Monthly Archives: March 2017

President Donald Trump is shaping up as a disaster for human rights. From his immigration ban to his support for torture, he has jettisoned what has long been, in theory if not always in practice, a bipartisan American commitment: the promotion of democratic values and human rights abroad.

He has lavished praise on autocrats and expressed disdain for international institutions. He described Egyptian strongman Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as a "fantastic guy" and brushed off reports of repression by the likes of Russia's Vladimir Putin, Syria's Bashar Assad, and Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

As Trump put it in his bitter inauguration address, "It is the right of all nations to put their own interests first. We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone." Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, has written that Trump's election has brought the world to "the verge of darkness" and threatens to "reverse the accomplishments of the modern human rights movement."

This threat is not new. The rise of Trump has only underlined the existential challenges already facing the global rights project. Over the past decade the international order has seen a structural shift in the direction of assertive new powers, including Xi Jinping's China and Putin's Russia, that have openly challenged rights norms while crushing dissent in contested territories like Chechnya and Tibet. These rising powers have clamped down on dissent at home

and given cover to rights-abusing governments from Manila to Damascus. Dictators facing Western criticism can now turn to the likes of China for political backing and no-strings financial and diplomatic support.

This trend has been strengthened by the Western nationalist-populist revolt that has targeted human rights institutions and the global economic system in which they are embedded. With populism sweeping the world and new super-powers in the ascendant, post-Westphalian visions of a shared global order are giving way to an era of resurgent sovereignty. Globalization and internationalism are giving way to a post-human rights world.

This amounts to an existential challenge to the global human rights norms that have proliferated since the end of World War II. In that time, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, has been supplemented by treaties and conventions

guaranteeing civil and political rights, social and economic rights, and the rights of refugees, women, and children. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War served to further entrench human rights within the international system.

Despite the world's failure to prevent mass slaughter in places like Rwanda and Bosnia, the 1990s would see the emergence of a global human rights imperium: a cross-border, trans-national realm anchored in global bodies like the UN and the European Union and supervised by international nongovernmental organizations and a new class of professional activists and international legal experts.

The professionalization of human rights was paralleled by the advance of international criminal justice. The decade saw the creation of ad hoc tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia and the signing in 1998 of the Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court, an achievement that then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan hailed as a "giant step forward in the march towards universal human rights and the rule of law." On paper, citizens in most countries now enjoy around 400 distinct rights.

This expansion was underpinned by an unprecedented period of growth and economic integration in which national borders appeared to disappear. Like the economic system in which it was embedded, the global human rights project attained a sheen of inevitability; it became, alongside democratic politics and free market capitalism, part of the triumphant neoliberal package that Francis Fukuyama identified in 1989 as "the end point of mankind's ideological evolution."

In 2013 one of America's foremost experts on international law, Peter J. Spiro, predicted that legal advances and economic globalization had brought on "sovereigntism's twilight." Fatou Bensouda, chief prosecutor of the ICC, has argued similarly that the creation of the court inaugurated a new era in which rulers would now be held accountable for serious abuses committed against their own people. (So far, no sitting government leader has.)

But in 2017, at a time of increasing instability in which the promised fruits of globalization have failed for many to materialize, these old certainties have collapsed. In the current "age of anger," as Pankaj Mishra has termed it, human rights have become both a direct target of surging right-wing populism and the collateral damage of its broader attack on globalization, international institutions, and "unaccountable" global elites.

Governments routinely ignore their obligations under global human rights treaties with little fear of meaningful sanction. For six years, grave atrocities in Syria have gone unanswered despite the legal innovations of the "responsibility to protect" doctrine. Meanwhile, many European governments are reluctant to honor their legal obligations to offer asylum to the hundreds of thousands of people fleeing its brutal civil war.

International rights treaties have always represented an aspirational baseline to which many nations have fallen short. But the human rights age was one in which the world seemed to be trending in the direction of more adherence, rather than less. It was a time in which human rights advocates and supportive leaders spoke confidently of standing on the right side of history and even autocrats were forced to pay lip service to the idea of rights.

It is no longer obvious that history has any such grand design. According to the latest Freedom in the World report, released in January by Freedom House, 2016 marked the 11th consecutive year of decline in global freedom.

Keystone international institutions are also under siege. In October, three African states--South Africa, Burundi, and Gambia--announced their withdrawal from the ICC, perhaps the crowning achievement of the human rights age. (Gambia has since reversed its decision following the January resignation of autocratic President Yahya Jammeh.) Angry that the ICC unfairly targets African defendants, leaders on the continent are now mulling a collective withdrawal from the court.

African criticism reflects governments' increasing confidence in rejecting human rights as Western values and painting any local organization advocating these principles as a pawn of external forces. China and India have both introduced restrictive new laws that constrain the work of foreign NGOs and local groups that receive foreign funding, including organizations advocating human rights. In Russia, a foreign agent law passed in 2012 has been used to tightly restrict the operation of human rights NGOs and paint any criticism of government policies as disloyal, foreign-sponsored, and "un-Russian."

In the West, support for human rights is wavering. In his successful campaign in favor of Brexit, Nigel Farage, then-leader of the UK Independence Party, attacked the European Convention on Human Rights, claiming that it had compromised British security by preventing London from barring the return of British Islamic State fighters from the Middle East. During the U.S. election campaign, Donald Trump demonized minorities, advocated torture, expressed admiration for dictators and still won the White House.

In the post-human rights world, global rights norms and institutions will continue to exist but only in an increasingly ineffective form. This will be an era of renewed superpower competition, in what Robert Kaplan has described as a "more crowded, nervous, anxious world." The post-human rights world will not be devoid of grass-roots political struggles, however. On the contrary, these could well intensify as governments tighten the space for dissenting visions and opinions. Indeed, the wave of domestic opposition to Trump's policies is an early sign that political activism may be entering a period of renewed power and relevance.

In December, RightsStart, a new human rights consultancy hub, launched by suggesting five strategies that international rights NGOs can use to adapt to the "existential crisis" of the current moment. Among them was the need for these groups to "communicate more effectively" the importance of human rights and use international advocacy more often as a platform for local voices.

Philip Alston, a human rights veteran and law professor at New York University, has argued that the human rights movement will also have to confront the fact that it has never offered a satisfactory solution to the key driver of the current populist surge: global economic inequality.

In a broader sense, the global human rights project will have to shed its pretensions of historical inevitability and get down to the business of making its case to ordinary people. With authoritarian politics on the rise, now is the time to re-engage in politics and to adopt more pragmatic and flexible tactics for the advancement of human betterment. Global legal advocacy will continue to be important, but efforts should predominantly be directed downward, to national courts and legislatures.

It is here that right-wing populism has won its shattering victories. It is here, too, that the coming struggle against Trumpism and its avatars will ultimately be lost or won.

Editorial on 03/19/2017

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Post-human rights world - Arkansas Online

New York Post

The terrifying DNA discoveries that are making science-fiction fact New York Post It's possible that the divide among humans in the future won't be necessarily about race or nationality, but an X-Men-like battle setting up regular Joes versus post-humans their superior engineered counterparts. One way to potentially level the ... and more »

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The terrifying DNA discoveries that are making science-fiction fact - New York Post

How Long Must This Go On?

This months news that Beauty and the Beast would include a gay character was both surprising and exciting. Many in the LGBTQ+ community have long been waiting for a Someday-My-Prince(ss)-Will-Come moment.

This anticipation is part of the reason that concepts like Joey Graceffas Dont Wait video play so well with the queer community. They tap into the desires of generations of the LGBTQ+ community to see characters like themselves find their Happily Ever After.

Apparently, the community will have to wait a bit longer for that.

Like Rachel Maddows release of Trumps tax returns this week, the queerness of Beauty and the Beast does not live up to the hype surrounding it. And, as I left the theater, I realized that the defining of LeFou as gay had undermined my experience of the movie as a whole. The movie was an enchanting and dazzling spectacle, but due to the discussion surrounding it, the exclusively gay moment was underwhelming, and it distracted from the beauty of Bill Condons creation.

For those familiar with the discussion, two points will strike you about the films queerness.

If you blink, you will miss it.

Second, the so-called exclusively gay moment is not inherently gay. It consists of two men dancing together and smiling at one another. Only under a fragile Gaston-esque definition of masculinity does such an act even read as queer. In fact, in some Western traditions, like ultraorthodox Judaism, dancing with your own sex is preferable in certain settings to dancing with members of the opposite sex.

Additionally, examining Christian traditions, you will be hard put to find a biblical text which would condemn this gay moment. In fact, you will find the opposite. Early Christianity was more comfortable with displays of affection between members of the same sex than modern Christianity. Thus, Paul told his followers to greet one another with a holy kiss (Rom. 16:16) and one of the disciples is depicted as reclining against Jesus on a kline (dining couch, John 13:23).

If the movie carries nothing inherently gay or sinful, why are people like Franklin Graham raising hullabaloo?

The central issue is one of labels.

Ironically, those involved with the movie seem to have missed one of the central points of the film: the effect of labels. The film questions the legitimacy of labels, from the opening query, For who could learn to love a beast? to the Princes roar, I am not a beast! It shows the power of labels through Gastons manipulation of the villagers to attack the castle, and it shows the problem of labels by flipping the idea of what constitutes a beast.

Unfortunately, in the discourse around the film, gay has proven to have the same powers as beast. This point is shown in the timing of the boycott movement: it preceded the release of the movie. Graham posted concerning the queering of the film two weeks prior to its release with no real idea of the films actual content. His and others actions were reactionary to a label. For social conservatives, in reinterpreting LeFou as gay, the character became something menacing. Thus, they sallied forth with their torches and pitchforks, urged by conservative leaders to protect their children from their unfounded fears.

The labeling of LeFou also requires the LGBTQ+ community and their allies to reasses him, and he does not fare too well under such scrutiny.

In retrospect, nothing is inherently wrong with Josh Gads performance. The character is similar to his other well-known characters such as Olaf in Frozen or Elder Cunningham in The Book of Mormon, and his performance of Beauty and the Beasts classic songs are, at times, delightful. In many ways, his is a charming tribute to the animated version of the character and would have been satisfactory as such.

However, rereading LeFou as gay necessarily changes his reception. What were adorable antics in Gads asexual talking snowman do not play quite as well when they are translated into Disneys first gay main character. Instead, they are transformed into gay stereotypes performed for a laugh by a heterosexual man for a largely heterosexual audience. Despite Condons own gayness, the queerness of LeFou does not feel like it was written for the LGBTQ+ community. Instead, it was encoded for a heterosexual gaze.

This fact is no more apparent than in LeFous own queer visibility. By even the most generous readings of the performance, LeFou is in the closet. A queer character written for a queer audience should have no need to hide his identity. Likewise, as Condon has interpreted the character, he plays into the tragic caricature of queer individuals pining away after the unattainable straight object of their affections. This idea not only recapitulates heterosexual preconceptions of queerness but also ties into and confirms their fears about homosexuality.

Reprise: How Long Must This Go On

Dont get me wrong. In a Disney-verse where the true magic of the Magic Kingdom is how everyone is neatly cisgendered and heteronormative (and, until recently, white), even caricatured tokenism is welcomed as visibility. We should celebrate the fact that the next generation has a queer character to look to and thank those who made this possible.

At the same time, the character deserves to be critiqued. What is the impact of the fact that the only character that queer children have to look to is a character named The Fool? What does this tell them about themselves and their queerness?

Although I adored the movie overall, part of my frustration with it is that I had hoped for more out of Condons exclusively gay moment. Instead, I found myself left wondering how long the LGBTQ+ community must wait to see a truly authentic performance of queerness by a main character in a Disney film.

Excerpt from:
HUMAN AGAIN? THE EXCLUSIVELY GAY MOMENT IN BEAUTY AND THE BEAST - Huffington Post

New York Post

Uber's self-driving cars need more than a little human help: study New York Post Uber's self-driving cars are failing to safely and smoothly drive long distances without the help of human intervention, a new study found. Uber's self-driving cars traveled more than 20,000 miles in one week this month, but for every mile of that, a ... Internal Metrics Show How Often Uber's Self-Driving Cars Need Human HelpBuzzFeed News Uber's autonomous cars drove 20354 miles and had to be taken over at every mile, according to documentsRecode all 60 news articles »

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Uber's self-driving cars need more than a little human help: study - New York Post