The Sad Fate of the Discovered Native

Just when you think there are no more unexplored corners of the world, one suddenly presents itself. Oh, if these people only knew the fate that awaits them now, should the pattern that afflicts their cousins' remain the same.

Eric Cantor Flirts with Treason

Andrew Sullivan highlights a shocking trend among GOP congressional leaders:

It is not the first time that this kind of direct attack on the president's ability to conduct foreign policy has occurred under this administration. John McCain and Joe Lieberman have gone abroad to assure Israel that they will undermine their own president to advance the interests of a foreign country in a critical diplomatic discussion with the US on that country's soil. But Eric Cantor has gone one further, openly bragging about something he once described as a felony.

Eric Cantor, a US lawmaker, has given assurances to the leadership of a foreign nation, namely Israel, that he and his fellow party members are putting Israeli interests ahead of those of their own Commander-in-Chief. The same US politicians who would, during the previous administration, accuse any critic of the President of being a traitor are now promising the leaders of another country that they will actively work against the American President.

Aung San Suu Kyi Released

NPR reports:

Myanmar's military government freed its arch rival, democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, on Saturday after her latest term of detention expired. Several thousand jubilant supporters streamed to her residence.
Suu Kyi appeared at the gate to her home, smiling and dressed in a traditional Burmese jacket. "There is a time to be quiet and a time to talk," she told the  hundreds of cheering supporters. "People must work in unison. Only then can we achieve our goal," she said.

Al Jazeera gives some good historical context:



Is Myanmar edging closer to some semblance of democracy? Their recent elections might have been racked with fraud and accompanied by violent skirmishes with ethnic rebels, but it was the first national vote in two decades there. While their votes may not have counted this time around, perhaps a new generation of Burmese have acquired a taste for democracy that they will find hard to ignore until it is truly satiated.

(Photo: Suu Kyi greets the crowd outside her compound in Yangon. Getty Images)

For Women's Rights or for Politics?

On Wednesday, The United Nations launched UN Women, a new agency devoted to promoting and protecting women's rights around the world, with seats for 41 member nations. Many nations, including Nigeria, DR Congo, and Saudi Arabia applied and were granted seats on this new council. One notable and controversial exclusion was Iran, who applied as one of the 10 members from Asia but was replaced at the last minute by East Timor. The AFP reports:

"They lost and they lost handily," commented US ambassador Susan Rice on Iran's defeat.
"We have made no secret of our concern that Iran joining the board of UN Women would have been an inauspicious start to that board," she told reporters.

The claim of Iran's exclusion being due to their abysmal women's rights record would be easier to buy were it not for DR Congo's and especially Saudi Arabia's easily obtained seats on the council. The epidemic of mass rape in DR Congo would not seem to make the nation an exemplar of protecting women, and Saudi Arabia oppresses their female citizens to such a complete and inhuman degree (they are not allowed to even leave their own homes without the company of either a spouse or blood relative, and of course must remain covered when in public) its like the Islamic Kingdom is trying to win some bizarro Nobel prize for violating human rights.
This is not to diminish the suffering of Iran's women at all; from the Islamic dress code, to being banned from places like soccer matches, to unjust and cruel imprisonment and execution by stoning, the gross mistreatment of Iranian women is legendary and ongoing. But for the UN to imply that Iran's record is worse than a country like Saudi Arabia, the world leader in oppressing women, is just ridiculous. Iranian women outnumber men at universities, and, unlike Saudi Arabia, women in Iran are allowed to go pretty much where they choose, although not without hazarding threats from the Morality Police should a headscarf be out of place or a blouse be too formfitting.
It seems blatantly political that the UN would take care to keep Iran off this new council while accepting Saudi Arabia and DR Congo seemingly without issue. One must not ignore the ongoing sanctions against Iran, which today brought this development:

Nigeria has vowed to report Iran to the United Nations Security Council if Nigerian investigators find evidence that an apparently illegal arms shipment seized in Nigeria violated UN sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

 Is Iran's seemingly deliberate exclusion from UN Women yet another sanction against this moment's global pariah? If the United Nations prime concern here was truly protecting and advancing women's rights, then they would keep Saudi Arabia as far away from that council as possible.

"Goodbye, baseball!"

It's being reported that beloved sportscaster Dave Niehaus has passed away at the age of 75. Dave was the announcer for the Seattle Mariners for their entire existence until he retired from broadcasting at the end of last season; he was deservedly inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2008.
Dave Niehaus was a Seattle institution and a giant in sports broadcasting. Many have rightfully dubbed him the Voice of the Mariners, a moniker I whole-heartedly agree with. As a kid, I listened to Dave call games all the time, and I credit his boundless joy and infectious enthusiasm for baseball with helping to form my rabid Mariners fandom, and I know I'm not the only one. It's hard to imagine the Mariners without him.

This glorious moment in Seattle sports history would not have been nearly as electric and memorable without Dave Niehaus:

Islamophobia Backfires, ala France

Across the pond, outcry against the recently passed French "Burqa Ban" is taking a number of forms. One of the most notable is the ongoing work of a mysterious graffiti artist who goes by the moniker Princess Hijab.

Princess Hijab is Paris's most elusive street artist. Striking at night with dripping black paint she slaps black Muslim veils on the half-naked airbrushed women – and men – of the metro's fashion adverts. She calls it "hijabisation".

 The Guardian managed to snag a rare interview.

"The veil has many hidden meanings, it can be as profane as it is sacred, consumerist and sanctimonious. From Arabic Gothicism to the condition of man. The interpretations are numerous and of course it carries great symbolism on race, sexuality and real and imagined geography."

 Meanwhile, a pair of women who call themselves Niqabitch have taken a stand against the burqa ban with this video:




(Top: photo by Princess Hijab)

"Ken lives on in our hearts."

Today is the 15th anniversary of the execution of Ken Saro Wiwa, a political activist who campaigned against the insidious activities of Shell Oil in his native Nigeria, specifically the Niger Delta region, but you wouldn't know it by reading or watching the major US news media. When it happened in 1995, Saro Wiwa's murder at the hands of his own government, ordered by Shell, was a huge international story that got loads of coverage in the American media, but today passed without so much as a mention of it.

I did find this article by the AFP, which gives some good historical context as well as how Saro Wiwa is being commemorated in Nigeria today. And yesterday, the Guardian published an article about Shell's efforts to control negative PR after the execution.

The suffering and injustice that Saro Wiwa fought against so many years ago persists; the lives and livelihoods of the Ogoni people continue to be sacrificed at the alter of corporate greed and western petrol-lust. And no one is listening.