Peanut dans Versaille

During the Paris weekend, Peanut took a day trip to Versaille. It looks like he had a nice time.

EEWWW and Why!?

Sad part is I think I have seen him in an airport queue in India. I distinctly remember been grossed out then also.

Anthony Victor of India has hair measuring 7.12 inches sprouting from the center of his outer ears.

World records revealed: From tallest teen to most Smurfs

Back blog: Lisboa

Anthony took me to Lisbon for my "29th for the 5th time" birthday :-). We had a great time. It was my first time there, though like always Anthony had been there before.

Though I will say that the food wasn't as good as I thought it would be. It was nice, but it wasn't great. Granted the pasteis de nata more than made up for it.












OH, and I also found out that my last name means salty snack (Salgado) :-(

One night in Bangkok and the world's your oyster

Well 3 actually.

I'm in a middle of a quickie Asian tour for work (if you count a couple of days in Nepal and a couple of days Thailand as an "Asian Tour").

The fabulous Tony is letting me crash at his place while I'm here for my meetings. I've spent the day shopping, which is what one does in Bangkok, and like Manu (who I missed by a day!), the humidity got the better of me also.

Now I'm trying to decide if I should go for a massage and a facial or bask in the wonder that is A/C.

Decisions, decisions.

I have joined the cycling revolution

Now that I am much closer to work, I figured it was time I joined London's growing cycling craze.

For one, I feel like my weight gain has reached obese proportions and that is just not on. Two, I truly hate the commuting traffic in public transport, i can feel my blood pressure raised each morning when I have to deal with the masses. Three, in the long run it is cheaper - the money I am saving on commuting will pay for the bike in 9 months.

Granted I do have the attention span of a gnat and the coordination of a spastic on speed, and I am dealing with London rush hour traffic; but really how bad can it be!?

Anthony having increased my life insurance coverage doesn't bother me. Thousands of people cycle around London each day and only a few die a month. Statistically speaking I should be fine.

Though the fates do seem to have a special fondness for fucking with me. Anywho, if you never hear from me again, it probably means that though I survived bomb blasts in Pakistan, i was squashed by a bendy bus in London.

I end up buying the bike in North London, they were great, really helpful (Chamberlaines in Kentish Town - check them out), but i had the issue of getting my bike to South London. That meant that though I have not ridden a bike in 20 years, my first ride would be 8.5 miles from the shop home. And did I mentioned that I had no clue where I was going?

In the end I made it home in about an hour, not sure where that falls on the scale between fat-ass loser and Olympic athlete; but I was just grateful to get home in one piece. Granted I was scared shitless the whole time and today my ass and legs are sore...and not in a good way.

Let's see how it goes tomorrow. I better loose some weight by the end of summer for all this trauma to be worth it!

On eating out

Don't you love it when restaurants make an effort in the presentation. Granted cute rice bears doesn't make you want to hack into them, but still that didn't stop Anthony.

So I got a new job right

I'm one of those international development guys and have always worked for small NGOs or local grassroots organisations. But now I am working for one of the big ones, the really big ones.

I am excited yet scared and overwhelmed.

As cliched as it may sound, it is way easier to be a big fish in a small pond. Plus it is faster to get things done when you don't have as big a structure.

Yet you can't argue with the resources and reached the a big organisation brings. Even if it comes with layers of management and bureaucracy.

Still, I am thrilled for this opportunity, let's just hope I don't fuck it up.

What is family for?

My baby sister got knocked up. Under normal circumstances I would be indifferent about this. Pregnancies have never excited me much. However, in this occasion I am fuming. Don't get me wrong she's not a teenager, she's a very respectable 21; and I used to think of her as the smart one among my four siblings. Yet, her remarkable lack of judgement and downright stupidity regarding procreation has definitely redefined my opinion of her.

I have no qualms with pre-marital sex or unwed mothers, but I do have issues with someone who is still living at home with her parents, that hasn't finish school, that doesn't have a job or a cent to her name thinking that she can raise a child. How does someone who has never had to struggle a day in her life, that doesn't know the meaning of sacrifice think that they can be responsible for someone else's life?

And to REALLY get my blood boiling: I asked her if she knew what kind of work I do, her reply "Something with AIDS right?" I asked her if she knew the prevalence of HIV and other STIs in Puerto Rico "I don't have to worry about that." Apparently she's immune. And why don't you use condoms or take the pill if you are fucking around I ask, "Because for 4 years I haven't gotten pregnant so didn't think I had to worry." Lord Fucking Help Me! If this conversation had been in person I think I would have slapped her.

So now, I am the bad guy for pointing out the bleeding obvious - her inability to raise a child when she can't take care of herself. Though I never actually told her she needed to abort the damn thing, I did everything in my power to indicate that it was the only choice she had. And she made it pointedly clear that she could not in good conscious "murder her unborn child". apparently she is too christian for an abortion, but not christian enough to keep her legs crossed. Go figure. Her master plan for taking care of herself and her baby - a healthy combination of parental support and welfare. Eye roll.

The hardest part for me in all this is that I will never be able to look at her in the same way again. That the one sibling I had that I thought could make something of herself was too stupid to protect herself/to plan ahead and too damn selfish to not burden others (because apparently her moral compass is OK with mooching from the rest of the family in order to deal with the problem).

At this point I actually have no interest in seeing her anytime soon or meeting the little bastard she's growing and that makes me really sad.

Peeps About Town

So James and David told me of a contest in DC for Peeps Dioramas. That reminded me of the fact that I never entered (or posted) my Peeps pictures for the "Introducing the Peeps in Places Photo Challenge!".

Last weekend, Anthony and I took a family of Peeps out for a tour of London, with every intention of entering the contest; but being the lazy sods that we are, we never got around to it.

Alas, here are the results:

Who counts as 'human'?

Source: The Guardian, 1 April 2009

A number of posts responding to this series have argued that human rights are self-evident, that they are expressions of the good society or, more extravagantly, that they are natural properties attaching to people like arms or legs.

Common to these arguments is the assertion that rights belong to humans on account of their humanity and not of a narrower membership such as nation or state. This is a comforting thought.

But when we examine it closer, it appears to be one of these paradoxical half-truths that litter our understanding of human rights.

A history of 'humanity'

The idea of "humanity" is modern. Athens and Rome had Athenians or Romans but not "men", in the sense of members of the human species. The word humanitas first appeared in the Roman Republic and meant eruditio et institutio in bonas artes (erudition and training in good conduct). Humanity was not a quality shared but, as Cicero put it, a standard of behaviour used to separate the homines humani (the educated Romans) from the homines barbari (the rest).

Christianity undermined the classical hierarchies. St Paul's statement that there is no Greek or Jew, man or woman, free man or slave (Epistle to the Galatians 3:28) introduced spiritual universalism. All humans have a soul and can be saved in God's plan of salvation, but only if they accept the faith since non-Christians have no place in the providential plan. This radical divide founded the ecumenical mission and proselytising drive of Church and Empire. In the Roman Empire, and those that followed it in exercising rule over large parts of the world, the line between humans and barbarians split the globe diagonally between the faithful and the heathen.

The Christian meaning of humanity was vigorously contested in one of the most important debates in history. In 1550, Aristotelian philosopher Gines de Sepulveda and cleric Bartolomé de las Casas debated the Spanish conquerors' attitude towards the Indians of Mexico. Sepulveda argued that "the Spaniards rule with perfect right over the barbarians who, in prudence, talent, virtue, humanity are as inferior to the Spaniards as children to adults, women to men, the savage and cruel to the mild and gentle, I might say as monkey to men."

Las Casas disagreed, arguing that the Indians had well-established customs and settled ways of life. They are "unwitting" Christians, he said, like Adam before the Fall, and would convert to Christianity but also accept the Spanish authority if the conquerors respected their traditions, laws and culture.

Las Casas combined theology and political utility in an early example of multiculturalism. But his Christian universalism was, like all universalisms, exclusive. He repeatedly condemned "Turks and Moors, the veritable barbarian outcasts of the nations". Las Casas won the moral argument but Sepulveda's advice was adopted by assorted colonialists and imperialists.

The next step in the history of "humanity" was taken by the early modern political philosophers and 18th century revolutionaries.

The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen states that "men are born and remain free and equal of right" but proceeds to bestow these rights, in their real, legal and political sense, to only some Frenchmen: citizens.

From this point on, statehood, sovereignty and territory followed a national principle. The gap between universal "man" and national citizen is filled by foreigners – they do not have rights because they are not citizens and as a result they are not fully human.

By separating humanity from citizenship, the French Declaration (and today, human rights treaties) introduced two alternatives: imperialism, in which the nation claims to be the expression of humanity and to spread its civilising influence through conquest. The Napoleonic wars are an early example, Iraq a contemporary. Or cosmopolitanism, in which universal values override local idiosyncracies. It was left to the Haitian revolution, which emancipated slaves and gave political rights to colonial people, to uphold universalism against its inventors.

The "man" of the "rights of man" has no concrete characteristics, except for free will, reason and soul. These universal elements secularised the Christian belief in the sacredness of life and endowed humanity with dignity and respect. At the same time, this "man" is an abstraction without body, colour, gender or history, as Hegel, Burke and Marx agreed.

Yet the empirical man who actually enjoyed rights was literally a man — a well-off, white, Christian, urban male. He condensed the abstract dignity of humanity and the privileges of the powerful. Ever since, full 'humanity' is constructed against a background of preconditions (citizenship, class, gender, race, religion, sexuality) which exclude the majority of human beings.

If rights are universal, refugees, "illegal" immigrants or the Guatanamo detainees who have no country to protect them should have humanity's entitlements. But they have none – they are just bare, unprotected life. Human rights do not belong to humans, the construct a graded "humanity".

The human rights movement can be seen as the ongoing but failing struggle to close the gap between the abstract man of the Declarations and the empirical human being.

Anti-discrimination conventions for people of colour, women, children, gay and lesbians add flesh, blood and sex to the pale outline of the "human". Have they succeeded? Yes and no.

The concept of a common "humanity" introduced the vocation of universal dignity. History has taught us, however, that there is nothing sacred about any definition of humanity and nothing eternal about its scope. Humanity's mastery, like God's omnipotence, includes the ability to redefine who or what counts as human and even to destroy itself. The dialectics of Enlightenment led both to emancipation and to Nazism. Similarly, rights are both a way of protecting the individual and a tool that governments use to discipline societies and, recently, the world.

Every historical age has used its (philosophical or empirical) definition of humanity to separate between rulers, ruled and excluded.

Those who don't speak our language, share our religion, belong to the wrong class, gender, colour or sexuality have always been left outside locally defined "humanity". These categories of exclusion are still active. They have been joined by the "bottom billion", the "human waste", the rejects of global neoliberal capitalism. Despite claims to the contrary, humanity cannot act as a normative ground.

A bill of rights?

Rights are an important liberal institution, but liberal philosophy – endlessly recycling 18th century ideas of the social contract (Rawls), natural rights (Dworkin) or the categorical imperative (Habermas) – misunderstands them.

Rights do not belong to fully formed humans. On the contrary, rights are tools through which people build their identities in an ongoing struggle for recognition with other people and social institutions.

Anti-discrimination rights give my racial or sexual characteristics minimal recognition and help me match public and private identity. But as Hegel explained, a formal right to property not accompanied with material means deprives the person of (self) respect and splits her identity between abstract dignity and concrete degradation.

This distance between formal rights and the preconditions necessary for their exercise is a key problem.

The European Convention of Human Rights and the Human Rights Act do not include even a basic right to equality.

The civil and political rights covenant creates enforceable rights while the economic and social rights covenant asks states to "take steps" towards their implementation. These gaps and omissions reflect the divergent trajectories of the liberal and socialist traditions, which lead to different versions of rights.

This historical and philosophical understanding helps reorient human rights in a number of ways. International human rights are a fact in the world and this adds a veneer of universalism.

But whatever international treaties, commissions and courts say, rights are violated or respected by state and local armies, courts, bureaucrats, financiers and police forces. Civil and political liberties, economic and welfare rights, have been won in political struggles against national authorities not in international conferences.

Talk of universal rights has rhetorical value but little purchase when electronic, CCTV and data surveillance – this new vis anglais – maps and records every aspect of life.

Francesca Klug recently argued that bills of rights are not "a substitute for politics". This is right but unfortunately no longer true.

Over the last 30 years, rights have become a main way of doing politics for both left and right. I do not refer here to civil liberties and the limited protections the underprivileged, the oppressed and the poor enjoy. Defending them is the core case of human rights, the contemporary expression of the urge to resist domination and oppression.

The problem is different: by becoming the vernacular expression of every kind of individual aspiration and desire, and a dominant language of public policy, they have lost their significance and edge. The Mail, the Sun and the Conservatives lead the attack by targeting "illegal" immigrants and "bogus refugees", while promoting the rights of crime victims, property owners and bankers. For these defenders of free-market individualism, rights are playthings of the middle-class.

Jack Straw joins the chorus from the other end. Responding to Tory attacks, the government promises a bill of "rights and responsibilities", and compares it to the Magna Carta and the 1688 Bill of Rights. According to Justice Minister Michael Wills, the bill will cover not just traditional liberties but also "jobs, housing, healthcare and education … the daily frustrations of public life … the hunting and the smoking ban". This is a pretty comprehensive list of political priorities.
When Labour was still a party of the left, it understood that politics expresses, condenses and aims to mediate social and economic conflict.

Antagonism is the life of politics and social justice its aim. But as Labour and the Tories moved to the ideological centre and pursued similar policies, conflict was declared finished.

The emphasis on the rights of crime victims and consumers pursues the same agenda. It gives the impression that fat cat bosses and the unemployed share common interests and values.
However, rights as entitlements of individuals cannot tackle inequality nor are they synonymous with justice. When rights become the main language of politics, they join the choice agenda and become an expression of neo-liberalism. As conflict returns in new intense forms, the left needs to rethink rights.

I'm not the only one that loves Peeps :-)

Introducing the Peeps in Places Photo Challenge!

Teehee! What better way to get some global exposure to the those little sugar coated marshmallow dreams.

I need to figure out where best to take the photo for my entry :-D

I love me some Peeps

Nothing says Spring like Peeps! :-) Last year the lovely Alan sent me a box with my favourite Easter treat. This year while Anthony was in LA, he was a total sweetie and got me a wonderful assortment of them. Yey!

I didn't even know that now they came in so many colours.

Though not for everyone, they are definitely one of my faves.

So I'm Uganda, right

I had to come to Kampala for a short assignment for work. I'm only here for the week, but it is totally random and last minute and I'm actually quite excited. Last time I was here was spending the Christmas holidays with my friend Sue over 4 years ago, who was working here at the time and it was strange coming back here.

Last time it was purely a social visit and I stayed with Sue and she and her friends took care of me and showed me around, but this time I don't know anyone and I am stuck in a hotel in downtown Kampala, which in the immediate vicinity doesn't seem to have much.

I am sure if explored a bit I could find stuff, but after working all day I just don't have the energy and I wouldn't even know where to get started.

This is the immediate area around the hotel.










As part of my work here I have been meeting some traditional birth attendants. Gladys is the warmest, most welcoming TBA I have ever met. In any country. With her demeanor it is obvious why a woman would choose to go to her for delivery as oppose to a hospital or clinic that may be short-staffed and under supplied.

This is where the women deliver

And here we have a community health education group singing a song about abstinence :-)