Some (mostly) human rights links [Note: Content Warning - reader discretion is advised!] and thoughts - Saturday 19th February, 2022

Black Lives Matter! Be Anti-Racist, Anti-Sexist, and Actively Inclusive in ALL Areas.
The Climate Crisis is real, urgent and existential!

The Pandemic is Real, and Vaccinations save lives. Stay safe - wash your hands, practice social distancing and wear a face mask in public, and follow informed medical advice - and be considerate towards those at risk or in situations of vulnerability (including economic) while the COVID-19 pandemic is a problem.

Some human rights (including significant, relevant links in other fields - such as geopolitics, democracy, or authoritarianism) links: 

• as hospitals crash under the weight of the latest COVID-19 wave, actions against protests by COVID- and reality-denying conspiracy fantasists in France, and Canada (which had been warned of extremists having infiltrated the protestors) & the US-Canada border (arrests) and New Zealand (including musical) . . . and our Prime Marketer dodges responsibility . . . but at least there are some "anti-vaxxers who changed their minds on Covid vaccines"; 
• nearly 100 people have died in more mudslides in Brazil;  
• talks are aiming for action on $2 trillion per year agricultural subsidies that harm the environment; 
• the activities of "tree-clearing criminals" are causing a plague of bushfires in Colombia;
  
• "a new kind of charger that allows an electric vehicle (EV) to be used as a giant home battery is close to going on sale in Australia"; 
• as the USA's "west has spent the last two decades in what scientists are now saying is the most extreme megadrought in at least 1,200 years", changes occur in Antarctica, and another fish kill may be about to happen in the Darling, confirmation that Australia's bushfire problem became catastrophic after the British invasion in 1788 (and land clearing in NSW has reached devastating levels - but see also here, on reversing desertification); 
• our inadequately designed electricity networks lack battery storage; 
• the flaw of limited or narrow focus in environmental footprint calculators;
  
• Russia continues to build up military forces on its border with Ukraine - and has started a cyber-attack / aka "hybrid war", prepared a media attack, and made a false flag attack in eastern Ukraine (where residents were told to flee to Russia), with claims Russia will try to institute coups after an invasion - and an interesting comment that "we should actually keep an eye on the Chinese embassy. As soon as it announces the evacuation of its employees, then the threat of war must be taken seriously. Russia will definitely warn China before bombing Kyiv. They are now strategic partners". Also, this may affect nuclear weapons controls - and US President Biden has failed so far to deliver on his promise to reform nuclear weapons policy (and the USA has not signed up to the ban on nuclear weapons); 
• an annual  conference on international security policy has this year found "more needs to be done to make people aware of the importance of deterrence as a method of conflict prevention", but "overlapping crises" has led to "a mood of "collective helplessness" ";
  
• the human rights suppressing military junta in Burma has announced it will pardon a few hundred of the more than 11,000 (hundreds just recently) of people who have been arrested as a call is made for "United Nations Security Council member countries [to] abandon their timid approach to the [Burmese] military’s mounting atrocities and replace mealymouthed statements with tough action" and Australia's "Future Fund has been forced to divest about $5m in taxpayers’ money from a Chinese state-controlled weapons manufacturer sanctioned for selling arms to the genocidal [Burmese] military"; 
• "the Netherlands’ Prime Minister ... has apologised to Indonesia after a study found the Dutch army used “systematic and extreme violence” in a vain attempt to regain control of its former colony at the end of World War Two";
  
• Tunisia's leader (aka "president") has removed judicial independence; 
• as well as heading a human rights abusing regime, Thailand's king is being investigated over taxation matters in Germany - where he lives; 
  
• "Hong Kong denies Australia access to detained citizen, violating international law";
  
• Palestinian anger with the Palestinian Authority over alleged corruption; 
• an examination of the complex reasons criminal organisations in some places may be diversifying into natural resources ("blood avocados"); 
• internally displaced people as a result of a drought in Somalia - where anti-terror police have been torturing journalists; 
• an "abduction spree" in Sudan;
  
• machine learning ("AI") is being used to fight poverty in Africa; 
• Cambodia, with close ties to China, appears to be heading towards Chinese-style digital surveillance;
  
• "mean and tricky" Australia wants to commit refoulement by returning a Hazara asylum seeker to Afghanistan - despite the seizing of power by a violent human rights abusing set of bigots; 
• "the field of human rights is littered with hypocrisy . . . but in the past decade or so, human rights have pretty much disappeared from our politics";
  
• "misuse of official information has been revealed as [a] key corruption risk for Commonwealth law enforcement agencies in a review by the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity" - and see here for one ex-police officers experience of becoming corrupt (this is the sort of experience that can guide a more effective response); 
• "Morrison and Dutton are puffing themselves up like mini-me McCarthyists – and it’s beyond reckless";
  
• "the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) held ... that Slovakia is liable for violating the right to a fair trial and the right to obtain attendance and examination of witnesses in a Syrian national’s complaint that his trial and conviction on charges of migrant smuggling had been unfair" - and "a groundbreaking attempt to make Iranian and Syrian military officials answerable [before the ICC] for war crimes they may have committed in Syria is being launched"; 
• as European troops withdraw from Mali and other parts of the Sahel, Niger says it would welcome the aid of European troops;
  
• Egypt has been attacking the families of human rights defenders; 
• a proposed law in one US state would allow citizens to act against gun manufacturers in much the same way that another state allows bigots to attack abortion;
  
• the USA may take control of Afghanistan's currency reserves in the USA;
  
• the USA will "reopen its embassy on the Solomon Islands to help Washington counter Chinese influence" - and hopefully do some good for people in that region?; 
• "forgiveness requires more than just an apology. It requires action"; 
• New Zealand also has now banned conversion practices (i.e., abuses mis-described as a "therapy");
  
• "the UK’s equalities watchdog is facing calls for it to lose its status as an internationally recognised human rights body amid claims of politicisation and taking a “determinedly anti-trans stance”"; 
• Hungary has made an attempt at transphobic murder;
  
• the abuse of trans and gender diverse  children following Scomo's now on hold and missing-the-point(enable) religious discrimination bill continues (see also here and  here) - at least one government is being supportive, and not all religions are socially / ethically backwards; 
• a national neolib minister has admitted to religious bias;
  
• the ALP's national leader is not making much headway; 
• the national neolib nitwit's third attempt to pass its xenophobic and unnecessary bill to strengthen the already enormous powers of the immigration minister will no longer be opposed by the ALP (small target at the expense of decency and differentiation is a backward step, but Scott is trying out various scare campaigns and people are meekly allowing themselves to be duped by conservative media);
  
• the national neolib nitwits have planned tax cuts to benefit rich men;
  
• UN Deputy Secretary-General has said "that women had faced "unimaginable" horrors [including mass rapes] in conflict-torn regions of Ethiopia"; 
• CONTENT WARNING - GRAPHIC VIOLENCE: a woman married as a child and trying to escape domestic abuse has been subjected to a gruesome murder by a family member; 
• toxic masculinity drove one promising female swimmer out of a promising career; 
• the national neolibs are STILL openly smearing women who are victims of sexual assault and abuse;
  
• US police have breached a woman's rights, set up a barrier to women reporting sexual assault and a dangerous (global?) precedent by using a rape victim's DNA from her rape kit to get a criminal conviction;
  
• possible improvements for women in north-western Pakistan; 
• making a pretence of women's inclusion in conflict resolution and governance, rather than being genuine;
  
• against the problem of digital coercive control, an opinion that "online safety laws strengthen defences against online harms";
  
• "how online abuse in Australia is shutting down crucial debates and damaging democracy" - and violent threats have been made against an Indigenous Senator; 
• more violent right wing extremism by MPs in the USA - and see also here, on how the political spectrum has widened by the right becoming more extreme (and right wing violence is occurring here as well), and here, on an opinion that democracy may cease to exist in the USA in ten years; 
• another sham trial in Nicaragua as "a Kenyan lawyer went on trial ... at the International Criminal Court charged with bribing and threatening prosecution witnesses so that they would withdraw their statements in a case that ultimately collapsed amid widespread witness interference";
  
• a call to address conspiracy fantasies (particularly this one) before the next election; 
• "the Court of Justice of the European Union [has made a decision that allows] EU institutions to tie funding to EU states to respect for the rule of law" (this outcome rejects the attempt by Hungary and Poland to be allowed to step into fascism);
  
• as a neolib senator indulges in a "grubby attack", ASIO has warned it is "not here to be politicised"; 
• the reality of corruption;
  
• a call to rethink the use of prisons;  
• a call for major political parties to come clean on donations; 
• the ABC plans to breach viewers privacy by tracking their habits through a compulsory account; 
  
• irresponsible pet owners are putting disabled people at risk by falsely claiming pets are emotional support dogs;
  
• another call to embrace a four day week.