http://blog.rightsbase.org human rights news & views Fri, 12 Mar 2010 03:56:24 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Maverick US historian and pacifist Howard Zinn died suddenly in January, aged 87.  He was an inspiring, indefatigable human rights activist best known as author of A People's History of the United States.  (His endorsement graces the cover of New Internationalist's No-Nonsense Guides.) When asked in a recent interview, ... http://blog.rightsbase.org/2010/03/12/vale-howard-zinn-a-movement-that-wont-go-away/ To further the debate over whether Australia should have laws protecting human rights, the Castan Centre is engaging in a spot of myth-busting: Myth 1: The proposed Human Rights Act would shift decision making to unelected judges who should not have the power to decide what constitutes a breach ... http://blog.rightsbase.org/2010/02/23/myths-about-a-human-rights-act/ I am pleased to report that The No-Nonsense Guide to Human Rights, co-authored by yours truly and my esteemed colleague Prof. Gready, with foreword by Desmond Tutu, is now available in Spanish under the title, Los Derechos Humanos. Published this year by Intermón Oxfam, Los Derechos Humanos is available ... http://blog.rightsbase.org/2009/11/26/finally-no-nonsense-in-spanish/ Expatriate Australian journalist John Pilger (right), in accepting the Sydney Peace Prize last week, was very critical of silence and lies in Australian polity and complicit bystanders among the Australian press and public.  He calls us from slumber to form a 'Fifth Estate' of citizen monitoring -- that eternal ... http://blog.rightsbase.org/2009/11/09/a-fifth-estate-of-citizen-monitoring/ Gentle reader, May I share with you two things that have come across my desk this evening which have had a profound impact on me? One is an 8-minute video by Oxfam about the life of a woman in rural Uganda facing the 'indescribable pain' of climate change. The second ... http://blog.rightsbase.org/2009/10/25/life-after-climate-change/ Key nuclear states Israel, North Korea, India & Pakistan remain non-signatories to the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).  What is your government's current position on the treaty and issues under review? The next review conference will be held at the UN in New York City in May next ... http://blog.rightsbase.org/2009/10/18/countdown-to-review-of-the-non-proliferation-treaty/ To quote a press release issued today on behalf of those presently involved in this anti-war protest in northern Australia: Christian Activists enter restricted military area during live-fire exercises Four nonviolent Christian activists have entered the Shoalwater Bay Training Area this morning to stop the Talisman Saber exercises. ... http://blog.rightsbase.org/2009/07/13/the-prime-ministers-iv/ Before dawn on 28 June, Honduras' President Manuel Zelaya (left) was 'pulled from his bed' in the presidential palace and forced into exile in Costa Rica, still in his pyjamas. That afternoon Roberto Micheletti, of the same party as Zelaya (the PLH), was sworn in for a 7-month term as ... http://blog.rightsbase.org/2009/07/05/first-central-american-coup-since-the-cold-war-threatens-human-rights/ Australia has a human rights defender on a par with Raoul Wallenberg and Oskar Schindler for his stance against Nazi Germany, yet William Cooper is little known in Australia today. Appalled by the vicious carnage of Kristallnacht, the watershed pogrom of November 1938, Aboriginal leader Bill Cooper (right) led ... http://blog.rightsbase.org/2009/06/20/yorta-yorta-elder-hero-of-the-jews/ Dear National Human Rights Consultation Committee, I would like to submit to the Committee Geoffrey Robertson's Statute of Liberty: How Australians can Take Back their Rights (Vintage, Sydney 2009) in its entirety. I hope he has done so already. I'm sure you have it. I work ... http://blog.rightsbase.org/2009/05/29/how-australians-can-take-back-their-rights/