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From the Author of No Land an Island and Unconscionable

Pondering Alphabetic SOLUTIONS: Peace, Politics, Public Affairs, People Relations

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Friday, December 27, 2013

CHRISTMAS SOMEDAY … when we have learned …

Someday at Christmas / Men won’t be boys
Playing with bombs / Like kids play with toys
One warm December / All hearts will see
A world where men are free

Singer-songwriter
Mary Blige
Someday at Christmas  / They’ll be no wars
When we have learned / What Christmas is for
When we have learned / What life’s really worth
They’ll be peace on Earth

Someday all our dreams will come to be
Someday in a world where men are free
Maybe not in time for you and me
But someday at Christmas time
Songwriter
of
"Someday at Christmas"

Someday at Christmas / We’ll see a land
With no hungry children/ And no empty hands
One happy morning / People will share
A world where people care

Someday at Christmas / There’ll be no more tears
Where all men are equal / And no man has fears
One shining morning / We’re on our way
From our world today

Singer-songwriter
Marlee Scott
Someday all our dreams will come to be
Someday in a world where men are free
Maybe not in time for you and me
But someday at Christmas time

Singer-songwriter
Stevie Wonder
Someday at Christmas / Men will not fail
Hate will be gone / And love will prevail
Someday a new world that we can start
With hope in every heart

Someday all our dreams will come to be
Someday in a world where men are free
Maybe not in time for you and me
But someday at Christmas time
Someday at Christmas time


Sources and notes

“Someday at Christmas” was written by Motown songwriters Ron Miller (Ronald Norman Miller) and Bryan Wells. This team wrote the song (1967) for Stevie Wonder’s Christmas album. Released during the Vietnam War, “Someday at Christmas” was “one of the first Christmas songs with a social and political message. … John Lennon’s 1971 song ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’” is another of this genre [Note by Bertrand of Paris, France], Song facts, http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=9573

MARY J. BLIGE “Someday At Christmas” Lyrics

Mary Blige sings: http://www.elyrics.net/read/m/mary-j.-blige-lyrics/someday-at-christmas-lyrics.html

Mary Jane Blige (/ˈblaɪʒ/) is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, and occasional rapper and actress. Her career began as a background singer on Uptown Records (1989). Since then, she has released 10 studio albums and made more than 150 guest appearances on other albums and soundtracks. [Wikipedia note] 

Marlee Scott sings at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzVBj3pnowA&list=PLEdfR4MTK_EqYZ1J7j-1Ztxb5f0sKzipI&index=62
Marlee Scott “Some Day at Christmas Lyrics; Artist: Marlee Scott; Album: Some Day At Christmas (Single), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sCc-gREtuQ
Marlee Scott is a Canadian (currently living in Nashville, Tennessee-USA) country music singer-songwriter.  She released her first album “Souvenir” in 2005; and four singles of which were released to country radio. Marlee Scott’s video for “I Fall in Love Too Fast” received airplay on CMT (Country  Music Television).


Stevie Wonder lyrics: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/steviewonder/somedayatchristmas.html

Stevie Wonder (Stevland Hardaway Morris, born Stevland Hardaway Judkins) is an American singer-songwriter who signed with Motown’s Tamla label at the age of eleven and continued to perform and record for Motown into the early 2010s. [Wikipedia note]
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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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Saturday, December 14, 2013

State covenants with human beings never to permit torture, slavery

Liberty observes Human Rights Week
Excerpt, minor edit by Carolyn Bennett

Liberty on Human Rights

Human rights belong to every member of the human family regardless of sex, race, nationality, socio-economic group, political opinion, sexual orientation or any other status.

Human rights are universal. They apply to all people simply on the basis of being human.

Human rights are inalienable.

They cannot be taken away simply because we do not like the person seeking to exercise their rights. They can only be limited in certain tightly defined circumstances, and some rights, such as the prohibition on torture and slavery, can never be limited.


Human rights are indivisible.

You cannot pick and choose which rights you want to honor. Many rights depend on each other to be meaningful – so, for example, the right to fair trial would be meaningless without the prohibition on discrimination, and the right to free speech must go hand in hand with the right to assemble peacefully.

Human rights are owed by the State to the people – this means public bodies must respect your human rights and the Government must ensure there are laws in place so that other people respect your human rights too. For example, the right to life requires not only that the actions of those working on behalf of the State do not lead to your death, but that laws are also in place to protect you from the actions of others that might want to do you harm.
U.S. diplomat
Eleanor Roosevelt
UDHR 1948

Human rights were first recognized internationally by the Universal Declaration on Human Rights in 1948.

This was quickly followed by the adoption two years later of the European Convention on Human Rights. In 1998 the Human Rights Act was passed making the human rights in the European Convention on Human Rights directly enforceable in the United Kingdom. It entered into force on October 2, 2000. The UK is also a party to a number of other international instruments that seek to protect and promote other human rights.

At Liberty UK
Liberty 

Founded in 1934, Liberty (also known as the National Council for Civil Liberties) is a cross-party, non-party membership organization at the heart of the movement for fundamental rights and freedoms in Britain. Liberty promotes “the values of individual human dignity, equal treatment and fairness as the foundations of a democratic society.  Through public campaigning, test case litigation, parliamentary lobbying, policy analysis and providing free advice and information, Liberty campaigns to protect basic rights and freedoms through the courts, in Parliament and in the wider community.

Sources and notes

At
Liberty website
HUMAN RIGHTS

Right to Life
Right to Respect For Private Life

Prohibition of Torture or Degrading Treatment

Protection against Slavery
Right to Liberty and Freedom
Right to a Fair Trial

Freedom of Thought, Religion and Belief

Freedom of Assembly
Free Speech
Right to Marry
No Discrimination
Protection of Property
Right to Free Elections
Right to an Education
No Punishment without Law

HUMAN RIGHTS ACT

Article 3 of the First Protocol: Right to free elections
Article 2 of the First Protocol: Right to education
Article 1 of the First Protocol: Protection of property
Article 14 No discrimination
Article 12 Right to marry
Article 11 Right to protest and freedom of association
Article 10 Freedom of expression
Article 9 Freedom of religion
Article 8 Right to a private and family life
Article 7 No punishment without law
Article 6 Right to a fair hearing
Article 4 No slavery or forced labor
Article 3 No torture, inhuman or degrading treatment
Article 2 Right to life
Article 5 Right to liberty 

What’s not to love, http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/human-rights/human-rights/the-human-rights-act/what-the-rights-mean/index.php

Liberty: http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/about/index.php

Sharmishta Chakrabarti

Sharmishta Chakrabarti is director of the British civil liberties advocacy organization Liberty (2003 - ) and Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University. Chakrabarti took her law degree at the London School of Economics and later was a barrister with UK’s Home Office.

Before her appointment as director of Liberty, Sharmishta Chakrabarti was that organization’s in-house counsel. Under her leadership, Liberty has become an outstanding “opponent of counter-terrorism legislation” and “she has campaigned against ‘excessive’ anti-terrorist measures, such as the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 (ATCSA), which followed the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shami_Chakrabarti


Shami Chakrabarti appeared this week (Friday December 13) on BBC Radio 4’s “Any Questions”, a political debate and discussion chaired by Jonathan Dimbleby,  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03kvd59
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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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Friday, December 13, 2013

Foxes head henhouse: human rights orgs’ warmongers

Amnesty, HRW, PEN, et.al
Excerpts, editing by Carolyn Bennett

Bad Seed

Suzanne Nossel is the executive director of PEN American Center (one of two, the other in LA, PEN centers located in the USA), the largest of 144 centers belonging to International PEN, the worldwide association of writers that defends those who are harassed, imprisoned and killed for their views). From January 2, 2012 to January 11, 2013, Nossel was Executive Director of Amnesty International USA.

Journalist and peace activist Chris Hedges resigned from PEN in protest of Nossel’s appointment. Hedges claimed in his resignation letter to PEN that ‘Nossel’s relentless championing of preemptive war—which under international law is illegal—as a State Department official along with her callous disregard for Israeli mistreatment of the Palestinians and her refusal as a government official to denounce the use of torture and use of extra-judicial killings, makes her utterly unfit to lead any human rights organization, especially one that has global concerns’

Before her Amnesty tenure, Suzanne Nossel was Hillary Clinton’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs (2009) and former Chief Operating Officer of Human Rights Watch; Vice President of Strategy and Operations for the Wall Street Journal (2005–2007); vice-president of U.S. Business Development for Bertelsmann (2001–2005); a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, the Center for American Progress, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Protested

A
 wide variety of prominent peace activists have doggedly protested Nossel’s positions on the government’s treatment of U.S. dissidents, her appointments to Amnesty and PEN, and her military-use-of-force positions as illegal and unjust U.S. aggression. Because of Nossel’s support for the U.S. war on Afghanistan, Code Pink formed a campaign calling on Amnesty’s board of directors to remove Nossel.

J
ournalist Chris Hedges was for many years a U.S./Middle East correspondent and Bureau Chief. He had felt “the suffering of Palestinians under Israeli occupation and the plight of people caught up in [U.S.] imperial wars in countries such as Iraq” ─ these were not abstractions, he said, in an email letter in April this year to the PEN American Center withdrawing his name from its May roster of speakers at the PEN World Voices Festival and resigning his membership from the organization. Hedges said in the letter, copied at Truthdig: “I will not participate because of your decision to select Suzanne Nossel as Executive Director of the PEN American Center.

This appointment makes a mockery of PEN as a human rights organization and belittles the values PEN purports to defend. 

Nossel’s relentless championing of preemptive war—which under international law is illegal—as a State Department official, along with her callous disregard for Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians and her refusal as a government official to denounce the use of torture and the use of extra-judicial killings, makes her utterly unfit to lead any human rights organization, especially one that has global concerns.

By appointing Nossel, PEN American Center has unwittingly highlighted its own failure to defend and speak out for dissidents.…



Sources and notes

Nossel and PEN

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzanne_Nossel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEN_American_Center

“Chris Hedges Resigns from Human Rights Organization PEN, posted April 1, 2013, http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/chris_hedges_resigns_from_human_rights_organization_pen_20130401/

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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Wednesday, December 11, 2013

U.S. presidential pageantry in SA changes nothing in shameful foreign relations practice

Predictable pattern of media/govt propaganda 
Excerpt, minor edit by Carolyn Bennett

Historian Piero Gleijeses today on Democracy Now! Author of Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991.
Cuba

Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman:

“Piero Gleijeses, what do you make of the furor right now … the significance of the handshake between President [Barack] Obama and President Raúl Castro right there at the Soweto stadium at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela?’

Author Piero Gleijeses:

“I think it is pathetic and reflects the ethics of the United States and the policy of the United States.

“…President Obama was received with applause in South Africa when he spoke, etc., because he is the first black president of the United States; but the role of the United States as a country, as a government, past governments, in the struggle for liberation of South Africa is a shameful role.

South Africa
“In general, we [the U.S.] were on the side of the apartheid government. And the role of Cuba is a splendid role in favor of the liberation.

Saudi Arabia
“This handshake—going beyond this particular issue − was long overdue. The [U.S.] embargo is absurd, is immoral.

“And we have here a president who bowed to the king … of Saudi Arabia, which is certainly no democracy.

“Even Obama should know it; so it is an absurd situation.

“The problem with Obama is that his speeches are good, his gestures are good; but there is no follow-up…; unfortunately, it is just a gesture, a long-overdue gesture that does not change a shameful U.S. policy.”

B
orn 1944 in Venice, Italy, Piero Gleijeses is a professor of United States foreign policy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University.

Unspeakable cruelty
Poverty
South Africa 
Gleijeses is reportedly the only foreign scholar to have been allowed access to the Cuba’s Castro-era government archives and is known for his scholarly studies on Cuban foreign policy under President Fidel Castro and for several works on U.S. intervention in Latin America.
  

Sources and notes

Among Piero Gleijeses’ books

Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976–1991 (2013)
The Cuban Drumbeat: Castro's Worldview (2009)
Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington and Africa, 1959–1976 (2002)
Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944–1954 (1992)
Politics and Culture in Guatemala (1988)
Tilting at Windmills: Reagan in Central America (1982)
The Dominican Crisis: The 1965 Constitutionalist Revolt and American Intervention (1978)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero_Gleijeses

By
Piero Gleijeses
Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991 by Piero Gleijeses

Publisher clip: “During the final fifteen years of the Cold War, southern Africa underwent a period of upheaval, with dramatic twists and turns in relations between the superpowers.

“Americans, Cubans, Soviets, and Africans fought over the future of Angola, where tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers were stationed, and over the decolonization of Namibia, Africa’s last colony. Beyond lay the great prize: South Africa.

“Piero Gleijeses uses archival sources, particularly from the United States, South Africa, and the closed Cuban archives, to provide an unprecedented international history of this important theater of the late Cold War.

“These sources all point to one conclusion:

…by humiliating the United States and defying the Soviet Union, Fidel Castro changed the course of history in southern Africa.

It was Cuba’s victory in Angola in 1988 that forced Pretoria to set Namibia free and helped break the back of apartheid South Africa. In the words of Nelson Mandela, the Cubans ‘destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor . . . [and] inspired the fighting masses of South Africa.’ http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=3458

“The Secret History of How Cuba Helped End Apartheid in South Africa,” December 11, 2013,
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/12/11/the_secret_history_of_how_cuba

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Respect, Protect: HUMAN RIGHTS as active verbs for all, forever

Today is 
Human Rights Day
Editing by Carolyn Bennett

“The very essence of human rights is the equal dignity for everyone,” says United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Christof Heyns.

T
he future of human rights lies in our hands. We must all act when human rights are violated. States as well as individuals must take responsibility for the realization and effective protection of human rights.

Iraq
Refugee CampsForced Homelessness
In marking the 20th year since a Vienna Declaration laid the ground for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Commissioner Navi Pillay lays out the state of human rights. “Women,” she says, “continue to suffer discrimination, violence and persecution; as do ethnic, racial and religious minorities and migrants”; and people of varieties of sexual orientations. “This shows how far we still have to go,” she says.

Internal conflicts continue to produce horrendous and widespread human rights abuses. Peaceful protests by people exercising, and calling for, their legitimate rights are being ruthlessly crushed by authorities virtually on a daily basis.
Syrian
Internal, external
Struggle

Changing and shifting populations  fueled by rising poverty, refugee movements and volatile global economics  make countering ‘fear of the other’ a priority.

  Human rights defenders who enter Tweets or Facebook posts can land in jail.


Armed drones are being deployed without due legal process for the remote targeting of individuals.
Killer USA drones
against world 

So-called ‘Killer robots’ – autonomous weapons systems that can select and hit a target without human intervention – are no longer science fiction, but a reality.  Their likely future deployment poses deeply troubling ethical and legal questions.

“Continued vigilance is needed to ensure that new technologies advance rather than destroy human rights. No matter the scale of these changes, existing international human rights law and international humanitarian law governing the conduct of armed conflict remain applicable.”
Homeless in Britain

INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW

I
nternational human rights law lays down obligations which States are bound to respect. By becoming parties to international treaties, States assume obligations and duties under international law to respect, to protect and to fulfill human rights. 
Poverty
Africa
Homeless in USA
The obligation to respect means that States must refrain from interfering with or curtailing the enjoyment of human rights

The obligation to protect requires States to protect individuals and groups against human rights abuses. The obligation to fulfill means that States must take positive action to facilitate the enjoyment of basic human rights
Through ratification of international human rights treaties, Governments undertake to put into place domestic measures and legislation compatible with their treaty obligations and duties. Where domestic legal proceedings fail to address human rights abuses, mechanisms and procedures for individual complaints or communications are available at the regional and international levels to help ensure that international human rights standards are indeed respected, implemented, and enforced at the local level.

HUMAN RIGHTS DAY

H
uman Rights Day is observed annually on this 10th day of December and commemorates the United Nations General Assembly’s adoption in 1948 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Today the UDHR turns 65.

When the General Assembly adopted the Declaration, with 48 states in favor and eight abstentions, it was proclaimed as a ‘common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations,’ toward which individuals and societies should ‘strive by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance.’

Although the Declaration with its broad range of political, civil, social, cultural and economic rights is not a binding document, it inspired more than 60 human rights instruments which together constitute an international standard of human rights.
Drafted in
aftermath of
World War II

Today the general consent of all United Nations Member States on the basic Human Rights laid down in the Declaration makes it even stronger and emphasizes the relevance of Human Rights in our daily lives. [UN High Commissioner for Human Rights]

UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS:Preamble

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of [hu]mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if [people are] not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

U.S. diplomat and UDHR
Eleanor Roosevelt
1948
Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in cooperation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction [End Preamble]

E
nding her Human Rights Day remarks, Commissioner Pillay says (and I agree wholeheartedly)

We can – and we must – do better [they we are doing]. The vision and goals formulated 20 years ago in Vienna are still valid. They are still worth fighting for now – over the next 20 years – and beyond.


Sources and notes

“A 20-20 Human Rights Vision Statement by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay for Human Rights Day, 10 December 2013, Media centre, Check the Universal Human Rights Index: http://uhri.ohchr.org/en
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/media.aspx?IsMediaPage=true

The High Commissioner for Human Rights, as the main United Nations rights official, and her Office play a major role in coordinating efforts for the yearly observation of Human Rights Day.

Human Rights Day is observed by the international community every year on 10 December. It commemorates the day in 1948 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The formal inception of Human Rights Day dates from 1950, after the Assembly passed resolution 423 (V) inviting all States and interested organizations to adopt 10 December of each year as Human Rights Day. http://www.ohchr.org/EN/AboutUs/Pages/HumanRightsDay.aspx

International Human Rights Law: The international human rights movement was strengthened when the United Nations General Assembly adopted of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) on 10 December 1948, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/InternationalLaw.aspx

At the 50th year mark, published by the United Nations Department of Public Information
DPI/1937/A--December 1997; Human Rights Page UN Home Page: Prepared for posting by the Information Technology Section (ITS) of the Department of Public Information, © United Nations 1997, http://www.un.org/rights/50/carta.htm

UDHR TEXT

Together with its Preamble, 30 Articles comprise the Universal Declaration of Human Rights http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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Friday, December 6, 2013

WHITEWASHED: SA’s social, economic disaster: Mandela stewardship

Epidemic diseases: rabid rich-poor chasm, AIDS: “Grotesque levels of exploitation and poverty afflict most of the population” [O'Connor]
Excerpt, minor edit, end comment by
Carolyn Bennett

“Mandela’s death,” Patrick O’Connor observes today in the World Socialist Web Site news, “has been accompanied by an outpouring of tributes from world leaders, each seeking to outdo the other in presenting the most mawkish (over-sentimental, sappy, mushy, foolish) depictions of Mandela as a secular saint.”

I
 too sensed a multi-layered fakery and peddling of ignorance. I don’t need to re-quote the rhetoric here but to continue with O’Connor’s outline of Mandela’s deeds and the unmentioned South African reality.

Severe Poverty
South Africa today
“Underlying the cynical rhetoric of the current and former war criminals occupying the White House, and that of their allied heads of government around the world, is genuine gratitude for the invaluable service Mandela rendered to the South African ruling elite and world imperialism,” O’Connor writes.

“Mandela utilized his indubitable political skills and personal courage to stave off the threat of a social revolution in South Africa, dismantling the Apartheid regime while defending capitalism and protecting the property and wealth of the country’s white rulers and of transnational corporate investors. 

“…Mandela courted the South African ultra-wealthy. The Guardian’s obituary noted his ‘attachment to the glamour of the very rich.’ The newspaper explained:

Money was dazzling. Hence, once freed, he [Mandela] holidayed at the Irish businessman Sir Tony O’Reilly’s Caribbean island and gave the go-ahead for his takeover of South Africa’s biggest newspaper group, in anticipation of his ‘magic money’ providing black empowerment in the media.

He allowed the casino king, Sol Kerzner, to host the wedding of his daughter Zinzi.

He borrowed rich men’s houses and flew around South Africa in their aircraft.

“The social and economic disaster now evident in South Africa stands as an indictment of Mandela’s role in preserving capitalist rule and of his perspective of promoting a ‘non-European bourgeoisie.’

“Nearly 20 years after the end of Apartheid, South Africa remains one of the most unequal societies in the world. Grotesque levels of exploitation and poverty afflict most of the population, with just over 50 percent living below the official poverty line.

“Officially, unemployment stands at 25 percent of the workforce, but the real figure is far higher.

“South Africa has the largest population infected with HIV/AIDS in the world, with up to 6.4 million people, or 12 percent of total population, including 450,000 children affected. Official data shows that only 28 percent of those infected are receiving treatment. Life expectancy was just 58 years in 2011, among the lowest in the world.

“At the other end of society, a tiny minority that now includes a layer of ANC, ex-Stalinist, and trade union figures have amassed enormous personal wealth. The country now has the most U.S. dollar billionaires of any African state, with 14 individuals now in this category, up from two a decade earlier.
Severe Poverty
South Africa today

“Mandela has died right at the point where social and political tensions in South Africa have reached a boiling point.”

T
his is another view of the esteemed leader. 

Observe for yourself. 

Read news and information reports and opinion beyond western and westernized concentrated corporate news. 

Believe what you like.

  
Sources and notes

“Former South African President Nelson Mandela dies” by Patrick O’Connor, December 6, 2013, http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/12/06/mand-d06.html

Long standing leader of the African National Congress (ANC) and the first president of post-Apartheid South Africa, Nelson Mandela, after suffering a protracted respiratory illness, has died (December 5) in Johannesburg. He was 95 years old. 

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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Monday, December 2, 2013

Left worth its name opposes ruling class, capitalism


Ben Barker’s “Imagine a Left”
Excerpt, editing by 
Carolyn Bennett

“To ignore politics or revile it,” Barker begins, “is to do nothing more than sit on the sidelines as society unfolds.” But whether or not we participate, decisions will be made; and we have two choices:

We can concede power over our lives to the powerful; or

We can take that power back for our communities and landmasses.

Politics

“Politics is not the political system.”


From the most global to the most intimate, the real meaning of the political is that which shapes the world we live in; that which determines who has power and who doesn’t, who has wealth and who doesn’t, who eats and who doesn’t ─ this is the real meaning of the political.

From the Latin politicus, the term means “of, for, or relating to the citizen” [Merriam Webster defines it “the total complex of relations between people living in society”]. That means therefore that politics concerns all of us; it is and should be important to all of us.
 
The Left

Nonexistent in the United States of America, the Left is also more than what is seen and heard in the noise of contemporary leanings, thought and action. In its original and most honest meaning, Barker points out, “The Left is an opposition to the ruling class.

Not a loyalty to it. Not an indifference to it. Not even a hatred of it ─ [the Left] is an opposition. “And in our case, he says, “it means an opposition to capitalism. This is why there is no Left in America. This is why we so desperately need one.”

Present void

In the absence of any meaningful political opposition to join, potential activists diverge into the benign, the fringe, the bizarre; each heading in a unique direction but never one that leads to the society’s transformation.

Some remain at Center, wanting to take from the established Left and the established Right to find bipartisan solutions; “but bipartisanism is itself the problem: Democrats and Republicans are far more alike than different. The only real political party in the United States is the capitalist party” and those conspiring against us are not “‘the new world order’” but “multi-national corporations.”

Fill void

“The task before us, Barker says, “is to rebuild a home for [revolutionary] Leftists.” Make the Left the common-sense avenue for resistance. Be a reminder that the political is important; be a reminder that the world can be changed, that there is an organized opposition capable of making that happen.

Instead of being one end of a spectrum, one pillar of the status quo, what if the Left “could sink the spectrum, topple the pillars?

What if the real meaning of the Left is a culture of resistance: a fiery populist radicalism potent enough to shake the power elite with even the smallest dose?

“Our energy is diffuse but vast among pools of the disenfranchised and it is up to us to rescue our opposition from the status quo of the ruling class, where it became (in words of Chris Hedges) ‘fearful, timid, and ineffectual [creating] an ideological vacuum on the left and ceding the language of rebellion to the far right.’”

It is impossible to say exactly what an actual Left would look like in contemporary America and the project toward transformation won’t be easy. “We won’t always agree but our debates could be held behind the shared banner: our unwavering Leftist vision of opposition to the ruling class. There’s a chance it won’t work but right now that ruling class is driving [the] world to ruin.” Establishing the Left that is capable of arresting this erosion once and for all is a chance worth taking, Barker concludes.
 
A Left worth the name is less a sold-out party line and more a grassroots revolutionary force of the kind we’ve not seen for far too long.

No matter what we want to call that force, now is the time to build it again


Sources and notes

“Beautiful Justice: Imagine a Left” by Ben Barker, Deep Green Resistance Wisconsin, December 1, 2013, DGR News Services, http://dgrnewsservice.org/2013/12/01/beautiful-justice-imagine-a-left/


Ben Barker is a writer and community organizer from West Bend, Wisconsin, and a member of Deep Green Resistance, writing a monthly column “Beautiful Justice.” Barker is also writing a book “about toxic qualities of radical subcultures and the need to build a vibrant culture of resistance.” 

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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