Human Rights

  Photo Credit: Stan Honda/AFP Today Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, the leader of Libya, delivered to the United Nations General Assembly what might be called a diatribe and can definitely be deemed a rambling and unexpected speech. Speaking for 100 minutes–a huge overshooting of his alloted 15 minutes–he managed to speak truth to power and mix […]

Apologies for the lack in articles over the last two weeks, as I have been on international travel, most of which was to attend and speak at the Aspen Institute’s Cultural Diplomacy Forum in Avilies, Spain. The theme of the conference was: Culture and Security. The Forum featured a combination of keynote addresses, plenary panels, […]

(UN) A high-level Rwandan rebel indicted by the United Nations war crimes tribunal for his role in the 1994 genocide in the tiny Central African country has been handed over to the court after being arrested in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).Grégoire Ndahimana, a high-level figure in the Forces démocratiques de libération […]

By Geraldine Forbes and Usha Thakkar Dr. Neera Desai [Neeraben] one of the pioneers of Women’s Studies in India, died on June 25, 2009 after a long struggle with cancer. Neeraben, born Neera Druv in Ahmedabad in 1924, lived most of her life in Bombay/ Mumbai where she founded India’s first Research Centre for Women’s […]

(AP) WASHINGTON – The CIA’s harsh interrogations are likely to have damaged the brains of terrorist suspects, diminishing their ability to recall and provide the detailed information the spy agency sought, according to a new scientific paper. The paper scrutinizes the techniques used by the CIA under the Bush administration through the lens of neurobiology […]

Most anyone sane who has ever had to suffer through Eurovision song contests walks away stunned.  The event has gone on for something like 50 years and drives the Europeans mad.  And the associated kitsch isn’t even remotely interesting.  Though I’m sure someone like John Waters wouldn’t agree.  Genius has no bounds and thankfully, no […]

Google Books, the ambitious plan by Sergey Brin and Larry Page to make available for free huge quantities of digitized books, suffered yet another blow on Friday as the US Department of Justice urged a federal judge to deny a settlement agreement that Google reached with authors and publishers over copyright issues.  The heart of […]

In what has been called the most important death penalty case in US history, the government is seeking a 60 day delay in the joint trial by military commission of Guantanamo’s Ramzi bin al Shibh, who, along with four others, is facing war crimes charges resulting from his alleged involvement in the September 11th attacks. […]

Around the world the way to deal with the aftermath of past violence and police states has yet to come to a definitive closure or method to resolve crimes of the past. Often the ruling class in one era of a society remains in the next era, whether it be a peaceful one or a […]

The debate over Israeli and Palestinian conduct during the 2008-2009 Gaza War continues, this time with the release of the UN Human Rights Council report on the issue.  Commonly referred to as the Goldstone Report after the head of the special commission, South African jurist Richard Goldstone, the 575 page report found that both sides […]

As the United Nations headquarters in New York prepares to host what is being hailed as the largest General Assembly gathering to date, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is disseminating a report designed to call attention to the plight of the world’s working poor.  Mr. Ban prepared a report entitled “Voices of the Vulnerable,” and today […]

Michel Bagaragaza officially plead guilty to Genocide today at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.  He had reportedly entered a plea deal last year with the prosecution ahead of his trial this month.  Bagaragaza was head of OCIR-Tea which controlled the tea industry of Rwanda and used this position to facilitate Genocide against ethnic Tutsis […]