New York Times Editorial, A Test for President Karzai: “Whom Mr. Karzai chooses for his new cabinet will be the first indicator, after his fraud-marred election, of whether he is truly determined to rein in epidemic levels of corruption and incompetence. His speech on Tuesday to an anti-corruption conference in Kabul suggested, ominously, that he still does not get it.”  Full Article

Trudy Rubin interviews General McChrystal as published in the Winnepeg Free Press:
But how can we rely on an Afghan government riddled with corruption?
McChrystal’s answer, which is key to the U.S. strategy: “Absolutely we need a credible partner. But we can leverage the good people at the local level simultaneously to working with the centre.” That means working with effective cabinet ministers, such as those at defence, interior, rural development and agriculture, and bolstering their staff in Kabul and at provincial and district level. It also means funnelling more aid through competent provincial governors and district heads, and pressing President Hamid Karzai to increase their numbers. Full Article

Robert Maier of Kabul Press: “Thirty minutes ago, I instructed Gen. McChrystal to arrest President Hamid Karzai…”  The speech Obama should give… Full Article

Matthew Green of the Financial Times London writes: “Last month, Mr Brown describing Afghanistan as a “byword” for corruption, and said the Afghan leader must do more to tackle graft after he was declared the winner of elections tainted by huge fraud.”  Green writes of Brown’s trip to Afghanistan to try to mend relations with Hamid Karzai while not backing down from demands of stronger efforts from the Afghan government.  Full Story

A bio of Mr. Karzai from the Afghan government website: A Brief Biography of President Hamid Karzai

Leave A Comment | No Comments

Democracy? That’s a laugh

While watching “The Young Victoria” the other day, a film about England’s 19th century queen, the thought struck me: Perhaps these odes to feudal aristocracies — films like “Marie Antoinette” or “The Duchess” — are so popular because they seem so familiar; just replace the lords and ladies with CEOs and trophy wives, the moated castles with gated communities, and the outrageous opulence with, well outrageous opulence.  Full Article

Regina Weinreich at Huffington Post on Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story:
“Whatever you may think of Michael Moore and his movies, one great reason to see this one is the footage he uncovered in an archive in South Carolina of President Roosevelt’s Second Bill of Rights which ensures the right of individuals to have a job, a fair wage, and health care.”  Full Article

Matt Diehl says that Capitalism: A Love Story is Michael Moore’s newest piece of trash.

From the New York Times, Manohla Dargis: “[Moore]’s on far firmer ethical ground when he doesn’t use other human beings as props. Some of the more effective scenes in “Capitalism” involve his straightforward, journalistic interviews with people who have been abused by the greed of their employers.” Full Article

Xan Brooks of The Guardian (UK):  “Michael Moore’s latest documentary drew tumultuous applause at the Venice film festival today, suggesting that the veteran tub-thumper has lost none of his power to whip up a response. If the film finally lacks the clean, hard punch provided by the record-breaking Fahrenheit 9/11, that can only be because the crime scene is so vast and the culprits so numerous.”  Full Article

Leave A Comment | No Comments

Power struggle behind revival of Maoism
By Willy Lam
As the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership tries to convince United States President Barack Obama and other world leaders that China is eagerly integrating itself with the global marketplace, the ultra-conservative norms and worldview of Chairman Mao Zedong are making a big comeback in public life.

---

Lam writes of how the rehabilitation of Mao speaks to the competition between two major Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “cliques” – the Gang of Princelings and the Communist Youth League (CYL) Faction.  The Gang of Princelings are so called because they are the descendents of party elders.  The Princelings favor the prominence of Mao.  Lam says that “the contributions of Mao were played up in this year’s blockbuster movie Lofty Ambitions of Founding a Republic, which was specially commissioned by party authorities.

The Telegraph published an article on the movie, Epic film The Founding of a Republic marks 60 years of Chinese Communism, noting appearances in the film by Jackie Chan and Jet Li.

A Time article on the movie titled, Reshooting History in a New China Film, accuses the movie of doing just that stating, “Because the CCP now gains its legitimacy almost solely from the material wealth it has created and is communist only in name, it has to recast the past to justify the present.”

France 24 also writes of the rehabilitation of Mao in its article, Mao makes a comeback amid economic crisis.

Leave A Comment | No Comments

Nepali News: “Housing provision is so central to social and economic development that policymakers need to act on this rather than continue to treat the activity as a mere social good, the author of a new book on the subject said.”

“Building prosperity: housing and economic development” a book by Dr Anna Tibaijuka covers the subject of housing as it relates to economic development.  Tibaijuka is head of UN-HABITAT, an organization dedicated to “promoting sustainable urban development and adequate shelter for all.”

A blog post at Zunia.org has short commentary on the book.

Dr. Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka is an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT).   Tibaijuka is the first African woman to hold this post.

African Success has a biography of Tibaijuka.

Leave A Comment | No Comments

Rights Council Vents Over Magnitsky The advisory group, created under then-President Vladimir Putin, has enjoyed a more prominent role in Medvedev’s Kremlin, but it is less critical of the government than independent rights groups.

“One of the presentations mentioned that the acquittal rate in Russian courts is less than 1 percent. The president seemed surprised and promised to look into it,” Oreshkin said.

---

Read more about Russia’s Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights Council headed by Ella Pamfilova, a Presidential candidate in 2000.

---

Read coverage of the story of the prison death of Sergei Magnitsky in a BBC article

He (Bill Browder) told the BBC that his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, had in effect been “held hostage and they killed their hostage.”

Leave A Comment | No Comments

International / Africa

---

The Ogiek are a hunter-gatherer tribe who live in parts of Kenya and Tanzania.  The Ogiek are forest dwellers who face the possibility of being driven from their homes.  The Kenyan governments says that it wants to redevelop the forest, but many believe that they wish to continue logging efforts in the region known as Mau Forest replacing the harvested trees with those the Ogiek consider to be of lesser quality.  Survival International hosts a page with more information about the Ogiek along with a link to write to the Kenyan government in order to urge them to not dislocate this long-settled tribe.

Leave A Comment | No Comments

Our goal is to inform our readers of civil rights issues all over the world.  We will interview people in our part of the world and welcome people who wish to interview others in their part of the world.

We wish to encourage discussion by posting articles and issues that address key civil rights issues.

We will also post stories that cover human rights issues and issues in the field of anthropology.

We’re still working out the design kinks, but please feel free to join up and start chatting.  You can find us here as well as own Facebook and Twitter.

I really hope that we will be talking.

Leave A Comment | No Comments