Cognitive clarity and a human rights-based approach

This is today's example of good thinking. it is from dave's blog, and quoted here out of context. The wider entry (Cognitive Liberty, it's called) is an interesting topic and worth consideration, but i wanted to take this paragraph as an example of the approach to the world which i aspire to and give most respect. Readers of dave's blog (and i know there's at least one of you) will remark at how succinct and clear it is, as a side note.

"I consider paedophiles in themselves to be just normal people with unfortunate sexual proclivities. This is not the same thing as condoning paedophiles who treat children in nasty and vicious ways. I am not homophobic but I am still against male on male rape. I am not a man hater but I still condemn male on female rape. I am not a hysterical peodo killer but I still condemn the rape of children. But many paedophiles are gentle, they don't mean to disturb and distort the sexualities of the children they "molest" and are often both under the delusion that what they do is consensual and under the non-delusion that they are in love with the child. Also many of them struggle against their urges. They may look at child porn but they don't fuck children. They may expose themselves to children but they don't rape them. There are huge grey areas around these issues that people just don't want to talk about. Like children consenting or appearing to consent. Like the sexuality of children. Like the cycles of abuse where a paedophile is often repeating the pattern of sexuality that they are familiar with – the whole abused becoming abuser thing."

Cheers dave.

(And on the other, there should be no enigma - I'm not usually quite so lost for words. my flatmate called me enigmatic yesterday, but she had good reason.)

welcome back, again

The Unifembots: a preponderence of INTJs. This is after our reception to meet the good and great of Albanian society. Various came. The Prime Minister got the day wrong and came the day after. But I'm told by a bilingual source that he's an idiot in both English and Albanian. The British establishment is uninterested in treating human trafficking as a human rights issue (link is pdf). Guns and drugs are (ironically) much sexier than sex slavery...

Skinny malinks headbangs to ACDC. I am very ignorant of all this seventies-eighties music, all the classic AC-DC/Deep Purple/Bon Jovi/White Snake which everyone seems to know in this region, and get shocked when i don't. Sam, why didn't this form part of the musical education we spent those years sharing? Or maybe you got it and it somehow passed me by. In which case you're a traitorous bastard. But I still miss you like crazy.

~

And from before Tirana, the night we designed a camera.

My incredible growing arm. The two in the middle are/were my pair of happiness, and now (the) one (with the boy) is gone, back to Other Life, which we all return to at some point. It's a strange way of knowing people, different to all the others I've experienced. According to those whose lives've been divided up into months-long chunks for the past few years (like amrei, the girl with the thumb), it gets very tiring emotionally, and I can believe it. On the other hand, it's never bad to find those few relationships which go beyond normal interaction in this ultra-incestuous environment.

Sorry for my tiredness and lack of links sprinkled through this blogue...

a witch i saw around town

a flier i will see around town

a town i saw around new year

i'm off to Albania for a week, for my sins. Very limited Internet access, pushing back my promises even further. Forgiveness is a virtue, though. It's been a horribly busy ten days. Another dead journalist here (I know how you like those). Roll on Tirana...

And for the most beautiful title sequence I've ever seen, watch to the end of Vovler. Where does he find his stories?

i was using it twenty minutes ago

but it seems i left my phone on the tram. so if you were goin to call me, don't. i'll have a new one soon, i'm sure. but it might be fun not having a phone for a while. i forget what it's like to have to make proper arrangements.

lined with silver,

chris

word of the day is "simmering"

like the viennese tube station.

lost and found

guess whooz (bag isn't) back in Bratislava?

with a new (one-week) contract, a bedroom which has been colonised by my flatmate, little sleep and more calories, and a feeling of being in a developed country, and a comfortable social environment. it's good to be back. my tshirt saying "Bratislava: ideal place to begin new life" is with all my other tshirts, underwear, books, wine, presents for people and turkish coffee is stuck in limbo somewhere between belgrade and here, otherwise i would be wearing it. (but i am still coming back to london, don't worry.)

when i am less suddenly busy at the weekend, i will tell you about istanbul and macedonia, but for now, i merely say: sleep well and nap often.

Back soon

Hello all. May the recently begun solar year be felicitous to you all.

I will fly out of Skopje in seven hours' time, and will tell you about the last two weeks after several long baths in Bratislava.

In the meantime, I think I will just say that those who hate the European Union are often wankers, but they aren't always wrong. I refer to this story, about how Bulgaria is being forced by the decision of the European Commission to close certain nuclear power plants for no good reason. While I am not well-disposed toward nuclear power per se, the negative implications of this closure on an unstable region seem too great to justify that closure on dubious security grounds. Macedonia and Kosovo in particular, and Bulgaria of course, will survive, with luck, but the short and medium term impact on the region, certainly important to the EU (which is taking over responsibility for overseeing Kosova politics and society as we speak). And all this in a context of concerns over energy security! (on which I expect to be working in the near future for GMF).

Okay, see you soon.