The coal fields of central Appalachia are not free.

The coal fields of central Appalachia are not free.


Somewhere near the Asian values section, Donally talks about the dichotomy between development and human rights. Specifically he talks about whether or not it is acceptable on the international arena to violate human rights for the sake of economic development. The obvious case in example is the third world in general. Specifically, think about the rain forests; indigenous peoples are losing their right to their culture and family lives when they are driven off their traditional lands as the forests are cleared for agriculture, specifically, ranches.
This debate may be difficult to internalize because we are not directly affected by third world development in our everyday consciousness. But what about when human rights are sacrificed for economic prosperity, not development? That is to ask is it acceptable, for the sake of our own economic well-being and comfort for human rights violations to continue to occur in order to feed the fires of the black furnace capitalism?
Case in point: Coal fields of Appalachia are not free; the people live under the dictatorship of King coal and for over 150, the people living in this region have been at the mercy of the violent whims of what is good for the coal industry. Everyday coal miners enter into unsafe working conditions, blatant violations of industry safety standards, so that the rest of the nation might have cheap electricity. Not only are the miners themselves at risk and suffer HR working violations, but everyone living in the area must reckon with the reality of a high impact mineral extraction economy.
Communities all over the coal fields are faced with poisoned water supplies, flooding, the threat of sludge impoundment dam failure, dangerous coal dust, and a public opinion that there is no point to fight for the interests of the people while there is so much power vested in the coal companies. The people living in these areas do not have the same life that the rest of America can enjoy. They live in a sacrifice zone that is being pillaged and ravaged for the sake of cheap electricity.

What other examples are there of such “sacrifice zones” in our own country?

Is the reality of this example and others acceptable if it provides for the stability and growth of our economic system?

Are there other nations that prosper without the exploitation of their citizens?

What kind of actions can we take to lessen our dependence on such HR violations?

Do you think many people think about this sort of thing? If not is that a problem?

How is this a commentary on capitalism, globalization and modernity?

Link to my ASU Comic Blog

I was just posting the link to my blog where I will start posting the comics I do for the ASU newspaper [and any other comics I do, either for the Village Idiot or myself]. I'll also place any feedback I recieve from people and post my responses to those.

I'd also love to hear feedback from you guys also, because at first I didn't take this job very seriously, but now I am actually trying to do this professionally. So I welcome and criticism- be it negetive or positive.

Thanks!
Vonda

My Blogger

Human Rights Essay

At first I was not too thrilled that I was required to write an essay on a movie. The assignment was so vauge and I had no idea what to write. I missed all the showings of the movies and just arbitrarily choose a movie to watch. That movie was Hotel Rwanda.

Prior to watching it I knew nothing of this movie. I just knew alot of people said it was very sad and horrible. But I figured I could squeeze atleast 3 pages out of viewing it...but never would I thought that movie would have moved me so much. Granted, I never shed a tear [I'm a pretty tough cookie har har har] but my eyes did water. Throughout the whole movie I kept wishing to myself that this was fiction- that this was not happening with our government's knowledge and we're doing NOTHING to prevent it.

I put so much heart into writing the paper after seeing the film- I even tried to keep it formal and not write in the first person, but the latter half of my paper I just had to put my emotions and opinions in.

So thank you Cynthia for requiring this paper.

Hotel Rwanda: I feel so helpless

After viewing the film, for a few minutes I sat there dazed- my mind was racing and thinking back to how many times situations like this have repeated themselves throughout history. You would think over the centuries, the government would have evolved to fix this error- this practice of turning a blind eye until the trouble hits home. Granted, when we DID try to "help" during the Vietnam war, things got out of hand, but that does not mean that we must abstain from involving ourselves with ANY outside problems.

But I was trying to think of things I could do as an individual to help. I feel the need to get involved now, or atleast make more people aware of such atrocities that are happening throughout the world. Because I beleive if we stay on this path of apathy, soon the things will get too out of hand, and societies will be doomed...

Poor "Human Rights Conditions" for Florida Farm Workers

About a week ago, 9 different human rights groups (including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Oxfam, America among others) submitted to the Executive Secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Mr. Santiago A. Cantón, a letter concerning the "human rights conditions" of Floridian farm workers. The letter revealed that at least 1000 workers have been subjected to forced labor/ slavery and when not being forced to work, the laborers are often paid far below the minimum wage (between $2500 and $7500 even though the poverty line was recently defined as $9310 for a single-person household). Additionally, about 83% of these laborers have no healthcare and, not to mention, the working conditions are often less-than-adequate. Hopefully, the letter they submitted will help expose and relieve many of these human rights violations.

Chinese AIDS sufferers put on house arrest

In recent HR news, China has placed many people infected with HIV/ AIDS under house arrest in order to keep them from petitioning the National People's Congress for compensation they may be entitled to due to a government scheme to profit from blood sales that went awry (some of the blood sold was infected w/ the AIDS virus). These people (23 cases documented thus far) were not only forbidden to leave their homes, but were also denied essential healthcare as well as any imdemnification. So essentially, the Chinese government is not only responsible for the numerous infections that occured in the first place, but is also refusing those people any compensation or even the right to plead for it....pretty lousy

military recruiters: just doing their job or going too far?

Although now we are all in college and it's becoming a bit easier to avoid the recruiters in the student union, the military is now (and has been for the past 3 years) taking extra steps in gaining new recruits. i know at my high school at least, dodging the "Be all you can be" crew was an everyday battle in the cafeteria and common areas. i actually even got in trouble for writing an article in our newspaper about the obnoxious tactics now being used to try pull students in. but either way, invading young people's privacy is becoming a common practice. and if i'm not mistaken, privacy is a human right ( at least according to "the list"). but i came across this article and thought it was definitely applicable to our class. now i'm not saying these recruiters are doing anything that's going to cause mass genocide or world hunger or anything of the sort, but they are certainly violating some lesser "valued" rights, like privacy. Raptivism.com is a good website to check out sometime if you have. Under "News" then "Politics" there are a lot of good articles and under "Factivisms" there are some really interesting facts from varying sources.

Some examples of facts that can be found there: "In 2001, there were 932,000 black children living in "exteme poverty" in the United States- the most since 1979" (source: TIME magazine)

and

"South Africa under apartheid (1993): 851 per every 100,000 black adult men incarcerated.
--In the United States under George W. Bush (2001): 7,226 per every 100,000 black adult men incarcerated."

have a good break everyone.
rachel

Human Rights Horrors II: Idi Amin

Idi Amin was the military dictator of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. His regime commited various atrocities against the people of his country--human rights experts hold Idi Amin's regime responsible for the deaths of at least 300,000 Ugandans.

The first human rights violation Idi commited was his call for the expulsion of all asians (Indians, Pakistanis, middle easterners) from Uganda. He later commited genocide against certain tribes he deemed inferior--where the 300,000 deaths come from.

read more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idi_Amin
http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/amin.html

The State Made Me Do It

http://humanrightswatch.org/english/docs/2006/02/22/usdom12706.htm

What is being discussed is the involvement of physicians in prisoner executions, and how many states have laws mandating physician involvement. This is clearly a violation of their legal rights, and rights of consent as they are forced to participate against their morals, ethics and spoken oaths. The Hippocratic Oath says that doctors shall strive to foster life, and to never willingly end it. Though there are always extenuating circumstances, no state should force unwilling doctors into aiding in executions.

What Does It All Mean?

While the content of these articles, websites and movies is shocking, it must be taken with a grain of salt. As Dennis has pointed out, the Bush family has ties to the Nazi Party, and to its key supporters. Though this is a leap of faith, the mythology of both the Skull and Bones society, the Thule Society and their links to neo-Babylonian/druidic death rituals is somewhat pointed, clearly there is a vast undercurrent of deception and for lack of a better phrase "bad vibes" going on here. The video also points out the Bush Family's links to the Brown Brothers Harriman which was fundamental in funding the Nazi war machine. It is almost naive to think the the Nazi Party could not have risen to power without American support, pre- WWII Germany was in ruins, and had absolutely no viable credit or dinero; however, though it might be naive, there is absolutely no cause for American to think in this way. This is simply outrageous, and personally, I would have never thought about it...Then again, if the government was to have covert ties (in some respects) to the Nazis, would the want me to know about it? Paralleling this is the Bush involvement with Saudi Arabia, and specifically the Saudi Bin Laden Group, the largest contractor in the Middle East, and one fiscally inseparable from the Wahabi powerhouse of the House of Saud. Both the Bush family and the Bin Ladens/Sauds have millions and millions of dollars invested in each other, not to mention the astonishing billions the Saudis have invested in the US. This leads me to wonder how much of our national policy is dictated on the grounds of making sure that this money is safe, and not to mention the the Saudis invest more money into our hungry pocketses. We all know that money, however glamorous is the root of all evil, I reference Bush and the Simple life in this, and if billions of dollars worth of evil roots have been growing since Nazi Germany in the backyards of the Bushes, the Bin Ladens, the Sauds...I think its pretty safe to say that there is something fishy to be found along the pathways of power and the money that changes hands behind closed doors. I dont believe that somehwere is there is vast evil orchard, but that there is definately something wrong with a government that overtly undermines its core principles and supports the very institutions that it condemns. I suppose the moral of the video is to know your history, to know your father (after all, he may be a Nazi), to watch out for violations of our essential and guaranteed freedoms.

Of course, take what this video has to offer, and what i have said here, with a large grain of salt, maybe even a pillar.

Yours Truly, Matt

Human Rights Horrors: the Khmer Rouge

The Khmer Rouge was a communist regime which ruled the southeast asian country of Cambodia (next door to Vietnam) for the second half of the 1970s. The Khmer Rouge commited some of the most atrocious examples of human rights violations that the world has ever seen.

Among countless other violations, the regime forced relocation through the emptying out of urban centers (bringing the workers away from the evils of the city and into the country for agricultural ventures), commited genocide against not only specific ethnic groups but also people perceived to be "intellectuals" (the government even went so far as to round up and kill any people they could find wearing glasses) and people of any type of religion (buddhist, christian, whatever).

It's a little slice of 20th century history that is horrifying and often overlooked.

read more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge