Gay rights advocates scored a hard-fought victory at the U.N. on Tuesday when member states restored a reference to sexual orientation, dropped last month from a resolution opposing the unjustified killing of minority groups.
The removal of the reference, at the urging of African and Arab countries last month, alarmed human rights advocates who said gay people are among minority groups that need special protection from extrajudicial and other unjustified slayings. U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice at the time said she was "incensed" by the change and announced she would sponsor the measure to restore the language.
Gay advocates win victory at UN
Obama administration readies indefinite detention order for Guantanamo detainees
The Obama administration is preparing an executive order that would formalize indefinite detention without trial for some detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but allow those detainees and their lawyers to challenge the basis for continued incarceration, U.S. officials said.
The administration has long signaled that the use of prolonged detention, preferably at a facility in the United States, was one element of its plan to close Guantanamo. An interagency task force found that 48 of the 174 detainees remaining at the facility would have to be held in what the administration calls prolonged detention.
Racial discrimination - a tool of occupation
![Racial discrimination - a tool of occupation](http://blogs.aljazeera.net/sites/default/files/imagecache/BlogsMainImage/village.jpg)
It is decided by a very intricate system of rules, restrictions, and checkpoints that Israel has designed to limit Palestinian movement. There are settler-only roads, "shared" roads, and then there are no roads at all … just rugged terrains. So sometimes, to go southwest, Palestinians must first drive northeast, etc. …
Israeli ethnic cleansing surge: How many more Palestinian homes must be demolished before western governments act?
Meanwhile, Israel's campaign is unfolding with such breath-taking speed that it is almost impossible to keep up. Today, 20 December, Israeli forces destroyed five shops in the southern West Bank city of Hebron. Further north, they ordered the residents of Khirbet Tana, a tiny Palestinian village to the east of Nablus, to evacuate their homes within 24 hours. Khirbet Tana is located just two kilometres from the illegal Israeli settlement of Mekhora, and this explains in part the ultimatum. The security and comfort of the illegal Jewish settlers must be guaranteed, by any means, regardless of international laws and conventions.
Ex-Guantanamo Official Was Told Not to Discuss Policy Surrounding Antimalarial Drug Used on Detainees
Military officials were instructed not to publicly discuss a decision made in January 2002 to presumptively treat all Guantanamo detainees with a high dosage of a controversial antimalarial drug that has been directly linked to suicide, hallucinations, seizures and other severe neuropsychological side effects, according to a retired Navy captain who signed the policy directive.
Capt. Albert J. Shimkus, the former commanding officer and chief surgeon for both of the Naval Hospital at Guantanamo Bay and Joint Task Force 160, which administered health care to detainees, defended the unprecedented practice, first reported by Truthout earlier this month, to administer 1250 mg of the drug mefloquine to all "war on terror" prisoners transferred to Guantanamo within the first 24 hours after their arrival, regardless of whether they had malaria or not.
Human Rights Watch: Israel preventing Palestinian development
Israel is preventing Palestinian development in parts of the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem while pouring funding into Jewish settlements, the Human Rights Watch group said on Sunday.
Its 166-page report released by HRW focused on Israeli policies in areas of the West Bank where the Palestinian Authority does not hold any sway under interim peace deals and in East Jerusalem, annexed to Israel after its capture in a 1967 war.
Promoting Jewish Victimhood as Guise for Victimizing Palestinians
During a July 2007 meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Canada supported the appointment of a representative to the chair to report on anti-Semitism. Despite calls for a change in OSCE policy, Ottawa supported recognizing prejudice against Jews as a unique phenomenon, not one among many forms of bigotry. The OSCE meeting condemned all forms of racism, discrimination and “aggressive nationalism” but added: “Recognizing its unique and historic character, [we] condemn anti-Semitism without reservation, whether expressed in a traditional manner or through new forms and manifestations.”
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