Tuesday, March 01, 2005
US administration reaffirms commitment to values of bigotry, homophobia and restricting women's freedom.
The Bush administration was accused yesterday of... demanding that the UN publicly renounce abortion rights.
The UN's commission on the status of women had drafted a brief declaration reaffirming support for the Beijing declaration, and calling for further effort to implement its recommendations. Organisers had hoped that informal discussions last week would reach a consensus on the draft... But those hopes were crushed in a closed-door session late last week when Washington demanded the declaration reaffirm its support for the declarations made in Beijing 10 years ago only if "they do not include the right to abortion", says a copy of the US text obtained by the Guardian.
The chief of the US delegation, Sichan Siv, went on to tell his counterparts that Washington opposed the ratification of the international treaty on women's equality, as well as resolutions that would "place emphasis on 'rights' that not all member states accept, such as so-called 'sexual rights'." (My emphasis)
It's them and the Vatican against the rest of the UN at the moment, it's the US and an organisation even more bureaucratic and unaccountable than the UN taking a stand on wanting to lead up back to the nineteenth century.
Two-thirds of the [UK] public want to have a say in how the country is run, but only 27% feel that they do have a say, [a survey] shows.
The Campaign to Restore Enterprise to Tv (I think they're Nuts) reports fundraising success. Enterprise series four starts here next week. I do tend to feel that even if it is all our Christmasses come at once, if it's some seventy episodes in before script-writers start giving most of the crew characters then the show deserves to die. And some of this production team have been at this since the mid-eighties, when Next Gen was first mooted. The franchise needs to pause, take a breath, then come back with something that doesn't suck.
US schools suck, apparently. And not just the ones that teach Christian theology in their biology classes. What little I know about the US system I learnt from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and skeptical books, but most of what is happening in US schools three years ago is happening in UK schools now. Beyond the extreme basics of reading and writing education for me was somewhere I went to every day and a nugget of information sometimes slipped in to my brain. Government minister Ruth Kelly insists we're going to keep the current system of GCSEs and A Levels, but I do wonder how useful any of these various tests, SATs, GCSEs, A Levels, are to you, other than as a way for another educational institution to decide whether it's worth them offering you a place. When I left school it was still offering GCSEs in Latin! As Eddie Izzard said, "At an airport you're not likely to be able to say 'Spechen zie Latin?'"
The Bush administration was accused yesterday of... demanding that the UN publicly renounce abortion rights.
The UN's commission on the status of women had drafted a brief declaration reaffirming support for the Beijing declaration, and calling for further effort to implement its recommendations. Organisers had hoped that informal discussions last week would reach a consensus on the draft... But those hopes were crushed in a closed-door session late last week when Washington demanded the declaration reaffirm its support for the declarations made in Beijing 10 years ago only if "they do not include the right to abortion", says a copy of the US text obtained by the Guardian.
The chief of the US delegation, Sichan Siv, went on to tell his counterparts that Washington opposed the ratification of the international treaty on women's equality, as well as resolutions that would "place emphasis on 'rights' that not all member states accept, such as so-called 'sexual rights'." (My emphasis)
It's them and the Vatican against the rest of the UN at the moment, it's the US and an organisation even more bureaucratic and unaccountable than the UN taking a stand on wanting to lead up back to the nineteenth century.
Two-thirds of the [UK] public want to have a say in how the country is run, but only 27% feel that they do have a say, [a survey] shows.
The Campaign to Restore Enterprise to Tv (I think they're Nuts) reports fundraising success. Enterprise series four starts here next week. I do tend to feel that even if it is all our Christmasses come at once, if it's some seventy episodes in before script-writers start giving most of the crew characters then the show deserves to die. And some of this production team have been at this since the mid-eighties, when Next Gen was first mooted. The franchise needs to pause, take a breath, then come back with something that doesn't suck.
US schools suck, apparently. And not just the ones that teach Christian theology in their biology classes. What little I know about the US system I learnt from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and skeptical books, but most of what is happening in US schools three years ago is happening in UK schools now. Beyond the extreme basics of reading and writing education for me was somewhere I went to every day and a nugget of information sometimes slipped in to my brain. Government minister Ruth Kelly insists we're going to keep the current system of GCSEs and A Levels, but I do wonder how useful any of these various tests, SATs, GCSEs, A Levels, are to you, other than as a way for another educational institution to decide whether it's worth them offering you a place. When I left school it was still offering GCSEs in Latin! As Eddie Izzard said, "At an airport you're not likely to be able to say 'Spechen zie Latin?'"
