One of the key messages emerging from the Wikileaks cables is the callousness of Western leaders towards human rights. It’s seen as an inconvenience. That’s why we treat them with appropriate contempt. One: The Howard government urged the United States to force the collapse of the North Korean regime by denying it aid, despite advice…
Showing all posts tagged human rights
ABC TV News 24 on refugees and government failures
I was invited back on ABC TV News24’s The Drum tonight with host Waleed Aly and guests Jo Stella and ABC journalist Gillian Bradford (video here). We talked mostly about domestic politics especially asylum seekers and the parlous state of refugee policy on both major sides of parliament. I argued that Labor has spent the…
How to spend 40 years morally corrupting a society
The banality of Israel’s evil occupation is laid bare with startling descriptions in the new book by Israeli group Breaking the Silence. Former IDF soldiers recount the daily beatings, humiliation, violence and degradation handed out to Palestinians. It’s routine. It’s normalised. And it’s backed by most Western powers: Testimony 48: “In reality you are just…
An Australian call for war crimes to be investigated in Sri Lanka
Australian Lawyers for Human Rights yesterday released the following statement: “The panel of experts appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, to advise him on accountability issues for the events in Sri Lanka during the period of civil war should recommend that the United Nations set up a properly resourced, independent and…
Zionist separation is in the state’s bloodstream
The actions of an apartheid state with the full backing of the so-called civilised world: Israeli policies in the West Bank harshly discriminate against Palestinian residents, depriving them of basic necessities while providing lavish amenities for Jewish settlements, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The report identifies discriminatory practices that have no…
China’s black sites used and abused by private firms
The massive expansion of a privatised and largely secret world is enveloping the West. Take military contracting and detention centres as two key examples. This recent feature in the Sydney Morning Herald highlights the foul stench of unaccountable thugs outsourced by the state in China: …In Tangshan city, a middle-class woman called Liu Yuhong told…
Letting Mugabe retire peacefully sounds like a terrible idea
The Wikileaks news that really matters (and yet more evidence that the UN is far too keen to protect dictators rather than prosecute them): The head of the United Nations offered Robert Mugabe a lucrative retirement package in an overseas haven if he stood down as Zimbabwe‘s president, according to claims quoted in leaked diplomatic…
Women with strong views campaigning in Gaza
Palestinian feminist Asma Al-Ghoul pushes for secularism in Islamic Gaza. It’s vital that growing Islamisation under Hamas is challenged: Recently Asma garnered media attention for two incidents with the Hamas police. In the summer of 2009, she walked on a public Gaza beach with a mixed gender group, and visited a former male colleague and…
When chocolate isn’t just about eating and enjoying
My following review appears in today’s Weekend Australian newspaper: Chocolate Wars: From Cadbury to Kraft, 200 Years of Sweet Success and Bitter Rivalries, by Deborah Cadbury, Harper Press, 340pp, $35. Deborah Cadbury is a descendant of the Quaker family whose name has become synonymous with chocolate. In this entertaining and insightful book she reveals just…
India and Sri Lanka are our mates (and they cause violence)
Thank you, Wikileaks. One: US officials had evidence of widespread torture by Indian police and security forces and were secretly briefed by Red Cross staff about the systematic abuse of detainees in Kashmir, according to leaked diplomatic cables released tonight. The dispatches, obtained by website WikiLeaks, reveal that US diplomats in Delhi were briefed in…