Guy Rundle writes in the Sunday Age of “the contradictions and hypocrisies of much human rights campaigning these days.” It’s so much easier to get outraged over Iranian abuses than to focus closer to home.
Showing all posts tagged human rights
Fisk tackles honour killings and spares no details
I finally read last night Robert Fisk’s devastating essay on honour killings around the world. It’s moving and shocking, crosses borders and religions and remains a largely ignored issue. His latest, on the situation in Egypt, continues the investigation. Journalism at its finest.
Keeping children in prison to manage our fears
So-called civilised nations, such as Britain, imprison children in immigration detention and the psychological scars are massive. Australia is no different.
Are urban slums the future?
Dhaka, in bustling Bangladesh, is a megacity growing at an incredible rate. And it’s part of a massive global shift: The earth’s countryside is emptying out, more quickly all the time. It took about 10,000 years for the human population to become 3 percent urban — a period extending roughly from the dawn of human…
Decency to the stranger hasn’t gone out of fashion
On the one hand, many of us are compassionate: A third of the world’s population has given money to charity in the past month, the largest study ever carried out into global social conscience reveals today. The “World Giving Index” used Gallup surveys of 195,000 people in 153 nations and asked people whether they had…
Yes, racism is in Australia
The first step to fixing racism in Australia is acknowledging it exists. A fine piece by Emily Howie in today’s Melbourne Age.
What happened to Ban Ki-Moon in Sri Lanka? (hint; not much)
The failing of the UN towards the Tamils in Sri Lanka is both shameful and predictable. This is a conflict that continues to receive virtually no global media coverage despite up to 40,000 Tamils being massacred last year: During the Vietnam conflict, the US military developed some creative ways to increase the numbers of Viet…
Poll: half of Israeli teens don’t want Arab students in their classroom
Hello, apartheid state: Sixty four percent of… Israeli teens aged 15 to 18… say that Arab Israelis do not… enjoy full equal rights in Israel, and from that group, 59 percent… believe that they should not have full equal rights, according to a special survey prepared for the “Education in the Digital Age” conference held in Haifa on Monday.…
Massive Attack embrace BDS
The cultural boycott of Israel grows strongly with news such as this: The movement for a cultural boycott of Israel in response to its treatment of the Palestinians, modelled on the boycott of apartheid South Africa, could eclipse decades of disingenuous political charades in engaging western intellectuals, academics and artists. Internationally renowned figures such as…
Capitalism with some blood and guts
An economist with a brain and heart. Cambridge’s Ha-Joon Chang: Another myth that needs to be busted is the idea that we can discuss economics without any moral implications. What kind of economy we build changes us, so what we do in terms of monetary policy determines who we are.