Archive for the 'Civil Rights' Category

Breaking news from yesterday that Faux seems to have missed.  A little something to hook nearly anyone’s sense of the macabre.   It seems like a couple of guys on the inside think there is not much that Prince is not capable of.
The Nation

ABC News

Some of us don’t take much convincing, already pretty convinced that this stuff was going on, but everybody else needs to take a much harder look at this crook and his organization, pretty much fits the definition of violent psychopath.

Palestinians evicted in Jerusalem

Palestinian officials say the families lived in the houses for over 50 years

Israeli police have evicted nine Palestinian families living in two houses in occupied East Jerusalem.

Jewish settlers moved into the houses almost immediately. The US has urged Israel to abandon plans for a building project in the area.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967 and later annexed it, a move not recognised by the world community.

The evictions have been condemned by the United Nations, the Palestinians and also the UK government.

The US said the evictions were not in keeping with Israel’s obligations under the so-called “road map” to resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

‘Deplorable’

The operation to evict the 53 Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah district of the city was carried out before dawn on Sunday by police clad in black riot gear.

It followed a ruling by Israel’s Supreme Court that Jewish families owned the land. Israel wants to build a block of 20 apartments in the area.

The evictions were quickly condemned by the United Nations.

The incumbent Israeli supremacist government continues to show itself to be as guilty as hell of outrageous, outright, persecution.

And/or racism. And/or apartheid. And/or long time, serial denial of basic human rights for innocent Jerusalem, Arab families.

Moreover, anyone who attempts to tell anyone at all anything different is at best, hopelessly misinformed and/or unbelievably naive and/or incredibly ignorant.

At worst, they’re flat out unforgivable, damned bloody liars.

And, anyone even considering calling us anti-Semitic, obviously knows a lot less than squat about us personally.

(Cross posted from across at ‘How This Old Brit Sees It’)

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Watch this and weep.

Then ruddy rage!

The young girl is 15 years old.

The ’so called’ policeman is a ’so called’ sheriff’s deputy.

So, now you’ve seen the film, read this whole sorry story ~ and much more of the same sort of shocking shit.

Home of the brave? Land of the free?

Oh, yeah. Sure

And we’re a pair of Protestant Popes.

(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)

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While we readily admit that today we’re taking a sarcastic sort of swipe at the pretty dumb practice of stating the sodding obvious, we ourselves wish to make it perfectly obvious that we are in no way “having a go” at Ireland’s excellent ex President, Mary Robinson.

Since the sad truth is that there are still millions of westerners convinced that bums like George Bush and Tony Blair, to mention just a pair, always told us all the truth.

Just take a look at this.

GENEVA (Reuters)

Washington’s “war on terror” after the September 11 attacks has eroded human rights worldwide, creating lingering cynicism that the United Nations must now combat, international law experts said on Monday.

Mary Robinson, who was the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights when al Qaeda militants flew hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001, said the United States caused harm with some of the ways it responded.

“Seven years after 9/11 it is time to take stock and repeal abusive laws and policies,” the former Irish president said, warning that harsh U.S. detentions and interrogations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba gave a dangerous signal to other countries that could easily follow suit.

While new U.S. President Barack Obama has announced he will close Guantanamo to break from the practices of his predecessor George W. Bush, Robinson said sweeping changes needed to take place to ensure Washington abandons its “war paradigm.”

“There has been severe damage and it needs to be addressed,” she told a news conference in Geneva. “We are not more secure. We are more divided, and people are more cynical about the operation of laws.”

Arthur Chaskalson, former chief justice of South Africa, said that the United States should launch an inquiry into its counter-terrorism practices, including acts of torture by individual security and intelligence agents.

Although counter-terrorism issues have faded from the front pages since the change of government in Washington, Chaskalson said such practices have shifted around the world and could keep restricting liberties if they are not confronted head-on.

“We all have less rights today than we had five or 10 years ago, and if nothing happens, we will have even less,”

So here’s to you, Mrs Robinson, we have to say that we like your style. Like it a lot, in fact. Truth be told, maybe we even love it.

Now read the rest of this Reuters’report.

(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)

Yes, we know, mister (unarguably) unelected UK leader, (and super-smarmy sidekick, Ms ’smart arse’ Jacqui Smith).

You know where we live.

Right?

But what about how you’d have us live, if you had your way?

Police may get more data powers

[British Home Secretary] Jacqui Smith said intercepting communications was ‘vital’

Jacqui Smith has set out plans to give the police and security services more powers to gather phone and e-mail data.

The home secretary said police risked losing the ability to fight crime and terrorism without new laws.

The government is considering creating a giant database to store details of every UK phone call and e-mail sent.

Ms Smith stressed the “content” of conversations would not be stored but she wanted a national debate on what new powers should be introduced.

And she warned that without increasing their capacity to store data, the police and security services would have to consider a “massive expansion of surveillance”.

Plans to collect more data on people’s phone, e-mail and web-browsing habits are expected to be included in the Communications Data Bill, due to be introduced in the Queen’s Speech in November.

‘Vital capability’

In a speech to the Institute of Public Policy Research, Ms Smith said:

See for yourself what this wicked witch has said.

Update:

Whilst we were still typing this, some equally concerned soul, stateside, sent us this.

Time alone will tell, eh?

(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)

Judge orders Chinese Muslims freed from Gitmo

Chinese, Muslim, Islamofascist terrorists?

Well, well, well. We do declare.

Hands up who knew.

Did you?

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A federal judge has ordered the immediate release into the United States of 17 Chinese Muslims who have been held for several years in the U.S. military facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

A U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina on Tuesday ordered the 17 detainees to appear in his Washington courtroom at 10 a.m. Friday and said he would hold a hearing next week to determine under what conditions they will be settled in the United States.

The government late Tuesday afternoon announced it would file papers shortly with an appeals court seeking an emergency stay to stop the judge’s order in its tracks.

The detainees are ethnic Uighurs, from a mostly Muslim autonomous region in western China.

They have been in government custody for seven years and have been cleared for release for the past four years to any country willing to take them. No countries have volunteered.

The judge, visibly impatient, told government lawyers he wants no delays.

“There is a pressing need for them to be released,” Urbina declared.

And, good old Judge Ricardo flatly refused to let the matter rest, even at that.

“I have issued an order. I do not want these people interfered with in any way,” the judge said.

Read the rest of this (sorta semi-refreshing), report right here.

(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)

Apparently, lots of us are learning a lot lately about a supposed terrorist type plot against Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

However, how many, we wonder, have as yet even begun to get to grips with the insidious implications of this mean spirited, mendacious miscreant of a man’s government’s shockingly sinister plot of it’s own?

You know, the good old Great British Gestapo Plot.

What a woeful way to goddamn go, eh?

We began by giving Blair, Bush and their respective bunches of bad-ass bandits an inch, and the bastards took a million bloody miles. And when we say “bloody” we do mean “bloody”.

Then, Blair buggered off before he was effed off, and we gave the supposed good-guy Gordo a go.

Now, super-snide as he so obviously is, this Brown bum gives us this shit.

Psst. Listen. Hear we now. We kid ye not.

We don’t even dare to imagine what this mangy, manic mob of mega-Machiavellian madmen may have headed our way next.

Do you?

(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)

For the Democrats an African American for President

For the Republicans a conservative descendant of a blue-blood slave holding / sharecropping Southern plantation family whose plantation is still intact and in family hands as I understand it.

I wonder what Abraham Lincoln would have thought of that. A very interesting flip-flop in political party associations at any rate.

Love old Leo or loathe him, he was always true to old ‘traditional’ Labour values as well as to his personal principles … regardless.

He was a one-off.

It’s doubtful we’ll see his like again. And that’s a shame.

Oh, that we still had a some sincere, genuinely gentlemanly, honourable & honest, determined, dedicated and principled politicians such as Leo Abse.

Gay rights champion and former MP Leo Abse has died at the age of 91, according to a family friend.

The former Labour MP for Pontypool and then Torfaen died at Charing Cross Hospital, west London, on Tuesday night after a short illness.

Mr Abse guided a Private Member’s Bill through Parliament in 1967 that legalised sex between men.

He was also credited with helping to liberalise divorce laws through the 1969 Divorce Reform Act.

Leo Abse was seen as a crusading backbencher

Mr Abse, who was in the Commons for nearly 30 years, is survived by his second wife Ania.

Learn some more about this amazing ‘little big man’.

(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)

A new Amnesty International report concludes that China’s human rights abuses have worsened during the run-up to the 2008 Olympics.

Nobody should be surprised by this outcome. For a couple of decades now, we’ve been told that integrating China into the world’s economic and political structures will lead to China’s becoming more democratic. The theory is that free markets and free speech are inextricably intertwined, as if Singapore was a beacon of democracy and Sweden a totalitarian state. Free the Chinese market, and you free the Chinese people.

So shortly after the Tienanmen Square massacre, George the Smart sent Lawrence Eagleburger and Brent Scowcroft to Beijing, in order to reassure the Chinese government that the US would not let a little thing like a televised massacre derail China’s quest for membership in the World Trade Organization.

But increased foreign investment expanded international trade had little effect on China’s human rights policies. Why would they? China didn’t suffer any significant penalty for the Tienanmen Square massacre. In fact, China’s oppression of its workers probably made foreign investors and corporations more eager to do business in China. Like the pigs in Animal Farm, the Chinese government had achieved a level of labor control that was greatly admired and envied by their capitalist trade partners.

A few years later, Bill Clinton decided to dispense with annual reviews of China’s human rights record, in which officials would fraudulently certify that China’s human rights record was improving, so their Most Favored Nation status should continue. Instead, he and the US congress decided to extend MFN status regardless of the human rights situation. In 2000, politically-motivated Republicans in congress accused the Chinese of forcing women to have abortions, and accused the Clinton administration of allowing Chinese spies to steal nuclear secrets. But they set such minor issues aside and voted overwhelmingly for granting China MFN status on a permanent basis. Democrats, who had criticized the Chinese for human rights and labor abuses just a couple of months before, followed suit. And in 2001, the Bush administration pushed for Chinese membership in the World Trade Organization, despite the fact that China’s human rights record had not improved, and despite the fact that only months before, the Chinese had detained for twelve days American Naval aviators who had crash landed in China.

The pattern remained unchanged for nineteen years. Outrageous behavior by the Chinese government was rewarded and repeated again and again. And now we find that rewarding China by awarding them the 2008 Olympic games has only led to further outrages? Imagine that.