A poignant series of photographs of persons with disabilities by Fiona Yaron-Field includes the following image of a young woman:

The 140-characters blog Twitter has recently faced some scrutiny over its balance between business interests and the defense of freedom of speech. In a portrait of Twitter’s lawyer, Alexander Macgillivray, the NYTimes observes:

This is a reality of the digital age. Sovereign nations have their laws. Internet companies have their rules.

The important report of the International Trust Fund for Demining and Mine Victim Assistance, ITF, which highlights the impact of landmines, particularly on children uses some very powerful imagery to convey the message:

The BBC features an unsung hero on the theory behind the current uprisings of societies in the Middle East: Dr. Gene Sharp is credited with sketching what it takes for people to rise and demand equality, justice, accountability and other features of democracy.

“Criminalising migration is the wrong answer to a complex social phenomenon,” the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, Thomas Hammarberg states in a new Issue Paper.

In dissecting the complexity of migration, the Commissioner rightly warns of the implications of language in public debates:

The choice of language is very important to the image which the authorities project to their population and the world. Being an immigrant becomes associated, through the use of language, with illegal acts under the criminal law. All immigrants become tainted by suspicion. Illegal immigration as a concept has the effect of rendering suspicious in the eyes of the population (including public officials) the movement of persons across international borders.

In a year that saw important elections and a lot of results that were not followed – see Zimbabew below as a stark example – it is interesting to see that the famously infamous decision of the US Supreme Court eight years ago on George W. Bush v Al Gore, despite the Court’s own pledge that it shall not constitute precedent, is increasingly making the rounds as a reference case. Read Adam Liptak’s NYTimes piece here.

The crisis in Zimbabwe is going from really bad to worse. The NYTimes reports with this picture of children picking up corn that a passing truck had lost: 

As Jonathan Freedland reflects on the death of “Deep Throat”, Mark Felt, who was the major piece in a puzzle that has become known as “Watergate”, “it was thanks to Felt that America finally reasserted, with Nixon’s forced resignation, that no one – not even the president – is above the law.”

The methods of whistleblowers have evolved since the early 70ies and internet fora such as wikileaks – compare blog post 8 July 2008 – are facing criticism, mainly for the speed they can provide.

Austrians today cast their ballots. The two far-right parties, Freedom Party and BZÖ, almost garnered more support than the Social Democrats who, despite their worst election result ever, came in first. 

Reuters has a report.

The Austrian Federal Association of Psychotherapists (ÖBVP) has issued a strong call against racism in the ongoing election campaign.

The statement decries “racism and exclusion” in the current National Council election. Highlighting that there is no agreed definition and no consensus on the origins of racism, the Association describes racism through the individualization thesis (Individualisierungsthese): 

There is a significant correlation between extreme-right orientation and a primary focus on money, personal advancement and social status. There is an over-identification with achievement and advancement ideologies. 

Highlighting the racist spins that the migration debate currently has in Austria, the Association states that the perceived threat is not the immigrant(s) but the person’s own anxiety to fail or anxiety of inability. “Strength and superiority are the most important norms.” The statement adds: “Racist tendencies coincide with the desire for a white, heterosexual patriarchal society.”

Truthout reports possible manipulation of voter registration in Ohio: mailings with notices about absentee ballot applications and related important information might be “returned to sender” faster than usual. This is disturbing, also in light of the disturbing report by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s on the 2004 election in Ohio.

Poignantly, an Anonymous reader at truthout shared the following: 

Memories ! This essay takes me back to August 1934 in Germany, when I was an almost 14-year old boy listening from a concealed place in the basemewnt of our schoolhouse to Nazi Storm-Troopers “counting” the ballots in the then “plebiscite” engendered by Hitler to overcome the strictures of the then German “Weimar” Constitution. I heard one Storm trooper tell his underlings that “We have to make it come out so that there will be fourteen “NO” votes, because that’s how many Jews voted today”. And that is how it came out, of course. When I told a Jewish neighbor what I had heard, he smiled sardonically and said, “I knew they would do something like that, so I voted for Hitler, just to prove it”. 
The Ohio story and others like it always remind me of that long-ago fatal time. And what are the “legal” dodges we are up against now in this “land of the free and the home of the brave “?

The partners in Austria’s coalition of social democrats and christian conservatives can no longer agree to work together. Elections are to be held in September. “The two parties have been bickering since forging their “grand coalition” in early 2007 following the October 2006 elections that gave the Social Democrats a slight lead,” observes the IHT.