Utopia, you are standing in it!

Feedback on the recommendations from New Zealand’s third Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the Human Rights Council in Geneva

The governments of Iceland and Australia have recommended that New Zealand amend Section 21 of our Human Rights Act (HRA) 1993, by adding “gender identity” as a prohibited ground for discrimination.

The concept of “gender identity” should not be introduced into the HRA. There are several reasons for this, and this submission will focus on two:

1. The HRA needs to be clear and evidence-based, but the concept of “gender identity” is both vague and ideological.
2. The concept of “gender identity” is at odds with the HRA Section 21 (1)(a) and 21(1)(m), which prohibit discrimination on the grounds of sex and sexual orientation.

1. The concept of “gender identity” is vague and ideological

New Zealand’s Human Rights Commission (HRC) defines “gender identity” as “A person’s internal, deeply felt sense of being male…

Yesterday I described the situation of Ronald Sullivan, a professor of law at Harvard University who is also resident head (“faculty dean”) of Winthrop House, an undergraduate residence hall where students live for their first three years in college. Like many law professors, Sullivan has a private practice, as well as a long history of social-activist legal work. These include, as the New Yorker interview below describes, “director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School and previous [service] as the director of the Washington, D.C., Public Defender Service. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, he helped free thousands of Louisianans who had been incarcerated without due process.”

He’s also the first black faculty dean at Harvard and has other social-justice cred for defending minorities (including the family of Michael Brown) and women.

None of this mattered after Sullivan signed on as a member of Harvey Weinstein’s defense…

Dr Robin Eagles, Editor of the House of Lords 1660-1832 project kicks off our new series, ‘Named Parliaments’. Here, whilst highlighting a number of Named Parliaments in the seventeenth century, he explores the debate of parliament versus convention or assembly in the early modern period…

The
question of what is and is not a Parliament might seem a simple one, but on two
occasions during the reign of James I, efforts were made to reclassify
unsatisfactory Parliaments as mere ‘conventions’. This was true of the 1614
‘Addled Parliament’, as it had failed to pass any legislation, and James I also
attempted to downgrade the 1621 Parliament, insisting it had not been one either.
Doubt might also be expressed about the status of some of the experimental
bodies that met during the turbulent years of Civil War and Interregnum, the
‘Nominated Assembly’…

Image credit: emeraldmedia.co.uk
How about a ban on endless international climate conferences that lead to hundreds of flights – including many long-haul – but produce little of value, ‘to save emissions’? In fact the ’20 flights in a lifetime’ proposed here would probably have that effect anyway. The report ends with an apparent claim that particulates in the air are a ‘climate problem’.

Leading German climate scientist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber has called for a substantial shift in strategy for the tourism industry to make sure that its carbon footprint does not contribute to the sector’s possible demise.

“Tourism bites the hand that feeds it if it contributes to climate change,” the former director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) said at the ITB international tourism fair in Berlin.

If beaches around the world are flooded due to a global rise in temperature of 4 or 5 degrees…

Barfe Khalaf Farho said she felt like she was born again after setting her veil on fire Credit: Sam Tarling for the Telegraph

Liberated Yazidi women burn their veils as Islamic State crumbles by By Raf Sanchez, Hassakah Province, Syria, 8 March 2019, the Daily Telegraph:

As she emerged from five years captivity inside the Islamic State, Barfe Khalaf Farho wanted one thing more than anything else: fire.

The 26-year-old Yazidi had been forced to wear a niqab every day of her slavery in the homes of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) fighters and their wives.

So when she reached the Western-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) last week the first thing she did was tear off her veil and set it aflame. The Kurdish fighters cheered her on as the black garment twisted in the fire.

Andrew Coates reports (atTendance Coatesy):

ISIS militants overran Nadia…