Results tagged “unitednations”

He says it was "a long-shot," but Berkeley professor Ken Light was hoping Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would take a moment out from invoking Allah and predicting the downfall of global capitalism at the U.N. General Assembly to mention the fates of three former Berkeley students who have been sitting in an Iranian jail since July. Shane Bauer, Josh Fattal and Sarah Shourd were, for reasons that the more sedentary and warzone-averse among us cannot understand, hiking in the mountainous Kurdistan region of Iraq when they wandered mistakenly over the border into Iran. They got arrested, and now they're being used as political pawns, much like Laura Ling and Euna Lee were in North Korea.

Along with the Vatican and several Muslim countries, the United States refused to sign some sort of benign declaration presented at the United Nations "calling for worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality." Written by France and the Netherlands, said declaration was signed by all 27 European Union members, Japan, Australia, Mexico and three dozen other countries. The US was the sole Western country to holdout. One reason the US withheld its John Hancock is because " [i]n numerous states, landlords and private employers are allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation; on the federal level, gays are not allowed to serve openly in the military." And also, because of this. The declaration, however, in keeping with the United Nations' impressively ineffective style, is just symbolic.

Net Neutrality Symposium at USF

The Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, gave a speech to the World Affairs Council at San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel yesterday, but was upstaged by a few gay (or bear) activists.

What does the move of the San Francisco 49ers to Santa Clara mean for San Francisco's 49ers fans? As we didn't grow up here and as we aren't "the Faithful" it's hard for us to explain. So we asked a Friend of SFist to see what it means to them. Below is his comment.

Reacting to criticism that the State Department voted against letting two gay rights groups into a United Nations panel, the State Department issued a statement last Friday denying that the vote was due to any sort of anti-gay bias. Instead, they did it because of a concern over pedophilia.

KRON 4's Brian Shields organized a huuuuuuge blogger meetup at their studios. They've decided to keep working on the rollout of their aggregator and commentary.

Oh no, and after we got out the nice china and everything! President George Bush has sent his regrets that he will not be attending the party for the UN's 60th birthday that we're throwing out here in Sodom-by-the-Bay. What's more, his girlfriend Condi isn't coming either! In their place, they're sending some dude we've never heard of, Ambassador Sichan Siv, the US UNESCO rep. The president of the UN Association of SF, Nancy Peterson, said, "I am just reading into this that the administration is taking a very dubious stance symbolically toward the importance of the United Nations to the American people." The Bush administration? No way!

Friend of SFist Kevin Smokler is celebrating the release of his new anthology, "Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times." By book lovers, for book lovers. Contributing authors Michelle Richmond, Adam Johnson, K.M. Soehnlein and Paul Flores will also be on hand to celebrate. A Clean, Well Lighted Place for Books, Van Ness between Turk and Golden Gate, 7pm.

Voter fraud in Nevada and Oregon raises questions in California.