Human Rights

Human Rights Day – December 10

On December 10, 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. Since 1950, countless events have been held to observe Human Rights Day on December 10. Among such events planned this year are two in Columbus, Ohio:

Jim Leonard and Dan and Barbara Lehman will present their reflections as participants in a Christian Peacemaker Teams delegation to Palestine/Israel, hosted by Central Ohioans for Peace (Columbus Mennonite Church, 35 Oakland Park Ave., 43214), 7-9 PM.

Human Rights Columbus’s celebration of Human Rights Day, recognizing “Columbus Human Rights Champions” Esther Flores, Dureti Mimi Tadesse, and Bill Pelke (First Congregational Church, 444 E. Broad St., 43215), 7-9 PM. The two events, we believe, may serve as examples of attempts to liberate the idea of human rights.

A History of Human Rights

Seasonally adjusted data released Friday, November 16, 2018 by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services show Ohio’s job growth picked up slightly in October, with the addition of 10,900 jobs, over a weak September. The state’s unemployment rate, which is generated from a separate survey, held steady at 4.6 percent. October’s increase in jobs was enough to push the state’s 12-month job growth rate to 2.1 percent, solidly above the national average of 1.7 percent. If this trend continues through the end of the year and survives the annual revision of job figures set for early 2019, this year will be the first since 2010 that Ohio outperforms the nation. It will also make 2018 the first year since 1997 that state’s job growth rate hits at least 2 percent.

Earth has a dozen years to turn climate change around, according to the recent United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report. Responses to the report give us insight into the political climate, as well as the actual climate, in the Buckeye State.

“Climate change is already happening in the greater Cleveland region,” and it “threatens the biodiversity,” stated Brian Parsons, Director of Planning and Special Projects at Holden Arboretum in the Cleveland area, who spelled out his findings in a 2007 article. Parsons pointed out that “temperatures in the region are increasing” and so are “extreme heat events.” Equally troubling are “heavy precipitation” and also “winters are becoming shorter.”

Well, that doesn’t sound that bad. But Ohioans can expect more flooding from storms, and in the future, increased demands to suck fresh water out of the Great Lakes to share with drought regions in the South and Southwest United States. All this will occur with faster and faster rates of climate change. If we fail to turn it around, Ohio will lose much of the ecological diversity in our flora, fauna and animals.

She was a typical All-American girl in high school. She attended Focus Learning Academy, was a good softball player and at one point she was a cheerleader. Donna Dalton had dreams as a girl to join the Columbus Police Department and, because she loved horses, to become a mounted police officer.

But her dreams quickly got sidetracked and turned to nightmares. She became pregnant at 18 and had two children before she was 21. She fell into toxic relationships with troubled men and began abusing painkillers and drugs. An attractive young woman, Donna supported her habit by becoming an exotic dancer at The House of Babes on South High Street. Later, her addiction dragged her into prostitution on the mean streets of Columbus's west side, on the infamous Sullivant Avenue.

Undercover in an unmarked car

There she spiraled into run-ins and arrests by the vice squad of the Columbus Police Department (CPD). Then on the tragic day, August 23, she was picked up by undercover Officer Andrew Mitchell in an unmarked police car. He drove to an isolated parking lot behind an apartment complex where "Johns" frequently brought prostitutes for business.

It isn't just the sweat shops in Jordan that are making cheap products for local garment titan Victoria's Secret; they are being made right here in the Columbus area. The international clothing (or lack of it, as VS models seem to be mostly naked) company that is such a sensation on the runway, in their own stores and in their sales volume has at least four factories working round the clock (literally!) to make the skimpy clothing that is supposed to entice sufficiently horny men into getting their women to remove even these last refuges of their modesty.

 

From the beginning of time, according to the Bible, women were made from the body of a man, were created to help man, to give birth to men and to serve men. Women were a mere second thought in the plan, according to the Bible. Even though there are many Atheists, many people who don’t believe in the Bible, and even say they believe in women’s equal rights, these are some of the same people who subconsciously see women as inferior to men. The woman remains on the bottom pole of most countries, they are still fighting for their rights to be seen, heard and acknowledged as an important piece of society.   From the beginning of time, women have been treated as sexual objects, with the responsibility of providing sexual favors to men. They have been traded off as “prizes” during war times, they have been sold as sex slaves, they have been beheaded and stoned to death for committing adultery while their husbands have openly had mistresses. Women and young girls have been raped, tortured, and murdered by family members, friends of the family and people unknown. Rape laws from the ancient near east, in areas such as Babylonia and Assyria, punished the woman if she was raped.

On Friday, September 14th, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected the peoples’ arguments that the Franklin County Board of Elections (BOE) had violated the rights of the people to legislate directly by initiative and sided with the BOE to keep the Columbus Community Bill of Rights off the November ballot. The proposed ordinance, if enacted, would assert resident’s rights to clean water, air, and soil and ban oil & gas extraction infrastructure, particularly regarding radioactive, toxic waste disposals in the city of Columbus as a violation of those rights. 

The court arbitrarily determined that the municipality and the people of Columbus do not have the same rights that the cities and people of Youngstown and Bowling Green have in placing initiatives on the ballot.  After precedents set by the court’s own decisions for these cities, the Ohio high court reversed logic in Columbus and stated that municipalities do not have the rights to create new causes of action, based upon statements by a member of the Franklin County Board of Elections and reiterated by two citizen protesters.  

A picture of his penis from the White House. Sex toys, $2,200 worth, delivered to his office where he had sex with a secretary. Taking high school coaches to strip clubs. Oh, and let’s not forget the victim. Zach Smith’s ex-wife, Courtney, had a number of serious looking bruises.

So this is our sacred Buckeye football team, so proud of its winning ways and its “core values.” We have a head coach, a self-touted man of faith, allowing a nepotistic toddler man run amok. Our head coach, a father of two daughters, turning a cold shoulder to obvious domestic violence so OSU can recruit the best wide receivers.

And this is our prestigious University. Slapping Urban Meyer on the wrist during the #MeToo movement. Ohio State University (OSU) claimed Urban had memory issues but he remembered to delete his text messages.

On Tuesday, August 14, Imam Hasan went before the Serious Misconduct Panel (SMP) for allegedly leading a riot, workstoppage, and other unauthorized business through the phones.

As he expected, the fix was in at the SMP and he was found guilty of all counts. More details below, but the summary is that none of his witnesses were allowed to testify, he was not allowed to view all of the evidence against him, and new charges and witnesses were brought against him.

Apparently the SMP is no more serious about due process than the Rules Infractions Boards we're more familiar with. Hasan faces a one year phone restriction and transfer to "Extended Restrictive Housing 3". Hasan has been on some version of "ERH" since it was invented, and on "level 5" the previous highest level since that was invented with the construction of Ohio State Penitentiary.

It is said in China, that a popular curse is to tell a person “may you live in interesting times.” Given the history of the world for roughly the past few centuries, mankind appears to be, not merely cursed, but damned. And in our present, things have become even more “interesting.”

Particularly in the years since 1945, the world has been almost literally burning, even given the end of the Second World War. The Cold War and its insane nuclear arms race, the proxy wars of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s and, most especially, the quagmire that most people refer to simply as the Middle East. It is this last subject that I will address here.

As an American Jew born in the early 1950s, I have watched the progress of things Middle Eastern, with interest and, often, horror. It wasn’t until recently, however, that I really explored, considered and, finally understood, how things got to be as bad as they are.