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	<title>Stephen Zunes</title>
	<link>http://stephenzunes.org</link>
	<description></description>
	<lastBuildDate>Tue, 08 May 2012 17:41:46 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>University of California Takes Aim at Human Rights Activists</title>
		<description><![CDATA[From the Vietnam War to the Central American revolutions to apartheid South Africa to the East Timor occupation to the invasion of Iraq, university campuses have been an important venue for concerned scholars and activists to raise issues regarding human rights, international law and US foreign policy.

However, in an effort to stifle this tradition, University of California President Mark Yudof has launched a campaign targeting human rights activists and others challenging the Israeli occupation and colonization of the West Bank and other policies of the right-wing US-backed Israeli government.]]></description>
		<link>http://stephenzunes.org/2012/05/04/university-of-california-takes-aim-at-human-rights-activists/</link>
			</item>
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		<title>Remembering Israel&#8217;s West Bank Offensive</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Ten years ago this month, following a particularly deadly series of Palestinian terrorist attacks, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) launched an assault on several Palestinian cities and refugee camps in the West Bank. The Bush administration largely supported the Israeli offensive, even as hundreds of civilians were killed and thousands of young men were detained without charge amid widespread reports of torture.]]></description>
		<link>http://stephenzunes.org/2012/04/18/remembering-israels-west-bank-offensive/</link>
			</item>
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		<title>Why One of the World&#8217;s Leading Peace Advocates Threatened to Punch Me in the Face</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I have rarely ever come face to face – only inches in fact – with such anger. Certainly not at an academic conference. And certainly not from such a prominent figure: chancellor of Australian National University, former attorney-general and foreign minister, former head of the International Crisis Group, and one of the world’s most prominent global thinkers.]]></description>
		<link>http://stephenzunes.org/2012/04/05/why-one-of-the-worlds-leading-peace-advocates-threatened-to-punch-me-in-the-face/</link>
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		<title>Military Intervention in Syria Is a Bad Idea</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Although the impulse to try to end the ongoing repression by the Syrian regime against its own people through foreign military intervention is understandable, it would be a very bad idea.

Empirical studies have repeatedly demonstrated that international military interventions in cases of severe repression actually exacerbate violence in the short term and can only reduce violence in the longer term if the intervention is impartial or neutral. Other studies demonstrate that foreign military interventions actually increase the duration of civil wars, making the conflicts longer and bloodier, and the regional consequences more serious, than if there were no intervention. In addition, military intervention would likely trigger a "gloves off" mentality that would dramatically escalate the violence on both sides.]]></description>
		<link>http://stephenzunes.org/2012/04/02/military-intervention-in-syria-is-a-bad-idea/</link>
			</item>
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		<title>Democracy Imperiled in the Maldives</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Well before the launch of the Arab Spring, the people of the Maldives, a Muslim nation located on a tropical archipelago in the Indian Ocean, were engaged in widespread nonviolent resistance against the 30-year reign of the corrupt and autocratic president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. The growing civil insurrection forced the dictator to finally allow for free elections in October 2008, which he lost.]]></description>
		<link>http://stephenzunes.org/2012/03/15/democracy-imperiled-in-the-maldives/</link>
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		<title>US Outrage Over Syria Veto at UN Rife With Hypocrisy</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Official Washington has been rife with condemnation at the decision by the governments of Russia and China to veto an otherwise unanimous UN Security Council resolution condemning the ongoing repression in Syria and calling for a halt to violence on all sides; unfettered access for Arab League monitors; and "a Syrian-led political transition to a democratic, plural political system, in which citizens are equal regardless of their affiliations or ethnicities or beliefs."]]></description>
		<link>http://stephenzunes.org/2012/02/08/us-outrage-over-syria-veto-at-un-rife-with-hypocrisy/</link>
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		<title>Syrian Repression, the Chinese-Russian Veto, and U.S. Hypocrisy</title>
		<description><![CDATA[As the Syrian regime continues to slaughter unarmed civilians, the major powers at the United Nations continue to put their narrow geopolitical agenda ahead of international humanitarian law. Just as France shields Morocco from accountability for its ongoing occupation and repression in Western Sahara and just as the United States shields Israel from having to live up to its obligations under international humanitarian law, Russia and China have used their permanent seats on the UN Security Council to protect the Syrian regime from accountability for its savage repression against its own citizens.]]></description>
		<link>http://stephenzunes.org/2012/02/07/syrian-repression-the-chinese-russian-veto-and-u-s-hypocrisy/</link>
			</item>
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		<title>Unarmed resistance still Syria&#8217;s best hope</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The Syrian pro-democracy struggle has been both an enormous tragedy and a powerful inspiration. Indeed, as someone who has studied mass nonviolent civil insurrections in dozens of countries in recent decades, I know of no people who have demonstrated such courage and tenacity in the face of such savage repression as have the people of Syria these past 10 months.]]></description>
		<link>http://stephenzunes.org/2012/01/26/unarmed-resistance-still-syrias-best-hope/</link>
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		<title>Iraq: Remembering Those Responsible</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The formal withdrawal of US troops from Iraq this month has led to a whole series of retrospectives on the invasion and the eight and a half years of occupation that followed as well as a host of unanswered questions, including - given the tens of thousands of Americans and others on the US government payroll, many of whom are armed, who are remaining in Iraq - just how total the withdrawal might actually be.  ]]></description>
		<link>http://stephenzunes.org/2012/01/01/iraq-remembering-those-responsible-2/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Iraq: Remembering Those Responsible</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The formal withdrawal of US troops from Iraq this month has led to a whole series of retrospectives on the invasion and the eight and a half years of occupation that followed as well as a host of unanswered questions, including - given the tens of thousands of Americans and others on the US government payroll, many of whom are armed, who are remaining in Iraq - just how total the withdrawal might actually be.  ]]></description>
		<link>http://stephenzunes.org/2012/01/01/iraq-remembering-those-responsible/</link>
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