Posts Tagged ‘UK’
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010
Paola Totro; 3/2/10
Pope Benedict has attacked Britain’s reform of human rights and equality legislation, saying religious employers should be allowed to discriminate against homosexuals. In an unprecedented move, the Pope commented directly on the laws of a Protestant state, claiming the proposed new human rights legislation threatens religious freedoms and violates ”natural law”. In a speech made during a visit to Rome by England and Wales’ 35 Catholic bishops, Pope Benedict urged Catholics in Britain to fight against the legislation with ”missionary zeal”.
(more…)
Tags: Christianity, Homosexuality, UK, USA military
Posted in Christianity, Homosexuality, Human Rights, USA | No Comments »
Sunday, January 31st, 2010
Helen Pidd; 30/1/10
They hail from the land of the free, the home of the brave, a place where it is said anyone can prosper regardless of colour, creed or religion. But dozens of Americans have tried in recent years to gain asylum in Britain by claiming they were persecuted in their homeland, according to figures released to The Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act. British Home Office statistics show that between 2004 and 2008, 45 Americans submitted asylum applications to the UK Border Agency, claiming they had fled the US and were unable to go back because they had a well-founded fear of persecution. Fifteen Canadians also applied. All were turned down. A US Government source said the American applications were most likely submitted by self-declared ”political refugees” claiming they faced discrimination under the last administration. The applications from the US peaked in 2008, the final year of George Bush’s presidency, when 15 Americans submitted asylum claims.
(more…)
Tags: Migrants & Refugees, UK, USA
Posted in Human Rights, Refugee & Migrant, USA | No Comments »
Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Robert Milliken; 30/1/10
From the air above Maralinga you can still see the sites where Britain tested nuclear weapons in the South Australian desert 54 years ago. At least one is still contaminated with plutonium. The township that once hummed with Australian and British servicemen and nuclear scientists is just a shell. But if the new owners have their way, this secret place, once an unlikely flashpoint of the Cold War, may soon have a fresh life. The new owners are really the old owners: the Maralinga-Trarutja Aborigines, who were pushed aside when their traditional lands became an atomic testing ground. Late last month dignitaries again flew in, this time to witness a ceremony marking the symbolic closure of one of Australia’s most bizarre stories.
(more…)
Tags: Aboriginal, Arms, Australia, Environment, UK
Posted in Aboriginal, Arms, Australia, Environment, Health & Children, Human Rights | No Comments »
Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Peter Wilson, 30/1/10
An unrepentant Tony Blair last night stood by his decision to invade Iraq in 2003, saying that even though no weapons of mass destruction were found he still believed he had done the right thing and he would do it again today in the same circumstance. The former British prime minister said that although the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US had not involved Iraq they had left him determined to not to take any risks with rogue states and WMDs. “The decision I took – and frankly would take again – was if there was any possibility that he (Saddam Hussein) could develop weapons of mass destruction we should stop him,” he said. “That was my view then and that is my view now.” Mr Blair used his long-awaited appearance before the Chilcot inquiry into Britain’s involvement in the war to meticulously defend his 2003 decisions and insist that the eventual discovery that Iraq did not have WMDs did not mean that the world would have been safe if Saddam had been left in power.
(more…)
Tags: Human Rights, Terrorism, UK, USA
Posted in Human Rights, Iraq, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Friday, January 29th, 2010
Ian McPhedran; 29/1/10
The Rudd Government has refused to help Australian veterans suing the British Government over radiation exposure during atomic bomb tests in the 1950s and ’60s. A group of survivors and their families are joining a class action after 800 British nuclear veterans were granted permission to sue the UK Ministry of Defence. Many of the soldiers were covered in radioactive fallout from the blasts while wearing just a hat, shorts and boots and were later treated for radiation sickness. They were never told of the risks involved and many were used as human guinea pigs to test deadly chemicals, including mustard gas.
(more…)
Tags: Arms, Australia, Nuclear, UK
Posted in Arms, Australia, Environment, Health & Children, Human Rights | No Comments »
Friday, January 29th, 2010
Henry Porter & Afua Hirsch; 29/1/10
It’s no coincidence that the four politicians who took us to war – Tony Blair, Jack Straw, Lord Falconer and Lord Goldsmith were all lawyers. Of course there were others involved, but let us be quite clear that each of these was in a position to stop the headlong rush to war by using the rule of law as an argument against the Bush regime. Only Lord Goldsmith attempted such a course, but he was flattened by Lord Falconer and Baroness (formerly Sally) Morgan and sidelined by No 10 until it was too late for Britain to withdraw.
(more…)
Tags: Iraq, UK, USA
Posted in Human Rights, Iraq, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
Paola Totaro; 28/1/10
The British Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, has been humiliated by his former legal adviser who said his boss had twice overruled his entreaties against military action in Iraq while he was foreign secretary. In a tense day at the Chilcot inquiry, Sir Michael Wood, Mr Straw’s chief legal adviser at the time of the invasion, contradicted Mr Straw’s evidence that he had only ”very reluctantly” supported the military decision. Mr Straw had told the inquiry of his moral and political anguish before the invasion in 2003. But Sir Michael said that not only had Mr Straw told his US counterpart, Colin Powell, he was ”entirely comfortable” arguing for war, he had also told his legal adviser that he had often ignored legal advice from the Home Office without consequence. Sir Michael said that when he had voiced his view about the illegality of action, Mr Straw ”took the view that I was being very dogmatic and that international law was pretty vague and that he wasn’t used to people taking such a firm position”. ”When he had been at the Home Office, he had often been advised things were unlawful but he had gone ahead anyway and won in the courts.”
(more…)
Tags: Human Rights, Iraq, Terrorism, UK, USA
Posted in Human Rights, Iraq, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Monday, January 25th, 2010
Riyadh Mohammed; 25/1/10
Fraud charges have been laid against a British supplier. IRAQI officials have reacted with anger to news that the director of a British company that supplies bomb detectors to Iraq has been arrested on fraud charges, and the export of the devices has been banned. ”This company not only caused grave and massive losses of funds, but it has caused grave and massive losses of the lives of innocent Iraqi civilians, by the hundreds and thousands, from attacks that we thought we were immune to because we have this device,” said Ammar Tuma, a member of the Iraqi parliament’s security and defence committee. But the Ministry of the Interior has not withdrawn the devices from service, and police continue to use them at checkpoints throughout Baghdad.
(more…)
Tags: Arms, Iraq, Trade, UK
Posted in Aid / Trade, Arms, Iraq | No Comments »
Saturday, January 23rd, 2010
Pia Akerman; 23/1/09
Cherie Blair QC, wife of former British prime minister Tony Blair, will represent Aborigines seeking compensation from the British government for illnesses allegedly resulting from its atomic tests in Australia. Five claims have already been lodged in the British courts by Aborigines from Emu Field, in South Australia’s northern deserts, where two atomic tests were conducted in 1953. Neil Gillespie, chief executive of South Australia’s Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement, said he had spoken to Mrs Blair several times to receive advice. “She has been recruited not because of her old man but because she’s one of the leading silks in the UK,” Mr Gillespie said. “We are so pleased, she is an incredible individual, sharp as a samurai sword.” In 2000, Mrs Blair represented Aborigines challenging the Northern Territory’s mandatory sentencing laws in the UN Human Rights Committee.
(more…)
Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Nuclear, UK
Posted in Aboriginal, Arms, Australia, Health & Children, Human Rights | No Comments »
Saturday, January 23rd, 2010
23/1/10
Perhaps the least fashionable cause in Britain is the welfare of its elderly. At least 35,000 old men and women will die from the cold this winter: a staggering, scandalous figure. Britain is a rich nation, there are many ingenious and inexpensive ways to heat a house, yet every August, when the number of “excess winter deaths” are disclosed, the extent of Britain’s national incompetence or indifference becomes clear. No one asks why so many more pensioners die each winter in Britain than in some other countries. The winter cull of our elderly has become accepted as part of national life.
(more…)
Tags: Human Rights, UK
Posted in Human Rights | No Comments »
Friday, January 22nd, 2010
Brendan Nicholson; 22/1/10
Australian special forces soldiers are using gunsights with biblical references etched on to them as they fight the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. The ADF has several hundred of the sights, which are prized by elite troops for their accuracy over long range. Their use by US, British and New Zealand troops has raised alarm among military leaders that it could reinforce views among extremists that the West is waging a crusade against Islam. The Australian Defence Force is investigating how to remove biblical references etched on to gunsights, without damaging the weapons. The ADF and military authorities in the US, Britain and elsewhere thought the letters and numbers on the sights were simply stock or model numbers until a US soldier in Afghanistan complained to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation that the initials referred to passage from the Bible. One example was JN8:12 which turned out to be a reference to chapter eight, verse 12 in the Book of John: “When Jesus spoke again to the people he said ‘I am the light of the world.” ‘Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life’.”
(more…)
Tags: Afghanistan, Australia, Religion, UK, USA
Posted in Aid / Trade, Arms, Christianity, Religion, USA | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
Richard Norton-Taylor, 19/1/10
Tony Blair’s former foreign secretary, Jack Straw, privately warned the then prime minister in 2002 that an invasion of Iraq was legally dubious, questioned what such action would achieve, and challenged US claims about the threat from Saddam Hussein, it has been revealed. Mr Straw gave what now seems prophetic advice in a letter marked ”secret and personal”, 10 days before Mr Blair met George Bush at the US president’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002. That was nearly a year before the invasion. In his letter, about which he is expected to be questioned when he testifies at the Chilcot inquiry this week, Mr Straw warned Mr Blair: ”The rewards from your visit to Crawford will be few … there is at present no majority inside the PLP [parliamentary Labour Party] for any military action against Iraq.”
(more…)
Tags: Human Rights, Iraq, Terrorism, UK, USA
Posted in Human Rights, Iraq, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Thursday, January 14th, 2010
Richard Norton-Taylor; 14/1/10
The British Government’s justification for launching the Iraq war has been undermined after two inquiries cast new light on the build-up to war. Delivering the first independent assessment of the legality of the war, a Dutch inquiry has found the military action had no sound mandate in international law. It delivered its findings as details of former prime minister Tony Blair’s support for the war emerged in testimony by his former communications chief Alastair Campbell to the Chilcot inquiry into the war. In about five hours of questioning about the secret diplomacy between Washington and Downing Street in the months before the invasion, Mr Campbell told the inquiry in London that Mr Blair had assured US President George Bush in private letters in 2002 that Britain would support a US-led war against Iraq.
(more…)
Tags: Afghanistan, Terrorism, UK, USA
Posted in Afghanistan, Human Rights, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
6/1/10
A group of Israeli military officers have delayed an official visit to Britain over fears they could be arrested on war crimes charges. Danny Ayalon, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, said on Tuesday that four officers invited to the UK by the British army would not be travelling “as we do not have a 100 per cent guarantee that they will not become objects of criminal lawsuits”. The officers, who hold ranks from major to colonel, are the latest in a string of Israeli politicians and military officials to call off travel to Britain due to fears over possible legal action. Last month, Tzipi Livni, the leader of Israel’s opposition Kadima party and foreign minister during last year’s Gaza war, cancelled her UK trip after an arrest warrant was issued by a British court.
(more…)
Tags: Human Rights, Israel, Terrorism, UK, USA
Posted in Human Rights, Israel & Palestine, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Friday, January 1st, 2010
Cameron Stewart & Mike Steketee; 1/1/10; (3 Items)
The Fraser government in 1979 secretly feared that the arrival of refugee boats would divide Australian politics and society for decades, posing a continuing threat to national unity, according to newly declassified cabinet documents. In an echo of the challenges now facing the Rudd government, the Fraser cabinet admitted it was caught between its moral obligation to accept genuine refugees and the political danger of a public backlash against taking large numbers of boatpeople. But the Fraser government was substantially more generous towards the mostly Vietnamese refugees seeking asylum at that time than the Rudd government has been, with cabinet accepting 20,000 refugees in 1978-79 compared with the 12,000-13,000 Australia has taken in recent years. Both Mr Fraser and his foreign affairs minister, Andrew Peacock, said yesterday Australia had benefited as a nation as a consequence of a sympathetic approach to refugees during the Fraser years, and whatever concerns might have been raised in 1979 turned out to be unfounded.
(more…)
Tags: Australia, China, Migrants & Refugees, UK
Posted in Australia, China, Human Rights, Refugee & Migrant | No Comments »
Saturday, December 19th, 2009
Pia Akerman; 19/11/09
Alice Cox was a young mother of two when the British exploded atomic bombs at Maralinga, her traditional country in South Australia’s west. Emerging from a shelter after one explosion, Cox felt something wasn’t right and warned her daughter not to eat fruit from a nearby quandong tree. Now about 80 years old and confined to a wheelchair, Cox recalled the fears and uncertainties of those times yesterday when she returned to Maralinga to witness the handover of a 3100sq km area of land known as Section 400 to the traditional owners. “I’m happy to come and see this,” she said. Section 400 is the last pocket of the notorious Maralinga Tjarutja lands where the British tested atomic weapons in the 1950s and 1960s.
(more…)
Tags: Aboriginal, Arms, Australia, Environment, UK
Posted in Aboriginal, Arms, Australia, Environment | No Comments »
