Yesterday I tore myself away from the Lib Dems tapes story and updates on "weather chaos" and people's last-minute Christmas shopping long enough to post the first five of my top ten human rights stories of 2010. Here are the next five...

Blimey, what a year. And here’s my take on it. In this two-part post – one today, one tomorrow – I’m giving you my top ten human rights stories from 2010. In no particular order – only rough chronology – here then are the first five...

After that mightily big Assange interview on the Today programme this morning they rounded off the programme with one of those “light” items at 8.55 where a couple of semi-regular guests chat about something topical. Today it was The...

There’s no such thing as bad weather, the Russians say , just bad clothing. I take the point. Wear leaky leather-soled shoes (like me!) and you’ll slither around in the snow with freezing cold feet. We Brits cling on to our skimpy...

Back in the days before England were thrashed by Germany and dumped out of the World Cup – and obviously back before Sepp Blatter was making “jokes” about abstinent gay football fans in Qatar in 2022 – I remember being in a pub in east...

As even the occasional reader of my posts may have noticed, I like to slip in the odd musical reference. It’s a foible of mine. Anyway, here it is. When I was young (long, long ago) I always seemed to be hearing so-called “novelty...

Here’s a question for you. What were you doing on 7 December 2009? Come on, I’ll have to hurry you. (Have a think about it and let me know later). OK, silly question, but I’m asking because exactly one year ago the UK-Iraqi dual...

On a busy news day yesterday (snow chaos, more WikiLeaks bombshells, mounting anticipation over the Fifa world cup decision: congrats Russia, by the way) the government slipped out a very important item on the procedures for issuing...

I must confess I never got to see the sensational ITV series Footballers’ Wives and therefore I missed out on the story of “ordinary women, struggling to keep their marriages intact while their husbands dazzle the crowds on the pitch”...

If a week is a long time in politics, then six months must be close to an eternity. It should (one would think) be enough time for Israel’s much-trumpeted “easing” of its blockade on Gaza to have brought some real improvements to the...

The other day a volunteer in the Amnesty media office where I work said “there’s always violence” in Egypt when they have elections. She was in the country for the 2005 elections, she said, and “We didn’t go out of the house. It was...

It’s been a strange few days on Guantánamo (even for seasoned Guantánamo watchers like me, and I’ve been bashing out Amnesty press releases on this miserable place since the first boiler-suited inmates were dumped there in 2002). First...

Ghost prisoners. Enhanced interrogations. Stress and duress techniques. Black sites. Enemy combatants. Spot the connection? Yes, as readers of this blog will certainly know, they’re all new – or rediscovered – phrases associated with...

It’s a blast from the past, and not a very pleasant one at that. George W Bush’s remarks justifying waterboarding in interviews to promote his memoir are … frankly, appalling. Here’s a bit from today’s Times: Asked if he authorised the...

Fears are once again mounting that Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani in Iran is about to be executed. As readers of this blog will know, this 43-year-old mother has been in grave danger of execution for months. Indeed she has become the world...

There’s a joke I’ve seen on Twitter along the lines of “buying printer cartridges will never be the same again” and you know what the joke-maker means. After the “underpants” bomb attempt on Christmas Day last year, there’s a bizarrely...

News that Tariq Aziz is to face hanging for crimes committed as deputy prime minister of Iraq isn’t going to lead to an international outcry of the kind we sometimes see with the death penalty. This, to use the Daily Express’ phrase...

Looks to me as if the devastating account in the WikiLeaks “Iraq War Logs” of how the abuse of detainees in Iraq occurred on a vast scale during 2004-9 has thrown a whole new light on this tragic, blood-soaked period in Iraq’s history...

Cuts, cuts, cuts. Fair or unfair? I’m no economist (neither are Osborne, Alexander or Johnson!) and wouldn’t claim to be able to judge it properly. But – like many others – I can’t help worrying about the damage the spending review may...

The old Catch-22 thing where interviewers sometimes try to trap their interviewees with a loaded question that leads to two equally unpalatable answers – in this example, either (1) I haven’t stopped, or (2) I have stopped – comes to...