This statement comes from the founder of Empower on the occasion of their report Hit and Run: The impact of anti-trafficking policy and practice on Sex Workers’ Human Rights in Thailand. This assessment, carried out by more than 200 sex workers over the course of 12 months in bars, restaurants and brothels across the country and in Burma and Laos, begins:

We travel for days up the mountains, across rivers, through dense forest. We follow the paths that others have taken. Small winding paths of dust or mud depending on the season. I carry my bag of clothes and all the hopes of my family on my back. I carry this with pride; it’s a precious bundle not a burden. As for the border, for the most part, it does not exist. There is no line drawn on the forest floor. There is no line in the swirling river. I simply put my foot where thousands of other women have stepped before me. My step is excited, weary, hopeful, fearful and defiant. Behind me lies the world I know. It’s the world of my grandmothers and their grandmothers. Ahead is the world of my sisters who have gone before me, to build the dreams that keep our families alive. This step is Burma. This step is Thailand. That is the border.

If this was a story of man setting out on an adventure to find a treasure and slay a dragon to make his family rich and safe, he would be the hero. But I am not a man. I am a woman and so the story changes. I cannot be the family provider. I cannot be setting out on an adventure. I am not brave and daring. I am not resourceful and strong. Instead I am called illegal, disease spreader, prostitute, criminal or trafficking victim.

Why is the world so afraid to have young, working class, non-English speaking, and predominantly non-white women moving around? It’s not us that are frequently found to be pedophiles, serial killers or rapists. We have never started a war, directed crimes against humanity or planned and carried out genocide. It’s not us that fill the violent offender’s cells of prisons around the world. Exactly what risk does our freedom of movement pose? Why is keeping us in certain geographical areas so important that governments are willing to spend so much money and political energy? Why do we feel like sheep or cattle, only allowed by the farmer to graze where and when he chooses? Why do other women who have already crossed over into so many other worlds, fight to keep us from following them? Nothing in our experiences provides us with an answer to these questions.

A hundred-page report follows. Excerpts from Sex ‘trade’, not ‘traffic’, a news story on the report include:

The survey determined that more than 50,000 sex workers have been involved with Empower since it started [in 1985] including migrants mainly from Laos, Burma, China and Cambodia…

Migration, it was noted, is part of the “culture” of sex work, and the brokers involved in transporting people are generally seen as helpful. Most don’t charge exorbitant rates for their service…

“We came to build new lives for our families, not to be sent home empty-handed and ashamed,” explained Dang Moo, another Burmese sex worker in Mae Sot…

“Before I was arrested I was working happily, had no debt, and was free to move around the city,” said Nok, a Burmese. “Now I’m in debt, I’m scared most of the time, and it’s not safe to move around. How can they call this ‘help’?”…

For those dropping into this website for the first time and not familiar with the issues except for what you’ve seen on television or in the newspapers, I have put together a list of links to stories about ‘rescues’ not appreciated by those defined as victims. This does not mean the migrants or sex workers or prostitutes were all perfectly happy with everything about their lives; it means they did not want whatever attempt to help was forced on them as part of anti-sex trafficking operations, and in many cases felt their lives had been ruined by Rescue. The Rescue Industry tag on this website includes many more posts with more resources, but here is an array of striking commentaries on what so few people question: the efficacy of Rescue operations.

• § Women resist rescue by anti-trafficking police, who admit it, July 2011
• § Saved at last? or Sex Workers Don’t Want Rescue? Stories from India, October 2010
• § Chinese trafficked sex workers refuse rescue from Congo, January 2011
• § Even sex-trafficked brothel workers reject raids and rescues, August 2011
• § Saving prostitutes or chasing out sex workers: Don Benzi, Abruzzo and deforestation, October 2010
• § Teen prostitutes don’t want to be saved so they must be brainwashed, right?, October 2011
• § Bangalore sex workers reject rescue by Supreme Court judge, March 2011
• § Cambodia Ladyboy Rescue Goes Wrong, November 2008
• § Sex Workers on Sunday: what people say themselves about exchanging money for sex, April 2011

And just to make it clear this problem of imposing victimisation and Rescue on women who sell sex is quite old, consider

Letter from the prostitute that didn’t want saving, 1858

For example, today (March 14) Bank of America/Merrill Lynch reported that “yesterday US markets started the day off with a strong rally after the solid retail sales report. . . . tailwinds are helping boost global equity markets today.”

The “solid retail sales report” for February consists of 1% nominal gain. That is, the increase is not deflated by the month’s inflation rate, which will be released on March 16. In other words, if very much of the 1%nominal gain in retail sales is due to higher prices, the inflation adjusted gain will not be statistically significant. The “rational market” took off without waiting to find out whether the gain was real.

Moreover, as statistician John Williams has established, the official Consumer Price Index (CPI) understates inflation. If an honest measure of inflation was used, retail sales could be in negative territory.

The “rational market” loves deception as long as it provides an excuse for equities to rise. The Federal Reserve’s focus on “core inflation,” which does not include rising food and energy prices, allows Federal Reserve officials to maintain that the inflation rate remains below target. By pretending that there is no inflation, the Federal Reserve continues to support banks with near zero interest rates while depriving savers and retirees of interest income. With no income from savings, people are forced to consume their capital. Thus, the Federal Reserve’s policy makes bankers richer and the country poorer.

Meanwhile, those whose old age security is based on pensions are confronting insecurity. Many with private pensions were harmed by the financial crisis. Those dependent on Social Security and Medicare are finding that these programs are being blamed for budget deficits caused by multi-trillion dollar wars of choice. Those expecting pensions from state and local governments are finding that governments are unable to make good on underfunded pension benefits.

State and local governments counted on a growing economy and rising consumer incomes to provide the tax base to make good on underfunded pensions. These governments did not foresee that US corporations would destroy their tax base by moving manufacturing, engineering, IT, research and design jobs overseas. The absence of growth in real incomes for the vast majority of the people and the capture of productivity gains by capital at the expense of labor have added to the budget woes of most state and local governments.

John Rauh at Northwestern University estimates that the unfunded obligations of state and local governments amounts to $4,400,000,000,000, an amount that is within the ballpark of Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes’ estimate of the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Money that could have saved Americans’ pensions instead was allocated to profits for armament corporations and to advance Israel’s territorial hegemony.

When the Occupy Wall Street movement says that Washington rules for the benefit of the 1%, OWS is not far off the mark.

A U.S. Army Staff Sergeant walked through two villages in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan around 3 a.m. March 11, methodically shooting 16 people that he’d dragged from their beds with single shots to the head. Then he dragged corpses outside and set some on fire. Eleven were reportedly from one family. Nine were children.

The Taliban has promised revenge against “sick-minded American savages.” Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta appeared to confirm this characterization when he callously told the press later the same day, “War is hell. These kinds of events and incidents are going to take place. They’ve taken place in any war. They’re terrible events. This is not the first of those events, and they probably won’t be the last.”

“Events” and “incidents” aren’t the pronouns that come to mind when contemplating premeditated multiple murders of sleeping women and children. Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai called the massacre an assassination and “an intentional killing of innocent civilians and cannot be forgiven.”

Seth Jones of the Rand Corporation, a former Special Forces Command officer in the Pentagon, tried to cement the blood-thirsty image of the U.S. at war when he said March 12 on the PBS News Hour, “This is not as out of the norm as it’s appearing in the media. … Afghans are used to being killed.”

Sick-minded American savages clearly are not confined to the killing fields. With the long record of U.S. massacres that have gone unpunished or been treated lightly, Afghans can be forgiven for demanding that the latest Son of Uncle Sam be turned over to Afghan authorities for trial.

In late November 2001, hundreds of captured Afghan fighters were packed into sealed shipping containers and moved to the town of Mazar. Hundreds died of asphyxiation en route, were executed when some of the bodies were dumped along the way, or were killed when the containers were riddled with machine gun fire in Mazar under the watchful eyes of 30 to 40 U.S. Special Forces soldiers. The documentary Massacre at Mazar includes eyewitness accounts of the killings. No soldier has ever even faced a U.S. inquiry.

No U.S. personnel have been prosecuted for jet fighter attacks gone astray, or for bombing civilians targeted with unreliable “intel,” or for the pilotless drone massacres directed from thousands of miles away that have left scores of children dead. Eleven children ages 2 to 7 were killed last May 28; six kids were killed Nov. 24; eight more were killed Feb. 15. No charges were brought against two Marines in charge of a unit that killed 19 people and wounded 50 by firing indiscriminately at cars and bystanders in Afghanistan in 2008.

When U.S. crimes of war have been prosecuted the official trivialization of the atrocities and the lack of severe consequences have been appalling. The literate population of Afghanistan may be more attuned to the pattern than U.S. readers. Pvt. Charles Graner, a leader of the Abu Ghraib torture cell in Iraq was released after 6 ½ years of a 10-year sentence. In 2009, charges were dropped against four U.S. military contractors from Blackwater, Inc. who massacred 17 civilians in the square in Baghdad. This year, Marine Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich was allowed to plead guilty to ‘dereliction of duty,’ after having overseen the cold-blooded murders of 24 sleeping civilians in Haditha, Iraq in 2005. He had told his men “Shoot first, ask questions later.” Six of them had their charges dropped and one was acquitted. Sgt. Wuterich walked free without any jail time.

A May 31, 2011 warning from President Karzai should now be reread by the Pentagon’s generals: “If they continue their attacks on our houses, then their presence will change from a force that is fighting terrorism to a force that is fighting against the people of Afghanistan. And in that case, history shows what Afghans do with trespassers and with occupiers.”

John LaForge is on the staff of Nukewatch, a nuclear watchdog and anti-war group in Wisconsin, and edits its quarterly newsletter. Distributed byPeace Voice.

After an American sergeant marauded through an Afghan village methodically shooting unarmed men, women and children, Secretary of State Clinton argued that “this is not who we are.” The president chimed in that we care about Afghan children as much as our own.

While high officials cannot avoid mouthing such mealy Orwellian pieties, that doesn’t mean that we citizens have to sleepily accept their mendacity.

Beg pardon, Madame Secretary and Mr. President, this is who we are. If we really cared about Afghan children as much as our own, surely we would not have so quickly turned to war as our habitual first resort.

No doubt Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama dearly want to wind down our feckless venture there. But the main reason war in Afghanistan has not worked is because official policy so closely resembles, especially from the perspective of the Afghans, the cool murderousness of the deranged sergeant.

It doesn’t have to be this way. But for it to change, we must look much more closely at ourselves and our militarism. It is hard to look at ourselves. We prefer the platitudes, the easy stereotypes of “us” as good guys and “them” as bad guys.

And so we lapse into the role of what one anthropologist has aptly called “technocratic colonialists.” Our first and most arrogant rationalization for invading Iraq or Afghanistan is that we know best. We know more about democracy. We know more about the judicious “investment” of military violence for a supposed long-term return in security. We know “our” oil somehow ended up under “their” sand and we have the right to control it.

But two things completely undercut and negate this “superior” knowledge. First, we remain abysmally ignorant about the culture, customs and languages of the countries we invade. The best and the brightest brought us Vietnam by way of the domino theory that communism would spread through the region if we did not draw the line. They seemed to have no idea that a thousand years of nationalistic fervor ensured that the North Vietnamese would no more tolerate the Chinese in their territory than they would the French or the Americans. We conveniently overlooked the fact that Ho Chi Minh admired Thomas Jefferson.

Second, in order to rationalize the subjection of distant peoples no different from ourselves to our campaigns of shock and awe, we have to think of them as subhuman—less real than ourselves. Inevitably and tragically, this means not valuing their children as much as our own.

The worst technocratic symptom in our condescending attitude toward the Muslim masses of Afghanistan and Pakistan is the malevolent use of robotic aircraft flown by remote control from bases on the American prairie. Is the impersonality of these dealers of death so different from the dissociation of the rampaging sergeant? In both cases damage is called collateral when it is pivotal, because it only gives a further spin to the wheel of revenge. The technological efficiency of our drones is altogether undercut by the loss of good will toward us. Meanwhile, as we remain bogged down in Afghanistan, Al Quaeda is said to have seeped into 60 other countries. Do we plan to invade them all?

General Petraeus wisely required his officers to read Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea. Through building schools for girls in the outposts of the Afpak region, Mortenson provides an alternative model for turning adversaries of America into friends. But building schools and occupying a nation by force will never work in concert, however much our well-intentioned military leaders might wish. It is long past time to admit that war does not only drive isolated men insane, war itself is insane.

Winslow Myers, the author of “Living Beyond War: A Citizen’s Guide,” serves on the Board of Beyond War (www.beyondwar.org), a non-profit educational foundation whose mission is to explore, model and promote the means for humanity to live without war. Distributed by Peace Voice.

I am in Hebron, Occupied Territories of Palestine, as a member of the Christian Peacemakers Team (CPT).  Every Saturday there is an “Israeli Settler Tour” of Hebron.  100+ Israeli settlers and their  guests come through the Old City where our Palestinian friends live.  The Israelis are escorted by an equal number of IDF soldiers. This is a “Real Estate Tour” because the settlers stop and “ooh and ahh” at the beautiful rehabilitation work that has been done by the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee (HRC), no doubt anticipating that the Israeli settlers will eventually take ALL of Hebron’s Old City.

During this “tour” by Israeli settlers, Palestinian residents of Hebron are not permitted to walk to or from their homes.  We followed the soldiers on the tour to observe that Palestinians are not mistreated.  At one point, we yelled at a soldier to stop pointing his gun at us and others who were waiting to pass.  A small Palestinian girl walked by me and suddenly became aware of the soldiers – she almost walked right up to a soldier’s gun.  She looked up at him and wailed, crying for her Mama.   I took her hand and began to walk with her to look for her mother or someone who might know her.  We waited until finally a young girl (maybe her sister) picked her up.  Later, I thought about the soldier and wondered if his heart was moved when he saw the beautiful little Palestinian girl terrified of him and his gun.

A day earlier, on the way to join Friday prayers at a protest tent in Tel Rumeida, three members of our team stopped to stand with a Palestinian man who was being detained by a soldier on Shuhada Street near Beit Hadassah, an Israeli settlement.  The soldier immediately said to us, “Go, you cannot stay here!”  We told him it was our job to stay until he released the man.  At that, he threatened to arrest us. We said “OK, call the police if you like.  We are not leaving.”  He picked up his phone, then immediately gave the Palestinian his ID back so he could go on his way.  We left.  Soldiers cannot arrest internationals; they have to call the Israeli police to make the arrests.

The protest tent was set up after a car owned by the Abu Heikal family was set afire by settlers while soldiers watched.  The family filed over 200 complaints with the Israeli police but has received no response to date.  A female member of the family fasted for forty days in the protest tent, but to no avail.

On mats scattered on the ground, fifty plus men and youth with hands held toward the sky offered praise to Allah and implored Allah’s aid.  As we watched from the tent, we were moved by their implicit trust in their God.  After prayers, a friend translated the imam’s message for us.  He thanked the people for their steadfastness, talked about the IDF’s escalation of violence, the 16 year old boy who was shot in the back by an Israeli soldier in Yatta village in the south Hebron Hills and the two 11 year olds who were killed by an unexploded ordinance left by IDF soldiers in Sa’ir village near Hebron.

In the afternoon, Hamed Qawasmeh of the U.N., invited CPT and ISM for lunch to thank them for the report about the Golani Brigade’s abuses of Hebron Palestinians.  We have had word from the U.S. Consulate and  the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH), an NGO created by the Olso Peace Process), that Israel’s notorious Golani Brigade will be leaving in a few days, rather than at the end of May.  The Golani Brigade has been brutal in its occupation of the village of Al Khalil, and has threatened CPT members with assault or death for documenting their abuses.

We learned that one and a half hours after we were on Shuhada Street, two women from the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) were assaulted by settler men.  One woman was punched in the face, the other was pushed to the ground and had wine poured over her while soldiers stood by and did not intervene.

In another round of assaults and illegal detentions, around 9:30pm on Saturday night, March 10, 2012, soldiers knocked down the door of the Palestinian Municipality Inspectors Office which is across the street from us.  They detained two of the men, took them to Beit Hadassah where they beat them badly.  After the men were released around midnight, they went to the hospital for treatment of their injuries.

So much has happened in the West Bank and in Gaza where 16 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes.  I don’t remember this much violence by the IDF since the 2001-2002 intifada!
JoAnne Lingle is a member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams and worked on the CPT Hebron project since 1997 in trips totaling staying in Hebron for over 4 years.  She has worked on CPT projects in Grassy Narrows, Ontario, Borderlands Project in Arizona, la Framboise Island, South Dakota, Vieques, Puerto Rico and Sulaimaniya, Iraq, Kurdistan Region.  She also made a trip to Gaza with a CODEPINK: Women for Peace delegation in 2009 after the Israeli 22 day attack that left 1400 dead, 5,000 wounded and 50,000 homeless and was a participant in the 1350 international delegation for the Gaza Freedom March that was stalled in December, 2009, by the Egyptian government in Cairo.  She has been arrested for civil disobedience for protesting US wars and US military bombing of Vieques, Puerto Rico, and has been imprisoned for these actions in local jails and Federal Prison.

It’s hard to write about nonviolence in Northern Ireland when so much violence has happened and so much of it has been glorified, even sacralized. Growing up as a Catholic in Ireland, as I did, you are presented with one outlook and one outlook alone. Obey the word of God and love thy neighbor, unless he’s a Protestant.

For my generation and the ones before and ever after, the creation of a free Irish Nation and a unified island is a dream worth fighting for. Countless men, women and children fought and laid down their lives so that their children might have a chance at peace and freedom.

Some of the leaders of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) are regarded as some of Ireland’s greatest heroes. Michael Collins, James Stephens and Charles Kickham are names that every school child knows. Heroes all!

The IRB staged the 1916 Easter rising which formed the Irish Free State and later became the IRA but in the infancy stage it was a much more ideological than military organization. My great grandfather has an IRB medal. It was awarded to him for bravery to the cause of Irish Freedom. It has pride of place in my Uncle’s farmhouse in Ireland. The medal was handed down to him from his father. His father’s father received it for being part of a guerilla style ‘flying column,’ in the late 1800’s. The actual recognized act was the physical dismantling of a stone bridge that was used to cross a river between a British Army garrison and a local town and regional center. Through many visits to the bridge under cover of darkness, my great grandfather and other members of his brigade chiseled and loosened the rocks and stones in the bridge until finally it was destroyed. A primitive terrorist-type act; is a terrorist act nonetheless, since civilians were likely to be hurt when it collapsed.

For me as an adult, the most striking thing has been the realization that my perspective on violence has been imbued with what I can only describe as a romanticized view. Terrorism is, of course, defined as a crime but by a Jihadist it’s a holy war. Depending on your viewpoint, everything is different. Isn’t war then, just as much a crime, depending on your viewpoint? As Kent D. Shifferd writes in his book From War to Peace: A Guide to the Next Hundred Years; sadly, the truth remains, “whatever your political stance, Bombs fall on people and objects, not on ideas.”

Ireland has a large and long history of violence, driven on by economic factors and under the banner of Religion. Many men served in both World Wars. Another relation of mine took “the King’s Shilling” and fought for the British. Risking public shame and ignominy, some Catholics fought for the crown for no better reason than a wage. The pay was more than any Irish peasant could make and it even afforded men enough to send money home to keep up their own families and farms. Irish fighters also fought in the Mexican-American war of 1846 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Patrick_Battalion) so its clear to see that there is a history of war for many reasons in our Irish past.

Bobby Sands is one of the best-known Catholic martyrs; he died during a nonviolent hunger strike in a makeshift prison nine miles outside of Belfast. He was a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. During his hunger strike he became a member of the United Kingdom Parliament but died 25 days after being elected. His nonviolent death caused a new wave of violent riots in Belfast and cemented his image in Republican lore. Every child knew who he was but none was told of why he was in prison first. He was an active member of a military campaign; he was a major suspect in both bombings and shootings. That’s not what you see in the streets though. You see children wearing Glasgow Celtic (the Catholic team in the Glasgow Old Firm) Jerseys with Sands’ name printed on the back. You still see young boys playing and fighting trying to get the ‘Brits out.’

Maggie Thatcher—then the British Prime Minister—made certain that her people all knew that Sands was not nonviolent and that they wouldn’t care if Sands lived or died, as he was no Gandhi. She famously told the House of Commons in 1981 “Mr. Sands was a convicted criminal. He chose to take his own life. It was a choice that his organization did not allow to many of its victims.” From our side of the fence it was political martyrdom of the highest degree. The crimes he was arrested for, he would not have committed if there were not a reason to. He was defending his own land.

I was raised to be a staunch Republican, to believe our side and be a good patriot. No one can ever question the cruel foreign rule Britain forced on the Irish people, but not until I became an adult and learned how to think for myself, did I ever question that the way to fight oppression was with violence. The idea behind democracy is to inform the electorate and it clearly works poorly in a pool of information and influence the size of whatever you’re handed down. Education is meant to increase your intellectual inheritance, and, for me, it has as I ponder the best way forward for my beloved homeland.

Loretta Napoleoni covers the point I am trying to make in her book Terrorism and the Economy: “What is the difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist? It depends on the angle from which one is looking.” I can regard my Irish heroes from the past with reverence whilst knowing that there is a better path for our future.

Stephen Quirke studies at Portland State University in Oregon. Distributed by Peace Voice.

Whereas the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not self-enforcing,

Whereas statement of the inherent dignity and of the equal and supposedly inalienable rights of all members of the human family achieves little without a struggle against greed, injustice, tyranny, and war,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights could not have resulted in the barbarous acts that have outraged the conscience of humankind without the cowardice, laziness, apathy, and blind obedience of well-meaning but unengaged spectators,

Whereas proclaiming as the highest aspiration of the common people the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want doesn’t actually produce such a world,

Whereas nonviolent rebellion against tyranny and oppression must be a first resort rather than a last, and must be our constant companion into the future if justice and peace are to be achieved and maintained,

Whereas governments do not reliably conduct themselves humanely toward other nations’ governments unless compelled to do so by their own people and the people of the world,

Whereas a common understanding of human rights and freedoms is false if it omits the eternal vigilance, struggle, and sacrifice necessary to create and maintain them,

Now, therefore THE OCCUPY GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RESPONSIBILITIES as a common standard of practice for all people, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by energetic use of creative nonviolence to promote the actual observance of what have never been but indeed should be made universal, equal, and inalienable rights and freedoms:

Article 1.

• Human beings are born into every variety and degree of freedom and oppression, privilege and poverty, peace and war.  All have a responsibility to work for the betterment of the condition of those around them and those less well off.

Article 2.

• Everyone is obligated to work at building understanding and equality across lines of race, color, sex, ethnicity, sexual-orientation, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, and birth or other status.  Everyone is obligated to actively reject the privileging of or discriminating against any such group, whether their own or others’, with no exceptions created by the presence of or participation in war.

Article 3.

• Everyone has the responsibility to help organize and take part in resistance to any violation of anyone’s right to life, liberty or security of person, whether that violation impacts a single individual or a large number, but in particular including resistance to war of any kind.

Article 4.

• Everyone has a responsibility to work for the swift elimination of slavery and servitude in all their forms.

Article 5.

• Everyone has a responsibility to expose any instance of torture or of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, or of any conspiracy to facilitate such acts, and a responsibility to work to end these practices and to prosecute those responsible in a fair and open court of law.

Article 6.

• Everyone has a responsibility to work and to sacrifice something of their own comfort to ensure that every other human being is afforded equal recognition as a person before the law.

Article 7.

• All are obliged to actively oppose any discrimination in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8.

• Everyone has the responsibility to insist upon, for themselves and all others, an effective remedy by the competent local, national, or international tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Article 9.

• Everyone has a responsibility to treat the arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile, of anyone else as though it were that of themselves or a loved one.

Article 10.

• Everyone has a responsibility to understand and require for every human being the right to full equality and to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of their rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against them.

Article 11.

• (1) Everyone is obligated to ensure for anyone charged with a penal offense the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which they have had all the guarantees necessary for their defense.
• (2) Everyone is obligated to ensure that no one shall be held guilty of any penal offense on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offense, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed, and that no heavier penalty shall be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offense was committed.

Article 12.

• All are responsible for not taking part in and for working to eliminate and to legally prohibit any arbitrary interference with anyone’s privacy, family, home or correspondence, or attacks upon their honor and reputation.

Article 13.

• (1) Everyone has the responsibility to protect everyone’s freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
• (2) Everyone has the responsibility to protect everyone’s right to leave any country, including their own, and to return to their country.

Article 14.

• Everyone has the responsibility to protect for all the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution but not from prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes.

Article 15.

• Everyone has the responsibility to protect for all the right to a nationality and the right to change that nationality.

Article 16.

• All are obliged to protect the right of free and fully consenting adults to marry.

Article 17.

• All are obliged to defend the right of all others to own property.

Article 18.

• Everyone has the responsibility to protect freedom of thought for all.

Article 19.

• Every human being has a duty to help communicate to others to the greatest extent possible information about injustice and war, and information about nonviolent efforts to achieve justice and peace.  This duty includes a responsibility to work for the creation of meaningful freedom of the press in which the communication of neither current events nor history is dominated or controlled by any privileged group within a society.

Article 20.

• Everyone has the responsibility to frequently exercise or attempt nonviolently to exercise the right to peaceful assembly and association in opposition to injustice or war, and in support of the rights listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Article 21.

• Everyone has the responsibility to work for the creation and maintenance of democratic and/or representative government uncorrupted by bribery of any form, by an unfree press, or by arbitrary restrictions on participation as electoral candidates or voters.

Article 22.

• Everyone has a responsibility to struggle nonviolently to alter the political and economic world so as to increase the opportunity for every human being to live, learn, and work in dignity with security from fear and want.

Article 23.

• Everyone has the responsibility to work with others to ensure the protection of one and all to a free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work, to protection against unemployment, to the freedom to join a trade union and to strike, to equal pay for equal work, and to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for themselves and their family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

Article 24.

• Everyone has the responsibility to work not only at their primary career but also for the betterment of society and the establishment of the rights listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Article 25.

• Everyone has the responsibility to work for a more just and less wasteful distribution of resources to ensure that one’s own and all future generations can provide every single human being, including every child, a standard of living adequate for health and well-being, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age, or other lack of livelihood.

Article 26.

• Everyone has the responsibility to assist in the education of themselves and others and to work toward the provision of free, high-quality education, including education in civil responsibilities and the history of social change through people’s movements, education directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, education that promotes understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and education that furthers the creation and maintenance of peace.

Article 27.

• Everyone has the responsibility to defend and exercise the right to freely participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits, and the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which they are the author.

Article 28.

• Everyone has the responsibility to organize, agitate, sacrifice, and struggle nonviolently and strategically for sustainable environmental practices, demilitarization, the development of democratic and representative structures of government, and the realization of the rights found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

David Swanson is the author of War Is A Lie and Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union. He blogs at davidswanson.org and warisacrime.org, where this article originally appeared, and works for the online activist organization rootsaction.org

Some mainstream news channels have been recently caught carrying dubious footage from Syria. It fuels the debate over media’s role in legitimizing possible military intervention in the country.

‘Danny’ is a Syrian opposition activist who reports from Homs for CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. He is attached to the opposition movement and regularly calls for military invasion of Syria. He’s identified as Danny Abdul Dayem, a 22-year-old British citizen of Syrian origin.

In a video leaked online, Danny appears to be falsifying a video broadcast for CNN. Prior to going on air, he requests colleagues to fire weapons to dramatize his Live report with Anderson Cooper. Though he denied any wrongdoings in an interview to CNN after the video went viral, his reliability as a verified news source was called into question.

Danny is far from being a lone soldier in an increasingly dirty information war. Investigative journalist Rafik Lotf has spent months looking at the background to footage that has helped shaped global opinion on the conflict. He told RT that Al Jazeera is involved in video fabrication to discredit the Syrian regime and cites a video described by Al Jazeera as proof Syrian Govt forces had bombed an oil pipeline.

“I know this video is on the Al Jazeera server. It is clear it is not an explosion but they ignore that and keep on reporting on the way they need to see it,” he said.

It is even thought that the clip may have been staged by rebels who blew up the pipeline themselves, as alleged on Infowars.com.

Dark turns in Syria’s blame game

All Journalists admit that verifying footage on the ground in Syria is difficult, nigh on impossible.

Most recently shocking footage emerged of some 47 bodies, including women and children found with their throats slit, bearing stab wounds and signs of rape. The opposition called for a UNSC emergency meeting on ‘the massacre’.

Assad’s government, in turn, announced that ‘terrorist gangs’ killed those in the video and claimed Homs’ residents recognized relatives among the dead, who had been previously kidnapped by the Syrian rebels.

As the mutual blame game spirals downwards and civilian suffering continues, the recent resignations of key Al Jazeera journalists may serve as a clear indicator – that some mainstream Syria conflict coverage is far from objective.