HRH The Prince of Wales gave BBC One’s annual Richard Dimbleby Lecture at St James’s Palace, London.
Prince Charles’ lecture, the 33rd held in honour of the broadcaster who died in 1965, was entitled Facing the Future and was broadcast on BBC One last night.
The Prince of Wales’ website has the text of the lecture.
Discrimination and abuse wrongly backed by doctrine are damaging society, argues the former US president
“Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status …” (Article 2, Universal Declaration of Human Rights)
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)
I have been a practising Christian all my life and a deacon and Bible teacher for many years. My faith is a source of strength and comfort to me, as religious beliefs are to hundreds of millions of people around the world.
So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when th e convention’s leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be “subservient” to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service. This was in conflict with my belief – confirmed in the holy scriptures – that we are all equal in the eyes of God.
Correspondents in Urumqi and Beijing | The Australian, July 9, 2009
POLICE killed 400 Uighurs in the capital of China’s Xinjiang region during ethnic unrest there, exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer claimed yesterday.
Ms Kadeer said Uighur sources within “East Turkestan”, the separatist name for the northwest region, had told her 400 Uighurs had died “as a result of police shootings and beatings” in Urumqi since violence erupted there on Sunday.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal Asia, the president of the World Uighur Congress said unrest was spreading across the region and unconfirmed reports indicated more than 100 Uighurs had been killed in Kashgar, another major city in Xinjiang.
Charity, checkpoints and client rulers
By Jonathan Cook in Ramallah | Information Clearing House, July 9, 2009
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has been much criticised in Israel, as well as abroad, for failing to present his own diplomatic initiative on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to forestall US intervention.
Mr Netanyahu may have huffed and puffed before giving voice to the phrase “two states for two peoples” at Sunday’s cabinet meeting, but the contours of just such a Palestinian state — or states — have been emerging undisturbed for some time.
In fact, Mr Netanyahu appears every bit as committed as his predecessors to creating the facts of an Israeli-imposed two-state solution, one he and others in Israel’s leadership doubtless hope will eventually be adopted by the White House as the “pragmatic” — if far from ideal — option.
David Whitehouse analyzes the upheaval shaking Western China.
Socialist Worker, July 9, 2009
Uighur women protesters challenge Chinese riot police during demonstrations in western Xinjiang province (Peter Parks | AFP)
LONG-SIMMERING grievances of China’s Muslim Uighur minority boiled over on June 6 after Chinese police attacked a peaceful demonstration in Urumqi, the capital of China’s vast western province of Xinjiang.
By the end of the evening, 158 people had been killed and 800 injured, according to Chinese officials. Official sources indicated that ethnic Chinese individuals and businesses owned by members of China’s ethnic Han majority were the main victims in the riots, but days later, officials still refused to give an ethnic breakdown of the dead or say how many had been killed by police.
Following the riot, security forces put the cities of Xinjiang under lockdown and held at least 1,500 in detention amid ominous reports of retaliatory violence by mobs of Han Chinese–who now form the majority in most of the province’s cities.
John Pilger | New Statesman, July 9, 2009
Liberals say that the United States is once again a “nation of moral ideals”, but behind the façade little has changed. With his government of warmongers, Wall Street cronies and polluters from the Bush and Clinton eras, Barack Obama is merely upholding the myths of a divine America
The monsoon had woven thick skeins of mist over the central highlands of Vietnam. I was a young war correspondent, bivouacked in the village of Tuylon with a unit of US marines whose orders were to win hearts and minds. “We are here not to kill,” said the sergeant, “we are here to impart the American Way of Liberty as stated in the Pacification Handbook. This is designed to win the hearts and minds of folks, as stated on page 86.”
Page 86 was headed WHAM. The sergeant’s unit was called a combined action company, which meant, he explained, “we attack these folks on Mondays and we win their hearts and minds on Tuesdays”. He was joking, though not quite. Standing in a jeep on the edge of a paddy, he had announced through a loudhailer: “Come on out, everybody. We got rice and candy and toothbrushes to give you.”
Silence. Not a shadow moved.
“Now listen, either you gooks come on out from wherever you are, or we’re going to come right in there and get you!”
The people of Tuylon finally came out and stood in line to receive packets of Uncle Ben’s Long Grain Rice, Hershey bars, party balloons and several thousand toothbrushes. Three portable, battery-operated, yellow flush lavatories were kept for the colonel’s arrival. And when the colonel arrived that evening, the district chief was summoned and the yellow flush lavatories were unveiled.
Yitzhak Shichor, Open Democracy, July 6, 2009
The broader roots of the eruption of protest in China’s far-west region of Xinjiang lie in the experience of the Uighur people under Beijing’s rule, says Yitzhak Shichor.
The reports of violence and deaths in the city of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province in northwest China, draw renewed attention to this comparatively neglected region of China and of central Asia. The exact details of what happened there on the night of 5-6 July 2009 are unclear and (inevitably) disputed, though the background may include the assaults on Uighur migrant workers at a toy factory in Guangdong province on 26 June (in which two are reported dead and dozens injured).
Dick Cheney ‘silenced CIA over spy plan’
July 12, 2009Dick Cheney, the former US vice-president, deliberately withheld details of a secret CIA spy programme from the US congress for eight years, a US senator has said.
Cheney, who was vice-president to George Bush until January this year, ordered the CIA not to tell congress of a new “counter-terrorism” programme in 2001.
Cheney’s role in stifling the information was revealed by Leon Panetta, who now heads the CIA and who ordered the programme to be stopped in June.
Senator Diane Feinstein, the chairman of the senate intelligence committee, speaking on a US television show on Sunday, said: “Director Panetta did brief us two weeks ago … and tell us that he was told that the vice-president had ordered that the programme not be briefed to the congress.”
Amid calls for an investigation, senator Dick Durbin said Cheney’s actions had been “inappropriate”.
“To have a massive programme that is concealed from the leaders in congress is not only inappropriate; it could be illegal,” he said.
The details of the intelligence programme, launched after the attacks on the US in September 2001, remain secret.
Covert operations
A spokesman for the CIA said it was not policy to discuss classified briefings, but added: “When a CIA unit brought this matter to Director Panetta’s attention, it was with the recommendation that it be shared appropriately with congress.
“That was also his view, and he took swift, decisive action to put it into effect.”
Under US law, the president is required to make sure intelligence committees are fully informed about covert operations.
The newspaper did not name its sources and said it had been unsuccessful in reaching Cheney for comment.
Cheney has been criticised in the past for supporting controversial interrogation techniques such as waterboarding (where a detainee is made to feel as if he is drowning), sleep deprivation, long periods of standing and exposure to cold.
Many critics have described the methods as being torture.
Controversial move
Eric Holder, the US attorney general is reported to be considering assigning a prosecutor to investigate interrogation techniques used on terrorism suspects by the government of George Bush, the former US president.
Such an appointment could lead to a criminal inquiry into the treatment of prisoners by the CIA following the 2001 attacks in New York.
The move is seen as being controversial as Barack Obama, the US president, had previously said he wanted to leave the issue “in the past”.
An official from the US justice department said Holder planned to “follow the fact and the law”.
Holder’s decision is expected to be made in the next few weeks.
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Tags:CIA spy programm, Dick Cheney, Eric Holder, torture, U.S. Congress
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