Yet another industrious benefactor of the robust Zimbabwean economy
December 10th was Human Rights Day, when people all around the world commemorate the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a cutesy, toothless charter on the books at the UN that says very nice things about people and affirms their right to live happily even if their neighbors prefer to run around genociding them.
In 2004, President George W. Bush turned the seven days surrounding December 10th into Human Rights Week. I believe this was done shortly after he issued an executive order decreeing that it is not technically torture to electrocute men by the testicles, so long as you use environmentally friendly NiMH batteries.
And how did our friends around the globe celebrate Human Rights Day/Week? Mostly with beatings and arrests.
In Havana, police reportedly gave a hearty trouncing to activist Belinda Salas and her unfortunate acquaintances for no reason other than to let them know they still live in Cuba. This may seem inconsistent with the values of Human Rights Day, but these folks, being Cuban dissidents, probably take beatings the way you and I take a bad traffic report. It’s not like they wound up in a gay concentration camp or anything.
In China, the government held a big happy press conference to talk about all the rights its subjects have. Afterwards, 40 protesters were rounded up and shipped off to indefinite incarceration. Hooray! In all fairness, the UDHR doesn’t apply to the Chinese, because they’re not humans so much as cogs in a very huge and productive machine that makes toilet plungers and Bratz dolls for actual sentient Westerners.
In Zimbabwe, meanwhile, Robert Mugabe proudly announced that his country’s devastating Cholera epidemic was over, and that he could get back to laying waste to his country with unbridled corruption, economic mismanagement, and mob violence. To really understand what’s going on there, read the following quote from the linked-to New York Times article:
The outbreak is yet more evidence that Zimbabwe’s most fundamental public services — including water and sanitation, public schools and hospitals — are shutting down, much like the organs of a severely dehydrated cholera victim.
Meta-metaphor win!
