Category Archives: Post Human

Phnom Penh has a poor record on refugee protection and basic rights, says Human Rights Watch.

Photo credit: abc.net.au

A new refugee agreement between Australia and Cambodia does not meet Australias commitment to send refugees to a safe third country, and will undermine refugee protection in the region, Human Rights Watch has said.

A Cambodian government press release states that the Australian immigration minister, Scott Morrison, will sign a Memorandum of Understanding on the settlement of refugees in Cambodia with the Cambodian interior minister, Sar Kheng, in Phnom Penh on 26 September 2014.

Australia and Cambodia have not released the terms of the agreement. However, Morrison has previously said that up to 1,000 asylum seekers sent by Australia to Nauru, where they have been recognised as refugees, may be transferred to Cambodia on a voluntary basis. Although Cambodia is a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, it has failed to protect refugees and asylum seekers, returning them to countries where they faced persecution.

Australias deal with Cambodia will send people to a country that has a terrible record for protecting refugees and is mired in serious human rights abuses, said Elaine Pearson, Australia director at Human Rights Watch. Australia should have examined these refugee claims itself instead of diverting asylum seekers to Nauru, but at least it should take those found to be refugees instead of shipping them off to Cambodia. Despite Canberras claims, the reality is Cambodia is both unsafe and ill-equipped to handle large numbers of refugees who will be given one-way tickets to Phnom Penh.

Since September 2012, Australia has been sending asylum seekers who arrive by boat to Nauru and Papua New Guinea to be screened there for refugee status. Under the terms of an agreement with Nauru, Australia is committed to helping settle refugees to a third safe country.

Australia has refused to accept returning anyone found to be a refugee to Australia on the grounds that it is pursuing a regional burden-sharing solution. As of 31 August 2014, 1,233 asylum seekers are detained in Nauru. As of 18 September 2014, the Nauru government has carried out 250 status determinations, 206 of whom have been recognised as refugees.

Australia will be failing to meet the terms of its agreement because Cambodia is not a safe third country, Human Rights Watch said.

The Australian government has referred to the transfer to Cambodia as resettlement. However, a spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, has described resettlement in Cambodia as not being a durable solution. Its not in the spirit of resettlement, the spokesman said.

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Australia-Cambodia deal puts refugees at risk

With all the vitriol, ridicule and scorn it attracts, its easy to forget the Human Rights Act is a force for good. Although the law only came into force in 2000, it incorporates the post-war European Convention On Human Rights, inspired by Sir Winston Churchill.

Ironic when its his Tory party that now want to axe it.

Civil liberties champion Michael Mansfield QC says: If the Human Rights Act were scrapped people would soon realise how our daily lives benefit whether its in health, people in care, child abuse and so many other issues.

But with the amount of flak its facing, its time to ape the classic Romans scene in the Monty Pythons Life of Brian and answer the question: What has the Human Rights Act ever done for us?

An obsession with UFOs saw Aspergers Syndrome sufferer Gary McKinnon hack into Pentagon and Nasa computers. US prosecutors tried to extradite him and he faced a 60-year jail term.

Following a 10-year fight by his family, Home Secretary Theresa May blocked the request in 2012 under Article 3 of the Human Rights Act which forbids degrading treatment or punishment. She said Gary, 46, of Notts, was seriously ill and he would probably commit suicide if taken to the States.

Servicemen and women sent off to war without the correct equipment can now use the Human Rights Act to sue the government.

The UK Supreme Court ruled that relatives of four servicemen who died in Iraq had a right to life when they died inside the lightly-armoured Snatch Land Rovers, nicknamed mobile coffins. At least 37 UK soldiers have died in Iraq and Afghanistan inside these vehicles.

Beth Warren won the right to have a child using her dead husbands sperm thanks to Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, which enshrines respect for for privacy and family life.

After he died in 2012 a sample frozen before he had cancer treatment was due to be destroyed under existing rules until Beth, 28, used the act to block the move. Now the sperm will be frozen until 2023, giving her the choice of when to start a family.

Link:
It helps us every day but what has the Human Rights Act done for you?

Bern, Switzerland (PRWEB) October 02, 2014

In appointing Jrg Vollmer, Swiss Post is sending out a clear signal regarding the further development of the business process outsourcing (BPO) segment. In his current function as Vice President, the 47-year-old is responsible for the European BPO business of Hewlett-Packard where he has headed up the development of the business unit in various roles since 2005 and managed more than 6,000 staff in document management, accounting, human resources and customer relationship management. On 1 January 2015, he will succeed Frank Marthaler, who left Swiss Post at the end of June 2014. Jrg Vollmer is married and has two grown-up children.

Market position strengthened With his longstanding experience in strategy development and implementation in various countries, German-born Vollmer has extensive expertise and an intuitive feel for the inter-nationally focused business of Swiss Post Solutions. Swiss Post Solutions offers solutions for business process outsourcing and secure electronic communication. Jrg Vollmer will continue to pursue the group units strategic path in order to strengthen its leading market position, especially within document management and information processing. A further goal will be the ongoing optimization of business processes in line with customer requirements.

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Jrg Vollmer to take over as Head of Swiss Post Solutions

Crysis 3 level 1 Post-human PC gameplay
Me playing the first level of Crysis 3.

By: ava minic

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Crysis 3 level 1 Post-human PC gameplay - Video

Finance Minister Alexander Chikwanda

THE Post Newspaper has continued blackmailing, demonizing and slandering Finance Minister Alexander Chikwanda so as to psychic public hatred among citizens so that they could rise against the minister, civil rights campaigner Brebner Changala has charged.

Mr Changala has also said the continued attacks on Mr Chikwanda were meant to estrange the Finance minister from President Sata so that the Head of State could fire his long-time friend, comrade and compatriot.

Mr Changala said insinuations that Mr Chikwanda had usurped power from President Sata was an attempt to generate public anger and hatred against the Finance minister and has cautioned Zambians to be wary of the Post Newspaper with its propensity to propagate hatred against the people they did not agree with.

He said the Post Newspaper was demonizing Mr Chikwanda because of the favours they had lost following the dismissal of Wynter Kabimba as justice minister and secretary general of the PF.

Mr Changala said inciting and propagating hate speeches against defenseless citizens such as Mr Chikwanda for purposes of separating him from President Sata was not the calling of decent media houses.

He said the Post had gone as far as secretly recording a private conversation Mr Chikwanda was having in his house with the criminal motive of maligning, blackmailing and psychic public hatred against the Finance minister so as to distance him from the Head of State who is a long-time friend and colleague.

Mr Changala has called on what he termed a docile Cabinet to rise and defend Mr Chikwanda who was one of their own and warned that when the Post would be through with the Finance minister, anyone of them would be the next target on the chopping board of slander and blackmail.

Why does the Post Newspaper want to control the PF? How much have they got to lose if they stayed away from the PF? PF is not their party and it does not belong to them. I know they want to have control over PF and the government. What have they lost after the dismissal of Wynter Kabimba as justice minister and secretary general of the PF? The Post must stop this behaviour of attacking every Zambian they do not agree with, Mr Changala said.

He recalled that the Post Newspaper attacked, demonized and verbally abused first Republican president Kenneth Kaunda when it suited them.

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Post crusade is to have Chikwanda fired

These little robots, called BlabDroids, ask people questions and video record their replies. The footage will be used to create a documentary. Courtesy of Alexander Reben hide caption

These little robots, called BlabDroids, ask people questions and video record their replies. The footage will be used to create a documentary.

In the 1960s well before Spike Jonze's Samantha MIT computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum introduced the world to Eliza, a psychotherapist (of sorts) who interacted with people through a text interface. She's still around today.

In preparing this post, I asked her what makes us human. "Are such questions on your mind often?" she replied.

Eliza is a computer program one of the first "chat bots" and an example of early artificial intelligence. While today's natural language processors are far more sophisticated, Eliza was an achievement in her day; having a conversation with her can be surprisingly intimate, personal, humorous and uncanny. She's no replacement for a human psychotherapist, of course, but she succeeds in teaching us something about ourselves. That's because human-machine interactions don't simply reflect how good we are as engineers they also reveal something about the kinds of creatures we are as humans.

Alexander Reben is an MIT-trained roboticist and artist. Courtesy of Alexander Reben hide caption

Alexander Reben is an MIT-trained roboticist and artist.

With a new generation of technology comes a new generation of scientists, scholars, engineers and artists exploring the relationship between people and machines. At the heart of this nexus is Alexander Reben, an MIT-trained roboticist and artist whose work forces us to confront and question our expectations when it comes to ourselves and our creations.

For one project, Reben created BlabDroids: adorable little robots that roam the world asking people questions, such as what they regret or what created the moon. In collaboration with filmmaker Brent Hoff, Reben will use the footage to create a documentary, Robots in Residence, whose roots go straight back to Weizenbaum's Eliza. On his website, Reben explains:

Robots in Residence, the world's first documentary shot and directed entirely by pre-programmed robots [the BlabDroids], will attempt to forge a new form of documentary storytelling and in doing so experimentally test MIT computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum's infamous "Eliza effect" which is "the tendency to unconsciously assume computer (i.e. pre-programmed) behaviors are analogous to human behaviors." "I had not realized," Weizenbaum later noted, "that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people." We shall see.

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Domesticated Robots And The Art Of Being Human

By Maryam Zarnegar Deloffre September 29 at 11:00 AM

On Sept. 18, the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) held an unprecedented emergency meeting on a public health crisis and officially declared the Ebola epidemic that has killed an estimated 2,803 people in West Africa a threat to international peace and security. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced the creation of the U.N. Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER), which he tasked with treating the infected, containing the disease and preserving stability. Last week, President Obama announced the deployment of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), which will set up a joint force command in Liberia to coordinate the activity of 3,000 U.S. forces; expedite the transportation of equipment and supplies; and train an estimated 500 health-care workers per week.

Although Kim Yi Dionne, Laura Seay and Erin McDaniel raised concerns in The Washington Post last week about U.S. military forces engaging in a large-scale humanitarian operation, the deployment of AFRICOM and the creation of UNMEER are different from previous militarized humanitarian missions. The emphasis on human security, supported by the recent UNSC proclamation, shifts the policy conversation. This is a potential watershed moment for future humanitarian interventions if key actors recognize the core comparative advantages of both non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and militaries and work together in a partnership.

What is human security?

We traditionally think about security in terms linked to states. National security means that states defend their borders, people, and economic and political interests against destabilizing threats. According to the U.N. Trust Fund for Human Security, Human security aims at ensuring the survival, livelihood and dignity of people in response to current and emerging threats threats that are widespread and cross cutting. So, whereas we typically think of security threats as a threat to a countrys national interests, human security broadens the notion of security to focus on the individual and thus considers things such as poverty, health pandemics and climate-related disasters as security threats. At the same time, these crises not only challenge individuals and communities, but have the potential to spill over and threaten international peace and security.

Obama invoked human security when urging the UNSC for a commitment to stop a disease that could kill hundreds of thousands, inflict horrific suffering, destabilize economies, and move rapidly across borders. In a speech at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Obama described the human security threat as an epidemic that is not just a threat to regional security . . . its a potential threat to global security if these countries break down, if their economies break down, if people panic. That has profound effects on all of us, even if we are not directly contracting the disease.

Why is human security different from humanitarian intervention?

Humanitarian intervention occurs when external state actors intervene militarily in another state to prevent, alleviate or arrest a humanitarian crisis resulting from conflict. In places such as Kosovo, where NATO conducted airstrikes on Serbia and then coordinated the delivery and distribution of relief aid during the subsequent refugee crisis, militarized humanitarian intervention has proved to be problematic. While at first NGOs appreciated the logistical capabilities of the NATO forces, their practices compromised core principles of neutrality (not taking sides in a conflict), impartiality (not discriminating in aid provision) and independence (working free of government interference). Since then, military-led stability operations have increased, but some NGOs have renounced working with military forces to provide humanitarian relief.

The important distinction here is that humanitarian intervention occurs in response to conflict situations, and often external actors intervene only when their national interests are at stake. The failure to respond to warnings regarding the imminent Rwandan genocide is a key example.

The AFRICOM and UNMEER missions are not your typical militarized humanitarian intervention. Defining the Ebola crisis as a human security issue is a game changer. There is no conflict in the West African countries most heavily affected by Ebola (at least not yet), thus the security threat highlighted by the UNSC is a threat to people and their humanity the right to life with dignity. Humanity is a universal principle, one that transcends and orders all the other humanitarian principles, one that NGOs, states and international organizations can all get behind. Viewed through this lens, it is no wonder that NGOs, such as Doctors Without Borders, that typically refuse to work with national militaries are calling on militaries to provide logistical support to address the Ebola epidemic.

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Monkey Cage: Will AFRICOMs Ebola response be watershed moment for international action on human security?

Sustainable Development Goals:

The full text of the address made by President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the 69th session of the UN General Assembly in New York on Wednesday.

I congratulate Your Excellency Sam Kutesa on being elected as the President of the 69th Session of the United Nations General Assembly.

We wish you success and assure you of our fullest cooperation.

The theme for this Session, Delivering on and Implementing a Transformative Post-2015 Development Agenda, is timely. The world has undergone many changes since the UN was created, and since the year 2000, much progress has been made towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

However, there are multiple challenges that still remain to be addressed. The moral and practical importance of creating an equitable world and a sustainable planet for this purpose cannot be ignored.

The Commonwealth, of which Sri Lanka is the current Chair in Office, accounts for over one quarter of the UN membership. In November 2013, the Commonwealth Heads of Government agreed in Colombo, to contribute to the process of evolving the new post-2015 global development agenda. They have endorsed the central focus on the eradication of extreme poverty and re-affirmed commitment to sustainable development.

The perspective on the post-2015 development agenda is based on shared values and principles contained in the Commonwealth Charter and individual experiences. The Commonwealth leaders encourage others to approach the forthcoming inter-governmental negotiations, in a collaborative spirit to achieve a balanced post-2015 development agenda.

Reducing inequality within and among countries is one of the most transformative goals that have been proposed by the Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals. We hope that this goal will serve to enhance the voice and representation of developing countries in decision-making.

The post-2015 agenda must focus on implementation. Achieving the SDGs would be impossible without the political will and dedication of all countries. It must be ensured that the failure of the developed countries to fulfill Millennium Goal 8 that called for a global partnership for development, is not repeated.

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Post-2015 agenda must focus on implementation

By Brandi Phillips

Contributing Writer

On September 10, at the second C.h.a.t. in a series (Community Health Talk Series) Kevin Lindsey, the Commissioner of MN Department of Human Rights, highlighted the states efforts to achieve equity and inclusion in the areas of workforce development, health care, state governing practices and procurement practices. In his presentation, he also discussed how to file a discrimination complaint, the hiring of state contractors, the more recent implementation of Ban the Box legislation and the Womens Economic Security Act.

Discrimination complaints

In his PowerPoint presentation, Commissioner Lindsey informed participants on many of their human rights and encouraged them to share their knowledge with the circles of influence. One of the topics he discussed was how individuals

Kevin Lindsey Photo by Charles Hallman

can file a discrimination complaint with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights (MDHR). Two important concepts regarding filing a complaint were:

An attorney is unnecessary as the department will help draft the complaint.

A complaint must be filed within one year to preserve the legal rights.

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MN Human Rights Commission updates community on new legislation

Last Americans - (Post Human Era Version)
Directed by Michael Finfer http://www.ancientlasers.com http://www.posthumanera.com.

By: Daniel Finfer

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Last Americans - (Post Human Era Version) - Video