Showing all posts tagged human rights
Imagining an America that doesn’t invade and occupy
This is a moving piece. Written by US journalist Michael Hastings (a friend and colleague) about the real opportunity that should be taken with the death of Osama Bin Laden. An imperial nation that continues to believe it can rule by brute force and invade Muslim nations is delusional: Osama bin Laden’s actions, and our…
Sri Lanka cannot escape scrutiny over war crimes
An important editorial in the Financial Times: Last year, Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary-general, commissioned a report into human rights violations in the closing months of the decades-long Sri Lankan civil war that ended in 2009. The report points to credible evidence of mass shelling of civilians and summary executions. It also concludes that…
Serco and Australian government see no evil, hear no evil
The ever-increasing growth of Serco in Australia is occurring while the company faces intense scrutiny over its record managing refugees in immigration. This story on ABC TV Lateline highlights the problems. I’m having a growing number of former and current Serco staff approaching me and wanting to speak about what they’re seeing in Australia’s dysfunctional…
Fallujah 2004 vs Misrata 2011
Here’s what the corporate press would like us to believe. Causing carnage in Iraq by Western forces was justified to rid the place of “terrorists” but when Gaddafi does something similar in Libya he’s a blood-thirsty murderer. Medialens dissects the hypocrisy.
What a real political party does; enforce human rights norms in Palestine
Following the circus of Sydney’s Marrickville council and its (brief) embrace of Palestinian rights through BDS, major questions remain; what will it take for a major political party, such as the Greens, to place human rights at the centre of its being? What excuses will be made to avoid this? And what “red lines” will…
Why can’t we just leave glorious and triumphant Sri Lanka alone?
The world post 9/11 is polluted with “terrorism experts”, usually academics who love to be romanced by armies in the business of brutally killing declared “enemies”. Rohan Gunaratna is intimate with the thugs in Colombo. In an interview with a Sri Lankan newspaper he offers advice for the government to avoid having to take accountability…
ABCTV News24 on human rights in China, Gitmo torture and Sri Lankan war crimes
I appeared last night on ABCTV News 24’s The Drum alongside ABC journalist Marius Benson and lobbyist Sue Cato (video here). While China, we learn via Wikileaks, ignores Australia’s supposed concerns for human rights, I asked if Prime Minister Julia Gillard actually cared about human rights as there had been no public comments from her…