Confessions of a News Junkie

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has reversed Iran's female liberation movement systematically, one restriction at a time, since he took power in August 2005.
Among his proposals:
- A law to mandate 1/2 college students are men, including a policy to restrict women entering medicine
- Women who work for the government must leave work by 6 to care for their families (law)

ANd even prisons give more free time, cigarette breaks, and tea to men.

The implications these policies will have on Pakistan's women creates a disaster in the field of human rights. Such setbacks set precedents for segregating societies and chipping away at women's rights as equal rights. Probably the most detrimental effect will be in education, where all nations can only benefit from training the students with the highest potentials and accelearted wills to succeed.

The U.S. Supreme Court's ban on partial birth abortions is a disgrace to our country's judicial decision. And it is not coincidental that the majority of the proponents of the ruling make religious justifications for protecting the fetus after twelve weeks. Therefore, the implications of this decision demonstrate religion's narrow control over justice and politics in our nation. There are many countries in western Europe that were founded on religious premises but uphold abortion laws and support women's reproductive decisions. Though we are a young nation, and even though our founders had all intentions to separate church and state, I hope we will catch up to the European countries, which safeguard a woman's right to privacy and good health care.

In November 2008, Americans will vote in the first presidential election in eighty years without an incumbent candidate, which means that neither the president nor sitting vice-president will run for the office. This unique political race of virgin candidates explains why campaign money will dominate political discussions until the November 2008 election.. Confident candidates with large enough campaign coffers seek economic advisers early in order to formulate legitimate and plausible policy strategies. The advisers analyze public spending habits, national trends and global markets, all of which can determine how presidents devise funding programs, such as health insurance. Republican and Democratic candidates already face distinct challenges, which is why their economic advisers are shaping campaign promises early. The Democratic primaries in March 2008 anticipates a vicious race between Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama but Jon Edwards continues to gain voter confidence with his unique health-care reform strategy. Republicans candidates struggle to reestablish their constituent base and overall party identity. They have spent more money than the Democrats, but have raised less in the first quarter of fundraising. In order to for candidates with smaller campaign coffers to gain popularity until the primaries, they will have to adopt creative ways to connect with voters.
Lucky for French candidates, their election law mandates that all nominees receive the same amount of TV coverage, which parallels the overall socialist schema of le politique français. But U.S. campaign finance laws don’t compete with the French in equal platform mandates during elections. The 2008 primaries will continue to dominate the national news, and this election will remind us all that in politics, money talks.  
 

The Bush adminstration spends at least one third of its AIDS assistance (PEPFAR- Preseidential Emergency Plan for Aids Relief) on Abstinence Only messages. Many African communities, however, are unable to consider a lifestyle based on abstinence, or even being faithful to one partner. Their cultures do not teach such western values, whihttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifch make understanding PEPFAR AIDS prevention methods much more difficult and often futile.

The US Congress requested a study to monitor evidence of youth abstinence in the United States, where the term is better understood than in Africa. The results showed that knowledge about abstinence (aka education) did not change the sexual behaviors of the youth. I doubt that the PEPFAR funding is being applied effectively in African communities if abstinence programs neither coincide with cultural norms nor promote healthy sexual activity and women empowerment, both of which can help decrease AIDS prevalence.

Additional Resources (April 17)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/washington/15sex.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/weekinreview/15mcneil.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Uganda’s democratic government is struggling to reconcile internal human rights abuses. As Uganda’s President, Yoweri Museveni is responsible for securing peace in the Uganda and restoring public confidence in his government. One of the major obstacles in thwarting violence from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is the decision to either prosecute LRA leaders in the International Criminal Court (ICC) or negotiate peace with the LRA leaders; the later will result in more immediate, but perhaps short-lived national cohesion and stable relationships among the government, Ugandans, and former rebels. The unsuccessful negotiations between the LRA and the government have stipulated that the LRA give up their weapons and cease violence indefinitely.

Since its early years, the LRA terrorized civilians using brutal insurgency tactics to overthrow the government. Thousands have died in the two-decade conflict between rebels and the government, and about two million have been forced to flee their homes. The LRA targets northern Uganda’s Acholi tribe, while trying to motivate the victims’ communities to join the fight against the National Resistance Movement (NRM). An international assessment of the LRA’s history of human rights abuses follows,

"a pattern of brutalization of civilians by acts including murder, abduction, sexual enslavement, mutilation, as well as mass burnings of houses and looting of camp settlements; that abducted civilians, including children, are said to have been forcibly recruited as fighters, porters and sex slaves and to take part in attacks against the Ugandan army (UPDF) and civilian communities.”*

The United Nations under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, Jan Egeland, called the destruction of Uganda’s communities and the human rights crimes “among the world’s most neglected crises”** International actions are apparent, but only effective marginally, due to limitations in disrupting state sovereignty.

In order for Uganda’s government to demonstrate democratic efforts at negotiations, it must incorporate citizens’ opinions represented throughout Uganda, or use a third party like the ICC to evaluate the fate of human rights criminals. Negotiations will include a cessation of LRA abuses and the former rebels’ subsequent integration into Ugandan communities and will demonstrate the government’s ability to assert national protection, power, and control. The ICC, on the other hand, will determine the incarceration of individual leaders responsible for the most elevated evidence of international violations of human rights law.

In either case, the Director of the International Center for Transitional Justice, Juan Mendez says “settling the problem of criminal liability for the very worst crimes is essential to peace, because it separates the responsibility of the individual who exploits the fears and anxieties of the population,”*** Notable to this viewpoint is evidence that when LRA attacks result in retaliation from the Uganda’s Peoples Defense Force (UPDF), a cycle of violence and fear throughout Uganda continues.

*“Warrant of Arrest unsealed against five LRA Commanders,” International Criminal Court, The Hague, 14 October 2005, (18 March 2007).
**Payam Akhavan, “The Lord’s Resistance Army Case: Uganda’s Submission of the First State Referral To the International Criminal Court,” Developments at the International Criminal Court, 99, no. 3 (2005): 420.
***Méndez, Juan E, “In Defense of Transitional Justice,” in Traditional Justice and the Rule of Law in New Democracies, ed. A. James McAdams (University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, 1997), 8.

# posted by CourtneyH : 8:47 AM  0 Comments

JUSTICE DENIED
President Musharraf fired his Chief Justice, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, who investigated cases of government intelligence based disappearances since the 2001 US allied efforts to contain suspected terrorists. Chaudry also resisted any temptation to tip-toe around other government wrongdoings, such as illegal property sales. The President's decision is similar to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' oversight of firing eight federal lawyers because both instances reveal political motivations for protecting the executive.

http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F10713FE35550C768DDDAA0894DF404482

SEX SLAVES
In his article, "Sanctuary for Sex Slaves," Nicholas Kristof documents the tale of a woman named Shakira Parveen forced into a brothel by her husband, who failed to tell her about his profession prior to their marriage. After escaping the brothel, her husband threatened to kidnap and beat her family members, and he did. Local police and council members contributed to Ms. Parveen's adversity by stating that such agreements between their forces and the brothel owner were common and they intended to uphold predetermined loyalty to ignore the incidents.


http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/opinion/03kristof.html

KARZAI VS. MUSHARRAF
Afghan President Karzai blames Pakistan for making deals with Taliban militia on its border, increasing difficulty for Afghanistan's war against the group. It is likely that the tension between Pakistan and Afghanistan efforts to suppress terrorism will make awkward meeting between the United States and the two nations. Will Condi visit to reconcile the arguments?

http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F40910F93A540C728CDDAD0894DF404482

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/02/world/middleeast/02qaeda.html