This article originally appeared on Care2. 

***

Chicago Alderman Joe Moreno has said that he plans to introduce an ordinance that will create a commission to handle and ensure the protection of transgender people while in police custody.

The proposed ordinance comes after a number of complaints from the trans community over how they have been treated.

Via Windy City Times: 

According to a fact sheet put out by veteran activist Rick Garcia and Anthony Martinez, executive director of The Civil Rights Agenda (TCRA), the ordinance will mandate a policy for interacting with transgender detainees and set up a mayoral-appointed commission to oversee the treatment of transgender arrestees.

“It’s a human rights issue,” said Moreno, who added that the ordinance is intended to address a “hole in the policy of the police of Chicago.”

The policy comes after years of complaints from transgender people who have reported being harassed or misgendered by police officers.

Moreno said he hopes the ordinance will tackle distrust widely felt among transgender communities of police.

“We can’t expect our police department to deal with a segment of the population if they’re not trained in how that segment wants to be addressed,” he said.

Formally titled The Police Treatment of Transgender Individuals Ordinance, the measure would specifically add gender identity definitions to police policy, therein requiring police to treat trans individuals as a cognizable group, and requiring police to undergo training with regards to how to deal with trans people in their custody.

More on the oversight commission via the Chicago Phoenix: 

In addition to adding protections for transgender people, the ordinance would effectively create the Police Transgender Issues Commission, a supervising body that would develop additional training for police officers and ensure the implementation of such training across the city. It would also release an annual report detailing the police’s adherence to the new guidelines.

Martinez said the commission is the most important part of the ordinance.

“It would be the first of its kind and I think it will have national implications if passed. The Transgender Police Issues Commission would be the first time, to my knowledge, such a body has been created,” he said.

The commission would be composed of six transgender Chicagoans or people who work for LGBT organizations and five Chicago Police officers, according to a fact sheet from TCRA.

The 2010 National Transgender Discrimination Survey carried out by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force found that over half of respondents said they felt uncomfortable seeking police assistance, often times meaning that they did not report instances of abuse or harassment simply because they feared how they would be treated by police. In addition, almost a fifth of respondents said they had faced harassment from police officers. This figure rose when examining transgender women of color.

This is not to misstate that Chicago has a particular problem with regards to police treatment of trans people beyond that of most other police departments. As the National Transgender Discrimination Survey showed, a lack of protections has left the community vulnerable throughout the USA.

In somewhat related news, State Rep. Kelly Cassidy recently introduced a bill that would add gender identity to Illinois’ hate crimes law. Read more on that here. 

Image by Fibonacci Blue, licensed under Creative Commons. 

In the wake of World War II, the United Nations passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The document was intended to prevent the kind of atrocities the world had just witnessed from reoccurring in the future.

More than 60 years later, as the Utne Reader’s January-February 2012 human rights package illustrates (“Tortured,” “The CIA in Somalia,” “Jihad Against Islam”), the world continues to struggle to meet the principles put forward in the text.

Several groups continue to fight for the ideals that were set forth, however. And they need your help. Here is a partial list of some of your options, vetted using Charity Navigator.

Human Rights Watch 
This fact-finding nonprofit has spent the last three decades sorting out often complicated human rights issues. The organization has deployed on-the-ground monitors to 80 countries around the world, and their team of academics, journalists and lawyers publish more than 100 policy-shaping reports every year. Their funding comes entirely from private individuals and foundations. hrw.org                                                                                                    

Human Rights First 
Founded in 1978, Human Rights First offers direct legal services to refugees and asylum seekers, fights against hate crimes, works with retired military leaders on issues of torture and detention, and works to quell mass atrocities by putting pressure on third-party enablers. A nonpartisan, nonprofit based in New York and Washington D.C., the organization accepts no government funding. humanrightsfirst.org 

Physicians for Human Rights  
Physicians for Human Rights was created in 1986 on the belief that health professionals could be a strong voice for preventing human rights abuses. Their expert opinions, epidemiological research, and forensic research are sought by international courts, the United Nations, and other government entities. The group’s targets include everything from wartime rape in Central and East Africa to the persecution of medical workers during times of civil unrest and armed conflict. physiciansforhumanrights.org 

Amnesty International 
In its 50 years of work, Amnesty International has fought against the death penalty, corporate abuse, and censorship. Their work, including trial observation, advocacy, and victim outreach, spans more than 150 countries and is funded primarily by members and public donations. The group also seeks volunteers to help raise money, translate, monitor the press and assist with research. amnesty.org 

Freedom House 
Freedom House publishes four reports a year – including their flagship, democracy-tracking work, Freedom in the World – assessing the state of freedom in the world. Founded by American leaders looking to bolster public support for fighting Nazi extremism, it continues to fight totalitarian regimes around the world by offering training and support at a grassroots level. Celebrating its 70^th anniversary, the group is soliciting $70 donations that will go to translation services in Africa, supporting women’s rights in the Middle East, or training human rights advocates in Central Asia. freedomhouse.org 

Global Exchange 
Leaders of this grassroots group say they want to build a “people-centered globalization that values the rights of workers and the health of the planet” and have built a network of activists, students, labor unions, and environmentalists to do just that. Based in the Bay Area, their efforts include everything from a trick-or-treating campaign in which people were encouraged to give fair trade chocolate to organized “reality tours” of Palestine. globalexchange.org  

National Religious Campaign Against Torture 
Formed in 2006, this coalition of faith communities, including the Buddhist, Catholic, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim faiths, fights U.S. policies that enable torture at home and abroad. The group is urging President Obama to sign the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture, which has been ratified by 60 nations, and advocates a program that would limit U.S. aid to governments that enable torture. nrcat.org 

Center for Victims of Torture 
The Center for Victims of Torture helps torture victims overcome their trauma at counseling centers in St. Paul, MN, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Jordan. The organization also works with researchers around the world to learn about effective treatments. Donations are accepted, and volunteers are sought to serve as “befrienders” of torture victims, tutors, and drivers. cvt.org 

Earth Rights International  
After winning a settlement from now-defunct oil company UNOCAL on behalf of Burmese villagers in 1997, Earth Rights International has continued to fight alleged human rights abuses through U.S. courts. The group focuses on the intersection of environmental degradation and human rights – what they’ve coined “earth rights.” Their work is funded solely through private donations. earthrights.org 

Equality Now 
Equality Now operates on a grassroots level in more than 160 countries to document, expose, and fight human rights abuses against women and children. Their main focuses include sexual violence, trafficking, discrimination in law, and female genital mutilation. The organization accepts donations and invites supporters to organize their own fundraisers on their behalf. equalitynow.org 

Free the Slaves 
Free the Slaves is working to release all people from the bondage of slavery still festering in impoverished corners of the world. They work with businesses to improve worker conditions and with governments to pass strict anti-slavery laws. The group invites supporters to join their “I Am the Change” campaign, which works to educate people about slavery around the world. freetheslaves.net 

Image by Zina Saunders / www.zinasaunders.com 

Here’s an image worth posting on Facebook, putting on a t-shirt, or sticking on a bumper.

“Free as a Man,” created by Serbian artist Predrag Stakic, is the winner of an online competition conducted by the Human Rights Logo Initiative, which is on a mission to make the design an internationally recognized symbol for human rights.

An initial call for entries went out in May and kicked-up 15,000 submissions from more than 190 countries. After a healthy period for public comment, a jury made up of 36 designers, human rights advocates, and concerned politicians from around the world chose 10 finalists.

Because the aim of the initiative—which was supported by a host of supporters and partners, including Google, Typo London, and Cinema for Peace—was to create an image “by people for people,” the logo is an open source product, free for use without restrictions.

Regardless of the author, political “tell alls” rarely tell readers anything they didn’t already know or firmly believe, except that the self-proclaimed hero or heroine of the tale is even more brilliant, arrogant, genuine, superficial, or petty than we dared dream. And given what I can only imagine lurks in the bionic heart of former Vice President’s Dick Cheney, I’m not making plans to curl up with his new book, In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir, over the Labor Day weekend.

I have found one reason to be excited by the VP’s 576-page curtain call, though. The international human rights organization Amnesty International is shrewdly taking advantage of the momentary media buzz around the book’s release to remind people of the lies that Cheney, his boss, and their loyalists told and continue to tell to justify “institutionalized torture, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances”—all immoral and indefensible violations of the Geneva Conventions and the United States Constitution.

“Amnesty International is reiterating its call to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to immediately open a criminal investigation into the role former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney, and other officials played in the use of torture on detainees held in U.S. custody,” Tom Parker, policy director for terrorism, counterterrorism and human rights for Amnesty International U.S.A., said in a press release on August 25.

On August 30, supporters of the organization showed up to protest Cheney’s appearance on NBC’s Today Show, and their signs calling for accountability were caught on camera. That afternoon, Amnesty members delivered a copy of Cheney's memoir to a spokesperson at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., along with a personal letter to Holder demanding that his office look into crimes committed during the Bush administration’s so-called “war on terror.”

Amnesty also launched Cheney’s Conscience, a parody account on Twitter that it hopes users will read and repost in an effort to remind people of the vice president’s actions in and out of office.

I’m still unsure why President Obama decided against pursuing his predecessors in the courts. A good case could be made that he simply wanted to keep his options open and continues to allow, if not encourage, torture and rendition off the grid. A more generous interpretation is that he didn’t want to get mired in a highly polarizing political fight. Either way, it’s a good guess he assumed Bush and Co. would show some gratitude and stay silent on the issue. Cheney, in particular, has chosen to do just the opposite. If there’s any justice, his braggadocio and the inventive work of organizations like Amnesty International will cause the Obama administration to reconsider its passivity.

Image courtesy of Amnesty International . 

It has often seemed a foregone conclusion, but it has finally happened: Dissident Chinese artist and blogger Ai Weiwei has been detained in a Chinese government crackdown, and supporters fear he may be charged with subversion or held indefinitely.

Here at Utne Reader, we have followed Ai’s defiant trajectory with an unsettling sense of foreboding. In 2009, we reprinted an interview with Ai Weiwei from Index on Censorship in which he explained his outspokenness against the Chinese government, which he says is “against humanity”:

“For me this is not a responsibility: It is part of life. If you live in self-punishment or self-imposed ignorance or lack of self-awareness, it genuinely diminishes your existence. Self-censorship is insulting to the self. Timidity is a hopeless way forward.”

By later in 2009 it was clear that Ai was being closely watched, and in January his studio complex was razed in a blatant act of intimidation.

Now he has been held for two days, and signs from the Chinese government and police are troubling: That is, they’ve given no sign at all that they’ve even detained him. Reporters are being hung up on, websites are being scrubbed of references to the incident, and Ai is joining dozens of other activists and critics who have “disappeared” in recent months.

Ai’s very life has often seemed like performance art. But now the narrative arc of the performance is out of his hands, and many fellow Chinese and China watchers worry that his story will become something that his life has never been: routine.

Read Twitter reactions from Ai’s fellow Chinese liberals at Global Voices.

UPDATE 4/10/11: Ai Weiwei has now been held three days. See China Digital Times for numerous links and analysis related to his detention.

Sources: New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Global Voices, China Digital Times  

If you’re not friends with the U.S. you’re more likely to be held accountable for your international misdeeds. Or so thinks Edward S. Herman who, writing for Z Magazine, says, “One of the major fallacies of our time is the idea that we have entered a new era in which human rights are being attended to more than in the past.” In fact, Herman claims, the only ones being attended to are the rights of the U.S. and others in the “white North.”

Herman finds it alarming that all 14 indictees of the International Criminal Court (ICC) have been black Africans and that the ICC does not include as a crime cross-border attacks on other countries under its jurisdiction, “that is, aggression, the ‘supreme international crime’ in the judgment of the Nuremberg court, but a bit awkward for the United States, as that crime is part of its standard modus operandi.”

There’s a double standard, Herman claims, when it comes to the likes of the U.S. and its allies. In the case of the bombing of Pan Am 103—recently brought back into the news by the release of AbdelBasset Ali Al-Megrahi—for example, he questions why Al-Mergrahi, whom some believe was falsely accused, is seen as an international villain—and his case seen as a success story of international justice—while the naval commander, who in the aftermath of the Pan Am bombing carried out the shooting down of Iranian Air Flight 655, which resulted in the loss of 290 civilian lives, is praised as a hero. This isn’t all the fault of the global justice system, though; Herman is quick to point out that stories like the Pan Am 103 bombing are not suitably covered in the mainstream media and therefore the version that does get reported is cemented into the memories of people across the world.

So, are the entities set up to uphold international law serving justice, or are they, as Herman claims, “political instruments serving political ends”?

Source: Z Magazine (article not available online)

Image by Alkan Chaglar, licensed under Creative Commons. 

OK, all you outdoorsy people: How green is your gear? Chances are, not very green at all. Most waterproof/breathable outerwear is made from highly toxic compounds; many fabrics for tents and clothing are created from petrochemicals; and metals for your tent poles, cook kits, and high-tech electronic devices are typically ripped from the earth in a most unsustainable way. Now go enjoy your hike, jerk.

Change is coming, but slowly.

The U.K.-based magazine Ethical Consumer breaks down some of the greenest—and least green—outdoor gear in the “Outdoor Special Buyers’ Guide” in its July-August issue. While many of the brands analyzed wouldn’t be familiar to U.S. consumers, a few international names such as Patagonia, Lowe Alpine, REI, The North Face, Salomon, and Columbia show up. (Of these, Patagonia and Lowe Alpine fare the best.) Writer Simon Birch notes the paradox at work in a leadoff article laced with Britishisms such as “hillwalkers”:

It’s a sad fact that few if any of the vast number of walkers who regularly head to the hills every weekend and who clearly love the outdoors make the connection between their walking jackets, boots, and other clobber and the whacking big environmental impact that results from their production.

In trying to explain this lack of environmental awareness, some suggest that since the outdoor industry regularly uses the sweeping backdrop of panoramic mountains to help market and advertise their gear, the public assumes that the industry is by default environmentally responsible.

Ethical Consumer breaks this myth wide open by reporting on angles such as the environmental downsides of both cotton and synthetic fabrics and the potential dangers of nanoparticles that are being increasingly used in gear. Animal and human rights figure into the calculus, too: Other articles describe the mistreatment of Merino sheep by some Australian woolgrowers and unfair working conditions in the outdoor industry supply chain. Overall, the industry gets a poor rating and a good scolding. The cover headline is “Lost: Why the Outdoor Gear Industry Is Ethically Way Off Track.”

I’d love to see a similarly rigorous analysis applied to outdoor gear brands sold in the United States: If there’s a great independent third-party green gear review out there, I haven’t seen it. And it would be nice if the glossy outdoor magazines did fewer gear-porn photo spreads and more reporting on what actually goes into making that gear.

As in all product sectors, greenwashing is a problem. Sierra Trading Post, a large online outdoor retailer, used to maintain an eco-conscious gear guide but has abandoned it because of a lack of industry-wide standards. Sierra reports on its website that the trade group the Outdoor Industry Association is working on creating standards and plans to roll them out at the 2011 Outdoor Retail Winter Show.

In many other industries, industry-created environmental standards have ended up lacking teeth and can actually end up misleading consumers instead of helping. Let’s hope our gear gurus have the good sense to do the right thing and create truly sustainable, credible standards that don’t destroy the very thing—nature itself—that keeps us heading into the hills for solitude, inspiration, and adventure.

Source: Ethical Consumer (subscription required), Sierra Trading Post

Image by Phil W. Shirley, licensed under Creative Commons.

In March, painter Owen Maseko was arrested for art his government said "undermined the authority of the President." His response? More art and more undermining. Here's how Inter Press Service describes his post-arrest painting, "Babylon Gavel":

Directly inspired by his arrest in March, the painting depicts a dreadlocked man in handcuffs and leg irons and a figure resembling President [Robert] Mugabe clutching four gavels under an inscription, "Silence in court, Here comes the Babylon judge."

"I thought courts were for criminals and not for artists," Maseko quipped to Inter Press Service.

Source: Inter Press Service

This new Amnesty International video is a potent depiction of the sadness and tragedy of the death penalty. "139 countries have wiped out the death penalty," come the words at the end of this very quiet and beautiful short. "Only 58 are left to convince."

Watch the video at the Pleix blog.

(Thanks, It's Nice That.)

Source: Pleix

Either Israel's blockade of Gaza is a blunt and vile form of collective punishment or Amnesty International, Oxfam, and the World Health Organization are staffed by pathological liars. Writing for Foreign Policy, Yousef Munayyer has assembled a vital fact sheet called What exactly is the blockade of Gaza? In it, Munayyer shares data from human rights organizations and aid agencies to present a crisp and chilling picture of Gaza under under siege.

Source: Foreign Policy

After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, somewhere in the neighborhood of 110,000 Japanese-Americans were locked away in internment camps. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, 700 of the interned were University of California students (many of them never returned to school to earn their degrees). On Saturday, UCLA gave out honorary degrees to 48 people whose education was interrupted with the rest of their lives by the injustice of internment. From the Los Angeles Times:

Last year, the UC Board of Regents voted to suspend a three-decade ban on awarding honorary degrees in order to recognize the former scholars. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger later signed legislation directing the UC system and other post-secondary institutions to confer honorary degrees upon those obliged to abandon their studies during the war.

...Yuriko Ito Takenaka, 86, voiced hope that the group's collective experience would resonate with a younger generation for whom an injustice like forced internment may seem hard to fathom.

"People nowadays don't think about civil rights," said Takenaka, who was a freshman at UCLA when her family was interned and who later completed her nursing studies at Stanford University. "They take it all for granted. This is a way to remind people what happened."

Fumio Robert Naka, 86, who was a UCLA student when he was sent to the Manzanar internment camp in the Owens Valley, said the experience taught a lesson in how humans can persevere when confronted with events "beyond our control."

(Thanks, Angry Asian Man.)

Source: Los Angeles Times

Mexico's ambassador to the United States is covering all the bases and broadcasting the Mexican government's new travel advisory over Twitter. Just what destination is he warning against? You guessed it.

And sheesh, I can't be the only one with this song going through my head this week...

(Thanks, Minnesota Independent.)

The Center for a New American Security, a think tank in Washington DC funded in part by major defense contractors, has released a report exploring the issue of an international peacekeeping force in Palestine. Coverage of the report has followed a familiar pattern: dwell on what this would mean for Israel while failing to consider the question of what it would mean for the Palestinians. The Washington Independent's coverage is typical: "One of the studies’ authors lists a short host of reasons why Israel shouldn’t have a problem with such a force while—at least in the introduction—glossing over the fact that it does."

The Boston Review's Helena Cobban has an early dissent at her blog Just World News. Here are a few excerpts to keep in mind if you bump into coverage of the report:

The report is titled “Security for Peace: Setting the Conditions for a Palestinian State.” Note that: “Security for Peace”—not “Land for Peace.” And amazingly, as you read through this report you will find not a single map of where the Palestinian state will actually be.

+ + +

The authors studiously avoid dealing with the governance framework of any peacekeeping force. Would it be a U.N. force, acting under a mandate from UNSC? Or would it be a NATO force? Or would it be something else entirely, like the US-led “Multinational Force and Observers” (MFO) that monitors compliance of both sides with the terms of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty of 1979? This makes a huge difference.

+ + +

I don't want to write much more about the CNAS study, most of which is unworthy of our attention. (The chapters on Timor Leste and Kosovo are of some interest, but limited relevance. The chapter on Lebanon is riddled with very elementary mistakes, some of them very serious.) … The people who worked on the Middle East sections of it … really need to go back and do a bit of elementary homework on the subjects they're writing about.

In a sense there is nothing remarkable about this report or its shortcomings. It's one in lineage of reports and studies that treat Palestine like an intellectual exercise, rather than the festering human rights issue that it is.

Source: Just World News

Archbishop Desmond Tuto has written a letter of support to students at the University of California in Berkeley who have been working to get the school to divest from "companies that enable and profit from the injustice of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and violation of Palestinian human rights." The student senate recently voted 16-4 in support of the measure, but that decision was vetoed by the President of the Senate.

Here's an excerpt from the letter:

It was with great joy that I learned of your recent 16-4 vote in support of divesting your university’s money from companies that enable and profit from the injustice of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and violation of Palestinian human rights. Principled stands like this, supported by a fast growing number of US civil society organizations and people of conscience, including prominent Jewish groups, are essential for a better world in the making, and it is always an inspiration when young people lead the way and speak truth to power.

I am writing to tell you that, despite what detractors may allege, you are doing the right thing. You are doing the moral thing. You are doing that which is incumbent on you as humans who believe that all people have dignity and rights, and that all those being denied their dignity and rights deserve the solidarity of their fellow human beings. I have been to the Ocupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid. I have witnessed the humiliation of Palestinian men, women, and children made to wait hours at Israeli military checkpoints routinely when trying to make the most basic of trips to visit relatives or attend school or college, and this humiliation is familiar to me and the many black South Africans who were corralled and regularly insulted by the security forces of the Apartheid government.

In South Africa, we could not have achieved our freedom and just peace without the help of people around the world, who through the use of non-violent means, such as boycotts and divestment, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the Apartheid regime. Students played a leading role in that struggle, and I write this letter with a special indebtedness to your school, Berkeley, for its pioneering role in advocating equality in South Africa and promoting corporate ethical and social responsibility to end complicity in Apartheid. I visited your campus in the 1980’s and was touched to find students sitting out in the baking sunshine to demonstrate for the University’s disvestment in companies supporting the South African regime.

Today the senate will vote again on divestment.

Source: Salem News

There’s a powerful exchange with Utne Reader visionary Rana Husseini in the latest issue of make/shift. If you’re not familiar with Husseini’s work, here’s what make/shift says: 

Husseini is a Jordanian investigative journalist whose coverage of violence against women has informed human rights agendas around the world … In her new book, Murder in the Name of Honor, Husseini challenges the term honor killing (“these murders … lack any honor whatsoever”) as well as the racist exploitation of this form of violence to justify western military aggression against Middle Eastern states… 

Here’s an excerpt from the interview: 

make/shift: Writing and speaking about this to a western audience must be tricky. In the book you discuss a very damaging example of western media coverage of so-called honor killings—

Rana Husseini: There was one book by a Jordanian American named Norma Khouri … Honor Lost. She was a Christian and [said] her Muslim friend was killed because she was in love with a Christian man … The book came out just before the war in Iraq, and she went out lecturing, saying that the west should liberate Muslim women…

make/shift: There’s been strong criticism of western feminisms that exhibit this kind of imperialist tendency. Part of that critique has been to question the notion of “global feminism” altogether, which some way wrongly presumes a universal “women’s” experience. How do you think about violence against women on a global scale, recognizing different forms and contexts?

Rana Husseini: Killing a woman is killing a woman ... Here in the U.S. you have women being killed every day by their partners … it’s possessiveness, it’s jealousy, it’s control, it’s infidelity—it’s even “honor” here. I think feminists here and elsewhere have to look at this problem in a global manner … You have to try and prevent the murder from happening. Not to talk after the murder happens. Domestic violence should be a constant issue to be addressed; we cannot just pick and choose—okay, for the next three months, we talk about female genital mutilation, then let’s talk about forced marriage—these are constant problems that need to be constantly addressed.  

Source: make/shift (article not yet available online)

Congratulations to make/shift, which is nominated for a 2010 Utne Independent Press Award for best social/cultural coverage.

Subscribe to the Thousand Yard Stare RSS feed  

Follow Thousand Yard Stare on Twitter (@1000yards) 

There is a great interview in Guernica with philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler about her latest book, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?. Here are a few excerpts from the exchange:

Guernica: In the book’s introduction, you set out a principled vision for how we might go about defining life—

Judith Butler: I am not at all sure that I define life, since I think that life tends to exceed the definitions of it we may offer. It always seems to have that characteristic, so the approach to life cannot be altogether successful if we start with definitions. All I really have to say about life is that for it to be regarded as valuable, it has to first be regarded as grievable. A life that is in some sense socially dead or already “lost” cannot be grieved when it is actually destroyed. And I think we can see that entire populations are regarded as negligible life by warring powers, and so when they are destroyed, there is no great sense that a heinous act and egregious loss have taken place. My question is: how do we understand this nefarious distinction that gets set up between grievable and ungrievable lives?

 + + +

Guernica: Your account of life depends on being intertwined with other lives; does it really then call on us to be more concerned for the lives of others in distant places and conflicts?

Judith Butler: Along with many other people, I am trying to contest the notion that we can only value, shelter, and grieve those lives that share a common language or cultural sameness with ourselves. The point is not so much to extend our capacity for compassion, but to understand that ethical relations have to cross both cultural and geographical distance. Given that there is global interdependency in relation to the environment, food supply and distribution, and war, do we not need to understand the bonds that we have to those we do not know or have never chosen? This takes us beyond communitarianism and nationalism alike. Or so I hope.

+ + +

Guernica: What does the grief you call for consist of? How does it act upon us?

Judith Butler: If we were to start to grieve those against whom we wage war, we would have to stop.

Source: Guernica 

A disturbing report on juvenile detainees in Afghanistan from Gareth Porter at Inter Press Service:

Nearly two of every three male juveniles arrested in Afghanistan are physically abused, according to a study based on interviews with 40 percent of all those now incarcerated in the country's juvenile justice system.

The study, carried out by U.S. defense attorney Kimberly Motley for the international children's rights organization Terre des Hommes, reveals a justice system that subjects juveniles, many of whom are already innocent victims, to torture, forced confessions and blatant violation of their rights in court.

The author personally interviewed 250 of the 600 juveniles in jails and rehabilitation centres across the country, including half the 80 girls and 40 percent of the 520 boys, as well as 98 professionals working in the system.

...Virtually all the male juveniles said the police beatings were aimed at forcing them to sign a confession. They said they had signed either while being beaten or threatened with being beaten, and that the confessions were then used to convict them.

Source: Inter Press Service

“The media and the militias are gone. But the battle for their country is only beginning.” These are the words that flash across footage from Sierra Leone's 11-year civil war in this preview for the documentary Pride of Lions. If this were an action thriller, I might shrug the sound bite off as cliché. But it's another matter when the words interrupt this powerful burst of clips documenting life in a place we never see and hardly ever read about.

If you want to travel in the developing world yet leave a light footprint, consider pointing yourself to Poland, Suriname, or Chile. These countries are among the surprising selections on “The Developing World’s 10 Best Ethical Destinations” of 2010 named by Ethical Traveler, reports Earth Island Journal. Here’s the full list:

• Argentina

• Belize

• Chile

• Ghana

• Lithuania

• Namibia

• Poland

• Seychelles

• South Africa

• Suriname

“The ten destinations … offer not only scenic beauty and memorable experiences, but also set a positive example in the areas of environmental protection, social welfare, and human rights,” writes Earth Island Journal.

The full ethical destinations report at the Ethical Traveler website contains a detailed description of methodology and some interesting notes about the countries that won—and those that didn’t:

• Lithuania and Chile are green champions, having scored particularly well in environmental protection.

• The “developing world” part of the criteria means that some countries that were on last year’s list, such as Estonia and Croatia, have basically prospered their way out of eligibility.

• “Notably, not a single Asian country made it to the Top 10. Irresponsible development, human rights abuses, and a lack of strong environmental policy kept them all off the list again this year. Perhaps surprisingly, though, four African countries—three on the mainland, and one island republic—made the final list. We believe this bodes well for the future of these nations and, hopefully, for the African continent.”

• Nicaragua was bounced from the list because of its poorly run 2008 municipal elections and a worsening record on human rights and freedoms of speech and the press. “We remove Nicaragua with regret, as the country has created many initiatives to help local communities benefit from tourism, and is taking strong steps to protect and restore its tropical forests.”

• Bhutan may be the only country in the world to measure success by a Gross National Happiness Index, but still it doesn’t make the cut: “Despite its sublime natural beauty and extraordinary commitment to preserving the environment,” writes Ethical Traveler, “the highly nationalistic kingdom is still plagued by human rights issues.”

Sources: Earth Island Journal, Ethical Traveler

Image by doug88888, licensed under Creative Commons.

The celebrated dissident Aung San Suu Kyi is not the only woman dissident suffering unjust punishment in Burma. Reporting for Inter Press Service, Marwaan Macan-Markar reports that “the jails in that military-ruled country continue to be filled by lesser-known women dissidents being held on a range of questionable charges.”

Mid-February saw the latest group of female political activists thrown into jail with a two-year prison term, including hard labour, for a “crime” they committed four months ago—donating religious literature to a Buddhist monastery, an act that the junta deemed as “disturbing the peace.”

At the time of their arrest in October 2009, Naw Ohn Hla, Myint Myint San, Cho Cho Lwin and Cho Cho Aye had also been conducting regular prayers at the landmark Shwedagon pagoda in Rangoon, the country’s former capital, to secure the release of opposition leader Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for over 14 of the last 20 years.

...The four women prisoners bring to nearly 190 the number of female activists among the estimated 2,200 political prisoners now in Burmese jails. The women who are paying a steep price for their political beliefs include Buddhists nuns, journalists, labour rights activists and members and sympathisers of the National League for Democracy (NLD), the party that Suu Kyi heads.

Nilar Thein, a former university student leader, is among them. She was condemned to a 65-year prison sentence in November 2008 for her prominent role in a peaceful protest movement in September 2007 that saw thousands of Buddhist monks come on the side of the oppressed and launch street protests.

Hla Hla Win was given a 20-year-prison sentence on Dec. 31 last year for her work as an "undercover journalist" who fed information from inside Burma, or Myanmar, as it is also known, to the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), an Oslo-based news organisation of exiled Burmese journalists.

Others such as the 54-year-old Cho Mar Htwe, who was released in September 2009 after languishing in jail for 11 years, was condemned for something more simpler – bringing to the NLD office a faxed letter from Japan that called for the release of Suu Kyi and all political prisoners.

For more on women dissidents in Burma, read Marwaan Macan-Markar’s interview with women’s rights activist Hseng Noung.

Source: Inter Press Service

Subscribe to the Thousand Yard Stare RSS feed  

Follow Thousand Yard Stare on Twitter (@1000yards) 

In her latest collection of essays, novelist and essayist Arundhati Roy turns her critical eye to her home country of India. Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers is published by Haymarket Books. In this UtneCast conversation, Roy challenges the mainstream media story of "India shining" and describes the recent laws and military operations inside the country that she says challenge India's image as a great democracy.

Listen now 

Download the UtneCast interview with Arundhati Roy

Subscribe to the Thousand Yard Stare RSS feed  

Follow Thousand Yard Stare on Twitter (@1000yards) 

Image by Pradip Krishen.

Over at the Change.org War and Peace blog, Jake Horowitz writes about the New America Foundation’s report on drone warfare:

At last, someone is breaking the near-unanimous silence in Washington over the utility of unmanned predator drone strikes on suspected militants in the tribal regions of Pakistan. While international law experts have long cried foul over the legality of America's use of targeted assassinations, Washington insiders and senior members of the Obama administration have continued to maintain that the use of missile strikes from unmanned drone airplanes are not only in compliance with international law, but also indispensable to America's effort to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda in the AfPak region.

That is, until now. The New America Foundation, an influential public policy think-tank based in Washington, D.C. has just released an explosive report that raises critical questions about the effectiveness of U.S. drone attacks. Not only does the report suggest that drone strikes may very well violate the principle of proportionality under international law, but it also questions the efficacy of the attacks as a counter terrorism tool altogether.

Source: Change.org, New America Foundation

Subscribe to the Thousand Yard Stare RSS feed  

Follow Thousand Yard Stare on Twitter (@1000yards) 

There aren't many English-language news outlets providing Iraq news reported and written by Iraqis. Enter the Institute for War & Peace Reporting. Their Iraq Crisis Report has been a key resource for me for years. Their latest report will help you to understand why. Mariwan Hama-Saeed reports from Iraqi Kurdistan on Iraqi women struggling for more political power there and in Baghdad. You can also view a photo slideshow on political campaigns in Iraq and watch a video by the Iraqi Women's Media Initiative. Here's an excerpt from Hama-Saeed's report:

Female political candidates warned this week that the constitutional quota guaranteeing Iraqi women parliamentary seats has failed to deliver them real political power.

Five female contenders vying for parliamentary seats in Sulaimaniyah and Baghdad laid out their positions on women’s issues, the economy and education in a rare all-women debate on February 20.

The Sulaimaniyah forum, which was organised by the United States-based International Human Rights Law Institute, included candidates from two secular parties and two Islamic factions.

The candidates agreed that the constitutionally-mandated quota, which sets aside 25 per cent of seats for female legislators, had helped Iraqi women by ensuring them representation. However, they said female politicians should begin exerting real political power.

"Equality doesn't only mean giving us posts," said Amal Jalal, a candidate from the Kurdistani Alliance in Sulaimaniyah province. "We need to be included in the decision-making process."

Bushra al-Ubaidi, a Baghdad candidate with the Unity Alliance of Iraq, said she believed that Iraq’s male-dominated political parties frequently select unqualified women to run on their lists and then exploit their lack of expertise as a reason for ignoring women’s issues.

This alleged strategy is discouraging for women who struggle to get their rights recognised, she said.

“The [quota] has been used against women and their cause,” Ubaidi said.

Source: Institute for War & Peace Reporting 

Subscribe to the Thousand Yard Stare RSS feed  

Follow Thousand Yard Stare on Twitter (@1000yards) 

Every month, social psychologist Arie Kruglanski sends a research report to the Department of Homeland Security from his National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (better known, mercifully, as START). In a Miller-McCune interview with Kruglanski, he talks about what he’s learned about suicide attackers and the people who support them. “Many people think of terrorists, especially suicide bombers, as not quite human,” says Tom Jacobs in his first question to Kruglanski, “presumably because they’ve set aside that basic human motivation of self-preservation. But your research suggests their motivations are quite recognizably human.” Here’s some of what Kruglanski had to say...

On the “quite recognizably human” motivations of suicide attackers:

Personal significance is a motivation that has been recognized by psychological theorists as a major driving force of human behavior. Terrorists feel that through suicide, their lives will achieve tremendous significance. They will become heroes, martyrs. In many cases, their decision is a response to a great loss of significance, which can occur through humiliation, discrimination, or personal problems that have nothing to do with the conflict in which their group is engaged.

On America’s martyrs:

Even in our country, we venerate our heroes.—our soldiers who are willing to put themselves in harm’s way for the sake of ideals we hold dear.

More on significance as a motivator:

According to terror management theory, we are alone among all species in that we are aware of our impending demise. As a consequence, we have this nightmare of ending up as an insignificant speck of dust in an uncaring universe.

Source: Miller-McCune (article not yet available online) 

Subscribe to the Thousand Yard Stare RSS feed  

Follow Thousand Yard Stare on Twitter (@1000yards) 

Image by Jeff Severns Guntzel.

I used to keep a map next to my radio. I am fairly cartographically astute but still I like to see the places in the news. If you’re like me, you’ll love Geocurrents—the latest addition to my RSS feed. It’s a blog of “cartographically illustrated analysis of significant political and environmental events” run by two geography professors who are also in the business of writing textbooks. Don’t think you need their help? Fine, you show me Cabinda, Zomia, and Vojvodina.

That’s what I thought.

(Thanks, The Map Room.)

Subscribe to the Thousand Yard Stare RSS feed 

Follow Thousand Yard Stare on Twitter (@1000yards)

It's that time of year again. While most people are passing top ten lists of music, books, and other delightful things, Médecins Sans Frontières quiets the room with its annual list of the Top Ten Humanitarian Crises of 2009:

Civilians attacked, bombed, and cut off from aid in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), along with stagnant funding for treating HIV/AIDS and ongoing neglect of other diseases, were among the worst emergencies in 2009.

Continuing crises in north and south Sudan, along with the failure of the international community to finally combat childhood malnutrition were also included on this year's list. The list is drawn from MSF's operational activities in close to 70 countries, where the organization's medical teams witnessed some of the worst humanitarian conditions.

The list has been an annual event since the late '90s. Looking back over the lists of the '00s, five countries made it onto nearly all of them: Chechnya, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, and Sudan.

Source: Médecins Sans Frontières 

Subscribe to the Thousand Yard Stare RSS feed 

Follow Thousand Yard Stare on Twitter (@1000yards)

In November of 2008, the backup batteries unexpectedly failed at a power plant in the Gaza Strip. Almost anywhere else, the incident would have been a blip, forgotten a week later. But this is Gaza—blockaded by Israel and Egypt and cut off from the Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank. It’s a place where more than a million and a half people inhabit a strip of land not even one-third the size of the city of Los Angeles… and where there is only one power plant.

That is what any self-respecting professor of the journalism would call an airtight lead. Perhaps it would surprise you to learn that a tightly-written, historically astute, and compassionate piece about the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip found a home in the official magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. If so, you don’t know IEEE Spectrum. It’s an Utne Reader favorite and stories like Sharon Weinberger’s Powerless in Gaza are the reason.

At Gaza’s only power station, which has been bombed and blockaded by the Israelis, engineers are in permanent MacGyver mode. When the plant’s turbines suddenly cease to function, workers kick start them with 170 twelve-volt car batteries patched together. Damaged steel poles are replaced with wooden ones. Even if they were to convince Israel to allow the steel replacements in, Weinberger explains, the concrete they would need to secure the poles in the ground is banned under the Israeli blockade.

The piece has everything an electrical engineer needs to stay hooked, and there is the chilling humanitarian angle, too. We are, after all, talking about electricity. Without it, hospitals go dark and food rots in retail and home refrigerators. And there has been an awful lot of darkness for Gaza residents:

If anything, it’s remarkable that Gaza’s grid isn’t in worse shape… Israel bombed the power plant in late 2006, destroying six transformers and halting operations… the Israeli military described the strike as a military blow aimed at Hamas. The bombing left thousands of Gazans in the dark and pushed the sewage and water systems, which rely on electricity, to the brink of collapse.

The power plant sputtered back to life in 2007… But the plant had barely been resuscitated when another setback hit. Israel, declaring Hamas a “hostile entity,” sharply curtailed electricity and fuel supplies to Gaza, setting off the first of what would be periodic energy crises that continue to this day.

The most recent war, which began on 27 December 2008, brought yet another catastrophe to Gaza. Israel launched Operation Cast Lead, a three-week military offensive retaliating against Hamas for a series of rocket attacks that fell on civilian areas in southern Israel. The military operations, which combined strikes from the air and sea with a ground assault, damaged transformers and several of the transmission lines that brought power from Israel. Gaza also lost a line from Egypt during the offensive. Lacking fuel, the power plant shut down completely. Vast swaths of Gaza were left once again to fend for themselves in massive blackouts.

The timeline of the power plants existence is like a metaphor for the situation in Gaza generally, something cartoonist and reporter Joe Sacco describes succinctly in his book about Gaza: “Palestinians never seem to have the luxury of digesting one tragedy before the next one is upon them.”

Source: IEEE Spectrum

Subscribe to the Thousand Yard Stare RSS feed 

Follow Thousand Yard Stare on Twitter (@1000yards)

Image by Rami Almeghari.

Outdated crime laboratories housed inside U.S. law enforcement agencies contribute to wrongful convictions, says Steve Weinberg in the July/August issue of Miller-McCune. He cites a recent study titled, “Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward,” and the results are overwhelmingly clear. He writes:

Law enforcement crime laboratories are underfunded, filled with poorly trained and/or technologically backward staff, beset by quality control problems and, too often, complicit in wrongful convictions because criminalists unintentionally misread evidence or intentionally lie.

Weinberg warns that until crime laboratories are updated with current technology and removed from police headquarters, forensic examiners are more likely to succumb to pressure from prosecutors to provide conviction-worthy evidence. “One incompetent or dishonest criminalist,” he writes, “can infect hundreds of cases in a crime laboratory, with some of those cases mutating into wrongful convictions.”

Source: Miller-McCune

Image by billaday, licensed under Creative Commons.

In a commencement address at Harvard this spring, excerpted in Greater Good, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling spoke about the unique power of human imagination to change the world. Rowling said that when she worked for the human rights organization Amnesty International in her early 20s, she shared office space with former political prisoners and read the testimonies of torture victims. The experience made her realize that imagination is what allows us to empathize with people who have suffered horribly and to act on their behalf. The danger of inaction, Rowlings said, comes from people who “prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all”: 

They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages. They can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally. 

Rowling urged the Harvard graduates to “retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages.” To change the world, she said, all that we need is “the power to imagine better.” 

To read more about the need for imagination, see the creativity package in the July/August issue of Utne Reader.

It isn’t often you hear the United Nations Human Rights Council praised, but that’s the message Peggy Hicks delivered at the recent Human Rights Law and Policy Conference in Minneapolis. Hicks is the global advocacy director at Human Rights Watch and a vocal defender of the two-year-old United Nations Human Rights Council, which replaced the controversy-plagued UN Human Rights Commission. A quick poll of the audience of lawyers, human rights advocates, and laypeople revealed a flurry of affirmation from those who knew of the council, which then dwindled to a few tentative hands for those who had heard anything good about it. 

The council has received frequent criticism for its repeated condemnation of Israel, coupled with a lack of strong action against other states committing serious human rights abuses. Hicks rebutted two common Israel-related criticisms: first, the council has condemned states other than Israel, including Sudan, Burma, North Korea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Somalia; and second, the council may spend a disproportionate amount of time on Israel, but it is far from the majority of its time. In addition to the council’s actions on the above states, it also did significant work on Sri Lanka, Hicks said, and held a special session on Sudan, sending a mission there (though the government blocked its entry). 

Hicks’ defense of the council was modest, but she offered suggestions for improvement, since, she said, we can’t replace it with anything stronger. Getting Southern nongovernmental organizations to the United Nations office in Geneva, where the Human Rights Council meets, would help those groups put pressure on their own governments, Hicks said. State membership on the council also could be improved through continuing to encourage competitive campaigns for seats on the council—competition which wasn’t a feature of the Human Rights Commission. (In the council’s second year, Belarus—which is infamous for cracking down on its media, political dissidents, and human rights groups—lost its bid for membership to Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, a defeat Hicks commended as a sign that the council might eventually build a membership of states with strong human rights records.) Hicks also praised the council’s ability to examine the human rights record of all UN member states through a four-year cycle of Universal Periodic Review begun this April. The United States is up for review at the council’s 10th session in 2010. 

This fall the Olympics will bring us the spectacle “of the human body at the height of health, beauty, discipline, power, and grace,” writes Rebecca Solnit for Orion (article not available online). In her elegant essay, "Looking Away from Beauty," Solnit points to the frail connection those bodies have to the nations they represent—“as though this feat of balance really had something to do with Austria, that burst of power really represented Japan.”

Of utmost importance, Solnit writes, is to consider the way those pristine bodies, those symbols of national pride, exist in conflict with bodies less revered, less public:

It serves the nations of the world to support the exquisitely trained Olympian bodies, and it often serves their more urgent political and economic agendas to subject other bodies to torture, mutilation, and violent death, as well as to look away from quieter deaths from deprivation and pollution. . . . The celebrated athletic bodies exist in some sort of tension with the bodies that are being treated as worthless and disposable. . . . But the associations between the two are crucial to our sense of compassion, and of what it means to be part of a global community.

Catholics are no strangers to schisms, but breaking secular ties is proving tricky, reports the Catholic newsweekly America (subscription required). When Amnesty International announced its policy supporting the worldwide decriminalization of abortion in August 2007, affiliated Catholic chapters had to decide whether the nonprofit’s work against torture and the death penalty outweighed its stance on abortion.

Unsurprisingly,  America found that many Catholic chapters disaffiliated from Amnesty International. “It’s disappointing,” says Monsignor Robert McClory, chancellor of the Archdiocese of Detroit. “On particular cases, we can work together. But the kind of in-depth collaborative work of the past would be stifled by the decision they’ve taken.”

In spite of the controversial policy, some social justice–minded Catholics are finding it difficult to abandon Amnesty International's work completely. Notre Dame’s campus chapter changed its name to “Human Rights Notre Dame” but continues to rely on information from Amnesty’s “Urgent Action” alerts. Across the Atlantic, the predominantly Catholic Amnesty Northern Ireland has struggled with breaking ties, reports Ireland’s public service broadcaster RTÉ, and is considering letting Catholic schools re-join Amnesty International if they can be sure funds raised won’t help support abortion. 

Catholic human rights groups may continue to seek new affiliations. America speculates that some may look to abortion-neutral human rights organizations such as the National Religious Campaign Against Torture.

Image by Takoma Bibelot, licensed under Creative Commons.

It’s an unrelentingly grim global forecast for activists and protestors worn down by decades of recurring injustices. But thanks to the human rights website New Tactics, activists needn’t rely on stale techniques to create change. Coordinated by the Minneapolis-based Center for Victims of Torture, New Tactics helps human rights defenders share stories of successful strategies, like text messaging to stop torture, an action by the human rights group Amnesty Netherlands that mobilized thousands of young people to demand the release of an imprisoned journalist in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Activists can also discuss how successful techniques can work in other countries and communities.

Starting June 25, New Tactics members will discuss the use of video in human rights advocacy, which, incidentally, was the subject of a recent Utne Reader story on creating participatory video to combat gender-based violence.

Also check out Utne.com's new special project, "Tracking Torture Coverage," a regularly updated roundup of the best torture coverage from around the globe.

Last century ended with a series of shameful failures by UN peacekeepers to save lives in Somalia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone. In the beginning of the 21st century, we face another round of tenuous peacekeeping assignments in Africa: in Sudan’s Darfur, Chad, the Central African Republic, and, again, Somalia. 

For many, the allocation of forces from the African Union, European Union, and United Nations to these volatile spots is cause for relief. François Grignon and Daniela Kroslack, the director and deputy director respectively of the International Crisis Group’s Africa program, however, see reason for concern. 

Writing in Current History’s April issue on Africa (subscription only), the two warn that the world has come to regard peacekeeping missions as Band-Aids—forces that emptily assuage human rights concerns with a show of military muscle that is in fact impotent in the face of danger. Unlike many others, Grignon and Kroslack aren’t taking aim at peacekeeping regulations that limit engagement. Rather, the teeth they say are missing from peacekeeping missions are diplomatic, not fire-power, related. 

“The military component of a peacekeeping mission is only as effective as the mission’s political masters make it,” they write. Without “viable peace agreements to implement,” peacekeepers are simply biding their time amidst social collapse. 

Intensive political negotiations, diplomatic pressure, and commitments to address the root causes of conflicts are what’s most needed and—not surprisingly—what’s most difficult. 

Despite peacekeeping missions’ shortcomings, though, Grignon and Kroslack do point to some unexpected successes: 

Recent peacekeeping operations have indeed achieved notable successes in Africa. Yet, paradoxically, their success has not been in the area of civilian protection. The UN Mission in Congo (Monuc) efficiently supported the peace process in the DRC [the Democratic Republic of Congo] and deserves considerable credit for the successful organization of Congo’s 2005 constitutional referendum and 2006 general elections. 

It seems that the bureaucrats and soldiers might be more effective if they switched places. It’s time to marshal our diplomatic forces for the fight and train armed peacekeepers in the tedious work of democracy building.

Image of African Union peacekeepers in Darfur by Patrick-André Perron, licensed under Creative Commons.

Indian women are donning pink saris, grabbing sticks, and cracking heads for human rights. A group known as the Gulabi Gang (gulabi means pink in Hindi) has decided to fight for human rights, literally. The all-female, pink-clad vigilante force is exposing corruption in Uttar Pradesh, one of India’s poorest regions. They target men who beat or blackmail their wives by attacking the men with sticks. Soutik Biswas of the BBC News spoke with Sampat Pal Devi, the leader of the gang. "Mind you," she says, "we are not a gang in the usual sense of the term. We are a gang for justice."

—Brendan Mackie