Human Rights

A throwaway comment I made somewhere (I can't remember where, it might have even been on this blog, but I can't find it) was about human rights, and it was pretty damn astute, and I'd like to spend a little time on it now.

In Canada, human rights are very much in the news. If MPs criticize Israel's human rights record, they're hit with the "antisemite" stuff, and it doesn't come off very well. Calling someone a bigot in Commons is okay, because speech is protected by law (libel and slander can't reach there), but it's still akin to asking a fellow member "So when did you stop beating your wife?" It sneaks the idea in there, and the more vehement your denials, the worse you look.

There's also the much bally-hooed apology by the PM for the treatment of Natives at residential schools. I've said before that my criticism of the Conservatives is largely policy-based (though I just don't like that dude), and I am proud of him for accepting responsibility on our behalf.

Macleans Magazine recently faced the BC human rights tribunal for publishing an article by Mark Steyn. I don't like Stryn, either, but he has a right to his opinion, and Macleans has a right to publish it. I'm a big fan of the human rights, but one of those rights is the right to free speech. You ought to be able in Canada to say whatever you want, and then everybody else should have the right to call you on it if you're wrong. Incidetally, from what I've read of the piece, it doesn't look to be wrong, bigoted or inflammatory. I'm not a fan of the way Canada handles its human rights. Free speech is too fucking important.

South of the 49th, California has a gay marriage holiday, until the voters go to the poll and revoke that right. Even now, assholes are being caught out because they think gay people are icky and don't want to marry them (to each other).

Everybody and their dog has an opinion, it seems, on the Beijing Olympics, because they're not nice to Tibet, or to dissidents. Most of the nations criticizin China have no moral high ground, but they're strident in saying that China is bad. I've commented on this before.

But the question of human rights is really never at issue, despite what people think. Honestly, everyone agrees what human rights are: freedom of speech, assembly, conscience, equality before the law, no slavery, no torture, no murder, fair trials and access to legal council, etc. The Canadian Charter and the Bill of Rights are more or less in sync (though that whole 'right to bear arms' thing is still a bit baffling), and agree largely with the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. No argument. Here are the rights.

But who has them?

To whom do these documents apply? That's the million dollar question.

In theory, everyone. But in theory, communism works, and in theory, Chirstianity says we ought to be nice to each other.

But let's be realistic. We spend an inordinate amount of time deciding who gets these rights, who doesn't, and thn providing justifications for our discrimination.

Mark Steyn and Macleans don't have the right to free speech, because it apparently infringes on someone else's right to not feel threatened (or at least their right to not feel abd about anything). In 48 states, gay people do not have the right of equality before the law because they are cunning linguists or like penises and other people have the right to follow a religion that teaches them to hate fags. Suspected terrorists do not have the right to a fair trial, dignity in prison, or to not be tortured in American Prisons becuase they're brown and Muslim. In the past, Canadian Aboriginals did not have the mobility rights or free association rights because white folks knew what was good for them (apparently it was raping and beating). Minors don't have the right to vote (admittedly, I don't trust most adults with their ballots...). In fact, the right to vote has a very checkered past: first only citizens, and then everyone who owned property, and then only white people, and then only men, and now only adults. And that's in actual democracies. There are dozens of countries that don't even pretend to let their people have a say in governance.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is far from universal, and most of the signatories have bloody hands, Canada included. I don't stand on our record as a good example. It's appalling. And yet we have the gall to criticize China, to badmouth the 48 states that don't allow gays to marry, and to say that Israel is engaging in Apartheid in Palestine, or call the people that say that nasty names.

But that gall, that chutzpah, is vital. It's the only thing that might drive us forward. We are all guilty, and thus no one can stand in judgement. However, we need to keep calling each other on our crimes. No one else will. There's no higher power, there's no ultimate authority, except each other. That's the point of democracy, and that's the ideal of the United Nations.

What we need to do is stop pretending. Human rights documents do not apply to everyone.

They should, but they don't. Until they do, we must keep fighting.

More Chinese (take that any way you wish...)

I can't seem to leave this China thing alone. Maybe it's because I keep hearing about it on the news. So I'm telling everyone who'll listen why a boycott of the Olympic Games is not an answer.

1. We can't get up on our high horse and bitch at anybody else about human rights violations. We're fucking up the planet, which won't seriously affect us, but will starve millions of people. In addition, we continue to discriminate against the most vulnerable people in Canada, when it would be quite simple and pretty affordable to guarantee an annual wage and further subsidise housing. In addition, we have a history of racial discrimination in the Chinese head tax, the Japanese and German internment camps (and Ukranians, too, but I never understood that), and the genocide of the First Nations. Not to mention that when we couldn't kill all the red people (not even with bioweapons), we tried to breed them out, or steal their children, and then when that didn't work, we put them on reservations, made them poor, and then made it difficult to break the cycle of poverty. We also instilled in our children a healthy sense of contempt them.
2. We're hosting the Winter Games in two years, and we won't have stopped our occupation of another nation by then. So there's that. Dead Afghanis look as bad on the news as dead Tibetans.
3. The Brits likely won't have pulled out of Iraq by 2012, so they can have that monumental human rights cluster fuck on their hands for as well.
4. I forgot to mention the economic sanctions against Iraq that Canada participated in, killing about a million Iraqis. So, while we were smart enough to tell George and Tony that we wouldn't go play in the sand with them, we did kill as many people as the war has. However, our way was much cheaper...
5. China has more than a billion people in it. They are the second or third biggest market in the world for consumer products (I'm not sure where the EU sits in that ranking). They own most of America's debt, which is substantial. They produce a significant portion of our manufactured goods, because we're too snotty to produce them ourselves, and we don't want to pay a fair price for them anyway. They are also increasing food production, and managing to sell produce to Canada that Canada would grow anyway, just not as cheaply: pears, apples, berries, apricots and pears. (Do you realize how fucked up that is? I expect my bok choi and water chestnut to come from China, but my apples? I live in ONTARIO, for Thor's sake!) China also has the largest standing army in the world, and while their military budget is peanuts compared to the US, they still make and sell a lot of weapons. What I'm saying here is that China may be embarrassed by an Olympic Boycott, but they can afford to be embarrassed. They have the worl economy by the short & curlies, as my mother would say.
6. Boycotts would hurt only the athletes (who haven't killed any Tibetans, I'd wager) and the sponsors (I can support that aspect of it. I'd shed no tears for poor old Ronald McDonald.)
7. *EDIT* Olympic boycotts don't work. Did the US change its economic and defense policies because the Soviet Union boycotted the '84 games? Did they improve conditions for their own poor? Did they pull back on defense spending or intelligence and counter-intelligence? Did they pull out of West Germany? Um, no. They re-elected Reagan, an then elected Bush Sr. How about the US boycott of the 1980 games? Any measurable difference? Apparently not. Only a retaliatory boycott. So we sit out their games, and then they decline our invitation. That's mature.

You want China to stop killing Tibetans? Stop buying their shit. It worked with the dolphins and the tuna. (I don't mean to insult anyone by comparing them to dolphins, though I can't imagine how that could be considered insulting. But I don't know much about Tibetan culture except what I've learned from the Dalai Llama, who doesn't seem like the kind of guy who'd get worked up about a dolphin analogy, but you never know.)

You know what else might work? Stop selling them shit. Particularly oil. Canada is in a peverse position of power, or we could be. The tar sands are huge. Probably more oil there than remains in Saudi Arabia (though the Saudis would deny that). However, it's expensive (which seems to be fine, now), and it's dirty (which, according to the relevant governments, seems to be fine, for now), and it takes a lot of energy to extract (which is fine, for the oil companies that drill for the natural gas the tar sadns use). We can't turn off the taps to the US (until Obama gets elected and opens up NAFTA discussions, which he'll soonafter regret), but we can say we aren't going to sell any oil to the Chinese unless they get their human rights shit together.

You want to see Canada punching above her weight on the international stage? We could do it. Just not in Beijing.

Though we will kick their ass in baseball (if they play it).

Tibet

China is getting up to dickens in Tibet. Big surprise. You tell the people that conquered you a while ago that you're rather sick of their abuse and they're likely to get testy.

What complicates things is that China is hosting the Olympics this summer. We don't want to visit a country that has invaded another and is tormenting its inhabitants (which means the UK will have to pull out of Afghanistan and Iraq inside of four years), and so people are urging our Canadian athletes to boycott the games.

Easy to say, if you haven't spent your life being the best fucking speedwalker in the Great White North. However, if you work full time (because we don't support our athletes) and train full time and forsake a real life with hobbies and friends and shit so you can get a medal in synchronized swimming (hopefully not solo, because in my opinion that sport's a bit odd), then it's tougher to say, "Ah, what the hell. It'll happen in four more years, and the Brits are our allies."

But what really chaps my ass is saying so smugly that the Chinese are assholes and we shouldn't go play with them because of their human rights record. Hang on a sec. Let's take a quick look at our own:

• Invaded continent and largely wiped out the people who already lived there, forced them to convert to Christianity, raped them to make half-breed babies, hanged their leaders when they objected to colonialism, put up religious schools that abused them sexually and physically, in addition to wiping out their culture;
• Promised to cut poverty and then made the rich richer while a fifth of Canadian children live in poverty;
• Invaded Afghanistan because some Saudi attacked the U.S.;
• Trade with China VERY liberally;
• Did NOT boycott South Africa;
• etc.

I'm so proud to be Canadian.