ISA-West 2012 Call for Papers

One of the benefits of serving as president of the International Studies Association's West Region is that I can be the first to roll out the Call for Papers for our 2012 annual meeting.  And I get to thank program chairs Jennifer Ramos of Loyola Marymount University and Donna Nincic of the California Maritime Academy for their work on what promises to be an excellent meeting.

(I haven't preserved the links on what follows, so to submit a proposal or register for the conference, please check our website at www.isawest.org in a few days for complete details on the conference.)

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The 2012 ISA-West Annual Meeting will be held October 19-20 at the Pasadena Hilton in the heart of Pasadena, California. We invite paper, panel, and roundtable proposals on any aspect of international studies, including those related to pedagogy within the discipline.

We especially welcome proposals related to this year’s theme, Climate Change and Human Security. The predicted impact of climate change on human societies has been a topic of wide-ranging discussion for some years. While there are still “climate deniers” who argue that climate change is not happening or is not resulting from human activity, groups such as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have issued a series of reports detailing predictions for the future in areas of food security, fresh water availability and access, health and the spread/migration of disease, and effects on coastal areas due to rising sea levels and increased storm severity. All of these will have significant consequences on human societies; many will lead to life-threatening challenges for various populations around the world.

With this in mind, the conference organizers encourage the submission of proposals for individual papers, complete panels, and roundtables that consider the following questions:

• What is the impact of various aspects of climate change on human societies?

• What are the relative consequences for nations at different levels of development?

• Are societies and nations ready to cope (both financially and in terms of logistics and infrastructure) with the predicted increase in, and intensity of, climate-induced natural disasters?

• To what extent will women bear a greater burden than men?

• What are the possible effects of climate change and climate-induced natural disasters on concepts of sovereignty, statehood, etc.?

• How will states and societies cope with a predicted increase in climate refugees?

• What is the role climate change may play in future conflicts – both within, and between nation-states?

Proposals may be submitted via myISA. Click “My Submissions” on the ISA-West conference page to submit a proposal. If you do not already have one, you will need to create an account in order to access MyISA. Please note that you need not be a member of the International Studies Association in order to create an account. Questions about submissions and registration may be directed to the conference organizers at isawest@gmail.com.

The deadline for the submission of proposals is June 1, 2012.

Faculty members presenting papers will be asked to serve as chairs and discussants. Please indicate your areas of expertise when you register via MyISA. Please note that those whose proposals are accepted must register before August 1, 2012. Any accepted participant who fails to attend the conference will, except in case of emergency, be excluded from participation in future ISA-West conferences.

Three best paper citations—one each for faculty or independent scholars, graduate students, and undergraduate students—will be awarded at the Saturday luncheon reception.

Donna J. Nincic, California Maritime Academy, CSU

Jennifer Ramos, Loyola Marymount University

Program Chairs

Filthy Rich

CNBC will air an hour-long documentary Thursday night (9:00 p.m. ET/PT) entitled "Filthy Rich."  The network describes the program as an "original documentary reported by award-winning Senior Correspondent Scott Cohn and the CNBC Investigations Inc. team. They follow the money around the globe to Dubai, London, Paris and the United States, which is fast becoming a place for the Filthy Rich to hide their wealth."

Teodoro Obiang will be among the corrupt rulers of oil-rich states profiled in the documentary.  Scott Cohn was in Malibu to conduct interviews and film Teodorin Obiang's $30 million mansion back in September and, as late as last month, I received emails from a CNBC producer looking for some additional information about the estate.  The program will include an interview with Lanny Breuer, the assistant attorney general who leads the Justice Department's anti-kleptocracy initative that, in October, filed an in rem suit seeking to seize the Malibu mansion plus another $40 million worth of assets acquired by Teodorin Obiang through corruption.

Big Dog

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is working on a robotic "pack mule" to help shoulder the load for dismounted soldiers. What DARPA calls the Legged Squad Support System (LS3) is based on Big Dog and Alpha Dog robot prototypes developed by Boston Dynamics. To see what's going on, take a look at this compilation video of the earlier Big Dog robot from Boston Dynamics.

For a more up-to-date presentation on the state of the LS3 program, watch the video of the Alpha Dog featured in this news release from DARPA.

The robotics technology is impressive, but it raises the question of what was wrong with this program.

German Jobs, Kazakh Rights

An article in today's New York Times ("Balancing Business and Human Rights") describes Chancellor Angela Merkel's effort to balance German economic interests with support for human rights.  Germany has recently entered into an agreement with Kazakhstan worth €3 billion for the purchase of rare earth metals needed for certain high-tech manufactured goods.

The most recent rankings by Freedom House (Freedom in the World 2012) list Kazakhstan as "Not Free" with ratings of 6 for political rights and 5 for civil liberties (with 7 being the lowest score on a 1 to 7 scale).  The report notes that "violent labor unrest in Kazakhstan should remind the world that repression does not in fact lead to stability."  Among the most repressed workers in Kazakhstan are the miners responsible for producing the rare earth metals being sold to Germany.

Unfortunately, the world's leading producer of rare earth metals--the People's Republic of China--presents its own set of human rights concerns.  Germany and other consumers of rare earth metals are between a rock and a hard place.

In-N-Out, Shanghai Style

California's iconic In-N-Out Burger has found that software, DVDs, and designer purses are not the only things that get copied in China.  A new restaurant in Shanghai called CaliBurger was recently forced to change some of the names of items on its menu.  The double cheeseburger has gone from being called the "Double-Double," which is In-N-Out's name, to the "Cali Double."  "Animal Style" fries, In-N-Out's name (and, for a time, CaliBurger's name) for french fries topped with cheese and special sauce, is now "Wild Style" fries on the CaliBurger menu.

How did In-N-Out manage to get a restaurant in China to respect its trademarks?  It turns out that CaliBurger is American-owned and based in Southern California, just like In-N-Out.  That made it much easier for In-N-Out to initiate the lawsuit that prompted CaliBurger to settle the case and give up the names "borrowed" from In-N-Out.

But--those of you who are familiar with In-N-Out Burger's products--take a look at CaliBurger's food.  It appears there's still more than a mere homage to In-N-Out Burger in what CaliBurger is offering.  Could it be because CaliBurger's chef de cuisine, Jonathan Wong, is a former In-N-Out restaurant manager?

On the other hand, you can't get your vanilla shake at In-N-Out spiked with bourbon the way you can at CaliBurger.

As Cheryl Hung, an American in Shanghai, put it, "It's China.  Anywhere else and I'd be surprised by a rip-off."  Indeed.  China, after all, is the home of Pizza Huh, Dairy Fairy, and lots of fried chicken restaurants with three-letter names.

Climate Change and Culture Wars

To develop a better appreciation of why international cooperation to limit greenhouse gases is so important, take three minutes to watch this animated graphic presentation of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels over time.  The graphs were produced and animated by the Earth System Research Laboratory (Global Monitoring Division) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

(Go here to see the full-resolution version.)

Now consider that documents leaked earlier this week from a libertarian organization called the Heartland Institute describe plans to develop a curriculum for public school science classes questioning the reality of human-induced climate change.  Although the Heartland Institute says that one of the documents is a fake--a claim bolstered by Megan McArdle here--the organization concedes that others were sent unwittingly by an employee to a person posing as a board member with a new email address. (In 2009, the Heartland Institute was among the organizations that publicized emails stolen from the accounts of scientists in an effort to discredit their work.  Some of those scientists responded to the new leaks with an open letter to the Heartland Institute.)

As the scientists' letter points out, it's one thing to disagree on policy responses to a problem such as climate change, but it's something else entirely to distort the facts.

Infectious Disease, Human Security, and Social Media

The concept of human security is based, in part, on a widening of our understanding of what constitutes a security threat beyond the traditional focus on military threats in the concept of national security.  Human security includes concern for military threats, but it also encompasses threats related to food shortages, pollution, poverty, and disease.  Health insecurity, in fact, is one of the most persistent and problematic of all forms of insecurity if we judge such things in terms of lethality and impact on quality of life.  Consider that the wars of the twentieth century were responsible for roughly 100 million deaths while smallpox (now eradicated) killed somewhere between 300 and 500 million people during the same period.

One of the keys to gaining the upper hand in the war with microbes is understanding--and responding rapidly--to the spread of infectious diseases.  For humans to continue with business as usual when communicable diseases are running rampant among the population is to give a tremendous assist to the bugs.  Especially now, when, for the first time in human history, over half the world's population lives in urban areas, failing to get a flu shot, to cough into a sleeve, to stay home when running a fever, or to avoid crowded spaces can jeopardize the health--and sometimes the lives--of others.  The problem, however, is that sometimes infectious diseases are spread before their human carriers even know they are sick.  By the time the coughing, sneezing, vomiting, or other unpleasantness arrives, the viruses causing the symptoms may have already been spread.  Infectious diseases are often stealthy.

The solution, as public health experts have known for a long time, is to ensure that healthy people take precautions against the spread of disease as soon as those less fortunate begin to manifest symptoms.  The key to my continued health, in other words, is to take note of your illness and to avoid you (like the plague, as it were).  But if I take note of your illness only after you've shaken my hand or sneezed in my general vicinity, it's too late.  I may already have what you have.  The key, therefore, is public monitoring and reporting of the fact that an infectious disease is making its way through the local population.

Public health authorities in every state of the United States and in most of the world's countries collect information regarding the spread of infectious disease.  In fact, laws mandate that hospitals and clinics report on the incidence of various diseases that have been diagnosed and treated.  Massachusetts, in 1874, was the first state in the United States to initiate the systematic reporting of illness by physicians.  Michigan, in 1883, was the first to require such reports.  Today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) collects aggregate data on disease and mortality from the states.  The World Health Organization (WHO) performs a similar function on the global level.

Reporting of this type is essential for epidemiologists.  It can help health care providers to know what is happening when people start appearing for treatment with symptoms that could be explained by a variety of different conditions.  It can allow pharmaceutical companies to know when to ramp up production of particular vaccines and where to ship those that they have produced.  But it may not be timely enough to let me know that I shouldn't ride the subway into work tomorrow because a bunch of people in my city starting coughing and sneezing in just the last 24 hours and some of them are likely to tough it out and go to work tomorrow in spite of the fact that they're spewing pestilence.

This is where social media may help.  A new website call Sickweather (with changing mottoes that include "cough into your elbow," "we be illin'," and "don't touch me") is attempting to map the spread of various illnesses in real time by collecting the clues we post on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media regarding our state of health.  So when people Tweet about being up with a sick kid all night or update their Facebook status with something like "my head is so full of mucus it could explode," Sickweather takes that information and (presumably after a "whoa, dude, TMI") includes it in the database of illness reports.  By mapping the location of those who post their health reports (when location can be determined), Sickweather is able to generate a sickweather map.  Sickweather also invites visitors to the site to log in and fill out a quick health report.  (Calling all hypochondriacs!)

There are some, ahem, bugs to be worked out, no doubt, but the concept seems to be full of potential.  John Metcalfe of The Atlantic reports on Sickweather here if you need a bit more information.

There's much to be learned about human behavior, and threats to human security, by mining our online data.  In fact, I suspect one could track (and issue warnings about) outbreaks of karaoke, wine snobbery, and Angry Birds expertise in much the same way that Sickweather is handling illness.

"Red nose at morning, sailors take warning."  Seriously, you should check out Sickweather just for its ever-changing tag lines.

Les biens mal acquis

Even as the United States Department of Justice seeks to prove that Teodoro Nguema Obiang's Malibu mansion, assorted sports cars, Learjet, and Michael Jackson memorabilia are the products of corruption and therefore subject to seizure, the French government is moving in the same direction.  As part of a corruption probe popularly known in France as "BMA" (for biens mal acquis, or ill-gotten goods), French authorities raided TNO's Paris home at 42 Avenue Foch earlier this week.

The Equatoguinean government responded Thursday with this statement:  "The government of Equatorial Guinea expresses its total indignation and protests against the illegitimate persecution by French authorities on an apartment of the state . . . in Paris, in flagrant violation of international conventions."  Of course, "the government of Equatorial Guinea" is TNO's father, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who runs the country as a family-owned criminal enterprise.  The "international conventions" to which the statement refers are those related to diplomatic immunity, and especially the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961.  The Obiang family argues that TNO's Paris residence is protected by diplomatic immunity because TNO was appointed by his father last October to be Equatorial Guinea's deputy permanent representative to UNESCO, which is headquartered in Paris.  The French government is apparently unpersuaded by the argument.

Women, Power, and Peace

In 1998, Francis Fukuyama argued in an article for Foreign Affairs that, as women gain access to power across the world, the world is becoming a more peaceful place.  The "democratic peace," Fukuyama suggested, may in fact be a consequence of the feminization of politics.  He noted that "developed democracies . . . tend to be more feminized than authoritarian states, in terms of expansion of franchise and participation in political decision-making.  It should therefore surprise no one that the historically unprecedented shift in the sexual basis of politics should lead to a change in international relations."

Today, in a column published online by Aljazeera, Harvard professor and former assistant secretary of defense Joseph Nye considers whether a world run by women would be a more peaceful place.  Harvard psychologist Stephen Pinker, he notes, has argued in a recent book (Better Angels of Our Nature) that "over the long sweep of human history, women have been and will be a pacifying force."  Nye, endorsing this view, suggests that the connection between women and peace may be due in part to differences between women and men in leadership style:  "Women's non-hierarchical style and relational skills fit a leadership need in the new world of knowledge-based organisations and groups that men, on average, are less well prepared to meet."

Notwithstanding the potential advantages that women bring to the table as leaders, there remains a large gender gap when it comes to access to power in the political, economic, and social realms.  Women today hold only 5 percent of the world's top corporate positions.  Over the course of the 20th century, just 27 of 1,941 rulers of independent states were female.  Often, when women have been in positions of power, they  have been forced to adopt more masculine leadership styles (and foreign policies).  (Think Margaret Thatcher, currently being portrayed by Meryl Streep in Iron Lady.)

Progress has occurred at a glacial pace, but when we look at certain benchmarks in the not-too-distant past we can find reason for optimism.  In 1900, no country in the world allowed women to run for elective office at the national level.  Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress in the United States, was elected in 1916.  (She remains the only woman ever elected to Congress from Montana.)  Today, wherever men can vote, women have won the right to vote as well (with women's suffrage in Saudi Arabia coming in 2015).

The future, in all likelihood, belongs to women.  And that is probably a good thing for all of us.

Picking Electronic Pockets

"Everybody knows that if you are doing business in China, in the 21st century, you don't bring anything with you."  The "anything" to which cybersecurity expert Jacob Olcott refers is anything electronic.  And why?  Because the Chinese are remarkably adept at stealing data from computers, cell phones, or any other devices carried by travelers to China.

The New York Times describes the problem in this rather unsettling article.

A Human Rights Revolution

Amnesty International presents a brief summary of the dramatic events in North Africa and the Middle East since 2011.


(A human rights revolution from Amnesty International on Vimeo).

Human Rights Enforcement: The End of an Era

Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish judge who, in 1998, issued an international warrant for the arrest of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and, in 2008, initiated an investigation of crimes against humanity committed during the Franco regime, has been found guilty of illegally ordering wiretaps of lawyers' conversations with clients in a political corruption case.  While Spanish law permits such wiretaps in terrorism cases, it is vague concerning their permissibility in other cases.  Garzón was convicted by a panel of judges in Spain's Supreme Court, fined, and removed from the bench for eleven years.

There are additional legal problems for Garzón.  A second trial, also on charges of exceeding his legal authority, has just concluded.  Garzón is accused of opening the investigation of the Franco regime's crimes in violation of a 1977 amnesty law.  He told the panel hearing that case that he was motivated by "the helplessness of the victims."  A verdict is expected to take weeks.

Although the verdict already rendered effectively ends Garzón's career as a judge in Spain, the case involving his investigation of Franco-era crimes is drawing even greater attention.  Garzón has argued that his investigation was proper because there can be no amnesty for crimes against humanity.  This position has been supported by a group of UN human rights experts who issued a statement calling it “regrettable that Judge Garzón could be punished for opening an investigation which is in line with Spain’s obligations to investigate human rights violations in accordance with international law principles.”

Right-wing groups in Spain have resented Garzón's international fame and have been angered by his interest in digging up Spain's troubled past.  Garzón, on the other hand, has viewed the investigation of Spanish crimes against humanity as a logical extension of his international investigations.  According to one of Garzón's attorneys, Gonzalo Martinez-Fresneda, "The question that Garzón was always asked is: 'Why are you prosecuting Pinochet, why are you going after the Argentinean dictators, why are you after the Nazis, but you're not investigating the war crimes committed in Spain?"

There remains the possibility that Garzón might be able to end his career as a prosecutor at the International Criminal Court.  He served as a consultant to the ICC after his suspension from the bench in Spain.

Kennedy and the Cubans

The United States' economic embargo against Cuba has now been in place for half a century.  President John F. Kennedy imposed what Cubans call el bloqueo by means of an executive order in February 1962, soon after Pierre Salinger, his press secretary, delivered 1,200 Cuban cigars to the White House.

Salinger tells this and another story related Cuban cigars in this video:

(Thanks to Alex Tangkilisan.)

Child Soldiers: Dealing with Responsible Parties

On October 3, 2008, President George W. Bush signed into law the Child Soldiers Accountability Act, introduced in 2007 by Senator Richard Durbin and passed unanimously in both the House and the Senate in September 2008.  The act, which has extraterritorial reach, makes it a federal crime to recruit or use children under 15 as soldiers.

Yesterday, a federal immigration judge ordered the deportation of George Boley, a former Liberian warlord, under the terms of the Child Soldiers Accountability Act.  It is the first time the Act has been used for this purpose.

Boley was the leader of an organization called the Liberian Peace Council (LPC), one of seven separate organizations waging war in Liberia during an internal struggle that lasted, with only a brief interruption, from 1989 to 2003.  As many as 250,000 people died in the civil war, which was characterized by the use of child soldiers and frequent atrocities against noncombatants.  Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommended that Boley and other warlords be prosecuted for atrocities committed during the war, but no charges have ever been filed.  (Former Liberian president Charles Taylor, however, is being tried in the Special Court for Sierra Leone for his role in fomenting that country's civil war.)

According to a story in the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle, Boley is a longtime resident of Clarkson, New York.  He attended college almost forty years ago at the College of Brockport where he earned a bachelor's and a master's degree before earning a Ph.D. at the University of Akron.  He was a minister in the government of Samuel Doe, but came to the United States in 1990 following Doe's murder.  In 1993, Boley returned to Liberia as the leader of the LPC.

Boley has been in federal custody for the last two years while fighting deportation.

The Right to a Free Public Education

There is a common misconception that international human rights are enforced only when the leader of an abusive regime--Sudan's Bashir or Syria's Assad, for example--is captured and transferred to an international court or when the Security Council musters the necessary votes to impose sanctions or authorize humanitarian intervention to halt human rights abuses.  These things do happen on occasion, but only when state interests (especially among the permanent members of the Security Council) are aligned properly.  The Russian and Chinese veto of a Security Council resolution calling for the ouster of Assad in Syria last week, with what appear to be tragic consequences, offers an example of a political failure to enforce human rights.

The Syrian case is especially tragic because innocent people are being killed by government forces as an authoritarian regimes clings to power.  But the international human rights regime deals with far more than threats to life and liberty.  There are many other human rights that require monitoring, and occasionally enforcement, under circumstances in which neither the Security Council nor a hegemonic state is likely to take much notice.  Sometimes, in fact, it is the hegemonic state that needs a dose of enforcement activity.  How are human rights enforced in these circumstances?

California provides a good example with respect to the right to a free public education.  The right is guaranteed in international human rights law and in California's constitution.  As an example of the former, consider Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states, in part, "Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages." (The UDHR is widely regarded as an expression of customary international law in spite of the fact that it was adopted in 1948 as a non-binding resolution of the United Nations General Assembly.)  Article 13 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights states that "Primary education shall be compulsory and available free to all."  In California, the right to education is found in Article 9 of the constitution:  "The Legislature shall provide for a system of common schools by which a free school shall be kept up and supported in each district."  (Article 9 actually includes about 2600 words, many having to do with the State Board of Education, public universities and boards of regents, textbooks, teachers, and many other matters more appropriate to a legal code than a fundamental statement of rights.)  The point, of course, is that the right to a free public education, which is a part of the contemporary international human rights regime, is embedded in California law where the right is realized.  (In point of fact, the right was embedded in California law long before the UDHR was drafted.  It would be accurate to say, certainly in this instance, that the UDHR articulates a right guaranteed in some but not all parts of the world in 1948.)

Unfortunately, budget cuts in California have weakened the state's commitment to an educational system that is "free to all," at least in its primary and secondary stages.  To compensate for declining revenues, many school districts have asked students and their families to pay for athletic uniforms, art supplies, and even workbooks for Spanish classes and novels for English classes.

In September 2010, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a class action suit on behalf of students forced to pay fees for a variety of required educational materials.  One student paid $440 annually for various fees, an amount that presented a financial hardship for the family.

Two weeks ago, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carl West denied a motion to dismiss filed by the state.  Meanwhile, Assemblyman Ricardo Lara is pushing legislation that will require school superintendents to monitor all schools under their supervision to ensure that illegal fees are not being imposed in violation of the constitutional--and international human rights--requirement that the state provide a free public education.

This is how international human rights ought to be--and sometimes are--enforced.  A particular right such as the right to a free public education, expressed in general terms in international law, is incorporated into the constitutional or statutory law of individual states in a form appropriate to the local culture.  Robust civil society groups, such as the ACLU in the United States, monitor compliance with the law and, when necessary, go to court to demand compliance, even as legislatures act to strengthen the law.

Slavery at SeaWorld?

Last October, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) filed suit in federal court alleging that five orcas kept by SeaWorld (three in San Diego and two in Orlando) are being held in slavery in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.  Jeffrey Kerr, PETA's attorney, has said that this is "the next frontier of civil rights."  Today Judge Jeffrey Miller heard arguments related to SeaWorld's motion to dismiss the suit.

There's certainly a case to be made that orcas should not be held in captivity, but antislavery law is probably not the best foundation for that case.

Globalizing Change.org

Nicholas Kristof's column in today's New York Times looks at Change.org and its power to create, well, change.  After describing the way a fourth-grade class in Massachusetts persuaded Universal Studios to green its advertising for The Lorax, a movie due out in March based on the Dr. Seuss book about protecting the environment, Kristof goes on to describe the dramatic expansion of Change.org.  It turns out that when I joined Change.org last month, it was a one-in-a-million thing--by which I mean that Change.org is adding a million new members per month.

Although still small (compared to Facebook), Change.org now has offices on four continents.  The company plans to have offices in twenty countries and operate in Arabic and Chinese by the end of 2012.  There will no doubt be censorship battles ahead, but the beauty of a petition is that can clearly articulate the will of the people--peacefully.

The "right of the people  . . . to petition the government for a redress of grievances," as the First Amendment puts it, is an important right.  Change.org makes it easy to exercise the right.

The First Grader

Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, in part, that "everyone has the right to education."  It is a right that is central to the plot of a beautiful film called The First Grader.

Based on the true story of Kimani N'gan'ga Maruge, a Kenyan who, at age 84, insisted on attending primary school so that he could learn to read after Kenya instituted free primary education for all, The First Grader is more than simply a cute "old man goes to school with six-year-olds" film.  In frequent and sometimes very intense flashbacks, we learn that Maruge fought against the British in the Mau Mau Rebellion of the 1950s.  While historians are divided over the significance of the rebellion in terms of its impact on Kenyan independence (which came in 1963), the Mau Mau rebels have been honored in Kenya for their contributions to the cause.

The First Grader also touches on the brutality of the British response to the Mau Mau Rebellion, an issue that continues to attract attention in spite of the fact that the British have been gone from Kenya--the former British East Africa--for almost fifty years.  In April 2011, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office admitted that it had withheld thousands of documents relating to the treatment of Mau Mau detainees in Kenya in spite of repeated requests for their release.  Shortly thereafter, a British court gave four Kenyans the right to sue the British government for human rights violations.  Historian David Anderson noted in The Guardian last summer, "Of the four elderly Kenyan plaintiffs who brought this case, two were allegedly the victims of castration, one claims to have been savagely beaten and left for dead on a mortuary slab, and another was allegedly the victim of repeated sexual abuse--all acts conducted during British 'interrogation' of suspects against whom no crime had been proved."

Perhaps what makes The First Grader work so well is the contrast it poses between the brutality of Kenya's colonial past and the hope for the future that free universal education offers.  Both came together in the person of Kimani Maruge, who died in 2009 at the age of 89.

(Thanks to Liz Feiner for recommending this film.)

Justice for Comrade Duch

Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Comrade Duch, had his conviction upheld and his sentence increased by the Supreme Court Chamber of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) earlier this week.  The ECCC was established as a mixed Cambodian-international tribunal to try those responsible for the Cambodian genocide of 1975-79.  In less than four years, the Khmer Rouge regime led by Pol Pot killed approximately 1.7 million Cambodians, or roughly a quarter of Cambodia's population.  Duch was head of a prison--S21--in Phnom Penh called Tuol Sleng.  Nearly all of the approximately 15,000 people who passed through Tuol Sleng were killed.

 Tuol Sleng (S21)

Duch was convicted of crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions in July 2010 in the first trial conducted in the ECCC.  He appealed the verdict in March 2011, claiming that, as a junior official in the Khmer Rouge, he was merely following orders on pain of death.  His argument was rejected by the court, which increased his sentence from 35 years to life in prison.  Judge Kong Srim called Duch's crimes "among the worst in recorded history."

World War I in Color

Even those who dream in color are likely to imagine World War I in black and white. The vast majority of the images that have come down to us, both photographs and a few movies, are monochromatic. Even All Quiet on the Western Front, the classic film about World War I that was released in 1930 is available only in black and white (having apparently escaped the colorization efforts of Turner Classic Movies).

There is, however, a trove of color photographs from World War I available online.  The photographs were taken by the French army during the last two years of the war using a color film that had been developed by Auguste and Louis Lumiere in 1907.  Here's one showing French troops posing in a trench.

One of the points that comes through in even a very cursory look at the photographs is the extent to which the war was in fact a world war.  There are soldiers pictured from various French colonies including Senegal, Algeria, and Indochina.  Woodrow Wilson's call for national self-determination must have been very unnerving to allies fighting the war with considerable help from their colonies.