Peacemakers Trust posts news, reports or announcements of interest to people studying or working in the field of dispute resolution, conflict transformation and peacebuilding. Inclusion of an item on the media watch blog does not imply endorsement or agreement of Peacemakers Trust with views expressed by authors of posted items.
We all make decisions every day; we want to know what the right thing is to do — in domains from the financial to the gastronomic to the professional to the romantic. And surely, if somebody could really tell us how to do exactly the right thing at all possible times, that would be a tremendous gift.
It turns out that, in fact, the world was given this gift in 1738 by a Dutch polymath named Daniel Bernoulli. And what I want to talk to you about today is what that gift is, and I also want to explain to you why it is that it hasn’t made a damn bit of difference.
Now, this is Bernoulli’s gift..: The expected value of any of our actions — that is, the goodness that we can count on getting — is the product of two simple things: the odds that this action will allow us to gain something, and the value of that gain to us.
The actions of a group of German church members in 1934 in resisting the Nazi regime still serve as a powerful model for churches today, according to the General Secretary of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC).
Sunday 31 May 2009 marks the 75th anniversary of the publication of a statement by the group that has come to be known as the “Barmen Declaration.â€
Clergy, theologians and church members who disagreed with the leadership of the German church which was willing to follow the orders of the Reich government, gathered in the city of Barmen to prepare a declaration which said that only the Christ of the scriptures has authority over the church.
Filed under: Human Rights — story spotted by Catherine Morris @ 03:02 UTC
News source:
27 May 2009
ReliefWeb
By United Nations Human Rights Council
The Human Rights Council this morning continued its eleventh Special Session on the situation of human rights in Sri Lanka, with speakers again expressing divergent views on the approach which should be taken towards Sri Lanka in the aftermath of the bloody conflict in the north of the country, which left tens of thousands dead and wounded, hundreds of thousands displaced and engendered a humanitarian emergency.
Filed under: News Watch Blog — story spotted by Catherine Morris @ 02:57 UTC
News source:
26 May 2009
Common Ground News Service
By Sholehudin A. Aziz
JAKARTA – When most Indonesians think of Poso, a town in eastern Indonesia once famous for its cacao, they think of the 1998 inter-religious conflict between Muslims and Christians. The violence is believed to have begun as a result of fighting between two young people from different religious communities during Ramadan, the fasting month for Muslims. The resulting conflict cost not only thousands of lives, houses and places of worship, but also hindered the town’s development and hurt its local traditions, practices of coexistence and intercultural tolerance.
The government made various efforts to stop the conflict, including facilitating a 2001 meeting between Muslim and Christian religious leaders in Malino, a town in South Sulawesi, which concluded with the signing of the Malino Peace Accord on 21 December. In this accord Christian and Muslim d
TEHRAN – Iran blocked access to Facebook on Saturday in what opposition candidates said was an effort to sabotage their challenges to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Canadian mining giant Goldcorp held its annual shareholder’s meeting on Friday, May 22nd, in Vancouver’s financial district. Simultaneously, hundreds of community members from San Miguel Ixtahuacan, where Goldcorp’s Marlin Mine operates, marched through the streets of Guatemala City so as to protest the corporation’s activities in the Guatemalan highlands.
Song writer, E. Y. Harburg once said, “Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought.†Well scientific research has helped to make that quote true. Most of us feel moved when we listen to a good song. In fact, studies have shown that in the dispute context, music can help to make parties more reasonable. But can music change the way we feel about others?
SAM Rainsy Party lawyer Kong Sam Onn appeared before an inspection team at the Cambodian Bar Association for the first time Monday as part of an investigation into accusations that he breached the Bar’s professional code of ethics.
Kong Sam Onn, who is representing opposition lawmaker Mu Sochua in her defamation lawsuit against Prime Minister Hun Sen, was himself accused of defamation by Hun Sen’s lawyers following comments he made at a press conference on April 23…
During the aborted meeting, at which he was to answer questions relating to the case, Kong Sam Onn said he hoped the Bar would judge him fairly and that Hun Sen’s involvement would have no impact on the case.
“I think that the Bar will decide my case legally if there’s no pressure from politicians. I didn’t do anything illegal, and the Bar will rule properly if there is no pressure,” he said.
Religious passages that were used in intelligence reports in 2003 were taken out of context, some say.
By Manya A. Brachear
Reporting from Chicago — One passage plucked from the New Testament’s Epistle to the Ephesians instructs believers to “put on the full armor of God.”
An excerpt from the Old Testament’s Isaiah directs them to “open the gates that the righteous nation may enter.”
As American troops fought in Iraq in 2003, these biblical verses and others reportedly prefaced intelligence reports approved by then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld…
Several members of the clergy say many of the biblical quotations used to condone war were taken out of context. Ephesians, for example, makes clear that the armor of God refers to the virtues of truth, justice and peace.
Filed under: Human Rights — story spotted by Catherine Morris @ 03:37 UTC
News source:
22 May 2009
New York Times
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
President Obama’s proposal for a new legal system in which terrorism suspects could be held in “prolonged detention†inside the United States without trial would be a departure from the way this country sees itself, as a place where people in the grip of the government either face criminal charges or walk free.
Filed under: Media and Conflict — story spotted by Catherine Morris @ 03:35 UTC
News source:
19 May 2009
Leah in Chicago (blog)
By Leah Jones
I’ve got this little speech that I give about Twitter based on a sociolinguistics class I took in the fall of 1995… I remember two things about that class.
Filed under: News Watch Blog — story spotted by Catherine Morris @ 21:04 UTC
News source:
25 May 2009
International IDEA
Editorial
By Vidar Helgesen
“Democracy is not about what governments do; it is what people do to make their governments accomplish things for the common good […].†These words pronounced by Peter Anyang’ Nyongo, when he headed the African Association of Political Science in 19911, still resound.
Today we are facing increasing popular discontent in politics and politicians, which by extension, affects our perceptions of how we are governed and how we control those who govern. The criticism we often address to our government executives, legislators and political party leaders, however justified, should not be oblivious of the strong mutual relationship between the quality of governance and the quality of participation: the lower the level participation and citizens’ oversight in matters of governance, the weaker the governance structures and processes will tend to be and it will all end up reducing the quality of the service delivered.
The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has issued its concluding observations and recommendations for the Government on Cambodia’s implementation of the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The recommendations are based on information provided to the Committee in its report, submitted in 2008, in its written responses to the Committee’s questions, and in a two-day meeting between committee members and Cambodia’s Ambassador in Geneva. The Committee members are independent experts elected by the governments of the countries who are parties to the Covenant, including the Cambodian Government and the review procedure is identical for every country when its report is considered. Read the recommendations in English or Khmer.
JERUSALEM – It is frequently asserted that bringing religion into the Arab-Israeli conflict will undermine any potential for resolving it. While a limited secular political conflict can be resolved, so the logic goes, religion invariably involves non-negotiable ideologies that complicate matters exponentially.
However, bringing religion into the Arab-Israeli conflict cannot be avoided. It already is part of the conflict and has been from its inception even if in the public discourse the deeper cultural and religious roots of the conflict are usually omitted.
Last fall, with headlines of million-dollar Wall Street bonuses appearing amid the worst economic crisis in a generation, I attended a lecture on corporate ethics by the CEO of one of America’s most venerable corporations. This captain of American industry was critical of the compensation committees and formulas that generated these outsize payouts and felt that in his own case, he didn’t deserve more than $10 million, regardless of what the committee came up with.
It is truly a statement of the times we live in that a self-imposed $10 million pay cap is a sign of modesty and virtue. Half a century ago, the median pay of top executives in U.S. companies was 30 times an average worker’s salary; by 2005, the ratio was nearly 110. How did we get here?
An exclusive article for the montlhy newsletter “En la mira – The Latin American Small Arms Watch.â€
In this issue of En la Mira, we present a compliment, a word of support and a call for attention. The compliment and support are for a government: the government of the Republic of Peru. The call for attention is for one of the world’s biggest firearms and ammunition manufacturers for small arms and light weapons companies: the Companhia Brasileira de Cartuchos (CBC). In both cases the key word is international responsibility.
A forthcoming series of recommendations by a UN rights body is unlikely to flatter the government, but civil society groups hope it does not fall on deaf ears.
THE UN’s Committee on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights (UNCESCR) is set to release its concluding observations following its review of Cambodia’s rights situation in Geneva last week.
