BLOG SABBATICAL

This blog has been 'paused' for quite some time, mainly due to lack of time rather than inclination, I'm about to take off on my travels, so I imagine it will remain defunct for a while, but I do plan to revive it at some point in the future. In the meantime, please feel free to browse older posts to your heart's content.

Decide what to worship

A tweet from my friend Antonia reminded me of the brilliance of this David Foster Wallace essay, which I first read just after he died. I'm a big fan of DFW, although his writing can be fairly patchy, because when he gets it right he really blows your socks off, in a 'deconstructing-the-little-things-that-you've-only-ever-noticed-subconsciously-and-rendering-them-profound-and-funny-at-the-same-time' kind of way.

I had a tedious, frustrating day yesterday (including very nearly getting squashed by a truck on my cycle journey home) but it was alleviated somewhat by reminding myself constantly "This is water, this is water..."

Fistula Foundation

Have a listen to this feature from Radio 4, about the Fistula Foundation hospital in Ethiopa; an excellent, rather moving report.

And by the way, The Fistula Foundation is one of the most worthwhile causes you could donate to - the treatment they give really does rebuild broken lives, so please think about helping them out.

The crazy tree blooms in America

This article in the Washington Post is excellent in putting all this absurd hyperbolic nonsense about healthcare reform, the 'Stalinist' NHS and 'death panels', into context. (My favourite right-wing gold so far: the claim that "if" Stephen Hawking was British he would have been left to die.)

It reminds me a bit of this classic essay, 'The Paranoid Style in American Politics' by Richard Hofstadter, which I have come back to time and time again since my A Level history teacher told me to read it (thanks JDM!).

Votes are not enough

The Times leader on Afghanistan yesterday was pretty spot-on I think, in labelling the heinous law on conjugal rights (see post below) "a defiance of what a democratic culture must mean", and this:

Democracy is a living process, measured in the culture of daily life, not counted periodically in votes cast in elections and the appearance of a representative government.

Paul Collier talks about this in his book Wars, Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places: elections on their own are not enough without security, accountability and strong institutions.

Sometimes I despair

Nothing I can say will do justice to how deeply depressing this is...

Trousers in Sudan

Alright, I know I'm being very female-centric (Harriet Harman must have inspired me) but this woman is my new hero...

Maternal mortality

It's a sad and infuriating fact that pregnancy and childbirth remain hugely risky, life-threatening activities for many women in the developing world. These are largely preventable deaths, allowed to happen because of a chronic lack of resources, a result of systematic gender discrimination when it comes to reproductive healthcare. William Kristof's column highlights the issue; the White Ribbon Alliance do excellent work in terms of raising funds and awareness for this cause.

Penance and population

There's been a HUGE hiatus, I'm sorry. Exams then holiday got me out of the habit, and now I'm bogged down in dissertation writing (although I have been posting some article links on Twitter - see bottom left of this page). However, I'm going to try and start posting again occasionally, although most content will be related to my dissertation subject-matter - an analysis of the relationship between human rights and climate change. Speaking of which:

Population control is a very controversial issue in development and environmental circles, even though over-population is undoubtedly hugely exacerbating a number of undisputed social, economic and environmental evils. Of particular concern to me is the way human rights rhetoric is wheeled out to make any form of population control seem like a draconian infringement of liberty. This reveals a privileged Western bias - there are millions of women throughout the world who would dearly love to be given the option and the means to have less children. To see the way this issue is tiptoed round, one would think that population control inevitably means mass forced sterilisation. In reality, a good strategy is far more positive and has all sorts of desirable side effects. Outgoing chair of the SDC Jonathon Porritt is bravely iconoclastic in this piece, which Greepeace rejected as too controversial.

Every single one of the multiple socio-economic issues that preoccupy campaigns today would be eased by full-on, government-led interventions to help reduce average fertility – especially in the world’s poorest countries. And we know exactly how to generate that double dividend: massively increase funding for education for girls, for improved reproductive and other health interventions for women, and for ensuring access for women to a choice of reliable and cheap (preferably free) contraceptives. That's what successful family planning looks like.

I suppose this just confirms my view that educating girls is the foolproof way to solve all the world's ills...