Link Banana

Entertainment Weekly columnist Mark Harris found some valuable things to say about the “F — -ing Ben Affleck” video after fighting the urge to avoid discussing it.

Right. In the movies and on TV, straight people have sort of agreed not to murder us or beat us up or make overtly vicious sport of us anymore, and to frown sternly in the direction of any heterosexuals who have not gotten that memo — offenders who, if necessary, will get the strongest punishment straight people can give out, which is a very severe talking-to from Katherine Heigl or a comedy about the importance of tolerance from Adam Sandler. And in exchange, gay people are expected to prove that we can take a joke. The same joke. Over and over again. Here’s the joke: You know what would be completely hilarious? IF SOMEBODY WAS GAY!

(via brijit)

Two points: (1) the BBC has some pretty good headline writers, hence I stole this one, and (2) this situation deserves more attention — and outrage.

The UK-based groups agree that Israel has the right and obligation to protect its citizens, urging both sides to cease unlawful attacks on civilians.

But they call upon Israel to comply with its obligations, as the occupying power in Gaza, to ensure its inhabitants have access to food, clean water, electricity and medical care, which have been in short supply in the strip.

“Punishing the entire Gazan population by denying them these basic human rights is utterly indefensible,” said Amnesty UK Director Kate Allen.

Chuck Rosenthal, the district attorney of Harris County — around Houston, has resigned after having developed quite a reputation. Not only did he send 36 people to death row, but he’s also done some colorful things:

Over more than 30 years at the DA’s office, he often ran into trouble. He set off firecrackers in a stairwell and endorsed one judge because “she looks great in jeans.” In 2002 he went before the Supreme Court to argue in favour of upholding Texas’s ban on gay sex. The eventual ruling, Lawrence v Texas, is considered a landmark for gay rights.

Most troubling was Mr Rosenthal’s enthusiasm for the death penalty. He considered it “God’s law”, and asked for it whenever possible.

Turkey’s recent easing of its headscarf ban has raised roughly equal amounts of praise and concern. The Economist asks why the government is lifting it at all.

Some believe they were designed merely to win votes in the local elections due next year. If the AK were serious about bolstering equality between the sexes, “there would be more than one woman in the cabinet,” says one AK-supporting lady. And if letting women cover their heads were a matter of rights, as Mr Erdogan claims, why has the government not scrapped Article 301 of the penal code, which criminalises free speech?

Nicholas Kristof’s latest column is worth perusing. He makes a rather cogent argument for both the repudiation of torture and swift justice for all detainees at Guantanamo.

The most famous journalist you may never have heard of is Sami al-Hajj, an Al Jazeera cameraman who is on a hunger strike to protest abuse during more than six years in a Kafkaesque prison system.

Mr. Hajj’s fortitude has turned him into a household name in the Arab world, and his story is sowing anger at the authorities holding him without trial.

That’s us. Mr. Hajj is one of our forgotten prisoners in Guantánamo Bay.

If the Bush administration appointed an Under Secretary of State for Antagonizing the Islamic World, with advice from a Blue Ribbon Commission for Sullying America’s Image, it couldn’t have done a more systematic job of discrediting our reputation around the globe. Instead of using American political capital to push for peace in the Middle East or Darfur, it is using it to force-feed Mr. Hajj.

The Economist offers a handy guide for totalitarian bureaucrats looking to make it hard to speak against them. It’s a troubling and useful look at the state of media freedom around the world.

Despite the flourishing of alternative media, such as satellite television and internet blogs, that challenge once-impregnable state monopolies on the flow of news, governments keep finding new ways to suppress contrary views. Whereas the dictatorships of old snuffed out opponents or chucked them in jail, today’s softer incarnations achieve similar silence by subtler means. Hyper-regulation via catch-all laws, plus financial carrots and sticks, tend to replace cruder direct control.

It’s times like this that I dislike The Economist’s refusal to put bylines on its storied. Nonetheless, last week’s correspondents diary about traveling along the fringes of Burma is well worth reading.

The moment doesn’t last long, but for a few seconds I can picture what her life was probably like before all this. Perhaps she can too. Then her weariness consumes her again, and she is back to being a victim of all that is wrong with Myanmar.

EDIT (2/07/08): According to More Intelligent Life, it’s Roger McShane (whose website will resize your browser window.)

To round up the women trio — a semi-intentional sequel to the semi-intentional futre of technology trio of earlier — The Economist says that though Saudi Arabia in particular (and the Arab world generally) still has far too many repressive rules governing the rights of women, things are indeed getting better.

But there are signs that things may be getting a little better for the kingdom’s women. Laws forbidding violence against women are now being drafted. Women are now allowed to stay in hotels unaccompanied. The government has given initial approval for the establishment of the first Saudi women’s rights body. And the first women’s football match was played in the eastern province earlier this month, with men excluded from the stadium entirely. There are even suggestions that an infamous ban on women drivers may be lifted later this year. Such improvements are slight, but welcome. And they reflect marginal improvements elsewhere in the Middle East.

I have to admit that half of my affinity for this Europe.view column is that I just love that word. It’s like so many fights held in so many places all over the world. But the column’s also got a few very valuable points about relations between the Kremlin on the West that are worth hearing.

One solution is to use points made by Russian leaders themselves. Guess who said this: “Russia is a country of legal nihilism at the level…that no European country can boast of…Corruption in the official structures has a huge scale”. That sounds as though it came from some opposition politician such as Garry Kasparov—the sort of marginal (or marginalised) figure that Russians often say gains far too much western attention. But the speaker was Dmitri Medvedev, successor-designate to Vladimir Putin.

Another is for outsiders to show a bit more self-criticism. It is worth noting early on in the discussion some outrageous flaws in American (or British, or German, or French) foreign policy, as well as recent scandals involving corruption and abuse of power.

The most powerful western asset during the last cold war was not bigger nukes or higher living standards, but self-criticism. However bad western governments may be, they risk trouble eventually—from the media, the courts or the voters. That is not something that one can say with much confidence about Russia now.

The Economist’s Asia.view column does a good job profiling America’s recent history of human rights advocacy in North Korea, as well as assessing China’s push for “corporate social responsibility” within its factories there. My favorite part, if only because I share the mentioned speakers feelings, was this bit:

And a documentary film which shows two ragged young men singing a song called “Our Father, Kim Jong Il”, in praise of the country’s dictator, hears one of them comment “Pretty lousy father”—a rare crack in the facade of national devotion.

None of this gives much cause for hope. But as one conference speaker put it, it is better to be an optimist and wrong than a pessimist and right. In North Korea, it is also harder.

In the wake of Charles Taylor — former president of Liberia — going on trial at The Hague, The Economist points to a very hopeful trend: an end to the peaceful and blameless retirement that too many third-world strong men have too long gotten and taken for granted.

However brutal or corrupt, Africa’s leaders used to shield one another from justice for fear that their turn could come next. But the remarkable spread of international justice over the past decade has brought about an equally remarkable change in attitudes towards prosecuting former heads of state, not just in Africa but throughout the world. No fewer than ten former presidents and military dictators are facing legal proceedings for human-rights offences and/or corruption, some in international tribunals, others in their own domestic courts, a few in other countries’ courts.

If you prefer video, Mark Goldberg and Mark Vlassic ably discuss the same topic in this episode of Bloggingheads.

In a NY Times Op-Ed, William Dalrymple takes a small step toward correcting the too-rosy picture that has been painted of the late Ms. Bhutto:

Benazir Bhutto was certainly a brave and secular-minded woman. But the obituaries painting her as dying to save democracy distort history. Instead, she was a natural autocrat who did little for human rights, a calculating politician who was complicit in Pakistan’s becoming the region’s principal jihadi paymaster while she also ramped up an insurgency in Kashmir that has brought two nuclear powers to the brink of war.