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Ed Webb

US and Israel lose UNESCO voting rights - Americas - Al Jazeera English - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...ights-2013118131753600731.html

UN UNESCO US USA Israel Palestine MEPP

shared by Ed Webb on 08 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • UNESCO has suspended the voting rights of the United States, two years after it stopped paying dues to the UN's cultural arm in protest over its granting full membership to the Palestinians, according to a UNESCO source. The US has not paid its dues to UNESCO due to the decision by world governments to make Palestine a UNESCO member in 2011. Israel suspended its dues at the same time and also lost voting rights on Friday.
  • The US decision of not paying UNESCO was blamed on US laws that prohibit funding to any United Nations agency that implies recognition of Palestinian demands for their own state.
  • The withdrawal of US funding, which to date amounts to about $240m or some 22 percent of UNESCO's budget, has plunged the organisation into a financial crisis, forcing it to cut programmes and slash spending.
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  • Some fear that a weaker US presence will lead to growing anti-Israeli sentiment within UNESCO, where Arab-led criticism of Israel for territorial reasons has long been an issue. "We won't be able to have the same clout," said Phyllis Magrab, the Washington-based US National Commissioner for UNESCO. "In effect, we (now won't) have a full tool box. We're missing our hammer." Israel's ambassador to UNESCO, Nimrod Barkan, told The Associated Press that his country supported the US decision, "objecting to the politicisation of UNESCO, or any international organisation, with the accession of a non-existing country like Palestine." Elias Sanbar, Palestinian Ambassador to UNESCO told Al Jazeera: "We need them (the United States) to be active. By taking this decision, first of all, they have created big problems for UNESCO, but they have also lost part of their role and we need their role." UNESCO designates World Heritage sites, promotes global education and supports press freedom among other tasks.
  • The Palestinians have so far failed in their bid to become a full member of the UN, but their UNESCO membership is seen as a potential first step towards UN recognition of statehood.
Ed Webb

Turkey can avert a tragedy on the Tigris - Yahoo! News - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/...yackerman

water Turkey heritage history culture Kurds UNESCO

shared by Ed Webb on 27 Aug 09 - Cached
  • The issues are complex. Advocates and opponents cast the debate as preservation of the past challenging progress for the future, conservation versus energy, national interests versus minority Kurdish interests, nationalism versus the interests of neighboring countries. The government argues that the dam will bring irrigation and power to the region. Opponents maintain that much of the electricity generated will go to other parts of the country. Iraq has protested vehemently against Turkey damming the Tigris River just upstream and further restricting the water flow across the border. There is also the geopolitical drama of the European partnerships withdrawing and Turkey potentially pursuing other partners such as China and Russia.
Ed Webb

Sri Lankan Sunday School Was 'Willing to Die for Christ' o...... | News & Reporting | C... - 0 views

www.christianitytoday.com/...school-sebastian-funerals.html

Sri Lanka terrorism Christianity Islam Christians Muslims politics

shared by Ed Webb on 26 Apr 19 - No Cached
  • Sri Lanka is an odd place for Muslim-Christian tension, which was virtually unknown before the Easter bombings. An island southeast of India, the population is 70 percent Buddhist and 12 percent Hindu. Muslims constitute roughly 10 percent, and Christians 8 percent—predominantly Catholic but with a sizable Protestant majority. Islam came in the eighth century, spread peacefully by Muslim traders. Christianity came in 1505 with the Portuguese, furthered by later colonial empires. Both religions have increasingly suffered at the hands of nationalists within local Buddhist and Hindu communities, striking at Sri Lanka’s multi-religious heritage.
  • there is a growing tension between Muslims and Catholics, said Heshan de Silva, chairman of the National Christian Council of Sri Lanka. But there is also an ecumenical outpouring. The local Muslim Council lamented “extremist and violent elements, who wish to create divides between religious and ethnic groups.” Many Muslims have joined Christians in funerals and protests, de Silva said. Buddhist monks have issued statements in support. And the coming weekend will see a joint Catholic-Protestant prayer vigil in the public square.
  • He stressed that Muslims in Sri Lanka are friendly, and pillars of the business community. But he told CT he is not optimistic. “Certainly there will be antagonism against Muslims by all other communities [Christians included], and people might start to look at them suspiciously,” said Senanayake. “The situation might get worse.”
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  • while Sri Lankan Christian leaders preach calm as their youth are tempted toward radicalization, the hope of transformation hangs in the balance
Ed Webb

Confucianism Isn't Helping South Korea Beat the Coronavirus - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...ing-cultural-trope-orientalism

pandemics Korea opinion analysis culture orientalism

shared by Ed Webb on 18 Apr 20 - Cached
  • The United States and Europe are suffering from COVID-19 because they saw the virus as an “Asian disease,” somehow unable to reach their own shores. Now, they run the risk of rejecting the best practices of combating the pandemic as they imagine “Asian solutions” that can never be replicated in their countries.
  • This is a long-standing pattern of Orientalism. Whenever a social policy seems to work well in an Asian country (usually Japan and more recently South Korea), Westerners—Americans in particular—are quick to claim that such policy was possible only because of Asia’s supposedly homogenous populations and harmonious societies. Such harmony, however, exists only in a racist fantasy that imagines a society made up of meek, compliant Asians.
  • In a 2018 study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, South Korea’s score for “average trust in others” was merely 0.32 in 2014. The country was outranked by such so-called individualistic Western societies as Norway (0.68), Sweden (0.65), the Netherlands (0.54), Canada (0.44), and even the United States (0.41).
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  • In the middle of the most serious global pandemic in a century, South Korea’s politics caused the nation’s foremost experts in infectious disease to cease advising the president.
  • Of course, culture is a real thing that guides people’s actions. It is entirely possible to have a sophisticated debate on, for example, how Confucianism influenced the South Korean public’s reception of the government’s response to the coronavirus. (The ancient Confucian philosopher Mencius provides rich material on practical governance in accordance with the Confucian web of obligations between ruler and subject.) But curiously, the Western media’s discussion of South Korea’s Confucian heritage never makes any reference to the actual Confucian texts. Instead, Confucianism is merely an excuse to introduce tired old stereotypes about Asians as mindless drones, ignorant to the true meaning of freedom.
  • South Korea’s success is thanks to competent leadership that inspired public trust.
  • Just as South Korea did, the United States and Europe could have moved in the earliest stage of the outbreak to implement a mass-scale test-and-quarantine program and minimize the damages of the coronavirus. By writing off South Korea’s response as culturally bound, the West is once again making the same mistake, failing to recognize that Asia’s solution could be its solution too.
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