Human Rights
Obama's Racial Wisdom
The scam of trading a grant white racial innocence for a cheap certificate of black equality offers no way out of racism. This phony bargaining strategy, still beloved of brainless and weak deans on privileged campuses, has been shed quietly not only by Obama but also by many Americans in their 20s. Obama has liberated himself in certain important ways from the black identity politics he explored in Chicago. He has done it not by running away from it or dancing around it, or by being trapped in it but denying it. He has done it not by running away from it or dancing around it, or by being trapped in it but denying it, as Steele variously imagines. He has outgrown it by going straight through it with some good old fashioned conservative introspection, making a Pilgrim’s Progress that tested his faith in himself and society.
A god-given opportunity for Beijing
In the wake of the brutal suppression, senior officials from the Bush administration pressed Chinese officials in private conversations to use their leverage with Myanmar’s authorities to help manage a transition to a new government in Myanmar. However, the Chinese officials “deflected the entreaties by describing Myanmar's turmoil as an internal matter.” Chinese UN Ambassador Wang Guangya argued that the problems facing Myanmar are “basically internal. No international-imposed solution can help the situation.” It is a god-given opportunity for China to demonstrate to the world that China’s is “a responsible partner” of the international community. The reluctant cooperation between the two superpowers in the region is working.
Haleh Esfandiari and the persecuted women of Iran
Evin is Tehran'’s hardest, most feared and most dangerous prison. Political dissidents and opponents of the regime all find their way here, and they, since May 8th, have been joined by Haleh Esfandiari, the Iranian-American Director of the Middle East Program at Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars. Haleh is 67 years old, and had returned to her home country in December to visit her mother. Ahmadinejad'’s regime prooved unwilling to forgive her holding both American and Iranian passports, however, and she was finally moved to Evin prison after more than four months under house arrest.
Is multiculturalism bad for women?
The anthropologist Carla Pasquinelli, author of Infibulazione. Il corpo violato (Infibulation. The violated body) (Meltemi), invites the champions of human rights to judge with the same coin, all the violations of the human body, before railing against mutilation of female genitals. But for Susan Moller Okin, author of Is Multiculturalism bad for women?, there are many cases in which the conditions of the individual would improve “if their culture put itself out”, and with this proposes a liberalism which demands “that the education of babies not be circumscribed to the knowledge of the cultures or religions of their parents, and much less make them believe that that is the ‘only’ right way to live”.
"Islam? Perfectly compatible with Women Rights"
“Do you know what our first president George Washington said, writing to the Quakers about why he was not going to require them to perform military service? ‘The conscientious scruples of all men should be treated with the greatest delicacy and tenderness’. Well, I wish I saw more of this delicacy and tenderness in Europe today”. According to the famous political philosopher Martha Craven Nussbaum, “it’s just appalling that nations want to ban wearing of traditional Islamic dress”. Religion, and in particular Islam, says Nussbaum, is compatible not only with democracy but also with women rights (see the Indian case). What’s really wrong are Western stereotypes about Muslims and the so (badly) called “Islamic world”.
“Western sisters, don’t play the role of teacher”
“The French Revolution took place in the eighteenth century, and we absolutely cannot think of applying such a historical experience across the entire globe. In the same way, Western women must, at all costs, avoid playing the role of teacher and telling non-Western women ‘If you want to be free, be like us’. What they need to show, rather, is an understanding and sympathetic attitude.” Thus Adriana Cavarero, lecturer in Political Philosophy at the University of Verona, and one of the best-known Italian exponents of the ‘philosophy of difference’, expresses her unease towards those who believe in westernising by force worlds with histories and cultures very different to our own.
Gay Parade? No, thanks. For Moscow it is a “Satanic Happening”
The new gay pride parade is set for May 27th, like last year, like 1993 when Eltsin decided that homosexuality was no longer a crime. City mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, didn’t think twice about it, and announced that he would never allow a gay parade in the capital city. The organizers of the gay parade say the mayor’s statements are medieval, something that reminds them of the Inquisition. They are optimistic: this year the gay pride parade will take place, and for good, without authorities bans. Because there is the European Court and because it is impossible not to recognize that homosexual human rights were trampled on.
Bin Laden's War Against ''Freethinkers''
In his latest speech Osama Bin Laden urged the killing of “heretics” and free Muslim intellectuals. According to the Memri Institute, only one eminent Arab columnist rebelled against the call: Tariq Alhomayed, the Editor-in-Chief of Asharq Al-Awsat.