So live your life

“Well, actually, you can’t be whatever you want to be. The world decides what you can and can’t be.”

Oh, footnotes

I'm reading (skimming, if we're going to be really accurate here) this article on feminist legal methods for my sociology of law exam tomorrow morning(...crap). I always enjoy reading the title footnote describing the author of the article, because it's always fun to find out that behind the text is an actual person. Also, just last week, I read this really engaging article about humanitarian intervention as a pretext and saw that my amazing criminal law professor, Derek Jinks, had contributed- always cool to see that.

Anyway- as someone who spent hours slaving over footnotes for the Texas International Law Journal and bemoaning the absurdity of how Bluebook adherence means editors all lose their minds just a little bit (sure, the real problem is how lazy I am, but hey, why get bogged down in the details), I thought hers was really amusing.* Just imagine the discussions that went on there; to be a fly on the wall in THAT final read...

* I need more sleep, less coffee.

The shoe

It's hard to put into words how I feel about this. On the one hand, of course I try to understand the frustration and the pain that Iraqis feel about the war. I don't mean to undermine their very real concerns and anger and sadness.

But... I don't really believe in hating people or in treating them in an undignifying manner no matter who they are, even when (maybe especially when) we are holding them accountable. So although I don't know if I would say I blame Al-Zaidi, I also certainly can't say I condone his behavior.

The International PostSecret Exhibition opens today

From an article on the opening:

For those who may not be familiar with PostSecret, it began four years ago when Frank Warren, a Germantown, Md., resident, decided to try an idea at the annual Artomatic exhibition in Washington, D. C. His idea: To pass out blank postcards to complete strangers in hopes they would return them with a personal secret and a doodle jotted on one side.

The postcards came pouring in and Warren put them on display, instantly becoming the talk of the exhibition. What Warren did not expect was that the postcards would continue filling his mailbox, long after the exhibition came to an end. Before long, he was receiving postcards with witty, depressing, shocking, engaging and even insulting secrets from every state in the country.

Warren decided to create an online blog to start posting the secrets he was receiving. Then, postcards started arriving regularly from Australia, India, the United Kingdom and beyond.

“ I realized I had tapped into something that was there all the time — something full of mystery and wonder, ” Warren said. “ I quickly realized I was no longer the leader of the project. PostSecret had a life of its own. ”

Four years later, Warren continues to receive more than 1, 000 postcards per week from around the world. The PostSecret site, www. postsecretcommunity. com, averages six million hits per month. To put things into perspective, that’s more visitors than eBay.

PostSecret — a sampling of more than 450 PostSecret postcards — will be on display Dec. 13 through Feb. 1 at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Over the past four years, the online version of PostSecret has become one of the most popular forums of conceptual art, possibly ever....

In addition to providing an important outlet, Warren believes PostSecret represents an opportunity for anyone, anywhere to add to the story of life. And that, he said, is the truest form of art.

Mugabe takes step toward power-sharing

Wow, what a team player.

Thank goodness, who else would stop the genocidal UK bastards from spreading cholera throughout Zimbabwe.

Oh, Mugabe. Please just let go and step down.

Darfur, Another Year Later

In January, President Bush said this about Darfur: “My administration called this genocide. Once you label it genocide, you obviously have to do something about it.”

Yet, last week — nearly one year later — this is what the International Criminal Court prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, told the United Nations Security Council about Darfur: “Genocide continues. Rapes in and around the camps continue. Humanitarian assistance is still hindered. More than 5,000 displaced persons die each month.” How can this still be?

The world has long declared its revulsion at the atrocities committed by Sudan’s government and its proxy militias in Darfur and done almost nothing to stop it. It took years of political wrangling to get the Security Council to approve a strengthened peacekeeping force with deployment set for Jan. 1. More than 11 months later, the Security Council has managed to send only 10,000 of the promised 26,000 peacekeepers. Large-scale military attacks against populated areas continue.

Much of the fault lies with Sudan’s cynically obstructionist president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir. But Russia and especially China — which has major oil interests in Sudan — have shamefully enabled him. So have African leaders. The United States and its allies also bear responsibility for temporizing, most recently over how to transport troops and equipment to the conflict zone.

President Bush said on Wednesday that the United States was prepared to provide airlift. So why has this taken so long?

Now, the war crimes charges Mr. Moreno-Ocampo has brought against the Sudanese leader for his role in masterminding Darfur’s horrors (the burning of villages, bombing of schools and systematic rape of woman) may — may — be changing the calculus in Khartoum.

Mr. Bashir recently agreed to peace talks mediated by Qatar and pledged to punish anyone guilty of crimes in Darfur. Until proved otherwise, the world must assume that all of this is theater designed to fool the Security Council into delaying his reckoning at the Hague.

The African Union and the Arab League, seeking to protect one of their own, are pressing the Security Council to delay a formal indictment and arrest warrant, saying it would hurt chances for a negotiated peace. The Bush administration has threatened to block such a move and we hope it stands firm. President-elect Barack Obama and his advisers have called for strong action to end the Darfur genocide. We hope the next administration moves quickly. But have no doubt: Fixing Darfur, which is increasingly engulfed in inter-rebel warfare, gets harder by the day. The indictment, expected in February, is undeniably deserved. United Nations officials say that up to 300,000 people have been killed in the Darfur conflict and that 2.7 million have been driven from their homes.

Still it might be worth delaying if Mr. Bashir called off his murderous militias, stopped obstructing deployment of a strengthened peacekeeping force and began serious peace talks. The world is waiting.

Article.



ADD YOUR VOICE!!! Ask Obama to keep his promise to make Darfur a priority.

Photo from Paris

I've meaning to post this picture I took in Paris like two months ago, but I've been...what's that word for when you put things off for no good reason? Oh yeah: lazy. Now that I have finals to study for, though, it seems like a good time to do it.

Preventing genocide

Dec 11th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Advice for Barack Obama on grappling with a problem from hell

A FEW years ago, Lexington visited a shabby church in Rwanda. Inside was a memorial to a massacre that took place within its walls in 1994. The most upsetting sight was that of small skulls which, unlike the larger ones around them, were mostly incomplete. Babies’ jawbones tend to break off when clubbed.

Preventing genocide is what one of Barack Obama’s advisers calls “a problem from hell”. But this week a group called the Genocide Prevention Task Force published some helpful guidelines for the president-elect. It is a serious group, led by Madeleine Albright (a former secretary of state) and William Cohen (a former defence secretary). And its report is steeped in good sense.

For a start, it avoids definitional traps. What, after all, is genocide? The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide is hopelessly vague, talking of “inflicting on [a] group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. Read literally, that could include almost any atrocity. Gérard Prunier, a historian of Rwanda and Darfur, prefers a stricter standard: a deliberate attempt to destroy a racial, religious or political group in its entirety.


Ms Albright and Mr Cohen sidestep this muddle by using the word “genocide” colloquially, as shorthand for the deliberate mass-murder of civilians. They then suggest ways to prevent it. First, the president should make this an explicit goal of his foreign policy. This is not only a moral obligation, says Mr Cohen, but will help keep America safer. Genocide can cause a state to collapse, and failed states make good boltholes for terrorists.

For about $250m a year, the authors of the report reckon America can detect the early rumblings of genocide and silence them. The directorate of national intelligence should monitor every trouble spot for signs that men with guns or machetes are about to kill lots of unarmed people, and report regularly on its findings. In high-risk countries, American aid dollars should address the conditions that make genocide more likely, such as ethnic discrimination, armed insurgency and leaders who whip up hatred to cement their own grip on power.

When the signs suggest that mass-murder is being planned, diplomats should warn the would-be perpetrators of dire consequences if they proceed. If all else fails, America should send in the marines, but the authors hope that the mere threat of this will usually be enough. Finally, since America cannot monitor or police the world alone, Ms Albright and Mr Cohen call for the creation of a global network to share information and act together to prevent genocide.

Optimists think Mr Obama is just the man to put all these noble thoughts into practice. He is hardly an expert on the world’s hellholes, but he surrounds himself with experts. Susan Rice, his pick for ambassador to the UN (a post that will now carry cabinet rank) was a cog in the machine that kept America out of Rwanda, and is determined not to repeat that mistake. Samantha Power, a member of Mr Obama’s transition team, is a former war correspondent in the Balkans, the author of a Pulitzer prize-winning book on genocide and a professor at Harvard. Mr Obama’s favourite think-tank, the Centre for American Progress, houses the Enough project, which aims to put the “never” into “never again”. The head of the Enough project, John Prendergast, is a perceptive Darfur-watcher and has also written a book on genocide. He says Mr Obama has recruited a “dream team” to prevent genocide. He singles out the forceful Hillary Clinton and James Jones, a respected general who will be the next national security adviser.

All this is encouraging. But in his quest to deliver the world from evil, Mr Obama will face several roadblocks. From the moment he assumes office, the economic crisis, health-care reform and Iraq will gobble up nearly all his time, energy and political capital. Whatever Mr Cohen says about the national-security benefits of genocide prevention, a report that a massacre might be about to occur in a poor and obscure place is unlikely to shoot to the top of the presidential in-tray. And will Mr Obama really be ready to send in the marines if deterrence fails?

Curbing the atrocities that are known about is hard enough. Mr Obama will probably push for negotiations to end the war in Darfur. The leading killers on both sides are likely soon to be indicted by the International Criminal Court, which should concentrate minds and provide an American peace envoy with an opening. Mr Obama will also give a jolt to the peace process in eastern Congo, where mass graves have recently been found. But given America’s commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, there will be few American boots to patrol other war zones.

Easier said than done
And the trickiest challenge will always be the unexpected. Bill Clinton is often blamed for failing to stop the killing in Rwanda. He could have sent troops or at least jammed the radio broadcasts that told the killers where to go and whom to kill. But he had seen a humanitarian military intervention in Somalia go bloodily awry the previous year, so he did not. He said afterwards that he had not understood soon enough what was going on in Rwanda. Ms Power retorts that he “could have known...if he had wanted to know”. But that is easy to say with hindsight. The Rwandan genocide was the quickest on record. Even experts did not realise just how well-organised and systematic the killing was until nearly half the victims were already dead. Mr Clinton could in theory have wrenched his mind away from all the other crises in the world and grasped the Rwandan situation in time to save many lives. But in practice, how many presidents are that flexible?

Perhaps Mr Obama will do better. But even a quick brain, a legion of good advisers and the loftiest of intentions are no guarantee. The next genocide may erupt in a place or in a manner that no one predicts. And American interventions to crush murderous governments do not always go as planned. Ask George Bush.

Article.

György Kepes

Wikify?

Today is the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

UDHR 60: What image opened your eyes to human rights?



Human rights still not a reality for all, top UN official says

Corruption impedes development and human rights, Ban says on International Day

Elie Wiesel quote

I was talking to my brother the other day about how my idealism has been taking a little bit of a beating lately, and this relates to my frustration over humankind's seeming lack of....awareness? humanity? At the end of the day, I still believe that people are good, and it isn't because they are incompassionate or bad that they don't seem to care. It is human nature to have a self-defense. In the genocide documentary that I posted about yesterday, Elie Weisel was asked about the tendency for the world to ignore the atrocities that are going on:

It's better not to believe, because if you believe, you don't sleep nights. And how can you eat? How can you drink a glass of wine, when you know?

I try to think in terms of this corollary as much as possible: how can I complain about (fill in the blank), because I DO know. I DO know how lucky I am, how wonderful my life is, and how blessed I am that God gifted me with this life, these opportunities, these people. But it is hard, isn't it, to avoid that guilt sometimes. There but for the grace of God go I... I want to earn it. I want to make it up, somehow.

A Happy and Blessed Eid

to all!

Scream Bloody Murder

The other day, I watched this CNN special on genocide called "Scream Bloody Murder", figuring it was a good substitute for, or at least complementary to, actually studying for my human rights exam. Also, oh yeah, I just wanted to.

Anyway, I just looked at the website and at the bottom there was a link to a poll, and I thought the results were interesting.

Quick Vote

Should military force be the first or last resort to end genocide?
First resort 79% 8447
Last resort 21% 2208
Total Votes: 10655
This is not a scientific poll

Obviously, not only is this not scientific, but it's arguably sort of a biased set-up: Hey check out all these horrible atrocities and no one did anything to stop it and that's horrible too, now take this poll. Then again, maybe the results reflect that the program made a good point. Who knows (not me)...

But it reminded me of a similar discussion we had in my class a week or two ago about whether or not, in the absence of UN support for intervention, a state should act unilaterally to stop human rights violations. Our professor took a quick poll of the class. I usually don't raise my hand in these sorts of situations, because a simple raising-of-the-hand doesn't let me qualify my answer, and I'm a huge relativist so like, that sucks. But I decided to go ahead and be really American and raise my hand "yes" (this felt awkward in the wake of the prof talking about countries using humanitarian intervention as a pretext, with Iraq as the example there). I saw several Irish students raise their hands "no", but I didn't really get the chance to see how other students answered. Ever since then, though, I can't stop thinking about all of the qualifications I would have liked to make to my answer.

Maybe it'll be an essay question.

Pictures of You: Images From Iran

This is an amazing, beautiful project. I'm so enamored with it that I am using my last five minutes of computer power (indefinitely) (...long story involving my power cord and some weird angles) to post it:

ARTIST'S STATEMENT
One day, while photographing on the streets of Isfahan, Iran, I spotted a young Persian man wearing a Dixie Chicks t-shirt. I introduced myself, and I inquired whether his t-shirt was intended to signify his dislike for the American President Bush. He smiled, and replied that the shirt wasn't just about President Bush. He explained that shortly after the Dixie Chicks criticized Bush on stage, bootleg Dixie Chicks shirts appeared in stores all over Iran's major cities. He told me that the shirt represented the admiration that he and his compatriots had for Americans' freedom of speech.

That young man and his t-shirt have become a symbol for me of the basic philosophical compatibility of Iranians and Americans— and of Americans' unawareness of that compatibility. For example, few Americans understand that the Persian culture celebrates knowledge, personal freedom, and the enjoyment of life. Most Americans do not know that Iranian women, despite the obstacles put in their way, are a significant political voice, and make up a majority of the university students in Iran. It seems that Americans would ordinarily admire the courage and willpower of the Iranian people, but the current political climate makes it nearly impossible for Americans to recognize those qualities.

I want all Americans to have a chance to come face-to-face with their Iranian counterparts, and I want to document the Americans' responses to the encounter. For this reason, I am assembling a traveling photography exhibit entitled 'pictures of you: Images from Iran.' The show features portraits of Iranians printed on translucent silk. The images can be viewed from either side, and the translucency of the fabric permits viewers to watch as other people look at the installation. This serves to make viewers aware of other people's reactions to the images, and perhaps will cause them to reflect on their own responses. The fragility of the silk is intended to remind viewers of the significant effect that American misperceptions might have on Iranians and on Persian culture. I want viewers to have the sense that something beautiful is in jeopardy.

The installation will be shown in outdoor venues that are not traditionally reserved for art. It will be shown in high-traffic areas, so it will be encountered by viewers who do not typically seek out art. For example, we plan to show the exhibit at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, at a NASCAR event, and at select state fairs. Many viewers will simply happen upon the show without having heard about it. My intention is to reach a broad audience, and to evoke an unfiltered response to the photography.


For me, Americans' response to the installation will be the real point of the show. Many Americans have strong feelings and intuitions about Iran, and many of their ideas have developed in an environment tainted by ignorance and suspicion. While Americans are free to learn about Iran and engage in informed debate about foreign policy, so many of them choose not to use those very freedoms that millions of Iranians long for. I hope that the show will ultimately transcend the issue of Iranian/American relations. It will illustrate how Americans exercise their freedoms and privileges— including the privilege to remain uninformed about other nations and cultures without suffering any significant consequences.

The main title of the show, 'pictures of you,' is deliberately ambiguous. Viewers may assume the subject of the show— the 'you'— is the Iranian people. But the American viewer of the show is its subject— its 'you'— as much as the people of Iran are. I hope that the documentation of Americans' response to the installation will allow us to examine that part of American culture objectively and with compassion. My intention is that allowing Americans to see themselves in this way will encourage them to look more carefully at other nations and cultures.
The title of the show was inspired by a verse by the Iranian poet Rumi. In translation, it reads:

If my head holds one thought wise and clear, it's you.
Poor as I am, what I hold dear is you.
No matter how I see myself, I'm nothing.
Anything I am entirely is you.

from Rumi's Kolliyaat-e Shams-e Tabrizi

Source (including link to interview with artist)hurryhurrypostpostpost

Capital lacks clean water, cholera kills hundreds in Zimbabwe

(CNN) -- Almost 12,000 people have contracted cholera since August in Zimbabwe, and the outbreak threatens to grow more dire -- and deadly -- because the nation can't pay for chemicals to treat water or for doctors to treat victims.

There was no running water Monday In Harare, the capital, according to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

Residents there were digging shallow holes in their yards in hopes of finding water. In some cases, nearby holes served as latrines. Other residents were getting water from polluted rivers....

Unemployment in Zimbabwe is about 90 percent, and the official inflation rate is 231 million percent, though unofficial estimates suggest it's higher.

The economic turmoil is compounded by the nation's political tumult. MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai won the most votes in March elections but dropped out of the subsequent runoff, citing violence against MDC supporters.

Tsvangirai and President Robert Mugabe of the ruling ZANU-PF signed a power-sharing deal in September, but it has failed to take effect as the MDC has refused to form a national unity government, accusing Mugabe of taking all the key ministries.

Last week, Carter called Zimbabwe "a basket case" and blamed the cholera outbreak and other turmoil in the nation on "the poisonous effects" of the Mugabe regime.

Also last week, a group of Harare residents, led by Arthur Taderera, filed a lawsuit against the Zimbabwe government, saying, "Due to their lack of diligence and constant supplies of clean water to my place of residence, diseases like cholera surfaced and people are dying."

World AIDS Day

A Day With(out) Art

Day Without Art (DWA) began on December 1st 1989 as the national day of action and mourning in response to the AIDS crisis. To make the public aware that AIDS can touch everyone, and inspire positive action, some 800 U.S. art and AIDS groups participated in the first Day Without Art, shutting down museums, sending staff to volunteer at AIDS services, or sponsoring special exhibitions of work about AIDS. Since then, Day With(out) Art has grown into a collaborative project in which an estimated 8,000 national and international museums, galleries, art centers, AIDS Service Organizations, libraries, high schools and colleges take part.

Obama picks Susan E. Rice

Choice for U.N. Backs Strong Action Against Mass Killings

Running for Congo Women

I just committed myself to run the Paris Half-Marathon on March 8th, and I am doing it for this cause.

If you have the money (I certainly don't, which is why I'm putting my knees through hell instead), sponsor a woman!

If you go to the website, they have a nice video about the program. I'm a sucker for a video.

But for a more "speaking" video, this is from a 60-minutes story called "War Against Women" in which they visited the Women for Women center:

Accompanying article here.

There is also a blog here from International Rescue Committee describing the situation:

"In the Democratic Republic of Congo there is a war raging against women. Here, women and girls are victims of rape on a scale never seen before. Whenever violent conflict escalates in Congo, so do incidents of rape. It’s happening right now in the volatile province of North Kivu. Gunmen are entering homes and raping and torturing women in front of their families. Others are being snatched from their villages or farms during raids or attacked while collecting water or firewood. They are sometimes kept for days, weeks or even months at a time and subjected to repeated gang rapes, beatings, and mutilation.

“Rape is used as a tactic by all the armed groups in Congo to terrorize communities and to control and humiliate families,” says Sarah Mosely, who oversees International Rescue Committee programs to aid rape survivors in Congo.

“It’s sometimes hard to describe just how horrific these assaults are, but I can tell you that it’s not uncommon for women to be raped with sticks and bayonets that rip them apart or for men and boys to be forced at gunpoint to rape, stab and shoot their mothers, sisters and daughters.

Before I came to Congo, I worked in Darfur aiding rape survivors. The situation is horrible there, but in terms of the frequency and the brutality of attacks, nothing compares to what’s happening to women and girls in Congo....

Tens of thousands of women and girls have suffered such attacks, leaving women and girls physically damaged and emotionally terrorized. Many victims are no longer able to bear children. Others end up suffering from fistula, a condition in which internal organs are so destroyed that the victims lose bowel and bladder control. Unfortunately, Congo’s war and ongoing conflict destroyed the health system in eastern regions, so there is a shortage of hospitals and clinics capable of treating rape survivors. And few can afford the medical help anyway.

A number of aid groups, including the International Rescue Committee, are working to change that and ensure that women and girls have access to critical medical and other needed support services."

A scattering of UN News Service headlines

Ban hails Sudan’s election body as major progress in north-south peace accord

Zimbabwe’s humanitarian crisis likely to worsen, warns senior UN relief official

UN experts call for strong government response to anti-Roma violence in Europe

UN human rights office regrets Israeli pull-out from upcoming racism conference

UNICEF sounds alarm after brutal murder of albino girl in Burundi

Egypt: Uproar as Lawyer Suggests Raping Israeli Women

Lovely.

Cleanliness is next to godlessness

Nov 20th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Soaping away your outer dirt may lead to inner evil

PUBLIC displays of untidiness, such as graffiti, may promote bad behaviour (see article), but when it comes to personal cleanliness the opposite appears to be true. A study just published in Psychological Science by Simone Schnall of the University of Plymouth and her colleagues shows that washing with soap and water makes people view unethical activities as more acceptable and reasonable than they would if they had not washed themselves.

Read more about how me not washing my hair today makes me an awesome person here.

Carter, Annan unable to visit to Zimbabwe

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (CNN) -- A group including former U.N. chief Kofi Annan and former U.S. President Carter postponed a visit to Zimbabwe meant to highlight the country's humanitarian crisis after the government refused to cooperate, Annan said. ...

The government denied that it barred the officials from entering, however, saying it instead asked them to postpone their visit....

Machel said she was "extremely disappointed."

"We want to talk to the people and hear their stories directly. We want people to know that we care and that we will do all we can to help them. People are dying from hunger every day in Zimbabwe, and hospitals are unable to treat the sick. With schools struggling to stay open, children are missing out on an education. One in four children has lost one or both parents. The government's attitude to our visit is deeply regrettable."

Carter noted that he supported Zimbabwe's liberation struggle, led by Mugabe, while he was the U.S. president.

"I am partisan. I make no apology for that. I supported Zimbabwe's liberation struggle, and I oppose suffering and misery. But I am very sorry that we are unable to visit Zimbabwe. We will continue with our plans to learn as much as we can while we are here in the region, where millions of Zimbabweans inside and outside the country face a daily struggle for survival."

Annan and Carter said they would remain in South Africa to monitor the situation in Zimbabwe.

Article here.

Iran Executes Man in Spy Case, and Blogger’s Arrest Is Reported

By NAZILA FATHI
Published: November 22, 2008
TEHRAN — Iran has executed a man convicted of spying for Israel, the semiofficial Fars news agency reported Saturday.

Iranian news media reported in June that Mr. Ashtari, 45, had received a death sentence for spying. At the time, newspapers said he had been the manager of a company selling communication and security equipment to the Iranian government.

An Israeli official said in June that Israel had no knowledge of his case.

Tension between Iran and Israel has escalated in recent months over Iran’s nuclear program. Israel has not ruled out launching a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran does not recognize Israel as a state and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has spoken of Israel with hostility since his election in 2005.

A Web site affiliated with the Iranian Intelligence Ministry has reported that a high-profile blogger, Hossein Derakhshan, was also arrested this month and accused of spying for Israel. Judiciary officials have not confirmed his arrest but the Web site, Jahan News, reported that he had confessed to spying for Israel.

Mr. Derakhshan, an Iranian-Canadian, had lived in Canada since 2000 but moved back to Tehran a few weeks ago. He traveled to Israel in 2007 and wrote about it on his blog.

Abraham Rabinovich, an Israeli journalist who interviewed Mr. Derakhshan in Jerusalem two years ago, described him in an op-ed article for The International Herald Tribune on Friday as an “Iranian patriot” who through his blog “offered the first views of ordinary life in Israel that Iranians had been able to see.”

Mr. Rabinovich quoted Mr. Derakhshan as saying: “I want to humanize Israel for Iranians and tell them it’s not what the Islamic propaganda machine is saying, that Israelis are thirsty for Muslim blood. And I want to show Israel that the average Iranian isn’t even thinking about doing harm to Israel.”

Article..

Religious unity: The Charter for Compassion

Friday, November 21st, 2008 @ 16:39 UTC
by Juliana Rincón Parra

As children we may all have heard the Golden Rule expressed in many different ways, but the basic idea is: Treat others as you would like to be treated. This is Karen Armstrong's TED wish, to create a platform in which the different Abrahamic faiths could focus on what was common to all, the moral backbone of all their faiths towards a greater unity and better communication among people of different faiths. The Charter of Compassion is requesting stories of unity and compassion to be uploaded on their site, written or in video form, and that together, people may write this Charter of Compassion a document where this new image will be established, signed by sages and religious leaders. Different sections of the charter are opened on different dates, so feel free to stop by the site and write your perspective on the issue.


Karen Armstrong is a British born former Catholic nun who has written many books on Muslim faith and has taught in the Leo Baeck rabbinic college: this inter-faith knowledge led her on the path towards bringing this project into fruition. Her acceptance speech video is on YouTube, and in it she speaks about this desire of hers to work for the unity of the different faiths, to make religion work towards universal harmony:



The Charter for Compassion's YouTube channel already has some inspirational videos by people in Pakistan. Samia Shoaib shares her own personal compassion story of how we are all interconnected and what happens to our neighbor or someone down the street does concern us:



Arshad Mahmood also speaks from his Muslim faith, in how people should concern themselves about the fate of others, and how discrimination against those of a different faith should not take place:



The Charter for Compassion has opened the call for submissions where people can also tell their stories of compassion and change the image of religion as a harborer of intolerance, showing the world that compassion is and will be the cornerstone of religion, and the way towards change. You can participate by offering information in different languages so the message can get to more people, and by making a video with a story where compassion is featured, or writing your opinion or perspective on the Charter itself.

Article from Global Voices.

Artist's London giveaway begins

Adam Neate is an urban artist who is leaving his artwork around London for people to find.







Article.

The Archipelago of Fear: Are fortification and foreign aid making Kabul more dangerous?

Here is a long but fantastic article exploring the often complicated relationship between foreign aid and its recipients.

I'm really intrigued by this article's message, but I know that eight pages can uh, be a deterrent to some, so let me super-simplify and condense here: The way that foreign aid is being done in Kabul is basically 1) alienating the people and 2) possibly increasing the security risks for foreigners. The fortification and foreign aid referenced in the title are showing up via luxurious compounds for foreigners and corrupted officials, which stand in stark contrast to the 45% unemployment rate and s#!tholes-without-electricity-or-running-water that the people themselves enjoy. The people are distressed, and bombers go after the hotels, which make for obvious and symbolic targets. In the other hand, maybe if the aid was distributed in a way that seemed more...well, distributed, then the people would feel better off and the desperation that makes Taliban recruitment easier would dissipate.

I'm also really interested in the article's exploration of the relationship between the (very understandable) desire of aid workers and other foreigners to have increasing security measures put into place and the way this might actually court an increasing need for those very measures.

Mentioned in the article was the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, which I thought sounded really awesome. Basically they are committed to helping rebuilding in Afghanistan with a focus on reclaiming its history and culture.

Check out this photography exhibition called Return, Afghanistan. (Description: For over a quarter of a century, Afghanistan has been devastated by war, drought and famine. Her people have been displaced, and her culture eviscerated. The world renowned photographer Zalmaï, a former refugee from Afghanistan, now Swiss citizen returns after twenty-three years in exile, to re-discover his homeland at a crucial moment of transition.)

Also UNHCR is running a five-part series this month on "Afghanistan at the crossroads." Here are the first, second, and third reports.

Refugees in Gaza

This is a five-minute clip from a documentary called Occupation 101 that I recently watched. Regardless of whether or not this documentary comports with your beliefs on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I urge everyone to watch this short video highlighting the refugee crisis. Very sad.

Gaza's Reality

Top UN officials tell world leaders it is time for action in fight against global woes

12 November 2008 – The General Assembly President today told global leaders the world is facing its most difficult period since the founding of the United Nations and urged them to use their “moral strength” in finding solutions to the problems plaguing the Earth, such as global hunger, poverty and climate change.Speaking to over 70 heads of State and high-level officials at the “Culture of Peace” gathering, Miguel D’Escoto said that the world must choose between the values of consumerism and greed, or social responsibility and ethical behaviour, including the economic and political spheres.
“The United Nations has very appropriately elaborated a complex agenda for making the world a better place,” Mr. D’Escoto said in his opening remarks to the two-day meeting in New York.

“But progress is too slow. We are running out of time, and do not seem to have the energy and conviction required to move any faster,” he added.

Read the article. Please.

We have to remember

In the midst of all the killing, raping, and looting in the Congo, the stalled power-sharing talks in Zimbabwe, pirating and other general lawlessness in Somalia...

let's hope the world doesn't forget about the tragedies still taking place in Sudan.

This is especially important given the Congolese refugees going into Sudan, stressing an already horrible refugee sitution.

It's not like reading the news makes me smile every morning, but today for some reason I am even more saddened than usual. Every day it feels like the news gets worse and worse, tragedy upon tragedy. And sometimes it feels like we don't even give two shits. Maybe it sounds like a broken record, but maybe that's because we aren't listening. People around the world are living in conditions that are unimagineable to most of us. And to them, it's not just a news story they read with their coffee. It's their LIVES. This is what they LIVE. These people could be you or me, had we only been born in a different place. These are mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends, and they deserve better than this. WE HAVE TO CARE.

As global talks on the economic crisis continue...

Things still look bad and the world is still trying to figure it out.

With that said, I want to revisit what Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said a few weeks ago at a talk in the States:

“While recently we have heard much in this country about how problems on Wall Street are affecting innocent people on Main Street, we need to think more about those people around the world with no streets. Wall Street, Main Street, no street – the solutions devised must be for all,” he stressed.

I guess I say this because also in the news is:

People are still starving

People are still without basic amenities

People are still caught up in horrific conflicts

I really, really hope that as we go forward in this economic mess, we remember how big the world is.

Myanmar blogger jailed for 20 years

Oh, nice.

In the second case, poet Saw Wai received a two-year jail sentence for a poem he wrote for Valentine's Day that contained a veiled jab at the junta's leading figure, Senior Gen. Than Shwe.

The first words of each line in the eight-line poem, "February the Fourteenth" spelled out the message: "Senior General Than Shwe is crazy with power."

...

How about a poem that spells out no s#!t.

Deprogramming Jihadists

By KATHERINE ZOEPF
The Saudi government is trying to rehabilitate violent Islamists by addressing their psychological needs. Could therapy be the best sort of counterterrorism?

Interesting article

Getting Tough - Deported in Coma, Saved Back in U.S.

GILA BEND, Ariz. — Soon after Antonio Torres, a husky 19-year-old farmworker, suffered catastrophic injuries in a car accident last June, a Phoenix hospital began making plans for his repatriation to Mexico.

Mr. Torres was comatose and connected to a ventilator. He was also a legal immigrant whose family lives and works in the purple alfalfa fields of this southwestern town. But he was uninsured. So the hospital disregarded the strenuous objections of his grief-stricken parents and sent Mr. Torres on a four-hour journey over the California border into Mexicali.

Article here. Wow.

John Baldessari

Absurd, awesome, absurdly awesome, awesomely absurd:









Excerpt from this interview with the artist-

Nicole Davis: What led you to become an artist?

JB: I always had this idea that doing art was just a masturbatory activity, and didn't really help anybody. I was teaching kids in the California Youth Authority, an honor camp where they send kids instead of sending them to prison. One kid came to me one day and asked if I would open up the arts and crafts building at night so they could work. I said, "If all of you guys will cool it in the classes, then I'll baby-sit you." Worked like a charm. Here were these kids that had no values I could embrace, that cared about art more than I. So, I said, "Well, I guess art has some function in society," and I haven't gotten beyond that yet, but it was enough to convince me that art did some good somehow. I just needed a reason that wasn't all about myself.

The Take Away Shows

My brother introduced me to this amazing concept they have going on at La Blogotheque.

Basically they invite musicians (typically indie bands and ...Jason Mraz?) to play their music whilst roaming the streets (typically Paris).

Check it out, it's awesome.

Human smuggling across Gulf of Aden and Mediterranean Sea keeps rising – UN

4 November 2008 – The number of people illegally crossing the Gulf of Aden and the Mediterranean Sea is on the rise, the United Nations refugee agency reported today, as it confirmed that 12 people fleeing Somalia in the past week have been found dead on a beach in Yemen and 28 others remain missing.Smugglers forced up to 40 people overboard into the deep waters of the Gulf of Aden as they were on the last leg of the 36-hour journey from strife-torn Somalia to Yemen on Sunday, the 75 survivors told the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) at its Ahwar reception centre.

Article here.

Cuba, U.S.A.: Voting on the Embargo

Cuban bloggers talk about the UN vote to lift US sanctions against their country.

The Cuban Triangle was of the opinion that the vote served to remind people of a few things:

"First, Cuba knows how to do multilateral diplomacy.

Second, while many governments agree with U.S. criticisms of Cuban human rights practices, virtually all agree, as the resolution says, that U.S. sanctions have “adverse effects” on the Cuban people. And virtually all are willing to vote to urge the United States to lift the embargo.
Third, if a new U.S. Administration decides that it wants to work more closely with allies and other countries on the Cuba issue, U.S. sanctions – from the embargo to direct action against third-country banks and companies – are an obstacle."

Meanwhile, El Cafe Cubano sought to draw attention to what he thinks is the real issue:

"Isn't that special…”The U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly for the favor of lifting the 46-year-old US trade embargo on communist-ruled Cuba.”
Alrighty then…What about FREE ELECTIONS and DEMOCRACY?"

Have Your Say: What does Africa want from the next US president?

I thought this was interesting also- just a collection of reader input.

'Human catastrophe' grips Congo

Fierce fighting between government and rebel forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo is causing a humanitarian catastrophe, the Red Cross has said.

It said the number of displaced people was growing by the hour and that the precarious security situation was making it difficult to deliver aid.

Intense diplomatic efforts are under way to end the crisis, which has displaced a total of 250,000 people.

A tense ceasefire is holding in and around the eastern city of Goma.
...
The BBC's Peter Greste in Goma says the road from the city is choked with human misery.

Article here.

Also read: Eyewitness: 'Chaos in Congo city'

More eyewitness accounts from bloggers in the area, including this heartbreaking video.

Here but for the Grace of God go I.

Tristeza en Colombia

Colombia has a really beautiful culture, and a lot of it comes from the interesting mish-mash of people.

Barranquilla Carnival:


Unfortunately, while mish-mashes can make for beautiful music, art, and dance, they can also sometimes make for conflict.

Colombia: Indigenous Protests and Murders Under Media Blackout
Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 @ 16:52 UTC
by Juliana Rincón Parra

From Colombia, the indigenous groups in the Cauca department have made an international SOS to call attention on their plight. On their website, cric-colombia.org they explain how they have been protesting the human rights abuses they have been victim of, represented by the murder of one of their community leaders by hit men and the death threats on other regional and community leaders and spokespeople.

CNN coverage:
Uribe: Colombian police fired on protesters

Video of the incident.

"Pre-Uribe confession" story here.

the Centre Pompidou and Jacques Villegle

I quite recently had the wonderful opportunity to visit the Centre Pompidou.



My favorite exhibition was Jacques Villegle.











There was also a wonderful futurism exhibition.

Iraqis leading the way in growing numbers of asylum-seekers, says UN agency

17 October 2008 – The number of people seeking asylum around the world is on the rise with Iraqis being by far the top nationality in search of safety, according to a report published by the United Nations refugee agency today.
Some 165,000 applications were submitted to the 44 industrialized countries included in the report in the first six months of this year, and Iraqis made up 12 per cent of all asylum claims lodged with 19,500 applications and some 20 per cent of those petitioning Sweden.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) report showed that the number of claims made by Iraqis was higher than the combined number of asylum claims submitted by Russia (9,400) and China (8,700), the second and third highest nationalities seeking asylum.

While the top three countries of origin for asylum-seekers saw either a downward or stable trend, the number of Somali claims lodged rose significantly, reflecting a deteriorating situation in the conflict-wracked Horn of Africa country. More than 7,400 Somalis were registered between January and June this year, compared to 5,000 for the same period last year.

Pakistan and Afghanistan also had large numbers of citizens seek asylum in the first half of 2008, with 6,300 claims each. For Afghanistan this represents a 22 per cent increase on the corresponding period for last year and a 42 per cent rise on 2006.

Although the total number of Iraqi asylum-seekers dropped by 18 per cent from the previous six months and 10 per cent from the first half of 2007, the overall upward trend of asylum claims continues. Data showed an increase of 9 per cent in 2007 compared to 2006 and 3 per cent from the first half of 2007.

According to the asylum trends report significant increases were registered by applicants from Mali, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Côte d’Ivoire, Georgia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Assuming that current patterns remain unchanged, UNHCR say the number of asylum claims lodged during the whole of this year could reach 360,000, or 10 percent more than 2007.

The report also noted that an estimated 25,400 people submitted asylum claims to the United States, the largest recipient of new claims, representing 15 per cent of all applications lodged in the first six months of 2008. Canada ranked second as a country of destination with 16,800 applications, or around 10 per cent of all asylum claims lodged.

Article here.

Related: UN calls on European Union to uphold pledges to protect Iraqi refugees

Alma Har'el, Alphonse Mucha, my world goes in circles, I smile

As seen in my last post, I am now an ardent fan of Alma Har'el. This discovery made today amazing, but the best part was seeing how wonderfully life can overlap itself sometimes. I was reading this interview about how she did the Elephant Gun video (SO GOOD), and I came across this part:

SRO: What inspirations helped you design and create the shoot for ‘Elephant’?

Alma: After meeting with Ben in NY, I went to Israel and stayed in my mother’s house for 2 weeks; I listened to the song late at night and dreamt what it would look like. I knew it would have a dance scene, but that the dancers would be tipsy and a little drunk— it’s that feeling at the end of the night when you feel you have a lot in common with everybody who’s in the room, whether you know them or not. Then Zach and I spoke on the phone about it and I asked him: “Zach, who is singing the song?” and he said - “a safari hunter”. That’s how it started.

It went through a few changes— In the beginning I wanted to shoot in a bar; then I decided on the space covered with old maps of the world, and I really got a handle on how I wanted it to look. The color palette was all coming from that and from Mucha paintings.

This was great, because I was just about to do a post on Alphonse Mucha. I even had this website about him open on my desktop as I read this interview. So I guess it's no wonder I was feeling the Elephant Gun video so much.







I'm typically a fan of art nouveau - and man, he's just the bee's kness. A classic! Offical website here.

I also really love this idea of decorating the walls with old maps. I hate modern maps, though. Maybe I should start collecting old maps and one day decorate my house like the Elephant Gun video...

Beirut

Sadly, I'd never actually watched the music videos for these songs before tonight- they are AWESOME.





Beirut is really really cool, and now I additionally have mad respect for Alma Har'el who directed these videos

Rape Victims’ Words Help Jolt Congo Into Change

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: October 17, 2008

BUKAVU, Congo — Honorata Kizende looked out at the audience and began with a simple, declarative sentence.

“There was no dinner,” she said.

“It was me who was dinner. Me, because they kicked me roughly to the ground, and they ripped off all my clothes, and between the two of them, they held my feet. One took my left foot, one took my right, and the same with my arms, and between the two of them they proceeded to rape me. Then all five of them raped me.”

The audience, which had been called together by local and international aid groups and included everyone from high-ranking politicians to street kids with no shoes, stared at her in disbelief.

Congo, it seems, is finally facing its horrific rape problem, which United Nations officials have called the worst sexual violence in the world. Tens of thousands of women, possibly hundreds of thousands, have been raped in the past few years in this hilly, incongruously beautiful land and many of these rapes have been marked by a level of brutality that is shocking even by the twisted standards of a place haunted by warlords and drug-crazed child soldiers.

After years of denial and shame, the silence is being broken. Because of stepped-up efforts in the past nine months by international organizations and the Congolese government, rapists are no longer able to count on a culture of impunity. Of course, countless men still get away with assaulting women. But more and more are getting caught, prosecuted and put behind bars.

Read the whole article here

Rain Forest Tribe’s Charge of Neglect Is Shrouded by Religion and Politics

By SIMON ROMERO
Published: October 6, 2008

PUERTO AYACUCHO, Venezuela — Three years after President Hugo Chávez expelled American missionaries from the Venezuelan Amazon, accusing them of using proselytism of remote tribes as a cover for espionage, resentment is festering here over what some tribal leaders say was official negligence that led to the deaths of dozens of indigenous children and adults.

President Hugo Chávez expelled missionaries from the Amazon but has increased social welfare programs there.

Some leaders of the Yanomami, one of South America’s largest forest-dwelling tribes, say that 50 people in their communities in the southern rain forest have died since the expulsion of the missionaries in 2005 because of recurring shortages of medicine and fuel, and unreliable transportation out of the jungle to medical facilities.

Mr. Chávez’s government disputes the claims and points to more spending than ever on social welfare programs for the Yanomami. The spending is part of a broader plan to assert greater military and social control over expanses of rain forest that are viewed as essential for Venezuela’s sovereignty.

The Yanomami leaders are wading into a politicized debate about how officials react to health care challenges faced by the Yanomami and other Amazonian tribes. In recent interviews here, government officials contended that the Yanomami could be exaggerating their claims to win more resources from the government and undercut its authority in the Amazon.

Meanwhile, the Yanomami claims come amid growing concern in Venezuela over indigenous health care after a scandal erupted in August over a tepid official response to a mystery disease that killed 38 Warao Indians in the country’s northeast.

“This government makes a big show of helping the Yanomami, but rhetoric is one thing and reality another,” said Ramón González, 49, a Yanomami leader from the village of Yajanamateli who traveled recently to Puerto Ayacucho, the capital of Amazonas State, to ask military officials and civilian doctors for improved health care.

“The truth is that Yanomami lives are still considered worthless,” said Mr. González, who was converted to Christianity by New Tribes Mission, a Florida group expelled in 2005. “The boats, the planes, the money, it’s all for the criollos, not for us,” he said, using a term for nonindigenous Venezuelans.

The Yanomami leaders offer a far different image of the tribe than those found in anthropology books, which often depict it in Rousseaulike settings with painted faces and clad in loincloths.

There are about 26,000 Yanomami in the Amazon rain forest, in Venezuela and Brazil, where they subsist as seminomadic hunters and cultivators of crops like manioc and bananas.

They remain susceptible to ailments for which they have weak defenses, including respiratory diseases and drug-resistant strains of malaria. In Puerto Ayacucho, they can be seen wandering through the traffic-clogged streets, clad in the modern uniform of T-shirts and baggy pants, toting cellphones.

This and the rest of the article here

With Spotlight on Pirates, Somalis on Land Waste Away in the Shadows

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: October 10, 2008

AFGOOYE, Somalia — Just step into a feeding center here, and the sense of hopelessness is overwhelming.

Dozens of women sit with listless babies in their laps, snapping their fingers, trying to get a flicker of life out of their dying children.

Little eyes close. Wizened 1-year-olds struggle to breathe. This is the place where help is supposed to be on its way. But the nurses in the filthy smocks are besieged. From the doorway, you can see the future of Somalia fading away.

While the audacity of a band of Somali pirates who hijacked a ship full of weapons has grabbed the world’s attention, it is the slow-burn suffering of millions of Somalis that seems to go almost unnoticed.

The suffering is not new. Or especially surprising. This country on the edge of Africa has been slowly, but inexorably, sliding toward an abyss for the past year and a half — or, some would argue, for the past 17. United Nations officials have called Somalia “the forgotten crisis.”

The causes are unemployment, drought, inflation, a squeeze on global food supplies and a war that will not end. Fighting between Somalia’s weak transitional government and a determined Islamist insurgency has been heating up in the past few weeks, driving thousands from their homes and cutting people off from food. The hospital wards here are one indicator of the conflict’s intensity.

“In the past two months,” said Muhammad Hussein, a doctor at a feeding center in Afgooye, “our patients have doubled.”

In August, 200 women with emaciated babies lined up outside his clinic every day. Today, there are 400.

More than three million people, about half Somalia’s population, need emergency rations to survive. Nobody seems to like it. Many say they feel humiliated.

“That’s all we talk about: when will the next handout come,” said Zenab Ali Osman, a grandmother raising her daughter’s children.

Before fighting drove her from Mogadishu, the capital, to Afgooye’s endless refugee camps of gumdrop-shaped huts made of plastic bags and in some cases soiled T-shirts, Ms. Zenab used to wash clothes for a living. On a good day, she made the equivalent of 80 cents.

The civil war has eviscerated the economy, leaving so many people to survive on pennies. But out on the high seas, it is a different story. Pirates thrive off this same lawlessness, making millions of dollars by hijacking ships in Somalia’s unpatrolled waters and demanding hefty ransoms to free them. On Sept. 25, a band of pirates seized a Ukrainian freighter full of tanks and other weapons bound for Kenya.

The pirates are asking for $20 million, an unfathomable amount here. Negotiations are still going on, and the price will probably be closer to $5 million. No one wants to pay the pirates, but in this case, with 20 crew members being held hostage on a ship full of explosives, giving in may be the safest way out.

But the pirates may be growing impatient. According to The Associated Press, they threatened Friday night to blow up the ship if they were not paid the money within three days.

“I pray to God they are caught,” said Dhuho Abdi Omar, a mother who was waiting at a feeding center in Afgooye with her 2-year-old girl, who had not eaten for two weeks. “These pirates are blocking our food.”

Not everyone agreed. Many young men in the camps seemed to lionize the gunmen of the seas.

“They’re tough guys,” said Muhammad Warsame, 22. “And they’re protecting our coast.”

The pirates have made the same argument, saying they hijack ships in response to illegal fishing and dumping.

“They’re our marines,” said Jaemali Argaga, a militia leader.

Somalia has not had any marines, or national army or navy of any significance, since the central government imploded in 1991. Clan-based warlords carved the country into fiefs, preying upon the population. People eventually got fed up, and in the summer of 2006, a grass-roots Islamist movement drove away the warlords.

Ethiopia and the United States accused the Islamists of sheltering terrorists, and in the winter of 2006, Ethiopian and American forces ousted the Islamists. But the Islamists are back. Supported by businessmen and war profiteers, Islamist guerrilla fighters are viciously battling the weak government forces and Ethiopian soldiers. Civilians are often caught in between. Thousands have been killed in the past year and a half.

Many aid workers have fled. The United Nations World Food Program is one of the last organizations with a large staff inside Somalia. Denise Brown, the deputy country director, said the environment was increasingly hostile. And desperate.

Thousands of hungry people besieged a convoy of 35 United Nations-chartered food trucks moving through Mogadishu two weeks ago. They stripped the trucks clean, looting more than two million pounds of food.

“It’s unprecedented,” Ms. Brown said “Things just went haywire.”

That has taken food out of the mouths of people like Ms. Zenab, whose daughter was one of the 20 street sweepers in Mogadishu killed by a bomb in August that was buried in a pile of garbage.

She is now helping raise several grandchildren. Amina, 13 months old, will not eat. The two sat the other day on a cot covered with flies. All around them were babies looking up at the ceiling with round wet eyes, some with faces covered in tape because they were too sick to swallow and were being fed milk through their noses.

Whom does she blame?

“Those with guns,” Ms. Zenab said. “Whoever they are.”

Source.

Lucia Cullinane

An artist from Madrid, now living in Ireland:

A Tea Time / La merienda


Maddonna with child


The cover of Dublin's fashion magazine "Choice"


The Mermaid Dance / El baile de las sirenas


See her website for more. I think she's pretty rad.

Obligatory Economy Post

Various articles:
here
aqui
and here

Really, I don't typically follow the business pages, and even when this started to hit the front pages, it wasn't as much on my radar as it should have been. But seeing how much it is also affecting the rest of the world has underscored its importance to everyone. What's going to happen to the global food prices crisis? Or the Millenium Development Goals? How will a huge government bailout affect the money given to humanitarian agencies or to foreign aid? How will charities fare?

a Holy Season

Yes, Happy Eid to all!

And of course, also Happy Rosh Hashanah.

An interesting article on the Holy Season here.

When itunes travels

The other day was a great day in the history of my itunes.

It began with (I refuse to be ashamed of my love for Rihanna).

Of course, it should go without saying that there was Manu Chao. In fact, let's just go ahead and put up another video from Senor Chao:

The lyrics, in Spanish and English are here

Whilst getting ready to hit up the Galway nightlife, my roommate (excuse me....FLATmate)'s brother was sitting out in the living room. When I reentered that room, he said, "What is this music? This is weird." My Itunes had wandered into Algerian territory:


(the above is what I think is a cool compilation video, but if you prefer, here is the artist singing it live:)


I really enjoy the above song, as well as some campier stuff and more traditional stuff:


Anyways, because this wonderful Algerian man once recommended some music to me, my train of thought was to likewise introduce it to my roommate(excuse me...FLATmate)'s brother. "Have you ever heard French rap?" I asked him. He had not.





Then, because this impossibly enchanting old one-armed Vietnamese man once recommended some older French classics to me, my intunes wandered to the one of the greats:



(and my personal favorite...)


At that point, we hit some pubs:
(...well, ok, the dancing didn't actually happen)

Finally, on the way home, our Nigerian taxi driver was really enjoying some Nigerian music. He recommended:


Anyways. Good day.

Kehinde Wiley

A great interview with the artist here

Not something I would hang on my walls, but kind of awesome.

When Judges Make Foreign Policy

By NOAH FELDMAN
Published: September 25, 2008

Every generation gets the Constitution that it deserves. As the central preoccupations of an era make their way into the legal system, the Supreme Court eventually weighs in, and nine lawyers in robes become oracles of our national identity. The 1930s had the Great Depression and the Supreme Court’s “switch in time” from mandating a laissez-faire economy to allowing New Deal regulation. The 1950s had the rise of the civil rights movement and Brown v. Board of Education. The 1970s had the struggle for personal autonomy and Roe v. Wade. Over the last two centuries, the court’s decisions, ranging from the dreadful to the inspiring, have always reflected and shaped who “we the people” think we are.

During the boom years of the 1990s, globalization emerged as the most significant development in our national life. With Nafta and the Internet and big-box stores selling cheap goods from China, the line between national and international began to blur. In the seven years since 9/11, the question of how we relate to the world beyond our borders — and how we should — has become inescapable. The Supreme Court, as ever, is beginning to offer its own answers. As the United States tries to balance the benefits of multilateral alliances with the demands of unilateral self-protection, the court has started to address the legal counterparts of such existential matters. It is becoming increasingly clear that the defining constitutional problem for the present generation will be the nature of the relationship of the United States to what is somewhat optimistically called the international order.

This problem has many dimensions. It includes mundane practical questions, like what force the United States should give to the law of the sea. It includes more symbolic questions, like whether high-ranking American officials can be held accountable for crimes against international law. And it includes questions of momentous consequence, like whether international law should be treated as law in the United States; what rights, if any, noncitizens have to come before American courts or tribunals; whether the protections of the Geneva Conventions apply to people that the U.S. government accuses of being terrorists; and whether the U.S. Supreme Court should consider the decisions of foreign or international tribunals when it interprets the Constitution.

In recent years, two prominent schools of thought have emerged to answer these questions. One view, closely associated with the Bush administration, begins with the observation that law, in the age of modern liberal democracy, derives its legitimacy from being enacted by elected representatives of the people. From this standpoint, the Constitution is seen as facing inward, toward the Americans who made it, toward their rights and their security. For the most part, that is, the rights the Constitution provides are for citizens and provided only within the borders of the country. By these lights, any interpretation of the Constitution that restricts the nation’s security or sovereignty — for example, by extending constitutional rights to noncitizens encountered on battlefields overseas — is misguided and even dangerous. In the words of the conservative legal scholars Eric Posner and Jack Goldsmith (who is himself a former member of the Bush administration), the Constitution “was designed to create a more perfect domestic order, and its foreign relations mechanisms were crafted to enhance U.S. welfare.”

A competing view, championed mostly by liberals, defines the rule of law differently: law is conceived not as a quintessentially national phenomenon but rather as a global ideal. The liberal position readily concedes that the Constitution specifies the law for the United States but stresses that a fuller, more complete conception of law demands that American law be pictured alongside international law and other (legitimate) national constitutions. The U.S. Constitution, on this cosmopolitan view, faces outward. It is a paradigm of the rule of law: rights similar to those it confers on Americans should protect all people everywhere, so that no one falls outside the reach of some legitimate legal order. What is most important about our Constitution, liberals stress, is not that it provides rights for us but that its vision of freedom ought to apply universally.
The Supreme Court, whose new term begins Oct. 6, has become a battleground for these two worldviews. In the last term, which ended in June, the justices gave expression to both visions. In two cases in particular — one high-profile, the other largely overlooked — the justices divided into roughly two blocs, representing the “inward” and “outward” looking conceptions of the Constitution, with Justice Anthony Kennedy voting with liberals in one case and conservatives in the other. The Supreme Court is on the verge of several retirements; how the justices will address critical issues of American foreign policy in the future hangs very much in the balance.

This may seem like an odd way of thinking about international affairs. In the coming presidential election, every voter understands that there is a choice to be made between the foreign-policy visions of John McCain and Barack Obama. What is less obvious, but no less important, is that Supreme Court appointments have become a de facto part of American foreign policy. The court, like the State Department and the Pentagon, now makes decisions in cases that directly change and shape our relationship with the world. And as the justices decide these cases, they are doing as much as anyone to shape America’s fortunes in an age of global terror and economic turmoil.

Read the whole article here. It's long but quite interesting.

On a related note, here is the website for the Ethical Globalization Initiative (founded by the first woman President of Ireland!)

Namesake video/ the genius of Manu Chao

A really offical translation, along with the original Spanish lyrics, are here

See also:


Lyrics for this masterpiece are here, although a true appreciation demands you understand the French part.

y tambien...

Lyrics aqui.

PORQUE ME GUSTA:
ACL is taking place this weekend in Austin, Texas. I've never gone to ACL; however, if not for the fact that I am overseas right now, I would totally go this year just to see Manu Chao. He is an absolute genius. One to whom I have been jamming out a lot lately.