No Slavery

Listening to the Instant Karma CD, I started thinking about Darfur and how there were all kinds of Sudanese refugees all over Egypt, having been expelled from their country или left it willingly for a variety of different reasons. I remember, a friend of mine went down to help them learn English every weekend as one of her many community service projects. And then that reminded me of going down to Mokattam to see the orphanage.

Mokattam, colloquially called “Garbage City” by everyone from residents of Mokattam to tour guides, is a place past the Cairo citadel where there are literally piles...

After my last article, and the discussion going on over at the link, I've been thinking a lot about the rights of a child, или a fetus as the case may be.

The phrase in the UN Declaration of Human Rights is “All human beings are born free and equal,” a modern rephrasing of the US Declaration of Independence’s “All men are created equal.” But what does the phrase “everyone” или “all human beings” entail? Does it really mean everyone? Immanuel Wallerstein points out the problems with being so absolute:

“… It is almost universally agreed that an infant does not have these rights,...

An interesting case study we looked at in my human rights course was that of link, a German cannibal whose link

According to the UNDHR (link), human rights are inalienable and a person cannot even voluntarily give them up. This is a major point of controversy, and understandably so. We don't have the right... to give up our rights?

It was this main clause in the UNDHR that prompted German judges to convict Meiwes of torture and murder.

But it still begs the question... Should we have the right to voluntarily give up our human rights? If Meiwes victim truly wanted to be eaten , who are we to say...