Christa B.

Sa’diyya Shaikh, “Transforming Feminisms: Islam, Women, and Gender Justice“  (via hkubra)

For the third year since the law was enacted, President Obama’s administration offered a waiver to almost all countries that would have been sanctioned in accordance with the Child Soldiers Prevention Act. The administration offered full waivers to Yemen, Libya, and South Sudan, and a partial waiver to the DR Congo. This Foreign Policy blog offers a great take on it. 

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child criticized Obama this month for offering the waivers last October, and suggested the law be amended to remove the option of a presidential waiver. 

In his speech announcing an executive order to fight human trafficking, a week before granting these waivers, President Obama said: 

“When a little boy is kidnapped, turned into a child soldier, forced to kill or be killed — that’s slavery. It is barbaric, and it is evil, and it has no place in a civilized world. Now, as a nation, we’ve long rejected such cruelty.”

If only we really had. 

Vidal Vega, leader of a landless movement in Paraguay, was shot and killed outside his home Sunday. He was also the key witness in a conflict between landless activists and police that left 17 dead. More information here. 

I feel angry that he joins the ranks of so many activists killed for standing up to those in power. I feel grateful that so many activists, like Vega, choose to stand up anyway, knowing it puts their lives in danger. I dream of a world where no one has to make such a choice. 

Do you remember Tim DeChristopher? When the government tried to auction off a ton of land just before a law protecting that land went into effect, he thwarted them by illegally placing a winning bid he had no way of paying. By the time they sorted it out, the law was in effect and they couldn’t re-do the auction; the land was saved. He was fined $10,000 and sentenced to two years in prison, of which he’s now served  a year and a half. 

Well, he’s recently been transferred to a halfway house, where he has to hold down a job. A local Unitarian church offered him a position in its social justice ministry, working to make the world a better place, basically. Here’s the “but”: according to his lawyer, Patrick Shea, “The Bureau of Prisons official who interviewed Tim indicated he would not be allowed to work at the Unitarian church because it involved social justice and that was what part of what his crime was.” 

Yep, that’s right. The government said he’s forbidden from working against racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry. Instead, he’ll work in a bookstore. Don’t get me wrong; I love books… but somehow that just doesn’t seem right. 

Tang Hui, as quoted in this NPR piece about the role of Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, in spreading news and fighting for justice—and why and to what extent the national government tolerates it. Tang Hui was sentenced to 18 months in a prison camp, but after her lawyer posted her story on Weibo, an overwhelming public response earned her freedom. 

Gaza Youth’s Manifesto for Change, written over two years ago, as quoted in the Guardian on January 1, 2011

Egyptian activists repaint a mural from the revolution, after government workers arrived at night to whitewash it. 

“So long as we can’t talk freely in this country, we still need walls to paint and songs to write.”  —Amr, an 18-year old business student 

“Where are the blessed peacemakers?”, Elizabeth Drescher, Religion Dispatches

Hawa Aden Mohamed in “Prize for Somali woman whose life work focuses on empowering women”, The Guardian

“Who’s that sharp looking Gene?”, Frida Berrigan, Waging Nonviolence

An article examining the possible implications of profiling nonviolent theorist Gene Sharp alongside rapper Jay-Z in New York Times Style magazine.

via UNRIC.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

“Syrian Children Offer Glimpse of a Future of Reprisals”, New York Times

A disturbing, but not entirely unsurprising, report on Syrian refugee children expressing their desire for revenge against Alawites (a religious sect of whom President Bashar Assad is a member, and closely tied to his regime). 

Should we, as people interested in peace, be judging victims of violence for holding these views?

Gold miners have massacred up to 80 people in Venezuela, in an attack on the isolated Yanomami tribe on whose land they illegally mine. So far only three survivors have been found; they were out hunting when the miners set fire to the communal house. 

Speaking to Survival today, Eliseo, a Yanomami man from the region who has spoken to the Indians who discovered the massacre’s aftermath, said, ‘They reported seeing charred bodies and bones, and the burnt remains of the shabono (communal house).’

In this image, survivors of a 1993 gold miner attack on Yanomami stand holding the ashes of the 16 dead from that attack. More info at Survival International. 

The Caravan for Peace, organized by Mexican poet Javier Sicilia, is currently making its way through the US. This article from El Paso Inc highlights the heartbreaking stories of strength and loss from people whose loved ones have been victims of the US/Mexican drug war. 

The caravan is about halfway through its route, with upcoming stops in New Orleans, Jackson, Montgomery, Atlanta, Fort Benning, Louisville, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Baltimore, and DC. You’d better believe I’m going to go hear what they have to say! 

Bartolomeo Vanzetti

I was reminded of this by the quotes I posted from the Pussy Riot band members. Not every loss is a failure. 

(source)

This trial is highly typical and speaks volumes. The current government will have occasion to feel shame and embarrassment because of it for a long time to come. At each stage it has embodied a travesty of justice. As it turned out, our performance, at first a small and somewhat absurd act, snowballed into an enormous catastrophe. This would obviously not happen in a healthy society. Russia, as a state, has long resembled an  organism sick to the core. And the sickness explodes out into the open when you rub up against its inflamed abscesses. At first and for a long time this sickness gets hushed up in public, but eventually it always finds resolution through dialogue. And look—this is the kind of dialogue that our government is capable of. This trial is not only a malignant and grotesque mask, it is the “face” of the government’s dialogue with the people of our country. To prompt discussion about a problem on the societal level, you often need the right conditions—an impetus.

And it is interesting that our situation was depersonalized from the start. This is because when we talk about Putin, we have in mind first and foremost not Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin but Putin the system that he himself created—the power vertical, where all control is carried out effectively by one person. And that power vertical is uninterested, completely uninterested, in the opinion of the masses. And what worries me most of all is that the opinion of the younger generations is not taken into consideration. We believe that the ineffectiveness of this administration is evident in practically everything.

And right here, in this closing statement, I would like to describe my firsthand experience of running afoul of this system. Our schooling, which is where the personality begins to form in a social context, effectively ignores any particularities of the individual. There is no “individual approach,” no study of culture, of philosophy, of basic knowledge about civic society. Officially, these subjects do exist, but they are still taught according to the Soviet model. And as a result, we see the marginalization of contemporary art in the public consciousness, a lack of motivation for philosophical thought, and gender stereotyping. The concept of the human being as a citizen gets swept away into a distant corner. 

Today’s educational institutions teach people, from childhood, to live as automatons. Not to pose the crucial questions consistent with their age. They inculcate cruelty and intolerance of nonconformity. Beginning in childhood, we forget our freedom. 

I have personal experience with psychiatric clinics for minors. And I can say with conviction that any teenager who shows any signs of active nonconformity can end up in such a place. A certain percentage of the kids there are from orphanages.

In our country, it’s considered entirely normal to commit a child who has tried to escape from an orphanage to a psychiatric clinic. And they treat them using extremely powerful sedatives like Aminazin, which was also used to subdue Soviet dissidents in the ’70s.

This is especially traumatizing given the overall punitive tendency and the absence of any real psychological assistance. All interactions are based on the exploitation of the children’s feelings of fear and forced submission. And as a result, their own cruelty increases many times over. Many children there are illiterate, but no one makes any effort to battle this—to the contrary, every last drop of motivation for personal development is discouraged. The individual closes off entirely and loses faith in the world.

I would like to note that this method of personal development clearly impedes the awakening of both inner and religious freedoms, unfortunately, on a mass scale. The consequence of the process I have just described is ontological humility, existential humility, socialization. To me, this transition, or rupture, is noteworthy in that, if approached from the point of view of Christian culture, we see that meanings and symbols are being replaced by those that are diametrically opposed to them. Thus one of the most important Christian concepts, Humility, is now commonly understood not as a path towards the perception, fortification, and ultimate liberation of Man, but on the contrary as an instrument for his enslavement. To quote [Russian philosopher] Nikolai Berdyaev, one could say that “the ontology of humility is the ontology of the slaves of God, and not the sons of God.” When I was involved with organizing the ecological movement, I became fundamentally convinced of the priority of inner freedom as the foundation for taking action. As well as the importance, the direct importance, of taking action as such.

To this day I find it astonishing that, in our country, we need the support of several thousands of individuals in order to put an end to the despotism of one or a handful of bureaucrats. I would like to note that our trial stands as a very eloquent confirmation of the fact that we need the support of thousands of individuals from all over the world in order to prove the obvious: that the three of us are not guilty. We are not guilty; the whole world says so. The whole world says it at concerts, the whole world says it on the internet, the whole world says it in the press. They say it in Parliament. The Prime Minister of England greets our President not with words about the Olympics, but with the question, “Why are three innocent women sitting in prison?” It’s shameful.

But I find it even more astonishing that people don’t believe that they can have any influence on the regime. During the pickets and demonstrations [of the winter and spring], back when I was collecting signatures and organizing petitions, many people would ask me—and ask me with sincere bewilderment—why in the world they should care about, what business could they possibly have, with that little patch of forest in the Krasnodar region–even though it is perhaps unique in Russia, perhaps primeval? Why should they care if the wife of our Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev wants to build an official residence there and destroy the only juniper preserve in Russia? These people … this is yet another confirmation that people in our country have lost the sense that this country belongs to us, its citizens. They no longer have a sense of themselves as citizens. They have a sense of themselves simply as the automated masses. They don’t feel that the forest belongs to them, even the forest located right next to their houses. I doubt they even feel a sense of ownership over their own houses. Because if someone were to drive up to their porch with a bulldozer and tell them that they need to evacuate, that, “Excuse us, we’re going raze your house to make room for a bureaucrat’s residence,” these people would obediently collect their belongings, collect their bags, and go out on the street. And then stay there precisely until the regime tells them what they should do next. They are completely shapeless, it is very sad. Having spent almost half a year in jail, I have come to understand that prison is just Russia in miniature.

One could also begin with the system of governance. This is that very same power vertical, in which every decision takes place solely through the direct intervention of the man in charge. There is absolutely no horizontal delegation of duties, which would make everyone’s lives noticeably easier. And there is a lack of individual initiative. Denunciation thrives along with mutual suspicion. In jail, as in our country as a whole, everything is designed to strip man of his individuality, to identify him only with his function, whether that function is that of a worker or a prisoner. The strict framework of the daily schedule in prison (you get used to it quickly) resembles the framework of daily life that everyone is born into. 

In this framework, people begin to place high value on meaningless trifles. In prison these trifles are things like a tablecloth or plastic dishes that can only be procured with the personal permission of the head warden. Outside prison, accordingly, you have social status, which people also value a great deal. This has always been surprising to me. Another element [of this process] is becoming aware of this government functioning as a performance, a play. That in reality turns into chaos. The surface-level organization of the regime reveals the disorganization and inefficiency of most of its activities. And it’s obvious that this doesn’t lead to any real governance. On the contrary, people start to feel an ever-stronger sense of being lost—including in time and space. In jail and all over the country, people don’t know where to turn with this or that question. That’s why they turn to the boss of the jail. And outside the prison, correspondingly, they go to Putin, the top boss.

…And what really irritates me is how the prosecution uses the words “so-called” in reference to contemporary art.

I would like to point out that very similar methods were used during the trial of the poet [Joseph] Brodsky. His poems were defined as “so-called” poems; the witnesses for the prosecution hadn’t actually read them—just as a number of the witnesses in our case didn’t see the performance itself and only watched the clip online. Our apologies, it seems, are also being defined by the collective prosecuting body as “so-called” apologies. Even though this is offensive. And I am overwhelmed with moral injury and psychological trauma. Because our apologies were sincere. I am sorry that so many words have been uttered and you all still haven’t understood this. Or it is calculated deviousness when you talk about our apologies as insincere. I don’t know what you still need to hear from us. But for me this trial is a “so-called” trial. And I am not afraid of you. I am not afraid of falsehood and fictitiousness, of sloppily disguised deception, in the verdict of the so-called court.

Because all you can deprive me of is “so-called” freedom. This is the only kind that exists in Russia. But nobody can take away my inner freedom. It lives in the word, it will go on living thanks to openness [glasnost], when this will be read and heard by thousands of people. This freedom goes on living with every person who is not indifferent, who hears us in this country. With everyone who found shards of the trial in themselves, like in previous times they found them in Franz Kafka and Guy Debord. I believe that I have honesty and openness, I thirst for the truth; and these things will make all of us just a little bit more free. We will see this yet.

The first Pride parade in Uganda, where the punishment for being gay is death. This is courage. 

Everyday people explaining why they’ll put their bodies on the line (literally) to stop to Keystone XL Pipeline’s path through Texas. Confession: Mary Francis from Norman Oklahoma made me cry.

More here. 

Yekaterina Samutsevich of Pussy Riot, in her closing statement at the trial that ultimately convicted her and her bandmates to two years in prison for hooliganism. 

“Mirrors”, Justin Timberlake

Its ridiculous how hard it is not to love Justin Timberlake. This video made me tear up thinking about my own grandparents.

“I Will Wait For You”, Mumford and Sons at the Grammys 2013

The only thing I care to read/gawk at the Grammys are these artists.

Something doesn’t quite add up about this image. 

Oh HELLZ YES!

“Buy Yourself an Easter Egg for Christmas”, Sesame Street

“Sleigh Ride”, Fozzie Bear

“All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth”, Elmo and Michael Buble

“Elmo likes wasabi. That’s why he doesn’t have any eye lids.”

A Muppet Family Christmas with the Sesame Street Gang

“The Christmas Wish”, John Denver and Kermit the Frog

“Christmas Scat”, Kermit and Robin from A Muppet Christmas Carol

“It Feels Like Christmas” from A Muppet Christmas Carol

“12 Days of Christmas”, John Denver and the Muppets

“I Want A Snuffalopagus [sp?] for Christmas”, Anne Hathaway and Big Bird

“Baby It’s Cold Outside”, Miss Piggy

Isn’t it obvious that Miss Piggy would be the sexual predator in that song?

“Thankful Heart”, Michael Caine and the Muppets from A Muppet Christmas Carol

“Joy to the World”, The Muppets

Muppet Christmas Carol gag reel

“All I Need Is Love”, Cee-Lo Green and the Muppets

“Ringing of the Bells”, The Muppets

There is almost nothing on this Earth that makes me happier on Christmas than the Muppets singing.

Merry Christmas internets!