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| Total Unique Visitors: 12 |
| Visitors Out: 1257 |
| Total Visitors Out: 1257 |
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| Limiting Free Speech (3): Hate Speech |
| 2008-07-23 08:21:29 |
(source)
Hate speech (or antilocution, or fighting words) is speech that incites other people to hate a certain group in society defined by common characteristics (race, gender, religion etc.). It usually also incites to commit violence and discrimination based on hatred.
The most famous case is that of the Danish Muhammad cartoons. These cartoons led to worldwide [...]...
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| Limiting Free Speech (2): Holocaust Denial |
| 2008-07-22 08:30:09 |
(source)
In the introductory post of this series, I summarized the dangers of limiting Speech">free speech while at the same time granting that such limits are necessary in some cases. One case is Holocaust denial, or Holocaust revisionism as it is referred to by its supporters.
What is Holocaust denial?
Holocaust deniers only rarely claim that the Holocaust [...]...
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| Limiting Free Speech (1): Introduction |
| 2008-07-22 04:21:07 |
(source)
I’m a strong defender of human rights in general and of Speech">free speech in particular. But I’m also convinced that the system of human rights is not a harmonious whole and that some rights can conflict; some rights may harm other rights, in which case one right has to be limited for the sake of [...]...
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| Migration and Human Rights |
| 2008-07-21 06:14:37 |
(source)
This post is kind of a summary of the stuff I’ve written about international migration and how it is relevant to human rights. I’ve tried to put it all in a simple drawing:
The darker the kind of grey, the more precarious is the rights situation of the people involved. Citizens typically enjoy the best human [...]...
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| Poverty, Summary of Causes and Solutions |
| 2008-07-19 16:21:03 |
I’ve written a lot about poverty on this blog - I think it’s one of the most severe human rights violations - and therefore it seemed appropriate to have a post which summarizes the topic.
more poverty
less poverty
bad governance
absence of democracy
corruption
rights violations
no rule of law
economic causes
economic stagnation/recession
lack of economic freedom
protectionism/trade restrictions
child labor
resource curse
foreign debt
social causes
lack [...]...
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| Human Rights Cartoon (96): Modern Slavery |
| 2008-07-18 10:32:46 |
(copyright Monte Wolverton)
Slavery was officially abolished worldwide at the 1927 Slavery Convention. Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:
“No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms”.
Slavery is illegal everywhere and yet it still exists everywhere. Experts estimate that today [...]...
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| Human Rights Story (5): 1984 |
| 2008-07-18 10:32:30 |
(source)
Excerpt from Orwell’s 1984:
There was an outburst of squeals from the cage. It seemed to reach Winston from far away. The rats were fighting; they were trying to get at each other through the partition. He heard also a deep groan of despair. That, too, seemed to come from outside himself.
O’Brien picked up the cage, [...]...
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| Human Rights Poem (50): The Second Coming |
| 2008-07-18 10:30:13 |
The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is [...]...
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| Human Rights Poem (49): The Slave’s Lament |
| 2008-07-18 10:29:41 |
The Slave’s Lament, Robert Burns
It was in sweet Senegal that my foes did me enthrall
For the lands of Virginia-ginia O;
Torn from that lovely shore, and must never see it more,
And alas! I am weary, weary O!
Torn from &c.
All on that charming coast is no bitter snow and frost,
Like the lands of Virginia-ginia O;
There streams for [...]...
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| Human Rights Poem (48): The White House |
| 2008-07-18 10:29:11 |
The House">White House, Claude McKay
Your door is shut against my tightened face,
And I am sharp as steel with discontent;
But I possess the courage and the grace
To bear my anger proudly and unbent.
The pavement slabs burn loose beneath my feet,
A chafing savage, down the decent street;
And passion rends my vitals as I pass,
Where boldly shines your [...]...
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| Human Rights Facts (50): Poverty and Economic Growth |
| 2008-07-18 05:13:55 |
(source)
Economic growth is the increase in value of the goods and services produced by an economy or a country. It is the percent rate of increase from one year to the next in gross domestic product or GDP of an economy or a country. In order to correct for the population sizes of different economies [...]...
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| Human Rights Quote (82): African Americans |
| 2008-07-17 15:33:15 |
(source)
President Theodore Roosevelt’s invitation of Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House was taken as an outrage and an insult in many quarters. America today is a world away from the cruel and prideful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the nomination of an African-American to be [...]...
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| Human Rights Quote (78): Honor Killings |
| 2008-07-13 08:23:36 |
The right to life of women in Pakistan is conditional on their obeying social norms and traditions. Hina Jilani, lawyer and human rights activist
An honor killing is a murder, carried out by a family to punish a female family member who has supposedly brought dishonor on the family. The acts which are the cause of [...]...
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| Human Rights Quote (77): Civil Disobedience |
| 2008-07-13 08:23:14 |
(source: http://www.freewebs.com/phamho/literature.html)
An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Civil disobedience is a dangerous thing. Laws are [...]...
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| Human Rights Quote (76): Prerequisites for Democracy |
| 2008-07-13 04:15:58 |
(source: http://www.democraticunderground.com/)
There are numerous examples of countries which do not meet a number of supposed cultural “preconditions” for democracy, and which nonetheless have managed to achieve a surprisingly high level of democratic stability. The chief example of this is India, which is neither rich and highly industrialized nor nationally integrated, nor Protestant, and which nonetheless [...]...
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| Human Rights Facts (48): Resource Curse |
| 2008-07-12 03:27:34 |
(source: http://solitaireinternational.wordpress.com/2007/05/)
Why do countries with lots of natural resources tend to do worse than countries with less resource wealth, both in terms of economic growth and in political, social and human rights terms? We see that countries which own lots of natural resources such as diamonds, oil or other valuables that are found in the [...]...
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| Human Rights Quote (75): Real and Normative Universality of Human Rights |
| 2008-07-11 03:27:26 |
No doubt the commitment of many countries to human rights is less than authentic and whole-hearted. Yet, the fact of the commitment, that it is enshrined in a constitution, and that it is confirmed in an international instrument are not to be dismissed lightly. Even hypocrisy may sometimes deserve one cheer for it confirms the [...]...
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| Human Rights Cartoon (95): Waterboarding |
| 2008-07-10 03:43:23 |
(copyright http://www.rall.com/)
Waterboarding is an old torture technique from the Spanish Inquisition. It consists of immobilizing the “target” on an inclined board, head down, with cloth covering his or her face. Pouring water over the face simulates drowning. The victim inhales water, and is convinced that he or she is drowning and about to die. As [...]...
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| Human Rights Facts (46): Religious Liberty |
| 2008-07-08 10:41:43 |
(source)
Religious liberty or the freedom of religion and belief is a human right. It is the right to be protected against coercion in matters of religion, to be free to practice and profess a religion of your choice, in private as well as in public, to change your religion, or to practice no religion at [...]...
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| Human Rights Quote (74): Democracy or Experts? |
| 2008-07-08 05:12:36 |
The proper judge of the expert is not another expert, but the user: The warrior and not the blacksmith for the sword, the horseman and not the saddler for the saddle. And evidently, for all public (common) affairs, the user, and thus the best judge, is the polis. Cornelius Castoriadis
The best method of choice is [...]...
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| Human Rights Quote (73): Equality of Opportunity |
| 2008-07-07 04:24:40 |
(source: http://www.al3x.net/)
Those who are at the same level of talent and ability, and have the same willingness to use them, should have the same prospects of success regardless of their initial place in the social system. In all sectors of society there should be roughly equal prospects of culture and achievement for everyone similarly motivated [...]...
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| Human Rights Cartoon (94): Types of Equality |
| 2008-07-07 04:21:31 |
(copyright by Bill Mauldin)
Here’s a short overview of different types of equality (I’ll come back to this in future posts):
1. Equality before the law
This concept is linked to the concept of non-discrimination. Laws must be equal for everybody and should not discriminate between people. Everyone should be protected and punished by the law in the [...]...
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| Human Rights Quote (72): Gender Discrimination |
| 2008-07-07 03:42:13 |
The inequality of the sexes has deprived society of a vast pool of talent. If women had the free use of their faculties along with the same prizes and encouragements as men, there would be a doubling of the mass of mental faculties available for the higher service of humanity. Every restraint on freedom of [...]...
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| Human Rights Quote (71): Democratic Peace |
| 2008-07-05 05:39:15 |
“In an increasingly interdependent world, Americans have a growing stake in how countries govern, or misgovern, themselves. The larger and more close-knit the community of nations that choose democratic forms of government, the safer and more prosperous Americans will be, since democracies are demonstrably more likely to maintain their international commitments, less likely to engage [...]...
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| Human Rights Facts (45): Health |
| 2008-07-04 04:49:34 |
This post focuses on health and health care. I already wrote posts on the specific subjects of infant mortality, maternal mortality and life expectancy and will not come back to these in the current post.
Health is a human rights issue in two respects.
First, people have a right to health care and health insurance. Article 25 of [...]...
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| Human Rights Poem (47): Refugee |
| 2008-07-04 02:10:38 |
Time for one of my own:
Refugee (2), FIlip Spagnoli
I’m a stranger, like hope in a world that doesn’t change
or change in a world that doesn’t hope.
And like all strangers I wash my hands separately,
and I scratch my own back,
and I no longer wonder ’bout the double meaning of “asylum”
‘cos there is none:
you have to be [...]...
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| Human Rights Facts (44): Dehumanization |
| 2008-07-03 08:34:42 |
Here’s a small catalogue of examples of dehumanization, of the ways in which humans try to exclude others from humanity, to deny them equality, to ridicule them, to render them objects in their plan, instruments for their advancement or pleasure. It ranges from the harmless national stereotypes and political humor, to the incitement of genocide. [...]...
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| Human Rights Cartoon (93): Crimes Against Humanity |
| 2008-07-03 05:54:26 |
This is from the infamous Nazi newspaper of Julius Streicher, Der Sturmer, from 1934. The cartoon praises the Nazi Ministry of Culture for removing Jewish teachers from German classrooms. Streicher was convicted at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity and hanged in 1946.
A crime against humanity is a large scale atrocity against a body of people, such [...]...
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| Human Rights Facts (43): Genocide |
| 2008-07-02 09:21:21 |
(photo showing the excavation of mass graves in Srebrenica)
Genocide is the deliberate, systematic and violent destruction of a group (an ethnic, racial, religious, national or political group). This destruction can take many forms:
the outright murder of (the majority of) the members of the group
inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about destruction
measures intended to prevent births
systematic rape as [...]...
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| Human Rights Facts (42): Discrimination |
| 2008-07-02 06:06:34 |
I’ve written before on discrimination, especially gender discrimination (also here) and discrimination based on sexual orientation. This post tackles the subject more generally.
Discrimination, in its non-political and non-legal sense, simply means the recognition of differences. In the political and legal sense, it means unjustifiable differences in treatment between groups of people, most often the unjustifiable [...]...
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| Human Rights Quote (70): Humanity |
| 2008-07-02 01:40:17 |
The decay of decency in the modern age, the rebellion against law and good faith, the treatment of human beings as things, as the mere instruments of power and ambition, is without a doubt the consequence of the decay of the belief in man as something more than an animal animated by highly conditioned reflexes [...]...
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| Human Rights Facts (41): Xenophobia |
| 2008-06-30 09:04:59 |
(copyright http://www.davidlachapelle.com)
Xenophobia, the contempt or fear of strangers or foreign people, often people of a different race or ethnic group, is not considered to be a disease like other “phobias”. It is part of a political struggle against adversaries, much like racism is. (Whereas racism is certainly xenophobic, xenophibia doesn’t have to be racist; it [...]...
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| Human Rights Quote (69): Religious Liberty |
| 2008-06-30 03:23:27 |
“False doctrine should be checked on its first appearance; the civil power should unite with the church in punishing those who dared to attack the established religion, and such only were punished by the Inquisition.” Samuel Johnson, aka Dr Johnson.
“Religiously wrong, a motive of legislation which can never be too earnestly protested against. Deorum injuriae [...]...
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| Spheres of Life |
| 2008-06-27 16:09:21 |
I was never happy with some of the traditional distinctions in political theory such as state-church, state-society, etc. (The same is true for some of the traditional equations such as public and state). Don’t get me wrong, I think these two distinctions in particular are very important, but they tend to become simplistic in political discussions.
That is [...]...
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| Human Rights Story (3): Sex Strike |
| 2008-06-27 04:10:30 |
Abbreviated excerpt from Lysistrata by the Greek playwright Aristophanes (a comic play on the sex strike led by the women of Greece in a successful attempt to force their husbands to stop making war. The men, suffering from the absence of sex, agree to make peace):
Lysistrata (one of the women): “If all women join together [...]...
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| Human Rights Quote (68): Aids Disaster |
| 2008-06-27 04:03:43 |
HIV/Aids is the disaster that keeps on killing. Day after day, families are destroyed, economies wiped out and communities crushed. DAVID ANDREWS, chairman of the Irish Red Cross, launching a report to recommend that the international community declare the HIV/Aids epidemic a “global disaster”
Some facts about the AIDS epidemic are here. The number of people [...]...
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| Human Rights Cartoon (92): Public opposition to migration |
| 2008-06-23 08:53:52 |
(copyright http://www.claybennett.com/)
The public in most developed countries (or rich countries) is often opposed to immigration:
(source: http://pewresearch.org/)
There are two main reasons for this opposition. Opinions about immigration are closely linked to perceptions about threats to a country’s culture, for example the language. We see a lot of anxiety in the US about English as the first language and the [...]...
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| Human Rights Facts (40): Asylum |
| 2008-06-23 08:23:53 |
This post on asylum is a follow-up on a previous post on refugees, which was in itself a follow-up on a post about the broader topic of migration.
Asylum is a form of protection that allows individuals to remain in a country, provided that they meet the definition of a refugee. Eventually, they may become permanent [...]...
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| Human Rights Cartoon (91): Corporate democracy |
| 2008-06-23 04:12:07 |
Given the importance of work and production in the life of individuals, it is justified to give them some say in the way in which the means of production are used. The owners of the means of production should not be entitled to decide unilaterally on the conditions, organization, purposes, processes and meaning of production. [...]...
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| Human Rights Story (1): The judicial system |
| 2008-06-21 14:13:32 |
Excerpt from “In the Penal Colony” by Franz Kafka (abbreviated)
(The story is about a settlement where they have a very peculiar judicial system, and a horrible execution method. The dialogue is between a visitor and the local self-styled “judge” annex executioner. They are talking about a soldier about to be executed).
Visitor: ‘Does he know his [...]...
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