It's that time of the day again...

...I'm scoffing and bitching at the TV.

[Note: This is in the larger context of President Obama's reaction to the arrest of Professor Gates.]

Watching the news here, you get the impression that 1) the President called the arresting policemen stupid, and 2) that he started a race controversy when he did so.

As for 1) "...acted stupidly..." does not equal "are stupid". Adjectives and adverbs...my English tutees also have trouble with those. Still...condemning actions or condemning actors. I would say the difference is somewhat significant. But that's just me.

And about 2) the tensions regarding race, and the controversy around racial profiling in particular are not Obama's creations. In a very twisted way, it would be great if they were. Because then it would be easier to resolve...6 months worth of baggage are a lot easier to work through than a country's entire history and the history of colonialism and imperialism before that.

And yet, shocking as it is, that merely made me roll my eyes.
What really bugged me was one simple question, from the news anchor to their correspondent:

Can a black president really be neutral in a conflict about race?

Such a simple question, yet so very revealing. I hate this assumption. That Caucasian isn't really a race. That a cottage cheese-complexion precludes a racial agenda whereas all other complexions come with one automatically (and it's completely uniform, too). That isn't just preposterous, it also flies in the face of reality. Blatantly. Sometimes it's even wearing distinctive white robes and hoods, or brown uniforms.

En lieu of a lengthy and half-informed diatribe about othering, I'd like to humbly suggest somebody who can be neutral in a conflict about race:

On Silences

I haven't posted here in about two months, but not for lack of topics to talk about.
To be frank, there was too much.
I still haven't regained my balance, so I'm never quite sure what to write about, which of the voices in my head and heart are worth listening to, and how to verbalize my thoughts in a way that at least offers some clarity for myself, let alone for others.

So I've been silent here. Don't get me wrong - I was still yelling and cursing the TV, but even discussing some of these topics with anybody seems beyond me.

First, it was Sri Lanka. How am I supposed to wrap my head around several days of fierce fighting over a patch of land the size of the field next to my house? I must have spent hours just looking at that field, and with each look, there seemed to be fewer answers.

Then it was the EU elections, which I still can't think about without tasting the bile in my throat.

And now it's the elections in Iran. I watch the news obsessively, I follow some blogs, I try to keep up with Twitter, although that seems a superhuman task. And in every picture I see I look for my friends. I don't write to them, because I can't seem to find the words. Everything I come up with seems insufficient at best, or ignorant and self-indulgent at worst. So I leave it and keep watching the news, and the posts, and the tweets. And I stay silent, even as I bite my lips in helpless furstration.

I think that Sean came closest to what I've been wanting to write. Even when he is speechless, he is still more eloquent me. And I'm grateful for that, because simply reading his words, knowing that they are out there, made me feel less alone, and just a little bit less helpless.

Michelle Obama's Garden

First of all, I'd like to say that I'm a big fan of Michelle Obama.
She's a great woman, and planting a vegetable garden sends a message I like (not to mention the fact that it's fun).

Having said that, could somebody please explain to me why "Michelle Obama's Vegetable Garden" made the headlines on the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF [link in German]) today?
What exactly is the news value for non-blog-reading-international-politics-craving Austrians? (Actually, what's the news value for blog-reading-international-politics-craving Austrians? I read about this yesterday.)

Why should we care about this? And what's next? More flag pins?


Edit: Just to let you know...it was Dijon mustard.

On a roll...

I was raised a Catholic.
Having been born in one of the most important sites of Catholic pilgrimage in Europe, there never seemed to be much of a question about that. It is the way things are. The way it is done. Alternatives were (and still are), at most, something purely theoretical that happened to other people.

The issues I have with my faith as a whole and the institution of the church in particular don't belong here. Suffice to say that I'm not happy, and I haven't been happy for a long time.

But lately, the church has really been on a roll.
Let's recap:

- Homosexuals are as big a threat to civilisation as global warming (and they go to hell).
- Women who take the pill make men impotent (and they go to hell).
- Women who don't dress the way Bishops would like them to are basically asking to be raped and mistreated (and they probably go to hell).
- Women who marry Muslims are in for a pile of trouble (and probably go to hell).
- Men who wear condoms, because they want to be safe are just being stupid (and probably go to hell).
- The President who repealed the Global Gag Rule is "arrogant" and aiding and abetting the "slaughter of innocents" (he's SO going to hell).

But there's no reason to worry, because denying the Holocaust is perfectly alright.
Great move, Ratzi!
Stay classy.

Seriously...if I weren't absolutely sure that it would break my grandmother's heart, I'd be out of this club in an instant. (And if they go on like that, I might just chance it anyway.)

Note: I should probably have added links to this post, but it's the middle of the night and I can't be arsed, so I'll just refer you to our Google overlords.

Yay !!!

Today, representatives of 107 countries got together in Oslo to sign a

Convention on Cluster Munitions:

...a legally binding international instrument that prohibits the use and stockpiling of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians and secure adequate provision of care and rehabilitation to survivors and clearance of contaminated areas.

Interestingly, Austrian state television didn't think this story was worth their notice.
I disagree, and I've been doing my personal happydance after spotting the report on Al Jazeera.

Unsurprisingly, the US, Russia, China, Israel, Pakistan and India have not signed this treaty.
The US, apparently "shares the concerns" ... but signing treaties, let alone binding ones, is un-American, or something. I suppose it interferes with their trying to be a "shining beacon of moral example". (Yes, I personally mangled this Obama quote. What can I say...I'm feeling even more cynical than normal.)

Also, there are "legitimate military uses" for cluster bombs...
...such as ruining entire crops or at least making it impossible for farmers to harvest what little might be left.
...or looking just like an interesting toy, so that children are more likely to pick it up:

Here are some more resources on this topic by people who are a lot more knowledgable than I am.

The Lost Tribe

All week, Al Jazeera has been running special coverage on the Hmong tribe of Laos. (Just when I thought I couldn't possibly love them more...) The features are on YouTube...watch them if you can.

Before the 1960s, the Hmong were recruited and armed by the CIA to fight a civil war against the Communist Pathet Lao. When the war was lost and the country became Lao PDR, the CIA dropped them.
Many Hmong emigrated (about a third of those to the United States), some are living in abject poverty in Thailand. But some remained and found that their war simply would not end. Targeted for retribution by the victorious government, they had no choice but to remain in the jungle.
Let me repeat that...this is not some stubborn rebel militia, this is an entire tribe, including their children and their elderly, who spend their lives on the run from one jungle camp to the next, without food, without shelter, without healthcare. The weapons they received during their war are just about the only thing they own, and there seems to be no hope for reintegration in their immediate future.

(...) I walked among starving children, their tiny frames scarred by mortar shrapnel. Young men, toting rifles and with dull-eyed infants strapped to their backs, ripped open their shirts to show me their wounds. An old man grabbed my hand and guided it over the contours of shrapnel buried in his gut. A teenage girl, no more than 15, whimpered at my feet, pawed at my legs and cried, "They've killed my husband. They've killed my mother, my father, my brother �" (...)

I read this article when it first came out. There were pictures, some of which I still cannot get out of my head. This story is partly responsible for my choosing my field of work (peace & development), because I ended up with a ball of white hot rage inside my gut. That rage is still there, and it's fuelled almost every single day, but now I can at least channel it into something constructive.

The mothers of missing children...

...are going through a kind of hell I cannot even begin to imagine.

Which is why I was so speechless (and then so angry) when I read this, this, this and this today, followed by one of the articles the others were talking about, in the Daily Mail.

I already knew that some missing children receive more media attention than others. Al Jazeera Int did a short feature contrasting media coverage of Madeleine McCann and several other (non-white, non-British, non-Middle class) missing children only a few days after Maddy went missing (I remember this because it was probably their 2nd week on the air, and that was the moment when I became a truly committed fangirl).

Back then, I tried to rationalize this knowledge (studying PR will do that to you) - those media outlets were catering to their target audiences, who, in turn, are more likely to respond to a human interest story if they feel that it affects them (or their own group) intimately.
Yeah, I know...that didn't exactly satisfy me either.

However, as if it weren't vile enough to be make victims of crime almost invisible based on sales projections, some journalists seem to have taken it upon themselves to go one step further.
Apparently, it is not enough to spend days (or months) in complete anguish because you don't know where your child is. No, it is also important that the media tell you exactly how wrongly you are handling the situation, how you are a miserable failure as a mother (and as a person, obviously), and how everything is really your fault.

So, Kate McCann was attacked for being too thin?
I suppose not knowing where your daughter is and what happened to her will diminish a person's appetite. Had she gone to some of those renowned Spanish restaurants she would have been attacked for being callous and then, presumably, for being too fat.
Resorting to this kind of attack is not just cruel, it's also pathetic enough to be completely ridiculous. But I suppose there was little else to criticize her for, what with her being middle class and married to the father of her child, and all...

...unlike Karen Matthews and Fiona MacKeown.

I can't even articulate how disgusting this is.