Edward Snowden: A worthy Human Rights award recipient

Now here is a slap in the face for the USA. The Americans have accused Edward Snowden, the so-called leaker, of everything under the sun starting with treason. The Europeans have a different slant on things. They want to award him a Human Rights prize.

"NSA leaker Edward Snowden joined three imprisoned Belarusian dissidents and Malala Yousafzai (pictured), the young Pakistani shot by the Taliban for supporting education for girls, on the short list Monday for the EU's Sakharov human rights prize.
By News Wires (text)

Three jailed Belarusian dissidents, US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden and Pakistani girls' education campaigner Malala Yousafzai were shortlisted Monday for the European Parliament's prestigious Sakharov human rights prize.

The three Belarusians, Ales Bialatski, Eduard Lobau and Mykola Statkevich, were jailed after mass protests in Minsk in December 2010 against the re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko.

They were backed for the prize, to be announced October 10 and officially November 20, by some 40 EU centre-right and conservative lawmakers."

France 24 reports here, in full.

Comments

Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives? In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t...

The NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) goes on hold.....because of one non-Treaty member (Israel)

Isn't there something radically wrong here? Israel, a non-signatory to the NPT has, evidently, been the cause for those countries that are Treaty members, notably Canada, the US and the UK, after 4 weeks of negotiation, effectively blocking off any meaningful progress in ensuring the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. IPS reports ..... "After nearly four weeks of negotiations, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference ended in a predictable outcome: a text overwhelmingly reflecting the views and interests of the nuclear-armed states and some of their nuclear-dependent allies. “The process to develop the draft Review Conference outcome document was anti-democratic and nontransparent,” Ray Acheson, director, Reaching Critical Will, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), told IPS. “This Review Conference has demonstrated beyond any doubt that continuing to rely on the nuclear-armed states or their nuclear-de...

#1 Prize for a bizarre story.....and lying!

No comment called for in this piece from CommonDreams: Another young black man: The strange sad case of 21-year-old Chavis Carter. Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas stopped him and two friends, found some marijuana, searched put Carter, then put him handcuffed behind his back into their patrol car, where they say he shot himself in the head with a gun they failed to find. The FBI is investigating. Police Chief Michael Yates, who stands behind his officers' story, says in an interview that the death is "definitely bizarre and defies logic at first glance." You think?

Mahler's Prodigal Son

Search This Blog