Sunday Music: My Grown Up Christmas List

My Grown Up Christmas List

Myanmar's Atrocities Exposed

Back in February, I wrote about human rights abuses against the Christian minority in Myanmar in my post Myanmar: The Other Killing Field. Now, according to reports on CNN, it appears that abuses are happening even to Buddhist monks.

Thankfully, Anderson Cooper with his 360° program has been bringing these activities to light (and CNN in general). He also has been reporting about abuses in this country by auto insurance companies against their insureds. This isn't the first time that Anderson Cooper has reported about hardball practices by auto insurance practices.

Thank you, Mr. Cooper, for bringing these issues to light.

A Christian Argument Against Racism

You would think that in our day and age that such a statement would not have to be made.

The simplest explanation to understanding the Brotherhood of Mankind as a seminal Christian concept would be found in the most quoted verse in the Gospels:

John 3:16

For God loved the world so much that He gave his only Son so that anyone who believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

The Living Bible translation.

There are two words I want to focus on: world (kosmos) and anyone. These words indicated that the message presented by Jesus was meant to be universal. The fact that the effect of these words were not incorporated into Christian practice for much of its history does not vitiate the plain original meaning of what he said.

The Conversion of the Ethiopian Eunuch (Acts 8:26-40)

The fact that an Ethiopian Eunuch was one of the first to be converted tells me that people of an African heritage were never supposed to be treated as a lesser group. The concept of the Love of God was pointedly universal in its application. As Christians, the followers of Christ's teaching were to be an example for the whole world of this simple message.

I am sure there are many more examples that could be used, but these two stuck out at me as glaring examples of how Christians should never support any kind of discrimination or bigotry based on race, ethnicity or nationality (as well as other forms of discrimination and prejudice which can be found in the broader message of love and obedience to Christ's message).

In a day and age when certain political figures and groups try to divide us based on our racial, ethnic or national heritages, it is important for Christians in particular to reject any such attempts and to work against such divisive actions.

Whitewash

Seymour Hersh recently wrote an article in The New Yorker wherein he reports on what General Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, found during his limited investigation.

But even with the limited investigation, General Taguba doesn't believe the official story that the soldier's were renegades acting outside the military command:

“From what I knew, troops just don’t take it upon themselves to initiate what they did without any form of knowledge of the higher-ups,” Taguba told me. His orders were clear, however: he was to investigate only the military police at Abu Ghraib, and not those above them in the chain of command. “These M.P. troops were not that creative,” he said. “Somebody was giving them guidance, but I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority. I was limited to a box.”

And from a report in the Washington Post:

In interviews with New Yorker reporter Seymour M. Hersh, Taguba said that he was ordered to limit his investigation to low-ranking soldiers who were photographed with the detainees and the soldiers' unit, but that it was always his sense that the abuse was ordered at higher levels. Taguba was quoted as saying that he thinks top commanders in Iraq had extensive knowledge of the aggressive interrogation techniques that mirrored those used on high-value detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and that the military police "were literally being exploited by the military interrogators."

Taguba also said that Rumsfeld misled Congress when he testified in May 2004 about the abuse investigation, minimizing how much he knew about the incidents. Taguba said that he met with Rumsfeld and top aides the day before the testimony.

"I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib," Taguba said, according to the article. "We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable."

Not allowed to ask questions that will get to the ultimate truth of the matter? Sounds like whitewash to me.

***Update***

Here is a video report:

Help Stop Teenage Affluenza

I found this funny video on YouTube that has a serious message. The spot might have shown on Australian TV.



Here is the website: 40 Hour Famine. You won't hear this message very often in America, so I will do my best to spread the word via my humble blog.

American Embassy In Baghdad Built With Slave Labor?

In a compilation of news and commentary, a post over at Daily Kos alleges that the American Embassy in Baghdad was built with forced labor.

(sarcasm) Yeah, that's what we want America to stand for. (/sarcasm)

From a story at MSNBC.com:

Whistleblowers who worked on the embassy have told officials at the State and Justice departments, as well as NBC News, that the contractor, First Kuwaiti International Trading, had brought workers, mostly South Asians and Filipinos, to Baghdad under false pretenses, then abused and threatened them while there.

Then the Bush Administration's State Department did an "investigation" and found "no wrongdoing":

The State Department inspector general, Howard J. Krongard, found no wrongdoing last year in what he describes as a "limited investigation" but acknowledges the company knew he was coming three months before he arrived. Still, his report states: “Nothing came to our attention as a result of the foregoing procedures that caused us to believe that TIP (Trafficking in Persons) violations … occurred at the NEC (New Embassy Complex).”

And the Bush Administration's Justice Department is seeking to wash our hands of it:

In addition, two lawyers in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, Andrew Kline and Michael J. Frank, have been talking to former First Kuwaiti employees about the charges. U.S. officials tell NBC News that they have not decided whether Justice even has jurisdiction in the case since the alleged violations occurred overseas.

Congress May Restore Habeas Corpus

A transcript from mcjoan at Daily Kos:

Olbermann: Supporters of this act, the Military Commissions Act ... point out that other administrations have suspended habeas corpus without destroying the republic. Is this time different, and if so how and why is that pretty much a sophistry argument?

Turley: It's hardly a convincing case that you have to have the collapse of the republic. It says more about the republic than the actions of the earlier presidents. This is a system of government that was designed to be idiot-proof and God knows we've tested that through the years. But it was actually designed for multiple idiots, and it means that we can go a certain period of time with the denial of rights and we have tended to correct that and it looks like we're about to do that now. This was one of the most disgraceful moments of the last Congress and it will be equally disgraceful to see many Republicans vote to fight the effort to bring back the great writ.

Olbermann: ... It is easy to imagine Americans who are patriotic but scared, who could just sort of dismiss habeas corpus and other civil liberties as luxuries that make us weak right now. Explain why that's exactly backwards, why they're not luxuries, why they're necessities that make us strong.

Turley: First of all, habeas corpus is sometimes treated like some trick by a Philadelphia lawyer. It is actually the foundation for all other rights. When the government throws you into a dungeon for what you say or who you pray to, it's habeas corpus that's the right that allows you to see the enforcement of the other rights. So without habeas corpus, the rest of it is just aspirational and meaningless.

The danger when you walk away from these values, these rights that define us have been proven by this president. The greatest irony of the Bush Administration is that his legacy will be to show the dangers of walking away from those rights that define us. We’re very much alone today. He can’t go to Canada without people protesting, Miss America can’t even go to Mexico without being booed. We’re viewed as a rogue nation and it is a dangerous world to live in when you’re alone. In Italy, they're prosecuting in abstentia our own agents. This doesn't make us safer.... It's very interesting that the lesson this president may leave for his successors is that whether you are inclined to walk away from those core rights or not, that is what puts us in the greatest danger.

Olbermann: The right to bear arms, to believe your religion or to not believe any religion at all, to say what you want, these rights get people fired up, no matter what side of the debate they're on. Is not habeas corpus essential to all of them? You don't have that, it doesn't matter what the second amendment says?

Turley: That's right.... all those rights are meaningless [without habeas corpus] because it's habeas corpus that allows you to get to a court who can hear your complaint. So without habeas corpus it's just basically words that have no meaning, and this president has shown the dangers of the assertion of absolute power. He has asserted the right to take an American citizen, declare them unilaterally an enemy combatant and deny them all rights. The courts have said otherwise and now Congress will say otherwise. [Any transcription errors mine.]

And In the "What Are We Fighting For?" Department....

Hat Tip to Oklahoma Lefty for raising awareness of this:

Marine faces loss of Honorable Discharge for marching in protest against the war:

(AP) A U.S. veteran who served in the Iraq war could lose his honorable discharge status after being photographed wearing fatigues at an anti-war protest.

So tell me again: what exactly are we fighting for? I thought the whole idea of fighting for your country was to fight to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States -- especially the First Amendment.

Prior Restraint

Hat Tip to the Huffington Post for this AP report:

On the advice of lawyers, the filmmakers spirited a master copy of "Sicko" outside the United States in case the government tries to seize it. Asked whether the inquiry could prevent the film opening in the U.S. as planned on June 29, [Michael] Moore said: "We haven't even discussed that possibility."

This is just sad. Who would have thought it would come to this? Michael Moore has to send a master copy of the movie Sicko because of the threat that the film will be seized by American authorities.

The legal theory that used to be followed in these cases is called "prior restraint." If you want to read more about this issue, you can find a lot of information on FindLaw.

See also generally "strict scrutiny."

Maybe this will be seen as a publicity stunt (and it might be), but to think that it even has to be considered is cause for alarm. This is America. We are supposed to be secure in our discussions of political matters. Obviously things have regressed enough in the area of civil liberties that some dissenters (such as filmmaker Michael Moore) have to consider extraordinary measures to protect information of political expression.

That should never happen in America. This isn't a potential national security case like the Pentagon Papers, so it should be obvious that an attempt to prevent the movie from opening would be a violation of Moore's constitutional rights.

The Ubiquitousness of Poverty

Today I read a book review by Nicholas Kristof of Poor People by William Vollmann. I found these paragraphs disquieting:

One measure of the ubiquity of these tradeoffs is that today, as every day, 30,000 children will die of hunger, disease, and other consequences of poverty, according to UNICEF. In many cases, those will be daughters, because parents (particularly in South Asia) don't have the resources to keep all their children alive, so they put a finger on the scales on the side of their sons. In India alone, among children aged one to five, girls are 50 percent more likely to die than boys—meaning that 130,000 Indian girls are mortally discriminated against each year.

Poverty both in the US and around the world remains a central fact of twenty-first-century life; a majority of the world lives on less than $2 a day, one common measure of who is poor. Yet we manage, pretty successfully, to ignore it and insulate ourselves even from poverty in our own country. When it pops out from behind the screen after an episode like the Watts riots of 1965 or the New Orleans hurricane of 2005, then we express horror and indignation and vow change, and finally shrug and move on. Meanwhile, the world's five hundred wealthiest people have the same income as the world's poorest 416 million.

I have been thinking about all of the wars that take place in the world today. I have often wondered how many of those wars are fought over such simple things as access to clean, potable water? Many wars, historically, are fought over access to natural resources.

It makes me wonder: how much money it would cost to provide clean, potable water to everyone in the world? How many needless deaths can we prevent just by expanding access to water? Water is life. Where you find water, you find civilization. Many of the diseases that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett want to eradicate probably start from unclean water supplies. I don't think it is enough to go after the diseases themselves. We need to go after their root causes.

How does this tie in to my post? Most of these people cannot afford individually -- even collectively -- to build water treatment plants. They cannot build wells deep enough to reach potable water and bring it to the surface. Some countries might be able to utilize water from the sea if they could afford desalinization plants.

This is the sort of problem that truly does need cooperation from everyone in the world and funding primarily from wealthy countries and individuals.

Video Report on Magazine Sales

Click the title for the report.

This relates to the post on the New Debt Bondage I did about two weeks ago.

Movie Review: Amazing Grace

Today I went and saw the new movie Amazing Grace. The movie tells the story of William Wilberforce, who, after his conversion to Christianity, became an advocate for the abolition of slavery. He also became an advocate for greater access to health care, prison reform and laws prohibiting cruelty to animals.

The movie has received pretty good reviews by critics and I concur. The movie moved along at a steady pace -- dramatizing the legislative and general political considerations involved in winning over converts to the cause. The movie goes from his young days as a member of Parliament (MP) to when abolition of slavery was finally passed by the British Parliament. The movie shows it being passed while he is still a member, but the link for him above indicates that it didn't pass until after his death. However, dramatization aside, this is a movie worth watching.





The struggle for justice continues to this day. Coinciding with the release of the movie, a group called The Amazing Change has formed to fight against modern forms of slavery: from child soldiers to forced prostitution.

To their issues I would like to add one more: debt slavery. The United Nations has recognized debt bondage (aka debt peonage in the US) as a modern form of slavery.

From Answers.com:

Peonage is a system where laborers are bound in servitude until their debts are paid in full. Those bound by such a system are known, in the US, as peons. Employers may extend credit [to] laborers to buy from employer-owned stores at inflated prices. This method is a variation of the truck system (or company store system), in which workers are exploited by agreeing to work for an insufficient amounts of goods and/or services. In these circumstances, peonage is a form of unfree labor. Such systems have existed in many places at many times throughout history.

Historical examples

* In Colonial America, some settlers used indentured service to obtain passage or an initial settlement, then continued working independently after completing their bonded labor.

* The American South - Such a system was often used in the southern United States after the American Civil War where African-American and poor white farmers, known as sharecroppers, were often extended credit to purchase seed and supplies from the owner of the land they farmed and pay the owner in a share of the crop.

* In Peru a peonage system existed from the 1500s until land reform in the 1950s. One estate in Peru that existed from the late 1500s until it ended had up to 1,700 peons employed and had a jail. Peons were expected to work a minimum of three days a week for their landlord and more if necessary to complete assigned work. Workers were paid a symbolic 2 cents per year. Workers were unable to travel outside of their assigned lands without permission and were not allowed to organize any independent community activity.

Modern views

According to Anti-Slavery International, "A person enters debt bondage when their labor is demanded as a means of repayment of a loan, or of money given in advance. Usually, people are tricked or trapped into working for no pay or very little pay (in return for such a loan), in conditions which violate their human rights. Invariably, the value of the work done by a bonded laborer is greater that the original sum of money borrowed or advanced."

At international law

Debt bondage has been defined by the United Nations as a form of "modern day slavery" and is prohibited by international law. It persists nonetheless especially in developing nations, which have few mechanisms for credit security or bankruptcy, and where fewer people hold formal title to land or possessions. According to some economists, for example Hernando de Soto, this is a major barrier to development in those countries - entrepreneurs do not dare take risks and cannot get credit because they hold no collateral and may burden families for generations to come.

Where children are forced to work because of debt bondage of the family, this is considered not only child labor, but a worst form of child labor in terms of the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 of the International Labour Organization.

Despite the UN prohibition, Anti-Slavery International estimates that "between 10 and 20 million people are being subjected to debt bondage today."

In the bolded paragraph above, doesn't that sound a lot like where we are headed with our new bankruptcy laws?

Myanmar: The Other Killing Field

Click on the link above for a link to Of Two Minds post that raises awareness of a genocide that is taking place against the Karen minority in Myanmar (aka Burma). I have to admit that I was not aware of this until Charles Smith told me about it. It definitely sounds like something about which there needs to be a raised awareness. The links he provides seem to document the crisis very well. There is even a video from the Washington Post on November 10, 2006.

According to the UN Report, urgent measures are needed to stop the human rights violations. Some reports that are cited even allege that disease in Eastern Myanmar is so rampant that it rivals anything found in the worst parts of Africa.

Human Rights Watch has an entire section on Burma.

This is another place in the world, besides Darfur, that needs the world's attention to end the human suffering that is taking place.

From the Book of Common Prayer:

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

People

I will, with God’s help.

May all people -- of all faiths -- apply this principle.

Find the Truth. Do Justice.

***Update***

Actually, as I was thinking about this post, I realized a later version from the Book of Common Prayer states "respect the dignity of all living things" rather than "every human being." I think that is even more appropriate.