http://blog.rightsbase.org human rights news & views Tue, 18 Nov 2008 02:43:07 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Last month at the UN General Assembly, rock legend Bono lamented that for ten years he has begged the G8 for US$25 billion to relieve hunger and disease in Africa, with limited success.  Suddenly, the United States has $700 billion to spend on Wall Street. Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz ... http://blog.rightsbase.org/2008/10/10/bail-out-the-worlds-poor/ The extraordinary struggle of five survivors of human trafficking and sexual slavery culminated last week in victory in Australia's highest court. After years of legal wrangling, six judges of the High Court upheld a brothel owner's conviction and 10-year goal sentence for slavery. A police raid on a legal brothel ... http://blog.rightsbase.org/2008/09/02/slavery-conviction-upheld/ A short documentary has appeared on the internet about Scott Parkin, the nonviolent US peace activist who in 2005 was detained in Australia for 5 days and then deported for being a 'direct or indirect risk to Australian national security.'  Greenpeace Australia's communications director, Dan Cass, is depicted describing ... http://blog.rightsbase.org/2008/06/23/australias-political-prisoners/ All but one of the 'Raytheon 9' war resisters were acquitted by a Belfast jury yesterday of all charges. In August 2006 Colm Bryce, Gary Donnelly, Kieran Gallagher, Michael Gallagher, Sean Heaton, Jimmy Kelly, Eamonn McCann, Paddy McDaid and Eamonn O'Donnell broke into the Derry offices of US arms ... http://blog.rightsbase.org/2008/06/12/war-crimes-resisters-acquitted/ The trail of the 'Raytheon 9' enters its likely final week.  These nine men occupied the Derry offices of an arms manufacturer for 8 hours back in August 2006 with the purpose of preventing war crimes.  Claims Eamonn McCann, due to take the stand this week: "Israel had dropped ... http://blog.rightsbase.org/2008/06/01/n-irish-pacifists-on-trial/ It's a bumper year for 40th anniversaries, especially for the United States: assassinations, moonwalks, war, protest.  Elsewhere there were coups, decolonisation, nuclear tests.  1968 was also the year of the Prague Spring and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, student riots in Paris, violence and starvation on a mass scale in Biafra ... http://blog.rightsbase.org/2008/05/20/catonsville-nine-survivors-divided/ Writes Nobel Peace Prize nominee, John Dear, SJ: "On May 1, the Catholic Worker [movement] celebrates its 75th birthday, and to mark the occasion, Marquette University Press will publish Dorothy Day's diaries, The Duty of Delight. Meanwhile, a beautiful new DVD documentary, Don't Call Me a Saint, has been released, offering rare ... http://blog.rightsbase.org/2008/04/21/the-duty-of-delight-the-diaries-of-dorothy-day/ Amnesty International called it "shocking and preventable."  On 27 January 2008, Australian indigenous leader and land rights activist Ian Ward -- "one of the last nomads born in the Gibson Desert" -- died in custody. The Warburton man was being driven 915km from Laverton in the Western Desert to Kalgoorlie for ... http://blog.rightsbase.org/2008/04/15/indigenous-nomad-died-in-custody/ If you agree that Israel must stop violating the human right to water and sanitation in the Occupied Territories, please consider signing this petition to the Knesset: "The human right to water and sanitation is protected under international law. Yet in the State of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, this ... http://blog.rightsbase.org/2008/03/25/the-right-to-water-in-palestinian-territories-israel-a-petition/ Forty-five years ago, this is how Martin Luther King spent Easter (an excerpt from his autobiography): [O]n April 10 . . . the city government obtained a court injunction directing us to cease our activities . . . [W]e did an audacious thing, something we had never done in any other ... http://blog.rightsbase.org/2008/03/19/all-that-my-life-had-brought-me-to-be/