Thomas Jones reviews ‘The Carbon Crunch’ by Dieter Helm, ‘Earthmasters’ by Clive Hamilton and ‘The City and the Coming Climate’ by Brian Stone · LRB 23 May 2013
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n10/thomas-jones/how-can-we-live-with-it
...if climate change is not only inevitable but already underway, how are we to live with it? The shift in emphasis towards adaptation will be reflected in the IPCC’s fifth assessment report, due next year.
Beware the rise of the government scientists turned lobbyists
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/29/beware-rise-government-scientists-lobbyists
What happens to people when they become government science advisers? Are their children taken hostage? Is a dossier of compromising photographs kept, ready to send to the Sun if they step out of line?
I ask because, in too many cases, they soon begin to sound less like scientists than industrial lobbyists.
Du sperme explosif
Alarm in Bellevue : Verdächtiger Brief an Gauck enthielt nur ein Kondom - Welt - Tagesspiegel
http://www.tagesspiegel.de/weltspiegel/alarm-in-bellevue-verdaechtiger-brief-an-gauck-enthielt-nur-ein-kondom/8137528.html
http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4136/4763963244_06ba2ce6a2_b_d.jpg
Der vor zehn Tagen im Bundespräsidialamt eingegangene verdächtige Brief hat nach Informationen des „Focus“ lediglich ein benutztes Kondom enthalten. Spezialisten der Polizei sprengten den Brief im hinteren Teil des Parks von Schloss Bellevue.Aus Sicherheitskreisen hieß es damals, ein Verdacht auf Sprengstoff in dem Brief habe sich bestätigt.
Ils sont fous ces spécialistes de la sécurité. Quelqu’un envoie une lettre avec un préservatif utilisé aux président allemand et on la fait exploser dans un coin caché du parc du palais présidentiel parce qu’on croit y avoir détecté des explosifs.
J’ai l’impression que les services de sécurité du président figurent également sur la listes des acheteurs de l’appareil ADE 651.
How A Millionaire Sold Fake Bomb Detectors To Governments All Over The World http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-04/how-millionaire-sold-fake-bomb-detectors-governments-world
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651
British officials predicted war – and Arab defeat – in Palestine in 1948 | World news | The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/26/british-secret-documents-palestine-partition
As early as October 1946, two years before partition, UK officials warned London that Jewish opinion would oppose partition “unless the Jewish share were so enlarged as to make the scheme wholly unacceptable to Arabs”.
UK signs deal with Jordan to expel Abu Qatada
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2013/04/201342504718946147.html
Britain has signed a new legal treaty with Jordan in the hope of being able to deport a cleric accused of being Osama bin Laden’s “right-hand man in Europe” later this year, the interior minister has said.
The British government has for years been unable to deport Abu Qatada back to his native Jordan, where he is wanted on
terrorism charges, because judges have said evidence obtained through torture could be used against him.
“I have signed a comprehensive mutual legal assistance agreement with Jordan,” Home Secretary Theresa May told parliament on Wednesday, a day after a court rejected the government’s latest appeal of a judicial decision to block Abu Qatada’s extradition to Jordan.
“The agreement also includes a number of fair trial guarantees ... I believe these guarantees will provide the courts with the assurance that Qatada will not face evidence that might have been obtained by torture.”
The new treaty is expected to be ratified by the Jordanian and British parliaments by the end of June, but May said it could still take several months to secure Abu Qatada’s deportation.
The case has been embarrassing for the Conservative-led government, which wants to appear tough on security and immigration, and in particular for May, who has been tipped as a future party leader.
Shaker Aamer and the dirty secrets of the war on terror
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/23/shaker-aamer-dirty-secrets-war-on-terror
Set up on US-occupied Cuban territory, it was filled with supposed “enemy combatants” seized in post-invasion Afghanistan, the vast majority of whom were then held without charge or trial, brutalised and tortured. That was all supposed to have come to an end after Obama’s election.
But instead of shutting this monstrosity, the camp is being rebuilt. Congress has played a central role in keeping Guantánamo open. But the president only tried to move it to Illinois, not end the scandal of indefinite detention without trial. And he’s personally blocked the release of dozens of prisoners, even when they’ve been cleared.
Le gouvernement britannique épinglé pour son manque de régulation dans l’exportation de technologies de surveillance vers des régimes autocratiques. RT
Privacy International, the human rights group, is suing the British government, filing an application for judicial review of Her Majesty’s Revenue and customs (HMRC) on account of its role in allowing the export of advanced surveillance technology that has been used by repressive regimes worldwide, including that of Bahrain, to spy on dissidents.
Privacy International’s lawsuit is over the government’s refusal to say whether it was investigating UK-based Gamma International (GI). GI’s FinFisher software has allegedly been used by some two dozen countries worldwide
Human rights group sues British government over export of spying technology used in Bahrain - The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/human-rights-group-sues-british-govt-over-export-of-spying-technology-used-in-bahrain/2013/04/15/b67a899c-a63c-11e2-9e1c-bb0fb0c2edd9_story.html
« Privacy International » a déposé [aujourd’hui] une plainte devant la Haute Cour de Londres contre le gouvernement britannique sur le fait que ce dernier refuse de dire s’il mène une enquête sur Gamma International, basé à Londres, dont le logiciel FinFisher a été utilisé dans plus de deux douzaines de pays, dont le Bahreïn, l’Egypte, l’Ethiopie, le Turkménistan et le Vietnam.
Camp Nama: British personnel reveal horrors of secret US base in Baghdad | World news | guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/01/camp-nama-iraq-human-rights-abuses
Codenamed Task Force 121, the joint US-UK special forces unit was at first deployed to detain individuals thought to have information about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. Once it was realised that Saddam’s regime had long since abandoned its WMD programme, TF 121 was re-tasked with tracking down people who might know where the deposed dictator and his loyalists might be, and then with catching al-Qaida leaders who sprang up in the country after the regime collapsed.
Suspects were brought to the secret prison at Baghdad International airport, known as Camp Nama, for questioning by US military and civilian interrogators. But the methods used were so brutal that they drew condemnation not only from a US human rights body but from a special investigator reporting to the Pentagon.
A British serviceman who served at Nama recalled: “I saw one man having his prosthetic leg being pulled off him, and being beaten about the head with it before he was thrown on to the truck.”
C’est désormais officiel, il y a « des centaines » d’Européens qui combattent en Syrie dans des groupes liés à Al Qaeda (source : Charles Farr du Ministère de l’Intérieur britannique).
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9956133/Syria-up-to-100-British-Muslims-fighting-in-war.html
There are “hundreds” of Europeans now fighting in Syria, some of whom are with groups linked to al Qaeda, the Home Office told MPs.
The British-born jihadis are said to have joined the fight with Jabhat al-Nusra, the country’s most militant al-Qaeda gang.
The fighters have come from range of ethnic backgrounds include young Asians, converts to Islam and men from north African backgrounds.
Je me demande s’il existe des reprises en français… (pas trouvé)
je ne sais pas ce que ça vaut... ici on parle de belges
http://www.7sur7.be/7s7/fr/1505/Monde/article/detail/1594281/2013/03/11/L-UE-preoccupee-par-les-jihadistes-europeens-combattant-en-Syrie.dhtml
mais ce qui inquiète l’Europe c’est leur retour :)
Le coordinateur européen de la lutte contre le terrorisme, Gilles de Kerchove, a exprimé lundi les inquiétudes de l’UE concernant les « jihadistes européens » qui combattent en Syrie et pourraient « représenter une menace » lorsqu’ils rentreront dans leur pays.
Russie (RT) + Argentine = British double-standards in the Falklands
http://rt.com/op-edge/british-double-standards-in-the-falklands-201
Is this the antibiotic apocalypse?
http://www.montrealgazette.com/health/this+antibiotic+apocalypse/8088447/story.html
Imagine a world where a scratch would strike terror into your soul. A place where giving birth is a life-and-death experience, where every sore throat and stomach upset is potentially lethal. A world where almost no surgeon will operate unless the only alternative is certain death and where chemotherapy is too deadly to contemplate. This could be our awful future, according to Prof. Sally Davies, the British government’s chief medical officer. She has warned the world faces an antibiotic apocalypse, a “ticking time bomb” and a “catastrophic threat to the population” as medicine faces the prospect of losing probably the most powerful weapon in its armoury - the effective antibiotic.
The tragedy is that this is a disaster of our own making. Thanks to a combination of profligacy, wilful stupidity, the laziness of thousands of doctors and the selfish persistence of millions of patients in demanding instant cures for minor illnesses that would go away on their own, simple bacterial infections could once again become the scourge of humanity.
(…)
This sad story is a version of the “tragedy of the commons” - a disaster that occurs when an action beneficial to an individual causes great harm to the community. The main cause of the antibiotic apocalypse has been over-prescribing, which increases the exposure of bacteria in the population as a whole to the drug in question, and gives these microbes more opportunity to evolve resistance.
(…)
Another major cause is the massive quantity of antibiotics fed to livestock. Cattle, pigs and chickens are not just given the drugs to cure illness, but for their side effects, which include their ability to stimulate growth.
Je me souviens d’un documentaire des années 80 qui sonnait déjà l’alarme sur le problème des multi-résistances aux antibiotiques. À l’époque on parlait plus des staphylocoque dorés et des maladies nosocomiales mais toutes les explication sur la prolifération des antibiotiques étaient déjà connues. Le document se concentrait sur les problèmes de pays riches, et rien sur la tuberculose.
C’est hyper flippant cet article surtout que quant je lie le tien @fil sur l.Afrique du sud, je ne voie que des problèmes insolubles. Le fait par exemple qu’il faille enfermer les patients pour limiter la contamination est un véritable dilemme. Et bien sur toujours les Big-pharma qui ne cherchent que le profit et le court terme qui est toujours le point central des pires horreurs.
Ce qui est encore plus flippant c’est que j’ai l’impression que nos gouvernement vont juste profiter des épidémies pour renforcer les obstacles a l’immigration et faire de la tuberculose une aubaine pour flatter la xénophobie ordinaire.
La grippe espagnol était de la petite bière par rapport à ce qui semble nous attendre.
The Meat Industry Now Consumes Four-Fifths of All Antibiotics
►http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/02/meat-industry-still-gorging-antibiotics
Exclusive: Secret war on enemy within - British terror suspects quietly stripped of citizenship… then killed by drones
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/exclusive-secret-war-on-enemy-within--british-terror-suspects-quietly
The Government has secretly ramped up a controversial programme that strips people of their British citizenship on national security grounds – with two of the men subsequently killed by American drone attacks.
Wilson and Plame: The whistleblowers who waited too long to blow the whistle — War in Context
http://warincontext.org/2013/02/27/wilson-and-plame-the-whistleblowers-who-waited-too-long-to-blow-the-wh
Ten years after Colin Powell lied to the UN Security Council to help start the war on Iraq, Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame recount some of the events that led to war, but the final line of their commentary is perhaps all they needed to say:
We did not do nearly enough to prevent this tragedy perpetrated on Iraq, on the world, and on ourselves.
On January 28, 2003, President Bush said: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
Joe Wilson knew at that time that Bush was lying, but he waited until July 6, 2003 before speaking out.
When Valerie Plame heard Powell lying to the UNSC she kept quiet. She didn’t want to lose her job at the CIA.
How many other careerists around Washington are there, who when their consciences told them to speak out, decided to put their material and professional interests first and remain silent — even when as a consequence, hundreds of thousands of people ended up losing their lives?
Britain’s colonial shame: Slave-owners given huge payouts after abolition - Home News - UK - The Independent
The true scale of Britain’s involvement in the slave trade has been laid bare in documents revealing how the country’s wealthiest families received the modern equivalent of billions of pounds in compensation after slavery was abolished.
The previously unseen records show exactly who received what in payouts from the Government when slave ownership was abolished by Britain – much to the potential embarrassment of their descendants. Dr Nick Draper from University College London, who has studied the compensation papers, says as many as one-fifth of wealthy Victorian Britons derived all or part of their fortunes from the slave economy.
Britain’s colonial shame: Slave-owners given huge payouts after abolition - Home News - UK - The Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britains-colonial-shame-slaveowners-given-huge-payouts-after-abolitio
The true scale of Britain’s involvement in the slave trade has been laid bare in documents revealing how the country’s wealthiest families received the modern equivalent of billions of pounds in compensation after slavery was abolished.
Mons Hall, named after the 1914 battle that saw thousands killed, will be renamed the King Hamad Hall after he gave £3 million towards its refurbishment.
Defence chiefs were accused of betraying the memory of soldiers who gave their lives for their country.
It emerged an accommodation block at the Army officer training academy has also been named after the first president of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) following a £15 million donation from the country.
(the same generous Shaykh Zayed with a theatre after his name at the London School of Economics)
Le très réjouissant article de Glenn Greenwald: Cameron’s attack on George Galloway reflects the west’s self-delusions
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/31/cameron-galloway-saudis-bahrain-dictators
As usual, anyone who questions the militarism of western governments is instantly smeared as a sympathizer or even supporter of tyrants. Thus, those who opposed the aggressive attack on Iraq were pro-Saddam; those who now oppose bombing Iran love the mullahs; those who oppose Nato intervention in Syria or Libya harbor affection for Assad and Ghadaffi - just as those who opposed the Vietnam War fifty years ago or Reagan’s brutal covert wars in Latin America thirty years ago were Communist sympathizers, etc. etc. Cameron’s outburst was just the standard smear tactic used for decades by western leaders to try to discredit anyone who opposes their wars.
The more important point here is that of all the people on the planet, there is nobody with less authority to accuse others of supporting “brutal Arab dictators in the world” than David Cameron and his Nato allies, including those in the Obama administration. Supporting “brutal Arab dictators in the world” is a perfect summary of the west’s approach to the Arab world for the last five decades, and it continues to be.
Le testament politique du #libertarien Ron Paul
Ron Paul’s Last Speech to Congress : 30+ Strangely Ordered Questions - Conor Friedersdorf - The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/11/ron-pauls-last-speech-to-congress-30-strangely-ordered-questions/265263
– Why are sick people who use medical marijuana put in prison?
– Why does the federal government restrict the drinking of raw milk?
– Why can’t Americans manufacturer rope and other products from hemp?
– Why are Americans not allowed to use gold and silver as legal tender as mandated by the Constitution?
– Why is Germany concerned enough to consider repatriating their gold held by the FED for her in New York? Is it that the trust in the U.S. and dollar supremacy beginning to wane?
– Why do our political leaders believe it’s unnecessary to thoroughly audit our own gold?
– Why can’t Americans decide which type of light bulbs they can buy?
– Why is the TSA permitted to abuse the rights of any American traveling by air?
– Why should there be mandatory sentences—even up to life for crimes without victims—as our drug laws require?
– Why have we allowed the federal government to regulate commodes in our homes?
– Why is it political suicide for anyone to criticize AIPAC ?
– Why haven’t we given up on the drug war since it’s an obvious failure and violates the people’s rights? Has nobody noticed that the authorities can’t even keep drugs out of the prisons? How can making our entire society a prison solve the problem?
– Why do we sacrifice so much getting needlessly involved in border disputes and civil strife around the world and ignore the root cause of the most deadly border in the world-the one between Mexico and the US?
– Why does Congress willingly give up its prerogatives to the Executive Branch?
– Why does changing the party in power never change policy? Could it be that the views of both parties are essentially the same?
– Why did the big banks, the large corporations, and foreign banks and foreign central banks get bailed out in 2008 and the middle class lost their jobs and their homes?
– Why do so many in the government and the federal officials believe that creating money out of thin air creates wealth?
– Why do so many accept the deeply flawed principle that government bureaucrats and politicians can protect us from ourselves without totally destroying the principle of liberty?
– Why can’t people understand that war always destroys wealth and liberty?
– Why is there so little concern for the Executive Order that gives the President authority to establish a “kill list,” including American citizens, of those targeted for assassination?
– Why is patriotism thought to be blind loyalty to the government and the politicians who run it, rather than loyalty to the principles of liberty and support for the people? Real patriotism is a willingness to challenge the government when it’s wrong.
– Why is it is claimed that if people won’t or can’t take care of their own needs, that people in government can do it for them?
– Why did we ever give the government a safe haven for initiating violence against the people?
– Why do some members defend free markets, but not civil liberties?
– Why do some members defend civil liberties but not free markets? Aren’t they the same?
– Why don’t more defend both economic liberty and personal liberty?
– Why are there not more individuals who seek to intellectually influence others to bring about positive changes than those who seek power to force others to obey their commands?
– Why does the use of religion to support a social gospel and preemptive wars, both of which requires authoritarians to use violence, or the threat of violence, go unchallenged? Aggression and forced redistribution of wealth has nothing to do with the teachings of the world’s great religions.
– Why do we allow the government and the Federal Reserve to disseminate false information dealing with both economic and foreign policy?
– Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority?
– Why should anyone be surprised that Congress has no credibility, since there’s such a disconnect between what politicians say and what they do?
texte complet :
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2012_cr/ronpaul.html
(à noter, il y a une coquille dans le texte complet qui écrit APAC là il faut lire AIPAC)
The global struggle for queer freedom
By Peter Tatchell
London - 8 November 2012 - Global magazine
http://bit.ly/YOXdZV
Homophobic persecution and discrimination is rife in large parts of the world, and the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are still not recognised or protected by international law. Nonetheless, progress towards equality is being made thanks to the defiance and bravery of activists.
Over the last two decades, the impoverished South Asian nation of Nepal has made an extraordinary transition from monarchical tyranny to a secular democratic republic. This progress has included significant advances for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. Thanks to the campaigns of the LGBT organisation, the Blue Diamond Society (BDS), there is cross-party consensus on LGBT equality in parliament, and the Supreme Court of Nepal ruled in 2007 that the government must repeal all laws that discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity.
As a consequence, citizenship and ID documents now include the option of ‘third gender’ to address the demands of people who do not identify themselves as either male or female; Nepal has opened South Asia’s first LGBT community centre; MPs are considering the legalisation of same-sex marriage; and the openly gay leader of the BDS, Sunil Pant, was elected to the Constituent Assembly in 2008 and now hosts one of Nepal’s most popular TV talk shows. Progress indeed.
However, in large parts of the world, homophobic and transphobic oppression remains rife. It is estimated that the global LGBT population is somewhere between 250 million and 500 million people (5-10 percent of the world population aged over 16). Most of these people – hundreds of millions of them – are forced to hide their sexuality, fearing ostracism, harassment, discrimination, imprisonment, torture and even murder.
Some of this violence is perpetrated by vigilantes, including right-wing death squads in certain regions of countries like Mexico and Brazil. They justify the killing of queers as ‘social cleansing’. Other homophobic persecution is officially encouraged and enforced by governments, police, courts, media and religious leaders. MPs in Latvia, Ukraine, Lithuania, some Moldovan cities and several Russian regions have proposed or passed laws banning so-called homosexual propaganda and promotion.
In Russia, religious leaders have united to denounce the LGBT community. The Orthodox Church has called homosexuality a “sin which destroys human beings and condemns them to a spiritual death”. The Supreme Mufti of Russia’s Muslims, Talgat Tajuddin, says gay campaigners “should be bashed…Sexual minorities have no rights, because they have crossed the line. Alternative sexuality is a crime against God.” Russia’s Chief Rabbi, Berel Lazar, has condemned Gay Pride parades as “a blow for morality”, adding that there is no right to “sexual perversions”. Successive Moscow mayors have repeatedly banned Gay Pride marches. This violates Russia’s constitution and law, which guarantee freedom of expression and the right to peaceful protest. LGBT people who have attempted to march have been beaten and arrested.
Meanwhile, the total criminalisation of homosexuality continues in nearly 80 countries – including most of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Middle East – with penalties ranging from a one-year jail sentence to life imprisonment. Half of these countries are former British colonies and current members of the Commonwealth – an association of nations that is supposedly committed to uphold democracy and human rights. The anti-gay laws in these Commonwealth nations were originally legislated by the British government in the 19th century during the period of colonial rule. They were never repealed when these nations won their independence from Britain.
As well as homophobic laws, British imperialism imposed homophobic prejudice by means of the fire-and-brimstone Christian fundamentalist missionaries who sought to ‘civilise’ the so-called ‘heathen’ peoples of the colonies. They instilled in these countries an intolerance of homosexuality that continues to this day. As a result, in part at least, homophobia is rampant in much of Africa.
In the last year, more than 20 men have been arrested in Cameroon on suspicion of homosexuality, often without any clear evidence that they had same-sex relations. Roger Jean-Claude Mbédé has spent a year in prison for sending an SMS text message to another man: “I’m very much in love w/u.” He is facing another two years behind bars in a filthy, insanitary prison where he suffers daily abuse from guards and inmates. In Nigeria, in 2005, six teenage lesbians, one only 12 years old, were ordered to be punished with an agonising 90 lashes for consensual same-sex relations. More recently, a Nigerian gay pastor from the House of Rainbow church and another Christian gay activist were forced to flee the country after receiving death threats. They were given no police protection. Government ministers in Namibia, echoing the hatred of President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, have denounced lesbians and gays as “un-African”, as traitors and as spreaders of HIV/AIDS.
However, homophobic oppression is most extreme in the Islamist states that impose the death penalty for same-sex relations, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Mauritania, Sudan and Yemen. In some regions of other countries – such as Nigeria, Pakistan and Somalia – shariah law is enforced and LGBT people can be stoned to death. The Iranian persecution of LGBTs continues unabated. Twenty-two-year-old Amir was entrapped via a gay dating website. The person he arranged to meet turned out to be a member of the morality police. Amir was jailed, tortured and sentenced to 100 lashes, which caused him to lose consciousness and left his whole back covered in huge bloody welts. He is just one of many Iranian LGBTs who have been subjected to lashings, torture and imprisonment – and who are at risk of execution. In early 2006, Iran’s Gulf neighbour, the United Arab Emirates, imposed a six-year jail sentence on 11 gay men arrested at a private party. They were not imprisoned for sexual acts, but merely for being gay and attending a gay social gathering.
Iraq is an example of extreme persecution – LGBT Iraqis suffer even more today than they did under the dictator Saddam Hussein. A BBC investigation in 2012 revealed that the police have colluded with the targeted murder of up to 1,000 LGBT people by Islamist militias and death squads who seek the total extermination of ‘sexual deviants’. Gang rape, torture and detention without trial are also commonplace. The Iraqi government is denying or ignoring this homophobic terror campaign. Francesco Motta, the representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Iraq, says the Iraqi government is in violation of international law and its failure to take action against the killings makes the state an accomplice to the crime.
Amid this gloom, in 2008 something truly remarkable and historic happened: 66 countries signed a UN statement calling for the universal decriminalisation of homosexuality and condemning homophobic discrimination and violence. Although the statement fell short of majority support and is not binding on UN member states, this was the first time the UN General Assembly had addressed the issue of LGBT human rights. Previous attempts had been blocked by an unholy alliance of the Vatican and Islamist states.
In March 2011, a new version of the statement was signed by 85 countries. Three months later, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution condemning anti-LGBT discrimination and hate crimes, urging a UN report on the issue. The report, authored by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, was published in December 2011, and noted with concern: “Homophobic and transphobic violence has been recorded in all regions. Such violence may be physical (including murder, beatings, kidnappings, rape and sexual assault) or psychological (including threats, coercion and arbitrary deprivations of liberty).”
Despite these breakthroughs, even today no international human rights convention specifically acknowledges love and sexual rights as human rights. None explicitly guarantees equality and non-discrimination to LGBT people. The right to love a person of one’s choice is absent from global humanitarian statutes. Relationships between partners of the same sex are not officially recognised in any international law. There is nothing in the many UN conventions that specifically upholds LGBT equality and prohibits homophobic discrimination. Some UN members and bodies have merely chosen to interpret the general commitments to equal rights and non-discrimination in the existing conventions as applying to LGBT people.
Likewise with regard to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). It is only in the last decade or so that the ECHR’s equality and privacy clauses have been interpreted to outlaw discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. In the late 1990s, British LGBT citizens filed appeals at the European Court of Human Rights against the UK’s then discriminatory, homophobic laws. They cited the ECHR’s right to privacy and anti-discrimination clauses to successfully challenge anti-gay UK legislation dating back centuries. These victories in Strasbourg forced the British government to repeal the unequal age of consent for gay men, discriminatory sexual offences laws and the ban on lesbians and gays serving in the armed forces. ECHR judgements also successfully pressured other countries, such as Romania and Cyprus, to decriminalise homosexuality. The convention has thus played an important role in challenging and overturning homophobic legislation.
Of the 193 member states of the UN, only a handful have repealed nearly all major legal inequalities against LGBT people: the Netherlands, South Africa, Belgium, Spain, France, Brazil, Germany, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Portugal, Canada, New Zealand and, more recently, the UK.
Britain’s record was not always so positive. Until 1999, when legislative reform began, the UK had the largest number of homophobic laws of any country on earth – some of them dating back centuries. Thanks to an astute 20-year twin-track campaign of direct action protest and parliamentary lobbying, today the UK is one of the world’s most progressive countries on LGBT rights.
Some supposedly liberal democracies have been slow to grant LGBT equality. The USA maintains a federal ban on same-sex marriage and not all states have full anti-discrimination protection. The Australian parliament recently voted down a bill to allow same-sex couples to marry, even though such legislation has overwhelming public support. Most of the emergent post-communist Central and Eastern European democracies maintain varying degrees of legal discrimination – and harbour public attitudes that are extremely homophobic.
Despite this discrimination, LGBT people have made huge strides forward in many parts of the world. A mere four decades ago, ‘queers’ were almost universally seen as mad, bad and sad. Same-sex relations were deemed a sin, a crime and a sickness. It was only in the early 1990s that the World Health Organization declassified homosexuality as an illness, and that Amnesty International agreed to campaign for LGBT human rights and to adopt jailed LGBTs as prisoners of conscience.
Nowadays, the global tide is shifting in favour of LGBT emancipation. In 1999, in New Zealand, Georgina Beyer became the world’s first openly transgender MP. Uruguay, once a military dictatorship, has lifted its prohibition on gay servicemen and women. History has been made in Lebanon – the first Arab Middle East nation to allow the open, legal establishment of an LGBT welfare and human rights group, Helem.
While fundamentalist religion is still a major threat to LGBT equality, campaigners also have allies in many faiths. The anti-apartheid hero Archbishop Desmond Tutu has compared homophobia to racism, and described the battle for LGBT freedom as the moral equivalent of the fight against apartheid. Eight countries now outlaw sexual orientation discrimination in their constitutions: South Africa (1996), Ecuador (1998), Switzerland (2000), Sweden (2003), Portugal (2004), the British Virgin Islands (2007), Kosovo (2008) and Bolivia (2009).
In almost every country on earth, there are LGBT freedom movements – some open, others clandestine. For the first time ever, countries like the Philippines, Estonia, Columbia, Russia, Sri Lanka and China are hosting LGBT conferences and Gay Pride celebrations. Via the internet and pop culture, LGBT people in small towns in Ghana, Peru, Uzbekistan, Kuwait, Vietnam, St Lucia, Palestine, Fiji and Kenya are connecting with the worldwide LGBT community. The struggle for LGBT liberation has gone global. We’ve begun to roll back the homophobia of centuries. Bravo!
More info: www.PeterTatchellFoundation.org
About the author:
Peter Tatchell has campaigned for human rights and LGBT freedom since 1967. In 1999, he made a citizen’s arrest of the Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, for human rights abuses.
Fissures in Hizballah’s Edifice of Control | Middle East Research and Information Project
http://www.merip.org/mero/mero103012
Many Lebanese, and the March 14 forces in particular, are wont to blame Hizballah for any and all security problems, especially those linked to the party’s next-door patron, Syria. Yet to do so is to miss the real story of the August abductions, which is that Hizballah does not in fact dominate the dahiya or the Shi‘i community in Lebanon. The kidnappings highlighted the growing clout of forces that are, in effect, rivals for power within that community.
Passionnant article, par deux remarquables connaisseuses de la banlieue sud de Beyrouth, la banlieue du Hezbollah (Lara Deeb et Mona Harb qui tweete à @mona_harb_ https://twitter.com/mona_harb_). On pourrait résumer l’article par l’idée que la contre-société du Hezbollah n’a pas dissous les formes « traditionnelles » d’organisation caractéristiques de la société libanaise, et a même été obligée de les accepter, de composer avec elles et de les utiliser. Dans le moment présent, ces « fissures » apparaissent au grand jour à un moment où, vraies ou fausses, les informations sur les troubles à l’intérieur du Hezbollah quant à la ligne à suivre en Syrie suggèrent que les alliances géopolitiques construites dans la longue durée depuis les années 1990 sont fragilisées. Voir par exemple http://seenthis.net/messages/94247
#Liban
#Syrie
#Dahiyeh
#Beyrouth
#banlieue-sud
Torture UK: why Britain has blood on its hands (The Guardian)
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/oct/19/torture-uk-britain-blood-government?CMP=twt_gu
When the US and its allies went to war in Afghanistan in 2001, it was inevitable that a small number of those captured on the battlefield would be British. For more than a decade, MI5 had been aware that British Muslims had been travelling to Pakistan and Afghanistan in what it saw as a form of jihadi tourism that posed no threat to the UK. All that changed after 9/11. (...) Source: The Guardian
Longue enquête de Ian Cobain : comment la Grande Bretagne a participé aux actes de torture contre ses propres citoyens
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/oct/19/torture-uk-britain-blood-government?CMP=twt_gu
The UK would do more than offer mere logistics support to the rendition programme, however. It would become an enthusiastic participant. And, as I discovered, this would not be the first time it was involved with the torture of its own citizens.
Colonised and coloniser, empire’s poison infects us all | George Monbiot (The Guardian)
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/08/empire-torture-kenya-catastrophe-europe
Last week three elderly Kenyans established the right to sue the British government for the torture that they suffered – castration, beating and rape – in the Kikuyu detention camps it ran in the 1950s. Many tens of thousands were detained and tortured in the camps. I won’t spare you the details: we have been sparing ourselves the details for far too long. Large numbers of men were castrated with pliers. Others were raped, sometimes with the use of knives, broken bottles, rifle barrels and scorpions. Women had similar instruments forced into their vaginas. The guards and officials sliced off ears and fingers, gouged out eyes, mutilated women’s breasts with pliers, poured paraffin over people and set them alight. Untold thousands died. (...) Source: The Guardian
Ces aspects positifs de la colonisation qui autorisent les occidentaux à brandir leur supériorité morale à tout bout de champ :
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/08/empire-torture-kenya-catastrophe-europe
Last week three elderly Kenyans established the right to sue the British government for the torture that they suffered – castration, beating and rape – in the Kikuyu detention camps it ran in the 1950s.
Many tens of thousands were detained and tortured in the camps. I won’t spare you the details: we have been sparing ourselves the details for far too long. Large numbers of men were castrated with pliers. Others were raped, sometimes with the use of knives, broken bottles, rifle barrels and scorpions. Women had similar instruments forced into their vaginas. The guards and officials sliced off ears and fingers, gouged out eyes, mutilated women’s breasts with pliers, poured paraffin over people and set them alight. Untold thousands died.
The government’s secret archive, revealed this April, shows that the attorney general, the colonial governor and the colonial secretary knew what was happening. The governor ensured that the perpetrators had legal immunity: including the British officers reported to him for roasting prisoners to death. In public the colonial secretary lied and kept lying.