Human Rights Poem (50): The Second Coming

The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is [...]

Political Artist (29): Katie Melua

Human Rights Quote (71): Democratic Peace

“In an increasingly interdependent world, Americans have a growing stake in how countries govern, or misgovern, themselves. The larger and more close-knit the community of nations that choose democratic forms of government, the safer and more prosperous Americans will be, since democracies are demonstrably more likely to maintain their international commitments, less likely to engage [...]

Human Rights Cartoon (93): Crimes Against Humanity

This is from the infamous Nazi newspaper of Julius Streicher, Der Sturmer, from 1934. The cartoon praises the Nazi Ministry of Culture for removing Jewish teachers from German classrooms. Streicher was convicted at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity and hanged in 1946.
A crime against humanity is a large scale atrocity against a body of people, [...]

Human Rights Story (3): Sex Strike

 
Abbreviated excerpt from Lysistrata by the Greek playwright Aristophanes (a comic play on the sex strike led by the women of Greece in a successful attempt to force their husbands to stop making war. The men, suffering from the absence of sex, agree to make peace):
Lysistrata (one of the women): “If all women join together [...]

Human Rights Poem (44): The Elf King

The Elf king (Der Erlkönig), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Who rides so late through night and wind?
It is the father with his child.
He has the little one well in the arm
He holds him secure, he holds him warm.
“My son, why hide your face in fear?”
“See you not, Father, the Elf king?
The Elf king with crown and [...]

Political Artist (20): Billy Bragg

Human Rights Quote (57): Poverty and Shame

“The poor man’s conscience is clear; yet, he is ashamed . . . He feels himself out of the sight of others, groping in the dark. Mankind takes no notice of him. He rambles and wanders unheeded. In the midst of a crowd, at church, in the market . . . He is in as [...]

Human Rights Facts (34): Arms Trade

This post on the international arms trade is a follow-up of a previous post on the evolution of war in the world and of one on the evolution of military budgets and defense spending.
Again, it’s useless to oppose trade in or production of arms in general. People and countries have to be able to defend [...]

Human Rights Facts (33): Military Spending

This is a follow-up of a previous post on the evolution of war in the world. Whereas the number of wars and their intensity seem to decrease over the last decades, the same cannot be said of the arms trade and the defense budgets. This makes it difficult to hope that the statistics on warfare [...]