Posts from — November 2007

On 11 October I posted this about Dr Randy Pausch. Dr Pausch has been diagnosed with terminal cancer of the pancreas. Instead of giving up on life, as I would be tempted to do, he has embraced both his coming death and the time he has left to live life to the full in the most positive and creative way imaginable.

This coming Tuesday (27 November) he’ll be giving a lecture at the University of Virginia on how to get the most out of your time, no matter how much or how little time you have left. The lecture is free and open to the public.

If I were in within reach of the University of Virginia Tuesday afternoon, I know exactly where I would be this coming Tuesday afternoon. But I’ll be in the UK then, so I’m going to watch the lecture online.

His “Last Lecture” was so extraordinarily humorous, inspiring and moving that I really don’t want to miss his Time Management lecture.

You can find links to Randy Pausch’s video lectures, media coverage and his legacy in general here. If you haven’t come across this gem of a man before, watch the video of his Last Lecture.

Technorati Tags: Randy Pausch, personal development, time management, death

My daughter-in-law just sent me this. It’s doing the rounds on the internet. Why does it work? Something to do with pattern recognition from minimal cues?

Only great minds can read this.

Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can. Its ttollay ture! i cdnuolt blveiee taht you cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht you wree rdanieg. Tihs is the phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

If you can raed tihs forwrad it on to see who else you konw wtih a hgue brian.

Technorati Tags: brainteaser, spelling, reading

Should the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee take country-specific human rights resolutions?

The 20-21 November New York Update from the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) reports that Cuba, the Sudan and Nicaragua took the floor before the Third Committee considered any of the country-specific resolutions on its agenda to say why the General Assembly should not deal with such resolutions.

Their primary objection is that they consider the [UN Human Rights] Council to be the most appropriate body within the UN system to consider human rights matters in specific countries, using the UPR [Universal Periodic Review] mechanism, which they regard as non-selective, non-confrontational, and an effective mechanism for engaging States in a human rights dialogue.

The USA and Australia responded to this claim by saying that country-specific resolutions were necessary to stop countries getting away with human rights violations with impunity and to help the victims of human rights abuses. As Liechtenstein pointed out, the Third Committee, unlike the Human Rights Council, has universal membership and the responsibility to deal with serious human rights violations.

The ISHR’s Update also reported that:

States in favour of country-specific resolutions also objected to any moves to stifle debate on serious human rights matters within the Third Committee, and pointed to the right of any State to bring forward a resolution in the General Assembly on any matter of concern.

As I reported on Wednesday, Iran did in fact try to stifle debate on serious human rights issues, in so far as they affected Iran, by tabling a no-action motion. That the motion failed by only one vote tells us that something is sadly amiss as far as the UN’s consideration of human rights is concerned.

I am very much in favour of appropriately used country-specific resolutions. (I say “appropriately used” because country-specific resolutions can be used vexatiously to target countries that do not deserve to be targeted while neglecting countries that do deserve to be targeted.) Iran is a country that cannot be allowed to get away with its appalling treatment of minorities, including the Baha’is, and with its many other terrible violations of its citizens’ human rights.

Claims by countries that the Third Committee should not consider country-specific human rights resolutions are entirely self-serving. Just look at the countries that took time at the Third Committee to argue against country-specific resolutions: Cuba, Sudan and Nicaragua are not exactly shining examples of human rights compliant states.

And to say that human rights matters should be handled only by the UN Human Rights Council is also self-serving, since the Council’s effectiveness has been limited - neutered, some would say - by the machinations of member states that are amongst the worst human rights abusers. In fact, the Human Rights Council has largely abandoned country-specific resolutions, except with respect to Israel.

Technorati Tags: human rights, UN, Third Committee, Iran, Israel, Baha’i, Bahai

The Third Committee of the UN General Assembly yesterday passed a resolution condemning Iran’s appalling human rights record.

But it was a close-run thing.

Iran tabled what’s known in UN terminology as a “No Action Motion” (NAM). Had that motion passed, any further debate on the substantive resolution (initiated by Canada) would have been blocked. After furious lobbying by Iran and by countries, such as the UK, opposed to the NAM, the the motion failed by just one vote. 78 countries voted for the NAM and 79 against. There were 24 abstentions.

Apparently this result caused gasps in the UN chamber, according to Steven Edwards of the CanWest News Service in this article.

Gasps and other expressions of astonishment erupted in the UN chamber as 78 countries voted with Iran in its call for “no action” on the censure bid - but 79 countries were against, and 24 abstained. Under UN rules, a tie would have defeated the motion.

The main resolution (A/C.3/62/L.43) was adopted by 72 votes in favour, with 50 against and 55 abstentions.

In the resolution the General Assembly expressed “its very serious concern” at a whole range of egregious human rights violations, including torture, flogging, amputations, public executions, stoning, execution of minors, violent action taken against women, and called upon the Iranian government to eliminate all its appalling and cruel practices.

The resolution condemns the…

…increasing discrimination and other human rights violations against person belonging to religious, ethnic, linguistic or other minorities, recognized or otherwise … and in particular attacks on Baha’is and their faith in State-sponsored media, increasing efforts by the State to identify and monitor Baha’is and prevention of the Baha’i faith from attending university and from sustaining themselves economically…

and calls upon the Iranian government…

…to implement, inter alia, the 1996 report of the Special Rapporteur on religious intolerance, which recommended ways in which the Islamic Republic of Iran could emancipate the Baha’i community.

It is good to see the persecution of the Baha’is in Iran condemned in such strong language.

The Iranian Ambassador to the UN, Mohammad Khazaee, portrayed the resolution as the product of a conspiracy:

It is deeply unfortunate that manipulation and abuse of the United Nations human rights mechanisms has become a prevalent tradition and exercise of certain states in advancing their political purposes.

Mr Khazaee condemned Canada as a country with serious human rights problems of its own (!). I have to say the words, “pot”, “kettle” and “black” come to mind at this point. Actually, on second thoughts, that saying would suggest a moral equivalence between Iran and Canada - and it would, in my view, be utterly perverse to accept any claim of moral equivalence between these two countries.

And which countries defended Iran’s position? Well-respected defenders of universal human rights like Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, Belarus and Pakistan!

The resolution now has to go before the Plenary of the UN General Assembly and there can be no doubt that Iran will try to force through another No Action Motion. Last year’s NAM failed by 3 votes, this year’s by 1 vote. Nobody at the UN is taking anything for granted.

Bani Dugal, the Baha’i International Community’s Principal Representative to the UN, commented about the No Action Motion:

Yes, very very close. It was nail bitingly tense.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Iran, human rights, UN, General Assembly

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The French news agency AFP has published a very nice quite odd article on its website about the Baha’i World Centre in Israel, under the title “Israel haven for new Baha’i world order”.

HAIFA, Israel (AFP) — Dominating a holy mountain in Israel is the nerve centre of the world’s fastest growing major religion, preaching global unity and world peace from one of the most troubled countries on earth.
Founded less than 170 years ago, the Bahai faith believes that Persian-born prophet Bahuallah, who died in Israel, brought a message of unity, equality and world federation to save mankind from the plagues of the modern world.

The article also has some attractive photos of the Baha’i shrines and gardens.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Haifa, shrines, Israel, Baha’i World Centre, Mount Carmel, AFP

Iranians, said Omid Djalili, as he opened the first episode of his new TV show on BBC One, just don’t get British humour:

For you, an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman is a joke. For us, it’s a hostage situation.

Or the Middle Eastern equivalent of the “knock knock” joke: the “floomph floomph” joke. “Floomph floomph”? It’s the sound of someone “knocking” on a tent. No? You’d have to hear Omid tell the joke.

Omid always makes me laugh, even when he recycles some of his favourite gags. Like the one about the middle easterner who wants to show his girlfriend how passionate he is about her. He cuts his wrist and writes a poem for her in his own blood and then forces her to take it.

The show’s format has Omid performing stand-up in front of an enthusiastic live audience; sketches and longer pieces are shown in video inserts. There was a lot of good stuff on the show. My favourite was the sketch about his ethnic bit parts in films and on TV. This is done like one of those serious retrospective arts shows about recently deceased actors, completely deadpan, and showing extracts from various thing Omid’s appeared in as the “general purpose Arab scumbag”.

There was a nicely observed take-off of the Ray Mears-type survival programme. But the jewel in this particular crown was the sketch in which Omid, playing a camp Scottish film director newly out of film school, directs Osama bin Laden in his latest video.

James Rampton interviewed Omid in the Daily Telegraph a few days ago:

Welcome to The Omid Djalili Show, a mixture of sketches and stand-up, and a brave piece of commissioning by the BBC. When it starts on BBC1 tonight, its eponymous star will become the first British-Iranian performer ever to get his own mainstream TV show anywhere in the world.

A brave piece of commissioning by the BBC? Rampton quotes Omid:

“I know I tick a lot of boxes for BBC1,” he says. “I’m aware that it’s very rare to have my voice on a mainstream channel, so I want to make the most of it. Why not give people a different perspective on the Middle East?

“In a way, it’s a political statement just to be a funny person from Iran because people’s expectations in this country are so low. But you can’t be too earnest about it. In the show, I say, ‘All I’ve ever wanted to do is bring world peace through my stand-up’ - at which point, the audience bursts into applause - ’so now that I’ve done that, I’m happy to do other things!’”

Baha’is who watched Omid’s show on BBC 1 may have been as anxious as Steve McClaren watching Israel giving England the ghost of a hope of qualifying for Euro 2008 by beating Russia. Omid’s “our lad on prime-time TV” and there are those amongst us who don’t wholly approve of Omid’s comedy. It’s not quite “Baha’i” enough; it’s “political”; it doesn’t give “the Baha’i message”; it’s too darned rude!

Well, I’ve always taken the view that it’s Omid’s business what he puts into his routines. He may not conform to what some people imagine the “ideal” Baha’i to be, but he knows what makes him tick. It’s not for the Baha’i community to “censor” him either overtly or by covert social pressure.

Of course, I understand the anxiety. Omid is a high profile member of a very small religious minority in the UK. We hope he will choose whatever we think Baha’i moral standards to be, and we want him to make us look good.

But not only does he deal well with sensitive subjects in his comedy, he is also opening doors for Baha’is. Before Omid came to prominence, there can have been very few young Baha’is who would have considered stand-up comedy as a possible choice of profession. There’s a standing joke amongst Baha’is that all Iranian parents in their hearts really want their offspring to be doctors or engineers, or possibly architects. (Yes, I know, you’ve seen that joke applied to people from the Indian Sub-Continent in Goodness Gracious Me. And, yes, I know it’s a stereotype, but there is often some truth in some stereotypes.)

Actually, despite this desire for respectability, there’s a strong tradition of Iranian Baha’is in the arts - and that goes back to the early days of our faith. But stand-up as the new rock’n'roll is very much a late 20th century/early 21st century phenomenon - and Omid pioneered a route into this profession for Baha’is, a route along which one or two other young Baha’is (such as Inder Manocha) are travelling.

I’m looking forward to the next episode of Omid’s show.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Omid Djalili, comedy, stand-up, BBC

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BBC One TV will be airing the first of six episodes of The Omid Djalili Show tomorrow (Saturday) night at 9:30 p.m.

Most stand-up comedians who are commissioned to write and perform first-time TV shows are given a try-out out on BBC Three TV before moving to the mass audience BBC One. Omid has gone straight to the mass audience channel.

He’s interviewed on the back page of Radio Times (the edition for the week beginning tomorrow).

I guess this is a first for a UK Baha’i. One in the eye for the Iranian government, too, given that no Baha’i artists, musicians, etc, are allowed to perform in Iran (see my previous post about the Iranian music student).

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Omid Djalili, comedy

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Ruth Gledhill, religious correspondent of The Times, has posted an interview on her blog with an Iranian Baha’i student who is currently living in London.

The student is here to study music, having been excluded from higher education in Iran purely on grounds of being a Baha’i. She had a childhood dream to be a pianist but had to go to Moscow to study. Even when she had graduated with distinction, because she was a Baha’i she could neither perform in Iran nor even give piano lessons.

She decided to come to the UK to pursue further study in freedom.

Sadly, things are likely to get worse for the Baha’is in Iran. A resolution condemning the egregious human rights perpetrated by the Iranian government has been initiated by Canada at the UN General Assembly. The motion includes mention of the situation of the Baha’is. Sadly, the motion may well be stopped in its tracks by a “no action motion” put forward by Iran. If the majority of countries vote for the no action motion, the substantive motion will not even be debated and Iran’s appalling human rights record will go uncondemned by the world’s main international forum.

There’s no doubt that the Iranian government will intensify its pressure on the Baha’is in fulfilment of a policy approved by Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei in 1991. The policy sets out the means for undermining the survival of the Baha’i community in Iran, means which include denial of access to education.

Read Ruth Gledhill’s interview with the Baha’i music student and watch a short video of her playing two piano pieces here.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, persecution, Iran, Ruth Gledhill, Times, human rights

This is what the Free Rice site says about itself:

FreeRice has two goals:

1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

This is made possible by the sponsors who advertise on this site.

Whether you are CEO of a large corporation or a street child in a poor country, improving your vocabulary can improve your life. It is a great investment in yourself.

Perhaps even greater is the investment your donated rice makes in hungry human beings, enabling them to function and be productive. Somewhere in the world, a person is eating rice that you helped provide. Thank you.

I just played and got to vocabulary level 50. OK, I used a dictionary for some of the words. But it didn’t always help. I couldn’t find “laina” in my Chambers 20th Century Dictionary, for instance. So I took a flying guess on … Nope, I’m not going to tell you. You’ll need to try it for yourself. It’s good for you and it’s good for the world.

I managed to contribute 600 grains of rice!

Technorati Tags: poverty, rice, vocabulary, game

OK, I’ll own up. I didn’t go to the Making Rights Real conference in Birmingham yesterday. I’ve all sorts of excuses I won’t burden you with, but it did give me a clear day at my desk to try and sink some of the jobs that have been awaiting my attention. Sadly my to-do list has the kind of growth rate that would put China’s economy amongst the also-rans. But never mind. I’m sneaking a few moments to write here.

Growth

And talking about growth (stay with me, you’ll see the link in a moment), I’ve now finished Thomas Homer-Dixon’s The Upside of Down (as reviewed in this previous post).

Homer-Dixon produces evidence to show that the world’s ecological, environmental, energy and social systems are facing synchronous collapse. Why? Because of our addiction to economic growth. We are stressing the environment and all our other systems to breaking point in the name of growth. But never mind. Growth is the god we worship.

We’ve created a complex and closely coupled high energy world. But it isn’t sustainable:

The growth phase we’re in may seem like a natural and permanent state of affairs - and our world’s rising complexity, connectedness, efficiency, and regulation may seem relentless and unstoppable - but ultimately it isn’t sustainable. (p. 253)

Energy costs will rise inexorably. We’ll be forced to reduce our use of energy, so our society will inevitably become less complex (it takes energy to create complexity). We’ll travel less, says Homer-Dixon, and we won’t travel and trade over such long distances. The world won’t go on becoming “flatter”, with fewer barriers to economic integration. Economic and political power will go to parts of the world with good access to energy.

Eventually those of us in rich countries will have to change many things in our societies and daily lives - not just the machines we use to produce and consume energy but also the work we do, our entertainment and leisure activities, how much we travel in cars and airplanes, our financial systems, the design of our cities, and the ways we produce our food (because our current agricultural practices consume a huge amount of energy).(p. 253)

Resilience

So what takes the place of growth?

A prudent way to cope with invisible but inevitable dangers is to … build resilience into all systems critical to our well-being. A resilient system can absorb large disturbances without changing its fundamental nature. (p. 283)

Roman and Victorian engineers, not knowing how their materials would take the forces operating on them, often “over-engineered” their bridges rather than try to make them more efficient by using less rock, brick, iron and so on. For those engineers there were too many unknown unknowns, things they didn’t know they didn’t know. Structures that were built too efficiently might be liable to sudden and unpredictable collapse.

The same is true, argues Thomas Homer-Dixon, in our complex world.

We should give up some of our obsession with efficiency in favour of more resilience. In this way, we will be better able to prevent foreshocks (like the credit crunch resulting from the subprime mortgage crisis in the US) from triggering synchronous failure of all our systems.

In other words, we can, if we let go of our prejudices and presuppositions about how the world “is supposed to be”, learn to think prospectively, openly, about other futures for our world. What Homer-Dixon refers to as “the prospective mind”…

…knows that scientific knowledge is the best tool to determine the boundary between plausible and implausible futures. But precise prediction is impossible…

Values

We also have to talk about values. Homer-Dixon distinguishes three kinds of values:

1. Utilitarian values - Homer-Dixon thinks of these as simple likes and dislikes.
2. Moral values - those concerning fairness and justice.
3. Existential values - those values that give our lives meaning - we might even call themspiritual values

We don’t really like talking about moral and existential values, so we try to satisfy our need for meaning by acquiring more and more stuff.

Reduced to walking appetites, we lose resilience. We risk becoming hollow people with no character, substance, or core - like eggshells that can be shattered or crushed with one sharp shock. (p. 301)

So whose interests do our current values serve?

Our current values serve the interests of today’s political and economic elites, and so are aggressively defended by these elites. Growth, even in already obscenely rich societies, is sacrosanct. This central value won’t really change until it’s discredited by some kind of major shock, which probably means some kind of system breakdown. Then alternative values that are centered on the idea of resilience might flower, not just at the fringes of our societies but also at their core.

What might values of resilience promote? Homer-Dixon suggests:

• Smaller populations that tread lightly on nature.
• Decentralized communities
• Less complex and fast-paced lifestyles.
• Broader, fairer and more vigorous democracy.

And only through much broader and deeper democratic practice will humankind likely develop the expansive “moral commonwealth” essential to our collective survival.

We’re one we

Here we come to the very core transformation that we all need to undergo. And this is absolutely the Baha’i solution:

Only when we all grasp that we’re in one boat together - that together we’re one we with an indivisible fate - will we be serious about making the concessions to each other that are essential if we’re to address global challenges like climate change and energy scarcity. (p. 306)

I realize that this post has gone on much longer than I had intended and that the only person left reading it is me, but I do want to conclude by quoting at some length from an admirable document published in 2005 by the Baha’i World Centre, One Common Faith, pages 42-43:

The power through which these goals will be progressively realized is that of unity. Although to Bahá’ís the most obvious of truths, its implications for the current crisis of civilization appear to escape most contemporary discourse. Few will disagree that the universal disease sapping the health of the body of humankind is that of disunity. Its manifestations everywhere cripple political will, debilitate the collective urge to change, and poison national and religious relationships….

Unity is a condition of the human spirit. Education can support and enhance it, as can legislation, but they can do so only once it emerges and has established itself as a compelling force in social life. A global intelligentsia, its prescriptions largely shaped by materialistic misconceptions of reality, clings tenaciously to the hope that imaginative social engineering, supported by political compromise, may indefinitely postpone the potential disasters that few deny loom over humanity’s future…. As unity is the remedy for the world’s ills, its one certain source lies in the restoration of religion’s influence in human affairs. The laws and principles revealed by God, in this day, Baha’u'llah declares, “are the most potent instruments and the surest of all means for the dawning of the light of unity amongst men.” (Tablets of Baha’u'llah, page 129.) “Whatsoever is raised on this foundation, the changes and chances of the world can never impair its strength, nor will the revolution of countless centuries undermine its structure.” (Baha’u'llah, quoted in Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha’u'llah, pages 202-203.)

Central to Baha’u'llah’s mission, therefore, has been the creation of a global community that would reflect the oneness of humankind. The ultimate testimony that the Baha’i community can summon in vindication of His mission is the example of unity that His teachings have produced.

The Baha’i solution goes far further than Homer-Dixon’s. We’re not just in the business of “making concessions” to others. We’re in the business of working together with others to build a radically new kind of civilization based on explicit existential and moral values and bringing with it explicit means to enable everyone to engage fully and equally in the shaping of all our futures. There will be breakdown. Breakdown is part of the way the world works and allows new growth to take place. Humankind has a future, a future based on unity in diversity, moderation and justice. It will be a future of reasonable prosperity for all. Our descendants will look back at the growth mania of the capitalist era and shake their heads, just as we shake our heads over the European wars of religion of the 16th century.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Baha’u'llah, Bahaullah, Homer-Dixon, Upside of Down, catastrophe, religion, growth, future, civilization, unity, diversity

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