2013-05-20T10:27:58-04:00 Noam Schimmel http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=noam-schimmel Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Noam Schimmel Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3097696 2013-04-17T03:02:16-04:00 2013-04-18T10:43:25-04:00

Noam Schimmel http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noam-schimmel/
That is how I feel a few days after the Boston marathon bombings.

Despite the sadness and grief, the indignation at injustice and suffering and the horror of senseless violence calculated to instill fear and terrorize, the loss of innocent lives and the struggles of the injured - our community has proven not only its resilience but its civic and moral character.

First responders give of themselves - often at great personal risk - without question or delay.

Thousands of people offer to volunteer and help in any way - big and small - from providing food or shelter - to the comfort of a listening ear, an open heart, and an embrace.

On an individual level, friends reach out and enquire about one's safety and well being.

I felt a little less alone in our city's grief when emails reached me from Rwanda, Spain, England, Canada and other parts of America to check how I am, but also, and as importantly, to express solidarity, concern, and compassion.

Caring and communication quickly fill the breach caused by violence.

Perhaps this is not extraordinary; it is as things should be, especially in times of crisis and distress.

Regardless, it is deeply moving and it is not to be taken for granted.

In an increasingly atomized and disconnected society in which social solidarity is often strained, the ease, generosity, and intensity of commitment to collective well being that so many have demonstrated in Boston is an affirmation of what it means to be democratic citizens and to be human.

Growing up just outside of Boston the marathon has always meant for me a certain moment of possibility at a special time of the year, but also a transcendent faith in life itself.

It always falls just as spring is beginning, and with it the promise of winter's thaw, summer's warmth, and a burst of new life and new beginnings.

My memories of past marathons - especially from childhood - are joyful and simple in their pleasures.

Racing with friends to give out as many cups of water as possible to slake a runner's thirst, cheering on runners with wild enthusiasm and loud yawps of support as well as creative chants to try to inspire even the most exhausted of runners, the taste of orange slices and the outstretched hand of a runner reaching for one and seeing the look of relief on his or her face as the juice provides sweetness and sustenance.

And a general atmosphere of sun dappled streets and picnicking - friends and family sharing a lazy spring day shot through with ambition and endurance, aspiration and achievement.

It was and remains fun in a primal kind of way - almost like a carnival but more easygoing and unpretentious and everyone is themselves.

No masks are worn.

It is a sincere celebration, down-to-earth, unvarnished.

There is sweat and tears, exhaustion and bodies in pain pushed to their limits - but there is also the physical eloquence of an undaunted runner completing the race unbowed, passion, perseverance, humility and humor, awe, dignity and tenacity.

At the marathon you bump into friends you haven't seen for a while, people share food and drink, and there is a sense of shared purpose - to support the runners - alongside just kicking back and enjoying the day.

With its commanding physical presence - 26 miles from out in Hopkinton to downtown Boston - the marathon creates unity across the diversity of the state of Massachusetts by linking towns and cities with different characters and populations, but all who share a common bond in hosting runners on their streets and supporting their efforts.

I have always loved Boston.

And now I love it all the more.

I am a New Englander and this is my capital.

Its landscape speaks to me, its trees, its bold autumns and uncompromising winters - the meandering flow of the Charles River, the green of Boston Common, the Freedom Trail and the values it honors and the lives and stories it recounts, Fenway Park and a crowded T of baseball enthusiasts on their way to or from a game.

And now, when I read about the acts of generosity, the strong sense of collective obligation, I am reminded that what was and will always be magical about the marathon is not just that it heralds spring and the promise of a distant but soon to be realized summer and that it is a relaxing day.

A day which punctuated my youth with wonder and has done the same for countless others and works its dependable magic over and over, year after year.

It is also a uniquely civic holiday - an unself-conscious kind of Thanksgiving that fittingly falls on Patriot's Day, when Massachusetts citizens honor the American Revolution and the democratic values of freedom, liberty, and equality it championed.

The marathon brings people out to the streets to celebrate together in a festive spirit that transcends generational differences and differences of just about every type.

Few public gatherings are as unifying, few make our differences less relevant and our common humanity more palpably and beautifully and immediately obvious - as urgent and powerful as the drive of a runner to reach the finish line, as fundamental as our human need for water and words of support when the going gets rough and the road remains long.

The marathon is special in the way in which people cheer on runners without having any personal connection to them, kids give out cups of water to the thirsty and somehow the meeting of the very individual private aspirations of runners who may be trying to break an athletic record, achieve their personal best, or raise funds for a good cause that speaks to their particular values and identity, relationships and life experiences fuse with that of society at large and become cause for public celebration.

There is something about this alchemy of individual and collective which gives hope and renews vitality.

It restores a sense of purpose and connectedness, community and home.

This year, as always, I feel a sense of gratitude.

But this year it is greater.

We have been tested.

Horribly, against our will, and we have lost our fellow residents and citizens as a consequence of the bombing attacks.

Many are wounded and in pain, physically and emotionally and many will need our support through an arduous process of healing and rehabilitation.

Yet as we mourn, and as we comfort the families of those individuals who lost their lives and who are caring for the wounded, we look to find strength.

We can draw strength from the spirit of the Boston marathon, a wellspring which remains as full and generous as ever.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2834205 2013-03-08T00:44:11-05:00 2013-05-07T05:12:01-04:00

Noam Schimmel http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noam-schimmel/
This is a timely, commendable and important report, and it challenges many of the all too self-congratulatory tendencies within EU member states and the EU as a whole that champion the EU's purported commitment to human rights which is often more a matter of rhetoric than reality.

It calls for greater EU attention to the way trade policies can impact the likelihood of mass atrocities, in particular the arms trade, which it calls to constrain in situations in which arms are likely to be diverted for use against civilians in violation of international law.

It also calls for improved intelligence gathering to create an early warning framework to try to prevent mass atrocities from breaking out and demands that the EU commit itself to preventing mass atrocities and creates a framework for making such a commitment actionable.

The full report with all its policy recommendations can be found at a link provided by the London School of Economics:

There are other issues the report does not address, however, which merit attention:

How should the EU deal with member states who are complicit in genocide and other mass atrocities, for example?

The most notable case is that of France, which was extensively involved in the Rwandan genocide of the Tutsi in 1994.

The French government provided military, diplomatic, and economic support to Rwanda's genocidal regime before, during and after the genocide.

This has been well documented with evidence presented by various scholars such as Daniela Kroslak in The Role of France in the Rwandan Genocide and Andrew Wallis in Silent Accomplice: The Untold Story of France's Role in the Rwandan Genocide.

Human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues have also provided similar evidence for France's role in the Rwandan genocide in particular and the complicity of other European countries as well, as has the investigative journalist Linda Melvern.

Moreover, given that the EU has failed to develop and implement a human rights policy aiming to prevent and stop genocide and other mass atrocities the EU needs to consider the moral obligations that stem from this failure.

The EU must ask itself what are its moral and legal obligations post-genocide and other mass atrocities to help individuals and communities seeking to rebuild their lives and realize their human rights following extreme human rights violations.

What should the role of European countries and the EU be in response to other failures to act to prevent mass atrocities in countries such as Syria, Sri Lanka, Congo, and Sudan?

These are questions of law, ethics, and public policy that need to be examined and answered, subject to public debate and democratic accountability.

Given the extensive role of EU national aid agencies in funding development aid programs careful consideration must be given to the responsibilities of national and multi-national EU aid projects to support survivors of genocide and mass atrocities and to enable them to realize their human rights in accordance with the UN Basic Principles on the Right to Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law.

These principles create a framework for restorative justice which defines obligations to provide restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction, and guarantees of non-repetition to survivors of mass atrocities.

In this regard, Britain, through the Department for International Development has been exemplary in its substantial commitment to funding development projects for survivors of the Rwandan genocide, and a model that other European national aid agencies should emulate.

Hundreds of perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide have shamefully found shelter in the EU and many EU member states refuse to prosecute them, France and Britain amongst them.

In too many EU states prosecution efforts are minimal, hopelessly lethargic, and marred by a lack of political and legal will.

This is utterly immoral, inexcusable, and must come to an end.

It imposes a further injustice on survivors of the Rwandan genocide and makes a mockery of EU commitments to international human rights law and the principle that violators of human rights - particularly the most egregious ones - need to be held accountable.

As the 19th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide approaches in April, this report by the Task Force on the EU Prevention of Mass Atrocities has been issued at a critical time.

Survivors of the Rwandan genocide who were failed enormously by the EU are demanding and deserve redress as an urgent matter of justice which has gone unaddressed for far too long.

They are currently campaigning for a program of restorative justice that recognizes their human rights in accordance with the UN Basic Principles.

Prevention and stopping genocide are paramount goals.

But in a world in which genocide and mass atrocities all too often are allowed to take place with little interference aside from hollow statements of diplomatic pseudo-solidarity with victims - and when the EU and its member states remain indifferent to the suffering and cries of distant others who are not EU nationals - action plans for providing assistance to survivors of genocide and other mass atrocities in their aftermath are equally essential.

Restorative justice for survivors of genocide and mass atrocities must complement the efforts to prevent and stop genocide advocated by the Task Force on the EU Prevention of Mass Atrocities.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2311764 2012-12-16T12:37:00-05:00 2012-12-17T09:14:14-05:00

Noam Schimmel http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noam-schimmel/
But by December of 1938 the persecution of the Jews of Germany was already taking on an extreme form.

In November, Kristallnacht, the 'Night of Broken Glass' took place, in which approximately 100 Jews were murdered, tens of thousands were arrested and sent to concentration camps, more than one thousand synagogues in Germany and Austria were burned, and thousands of Jewish shops were attacked and destroyed.

It was more than sufficient warning of Nazi Germany's attitude toward the Jews and its assault on their rights and their lives.

Someone was moved to take action and protest in a very distant land as a result of these attacks.

William Cooper, an Aboriginal elder of the Yorta Yorta tribe in Australia led a march to the German consulate in Melbourne in December of 1938 to protest Germany's persecution of the Jews.

It was an act of extraordinary empathy, conscience, and solidarity - and one which I believe needs to be better known, honored, and celebrated.

This year, William Cooper's grandson, Alf Turner, along with family members, Holocaust survivors, friends, and supporters re-enacted the march and submitted a copy of the petition of protest of the persecution of the Jews to Germany's consulate in Melbourne, on the 74th anniversary of the march.

It stated, "We plead that you would make it known to your government and its military leaders that this cruel persecution of their fellow citizens must be brought to an end."

William Cooper led this delegation in December of 1938 at a time when Aboriginal Australians suffered from intense persecution and discrimination themselves.

They had no right to vote and were not recognized as citizens until decades later in the late 1960s.

Cooper was a passionate and dedicated activist for Aboriginal rights and the principles of freedom and equality, securing in 1940 a National Aborigines Day and working tirelessly to secure Aboriginal land rights and greater honesty about and accounting for the theft of Aboriginal lands and the racist persecution Aboriginal peoples faced since Australia was settled by the British.

Under Australia's racist government policies Aboriginal cultures and languages were denigrated and marginalized.

The Australian government attempted to destroy them outright through policies of forced assimilation, coercive breaking up of families, and schooling that denied any recognition to Aboriginal heritage and language.

Today, Aboriginal Australians still suffer from discrimination and intense social and economic marginalization despite substantial improvements in recognizing the value of their communities and heritage and increased - though far from complete - recognition of their rights.

I write this with the deepest gratitude to William Cooper and his descendents and to thank them in the words of the great American rabbi and activist for civil rights, Abraham Joshua Heschel, for the "moral grandeur and spiritual audacity" of William Cooper's act.

Very few, if any such private protests were made; it was an act of exceptional ethical boldness, prescience, and compassion.

At Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial to the Holocaust, a garden will be planted to honor William Cooper's protest and demand for justice, freedom, and equality for the persecuted Jews of Germany and Austria in 1938.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2176707 2012-11-23T04:13:36-05:00 2012-11-26T03:33:34-05:00

Noam Schimmel http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noam-schimmel/
Because their intentions are considered largely unimpeachable and because their efforts are so widely respected there is a tendency to show them deference rather than to engage them sympathetically but critically.

This tendency undermines human rights and does no service to these organizations either.

Human rights organizations have distinct ideologies and campaigning emphases - despite their commitment to shared goals of protecting universal human rights as defined and codified by international law.

The tension between pragmatism and principle in their efforts to promote human rights is inevitable and continuous despite rarely being acknowledged and discussed vigorously and transparently. Like all organizations promoting social change they have had their share of successes and failures.

The romantic view of human rights organizations which dominates much of public discourse and parts of academia does a disservice to human rights because it presents organizations promoting human rights as paragons of virtue, almost as Gods of infallibility, good intention, and right moral outcome.

This is not the case and cannot be the case, by virtue of the often difficult choices, conflicting priorities and values, internal politics, exigencies of human rights advocacy, and the biases and power dynamics which inform human rights organizations, as they similarly inform other organizations promoting urgent and essential social change in the context of a world replete with asymmetries of power, resources, and media attention.

Human rights organizations have had tremendous victories but they have also had spectacular failures - particularly with regard to their inability to significantly influence the UN and member states to act to prevent and stop genocide and other mass atrocity, enforce human rights conventions with any degree of reliability, and similarly, in failing to advance restorative justice in a substantive way for victims of genocide and other mass atrocity.

Their models of engagement are sometimes overly scholarly and passive, and while many excel at observing and reporting human rights violations far fewer succeed at preventing and stopping them.

The reasons for this are complex and are not a simple case of finding fault with human rights organizations who face multiple challenges in pursuing human rights and who struggle with relatively few resources given the epic scale and scope of human rights violations globally.

Still, there needs to be a larger discursive space for criticism and accountability, for it is only through such reflection that any organization can continue to grow, be responsive to changing realities, and maintain the necessary openness and humility that leavens excellence and the successful realization of an organization's mission.

Some human rights organizations fixate on human rights violations in particular countries or regions disproportionately and often without just cause; this undermines their commitment to the principles of universality, equality and non-discrimination.

Some, in their firm and sincere commitment to human rights ideals make the perfect the enemy of the good, aligning human rights with a zealous utopianism that while well intentioned can have devastating consequences in fragile settings where the very advocacy and demands of human rights organizations can inflame ethnic and political hatreds and tensions and sow the seeds of conflict and violence, and which sometimes do more to undermine human rights than to protect and realize them.

Some organize themselves around campaigns that have symbolic value and generate media attention and popular interest but are not necessarily most urgent and do not reflect the needs of individuals and peoples suffering from the most egregious violations of human rights and in immediate and intense vulnerability to harm.

In promoting human rights we ought to show those organizations advancing human rights respect and appreciation but not deference, hold them accountable to the values they strive to represent and protect and critically assess their efforts to do so, and encourage a more prominent place for discussion, dissent, and contestation within the human rights community and society at large about how human rights are advanced.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1949690 2012-10-10T12:18:12-04:00 2012-10-10T12:24:42-04:00

Noam Schimmel http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noam-schimmel/
There was a special program within the Mister Rogers' Neighborhood television show called the 'Neighborhood of Make Believe.'

You may remember it.

In the context of the show it was a special place that fired up the imagination of children, addressed issues of cooperation, conflict, and community, and sensitively portrayed emotions and ethics as they related both to interpersonal relationships and individual experience.

It was also simply a place of fun and spontaneity, a little zany -- a place of freedom and individuality and offbeat creativity where the mind could wander and the spirit play. A place to which kids would naturally be drawn and where they'd feel safe and at home.

Sadly, Mitt Romney seems to have fallen down the rabbit hole of a different kind of neighborhood of make believe.

Not the edifying one of Mister Rogers and PBS -- which Mitt Romney would gut for the sake of cutting taxes for the wealthy or keeping them so low as to increase the difficulties middle class and working class Americans have making ends meet, putting food on the table, paying for housing, and securing healthcare.

Not one concerned with education and expanding the human imagination and making America a country where all children and young adults have access to education.

But one that is more prosaically and predictably the make believe of dishonesty and disingenuousness.

Mitt Romney called for an end to the Affordable Care Act insisting that the states should each find their own way to make healthcare affordable and accessible to more Americans.

But this claim lacks credibility. Romney knows that very few states have the political will to do so and that tens of millions of Americans would be left uninsured or underinsured if the Affordable Care Act is repealed and healthcare is left to the states.

Romney's heart and his mind are not with the tens of millions of uninsured and underinsured Americans but with the obstructionist Republican ideologues that have turned their back on a piece of legislation -- the Affordable Care Act -- that was modeled on plans developed by the conservative Heritage Foundation, not exactly a paragon of liberalism and big government excess.

Romney spoke about his purportedly deep concern for education but neglected to mention his desire to cut Pell Grants and his lack of budgeting for substantive increases in funding for community colleges, state colleges and universities to enable economically disadvantaged young Americans who want to go to college to receive the education that will help them realize their potential and contribute to American society.

When campaigning Mitt Romney was asked how he would lower tuition to make college more accessible.

He didn't have a good answer.

He replied, 'Shop around.'

He has called for the American Opportunity Tax credit, which helps fund college tuition costs, to be ended.

Paul Ryan's budget calls for increasing the interest rates on student loans which obviously won't be helpful to students and will only make it even harder for them to afford tuition.

Mitt Romney's policies threaten education in the United States; they do not strengthen it.

Mitt Romney lamented the massive number of Americans on food stamps. But he didn't mention that food stamps and similar essential social safety nets that provide a lifeline to the most economically disadvantaged Americans have been and are under relentless assault from Republicans.

If Romney really cared about the poor and economically vulnerable generally he would offer a far more comprehensive and detailed plan to reduce poverty and protect the well being of the most economically disadvantaged Americans.

He has offered no such thing.

Mitt Romney was charismatic at the first presidential debate.

But he wasn't honest.

He distorted his record and Obama's as well. He was deceptive in how he portrayed his healthcare plans and his tax plans which overwhelmingly favor the very rich despite his denials and he made extravagant and irresponsible promises that he cannot keep.

He talked as though he's a moderate Republican of the kind that used to exist in reasonable numbers, did honor to conservatism, and which has sadly now gone the way of the dodo; all but extinct as a movement within the Republican party.

Romney's not about to resurrect it with one debate performance.

He is creating its shadow, using words to conjure images and feelings that create the illusion of a moderate form of conservatism that has no real backing within the power structure of the Republican Party and amongst Republican politicians.

For over a year he has appealed to the radical wing of the Republican Party which has turned conservatism not into a philosophy of pragmatic governance dedicated to the well being and rights of all Americans but a philosophy of intransigence, hyperbolic self-righteousness, self-defeating do nothing anti-government dogmatism, and governing for the sake of a narrow and exclusive upper class elite which neither understands nor cares to address the profound challenges the average American faces.

Honesty is the most fundamental prerequisite for being president.

It is the principle from which so many other fundamental ethical values radiate.

All the charisma in the world and all the "moderation" which Romney presented at the debate amount to little if Romney lacks integrity and if the American people cannot trust him.

When Mister Rogers spoke to the Senate in 1969 in defense of PBS in the face of proposed cuts to its budget he said, "One of the first things that a child learns in a healthy family is trust..."

As for a healthy family, so too for our nation.

Before he rushes to pull the plug on PBS and deny American children educational television it seems that Mitt Romney needs to spend a few good hours with Mister Rogers, whose humility, plain spoken honesty, wisdom, and integrity could teach him some valuable lessons.

Until he internalizes them the only neighborhood of make believe that Americans should tune in to is that of PBS while we still can, and not the hocus pocus illusions of Mitt Romney and his bag of manipulative magic tricks.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1898371 2012-09-19T17:18:15-04:00 2012-09-21T04:57:24-04:00

Noam Schimmel http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noam-schimmel/
There is no reason why the American people should trust Romney's pledges that smaller government is the answer to America's economic and social challenges.

It's not about small government or big government.

That's a convenient rhetorical frame but it's also a bogus one.

If it ever was believable it is now becoming increasingly transparent as unoriginal and unresponsive to the needs of the American people.

Americans want real answers to practical problems and needs - not ideological lectures, vague claims, and evasive promises.

Sometimes it helps to trim down government programs, other times it makes sense to scale them up.

Size is not everything.

Government regulation can save lives and maintain vital standards - safeguarding our air and water, protecting our food supply, ensuring the quality of our medical care.

It can also be bureaucratic, overbearing and stifle initiative.

It depends on the subject, the context, the location, and the situation.

Many Americans have much to be grateful for and have experienced the best of government by police and firefighters, emergency response teams, teachers, and other government employees that pursue essential, often life transforming and life saving work.

Government needs to be accountable, effective, responsive, and efficient. It can be those things but not if a political ideology of self-defeat and low expectations holds it hostage.

Ultimately Mr. Romney, if government is such a problem, if it is such a toxic thing, then you should not seek to lead it.

If you have so little faith in it then it is irresponsible of you to seek out the highest elected office in our democracy.

Abraham Lincoln called for a 'government of the people, by the people, for the people.'

He did not denigrate government and its ability to do good.

He did not demean our democratic institutions by denying their capacity to reflect the will of the people and to be productive.

Abraham Lincoln's words resonate with Americans precisely because they are words grounded in democratic ideals and pragmatic idealism and not in the intrinsic pessimism and negativity of hollow anti-government rhetoric.

We need conservatives who seek to make government more accountable, efficient, and effective. But not at the expense of the poor and the working class, of veterans and seniors, middle class Americans, children, and the economically and socially disadvantaged.

We need conservatives that stay grounded in a civic vision that respects the rights and well being of all Americans, seek to realize these rights and increase equality of opportunity, and understand that to relentlessly depict government as intrinsically flawed is to render conservatism powerless to effect positive social change and expand true freedom, transforming it into a vapid ideology of obstructionist paralysis in the face of urgent social needs.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1867057 2012-09-10T13:29:40-04:00 2012-09-10T13:29:38-04:00

Noam Schimmel http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noam-schimmel/
Well, the time for magic is over.

When Mitt Romney was asked how he would lower college tuition he offered an evasive and exceedingly unhelpful response: "Shop around,'' he said.

Does Romney really think American students do not shop around now? Is this a thoughtful piece of advice or a reflection of a lack of concern and a passing of the buck?

It's time for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan to stop stating the untruth that cutting from budgets for essential social services is a creative process -- when its done excessively, recklessly, and carelessly. Such relentless and radical cuts leave citizens vulnerable and disadvantaged.

They are destructive and their destructiveness is already being felt by the hundreds of thousands of young Americans being deprived of a college education, the negative consequences of which all Americans will feel for decades ahead.

Higher education is expensive in America for many reasons and it is fine and good for Republicans to find ways to encourage and pressure universities to bring down unreasonable costs and address waste in the system. All Americans will support such efforts and Romney and Ryan are right to insist upon them.

But this alone will not provide working class and middle class Americans with a dependable and accessible pathway to higher education and Republicans should stop pretending otherwise because Americans are catching on to the lie.

Moreover there is no better way to alienate a massive swath of American citizenry than to cut funding for loans and grants to students seeking to enroll in higher education and in need of economic support to do so.

Those of us in our twenties and thirties struggling to make ends meet so that we can afford higher education and pay back loans, and those of us in our forties and even fifties who are paying off massive loans and feeling the strains of our inadequately funded system of higher education and the economic toll and pressures it places on young families and households are voters.

We recognize that Romney and Ryan's plans are damaging and we will hold them accountable.

America does not invest nearly enough in financial aid for students and in support for community colleges and state universities and the sharply negative consequences of this underinvestment are being felt now and will be felt for decades.

Community colleges are cutting classes and programs because of massive budget cuts, state universities are rejecting students and closing down programs and courses for lack of resources, and the door to the American dream is getting slammed in the face of young Americans over and over again.

Romney and Ryan, instead of finding a way to open the door and allow more young Americans through it are proposing policies that make education more exclusive, perpetuating inequality and undermining social mobility.

They want to cut Pell Grants massively, which will make it harder for working class and middle class students to afford college. Ryan's budget calls for increasing interest rates on student loans, raising the costs of higher education for students considerably and serving as a further barrier to education. Both Romney and Ryan want the American Opportunity tax credit, which aids students enrolling in higher education, to expire.

Romney wants private companies to be lenders to students, even though the billions of dollars in profits they make do nothing to make higher education more affordable or to improve higher education and instead raise costs unreasonably for students.

That doesn't seed the American dream. It chokes it.

Education costs money and requires tax revenue and a willingness to raise sufficient revenue to meet basic standards of educational quality and access. Just like healthcare does. And housing. And the whole range of services and protections afforded by the government. That necessitates shared sacrifice and a sense of civic and collective social obligation.

Somewhere, somehow, Republicans have been losing this sense of civic obligation and communitarian responsibility and they are making a credo of this as though it is something of which they should be proud.

It's not. It's a moral failure and a failure of the spirit and the heart.

It is also an economic and an intellectual failure -- because the American economy will not flourish when the conditions of growth, which necessitate universal, affordable, quality education to build human resources and skills, strengthen human development, and encourage civic engagement are not met.

The Republican Party suffers from what has become a chronic, cruel, and crippling form of miserliness that in the face of injustice and denial of opportunity clenches its hand into a fist and leaves millions of Americans who are increasingly marginalized and disadvantaged out in the cold.

This latest policy proposal on student grants and loans which does little to make higher education affordable and expand access to more Americans is but one example of a larger Republican problem.

Repeating the same claims about private markets and increased competition -- as though these can answer every social need and social ill -- repetitively and increasingly loudly will not make the claims any more right.

All they do is reveal the extremism and doctrinaire nature of Romney and Ryan's conservatism and its lack of respect for responsible conservatism that is reasonable, moderate, and morally sound and promotes social well being and recognizes the importance of the public good.

Americans have real needs and vulnerabilities which will not be solved with dogmatic ideology and empty rhetoric.

Access to affordable, quality higher education is one of the greatest positive influences on social mobility, societal well being, and equal opportunity.

Romney and Ryan's stance on cutting funding for Pell grants, raising interests rates on student loans, and underfunding higher education and research generally threaten all of these.

They make Romney and Ryan obstacles to the realization of the American dream and its underlying promise of equal opportunity and a fair chance for all Americans to improve the quality of their lives and in so doing be empowered to contribute to the greater good of American society as a whole.

If Romney and Ryan stand with American students and college graduates they will reverse course, revise their plans, and offer policy responses that respect the rights and needs of young Americans seeking higher education.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1827152 2012-09-04T18:20:43-04:00 2012-09-04T18:21:12-04:00

Noam Schimmel http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noam-schimmel/
He's wrong.

He has designed his proposed Medicare reforms in such a way that they will not change Medicare for those 55 and over, but will substantially reduce Medicare benefits for those under age 55.

So he can, with real credibility, assure America's senior citizens of today that his Medicare reforms won't harm them directly.

What he doesn't tell them is that they will cause great harm to Americans under the age of 55.

He is banking on the idea that senior citizens are selfish and only care about their own well-being, and don't have in mind the welfare of their children and grandchildren as well.

It's a cynical and misguided assumption.

Senior citizens will prove to see through the smoke and mirrors of his plan and the divisiveness at its heart. They have children and grandchildren whom they love, young neighbors and friends whose health is important to them and who they believe deserve the same peace of mind and quality health care to which Medicare entitles them as senior citizens today.

Moreover, Americans between the ages of 18 and 55 are not going to take Ryan's Medicare reforms lying down and passively watch as Ryan dismantles one of the most valuable, important, and protective of American government programs.

We understand our own self interest and we won't let you undermine our rights to the same system of Medicare to which we have been contributing since we began to work.

So please Paul Ryan, go ahead and reform Medicare reasonably and responsibly, in a bipartisan way that maintains the Medicare guarantee and assures quality and accessible care to all Americans 65 and over now and for future generations but also works to reduce costs and waste.

But don't do it on the backs of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 55 and deprive them of health security once they enroll in Medicare when they are older.

Don't discriminate against non-senior citizens and propose a policy that insists they deserve less health security when they reach senior status than older Americans today.

Don't reform Medicare by dividing Americans when your task is to cultivate citizen solidarity and concern and action for the common good.

The American people deserve better from you and the Republican Party.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1674168 2012-08-31T20:25:29-04:00 2012-08-31T20:25:34-04:00

Noam Schimmel http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noam-schimmel/ over 250 million bombs dropped.

According to the New York Times, 30 percent of the bombs the United States dropped on Laos did not explode, leaving a literal minefield that continues to injure and kill decades after the end of the war, the resumption of full diplomatic relations between the United States and Laos, and peaceful relations between the two countries.

On a recent visit to Laos, Hilary Clinton stated that the United States is interested in expanding aid to speed up the removal of American bombs from Laos.

It is heartening that Clinton has proposed a measure that could have very substantive and transformative impact on citizens of Laos in making their country safe for children to play, farmers to plant and harvest, citizens to live and travel freely, and individuals to engage in commerce and trade without fear of injury.

But the United States needs to do more, especially for those Lao citizens who have already been injured by American bombs for whom bomb clearance will have arrived too late.

Thousands of Lao citizens are struggling with physical disabilities as a result of American bombs and other ordnance. Helping these Lao citizens is as important as removing the bombs that currently litter the country. It should be pursued alongside bomb clearance efforts.

Many American and international organizations are already on the ground in Laos providing such services -- but they need greater funding to reach the large numbers of Lao citizens who have been injured by American bombs but have not been able to access proper health and rehabilitative support services.

These services promote the broader development efforts of Laos -- which are supported by the American people through the programs of the U.S. Agency for International Development and through many American and international NGOs.

They are not acts of charity but acts of justice in the context of efforts to increase the well-being of the Lao people, the growth of their economy, and their overall development and capacity to enjoy their social and economic rights.

The suffering, dismemberment, disability, and poverty that results from Laotian civilians being maimed by U.S. ordinance is massive and no amount of aid can bring back the individuals killed by these bombs, nor the quality of life individuals who are now injured enjoyed prior to their injuries.

But aid can still have profoundly positive impacts -- enabling self-sufficiency and reducing poverty, restoring confidence, strengthening families and communities, and inspiring hope where it has been dimmed.

In many injured individuals rehabilitation can lead to dramatic and sustained improvement in their functioning with positive ripples across Lao society.

Currently the United States funds $9 million a year for bomb removal in Laos, an increase in funding Congress passed this year after spending an average of only $2.6 million annually since 1997.

This is a charitable sum -- not one that approaches the demands of justice. The increase to $9 million is a positive sign, but it is not enough given the scale of the problem.

Unexploded ordinance impedes the development of Laos and is a continuous threat to the safety of its citizens. It is the responsibility of the U.S. State Department and its aid agency, USAID, to address this speedily and comprehensively and not in the slow and paltry way it has until now.

Some foreign policy goals are massively complicated, take years to achieve, and sometimes are riddled with failure. Still, billions are spent on them despite these obstacles to success.

It won't take billions of dollars to clear Laos of American bombs and to provide an improved health and rehabilitative service for those Lao citizens injured by American bombs.

But it will take sustained genuine political will at the State Department and the US Agency for International Development and a more realistic and honest appraisal of need and adequate funding in response.

Already USAID funds programs (on a very small scale) for the protection of vulnerable people in Laos through its support for the Lao Disabled People Association and through projects to improve health and rehabilitation services for individuals injured by bombs as well as education and injury prevention outreach programs to the Lao population at large.

Scaling up bomb removal and health and rehabilitation programs for Lao people injured by bombs is not unduly complex and the end goals are achievable -- indeed, there is already a strong record of success upon which to build.

The U.S. has the resources to get this right and to enable healing and health in a land and for a people ravaged by war. Clinton should be commended for taking note of the problem and expressing the desire to address it.

Now good intentions need to be followed up with right action and Congress and the State Department should follow through on Clinton's commitment.

----------------------------------

Readers interested in learning more about development efforts to address the legacy of unexploded ordnance in Laos can visit the following websites:

http://www.careinternational.org.uk/where-we-work/laos

http://blogs.oxfam.org/en/blog/10-11-11-laos-worlds-most-bombed-country

http://www.copelaos.org/

http://www.handicap-international.org.uk/where_we_work/asia/laos

http://transition.usaid.gov/rdma/countries/laos.html

https://legaciesofwar.org/]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1826220 2012-08-23T17:40:48-04:00 2012-08-24T06:26:32-04:00

Noam Schimmel http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noam-schimmel/
Instead, it's a philosophy which sees most problems, social, economic, and otherwise as stemming from government that is too large. It rejects the capacity of government to substantially protect the well being and interests of citizens.

Its narrow focus on negative liberty leads it to marginalize positive liberty and to neglect the freedoms that government actively enables - from education and the engaged citizenship it helps realize to public health and the freedom to enjoy a safe, thriving, and clean environment in the city and rural areas alike. Government programs that enrich children and enable them to develop in a healthy way in a safe environment maximize the freedom of children and their families to fully actualize their potential as do social programs that provide support services to the elderly, the disabled, and veterans suffering from war wounds and trauma.

One of the problems with this philosophy is that it's reductionist in the extreme and monistic. Social, economic, and other challenges American society faces are not mono causal. Certainly government often acts in wasteful, incompetent, and dysfunctional ways. But so do corporations and other societal entities - governments do not have a monopoly on imperfection and failure.

Sometimes governments are highly effective, other times less so. But they are not demonic in the way that Ronald Reagan and his heirs have characterized them.

Conservatism has become intellectually dishonest because of its insistence that all problems stem from government and that government is intrinsically bad.

And because of this ideological rigidity contemporary Republicans have killed conservatism and placed themselves in a straitjacket when it comes to delivering effective government that respects the rights, needs, and desires of American citizens.

How is this so?

Consider a social problem, such as the lack of health insurance from which over 45 million Americans suffer.

Democrats have offered their policy response to the problem of how to insure these Americans in the form of the Affordable Care Act. Republicans have not. Instead, they urge rejection of the Affordable Care Act and provide no alternative that will guarantee every American healthcare without discrimination on the basis of wealth, age, health status, or disability.

What has happened as a result of the radical anti-government ideology is that Republicans have made it impossible for themselves to offer practical policy solutions informed by conservatism on a range of issues. They ignore or violate the principle of equal opportunity which necessitates government activity and protection - so essential to the foundations of democracy - across a wide range of domains from education to healthcare and housing.

Often, when Republicans introduce new social polices they are disingenuous; just another attempt at privatization of public services and the stripping away of a guarantee and the security it affords, as with Paul Ryan's Medicare reform plans which won't reform Medicare as much as eviscerate it.

Sometimes privatization may be prudent, but often times it is not, anymore than creating a government program is always the best solution to a social problem.

We may recall that prior to September 11th private security companies provided most security protection at American airports - generally providing a very poor service that put US citizens at risk. The TSA was created in large part because these private firms with their focus on profit rather than citizen protection failed the American people.

The private sector is capable of the most abject dysfunction and corruption absent democratic accountability through government regulation, as the current banking and economic crisis painfully illustrates.

US private health insurers for decades - until the government stepped in under the Affordable Care act - unconscionably discriminated invidiously against individuals with disabilities and pre-existing illnesses causing immense, pain, suffering, poverty, and often premature death of many Americans because of their refusal to provide them with medically necessary care.

If liberals have been guilty of sometimes having utopian visions of what government can achieve conservatives are guilty of the opposite - being excruciatingly pessimistic and creating a negative self-fulfilling prophecy because of the tyranny of low expectations which they espouse.

America desperately needs a conservative party that can move beyond a fixation on size and 'shrinking government' to one that puts certain positive outcomes such as non-discriminatory universal quality health care, reduced poverty, child welfare, safe streets and communities, support for senior citizens and other potentially vulnerable populations, improved infrastructure and higher graduation rates from school and college as aims of government.

We need a conservative party that offers its own solutions to social problems and that will cooperatively work with Democrats to find solutions that meet the needs of most Americans and that entail compromise and elements of both conservative and liberal philosophies of governance.

How will conservatives lower our infant mortality rates and raise our life expectancies so that we don't languish behind our colleagues in Western Europe, Japan, Australia, and Canada who do far better on these measurements of human well being? How will they reduce poverty and improve early childhood care? How will they address the mental health crisis facing veterans and ensure that the medical care veterans receive is timely, of a high quality, and reliable? How will they maintain the Medicare guarantee rather than destroy the security Medicare affords and offer a far less generous health plan which will not come close to replicating the dependable care from which seniors on Medicare today benefit?

The charge that government is the problem is a shirking of responsibility and is becoming a form of the boy crying wolf. Government is not always the problem. Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it's the answer, or part of the answer. Reality is not so facile and polarized.

American tax rates as a percentage of GDP are not large in comparison to the governments of other OECD countries nor are effective American corporate tax rates high in comparison to other OECD countries. On the contrary, the evidence consistently shows otherwise.

So Republican claims are off the mark on the honesty test.

It makes no sense to be a democratic representative of US citizens and attack the very expression of democracy itself which is the government. It's like being a surgeon who believes hospitals are intrinsically bad and works to undermine them and neglect patients, a lawyer who has no faith in the justice system and who tries to dismantle it and refuses to represent clients with competence, a teacher who refuses to do his or her best in the classroom because he or she has no faith in the capacity of students to learn and who consequently lowers the quality of their educational experience and thwarts their potential.

Such attitudes are destructive and inimical to a healthy polity.

What may have originated as a necessary critique of liberal excesses and government waste has become an unmoored and false religion with a broken moral compass and a cynical and self-defeating intellectual orientation.

Americans of all persuasions deserve better and American democracy can only thrive when conservatives offer real solutions to social problems that involve more effort than swinging a sledgehammer at taxes and axing essential services.

It's easy to be angry - and for decades Republicans have been angry about the size of government. They have harnessed that anger and applied it to governance - but the social results have proven to be less than encouraging, at best. Poverty and inequality are up and both seriously harm the well being of the American people. The middle - class is struggling and getting smaller and working class people are increasingly disadvantaged, economically and socially.

It's time to channel conservative anger constructively to address the social issues that threaten social cohesion and the rights and welfare of American citizens.

Republicans should be as indignant about these concerns if not more so than the alleged whopping size of government.

Conservatives have something valuable to offer.

They need to end the self-imposed exile and come back to the civic table for the greater good of all Americans.

To offer and do justice to conservatism that is wise, thoughtful, and responsive to citizen needs, confident but humble, and working in critical partnership rather than intransigent antagonism.

Conservatives need to unleash the creative and constructive tendencies within conservatism which have gone sorely missing for too long.

That is their greatest test.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1800854 2012-08-18T09:29:59-04:00 2012-08-23T15:46:48-04:00

Noam Schimmel http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noam-schimmel/
There are many different reasons for this. What is clear is that improving citizen attitudes towards government will require changing how the government works in terms of effectiveness, transparency, responsiveness and communication, accountability, and efficiency.

Conservatives have a tremendous and rather unhealthy fixation on size.
The size of the government matters -- but not quite as much as conservatives insist.
Of far greater import are the aforementioned parameters all of which relate to the matter of trust and the quality of the relationship between citizen and government.

Right now, that relationship is characterized largely by suspicion, fear, lack of knowledge and understanding and -- in more extreme circles -- outright loathing of government, sometimes in an exaggerated and obsessive way in which the government has been scapegoated.
Americans are alienated from their government and the causes of this alienation are multiple and complex.

Much of this alienation stems from over three decades of conservative attack on the very institution of government itself, attack that has often been ideological and extreme rather than nuanced, careful, and fair minded.

But it also stems from very real and legitimate concerns which all Americans share about how politicians of both parties determine funding allocations for government programs.

Addressing the parameters outlined above requires a bipartisan effort in a country that is so deeply divided by partisanship it is unlikely to advance anytime soon.

But there are still ways that we can promote more effective governance and a healthier relationship between citizens and the government in the short-term.

One way to increase citizen faith in government which is essential for a successful democracy is by empowering citizens to exercise greater control over government spending through targeted taxes.

Targeted taxes allow citizens to bypass the often corrupt process whereby funding allocations made by Congress are influenced by petty partisan politics and Congressional power plays, narrow sectarian interests, politicians acting exclusively in the interest of their states and districts without taking sufficient account of the interests of the American people as a whole, and the sometimes excessive and distorting influence of lobbying groups with a narrow agenda that does not necessarily reflect the overall public good.

Targeted taxes will allow Americans to have far greater confidence that their taxes are being spent on the exact programs which they prioritize and through the particular revenue generation policies they create and approve.

Targeted taxes are not a panacea. They are a small component of what will eventually need to be a much larger effort to restore citizen faith in government and improve the quality of government in the United States.

They are also not without risk and could lead to some taxes that may not be helpful to the economy or sustainable.

But they do restore a place for the individual American citizen in expressing his or her particular preferences regarding the substance and details of government unfiltered and undistorted by the politicking of Congress.

It is clear that our system of representative democracy is becoming increasingly distant for the average American who is frustrated by his/her powerlessness to impact government and we need to empower Americans to have a greater say in how tax revenue is raised and spent.

Targeted taxes can also result from Congressional action and need not stem exclusively from citizen ballot initiatives. Congress can commit itself to initiating a range of taxes that are exclusively directed towards particular citizen needs such as healthcare, housing, support for senior citizens, education, child welfare, crime reduction, veteran well being, job training, public health, and environmental protection.

Whatever revenues raised from taxes strictly delineated for a particular government program area would be roped off away from Congressional wheeling and dealing and pork spending. This would also help restore faith in the government and would require significant self-control and deference to the public good on the part of members of Congress.

Targeted taxes are already on ballots -- from the smallest local endeavors such as the recent efforts in Michigan described in the New York Times to save the Detroit Institute of Arts from massive budget cuts in which three Michigan counties successfully passed a targeted property tax to fund the museum, to the major tax initiative to be voted on in California to rescue California's severely under funded system of higher education.

A little citizen action and participation can go a long way in improving government and restoring the faith of citizens in the government's ability and willingness to truly reflect the wishes of the American people and their civic priorities.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1755222 2012-08-08T08:15:53-04:00 2012-08-10T05:41:07-04:00

Noam Schimmel http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noam-schimmel/
The truth, however, demands its own accounting by honestly, critically, and fairly assessing one's own national record.

In this regard Europe is not unique in its failure - it is a near universal and all together human one. But that does not make it right.

The Turkish government continues to deny the Armenian genocide perpetuated by the Ottoman Empire and Sudan denies its role in the crime against humanity of extermination and possibly of genocide as well.

The legacy of colonization is not an exclusively European one. The former Soviet Union and China have their own histories of invasion, empire and conquest to contend with. The practice of Communism and colonization which were inextricably linked in the Soviet Union and China caused a far greater number of deaths and more wide scale human rights violations than that ever pursued by Europeans.

That in no way exonerates European governments for massive and egregious human rights violations, but it does contextualize them and challenge the absurd notion often advanced by Communist governments that imperialism was only a European and Western project.

But for a continent that prides itself on its commitment to human rights and liberalism Europe is strangely and troublingly lacking in self-reflection and reparation for its legacy.

Europe has never genuinely and substantively confronted its colonial past and the devastating trail of violence it entailed. Only this year has the subject attracted significant attention in Britain - primarily because of the efforts of Kenyans to seek legal redress for the human rights violations they experienced during the Mau-Mau rebellion and the release of government documents from the time outlining methods of torture and other forms of abuse.

As David Anderson has written in the Guardian, "As a nation Brits nurture memories of empire that are deceptively cozy, swathed in a warm, sepia-tinted glow of paternalistic benevolence... However benevolent empires aim to be, they are invariably built on political, economic and military domination. Empires are by their very nature exploitative, the authority of imperial rule often established and sustained through violence and coercion. In all of this, Britain's empire was no different than any other. It is time for a reappraisal of our imperial past - for a new kind of reckoning that takes account of the power relations that must inevitably determine the history of any empire. This should not be just a balance sheet of progress, but rather a candid review of the history, warts and all."

The British high court has acknowledged that "there may have been systematic torture of detainees during the [Mau Mau] emergency" and that it would be "dishonourable" for the courts to accept the Foreign Office's claim that veterans of alleged torture and other human rights abuses should sue the Kenyan government.

These are welcome words.

British human rights abuses in Kenya were not on a small scale. They included starvation, burning alive, whipping, clubbing, sexual torture involving sodomy, forced labor, forced displacement of civilians, and other forms of violence.

This was government policy, implemented with the full knowledge and consent of the British authorities from the governor on down. The cover up the British government engineered entailing the destruction of tens of thousands of documents was on a massive scale.

An honest historical accounting can help advance the restorative justice which many of its victims rightly demand and deserve. As the lawyer for the Kenyans bringing their case for redress, Martyn Day, has stated, the case is "not about reopening old wounds".

Indeed the wounds have been open for decades, festering and unhealed, ignored by the government of their perpetrators and all governments that have followed.

Day continued,

"It is about individuals who are alive and who have endured terrible suffering because of the policies of a previous British government. They are now seeking recognition and redress in the form of a carefully conceived welfare fund. It is incumbent on the government to treat such people with the respect and dignity they deserve."

Britain's attorney general in Kenya at the time of these human rights abuses stated that "If we are going to sin, we must sin quietly."

The silence is finally breaking.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1713485 2012-07-28T10:28:10-04:00 2012-07-30T04:21:27-04:00

Noam Schimmel http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noam-schimmel/
We may hear from them in interviews about their efforts, the endless hours of training, the harsh physical demands, their hopes and challenges, their toughest moments and their moments of greatest achievement.

We know that their commitment is relentless, focused, intense, and uncompromising. In the face of the fiercest competition that is the only way to make it to the Olympics.

But if we scratch the surface of the Olympics with its focus on athletic prowess and competition we find - of course - a human community that is characterized by much more than its pursuit of sport.

Olympic players come with their own gifts and challenges, family backgrounds and life stories, legacies of adversity overcome and adversity that presents a daily challenge, practically and emotionally.

Olympic competitors are more than their dedication to sport excellence. And it is worth taking a moment to examine the life of just one Olympic competitor to recognize the life experiences that individuals bring to the Olympic Games and to pay tribute to the sacrifices, stamina, and resilience that inform their Olympic journey.

Adrien Nyonshuti is a survivor. In 1994, the Rwandan genocide took the lives of over one million Tutsis and tens of thousands of Hutus who were murdered alongside them for refusing to submit to the racist ideology of the genocide.

Nyonshuti lost six of his brothers in the Rwandan genocide. He hid during the genocide, living in terror and never knowing if he would survive.

Inevitably, he carries those memories with him and the pain of losing his closest relatives in the genocide as well as friends and members of his extended family.

But Nyonshuti, while committed to remembering the past places great emphasis on the present and the future. Despite the legacy of loss and horror he carries he pushes onwards with faith in the resilience of his country, its people, and the capacity of Rwandans to rebuild their country on the basis of coexistence.

As we see Nyonshuti compete as a member of the Rwandan cycling team let us take a moment to reflect on the totality of what it means to be an Olympic player.

It is not just about sports competition. It is about the human spirit pushing onwards despite the most egregious of losses and extreme forms of suffering.

It is the faith of an individual in his own abilities and values despite having been targeted for murder because of his background and identity.

The Olympic ideal is one in which diversity does not threaten but actively inspires.

It is only when individuals from every nation come together at the Olympics that we can have the most truly comprehensive competition which is characterized by openness, inclusivity, equality, and diversity and the freedom of all to compete.

Nyonshuti embodies these Olympic ideals. They represent the polar opposite of the hatred and destructiveness which inspired the Rwandan genocide of the Tutsi.

For thousands of Rwandan genocide survivors Nyonshuti is an inspiration for how far all survivors can travel in rebuilding their lives and achieving their dreams against all odds.

He is also a reminder of the vulnerability that genocide survivors face. Resilience is most likely to result in a person who has survived catastrophic losses and threats to self only when they have support services - individuals, social programs, and organizations that reach out to them and support them.

It needs to be aided, carefully cultivated, and sustained. Survivors of genocide are uniquely disadvantaged and impoverished because of the genocide and the destruction of their families and communities and the killing of family members responsible for generating income, loss of housing and property, and the material and psychological costs of the genocide.

So let us us take inspiration from Nyonshuti and also remember and reflect upon the community of survivors from which he hails, the challenges that they face, and the capacity all of us have to reach out and make it possible for more individuals like Nyonshuti to realize their dreams.

Nyonshuti has emerged as an inspiration not only to survivors of the genocide but to all Rwandans.

His life and his competing at the 2012 Olympics is a tangible testimony of the triumph of the human spirit despite the most extreme forms of adversity.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1713260 2012-07-28T08:53:38-04:00 2012-07-28T13:24:53-04:00

Noam Schimmel http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noam-schimmel/
The moment did not harm the celebratory spirit of the Olympics, rather, it reinforced the values the Olympics celebrate: the peaceful coming together of individuals from diverse nationalities in sport competition on the basis of equality.

As Xan Brooks wrote in the Guardian about the video tribute and silence, "The Olympics pay tribute to the war dead and the victims of the 7/7 terrorist attacks in London. This is a hushed, respectful, gently moving interlude; a pause for breath amid the frantic festivities."

It reminded us that beyond the spectacle, the images of Daniel Craig and blazing Olympic rings and all the beautiful razzle dazzle rested a quiet, dignified, moral principle: the games are predicated on peaceful competition, without the specter of violence, discrimination, and threat which the Olympic Committee and host nation do their best to ensure so that athletes can compete in confidence of their safety.

So it was tragic that in this context the Olympics Committee had neither the heart nor conscience to finally acknowledge in a substantive public way at a major Olympics event the memory of the Israeli athletes murdered in the Munich massacre of 1972.

It was callous and an act of cruelty towards their surviving team members, spouses, and family members, and an act of stunning disregard for the (purported) values of the Olympics and its commitment to honour all Olympics players equally, whatever their nationality and origin.

David Cameron unfortunately chose not to stand in solidarity with the memory of the Israeli victims and forthrightly acknowledge the legacy of pain and loss that followed in the wake of the Munich Massacre.

He insisted - as the head of the IOC insisted - that it was more proper to commemorate their deaths at smaller commemorations, where the atmosphere would be more somber and focused on memorialisation rather than celebration. Jacques Rogge stated, "The Opening Ceremony is an atmosphere that is not fit to remember such a tragic incident."

But clearly it was, and appropriately so, to remember the attacks on London public transport in 2005 and remember the individuals who lost their lives as a result.

The IOC and Cameron clearly underestimated the moral and emotional maturity of British citizens and of viewers of the opening ceremony, whatever their nationality. They condescendingly implied that they wouldn't be able to stomach the dignity and somberness of a tribute to innocent individuals who lost their lives in an act of terror and mass murder. Of course, they were wrong, as respectful silence was maintained for victims of terrorism in Britain depicted on videoscreens.

The real reasons for why the Olympics Committee have always found weasel words and lame excuses as to why the victims of the Munich Massacre should not be commemorated in a substantive public way at a major Olympic event have to do with politics, money, and the pernicious cowardice of submitting to the preferences of nations who would rather not honour the memory of the murdered Israeli athletes and who likely believe that their murder was legitimate.

Of course the IOC cannot admit this publicly - but the Olympics for all its idealism is an exercise in real-politics and a cacophony of national egos and competing values, relationships, and obligations. The end result is that moral principle has little role to play in the implementation of the Olympics.

The values that won at the opening night were discriminatory ones. They discriminated on the basis of nationality and they contrasted sharply with the diversity, openness, tolerance, and welcome that London offers individuals and communities of every nationality, faith, ethnicity, and background which Johnson and Cameron rightly celebrate.

It was saddening and distressing to watch members of the Jewish and Israeli communities have their own lonely commemorations out of necessity - because had they not done so in a public way the Olympics Committee would have satisfied itself with its small and semi-private memorials, designed expressly not to be communicated to the very masses who come together physically and via the media to enjoy the Olympics.

This injustice will eventually be corrected. Perhaps at the next Olympics or the following, or even later.

But the endless delaying and obfuscation, the dilatory and evasive exclamations - all hollow out the message and promise of the Olympics as a moment in time and a changing place every four years where all peoples come together on the basis of equality, and all individuals and peoples are respected on that basis.

That such a small act of memorialization - the solidarity of silence - was refused to commemorate the victims of the Munich massacre speaks volumes for how very far the Olympics Committee must travel to act in accordance with its own ideals.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1705258 2012-07-26T09:09:11-04:00 2012-08-08T08:36:41-04:00

Noam Schimmel http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noam-schimmel/
To be sure such evasions of honest national historical accounting are not unique to Britain.

One finds hardly any reflection in the US media on America's devastating interventions in Central American countries and collusion in egregious human rights violations that took place there under dictatorial regimes who engaged in crimes against humanity including mass murder on an enormous scale.

Nor do Americans know much about or discuss America's history of colonisation in the Philippines or its 'Secret War' in Laos with its devastating bombing campaign that killed and injured thousands of Lao civilians.

So Britain is not unique in this willful looking away; a looking away which is not an evasion of shame, for one can only experience emotions of shame when facing an honest accounting, rather, a looking away of studied moral evasion and denial.

All nations, including and sometimes especially democracies, who wish to perceive themselves as paragons of moral virtue even if this virtue, however limited, almost never extends meaningfully beyond its borders to foreign affairs, disdain critical self reflection.

Nations are like individuals that way - egotistical, prone to self-rationalization and self-aggrandizement, uncomfortable with the hard work of self-examination, self-awareness, and self-criticism.

When speaking about nations one can only comment about tendencies and trends, as nations are complex, multi-dimensional, and vast, containing a diverse citizenship and made of individuals who may or may not share the attitudes and beliefs of many of their fellow co-citizens.

Nevertheless, we can examine how nations function as collectives, and observe the attitudes and beliefs prevalent amongst citizens.

Certain nations cannot look away from the legacy of their own human rights violations because the legacy is inextricably linked with the people, culture, and very physical landscape of the nation.

Slavery happened in America and the former slaves eventually became US citizens. However deep the legacy of racism remains in America, America has also traveled far in confronting the legacy of slavery and segregation. How to address ongoing discrimination remains a frequent part of public discourse.

Such discrimination is an uncomfortable topic which undermines the common American self-perception of the United States offering equality and justice to all American citizens. Many would rather avoid the topic or claim that it is no longer salient. But racism still exists in many different forms and creates barriers to equal opportunity and justice. Structural racial injustices remain deeply rooted in American society.

Conversation also does not necessarily lead to tangible policy outcomes to rectify injustices but it is a prerequisite for engaging the issue.

Still, the fact that social injustices happened within a nation's borders does not guarantee greater societal openness to addressing it. The Native American experience is barely ever acknowledged in the United States in any substantive way and American attitudes towards dispossession, discrimination, and persecution of Native Americans are as evasive as many European attitudes towards colonization.

Clearly then the American accounting with its past of slavery and segregation - however incomplete and imperfect - is not merely a mechanistic function of the location of where those crimes took place.

The civil rights movement left a profound mark on American society and transformed it - forcing Americans to confront the brutal legacy of slavery, segregation, and ongoing formal and informal racism. The consequences of the movement are still felt in America today and its moral integrity and commitment to equality and justice are needed as much today as they were in the past.

But there is no such similar movement which forced and forces Europeans to confront the human rights violations of colonization and their tenaciously enduring nature long after colonization officially came to a close.

Like slavery, segregation, and structural and informal racism the impacts of colonization remain deeply felt and continue to violate the rights and welfare of those individuals, communities, and nations who were subject to it.

Yet it has been relatively easy for Britain and other European countries to avoid confrontation of the legacy of violence, sectarian divisions, and human rights violations of their colonial pasts.

For Britons the legacy of colonization happened over there - far, far away. And the brutal consequences of colonization which are still felt today in India and Pakistan, in Iraq, and in Sudan - amongst other places - is rarely ever examined within a colonial and post-colonial context outside of rarefied academic contexts.

The colonial legacy is evacuated such that Iraq and Sudan's sectarian conflicts are rarely attributed at least in part to Britain's ignorant and artificial borders created to protect British interests rather than the well being of former colonial subjects and their social and political stability. Often these borders sowed the seeds of ethnic and political conflict, mass violence, and protracted wars.

Britain of course is not unique in Europe. Belgium has also done little to collectively examine the consequences of its colonization of parts of central Africa and yet perhaps no other colonizer in Africa played as direct and immediate a role in deliberately fomenting societal divisions that lay the groundwork for ethnic hatred and mass violence on a catastrophic scale.

This would lead to massacres and genocide throughout the 20th century in Rwanda and Burundi. It also led to the largest scale crime against humanity in Africa under King Leopold's and then the Belgian government's control of Congo involving mass killings, torture, and gross violations of the most basic human rights. Belgium's king and later the Belgian government itself did not only foment ethnic and social tensions but organized and directed violence and killing with the purpose of economic exploitation of the Congolese.

The Netherlands is finally beginning to examine and provide some framework of restorative justice - however minimal - for human rights violations that took place in Indonesia as a result of Dutch colonization.

The Spanish have failed to address their role in Western Sahara and its consequences for the Saharawi people including their current lack of freedom. Nor have they accounted for colonial crimes in Central and South America that still impact peoples living there detrimentally and were massively violent and exploitative. The same holds true for Portugal regarding its colonies in Africa and its colonization of Brazil.

The French reckoning with massive human rights violations in Algeria is woefully incomplete.

After the Rwandan genocide in 1994 The French created a parliamentary commission whose aim was purportedly to examine France's role - a thoroughly neo-colonial one - in the Rwandan genocide of the Tutsi. Instead, it essentially exonerated France of wrongdoing, called for no criminal investigations, and denied the overwhelming evidence that France supported Rwanda's genocidal regime before, during, and after the genocide with training, finance, weaponry, and diplomatic support.

While Germany has confronted its Nazi past with relative candor and more introspection, contrition, and genuinely honorable and substantive efforts at reparation than any other nation with a similar history of massive human rights violations and genocide it has shown little of that moral maturity with regard to confronting its colonial legacy in Namibia.

Instead, it satisfied itself with an apology in 2004 for what it rightly termed as genocide but refused any legal claims against it with the argument that because no international laws protecting the rights of innocent civilians at the time existed it has no legal responsibility for those crimes.

Such an argument might have legal legitimacy. But it is morally obtuse beyond measure and appallingly disrespectful to the memory of the victims and to their human rights - which existed - irrespective of whether they were legally codified.

In this context the recent effort of Kenyans who were tortured during the Mau-Mau uprising to sue the British government is important not only for the pursuit of justice but also for the breaching of the largely informal but powerful societal silence over the violent legacy of colonization by Britain and other European states.]]>