No longer Emma's America

On July 22nd, 1849 in New York City a baby girl was born to Moshe Lazarus and Esther Nathan, Sephardic Jews with family origins in Portugal. Baby Emma was the fourth of seven children. Emma’s family had lived in the New York area since colonial times.

Emma was a bright student, studying American and British literature from an early age and mastering the German, French, and Italian languages. As a youth she started writing, with her work attracting the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emma and Emerson remained friends, corresponding until he died in 1882. Emma would herself die only five years later, and the tender age of 38.

Emma Lazarus was a poet of note, best known and still memorialized for a sonnet that spoke America’s youthful story with eloquence.

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,With conquering limbs astride from land to land;Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall standA mighty woman with a torch, whose flameIs the imprisoned lightning, and her nameMother of Exiles. From her beacon-handGlows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame."Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries sheWith silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

This was written in 1883; its lines appear on the bronze plaque affixed to the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, placed there in 1903.

Emma Lazarus died on this day in 1887, most likely of Hodgkin's lymphoma. Considering the current anti-immigrant climate I have to wonder if young Emma would even recognize the America of which she sang. 

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Happy Birthday Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin

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How will you commemorate 9/11?

Someone asked. Figured I'd answer.

Likely I'll get up out of the bed and jump in the shower... much like I do every day.

Probably I'll head into the kitchen and scavenge something to eat. There's a small slice of that apricot pecan poundcake left that would go good with four or five slices of thick-cut bacon and maybe a fried egg.

Normal practice would be to fire up the the laptop and cruise the news while polishing off breakfast and a few cups of that strong, black Columbian roast... about the same as yesterday and the day before.

I'll fix a lunch... probably since my friend Jeannine brought me over a nice, big ripe tomato I'll make a bacon, tomato and cheese on toasted wheatberry bread. I've always loved a home grown tomato.

When 5:45 rolls around I'll hop in the truck and head north to do another hitch at the daily grind. I'll take the county roads slowly toward the highway, because I know that as soon as I merge onto the 4-lane it'll be every man for his-own.self-bumper-cars. It's like that every day.

Being as I'm an early riser I'll have my choice of parking places and I'll pick that one just a little further away than those closest to the building door, but that has that nice, big shade tree that will keep the cab from being so hot when I come back out at 15:30. In Texas a good parking space is judged by the shade, not the distance. It's been that way as long as I can remember.

I'll juggle my coffee cup and my sack lunch as I fumble for the key to get in. I've always been there before the building is unlocked. Always.

Once inside I'll look longingly at the elevator, but I'll go on around and take the stairs instead. I'm getting fat so the climb will burn an extra calorie or two. Nothing new there except that I should'a never let myself get into this shape.

Another locked door and hopefully not too much spilled coffee before I'm in the hive. I'll flip on the lights and head to my cube. Yep. These days I'm a cubizen. Been one for too long already and I miss the field.

I'll put in my eight shuffling papers and answering the phone... drink more coffee, eat my sandwich when the time comes, smooze with my coworkers and snigger at David's pitifully painful groaners. David has always been the one to come up with the puns.

About 15:25 I'll start winding it down and securing anything that can't be left out for curious eyes. HIPAA can be the bane of my existence... when it isn't FEMA instead... but government has always been a pain in someone or another's derrière.

I'll head down to the parking lot, climb in the cab of a truck that has been sitting shaded by that big, old pecan tree all day long, and I'll get a small grin on my face looking around at the cars of all those drivers that just had to get the space closest to the door. My truck will be cool, and leaving as early as I do I'll miss most of the bumper cars on the highway as I cruise to the house. Takes about 30 or 35 minutes. Almost never fails.

There are chores needing done around Casa Phudpucker. I'll take care of some of them and blow the rest off for another day. Around dinnertime I'll forage through the pantry to see what looks good and fix a bite of supper. Pretty routine stuff.

Next I'll get on the laptop and joust with some bible thumper or some right wingnut about what is real in this world and important. The thumper will tell me I've got to fear god and the wingnut will tell me I've got to fear just about everything even slightly different than "us." I'm passionate about the rights of others, and from my perspective the best way to lose rights is to support some religion or some fear-mongering politician. I've always been like that... and so have they.

At some point today I'll find time to be sad that although humankind can use science to cure polio, to put a man on the moon and a robot on Mars with high definition cameras, yet there are still far too many who will turn to mysticism... which is what led those men 11 years ago to fly airplanes into buildings... and all the while peddlers of fear and discontent will capitalize on the stuff for profit or political gain.

The reason this is a day of note is because of extreme religion and extreme politics. It was extremism generated and fanned by fear, hate and discontent... pounded out of a Qu'rans... that brought about the deaths of all those folks in New York, DC and Shanksville.

Here at home a bunch of bible pounders and right wingnut politicians have spent the past eleven years rousing the rabble... playing on ignorance and fear... demonizing the other guys and their religion... dehumanizing our fellow humans. They use the memory of 9/11 to shore up their base and keep the flames of hatred fanned. There are idiots around. Always have been. Humans die unnecessarily because of them. Always have.

I'm an advocate for human life and liberty and today I'll pontificate about real freedon. Freedom from the chains of religion and of politics. We're slaves to our ignorance. So long as there is some grand notion of life after this one in some paradise in the sky, we will always be slaves. We have the knowledge to change that, but for some reason we can never get the job done.

I'm atheist and politically moderate, but still probably more liberal than many. Those folks will continue to bow to some master or another... and people will keep killing each other for political expediency and because of bronze age myths. Always been that way.

Nothing much changes in my day to day life. Seldom ever has. Today will be of little difference. What happend on 9/11 is nothing new to this world... different only in scale from many other atrocities committed upon other peoples by people toting bibles and qu'rans alike. It disgusts me that humans can find such evil within themselves to perform such acts... but it does not surprise me. We've done things like this to each other since the dawn of history.

It won't change much of my routine. If I changed anything because of what some hate-filled crazy people had done or what they might do next... then they would win. I'll remember what evil does... but I'll not let evil win.

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Arizona legislature endorses controversial contraceptive bill

For my conservative friends saying that the government should stay out of the contraception issue, this story ought to make your day.

“I believe we live in America. We don’t live in the Soviet Union,” Lesko said. “So, government should not be telling the organizations or mom and pop employers to do something against their moral beliefs.”

So it is the Soviet Union that would impose upon a "mom and pop" if the government insists that insurance must cover all people equally, but it isn't when the government passes a law authorizing said "mom and pop" to pry into an employee's medical records? ...and Senator Lesco thinks the First Amendment allows this?

Really?

The Republicans keep on telling us they are the party of liberty, small governemnt and freedom. So why do they keep on trying to pass laws that allows the governemnt (and now my employer) to poke noses into my library and my bedroom?

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On Religious Freedom

The concept of the natural rights of man has been recognized for some time. In some of the earliest known writings on the topic the Stoics of ancient Greece described slavery as an unnatural, or external condition of man. The philosophy of sui juris, or the freedom of the human soul was espoused in many writings of the day.

It is a mistake to imagine that slavery pervades a man's whole being; the better part of him is exempt from it: the body indeed is subjected and in the power of a master, but the mind is independent, and indeed is so free and wild, that it cannot be restrained even by this prison of the body, wherein it is confined.

-- Seneca the Younger, De beneficiis, III, 20.

The worst speculative Sceptic ever I knew, was a much better Man than the best superstitious Devotee & Bigot.

-- David Hume in a letter to Gilbert Elliot of Minto, March 10, 1751

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Those were the first few words of the first missive offered for this blog. That was on 2008.12.10, and the post was titled THE RIGHTS OF MAN (With Apologies to Thomas Paine) and the topic was the 60^th anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Just a few months prior to this blog's début a Saudi led coalition of 56 Islamic nations managed to reverse Eleanor Roosevelt’s signature achievement of 60 years prior. They accomplished this by inserting language effectively criminalizing blasphemy under the guise of "religious anti-defamation". It was just this kind of religious intolerance that was the focus of Mrs. Roosevelt’s drive for human rights, yet every effort to override this movement was stymied.

Now just a short few years later we see attitudes swinging more in Mrs. Roosevelt’s favor. On 2011.03.24 Reuters reported on the groundbreaking consensus that had been reached by UN member nations to abandon the blasphemy language inserted in 2008. A new three-page resolution recognizing that there is "intolerance, discrimination and violence" aimed at individuals in all regions of the world emerged after discussions between U.S. and Pakistani diplomats.

Washington, DC – Today in Geneva, members of the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a groundbreaking resolution that seeks to address violence, discrimination and incitement to religious hatred without reference to the controversial notion of “defamation of religions.” Human Rights First said the move marks an important shift away from efforts at the UN to create an international blasphemy code, something that has for the past decade been supported by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

The move by the UN Human Rights Council is important because we can now expect to see a shift from protection of religion to the protection of individual rights. And yes, change will come slowly. The resolution is a good start but recent events [HERE, HERE, HERE] remind us that the Islamic world is unlikely to make any rapid changes.

The cult of Muhammad ibn Abdullah is as firmly entrenched in the Muslin world as the cult of Jesus of Nazareth once was in Christian regions. Over time the greater freedoms allowed in the west promoted increased tolerance and a more secular society, gradually pushing onerous laws out of the books. Christians became a less authoritarian sect, but the Muslims were just on the rise.

Unfortunately when the adherents of one sect or cult feel threatened by encroachment of another we see protectionist laws resurface. The growth of Islam and the threat of terrorism has done exactly that to the west.  

Witness the unnecessary "Anti-Shariah" law now on the books in Oklahoma, and those proposed in several other states. This type of futile reaction tends to strengthen the will of those promoting religious intolerance elsewhere. Fortunately there are cooler heads and the effects of our home grown intolerance is somewhat muted.

In spite of the reactionism here and the intransigence of Muslim states, we are seeing changing attitudes elsewhere. Likely this is due to ever greater and uncomfortable encroachment of religion into public dialogue, as well as news stories such as those illustrated above.  

The change in the UN resolution comes as many of the globe’s borderline religionist states, led by  more secular nations, are leaning toward greater tolerance and political moderation. Initially Argentina, the Bahamas, Barbados, Fiji, the Republic of Korea, the Solomon Islands, Mexico, Uruguay and Zambia all voted in favor of the anti-defamation resolution in 2008, yet in this most recent move those same nations all switched sides.

In a recent Human Rights First report scores of cases were identified providing actual examples of the dangers of enacting a global blasphemy law. More than 70 cases were identified in 15 countries where the enforcement of such laws resulted in death sentences, long prison terms or arbitrary detentions, all based upon suspect accusations. A person accusing another of blasphemy cannot even recount the offense without also being accused of the sin, leaving a court to accept the accuser’s statement with no evidence that the accused might be able to refute.

Fundamentalist citizenry enabled by these laws have been documented attacking, assaulting, and sometimes murdering those accused; often with no evidence other than the accusation. The assassination of Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer by his own body guard, and the murder of Pakistani Minister Shabhaz Bhatti were identified as results of blasphemy accusations, as were outbreaks of mob violence in Indonesia. 

The tides, hopefully, are turning. On Monday, 2011.12.19, as the 66th session of the United Nations General Assembly came to an end, it adopted two resolutions on the right to Freedom of Religion or Belief. One of these called for the elimination of all forms of intolerance and discrimination based on religion or belief and the other for combating intolerance, negative stereotyping, stigmatization, discrimination, incitement to violence and violence against persons, based on that person's religion, belief, or lack of belief.

It is a small start, but perhaps this will be the beginning of something grand. We can hope.

More reading on this topic at the links below:

USCIRF Welcomes Move Away from "Defamation of Religions" Concept

Islamic Bloc Drops U.N. Drive on Defaming Religion

Human Rights First Ten-Point Plan for Combating Hate Crime

The Consequences of Criminalizing “Defamation of Religions” [PDF]

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Ignorance makes the best mind control

The British computer news and tech site TechEye.net is reporting on a recent move by the Saudis to clamp down on publishers of Internet news sites, weblogs, forums, and even personal websites originating from within the country.  Site publishers are required, among other things, to be of good conduct and behavior and hold an appropriate license. The Saudi Ministry of Culture and Information, of course, would issue the license.

TechEye previously reported that China had banned VoIP providers not controlled by the Chinese government, including Skype; the largest and most popular of  the providers.

Keeping the flock in the dark has always been a popular authoritarian tool utilized to maintain order. Where once they burned books, censors around the world have now focused attention on the Internet. Free access to the truth tends to make controlling the flock sometimes very difficult .

Saudi Arabia and China are far from the first to employ censorship as a means of maintaining ignornace. Book burners in this country have been trying it for years, but a little thing called Freedom of Speech has sidetracked them.

Citizens of other countries are not always so fortunate.

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What kind of speech needs protection?

This is the question asked by Hemant. He goes on to say...

"The Center for Inquiry recently held a video contest for their Campaign for Free Expression. Today, on International Blasphemy Rights Day, they announced their winner — and it’s a great pick"

Hemant then quotes CFT...

"Center for Inquiry (CFI) is pleased to announce that Gregory Walsh and John Schmid of Maryland are the Grand Prize winners of its Campaign for Free Expression Video Contest, which asked contestants to submit short videos in the form of a public service announcement that addresses the importance of free expression. The Grand Prize provides Messrs. Walsh and Schmid with a cash award of $2000"

A tiny, little award for a very simple yet dynamic work. Hemant is correct; it is a great video. My heartfelt contrats to Walsh and Schmid.

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The politics of fear and loathing

Religionistas: Islamophobia and Christophobia

On August 24, 2010, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released the results of a recent opinion survey. 35% of Americans believe Islam encourages violence to a greater degree than other religions. Eight years ago, only months after the attacks of September 11, 2001 that figure stood at 25%.

45% offer the opposing opinion, saying that Islam does not encourage more violence than other religions, while 24% have no opinion.  The survey also revealed that 38% of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of Islam, compared to just 30% with a favorable view and 32% with no opinion. Recent events, small and large, have put this fear and the reaction to it on front-page display.

A taxi driver in Manhattan was savagely attacked merely because the assailant believed him to be Muslim. A proposed expansion of an Islamic center located a couple blocks away from the World Trade Center site causes volcanic levels of hysteria in the right-wing media and blogosphere. A nut-job minister in Gainesville, FL and about 50 of his followers grabs center stage by threatening to burn copies of the Quran. In Tennessee, federal investigators believe arsonists torched construction equipment at the site of a future mosque in Murfreesboro. In New York State, a Muslim community in Waterport has been targeted and harassed by teenagers.

Politicians, pundits and preachers are fanning the flames of Islamophobia, repeatedly insisting that all of Islam be responsible for the actions of a handful of extremists. Inversely, across the pond, Christians are feeling the brunt of similar fear and loathing, stoked mostly by radical Islamic clerics, religious extremists and leftist politicians.

In Muslim countries practicing Sharia law, discrimination against Christians and Jews is not just practiced, it is codified into law.  Egypt is one of the more secular and moderate of the Muslim countries with a sizable religious minority of Coptic Christians, yet Egyptian law stipulates that a "Muslim man may marry a Christian woman but the opposite is forbidden; and if a Muslim woman does marry a Christian man, both the husband and the wife would be considered adulterers". 

However, it is not only the Muslim countries where we find anti-Christian sentiment. Christophobia is rampant across Northern Europe and England, and in Israel the sentiment is strong.

In May of 2007 a Baptist church in Brighton, England, was invaded by anti-Christian squatters who promptly wrecked the place with garbage and graffiti. In May of 2008, the mayor of a small city near Tel Aviv ordered hundreds of New Testaments confiscated from his citizens. These were later burned. Since the early 90’s, nine Christian churches have been burned in Norway.

In 2009 a Vienna, Austria based security organization issued a report confirming that Christophobia has become not only wide-spread, but perfectly acceptable in Asia, Africa and Europe, much as Islamophobia has become perfectly acceptable in America, Germany, the Netherlands and Great Brittan.  

The struggle isn’t new. Along with Judaism, these philosophies have been doing battle on one front or another for thousands of years, locked in an ongoing struggle for control of the Western World. The holy books of each of these commands adherents to engage the infidels, and to establish nations under Islamic law/Biblical law/The Law of Moses… whatever.

It is all nonsense.

Some 235 years ago a group of wise men recognized the futility of these millennial struggles and, seeking to create a more perfect union, devised a political system outside of any religious law. The framers of our Constitution and the Founders of our republic crafted a constitution that specifically excluded religion of any stripe. The only language in our Constitution that even mentions religion is exclusionary.

Article VI Paragraph 3 of our Constitution states that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” Then there are the two First Amendment clauses commonly known as the "religion clauses" are the Establishment Clause, which states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion," and the Free Exercise Clause "prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Now, after all these years, we find Christian extremists twisting the words of our Founders in an attempt to circumvent the Establishment Clause, promoting the myth that America was created as a Christian nation, while viral political rhetoric has created a de facto religious test for public office. In the process they are attempting to backdoor Biblical law and, with the help of FOX News and the right wingnut blogosphere, establish the accepted discrimination of Muslims and others who are not “like us.”

The 6,000 year-old struggle progresses unabated while fear and loathing stokes the flames of hatred and violence. One of these days we may discover, perhaps too late, that religion in any form is corrosive to peace and individual freedom.

Thomas Jefferson was a visionary.

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Common Sense 0, First Amendment 1

Fred Phelps is a disgusting individual. He, his family and the congregation of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, KS represent the lowest underbelly of America… but regardless of that, they remain Americans and therefore the beneficiaries of the same Constitutional rights as the rest of us.

These despicable abusers of the Rights of Man have been mentioned in this space before [HERE] [HERE] and [HERE]. In that last link a court case was mentioned in which the Phelps crew had beaten a lawsuit [Snyder v. Phelps, et al] brought by the father of a Marine killed in Iraq after the Phelps family protested the funeral. 

The judge in the case ruled that in the United States of America, people have the right to believe anything they want, say anything they want, and in general to behave like ignorant idiots, so long as no physical harm is done.

Next came the 2006 law passed by the Missouri legislature, specifically targeting the Kansas church group, and severely restricting protests near funerals. Phelps sued, and won [Phelps-Roper v. Koster].

Yesterday a U.S. District Judge ruled the Missouri law violates the church’s right of free speech guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

Judge Fernando Gaitan, although sympathetic to the argument that people attending a funeral deserve some protection, ruled that Missouri officials did not demonstrate that the protest restrictions served any significant government interest, nor had it been narrowly tailored to prevent the harm of interruptions of funeral services.

Several other states have enacted similar laws, and those too will likely fall upon appeal. Judge Gaitan had little option, considering the earlier federal appeals court decision that there was no compelling government interest in protecting people from unwanted speech outside their homes.

Court documents reveal that the Kansas church has held more than 42,000 pickets, including more than 500 at funerals. This fall SCOTUS is supposed to consider the appeal in Snyder v. Phelps, et al. I predict this too will fail. The fact that these idiots behave in this manner is disturbing, but fits the category of protected speech. The fact that they have the right to be idiots is written in our Constitution. 

Now, briefly consider the parallel of this case to the ongoing debate over the so-called Ground Zero Mosque… We may not like it, and it may seem a really insensitive thing to do... but there is no legal basis for denying it.

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There be witches

In a copyrighted broadcast on December 21st, NPR reported on a death sentence handed by down by a Saudi court. The criminal was the Lebanese host of a popular television advice program in which he would sometime offer predictions of future events. The Arabic language program was broadcast from Beirut by satellite. Ali Hussain Sibat was apprehended as he traveled to Saudi Arabia on a pilgrimage to Mecca.

So what was his crime? What unspeakable, heinous sin did Sibat commit that would justify capital punishment?

Sorcery

Sibat’s attorney says, "They took him to prison, and after that they took him to the court many times, asking him, you have to say that you have done something against religion, and after that we will release you and take you to your country." He admitted his sins, and was promptly sentenced to beheading.

A reasonable person would think that this must be an isolated case, and that such extremes would be rare. But as NPR reports, Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch says that such cases are on the rise in Saudi Arabia, and the religious police have arrested many Saudis and non-Saudis, Muslims and non-Muslims on sorcery charges.

Mr. Sibat, in following the advice of his captors, confessed that he consulted spirits to predict the future. Instead of releasing him they marched him in front of live television cameras and told him to confess again. He was then tried, his confession used against him, and sentenced to die. The Saudis did not respond to several requests for comments from NPR and other news organizations.

Whitson says that "You will never know on any given day whether the book you are reading or the words you are saying are going to be interpreted or used against you deliberately as a form of witchcraft".

Saudi Arabia has no penal code and the “crime” of witchcraft is not specifically defined. In each case the judge is left to decide if the charge is a crime. Most Saudi judges view people who believe in the supernatural as heretics and often sentence them according to their personal Sharia training.

The religious police headquarters in the Saudi capital of Riyadh has an entire department devoted to combating sorcery and witchcraft and regularly distributes pamphlets and DVDs. In one DVD, which is set to religious music, police are shown searching homes for signs of witchcraft.

Mr. Sibat’s case is by no means a unique example of the Saudi’s purposeful march into medieval times. Other cases include a Saudi man who was arrested for smuggling a book about witchcraft into the country, an Asian man accused of using “powers” to solve marital disputes, and a man of unknown nationality given a death sentence for “trying to learn magic.” An Egyptian pharmacist was executed in 2007 on a charge of sorcery.

In yet another case, a Eritrean national was convicted and sentenced to 20 month and 300 lashes on a charge of "charlatanry." The evidence was a leather-bound phone booklet with handwriting in the Tigrinya alphabet commonly used in his home country. The religious police called the phone book a "talisman.” The man was imprisoned for over double his sentenced time, then deported.

We should try to remember… these people are our allies.

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Of Anniversaries and the Rights of Man

This blog turns one year old today. It began out of frustration. I enjoy writing, and was encouraged to submit some of what I’d penned for publication. Never got a bite, so with further encouragement I turned to blogging. Reading back on my own missives I think maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick on the trigger, but I still like the first piece I published.

My first piece was a memorial to the human rights movement, and a tip of the hat to those who have fought for what I called (with apologies to Thomas Paine) “The Rights of Man”. The post was timed to coincide with 60^th anniversary of United Nations General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) of 10, better known as The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. So today is the resolution’s 61^st.

Today is International Human Rights Day. The United Nations officially came into existence at the end of World War II, on October 24, 1945, with a mission to preserve world peace and security; develop friendly relations between nations; work toward solving world economic, social, cultural and humanitarian problems; and to protect and promote respect for human rights and freedoms.

The UN’s definition of human rights is “those rights which are inherent in our nature and without which we cannot live as human beings.” “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” These is the first statement found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, yet today, the fight against discrimination remains a daily struggle for millions around the globe. Americans take our inherent rights for granted, but many in the world continue to have what we consider basic denied. In the 1948 Declaration, the UN listed the basic human rights:

1. Right to life and liberty

2. Right to freedom of movement

3. Right to equality before the law

4. Freedom of opinion and expression

5. Freedom of assembly and association

6. Freedom of thought, conscience, and religion

7. Right to be recognized as a person before the law

8. Right to presumption of innocence until proven guilty

9. Right to appeal a conviction

10. Freedom of choice in whom a person marries

11. Freedom from discrimination based upon race, sex, color, national origin, or language

12. Right to self-determination

13. Right to wages sufficient to support a minimum standard of living

14. Right to equal opportunity for advancement

15. Right to equal pay for equal work

16. Right to paid or otherwise compensated maternity leave

17. Right to form unions

18. Right to strike

19. Right to free primary education

20. Right to accessible education at all levels

21. Freedom from exploitation of children

The list of human rights originally enumerated in 1948 have been expanded over the last three-score years, and now includes new issues, such as a nation’s right to develop; capital punishment; children in armed conflicts; compensation of victims; disability; expanded discrimination based on HIV or AIDS; enforced or involuntary disappearances; environment; impunity; indigenous peoples; migrant workers; peacekeeping operations; the sale of children, terrorism; and war crimes.

TRIVIA: The UN recognizes six official languages. Do you know what they are? (answer at the end)

The first UN Prize in the Field of Human Rights was awarded in 1968, posthumously to American human rights activist Eleanor Roosevelt, who was active in the formation of numerous institutions—most notably the UN, the United Nations Association and Freedom House. She chaired the committee that drafted and approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

There were 48 original members of the UN, and the vote on the Declaration of Human Rights was 48-0. There are 192 member nations today, and one must wonder, if the same resolution were voted on today… just how much consensus we would find. So we can debate the effectiveness of the UN, but the founding goals were admirable.

This year marks the 61st anniversary of the adoption of the UDHR. The theme for International Human Rights Day 2009 is “Embrace Diversity; End Discrimination.” Human Rights Day this year will focus on non-discrimination.

“Discrimination lies at the root of many of the world’s most pressing human rights problems. No country is immune from this scourge. Eliminating discrimination is a duty of the highest order.” Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Another admirable goal…

CITATIONS:

United Nations 24-Hour ‘Hot Line’ for Reporting Human Rights Violations

A Summary of United Nations Agreements on Human Rights

Human Rights Watch

About UNICEF: Who We Are

Bill of Rights Day

Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission

United Nations Fact Sheet on Human Rights

The United Nations and Human Rights

United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights: Background

The six official languages of the United Nations are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish

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