By Michael Krieger: Not that they ever were, but they’ve finally decided to be honest about it. Which to be honest, is pretty scary. From the Independent:
Human rights are no longer a “top priority”
for the Government, Britain’s most senior Foreign Office official has
admitted, as ministers put resources into supporting trade deals ahead
of tackling injustice in other parts of the world.In a
remarkably frank admission to MPs, Sir Simon McDonald, Permanent
Secretary at the Foreign Office, said that human rights no longer had
the “profile” within his department that they had “in the past”.
And he added that the Conservatives’ “prosperity
agenda” was now “further up the list” of areas on which the department
was concentrating its dwindling resources.
By Mike Buchanan J4MB: We’ve spent some time over recent weeks developing a ‘Letter to the Editor’ for publication in a national newspaper or periodical, in the week preceding the Conservative party conference, which starts next Sunday. The letter has been signed by some of the world’s most well-known anti-MGM campaigners, researchers, and anti-MGM organizations. None of the numerous national newspapers and periodicals we’ve approached offering exclusivity (one after another) have been willing to publish the letter, so we’ve decided to publish it here. It takes up the remainder of this post: Dear Sir / Madam, We call upon the government to specifically proscribe the non-therapeutic circumcision of male minors (henceforth male genital mutilation, MGM). This would give male minors the same legal protection as that enjoyed by female minors since the passing of the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985. The original purpose of this obscene practice was to diminish sexual pleasure in adult men. It detrimentally affects many men’s physical and mental health, blighting their lives, and sometimes leads to suicide. This mutilation of healthy minors’ bodies has always been illegal under Common Law. It is illegal under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, as well as a plethora of more recent legislation, which, inter alia, protects the basic right of the individual to bodily autonomy, until that person reaches an age to make an informed decision. MGM also breaches UN and EU conventions.
The Question and Answer period after the lecture by Cathy Young delivered at St. Paul's University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada on September 25, 2015. The lecture was sponsored and hosted by the Canadian Association For Equality.
Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert ask whether or not this truly is the best time in the entire history of mankind to borrow. In the second half, Max talks to Sandeep Jaitly of FeketeResearch.com about negative rates and returning capital on agricultural lands.
Uh oh, there we go again, using the C word. But every once in a while, a Slot C does something that makes it called for. This is a list of those things that immediately identify her as a Can't Understand Normal Thinker. Terrence Popp
By SM Gibson:One of the United States’ strongest allies iscurrently inflicting as much carnage as any other nation in the world. Instead of being vilified for their part in a staggering amount of human rights atrocities, the critics go mute and the bloodshed is rewarded. The news regarding Saudi Arabia this week is too abundant to include in any one headline. According to UNICEF, the ongoing attacks by a U.S.-backed, Saudi Arabian-led coalition in Yemen have resulted in the deaths of at least 505 children since March 26, 2015. Another 710 have been left injured, and 1.7 million are at risk of malnutrition. As Daniel Johnson with the U.N. pointed out, the grievous numbers are equivalent to eight children killed or maimed in Yemen every day for six months. On Monday, a missile from a Saudi-led airstrike struck a Yemeni wedding reception in the village of Al-Wahijah, located near the Red Sea. The explosion resulted in 131 deaths, and the incident is being labeled as one of the deadliest attacks on civilians during the six-month conflict. In total, there have been 7,217 civilian casualties, including 2,355 killed and 4,862 wounded in the six months since the fighting began, according to the United Nations. Despite these statistics, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Saudi Arabia — while addressing the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday evening — had the audacity to scold the international community’s inability to end the bloodshed in Syria.
By Don Quijones: A secluded private courthouse in Washington DC is currently the scene of a gargantuan legal battle that could have serious ramifications for all of us. Yet virtually nobody knows about it. On one side of the battle is the tiny, poverty-crippled Central American nation of El Salvador; on the other is Pacific Rim, a Canadian mining company that was acquired by the Australian corporation Oceana Gold in 2013. At stake is the basic issue of who owns what in tomorrow’s world.
Putting Gold Before Water
In 2009, Pacific Rim filed a private lawsuit – what is referred to in the impenetrable jargon of modern globalism as an Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) – against the government of El Salvador for $301 million, equivalent to just over 2% of the country’s $24 billion GDP. As BBC World reports (in Spanish), the amount is equivalent to three years’ combined public spending on health, education and security. The company argues that El Salvador unfairly denied its mining permit after it began an exploration process for gold mining, costing it hundreds of millions of dollars of “potential future profits.”
Yes, you read that right. Trade deals. You know like…
Yes, you read that right. Trade deals. You know like…
