Homeless man Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax was stabbed several times in the chest while saving a woman from a knife-wielding attacker in New York City. He then bled to death while dozens of people walked by -- one stopping to snap a picture of the dying man with his cameraphone before leaving the scene. [more inside]
posted by zarq on Apr 25, 2010 - 82 comments

You've heard about MS-13. But did you expect that members of “The World's Most Dangerous Gang” would now be testifying for the prosecution? Other witnesses would be envious. The saga of The Butterfly and the Knife is in a new chapter. (Previously)
posted by Robert Angelo on Jun 25, 2007 - 6 comments

Project Witness provides training and video cameras for local groups to use in their human rights advocacy campaigns. They have recently begun releasing these videos online. Check out US films like Outlawed, Rights on the Line, or The Day After Diallo, or focus your attention on the international scene: Between Two Fires dwells on Northern Uganda's civil war crimes, torture, and refugee camps, Season of Fear deals with Burma's internally displaced, and Witness to Truth addresses Sierra Leone's attempt to replicate the South African Truth and Reconciliation model. Best of all, this simple strategy actually works.
posted by anotherpanacea on Oct 17, 2006 - 3 comments

The Ghetto Diary of Eli Lesky, The Fifth Horseman, the Buchewald Series, artwork by Joseph Bau; Paintings of the Hmong Migration; Visualizing Otherness - Nazi and other racist propaganda - all this and much, much more from the University of Minnesota's The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
posted by madamjujujive on Jul 27, 2006 - 18 comments

The truth about Kitty Genovese. They say she was the woman stabbed to death before 38 witnesses who did nothing. They "didn't want to get involved." To many, her name rings synonymous with "public apathy" and the "bystander effect." Unfortunately, the details - and the meat - of her case are largely misunderstood. None of that, however, diminishes the tragedy of her death, not only for her family and friends, but also for her lover.
posted by Sticherbeast on Jun 5, 2006 - 41 comments

Remember.org is a huge archive of the Shoah. It contains sections on the accounts of survivors and liberators (here is an account by Helen L. of her childhood in Auschwitz, here is Harry Herder's account of liberating Buchenwald, here is Jacques Lipetz account of WWII in Manila, here is part of a history of life in the Warsaw Ghetto), images from the camps and pictures of artwork produced by survivors (here is Mauthausen then and now, here is a picture of a prisoner at Dachau from this extensive archive of historical images, here are some drawings by Jan Komski, an Auschwitz survivor), and an extensive sections of excerpts of books written by survivors. Many of the images and accounts on this website are quite disturbing.
posted by OmieWise on Sep 15, 2005 - 65 comments

That's right, we're offering $10,000 cash! Yours to either spend or invest in job creation. All you have to do is definitively prove that George W. Bush fulfilled his duty to country. Garry Trudeau, like the rest of us, is weary of the "partisan assault on [Geo W's] character," and is taking brave steps to finally end the liberal accusations...
posted by Shane on Feb 24, 2004 - 36 comments

Cruel and unusual? "Expert witnesses testified that the brief delays give the body time to recover and increase the chance the person will feel pain." What a crock... I wonder if the 3 year old baby he killed and dismembered felt any pain? The punishment should fit the crime. Although the death penalty doesn't deter crime, if we punished those in the same manner that they commited the murder, then maybe criminals would think twice... then again, maybe not.
posted by da5id on May 9, 2000 - 32 comments