Morning No: No Prisoners

by: Natasha Chart

Fri Jun 19, 2009 at 06:00

- Added item: Khamenei has given his big speech, endorsing the election results, rejecting all allegations of impropriety and telling the street protestors to go home or face the consequences. @NaseemFaqihi twittered of the speech, "Omg - he's saying people are taking advantage of riots and crowds to terrorize baseej and harass students in dorms in name of elections", via @Mlsif.

- Voices from Iran: Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi has called for the country's elections to be voided and redone. Human rights activist Akbar Ganji appreciates Obama's diplomatic stance so far, but wants international pressure over human rights abuses maintained.

- I'm not always Obama's biggest fan, but we are so damn lucky that Mike Pence and John McCain aren't handling our foreign policy right now. Dodged a bullet doesn't begin to cover it.

- Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak says it's a good time for Arab-Israeli peace, and that Obama has made clear that it's politics, not values, that separate the US and the Middle East.

- Justice John Roberts led the Supreme Court to deny that inmates have a constitutional right to DNA testing.

- Worldwide protests marked Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's 64th birthday, which she's spending in a Myanmar prison.

- The American public, favors Guantanamo detainees being either charged with crimes or released by a 68-24 majority. The Obama administration so far plans to indefinitely detain them.

- The Chamber of Commerce thinks arbitration is good enough for women who've been raped on the job, but unfair to employers negotiating union contracts.

- Anti-immigrant hate leads to violence.

- The UN Human Rights Council has resolved that maternal death and illness are human rights violations when they occur at rates that indicate epidemic sexual violence and lack of basic reproductive healthcare delivery. Violence, discrimination and neglect have killed 100,000,000 women who should be alive today.

- This December is the 25th anniversary of the Union Carbide leak at Bhopal.

- Good news: Unemployment numbers are down! Bad news: It's because the benefits ran out.

- It's the privilege, stupid, not the identity.