International

Via Andrew Sullivan from a couple months back, an article titled "A Country Ruled by Faith" by Garry Wills in The New York Review of Books, among other things, described the process by which ideology was placed above competence as people were selected by the Bush administration to manage and rebuild Iraq as part as the Coalition Provisional Authority (we now know how well that went):

The equivalent director of personnel for the Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority (headed by Catholic convert Paul Bremer) was the White House liaison to the Pentagon, James O'Beirne, a conservative Catholic married to National Review editor Kate O'Beirne. Those recruited to serve in the CPA were asked if they had voted for Bush, and what their views were on Roe v. Wade and capital punishment. O'Beirne trolled the conservative foundations, Republican congressional staffs, and evangelical schools for his loyalist appointees. Relatives of prominent Republicans were appointed, and staffers from offices like that of Senator Rick Santorum. Right moral attitude was more important than competence. That was proved when the first director of Iraqi health services, Dr. Frederick Burkle, was dismissed. Burkle, a distinguished physician, was a specialist in disaster relief, with experience in Kosovo, Somalia, and Kurdish Iraq. His replacement, James Haverman, had run a Christian adoption agency meant to discourage women from having abortions. Haverman placed an early emphasis on preventing Iraqis from smoking, while ruined hospitals went untended. This may suggest the policy on appointments that put Michael Brown in charge of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but the parallel is insufficiently harsh. Chris Matthews brought it up on his television show while interviewing the Washington Post reporter who had covered the CPA in Iraq, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, who said, "There were a hundred Browns in Iraq." But there were Bible study groups in the Green Zone.

From the current issue of The Week Magazine:

Belgium - Last week, the French-language television station RTBF played a hoax on its viewers, and they are not amused. The station interrupted its broadcast with the news that Flanders, the Flemish-speaking part of the country, had declared independence. A shaken anchor said the king had fled. "Correspondents" stood outside Flemish government buildings interviewing grave-faced politicians. The show was convincing. French-speaking viewers wept by the thousands at the collapse of their country, and foreign embassies began phoning Brussels. The broadcast went on for many minutes before RTBF displayed a message confessing that the news was fake, a "dramatization" intended to provoke debate. The country erupted in fury. Parliament has opened an inquiry and threatened RTBF with everything from fines to outright closure.

My "Depressing Documentary Film" fest continued today with Paper Cannot Wrap Up Embers:

During the last half-century, Cambodia has witnessed genocide, decades of war and the collapse of social order. Now, documentary filmmaker Rithy Panh looks at an irreparable tragedy that is less visible, yet no less pervasive: the spiritual death that results when young women are forced into prostitution. Angry and impassioned, PAPER CANNOT WRAP UP EMBERS presents the searing stories of poor Asian women whose lives were violated and their destinies destroyed when their bodies were turned into items of sexual commerce.

I give it 4 out of 5 for doing a great job of communicating a real sense of the hopeless lives of these women in their own voices.

Recently I finished watching Ithuteng, a moving documentary about the Ithuteng Trust School in Soweto, Africa. The school tries to reach troubled kids by, for example, teaching them about the realities of prison and encouraging them to dramatize their own personal stories of trauma (sexual abuse is rampant in South Africa as is AIDS). Unfortunately, the film ends with a disclaimer that it was made prior to allegations about Ithuteng's leader Mama Jackie appearing in the South African press. Apparently she is accused of fabricating stories for the documentary and living in luxury accommodations. Disturbing. I recently read a couple stories in the NY Times about the tragic plight of kids in Africa. The first, from October 29 by Sharon LaFraniere titled "Africa's World of Forced Labor, in a 6-Year-Old's Eyes,":

...part of a vast traffic in children that supports West and Central African fisheries, quarries, cocoa and rice plantations and street markets. The girls are domestic servants, bread bakers, prostitutes. The boys are field workers, cart pushers, scavengers in abandoned gem and gold mines. By no means is the child trafficking trade uniquely African. Children are forced to race camels in the Middle East, weave carpets in India and fill brothels all over the developing world. The International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency, estimates that 1.2 million are sold into servitude every year in an illicit trade that generates as much as $10 billion annually. Studies show they are most vulnerable in Asia, Latin America and Africa.

A 2002 study supervised by the labor organization estimated that nearly 12,000 trafficked children toiled in the cocoa fields of Ivory Coast alone. The children, who had no relatives in the area, cleared fields with machetes, applied pesticides and sliced open cocoa pods for beans. In an analysis in February, Unicef says child trafficking is growing in West and Central Africa, driven by huge profits and partly controlled by organized networks that transport children both within and between countries.

In a region where nearly two-thirds of the population lives on less than $1 a day, the compensation for the temporary loss of a child keeps the rest of the family from going hungry. Some parents argue that their children are better off learning a trade than starving at home. Indeed, the notion that children should be in the care of their parents is not a given in much of African society. Parents frequently hand off children to even distant relatives if it appears they will have a chance at education and more opportunity.

And, so tragic that it's true:

To reduce child trafficking significantly, said Marilyn Amponsah Annan, who is in charge of children's issues for the Ghanaian government, adults must be convinced that children have the right to be educated, to be protected, and to be spared adult burdens - in short, the right to a childhood.

The second, by the same author, "Sex Abuse of Girls Is Stubborn Scourge in Africa":

Even as this region races to adopt many of the developed world's norms for children, including universal education and limits on child labor, one problem - child sexual abuse - remains stubbornly resistant to change. In much of the continent, child advocates say, perpetrators are shielded by the traditionally low status of girls, a lingering view that sexual abuse should be dealt with privately, and justice systems that constitute obstacle courses for victims. Data is sparse and sexual violence is notoriously underreported. But South African police reports give an inkling of the sweep of child victimization. In the 12 months ending in March 2005, the police reported more than 22,000 cases of child rape. In contrast, England and Wales, with nine million more people than South Africa, reported just 13,300 rapes of women and girls in the most recent 12-month period.

Africa is not unique in its high rates of abuse. While a survey of nine countries last year by the World Health Organization found the highest incidence of child sexual abuse in Namibia - more than one in five women there reported being sexually abused before age 15 - it also found frequent abuse in Peru, Japan and Brazil, among other nations. Relatives are frequent perpetrators in Africa, as in much of the world. But this continent's children face added risks, especially at school. Half of Malawian schoolgirls surveyed in 2006 said male teachers or classmates had touched them in a sexual manner without their permission.

But medical and legal authorities say the vast majority of families still hew to a tradition of accepting payment from perpetrators. The few who press charges are plunged into a criminal justice process that Mr. Mouigni calls deeply frustrating.

Via Slate's Today's Blogs column, Matthew Hill (a correspondent for the BBC) recently made the disturbing report that:

Healthy new-born babies may have been killed in Ukraine to feed a flourishing international trade in stem cells, evidence obtained by the BBC suggests.

Ukraine has become the self-styled stem cell capital of the world. There is a trade in stem cells from aborted foetuses, amid unproven claims they can help fight many diseases. But now there are claims that stem cells are also being harvested from live babies.