In much of the United States, Pride parades have become more or less the equivalent of St. Patrick's or Mardi Gras parades, or really, any ethnic festival: a subcultural celebration where everyone's welcome, with floats and trinkets and t-shirts abounding. It's not quite the same in former Soviet bloc countries. Take a look at what happened to Svyatoslav Sheremet, head of the Gay Forum of Ukraine, for trying to arrange a Pride Parade in his country. Then scroll down past the Russian, here, to see pictures of the results. You don't need Google Translate to understand.
I don’t know about you, but Jaclyn Friedman’s series last week filled me with all kindsa hope, or, at least, tamped down my hopelessness. Ending rape in conflict zones? Ending rape at all? My Eeyore side was looking askance at her pieces every day, slowly and cautiously persuaded that perhaps All Is Not Hopeless. Reading her was like reading Nicholas Kristof’s Mother’s Day article about the fierce spirit of the Ethiopian woman Mahabouba Mohammed, who managed to find her way to Dr.
This being Friday, seems like the way to wrap up this week's series on endingrapeinconflict is with a good old-fashioned link round-up. Before we get into the clicking, a huge thanks to E.J. Graff and the Prospect for hosting me this week, and to all of you for reading.
For the first of two rounds of links, and to give you a sense of the movement that's already underway, let's focus on recent actions happening in the four focus countries of the campaign:
Consistent in its suicidal tendencies, the Greek political system failed this week to come to an agreement on forming a coalition government. The leaders of Greece’s political parties—as we know from the published minutes of the meetings with the President of the Republic—showed themselves, with one or two dignified exceptions, tragically unable to rise to the occasion. New elections have now been called. The outcome on June 17, or even the mounting uncertainty of the pre-election period itself, could spell the end of Greece’s membership of the euro.
We've been talking this week about how to stop rape in conflict. As with many massive social changes, I think one of the greatest obstacles to eradicating this atrocity is the common belief that it can't be done. I tried to address that some in Monday's piece, but I thought we could all use a little more nitty-gritty. So I went straight to the source: Liz Bernstein.
Yesterday I wrote about the new global campaign to end rape in conflict, and why it's a winnable goal. Today, it's time to bring home the reasons why we need to put in the required effort. We’ve all got our lives to live and our own pet issues to look after, and it’s easy for those of us in the U.S. to think of “rape in conflict” as a conceptual "Terrible Thing" that happens to those Other (Poor, Brown) People Far Away. But when we tie it in a tidy little “Over There Issue” bow, we totally erase the ways it’s a "Right Here Issue," both in that we’re complicit in it, and, relatedly, that there are things we in the US can uniquely do about it.
The voters in France and Greece have rejected the parties of austerity. But it is not yet clear that the party of growth can deliver the recovery that the citizenry wants. On both sides of the Atlantic, the obstacles are more political than economic.
In Europe the conventional wisdom, enforced by Germany and the European Central Bank, still holds that the path to growth is budget restraint. Unfortunately, the more that budgets are tightened, the more economies shrink and the more revenues fall. No large economy has ever deflated its way to recovery.
As you'll soon notice, I'm not E.J. Graff. She's been kind enough to give me the keys to this joint for a week, and I'm going to do my best not to put too many dents in it. (I won't bore you with bio, but if you're wondering who I am, here's a good place to start.)
You will either be alarmed or intrigued to hear that this temporary takeover has a very specific focus: sexual violence in conflict. Stay with me! I’m not going to flood you with statistics and sad stories until you curl up in a ball in the corner. What I hope to do here is convince you that there are things you, actual person reading these words right now, can do about the situation.
Just last weekend, local political commentators were enthusing about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's tactical brilliance in deciding on snap elections more than a year ahead of schedule. The opposition—particularly the centrist Kadima party—was unprepared. Polls purportedly proved that Netanyahu's Likud would be the only party holding more than a quarter the seats in the next parliament; all the rest would stand in line to join his coalition. An cabinet press release on Sunday named September 4 as election day.
For two years, Greek voters could only express their mounting disaffection with the economic catastrophe that had befallen them by demonstrating, publicly rebuking members of the political class, even occasionally beating them. Yesterday, they finally got the chance to punish their politicians, in particular those of PASOK and Nea Demokratia—the two parties which had alternated in power for the past four decades—at the ballot box. They certainly got their revenge. But the cost of their choice may well be too heavy for them to bear.
François Hollande's victory in France offered a stiff rebuke to Germany's austerity regime, but the new president faces challenges in delivering on his campaign's pro-growth rhetoric.
Miriam Jordan at The Wall Street Journal has published an investigative article about adoption from Ethiopia, which has for several years been riddled with allegations of fraud and unethical practices.
The decision broke with a policy that Israel has held for 20 years: no new settlements will be established. Right-wing Israeli governments, in particular, have broadcast that policy as part of their international PR efforts. Yet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his most senior ministers granted official approval last week to three West Bank settlements. No big deal, say government spokesmen.
"This is only a technical matter," Netanyahu's staffers told U.S. Ambassador Dan Shapiro, the Daily Ma'ariv reported on Sunday. There's actually a measure of truth in that claim—but that dollop of truth is an indictment of 20 years of settlement policy.
If anyone was expecting President Obama to spike the proverbial football during his address this evening from Afghanistan, they were sorely disappointed. In a sober, 11 minute message, Obama retraced the path that brought the United States to Afghanistan, and outlined the next two years of American policy in the country.
Could this week produce a turning point in Europe’s long, Sisyphean battle against the debt-and-banking crisis that has been ravaging it for the last two-and-a-half years? This coming Sunday, France will likely vote for Francois Hollande, a pro-Keynesian Socialist, as its new president. In Greece, on the same day, parliamentary elections will produce a hammer blow to the existing two-party system and will significantly increase the strength of the anti-Europeans on the far left and the extreme right.
