#udhr

The text clearly says EVERYONE. Not 'every legal citizen of a given country'. Every human being, no matter where they were born, where they are now, how they came to where they are, what they are accused with, has the undeniable right to a fair trial. And as far as I am concerned, abducting people and detaining/deporting them does not fit the definition of a fair trial.

Of course it has to be acknowledged this list of human rights is fundamentally a list of ideals rather than the reality on the ground, and often even men in the world don’t possess every one of these rights.   However, i’d like to point out exactly how few of these rights women have.   

On a side note, the UN website takes pains to point out that if Hansa Mehta of India hadn’t spoken up they wouldn’t have even thought to put ‘all human beings’ instead of men.  They say this to celebrate Hansa Mehta and to pat themselves on the back about their inclusivity, but isn’t that honestly shameful?  That they had to be told to include women??? more than HALF of HUMANITY, in a UNIVERSAL declaration of human rights?   

Anyways, let's get into this.

Article 1 All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

So right out of the gate, in Article 1, we can see what women are stripped of: Women are not afforded equal dignity and rights, neither before the law or within culture, not in any country or place in the world.  

And then there’s this stupid ‘spirit of brotherhood’.  Yeah, ‘siblinghood’ sounds weird, but is there literally no other way to express the connections humanity owes each other than through male relationship?

Article 2 Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

This is a fantasy for all human beings, but yes, at least we’re finally talking about all human beings.

Article 3 Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

This is attainable by many men currently, but what woman in the world today has ‘security of person’?  What woman alive today does not live with the threat of rape?

Article 4 No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

‘Unpaid labor’, or women’s constant, unacknowledged, unpaid labor in care of the men, children and elderly in their lives.  Is that not servitude, if not outright slavery?

Article 5 No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

How many women in the western ‘free’ world are anally raped and choked during sex on a regular basis, without their permission?  How many women are forced into degrading clothing and practices of appearance?  How many women are belittled and dehumanized on a daily basis, in conversation, media, religious practice, culture?

Article 6 Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7 All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Barely, barely anywhere in the world do we have legal recognition of ourselves as human beings. Not even in the US is women’s humanity defended in the law. Women are not explicitly named as being human beings in the US legal code, but rather are only inferred to be a subset to men.

Article 8 Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

‘Effective remedy and national tribunal’ against rape when?  ‘Effective remedy and national tribunal’ against porn (filmed violence upon women) and prostitution (paid violence upon women) when?   ‘Effective remedy and national tribunal’ against child marriage, FGM etc when?

[Eleanor Roosevelt with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, courtesy of the FDR Presidential Library & Museum, via Wikipedia Commons]

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 10, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Dec 10, 2024

Today is Human Rights Day, celebrated internationally in honor of the day seventy-six years ago, December 10, 1948, when the United Nations General Assembly announced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

In 1948 the world was still reeling from the death and destruction of World War II, including the horrors of the Holocaust. The Soviet Union was blockading Berlin, Italy and France were convulsed with communist-backed labor agitation, Greece was in the middle of a civil war, Arabs opposed the new state of Israel, communists and nationalists battled in China, and segregationists in the U.S. were forming their own political party to stop the government from protecting civil rights for Black Americans. In the midst of these dangerous trends, the member countries of the United Nations came together to adopt a landmark document: a common standard of fundamental rights for all human beings.

The United Nations itself was only three years old. Representatives of the 47 countries that made up the Allies in World War II, along with the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and newly liberated Denmark and Argentina, had formed the United Nations as a key part of an international order based on rules on which nations agreed, rather than the idea that might makes right, which had twice in just over twenty years brought wars that involved the globe.

Part of the mission of the U.N. was “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.” In early 1946 the United Nations Economic and Social Council organized a nine-person commission on human rights to construct the mission of a permanent Human Rights Commission. Unlike other U.N. commissions, though, the selection of its members would be based not on their national affiliations but on their personal merit.

President Harry S. Truman had appointed Eleanor Roosevelt, widow of former president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and much beloved defender of human rights in the United States, as a delegate to the United Nations. In turn, U.N. Secretary-General Trygve Lie from Norway put her on the commission to develop a plan for the formal human rights commission. That first commission asked Roosevelt to take the chair.

“[T]he free peoples” and “all of the people liberated from slavery, put in you their confidence and their hope, so that everywhere the authority of these rights, respect of which is the essential condition of the dignity of the person, be respected,” a U.N. official told the commission at its first meeting on April 29, 1946.

The U.N. official noted that the commission must figure out how to define the violation of human rights not only internationally but also within a nation, and must suggest how to protect “the rights of man all over the world.” If a procedure for identifying and addressing violations “had existed a few years ago,” he said, “the human community would have been able to stop those who started the war at the moment when they were still weak and the world catastrophe would have been avoided.”

Drafted over the next two years, the final document began with a preamble explaining that a UDHR was necessary because “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,” and because “disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind.” Because “the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,” the preamble said, “human rights should be protected by the rule of law.”

The thirty articles that followed established that “[a]ll human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights…without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status” and regardless “of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs.”

Those rights included freedom from slavery, torture, degrading punishment, arbitrary arrest, exile, and “arbitrary interference with…privacy, family, home or correspondence, [and] attacks upon…honour and reputation.”

They included the right to equality before the law and to a fair trial, the right to travel both within a country and outside of it, the right to marry and to establish a family, and the right to own property.

They included the “right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion,” “freedom of opinion and expression,” peaceful assembly, the right to participate in government either “directly or through freely chosen representatives,” the right of equal access to public service. After all, the UDHR noted, the authority of government rests on the will of the people, “expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage.”

They included the right to choose how and where to work, the right to equal pay for equal work, the right to unionize, and the right to fair pay that ensures “an existence worthy of human dignity.”

They included “the right to a standard of living adequate for…health and well-being…, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond [one’s] control.”

They included the right to free education that develops students fully and strengthens “respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.” Education “shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.”

They included the right to participate in art and science.

They included the right to live in the sort of society in which the rights and freedoms outlined in the UDHR could be realized. And, the document concluded, “Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.”

Although eight countries abstained from the UDHR—South Africa, Saudi Arabia, and six countries from the Soviet bloc—no country voted against it, making the vote unanimous. The declaration was not a treaty and was not legally binding; it was a declaration of principles.

Since then, though, the UDHR has become the foundation of international human rights law. More than eighty international treaties and declarations, along with regional human rights conventions, domestic human rights bills, and constitutional provisions, make up a legally binding system to protect human rights. All of the members of the United Nations have ratified at least one of the major international human rights treaties, and four out of five have ratified four or more.

Indeed, today is the fortieth anniversary of the U.N.’s adoption of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, more commonly known as the United Nations Convention Against Torture (UNCAT), which follows the structure of the UDHR.

The UDHR remains aspirational, but it is a vital part of the rules-based order that restrains leaders from human rights abuses, giving victims a language and a set of principles to condemn mistreatment. Before 1948 that language and those principles were unimaginable.

In a proclamation today, the White House recommitted to “upholding the equal and inalienable rights of all people.” It noted that in the U.S., the Biden administration established “the White House Gender Policy Council to advance the rights and opportunities of women and girls across domestic and foreign policy [and] rejoined the United Nations Human Rights Council to highlight and address pressing human rights concerns.” It has “worked to protect the rights of LGBTQI+ people” and to expand “accessibility for people with disabilities.” Crucially, the administration has also worked to stop the misuse of commercial spyware, which has enabled human rights abuses around the world as authoritarian governments surveil their populations, and to fight back against transnational repression targeting human rights defenders.

At the State Department, Under Secretary of State Uzra Zeya, Assistant Secretary of State Dafna Rand, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken honored eight individuals with the Human Rights Defender Award. The recipients came from Kuwait, Bolivia, the Kyrgyz Republic, Burma, Eswatini, Ghana, Colombia, and Azerbaijan and defend migrant workers, LGBTQ+ individuals, women, democracy.

Their stories underlined both that the fight for human rights is universal and that it requires courage. One recipient’s award was delivered in absentia because he is imprisoned. Another award was posthumous—the recipient was murdered last year.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

Today we've got a slightly longer sample text, including a few words not otherwise introduced, and illustrating some new points of syntax.

It's (the rather anachronistic for a language dating to the European Iron Age) Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

All Human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience, and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

subl-ai ɣam-nis fri-yumas eð all-ANM.NOM.pl human-NOM.pl free.MASC.DAT.pl and ka-līg-umas lustr-ī reht-am-pi alike-MASC.DAT.pl value-GEN.sg right-GEN.pl-CONJ gnāy-antai widriþ-ād give.birth-3p.pl.PAS.PRES logic-ABL.sg lahtuðaɣ-ās-pi was-antai eð conscience-ABL.sg-CONJ dress-3p.pl.PAS.PRES and amm-as vir-s-inti sē RECP-DAT.pl over-be-3p.pl.PRES as-if brāþ-ris s-īnt ðē-ri brother-NOM.pl be-3p.pl.PRES.SBJ do-INF.ACT.PRES

This more complex text illustrates a few points of syntax.

We have a clause-level conjunction eð, and a word-level conjunction -pi (which also trigger assibilation of a preceding d).

The basic sentence is SOV, but pro-drop and with the ability to move elements forwards for focus or emphasis.

In more complex sentences, the finite or auxiliary verb goes in second position, and the infinitive goes in final position. In this way we have somewhat of an intermediate stage between the conservative SOV seen in early Continental Celtic, and the V2 seen in Old Germanic.

The dative (which has taken on the uses of the locative) is used as an adverbial case for adjectives (seen in the declension of "free" and "alike"), and the ablative has taken on the use of the instrumental (as seen in the declension of "logic" and "conscience").

Conditional military assistance

Development cooperation and security assistance must be conditional on adherence to the universal humanist values of the Enlightenment.

Assistance must not be given to a dictatorial regime that oppresses its population. The United States' unconditional support for Israel, which practices an apartheid regime against the Palestinians, is not right. This assistance should have been accompanied by conditions in return. France's support for Sahel countries against Islamist guerrillas has not been accompanied by a demand for democracy and human development. US protection of Saudi Arabia against Iran and Iraq was done despite the fact that Saudi Arabia practises discrimination between men and women, torture, monarchical dictatorship, and so on. In Gabon, France supported the Bongo dynasty in power to enable the country to prosper, but in exchange no democratic or human progress was demanded. As a result, the Gabonese have turned their backs on France. In Mali, no human measures were demanded in exchange for military assistance; the Malians saw that it protected the dictator in power and turned to the Wagner militias. This is creating resentment among the population. It's a betrayal of the universal values of the UDHR.

In Taiwan, Ukraine or South Korea, Western protection has its requirements in terms of elections, human progress and the fight against corruption. These countries have made tremendous human progress: they are true democracies respecting human rights, with real elections, no persecution of women or LGBT+, they don't attack their neighbours, etc. So it's possible.

On the night of April 13 to 14, 2024, Iran launched a salvo of 300 missiles and drones on Israel with the aim of killing as many people as possible, without being able to discriminate between civilians and soldiers. This is a war crime. If Iran or its allies in the Middle East were to repeat such an attack, Israel would need military assistance from Western countries to defend its population. This assistance must be conditional: an end to the massacres in Gaza, an end to the violence in the occupied territories, and an end to the apartheid regime against the Palestinians.

If a regime is backed without adhering to these values, what will the consequences be? Unconditional support for Israel has also led to support for the Israeli government, which massacres Gazans in total impunity.

These conditions must be negotiated publicly. The violence must stop. When the West intervenes, there must be security, schools, health, development and prosperity. Otherwise, there will be great disappointment, and this will fuel people's turning away from the West.

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Une aide militaire sous conditions: https://www.aurianneor.org/une-aide-sous-conditions/

When might is right: https://www.aurianneor.org/when-force-is-right/

European defense: https://www.aurianneor.org/european-defense/

The moral compass: https://www.aurianneor.org/the-moral-compass/

Immigration: https://www.aurianneor.org/immigration-2/

Freedom and coexistence: https://www.aurianneor.org/freedom-and-coexistence/

How can we win back trust?: https://www.aurianneor.org/how-can-we-win-back-trust/

Police and justice for the people: https://www.aurianneor.org/police-and-justice-for-the-people/

War and Peace at the UN: https://www.aurianneor.org/war-and-peace-at-the-un-in-1961-secretary-general/

The Red and the Yellow: https://www.aurianneor.org/the-red-and-the-yellow-red-scarves-against-yellow/

La preuve qu’on sait ne pas se battre. – Quand la force n’est pas légitime…: https://www.aurianneor.org/la-preuve-quon-sait-ne-pas-se-battre-quand-la/

Arrête de financer la haine: https://www.aurianneor.org/arrete-de-financer-la-haine/

Hoping The World Can’t Forget Loving Christine McVie

Music listeners everywhere mourned the loss of Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie on the 1st of December, 2022. Losing the British songstress came as a real shock. No one could have anticipated illness to take her away from us seemingly without warning. Beyond unfair, we have lost one of the greatest songwriters in rock and roll, not to mention a heavenly recording artist and performer.

McVie should be remembered first and foremost as a songstress. Hits written solely by McVie contributed significantly to the cosmic success of Fleetwood Mac over the decades. To her credit, McVie wrote the majority of songs on the bands’ biggest-selling albums, starting with 1975’s eponymous album Fleetwood Mac. In it, McVie gave the band Warm Ways, Over My Head, Say You Love Me and Sugar Daddy. On 1977’s Rumors, McVie wrote or co-wrote, and performed, Don’t Stop, Oh Daddy, You Make Loving Fun and (my all-time favorite) Songbird. She also contributed to writing The Chain. Her contributions to the band’s output continued album after album, with over a dozen more songs written by McVie and given to the band’s anthology, such as Over and Over, Everywhere, You and I Part II, and Little Lies.

Outside of Fleetwood Mac, Ms. McVie wrote and released several studio albums, and released the chart-topping 1984 hit song Got a Hold on Me, which dominated the Billboard Adult Contemporary and Rock Tracks charts.

The United Nations has published a statement of 30 intrinsic human rights. Each of the 30 articles was published in 1948, following the atrocities of World War II. The 27th Article from the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads:

1. Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

2. Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Human Rights includes both the right to artistic expression, as well as unrestricted access of the artist to the moral and materials interests her creations have garnered. This is an intrinsic part of Rock and Roll. Our culture can’t afford to diminish McVie’s contributions or allow them to go unmentioned. They must be continuously held up and talked about so long as Fleetwood Mac’s hits please our heads and hearts.

We, the enthusiastic music consumers, have enjoyed a long run of polished rock-and-roll acts. The megastar bands whose stellar lead vocals are matched by highly-trained rhythm and strings, et al. Whether thrown together by fate or my music moguls, the stadium-fillers have wooed the American music markets continuously since the 1970’s. While Fleetwood Mac will always be one of our all-time favorite rushes, let us give a special mention always to the original, resident goddess of their clan, Ms. Christine McVie who has now passed through this lifetime, but who has also left us a legacy to cherish and raise the next generation with.

The influence of McVie has been felt everywhere radios have played since 1975. Losing her is like losing a very warm feeling you’ve been able to tap into for years.

When I was fourteen, my mother played Fleetwood Mac The Greatest Hits album on cassette in our family’s minivan, for about a year. She claimed it was stuck inside the machine. The trip to and from my school took one hour. How I remember enjoying all of those 16 Fleetwood Mac songs. I never tried ejecting my mother’s tape, and I learned all of the songs by heart. McVie’s dignity resonates in her voice. Her music always captivated my attention.

Animated Film Premiere:

Everyone Has the Right: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights