Free Republic

You have to love Hamas. They're just so subtle. Hamas has sent some of its goons to attack Mahmoud Abu Rahma after Abu Rahma exposed Hamas' use of Gaza citizens as human shields. The stabbing in Gaza of a Palestinian rights activist after he exposed Hamas' contempt for its own people by using them as human shields, and after he criticized the radical Islamic group for torture, abuse and trampling free speech, should be strongly condemned by the United Nations—both as an attack on the victim’s human rights, and on the idea of freedom of expression. Masked attackers on Friday...

14 Syrians dead on Human Rights DayAFP – 7 hrs ago World powers piled pressure on Syria to let in observers as activists on Saturday reported at least 14 another civilians killed by security forces on the anniversary of International Human Rights Day. "The world celebrates human rights as human rights are being violated in Syria," the opposition Syrian Revolution 2011 said in a message posted on its Facebook page. In Oslo, the Nobel Committee head said at the 2011 Peace Prize awards ceremony that this year's award to Yemeni activist Tawakkol Karman served as a warning to dictators in...

GOTHENBURG, Sweden — An unidentified man burst into flames while waiting outside a train station in Sweden, leaving police flummoxed, the Göteborgs-Posten reported. Witnesses said the man was standing outside a music shop at the Gothenberg central train station around 10:30 p.m. Sunday, when he suddenly caught on fire. "He just stood there burning outside the shop," a witness told the paper. "After a while he started screaming. There were a few people about but they just watched him. I ran up to him, tore my coat off and managed to put the fire out together with another guy." The...

By facing the issue and joking about it, Perry frames his gaffe as a funny moment rather than a serious, and seriously stupid, one. He takes control of the discussion. Every minute he's on the air being interviewed about it is one more minute his moment isn't being replayed, one more minute some panel of pundits isn't fretfully analyzing its stupendous terribleness. By allowing his memory glitch to be the topic of discussion and owning up to it, he helps exhaust the subject. Most of all, Perry is being humanized, albeit not in the way any politician would wish. For...

Since the Occupy protests began, reports of demonstrators placing themselves and even their small children in harm’s way have surfaced near-daily. This instance is no exception. MRCTV reporters happened to be at a D.C. Metro station and witnessed a group of Occupiers fight with convention center security guards while trying to block its entrance…with small children. Watch as protesters place the children right in the middle of the altercation while one Occupier says that since the children are hers, the action is justifiable. Meanwhile, other demonstrators seem to think that using children as human shields is permissible simply because they...

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has released new guidelines for employees dealing with reporters, and some journalists are none too pleased about it. The new media policy requires all HHS employees to notify the agency’s office of public affairs about contact with the media and coordinate any interview requests with the office. It also discourages off-the-record conversations without prior approval. Jim Dickinson, editor of FDA Webview and FDA Review, issued a scathing critique of the new guidelines.

SIERRA VISTA — When the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, left the nation reeling in sorrow and sadness, the ideas of how best to remember the fallen were plentiful. Flags, ribbons, flowers and other mementos adorned makeshift memorials across the nation, and locally, a giant American flag, created by Americans, for Americans, and expressing the true pride that comes with being an American, was created four days after the attack at Tucson Electric Park as thousands gathered to work on mending the wounded heart of the nation. And with such success in drawing people together back in 2001, what better...

This is bullet-proof human skin - made from spider silk and goat milk. Yes, really. Jalila Essaidi is testing the limits of human endurance, and it starts by having to milk spider-goats. Spider goats are otherwise innocent-looking goats that have been genetically engineered to produce milk packed with the protein made in spider's silk. (There is no definitive proof that this also gives them a propensity to skitter up walls or hide out in your sock drawer, but I think it does.) Once the goats are milked, Essaidi spins the protein into fiber that is ten times stronger than steel,...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Britain told Iran on Thursday it was happy to discuss its handling of street unrest after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused its police of "savage" aggression against demonstrators. Britain helped lead Western condemnation of Iran's crackdown on protests against Ahmadinejad's re-election in June 2009. He was quick on Wednesday to criticise the British police's "crushing attack" on unarmed citizens. In a letter to Iran's Foreign Ministry, Britain's top diplomat in Tehran said she hoped such openness would encourage Tehran to allow a U.N.-appointed investigator looking into alleged human rights violations in Iran to enter the country.

Is there a little Fred Flintstone in you? According to a new genetic analysis, some of the human X chromosome originates from Neanderthals -- but it's found exclusively in people outside Africa. The ancestors of Neanderthals left Africa about 400,000 to 800,000 years ago. They evolved over the millennia mostly in what are now France, Spain, Germany and Russia, and went extinct (or were simply absorbed into the modern human population) about 30,000 years ago. The ancestors of early modern humans left Africa about 80,000 to 50,000 years ago, according to DiscoveryNews.com. Despite that wide spread in time, genetic material...

This new interview with American author Alice Walker gives a brilliant insight into what motivates trendy pro-Palestinian sentiment in the West today. Notice how effortlessly she flits between talking about Palestinians in Gaza and chickens in factory farms. In one breath she talks about the “cruel and inhuman” treatment meted out to Palestinians, who are “frazzled and suffering everyday”. And in the next she talks about chickens that are “raised under horrible, torturous conditions”, and the fact that people who tuck into chicken dinners don’t realise that they are eating “something precious, beautiful, rare”. Palestinians and chickens – these seem...

China released human rights lawyer Teng Biao after ten weeks in custody but a second lawyer has disappeared, rights groups told AFP Saturday, amid an ongoing crackdown on dissent. Advocacy group China Aid said Teng returned home at 3:30 pm (0730 GMT) on Friday but also stated that Li Fangping disappeared around 5:00 pm after leaving the office building of an AIDS victims group in Beijing. Teng Biao's wife confirmed to AFP that her husband had returned home but said "it is not convenient to speak now". "It's a relief that Teng Biao has been released after almost 70 days...

Another 62 shot dead in cold blood in the streets today, just the latest in a series of Friday post-mosque slaughters. Good enough for a unanimous vote by the UN Human Rights Council? Why … no: At an Special Session in Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, members of the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a resolution condemning Syria’s human rights abuses and calling for a UN Mission to investigate the violence… The resolution expresses “grave concern with respect to alleged deliberate killings, arrests, and instances of torture of peaceful protestors by the Syrian authorities,” and “unequivocally condemns the use of lethal...

Scientists predict strong thirst for 'human milk'08:31, March 22, 2011 Genetically modified (GM) dairy products that are similar to human milk will appear on the Chinese market in two years, an expert in biotechnology has predicted. Li Ning, a scientist from the Chinese Academy of Engineering and director of the State Key Laboratories for AgroBiotechnology at China Agricultural University, said progress in the field is well under way. Li said Chinese scientists have successfully created a herd of more than 200 cows that is capable of producing milk that contains the characteristics of human milk. He said the technology is...

Part I of this paper appears below.  To download the full paper, click here. Presently, Irving Weissman, the director of Stanford University's Institute of Cancer/Stem Cell Biology and Medicine, is contemplating pushing the envelope of chimera research even further by producing human-mouse chimera whose brains would be composed of one hundred percent human cells. Weissman notes that the mice would be carefully watched: if they developed a mouse brain architecture, they would be used for research, but if they developed a human brain architecture or any hint of humanness, they would be killed. [1] Imagine two entities.Hal is a computer-based artificial...

Amid unrest in Libya, where on one side the United Nations has condemned the Muammar al-Qaddafi regime for its crackdown on pro-democracy protestors, the organisation's Human Rights Council is poised adopt a report praising the oil rich country for its human rights records. The review praises Libya for improving educational opportunities, for making human rights a "priority" and for bettering its "constitutional" framework. Several countries, including Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia have rated Libya positively for the legal protection given to its citizens, who are now revolting against the regime, Fox News reports. On being asked if any...

An angry voice behind the veilMonday, 24 January 2011 This April, France will ban Muslim women from wearing face-covering veils. But one French woman Kenza Drider explains why she refuses to take off her niqab and why she’ll take her fight to the European Court of Human Rights if she gets fined.

Today’s slaveryA unified effort to end human trafficking By Renée Loth January 29, 2011 IN NEWARK, 20 young women and girls from West Africa were discovered working in hair-braiding salons for 14 hours a day with no pay. Their employer ruled over the victims, some as young as 10, with beatings, sexual assaults, and voodoo curses. Closer to home, five people were indicted in Quincy for operating brothels in rented apartments using immigrant women kept in a state of debt bondage with threats of deportation. In Danvers, a 13-year old runaway girl was offered to a group of men at...

It’s been continuing to single out the most humanitarian state in the Middle East for unwarranted criticism, of course. NGO Monitor just released a new analysis of the activities of Human Rights Watch over the past year and found that the organization continued to aim its ire at Israel while ignoring some of the world’s worst human rights abusers. Here’s a brief summary of the findings: • In 2010, HRW published 51 documents on “Israel and the Occupied Territories,” more than on any other country in the Middle East. Compare that to the organization’s research on some of the most...

Friends of Israel have long fumed over what they felt was the human rights community’s disproportionate and unfair criticism of the Jewish state: Major rights organizations typically portray Israel as among the cruelest of nations, while this planet’s actual dictatorships and tyrannies get wrist slaps. (snip) In October, Robert L. Bernstein, HRW’s founder and a former chairman, blasted his own organization in The New York Times for obsessively focusing on Israel, while ignoring authoritarian Arab and Iranian regimes and terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas.

A new human rights curriculum that was recently introduced to middle schools and high schools all across New York is a disservice to students because it wastes precious instruction time which would be more wisely spent on academic fundamentals. Last Friday, December 10, over 1,000 New York students took part in the inaugural webcast of the “Speak Truth to Power” curriculum distributed by the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights and New York State United Teachers.

NEW YORK, NY -- Last week, the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly voted on a special resolution addressing extrajudicial, arbitrary and summary executions. The resolution affirms the duties of member countries to protect the right to life of all people with a special emphasis on a call to investigate killings based on discriminatory grounds. The resolution highlights particular groups historically subject to executions including street children, human rights defenders, members of ethnic, religious, and linguistic minority communities, and, for the past 10 years, the resolution has included sexual orientation as a basis on which some individuals are...

Japanese researchers have developed an android that mimics human expressions. Eventually, it could be used as a companion for disabled children or the elderly.

For decades scientists believed Neanderthals developed `modern' tools and ornaments solely through contact with Homo sapiens, but new research from the University of Colorado Denver now shows these sturdy ancients could adapt, innovate and evolve technology on their own. The findings by anthropologist Julien Riel-Salvatore challenge a half-century of conventional wisdom maintaining that Neanderthals were thick-skulled, primitive `cavemen' overrun and outcompeted by more advanced modern humans arriving in Europe from Africa. "Basically, I am rehabilitating Neanderthals," said Riel-Salvatore, assistant professor of anthropology at UC Denver. "They were far more resourceful than we have given them credit for." His research, to...

Transnationalist billionaire George Soros is spreading his left-wing wealth across the globe. The NYTimes reports a record Soros donation to Human Rights Watch: George Soros, the billionaire investor and philanthropist, plans to announce on Tuesday that he is giving $100 million to Human Rights Watch to expand the organization’s work globally. It is the largest gift he has made, the largest gift by far that Human Rights Watch has ever received, and only the second gift of $100 million or more made by an individual this year, according to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. …Human Rights Watch will...

A recent high-profile article in the journal Nature released the results of a study with implications that shocked the scientific community because they contradict long-held claims of human-chimp DNA similarity.1 A previous Acts & Facts article showed that much of the research surrounding the often touted claims of 98 percent (or higher) DNA similarity between chimps and humans has been based on flawed and biased research.2 The problem is that the similarity has been uncertain because no one has performed an unbiased and comprehensive DNA similarity study until now. And the results are not good news for the story of...

rganizers of the flotilla intended to break Israel's naval blockade of Gaza are using children as human shields to keep Israel from attacking the boats. Chairman Bulent Yildirim of the Turkish group IHH said so during an interview on the group's website, in which he was seen holding a baby that was on board the boat Mavi Marmara.

Al-Qa'ida is struggling to launch frequent suicide attacks in Iraq for the first time because of a shortage of foreign volunteers travelling to the country to carry them out. Interrogation of prisoners and intercepted messages revealed that local al-Qa'ida commanders are complaining about the lack of foreigners to carry out suicide missions as they had done to devastating effect in the past, Iraq's Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, said in an interview with The Independent.

Where’s Jimmy? Just Google His Bar Code By Gene J. Koprowski - FOXNews.com Scientists currently tag animals to study their behavior and protect the endangered, but some futurists wonder whether all humans should be tagged too. Scientists tag animals to monitor their behavior and keep track of endangered species. Now some futurists are asking whether all of mankind should be tagged too. Looking for a loved one? Just Google his microchip. The chips, called radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, emit a simple radio signal akin to a bar code, anywhere, anytime. Futurists say they can be easily implanted under the...

Arizona is joining Louisiana in prohibiting scientists from creating "human-animal" hybrids. Louisiana enacted its law last year, and Gov. Jan Brewer signed the Arizona legislation into law on Friday. The Arizona statute effect in July. It prohibits human cloning through various means, including fertilizing human eggs with nonhuman sperm and vice versa. It also makes it a crime to knowingly destroy human embryonic stem cells during research. As in Louisiana, supporters of the Arizona legislation said it would prohibit human cloning and protect the dignity of human life at its earliest stages. Critics variously ridiculed the bill and said it...

Rarely are currency exchange rates as good for the American dollar as that of Asian countries. In Asia, the American dollar carries a lot of clout and with the recent devaluation of the USD; it is a good thing that these countries offer an excellent trip for so little cost to Americans.

Jason Mattera, author of "Obama Zombies", a NYT bestseller, has been named editor of Human Events. This is great news folks, as it's a sign of the times. Mattera is a fearless, conservative activist who's pistol-whipped the likes of John Kerry and Mr. Smalley himself. See his videos on youtube if you don't believe me.I've read OBAMA ZOMBIES, and all I can say is that it is a MUST READ FOR ALL CONSERVATIVES. This guy Jason knows how to skewer liberalism on camera and in print. I LEARNED so much from OBAMA ZOMBIES. The data will shock you!

VANCOUVER — A comedian whose put-downs of a lesbian and her companion in the audience is hoping she doesn’t have the last laugh at a B.C. Human Rights Commission tribunal this week. Was Guy Earle’s discriminatory verbal assault spurred solely by the woman’s sexual orientation, or was the professional funny man exercising his right to free speech when an audience member wouldn’t settle down? Earle, who’s been a stand-up comic for more than two decades, was the volunteer master of ceremonies at amateur night at a Vancouver restaurant in May 2007. Lorna Pardy and her same-sex partner had moved to...

he Competitive Enterprise Institute, a leading free-market think tank, will celebrate the Second Annual “Human Achievement Hour” between 8:30pm and 9:30pm on Saturday, March 27, 2010. The one-hour celebration coincides with “Earth Hour,” an hour in which governments, individuals, and corporations will dim or shut off lights to symbolically renounce the environmental impacts of modern technology. “Earth Hour’s creators suggest that human inventions and technology are a problem, but we see the ability to create and innovate as the ultimate resource,” says Human Achievement Hour founder and CEI Policy Analyst Michelle Minton. “Environmental challenges will not be solved by turning...

Almost four in five people around the world believe that access to the internet is a fundamental right, a poll for the BBC World Service suggests. The survey - of more than 27,000 adults across 26 countries - found strong support for net access on both s.......

Avatar: Film-making and Human Destiny by Administrator on January 15, 2010 by Larry KlaesJudging by the abundant reaction to Larry Klaes’ recent article on James Cameron’s Avatar — and by the continuing commentary in society at large — Larry seems to be vindicated when he says the film has become a focal point of discussion for many in the general public. Having engaged in the lively debate in these pages, Larry now wraps up our Avatar coverage with a look at the film’s message and its ramifications, along with comments on its use of science.To some the new film...

KABUL, Dec. 14, 2009 – U.S. troops need to be prepared to operate in a “complex human terrain” when they arrive in Afghanistan, the commander of International Security Assistance Force Joint Command said here today. Army Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez took over the job just two months ago. He commands U.S. troops assigned to NATO and troops of 42 other nations for daily operations throughout Afghanistan. “Now that we know where [U.S. troops] are going and when they are coming in, I think we’ll be able to make them well-prepared for what they need to do,” he said during...

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 8 (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Tuesday that emails leaked from a British university have done nothing to undermine the United Nations' view that climate change is accelerating due to humans. "Nothing that has come out in the public as a result of the recent email hackings has cast doubt on the basic scientific message on climate change and that message is quite clear -- that climate change is happening much, much faster than we realized and we human beings are the primary cause," he said.

Peru's police chief has suspended a top investigator for saying he had caught a gang who were murdering people to sell their fat. Last month, top organised crime investigator Felix Murga said police had arrested four suspects who confessed to murdering up to 60 people. He said they were selling their fat for thousands of dollars a litre. But the macabre tale now appears to be nothing more than a tall story - or a big fat lie. 'Sold-on' In an extraordinary press conference, police showed two bottles of what they said was human fat and a photo of a...

LIMA, Peru - Police say a gang in the Peruvian jungle has been killing people and draining fat from the corpses to sell on the black market for use in cosmetics, although medical experts say they doubt a major market for fat exists. Three suspects confessed to killing five people, but the gang may have been involved in dozens more, said Col. Jorge Mejia, chief of Peru's anti-kidnapping police. He said one suspect claimed the gang wasn't the only one doing such killings.

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BAGHDAD, Oct. 6, 2009 – Iraqi Defense Minister Mohammed Abdul-Qader Jassim hosted a conference here yesterday to highlight Iraq’s commitment to human rights. Senior Iraqi army officials, civilians, government employees, political leaders and women from Iraq’s Ministry of Human Rights were on hand for Iraq’s second human rights conference, as well as select members of the Multinational Security Transition Command Iraq, which is responsible for training and advising the defense ministry on human rights issues. “After criminals are captured in Iraq, we must protect their dignity and provide them with clothes, food, medical care and other needs,” the defense minister...

LOS ANGELES – A U.S. Forest Service official says the huge wildfire burning in the mountains north of Los Angeles was human-caused. Deputy incident commander Carlton Joseph said Wednesday that it's not known specifically how it was started. Investigators will be trying to determine whether it was accidental or arson. Carlton says investigators have leads that brought them to the conclusion but he will not give any further information. Carlton notes that the options were lightning or a human cause and lightning has been ruled out.

home | about spiked | issues | support spiked Friday 26 June 2009Restating the case for human uniquenessA brilliant new book cuts through all the media-oriented research about ‘clever chimps’ using tools, doing maths and feeling emotions, and reminds us that, in truth, there is nothing remotely human about primates.Helene Guldberg Not a Chimp: The Hunt to Find the Genes That Make Us Human is a refreshing defence of human uniqueness. ‘We are a truly exceptional primate with minds that are genuinely discontinuous to other animals’, Jeremy Taylor writes. The first half of Not a Chimp challenges ‘the basis...

When we daydream about the future, we tend to focus on the fabulous belongings we're going to have. Jet packs, flying cars, weapons to kill aliens, cell phones that make today's sleek models look clunky -- you name it, we're going to have it. We don't tend to focus, however, on who we'll be in the future. Most of us probably picture ourselves exactly the same, though maybe thinner, as surely we'll all have robot personal trainers by then. While we see the world's technology evolving to meet our needs, we may not think about how we ourselves might be...

By now, we’ve seen it all before. The Liberals do something, and they call it something it’s not (i.e. The Employee Free Choice Act and The Fairness Doctrine). Such is the case with what Wang Dan calls “freedom” in defending his Olbermann-esque stance on the “Pro-Democracy” movement and calling it the “truth.” In a nutshell, many of the claims against China on the issue of “human rights” are unfounded distortions those who support Hillary Clinton and the left. Wang Dan’s claim that “the reforms my fellow students and I were advocating are the central challenges shaping China's destiny today.“ are...

People have a deep desire to communicate with animals, as is evident from the way they converse with their dogs, enjoy myths about talking animals or devote lifetimes to teaching chimpanzees how to speak. A delicate, if tiny, step has now been taken toward the real thing: the creation of a mouse with a human gene for language.

Note: The following text is a quote: Social Science Research Assists Navigation of ‘Human Terrain’ By Navy Lt. Jennifer Cragg Special to American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, May 18, 2009 – The Defense Department is funding research to help warfighters learn and adapt to the social and cultural norms in their deployment areas, a Navy program officer said in a May 13 webcast of “Armed with Science: Research and Applications for the Modern Military” on Pentagon Web Radio. “It's been a shift in the thinking of the Department of Defense away from conventional warfare practices to the asymmetric and irregular...

A herd of pigs in Canada has tested positive for swine flu, after coming into contact with a human carrier. The pigs were apparently infected by an Alberta farm worker who had recently returned from Mexico. The herd, in the western province of Alberta, has been quarantined. Many new cases of swine flu have been diagnosed among humans in Canada, where the total number of sufferers has risen from 35 to 85.

A parasitic microbe commonly found in cats might have helped shape entire human cultures by manipulating the personalities of infected individuals, according to a new study. Infection by a Toxoplasma gondii could make some individuals more prone to some forms of neuroticism and could lead to differences among cultures if enough people are infected, says Kevin Lafferty, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In a survey of different countries, Lafferty found that people living in those with higher rates of T. gondii infection scored higher on average for neuroticism, defined as an emotional or...