Category Archives: Things That Annoy Us

Let’s Get Ready to Rumble

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Our initial reaction when we first saw Samahope was: Man, what brilliant satire. It so perfectly skewers the particular sort of poverty porn-y, competitive victimhood-encouraging NGO that we’re always ranting about. But as we clicked through the site, which posts pictures of Sierra Leonean women and girls suffering from fistula and asks for donations to pay for surgical intervention, we began to get that uncomfortable tingling that accompanies the realization that something you thought was a hilarious send-up of a disturbing phenomenon is actually just one more example of the disturbing phenomenon itself. (What? It’s a real feeling. We get it all the time.)

We didn’t want to jump to any conclusions, though, because Samahope is backed by Leila Janah, the founder of Samasource, which is “an innovative social business that connects women and youth living in poverty to dignified work via the internet” that we’ve been fans of for years. But when we reached out to Leila on Twitter, she told us that Samahope is totally for reals. We mentioned that we were having a lot of uncomfortable, squicked-out feelings about the whole “repair a broken vagina for just $3 a day” approach and that we were going to blog about them (because that’s why people have blogs), and offered Leila the chance to share her perspective as well.

So tomorrow Wednesday we’re going to have an Onion-style Point/Counterpoint in which we’ll explain why this hurts our brains, and Leila will explain why Samahope is doing important and necessary work. Hopefully we’ll all learn and grow.

WTF Friday, 5/18/2012

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This week’s winner: Belgian Congo Pale Ale, apparently an actual thing. The brewer describes it as “[a] blend of old world traditions.” Right, a “secret Belgian yeast strain” and delicious old world traditions like forced labor and mass amputations. Yum. (h/t: @texasinafrica)

And the runner-up: More than 50% of the police officers in Greece voted for the neo-Nazi party in the May 6th elections. Always a good sign when most of your security sector is fascists…

WTF Friday, 3/16/2012

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This week in first world problems: “‘It’s not cheap like it used to be,’ laments Dale Weathington of Kolcraft, an American firm that uses contract manufacturers to make prams in southern China. Labour costs have surged by 20% a year for the past four years, he grumbles (emphasis mine).” This sounds like the curmudgeonest dude in history. Also I’m pretty sure he makes an imaginary product.

“Sixteen civilians [have] been killed in a shooting spree by a U.S. officer stationed in Afghanistan…The incident is the latest in a series of widely publicized self-inflicted setbacks for U.S. forces in recent months. In February, Qurans were mistakenly burned as garbage at a military base in Afghanistan, which led to deadly riots. In January, a video of U.S. forces urinating on Taliban corpses surfaced on the Internet.” Reaction from Newt Gingrich: “We’re not prepared to be ruthless enough.” Just so everybody has it straight, to Newt Gingrich, massacring civilians and pissing on corpses counts as not ruthless enough.

ICC celebrates its decennial with…a verdict!

WTF Friday 3/9/2012

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After years of American rappers doing it or resisting it metaphorically, Swazilanders are literally throwing rocks at the throne.

“The Taylor aide believes that his boss is not on trial for crimes in Liberia but rather in Sierra Leone and, therefore, he deserves his pension benefits as former head of state here.” Honestly I think it’s messed up that he had to export his war crimes just so he could get his pension. The game is rigged.

This is just about the antithesis of Kate and Amanda’s article at The Atlantic (shameless plug). Giving “why not” as a justification? Check. Hyperbole about the power of social media and “awareness?” Check. Totally predictable opinion (from a teenager) about whether Kony is chill or unchill? Check. (Spoiler: hes goes with “terrible”). Baselessly optimistic prediction? I think we have a winner.

 

WTF Friday, 3/2/2012

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Thanks to Shelby Grossman for pointing out some highlights of the Viktor Bout interview for those of us who don’t have a New Yorker subscription. “We learn that Bout researched the FARC before the meeting with undercover DEA agents, and arrived in Thailand with a copy of Lonely Planet: Colombia.” I’ll definitely be hitting the newsstand for this asap.

I don’t mean to go all “domestic” on you guys, but this man is too epic of an asshole to ignore (though I really should). Highlights:

  • “Arpaio, vowing that no troublemakers would be released on his watch because of overcrowding, procured a consignment of Army-surplus tents and had them set up, surrounded by barbed wire, in an industrial area in southwest Phoenix. ‘I put them up next to the dump, the dog pound, the waste-disposal plant,’ he told me.”
  • “He banned cigarettes from his jails. Skin magazines. Movies. Coffee. Hot lunches. Salt and pepper—Arpaio estimated that he saved taxpayers thirty thousand dollars a year by removing salt and pepper.”
  • “Why the Weather Channel, a British reporter once asked. ‘So these morons will know how hot it’s going to be while they are working on my chain gangs.’”
  • “He got a tank from the Army, had the howitzer muzzle painted with flames, and “Sheriff Arpaio’s War on Drugs” emblazoned on the sides, and rode in it, with Ava, in the Fiesta Bowl Parade.”
  • “A federal investigation found that deputies had used stun guns on prisoners already strapped into a “restraint chair.”
  • “He meant a press release. The Sheriff gathered eight or nine aides around a big table in his office. ‘Illegal Immigration Breeds Crime, Disease,’ Arpaio suggested.”
  • “The public-health specialist said gently, ‘Surgical masks do nothing to combat this virus.’ Arpaio erupted. ‘This is my press release! I’m the sheriff! I have some knowledge! I’m not just some little old sheriff!’”
  • “In 2005, he forced nearly seven hundred prisoners, wearing nothing but pink underwear and flip-flops, to shuffle four blocks through the Arizona heat, pink-handcuffed together, to a new jail. When they arrived, one prisoner was made to cut a pink ribbon for the cameras. This elaborate degradation, which is remembered fondly by Sheriff Joe’s fans, was ostensibly in the name of security—the men were strip-searched both before and after the march. But Arpaio also told reporters, ‘I put them on the street so everybody could see them.’”

WTF Friday, 2/24/2012

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No there is one strategy and it is called “freedom.”

“Church officials promote what they call ‘natural’ family planning: women are advised to track their cycle and abstain from sex on all but their least fertile days.” I gotta get in on the ground floor of some fertility mood rings.

“…photographing mosques, eavesdropping on conversations inside shops, and keeping files on Muslims who Americanized their names — amounted to looking around, ‘just to kind of get familiar with what’s going on. We don’t target individuals based on race and religion,’ [Bloomberg] said.” Yea, I mean Muslims going to mosques and Americanizing their names, that’s just stuff that’s “going on” in New York. So I just hope they have a huge file on Jeremy Lin cuz that’s what’s really going on in New York.

WTF Friday, 1/27/12

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In which I may have gotten tricked into believing something ridiculous. Thanks a lot, Globe. (via FP Passport)

Kutch just ridin the wave. Unlike earlier this month, I guess this one’s a “fun flood.”

“The tournament more notorious for poor goalkeeping, administrative nightmares and tragedy rather than high quality football.” This is just not true. You gotta pick your burdens more carefully.

 

Human Rights for Gays Somehow Still a Point of Controversy

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Last week President Obama issued a Presidential Memorandum directing “all agencies engaged abroad to ensure that U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance promote and protect the human rights of LGBT persons.” On the same day, Secretary of State Clinton gave a speech on human rights emphasizing that “[l]ike being a woman, like being a racial, religious, tribal, or ethnic minority, being LGBT does not make you less human.”

U.S. politics being what they are, the suggestion that gay people have rights sparked immediate backlash. From America’s favorite extended practical joke, Rick Perry:

“Promoting special rights for gays in foreign countries is not in America’s interests and not worth a dime of taxpayers’ money.”

This is heartbreaking. Not just because it confirms that Rick Perry is real, or at best a really vivid mass hallucination, but because if there’s anything “special” about gay rights, it’s that they are far more limited than the class of rights straight people enjoy. In fact, the specific gay rights mentioned by the memorandum are (1) not to have their sexual orientation criminalized, and (2) asylum.

Given that the right of asylum only kicks in when an individual is a victim of past persecution (which usually means torture) or has a well-founded fear of future persecution (generally, torture or murder), it should be clear that the rights the Obama administration is attempting to guarantee are not your fancier sorts of rights. (Unless I missed the fine print on the memo reading “A swimming pool for every gay!”) Not being subject to criminal penalty or violence due to one of your innate and inalterable characteristics is about as basic as human rights get.

Bonus round: The Memorandum instructs U.S. government agencies to target foreign aid towards efforts to improve gay rights. Notably, it does not suggest that the U.S. will make aid to foreign governments conditional on their treatment of LGBT persons. I point this out because moves by European governments to cut aid to countries that criminalize homosexuality have met with criticism from gay rights activists in Africa on the grounds that such policies impede their work and risk triggering backlash against the LGBT community.

Yet Another Contender for Worst Idea Ever

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So, one downside of being Prominent Internet Curmudgeons is that we’re now unable to maintain blissful ignorance of any stupid advocacy or development project, because someone ALWAYS emails us. (But seriously, keeps those tips coming; we love you guys.)

Today, the emailer in question is alert reader Elliott Prasse-Freeman, who directs our attention to Fonderie 47, an organization that buys AK-47s at above-market-prices in conflict zones and turns them into extremely expensive accessories, all in the name of helping Africa.

Apparently, the logic is that this will increase the price of AK-47s, thereby decreasing their pervasive presence in conflict zones. To which we respond: Holy economic fallacy, Batman. Where on earth do people get the idea that purchasing a good will lead to a reduction in its sale? (We’re looking at you, Nick “I’ma buy some womens to stop the scourge of sex slavery” Kristof.)

As tipster Elliott explains in his 4-Lucky-Charms-red-balloon-winning email to us:

“[T]he intervention is premised on two assumptions: (1) that gun dealers are supply constrained (in AK-47s) AND (2) that there are no perfect (or adequate) substitutes for AK-47s. If they don’t BOTH hold, then things get perhaps disastrously worse.

Consider: if the first assumption doesn’t hold, then the demand effect makes the gun dealer richer, and the supply of AKs stays constant to the level demanded in Africa. That’s bad. So, if we relax that assumption and assume that AKs are inelastic, then the demand effect is captured in price, and the gun dealer also gets richer, but the supply effect may actually remove AKs. That’s good.

But here we have to introduce assumption two, and wonder what happens if it doesn’t hold (and it probably doesn’t, because there are LOTS of guns in the world): assuming the gun dealer was capital constrained before AKs went up in price (b/c really, what gun dealer isn’t?), the now-richer gun dealer is able to expand his operations and provide the AK-48 (or some equivalent) to his grateful and desperate customers.”

Couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

*Picture of AK-47 from Wikipedia.

Fun with Complementarity

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There is SO MUCH international criminal law news right now, you guys. Case 002 opened at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (more on that later), Bangladesh began a trial for atrocities committed during its independence fight, and George W. Bush and Tony Blair were found guilty of war crimes by a “Let’s Play Make Believe” tribunal in Malaysia.

But the biggest story is that Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and Abdullah al-Senussi, both the subject of ICC warrants on crimes against humanity charges, were captured in Libya this weekend. The Libyan authorities have expressed a very strong desire to try Saif themselves and a reluctance to hand him over to the ICC, so ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo headed down to Libya yesterday to talk things out.

As far as I can tell, it was at that point that every news media outlet in the world began misreporting the story. So, uh, note to Al Jazeera, The Guardian, MSNBC, Voice of America, and the rest of y’all: Moreno-Ocampo most certainly did not agree that the Libyans will try Saif. You know how I know this, despite my lack of a foreign correspondent on the ground in Tripoli? It’s because the Chief Prosecutor does not have the power to make that decision.

The new Libyan government is well within its rights to challenge the ICC’s jurisdiction if it wants to prosecute the crimes against humanity charges itself. And there’s a good chance they’d prevail on the challenge, given that the ICC’s jurisdiction is complementary, not universal. (This means that the court can only try cases where the relevant domestic judicial system is either “unwilling” or “unable” to prosecute.) However, the assessment of whether Libya is “able” to prosecute rests with the Pre-Trial Chamber of the ICC, not with the state itself, or with the Chief Prosecutor.

This particularly legal issue hasn’t been explored before* so the Libyan case will be an exciting (maybe just for me) opportunity to establish exactly how the ICC will handle inquiries into the ability of states to try mass atrocity cases. Specifically: Will the Pre-Trial Chamber defer to state preferences and call off ICC proceedings when states show a genuine desire to conduct trials themselves, or will it conduct an extensive analysis of judicial capacity?

I suspect the bizarre reports we’re getting that the ICC has “ruled” that the Libyans can try Saif stem from the fact that the Prosecutor has opted for the former course,** and will support Libya’s efforts to try the case. We’ll see whether the judges do likewise…

*Note: The ICC did slap down a challenge to its jurisdiction from Kenya earlier this year, but it was on the grounds that the Kenyan government wasn’t conducting an investigation or prosecution on charges similar to those in the ICC case, not that it didn’t have the capacity to do so.

**Possibly in recognition of the fact that if Libya flat out refuses to hand Saif over, there’s not much the ICC can do…