Brights News Feed

The IHEU’s former President, Roy Brown, has made a series of criticisms against the Human Rights Council to which he is now the IHEU’s representative at the UN.

Even in his worst nightmares former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan could hardly have dreamed when he called for the replacement of the failing Commission for Human Rights by a new Human Rights Council, that he was driving the first nail into the coffin of human rights at the United Nations (Roy Brown reports from Geneva). The last nail was hammered home on Tuesday 19 June 2007 when, after a year of often heated debate, the Council adopted without a vote a new set of procedures that will permanently limit its ability to deal effectively with human rights violations. […]

The root cause of the problem in the Council is the geographical distribution of its membership. The African and Asian states have an in-built majority. Whilst this can be justified by the number of states and the populations involved, it enables a group of states, euphemistically called the “like-minded” group, to control the Council. Sadly, these states, as diverse as China, India, Pakistan and Cuba, are like-minded only in their determination to shield one another from accusations of human rights abuse.

See “A Catastrophe for Human Rights“. Also see last week’s “Is the Council of Europe really impartial on religion?” and today’s “Council of Europe rejects report calling creationism “dangerous” and a “threat to human rights“.

On the very same day that severe storms and tornadoes wreak havoc in Florida, and oily, orange snow with a “pronounced rotten smell” falls across several towns in Sibera, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) releases a report which very much confirms the mainstream scientific view that global warming is “unequivocably” taking place, and that humans are “very likely” to blame (International Herald Tribune, IPCC summary, photo source).

“I have received a report from the American side chronicling the targets and list of damage,” said Somali presidential chief of staff, Abdirizak Hassan, today. “One of the items they were claiming was that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed is dead.”

Fazul Abdullah Mohammed was the chief suspect in the planning of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania which killed 225 people, and a number of other terrorist activities.

In a series of air strikes undertaken since Sunday, and ongoing (Retuers), the Somali transitional government claims the US forces have eliminated numerous Islamic Courts fighters, on the run from government and Ethiopian ground troops. A successful strike against Fazul Abdullah Mohammed represents closure on two fronts for the US military, as the air strikes are the first overt US military action in Somalia since the devastating failed mission in 1993 that was immortalised in the book and film Black Hawk Down.

Read the rest of this entry »

After days of increased hostility — including exchange of rockets and artillery fire which claimed dozens of lives and injured hundreds — between Islamist militias and forces loyal to the transitional Somali government, tanks from majority-Christian Ethiopia yesterday rolled into Somalia’s Baidoa region, according to witnesses. (Ethiopia has so far denied this, possibly because they have previously promised to publicize any decision to officially go to war with the Islamists.) Their mission would be to defend the fragile seat of the internationally-recognised, UN-backed, secular Somali government, which holds sway only over a relatively small area around the city of Baidoa, against redoubled threat from the Union of Islamic Courts and their militia.

Somali forces defending the UN-backed government

The Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) control Mogadishu, the Somali capital, and most of the south of the country. Yesterday they issued threats that the militias were preparing to take Baidoa (Toronoto Star), desipte earlier claiming that they were at war with Ethiopia and not the transitional government (Al Jazeera). Ethiopian reinforcements pose a formidable block to the ambition of the Islamist militias, but a UN report states that arms in support of the UIC are continuing to roll in from Eritrea and Yemen, who back the Islamic Courts, and may yet send their own forces to officially stand alongside the militia. This would reignite war across the Horn of Africa, especially between old enemies Ethiopia and Eritrea. Meanwhile the UN has called for calm, but while the fighting continues, aid is still failing to reach thousands of people whose lives are threatened by flood and famine (News24.com).

Read the rest of this entry »

UN representative for the American Humanist Association, Beth Lamont, was arrested Tuesday, with fifteen other anti-war protesters, during a nonviolent demonstration outside the UN Building in New York. Police became involved when a mere sixteen protesters strayed from a designated “free speech zone”.

The protest at the UN. (The AHA’s Beth Lamont is in pink)

All sixteen activists were arrested within minutes. Arrests included the AHA’s Beth Lamont; Ann Wright, one of three State Department officials to resign in protest against the Iraq war; Elaine Brower, the mother of a U.S. Marine stationed in Fallujah and a spokesperson for World Can’t Wait; Episcopal Minister Father Luis Barrios; and C. Clark Kissinger, convener of the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration.

Two of the arrestees were formally charged. Disabled Iraq War veteran Geoffrey Millard was also held overnight and charged with resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. Father Luis Barrios was charged with felony assault on a police officer, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct. He is due in court on the felony charge in January.

(Also see: NY1 TV News coverage via World Can’t Wait; Bush Crimes Commission; Humanist News)

This morning the UN passed a resolution urging a “full cessation of hostilities”, after which both Hezbollah and Israel continued offensive action, Hezbollah firing more rockets into northern Israel and Israel carrying out further air strikes; Israel will vote on accepting the resolution tomorrow (BBC: “Fresh Israel raids after UN vote“).

Meanwhile, the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) published a response to the Israel-Hezbollah crisis (IHEU: “Missiles? What missiles? Israel and the UN Human Rights Council“). The IHEU refer primarily to a separate resolution considered yesterday by the new UN Human Rights Council, saying that “During the debate, not one member state mentioned the avowed aim of Hezbollah and its sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran, to wipe Israel from the map. It was left to an NGO to remind the Human Rights Council of Hezbollah’s objectives”. They damned the Council as biased against Israel for failing to mention — let alone condemn — the role of Hezbollah.
Read the rest of this entry »