Feeding Frenzy #2
Congratulations, Somalia. You’ve done better than the United States.
November 20 marked the twentieth anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Marking that day, the government of Somalia promised to ratify the convention, leaving only one UN member-state that has refused to sign on: the United States.
It would have been embarrassing to have let twenty years pass without ratifying the CRC. To have not ratified it at all is mortifying. To be the only country yet to sign—beaten by Somalia—is repulsive. Somalia barely even has a government, let alone one known for its progressive views.
The strongest voices against ratification belong to the Religious Right, which has stood in opposition to the CRC because, as they tell it, it takes away the rights of the parents. Specifically, children would have protected freedom of opinion, freedom of information, freedom of thought, and freedom of religion. Children would have the right to safety, which, although not outlawing all corporal punishment, outlaws the sort that would cause severe mental or physical trauma.
If children have freedom of opinion, information, thought, and religion, they will be harder to indoctrinate. If children are free from beatings, they will be harder to indoctrinate. I’ll follow up on this sort of assholery on a later date, but for now, it’s enough to say that it’s despicable that the United States bases foreign policy on the will of the Religious Right.
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It’s easy to get caught up in the stereotypes and to start to think of Western Europe as a place of snooty progressives who look down their noses at America’s struggles with prejudice. The choice by Swiss voters to ban the construction of minarets shows that America isn’t the only country with douchebags: ours are just more obvious.
Things work a little differently in Switzerland than they do in the United States. The voters are sovereign in Switzerland; their votes are counted and the government submits to the popular authority. The voters can pass a constitutional amendment to do whatever they want.
What the majority of Swiss voters wanted was to stop the construction of minarets. A war against “Islamization” has been waged by far-right groups, and the campaign for this ban is only part of it. Using words like culture and tradition, they insist that Swiss society will collapse under the weight of these minarets. There are currently four minarets in all of Switzerland; two more were planned.
It’s truly remarkable how pathetic the attempts to hide this blatant racism and xenophobia are. A couple of years ago, the Swiss People’s Party, which led the recent attack on Muslims, distributed posters that advocated “security” by showing a group of white sheep kicking a black sheep off of the Swiss flag.
Ultra-right groups across Europe have picked up on this and are now working on their own legislation. One of the most prominent figures is Geert Wilders, a member of the Dutch Parliament. He has advocated that the Koran be banned and frequently speaks of the “retarded Islamic culture.” Wilders says that he is “very afraid of being linked to the wrong rightist fascist groups.” The right ones, on the other hand…
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Sarah Palin was nearly struck by two tomatoes during a public appearance. It’s rare to see vegetables turn on their own kind…
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Glenn Beck put on a new show, The Christmas Sweater. Here’s the story (all characters played by Beck): a twelve-year-old boy doesn’t like the sweater his mother gave him for Christmas at his grandparents’ house. Because he’s rude, his mother decides to drive home during the night. She crashes, she dies, the boy becomes an atheist, runs away, gets lost in a cornfield during a storm, and is saved by a farmer who tells him to be a man. Then he wakes up—it was all a dream. The clichéd story would be bad enough, but Beck felt the need to give all of the characters his own special touch. His sweat, his tears, and his ruddy complexion make him look like an uncooked Christmas ham.
My only solace is the fact that he didn’t make much money off of this. Only 17 tickets were sold in New York City, at a price of $20.
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This is Vladimir Putin as a child: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Vladimir_Putin_as_a_child.jpg
This is Macaulay Culkin, star of the movie Home Alone: http://www.s9.com/images/portraits/6958_Culkin-Macaulay.jpg
Of course, we know how Home Alone would have ended if Putin had been the kid. The bodies would have been discovered when the snow melted, a single bullet hole in each forehead.