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Love Your Mother
Pictures of planet Earth “our home planet” capture our imagination. This one commemorates Earth Day and its message is simple: we need to love the planet we live on. It’s easy to take our ability to see the whole Earth for granted and to forget that until the ‘Space Age’ at the end of the 1960’s we had simply never seen it that way: we’d never got the whole thing in perspective. “The Blue Marble”, the photograph that appears in our logo, was taken in 1972 by Harrison Schmitt, one of the astronauts of the Apollo 17 mission. Robert Poole is his book Earthrise: How Man First Saw the Earth describes it as ‘A photographic manifesto for…
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More than one thousand deaths since 2000
On 15 December 2010, 50 people are believed to have drowned when their asylum seeker boat was smashed, only metres from safety, on the shores of Christmas Island. Some of the bodies of those who died will never be recovered. In protests by asylum seekers that followed, children held in detention are seen holding up placards asking: “The children died. Why?” [1] Yet the children and adults that died on 15 December are (horrifically) only a small fraction of deaths associated with “border security”. Sometime in 2010, the known number of deaths associated with Australia’s border controls passed 1000. This number in turn is only a small fraction of the known global toll associated with similar border security policies which are playing out on borders…
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Book Review: The Strange Alchemy of Law and Life by Justice Albie Sachs
The victims and perpetrators of human rights abuses whisper from the pages of this short book. They speak to us of their struggle to realize their own humanity and recognize the humanity of each other. For a judge The Strange Alchemy of Law and Life is an unusual book. But then Albie Sachs is an unusual judge. A member of the African National Congress and a legal adviser to it when it was still a revolutionary movement, Albie Sach’s life moves from barely surviving a state sponsored terrorist bombing, to which he lost an arm and an eye, to sitting on the Constitutional Court of South Africa. It is the kind of life that prompts reflection,…
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Only Water in a Stranger’s Tears
‘It’s only water in a stranger’s tears.’ I start with this line partly because I’ll always get in a musical reference if I can (it’s a lyric from the song Not One of Us, by Peter Gabriel), but also because it sums up to me what defining ‘the other’ (the foreigner) seems to be all about: denying the humanity of a particular group of people. And perhaps nothing defines our humanity as much as our tears, whether from grief, distress, fear, or even happiness. We shed tears when emotion, that quintessentially human experience, overwhelms us. We cry with sympathy, too, and not just for people we know. You’d be forgiven…
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On the nose: perfumer sparks racism furore
Last month, I discussed a problem of foreignness emerging from France. This month, coincidentally, I again turn to a controversy from France that has gripped the world’s attention—one that reveals how language can create and perpetuate notions of Otherness and foreignness. Jean-Paul Guerlain, who once worked for the famous high-end cosmetics line that shares his last name as its name, has fallen under the media spotlight for racist remarks he recently made in an interview on French television. Out of decency, I will not reproduce his remarks on this blog, but major news media sources across the world such as The Guardian are reporting them. There is no question that…
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“Crossing Over” – Harrison Ford interpreta al agente del ICE
Crossing Over “es un drama de 2009 independiente de cine estadounidense que explorar la vida de los inmigrantes ilegales que intentan” cruzar la frontera “, literal y metafóricamente para obtener un estatus legal en los Estados Unidos. La película trata de la frontera, la falsificación de documentos, el asilo y el proceso de la tarjeta verde, la aplicación de trabajo, la naturalización, la oficina de lucha contra el terrorismo y el choque de culturas. La película enfatiza los efectos deshumanizantes de los controles fronterizos en ambos aquellos que tratan de cruzar la frontera y los que participan en el contrabando humano. También se explora el cruce de fronteras culturales y…
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Ocho millones de niños menores de cinco años mueren cada año por causas en gran medida prevenibles. Un billón de personas viven en extrema pobreza. Miles de personas que huyen de la guerra de la pobreza o la persecución mueren cruzando fronteras internacionales. Los países ricos continuamente fortaleciendo las leyes y medidas para impedir que la gente no cruzen esus fronteras. Cientos de miles de refugiados terminan viviendo en “campos” de refugiados como si fueran delincuentes. 67 millones de personas viven como refugiados o personas desplazadas como consecuencia de la persecución, guerra, la pobreza o por otras causas. Creyendo que los seres humanos son “extranjeros” es la causa para que sus…
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Abolir étrangeté
Huit millions d’enfants sous l’âge de cinq meurent chaque année de causes en grande partie évitables. Dans certains pays 20 {c84781dca76076c2df837abb441bfc3b29951050b7a36b48c8ddc8b88155ee2c} d’enfants meurent avant qu’ils atteignent l’âge de cinq ans. Des milliers de personnes fuyant la guerre, de la pauvreté ou de persécution meurent franchissent les frontières internationales. Les pays riches renforcent continuellement des lois et mesures pour empêcher les gens de passage de leurs frontières. Des centaines de milliers sont détenus dans des prisons de migration «camps» comme s’ils étaient des criminels. 67 millions de personnes vivent comme réfugiés ou de personnes déplacées à la suite de persécution, de guerre, de la pauvreté ou d’autres causes. Un milliard de personnes…
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Abolire Estraneità
Otto milioni di bambini sotto l’età di cinque muoiono ogni anno in gran parte per cause prevenibili. In alcuni paesi il 20{c84781dca76076c2df837abb441bfc3b29951050b7a36b48c8ddc8b88155ee2c} dei bambini muore prima di raggiungere i cinque anni. Migliaia di persone in fuga da guerre, persecuzioni o povertà muoiono attraversando le frontiere internazionali. Paesi ricchi continuamente rafforzano leggi e misure per prevenire che le persone attraversano le frontiere. Centinaia di migliaia sono detenuti nelle carceri di migrazione – come se fossero dei criminali. 67 milioni di persone vivono come rifugiati o sfollati interni a causa della persecuzione, guerra, povertà o altre cause. Un miliardo di persone vivono in estrema povertà. Credere che gli esseri umani sono “stranieri” rende tale profonda violazione dei…
