19 posts tagged “freedom”
Johanna Sigurdardottir was named new prime minister by the country's coalition political parties.
Iceland's previous coalition cabinet of PM Geir Haarde collapsed last month under the strain of an escalating economic crisis.
Ms Sigurdardottir's government said on Sunday it would immediately start to tackle Iceland's crisis.
"The government inherits enormous difficulties due to the banking and systemic collapse as well as considerable and rapidly increasing foreign debts and liabilities of the national economy," the new coalition said in a statement.
It said its priorities would be replacing the board of governors of the central bank and to ask a parliamentary committee to look at the possibility of entering the European Union...
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Alone among major Western nations, the United States has refused to sign a declaration presented Thursday at the United Nations calling for worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality.
US balks at backing condemnation of anti-gay laws
By DAVID CRARY – December 19, 2008
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Alone among major Western nations, the United States has refused to sign a declaration presented Thursday at the United Nations calling for worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality.
In all, 66 of the U.N.'s 192 member countries signed the nonbinding declaration — which backers called a historic step to push the General Assembly to deal more forthrightly with any-gay discrimination. More than 70 U.N. members outlaw homosexuality, and in several of them homosexual acts can be punished by execution.
Co-sponsored by France and the Netherlands, the declaration was signed by all 27 European Union members, as well as Japan, Australia, Mexico and three dozen other countries. There was broad opposition from Muslim nations, and the United States refused to sign, indicating that some parts of the declaration raised legal questions that needed further review...
According to some of the declaration's backers, U.S. officials expressed concern in private talks that some parts of the declaration might be problematic in committing the federal government on matters that fall under state jurisdiction. In numerous states, landlords and private employers are allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation; on the federal level, gays are not allowed to serve openly in the military.
Carolyn Vadino, a spokeswoman for the U.S. mission to the U.N., stressed that the United States — despite its unwillingness to sign — condemned any human rights violations related to sexual orientation.
Gay rights activists nonetheless were angered by the U.S. position...
The number of reported attacks against LGBT people increased 24 percent in 2007 over 2006, and they were expected to jump in 2008, said Sharon Stapel, executive director of the New York City Anti-Violence Project.
Anti-gay violence feared rising
By The Associated Press
12.15.2008 10:35am EST
(New York City) A rash of attacks against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people across the country - including the severe beating of a New York man whose attackers believed he was gay - suggests the number of reported assaults could rise in 2008, an advocacy group said.
The number of reported attacks against LGBT people increased 24 percent in 2007 over 2006, and they were expected to jump in 2008, said Sharon Stapel, executive director of the New York City Anti-Violence Project.
Officials were still crunching the 2008 figures, which will be released next spring, Stapel said.
The baseball bat murder of Ecuadorean immigrant Jose Sucuzhanay in New York on Sunday was the latest in a number of reported assaults, said the project, which coordinates organizations that document violence against LGBT and HIV-positive people. The attack left Sucuzhanay, 31, brain dead.
Since the February fatal shooting of Lawrence King, a 15-year-old Los Angeles boy who endured harassment after telling classmates he was gay, “we are witnessing what appears to be an increase in both the occurrence and severity of violence motivated by racism, homophobia, and transphobia,” said Stapel.
Stapel attributed the increase in part to more people reporting incidents, but she believed there actually could have been more assaults because 2008 was an election year.
“Election years are always violent years for us because of wedge issues,” Stapel said, referring to ballot measures this year banning gay marriage in California and Florida. “With increased visibility comes increased vulnerability to LGBT stereotypes and violence. We’ve seen some of the most violent hate crimes that we’ve seen in a while.”
In the case of Lawrence King, one of his classmates was charged as an adult in the slaying, which prosecutors classified as a hate crime.
Other incidents include the discovery of Angie Zapata’s body in July in her apartment in Greeley, Colo. Zapata, 18, was a transgender woman. Police have charged a man with murder as a hate crime in her death.
In June, a surveillance tape was publicized showing Memphis, Tenn., police officers beating Duanna Johnson, a transgendered woman, and shouting slurs in a jail booking area; a public outcry erupted. Johnson was found fatally shot on a Memphis street in November.
Also in New York City, police arrested four teenagers on charges of assaulting a priest outside a shelter he ran for homeless transgender youths in July. Witnesses said the four teens had harassed and taunted residents with homophobic slurs and insults before the assault.
“I expect the number will increase from 2007 to 2008,” Stapel said. “I hope I’m wrong about that.”
...The 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence (25 November – 10 December) is an annual campaign that is symbolic of the global women’s movement and end-violence networks. Its starting day, 25 November, is observed each year to honour the Mirabal sisters, three political activists from the Dominican Republic who were assassinated on the same date in 1961. The end of the 16 Days is marked by 10 December, International Human Rights Day...
From the Center for Women's Global Leadership (link above):
The 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence is an international campaign originating from the first Women's Global Leadership Institute sponsored by the Center for Women's Global Leadership in 1991. Participants chose the dates, November 25, International Day Against Violence Against Women and December 10, International Human Rights Day, in order to symbolically link violence against women and human rights and to emphasize that such violence is a violation of human rights. This 16-day period also highlights other significant dates including November 29, International Women Human Rights Defenders Day, December 1, World AIDS Day, and December 6, which marks the Anniversary of the Montreal Massacre.
The 16 Days Campaign has been used as an organizing strategy by individuals and groups around the world to call for the elimination of all forms of violence against women by:
- raising awareness about gender-based violence as a human rights issue at the local, national, regional and international levels
- strengthening local work around violence against women
- establishing a clear link between local and international work to end violence against women
- providing a forum in which organizers can develop and share new and effective strategies
- demonstrating the solidarity of women around the world organizing against violence against women
- creating tools to pressure governments to implement promises made to eliminate violence against women
Johnny Cash's America premieres tomorrow Thursday October 23, 2008 at 9/8c on A&E's Biography Channel
Johnny Cash's America was not red, white, or blue, but black. And that blackness contained multitudes. While society has become increasingly divided. Cash navigated some of the most contentious issue of our time - war, prison, reform, youth discontent, religion, Native American rights - without losing his audience. Americans who can agree on little else have agreed on Johnny Cash. What lessons can be learned from his story?
Johnny Cash's America blends biography, essay, and music to explore the meaning of one American's life. The film, which will be seen on A&E's Biography starting end of October (just in time for the election), chapters Cash's life, his agricultural roots, finding his voice within the original rock and rollers, his commitment to family and self education, his anger at the treatment of Native Americans, his refusal to let prisoners be forgotten, America's wars - his support and resistance, and patriotism even when questioning the government. All things that are totally relevant today.
This episode features couples who are part of a lawsuit in Maryland seeking to overturn state law that bars lesbians and gay men from marriage. Despite being in committed relationships, they lack the hundreds of legal protections afforded to heterosexual married couples, and must worry about how to look after their families without these protections. In courageously taking their fight for civil liberties to the public arena, they seek to change a system that unfairly harms same-sex couples and their families.
Anyone feel like dancing?
Change the world one song, one action, one belief at a time. (T. Chianetta)
Written by Andy Fraser, Gioia Bruno, Musiq Maniacs
Produced by Musiq Maniacs
Engineered by John D. Thomas
Video Edited by Kim Gonzalez
(c)2008 Smoovicity Inc. (SESAC)
*A song inspired by and written for Barack Obama
Free Download @
www.myspace.com/gioiab
www.gioiabruno.com
www.exposeonline.net
www.myspace.com/exposeonline
Iraqi Gay Activist Murdered in Baghdad
September 26, 2008
Michelle Garcia, The Advocate
A coordinator of an Iraqi LGBT advocacy group was assassinated Thursday. The 27-year-old university student, known only as Bashar, was assassinated in a barbershop in Baghdad. Militia members burst into the barbershop and "sprayed his body with bullets at point blank range," Peter Tatchell of the U.K gay advocacy OutRage! told the Guardian newspaper.
The student organized safe houses for gays and lesbians in Baghdad, where many seek refuge from militias that seek out and kill LGBT people...
A United Nations report on human rights, released in 2006, showed that while gays and lesbians are supposed to be protected by law in Iraq, LGBT residents must still live in hiding or face extreme brutality.
...gays and lesbians in Iraq are often threatened because "homosexuality is sometimes interpreted by people in Iraq as being a Western import...
October 10, 2008 will mark the arrest of the 20 millionth cannabis consumer arrested under cannabis prohibition, circa 1937
From NORML:
Marijuana Arrests For Year 2007: 872,721 Tops Record High -Five Percent Increase Over 2006
September 15, 2008 - Washington, DC
Washington, DC: Police arrested a record 872,721 persons for marijuana violations in 2007, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's annual Uniform Crime Report, released today. This is the largest total number of annual arrests for cannabis ever recorded by the FBI.
Cannabis arrests now comprise nearly 47.5 percent of all drug arrests in the United States...
...at current rates, a cannabis consumer is arrested every 37 seconds in America...
Of those charged with marijuana violations, approximately 89 percent, 775,138 Americans were charged with possession only...
...there has been a dramatic 195 percent increase in marijuana arrests in the last 15 years -- yet the public's access to pot remains largely unfettered and the self-reported use of cannabis remains largely unchanged...
...The total number of marijuana arrests in the U.S. for 2007 far exceeded the total number of arrests in the U.S. for all violent crimes combined...
...October 10, 2008 will mark the arrest of the 20 millionth cannabis consumer arrested under cannabis prohibition, circa 1937...
...Enforcing marijuana prohibition costs taxpayers between $10 billion and $12 billion annually and has led to the arrest of nearly 20 million Americans. Nevertheless, nearly 100 million Americans acknowledge having used marijuana during their lives...
