Blog Series

Most of the different daily posts that appear on this blog are organized into so-called “blog series”: for example, now and again we publish a post that’s called “human rights facts: …”, or “political jokes: …” etc. Although some posts don’t belong to a specific series and are “one-offs”, most do. If you happen to stumble on one post of a specific series – for example because Google led you there – then you may find the other posts of the said series equally interesting. If so, just click on the name of the series below and all posts belonging to that series will be displayed.

Absurd Human Rights Violations: accounts of some of the most absurd human rights violations reported in the press
 
Annals of heartlessness: accounts of some of the most heartless human rights violations reported in the press
 
Becoming a Democracy: if we want to promote universal respect for the right to democracy, we have to know how societies have achieved or failed to achieve the transition from authoritarian forms of government to more democratic ones, and how democracies have avoided the opposite transition
 
Capital Punishment
 
Causes of Human Rights Violations
 
Causes of Poverty
 
Children’s Rights
 
Cultural Rights: do cultures have rights, on how do cultures or thinking in terms of cultures harm rights
 
Economic Human Rights: work, health, education, standard of living and other neglected human rights
 
Equal Rights: gender discrimination, LGTB rights, racism, discrimination in general, and hate
 
Ethics of Human Rights
 
Freedom and Equality: human rights require and create both freedom and equality, and some believe that’s a contradiction – we don’t; also: what is freedom, and what is equality?
 
Fun Stuff
 
Human Rights Ads: some inspiring ads made by human rights advocates (mostly but not exclusively by Amnesty International)
 
Human Rights and Crime: how does crime and our response to crime affect human rights?
 
Human Rights and International Law: posts that focus on legal philosophy
 
Human Rights and Migration: how do border controls and citizenship restrictions harm the rights of migrants
 
Human Rights and Religion: how does religion harm or profit from human rights
 
Human Rights and Terrorism: the implications for human rights of both terrorism and the war on terror
 
Human Rights and the Environment
 
Human Rights Facts: data, numbers, statistics and graphs about human rights
 
Human Rights Images: collections of images, photos, signs, posters, adverts etc., grouped by types of rights violations
 
Human Rights Nonsense: as a passionate activist for human rights, I’m obliged to point to the ways in which the language of human rights is used to push nonsense; human rights nonsense devalues the whole system of human rights, and has to be ridiculed mercilessly if we want to preserve what is good about human rights
 
Human Rights Poems: well-known and less well-known poems about human rights
 
Human Rights Quotes: quotes about human rights, with or without extensive commentary, depending on how I feel
 
Human Rights Stories: excerpts from novels or plays with an original perspective on human rights problems
 
Human Rights Videos: because it’s a bit boring to have information only in text form
 
Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations: an iconic image of human rights violations is something very powerful; it can symbolize a certain human catastrophe, and burn it in the human mind; it keeps alive the memory of the event, and educates people about human rights, more than history or story-telling can ever do (icon: “an important and enduring symbol”)
 
Income Inequality
 
Ironic Human Rights Violations: things not turning out quite as intended
 
Lies and Statistics: since we believe statistics are very important, we also give examples of the abuse of statistics
 
Limiting Free Speech: commentary about different cases of (un)justified limits on the freedom of speech
 
Moral Dilemmas: “dilemma”, from Late Greek dilēmmat-, dilēmma, probably back-formation from Greek dilēmmatos involving two assumptions, from di- + lēmmat-, lēmma assumption; a usually undesirable or unpleasant choice; a dilemma is having to make a choice one does not want to make
 
Political Art: songs and graphic art of artists with an interest in politics and human rights
 
Political Graffiti: insights from often anonymous artists/”philosophers” using an unconventional stage for their free expression
 
Satellite Evidence of Human Rights Violations: posts on an interesting technology to monitor human rights violations
 
Self-Defeating Human Rights Policies
 
Types of Human Rights Violations
 
What Are Human Rights?
 
What is Democracy?: commentary about different aspects of contemporary democracy, including what it should be and isn’t yet, what it is and shouldn’t be, and what it is believed to be but isn’t
 
Why Do We Need Human Rights?