Open Thread WE 31 AUG 22 ~ human rights
A peaceful world requires collective measures for the prevention of war, international cooperation to solve economic and social problems, and respect for human rights.
Goran Persson
“To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.” – Nelson Mandela
“A right delayed is a right denied.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” – Elie Wiesel
"Our country, like every modern state, needs profound democratic reforms. It needs political and ideological pluralism, a mixed economy and protection of human rights and the opening up of society." - Andrei Sakharov
"I am disturbed by how states abuse laws on Internet access. I am concerned that surveillance programmes are becoming too aggressive. I understand that national security and criminal activity may justify some exceptional and narrowly-tailored use of surveillance. But that is all the more reason to safeguard human rights and fundamental freedoms."- Ban Ki-moon
"I was a human rights lawyer for 20 years, I believed those values of dignity, equality and non-discrimination were a given. believed the only question in my lifetime would be - how much further do we extend those values? I did not think in my lifetime we'd actually be having an argument about those values." - Keir Starmer
Welcome to your Wednesday episode of "to tell the truth" AKA C99's OT. Today, am dabbling
with some aspects of basic human rights. Not the 'god-given variety', so much as the
association with the concepts of dignity and self-determination. What do you understand
human rights to be?
Interlude ~ A few notable events in history ..
1917 - In China, Sun Yat-sen and his supporters' 'rump' parliament establishes a military government and elects Sun Yat-sen as commander-in-Chief, considered the father of modern China
1935 - FDR signs an act prohibiting export of US arms to belligerents (??)
1955 - 1st sun-powered automobile demonstrated (Chicago, Illinois)
1969 - 25,000 attend New Orleans Pop Festival
1997 - Diana, Princess of Wales, dies in a car crash in a road tunnel in Paris
If any of this rings bells for you, please share your thoughts. And, being an open thread,
anything else off-topic that stirs the brain cells is also welcome.
“Whale prana and the Flaming World Tree". A visual pulse of wicking fear from the planet. A story that includes the twin Seed Keeper girls, Whale as Time Keeper and the bendy nature of time. It is simultaneously an architectural-cartography of Maha Bandha”
- Tanya P. Johnson (2022)
"Drawn on vintage ledger paper, the pieces are “tools for consciousness hacking,” Johnson says, instruments for confronting the systems we’re accustomed to. Each work “generates subtle awareness, cultivates wisdom, and wicks fear. They symbolize the ways movement and breath can be used to interrupt patterns, to strengthen electromagnetism, and to stabilize energy.”
Comments
Good morning C99'ers and lurkers
Interesting article about the Gorbachev legacy with implications of todays' status ...
https://sputniknews.com/20220831/gorbachev-was-promised-non-expansion-of...
Good morning...
Nice cool 68 F this AM. Got another 0.3" of rain yesterday bring the monthly total to 8.6"...a very wet August for Alabama. As a result I'm going to mow this morning. Fortunately the rains have been gentle and there's no road wash/erosion.
I guess human rights are a matter of opinion, but to my mind it involves the freedom to live ones life in a manner of ones own choosing... with the caveat, it doesn't negatively impact others.
As an opposite of human rights is the way in which we are propagandized....brainwashed into thinking our actions are our own choice. I watched a piece on the way we're manipulated using an advertising model.
Hope you are all doing well. Thanks for the OT!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
hola, Lookout. As to the tollowing -
should be the whole of the law is one interpretation or summarization. The second half of the italicized portion is from Crowley, among others, who likely cribbed it from Rabelais.
The problem then lies in the punishment or reddress for violations of the first clause, what, for example should be done to one guilty of manslaughter, or one who negligently misgenders somebody through failure to ask what their pronouns are before addressing them.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
That last one
is a doozy for sure, in this day and age. But the current reset has a simple answer for that- the death penalty for any infraction, no matter how slight. Simple, tidy, doesn't bother The Owners with having to trouble their beautiful minds about it.
To quote Danny Elfman from "No Spill Blood":
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10tcb1RfOE4]
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Good point
the freedom of self-determination is key. As your vid points out, there exists a slippery slope
between what we think we want to accomplish with our lives and what we are being programmed
to believe. Clarity of purpose is not an easy path, It requires careful assessment.
George had something to say about that..
[video:https://youtu.be/6m10HsVchvs]
cheers!
bomb yourself, don't fuck yourself
what a brilliant solution...
If I could write ...
Hola QMS. Human rights, whenever codified and
promulgated, always seem to fall short of the simple concept that actions which don't hurt another can only be limited or restricted upon showing (proving) an overwhelming social or societal purpose of some sort.
Historically,they very often follow a pattern of "Ta Daa! Behold; The Rghts of Man. Ta Daa" Including women? Uh, well, actually no. How about the plebes/serfs/slaves? Well, of course not. And on and on and on. Hammurabi's enormous compendium (which was enscribed on a stelae which was eventually stolen) was largely about crimes and punishment, and Moses' tablets (take two and call me in the morning) were mostly restrictions; another failing of such attempts, "you are free to do anything *except* (insert a shitload of restrictions) unless the king says otherwise. Bah & Humbug.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Or we could go fully
totalitarian, and simply say "Everything not forbidden is compulsory"...
Or something like that.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
that has a really nice ring to it, but defining
"everything", especially operationally, could become tedious.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Well...acktually...
Having spent the better part of the last half of the day reading about our medical coding system, I don't think that'll be a problem. At fuckin' all.
I've concluded that there is a sub-clad of humans that thrive on classifying things. In my previous life it was always the kinda wily/crazy mass-spectrometry guy or the botanists or parasitologists. Now, I've seen it all.
Googling the medical-codes on my recently botched endoscopy, I occasionally read some result that didn't have a lot to do with what I was searching. So, yeah, there are medical codes for ER visits for "patient attacked by duck", and, there are different codes for a number of other specific birds. There are medical codes for *everything*, with suffix codes that are sometimes hilarious, but mostly sad. They are all just part of the warfare between the medical and insurance companies I guess. Where we are the civilian casualties caught in the middle. And yet we are their reason for being? What a Crazy Stupid System.
So anyhoo. I don't think TPTB would have any problem coming up with that list. There are people that thrive on such tasks. Apparently.
edited: typos
Ah, I suppose you re right. Sorry about
your travails and your endoscopy.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Happy Anniversary! I have my doubts that they are celebrating
in Washington and the Pentagon.
I don't know why they wouldn't be celebrating
in Washington and the Pentagon. After all, they have spent untold billions and the death of 2,500 US servicemen in Afghanistan since 1979 to completely destroy the country and make it into the hell hole it is today.
I suppose I should have included a snark tag. NT
I am curious as to how both sides will spin the report.
Are we being railroaded?
China completes track-laying for first sea-crossing high-speed railway
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-08-31/China-completes-track-laying-for-f...
Afternoon QMS
It makes sense as stated above, that:
It seems to me though that our society is not trying to prevent war, or to use diplomacy to cooperate, or want to respect human rights. So we have a sticky situation. None of those things appear to be our goal. Why not?
There is nothing like a war to obliterate human rights.
The problem is, war is not such a good plan for most humans. It just plain is horrific.
Usians aren't the only ones who like to bomb other people. (Carlin missed a few.) Europe hosted a couple of spectacular wars not so long ago. It looks like Europe is OK with hosting another. I wonder why. It seems absurd. That brilliant chick from the UK wants to use nuclear weapons... what a brain.
Carlin ticks me off. His shtick is cynicism and ridicule. That's easy. That just involves tearing things down.
The hard part is trying to prevent things from completely falling apart and loosing what is good. The hardest part is trying to build something that is good from the wreckage. I feel very bad for the younger generation. We have left them a disaster. They deserve more than just cynicism from us.
Carlin says he's so great because unlike others, he thinks. Well good for him. He didn't think hard enough to do much good.
Here's another guy who thinks (actually I should say thought...both dead). He tried to think of some ways to pick up the pieces after the wars. Some of his ideas might be useful to those who are interested in trying to pick up the pieces now.
Camus gave a lecture at Columbia university in 1946. The topic was not so much about human rights but about humanity. The poison unleashed by the war, in Camus's mind, created a crisis for humanity in that it threatened to destroy the last vestiges of decency. Camus saw human decency in action. He participated in the resistance in Le Chambon in rescuing many hundreds of children. He is and was on the side of affirming human decency. He fought for it tooth and nail. I think human rights go hand in hand with human decency.
Here is a snip from that speech:
The following video is a reading of Camus's entire lecture by Viggo Mortensen. It's long but interesting.
and correct spelling
edited to add video
This teacher is much too "woke" for me
I think it is time to start home schooling your children in America. Either that or move to Russia.
I got an email from State Bar of Texas Continuing Legal
Education today. I must attend 15 hours of class annually, including 3 hours of ethics. Maybe 2. Not sure. I usually do about 4 or 5.
For $65 I could attend this: "Me? Biased? How Biology and Psychology Affect Our Opinions".
The State Bar is shoving woke down our throats. There are days long seminars on "inclusiveness" for a healthy fee. You can join the luncheon with trans, gays, just everybody on the spectrum, even the ones identifying as hetero, although that label is discouraged.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Good evening, QMS, et. al.
Here is a view on human rights. My client was charged with animal abuse. In trying to prepare his defense, I called my vet/pal/client, asked him how he testified when called to court insofar as standards. The standard was it is criminal if something you do causes the animal to suffer. He would testify they were not healthy, in pain, hungry, filthy, not properly housed or fenced, etc...
Taking that as a standard for humans is a good start, in my opinion. It should be our human right not to suffer. Any entity who causes or even allows suffering should be considered as human rights violators.
Happily, the people who turned in my client guessed the horse to be 12 yrs. old. The horse was 31, and in the condition any vet would expect. His case was dismissed.
I loved Carlin. He knew that people were propagandized and unaware of the truth. He left it to them to do something about the problems they didn't know existed until he laid it out to them.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
That hearkens back to
Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table. Apparently, after a great deal of Adult Beverage, some wag challenged the esteemed Ms. Parker to come up with a sentence involving the word "horticulture". And without missing a beat, she said,
Oh, what I would have given to be a fly on the wall for those wrist-raising festivities- but I was born far too late, and in the wrong part of the country...
At least here at C99, we can all think together- and perhaps, just perhaps, we can thwim.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Yes, we can,
UFS!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Trying something
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
My first Twitter embed!
I feel all grown up!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981