Electoral College, to an excess of money in […]
