Personal diary of John Barnabas (aka Barney) Leith
From the monthly archives:
On 11 October I posted this about Dr Randy Pausch. Dr Pausch has been diagnosed with terminal cancer of the pancreas. Instead of giving up on life, as I would be tempted to do, he has embraced both his coming death and the time he has left to live life to the full in the [...]
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Should the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee take country-specific human rights resolutions?
The 20-21 November New York Update from the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) reports that Cuba, the Sudan and Nicaragua took the floor before the Third Committee considered any of the country-specific resolutions on its agenda to say why the General Assembly [...]
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The Third Committee of the UN General Assembly yesterday passed a resolution condemning Iran’s appalling human rights record.
But it was a close-run thing.
Iran tabled what’s known in UN terminology as a “No Action Motion” (NAM). Had that motion passed, any further debate on the substantive resolution (initiated by Canada) would have been blocked. After [...]
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The French news agency AFP has published a very nice quite odd article on its website about the Baha’i World Centre in Israel, under the title “Israel haven for new Baha’i world order”.
HAIFA, Israel (AFP) — Dominating a holy mountain in Israel is the nerve centre of the world’s fastest growing major religion, preaching global [...]
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Iranians, said Omid Djalili, as he opened the first episode of his new TV show on BBC One, just don’t get British humour:
For you, an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman is a joke. For us, it’s a hostage situation.
Or the Middle Eastern equivalent of the “knock knock” joke: the “floomph floomph” joke. “Floomph [...]
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BBC One TV will be airing the first of six episodes of The Omid Djalili Show tomorrow (Saturday) night at 9:30 p.m.
Most stand-up comedians who are commissioned to write and perform first-time TV shows are given a try-out out on BBC Three TV before moving to the mass audience BBC One. Omid has gone [...]
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Ruth Gledhill, religious correspondent of The Times, has posted an interview on her blog with an Iranian Baha’i student who is currently living in London.
The student is here to study music, having been excluded from higher education in Iran purely on grounds of being a Baha’i. She had a childhood dream to be a [...]
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This is what the Free Rice site says about itself:
FreeRice has two goals:
Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.
This is made possible by the sponsors who advertise on this site.
Whether you are CEO of a large corporation or a street child in a poor [...]
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OK, I’ll own up. I didn’t go to the Making Rights Real conference in Birmingham yesterday. I’ve all sorts of excuses I won’t burden you with, but it did give me a clear day at my desk to try and sink some of the jobs that have been awaiting my attention. Sadly my to-do list [...]
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