The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Hello one, hello all!

If you haven't already realized, I survived the fabled "snow"pocalypse, the "snow"mageddon, the blizzard of 2011. Whatever they're calling it. I survived. And I actually went out to play around in it (snowball fight where we could barely see a foot away from ourselves, much less who we were throwing snow at).

But I'm getting off subject.

I've brought you another fantastic rant. Love me. <3

So today for your reading pleasure, I'm going through another of my LS class assignments.

So here today we have "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights". And because I'm going to take pity on you all, I'll just summarize all thirty articles before I make my points known.

Article 1 - All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.

Article 2 - Everyone has freedom and rights given to them the moment they are born, no matter their race, color, gender, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. No distinction shall be made because of these things or because of their country, no matter what kind country it may be. Fuck not with these rights.

Article 3 - Everyone has right to life, freedom, and security.

Article 4 - No one shall be put into slavery or servitude. Slavery is forbidden.

Article 5 - No one shall be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman punishment or treatment. [Hey, Egypt? Yeah, this is for you. STFU now, bitches and give the people what they want.]

Article 6 - Everyone has a right to recognition, no matter where they are because they are a person.

Article 7 - No discrimination. Everyone is equally protected from discrimination.

Article 8 - Everyone has a right to a tribunal [court of justice] if they screw up and violate the rights given to them.

Article 9 - No one shall be subjected to arbitrary [irresponsible; undetermined] arrest, detention [the act or state of being detained], or exile.

Article 10 - Everyone is entitled to an equal and fair public hearing an an impartial court to determine whether he/she is guilty or not.

Article 11 - 1)) Everyone is innocent until proven guilty under a court of law. 2)) If you get in trouble for one thing, you won't have a heavier penalty imposed if you're brought to court fifty years later than the one you'd had when the crime was committed. AND you cannot be accused of an offense if it wasn't an offense when you committed it.

Article 12 - No one shall be subjected to arbitrary [irresponsible; undetermined] interference with their privacy, family, home, or correspondence, nor to attacks on a person's honor or reputation. Everyone has the right to protection by the law. Basically: Fuck not with other people if you don't have a good reason.

Article 13 - 1)) everyone has a right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. 2)) everyone has the right to leave any country, including their own, and to return to their country.

Article 14 - 1)) Everyone has the right to seek and enjoy protection/sanctuary from persecution in other countries. 2)) This right is null and void if you commit a non-political crime....or if you screw with the United Nations and their principles.

Article 15 - 1)) Everyone has a right to a nationality. 2)) No one shall be deprived of a nationality no denied the right to change their nationality.

Article 16 - 1)) Men and women of age, without limitation due to race, nationality, or religion, have the right to marry and have a family. They are entitled to equal rights of marriage, during marriage, and at its dissolution [the undoing or breaking of a bond;; in this case "divorce"]. 2)) Marriage must be consenting. 3)) The family is part of society and is entitled to protection by society and State.

Article 17 - 1)) Everyone has the right to own property both alone and with other people. 2)) No one gets to fuck with this right. Period.

Article 18 - Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscious, and religion; this includes the right to change their religion or belief. They also have the freedom to teach, preach, worship, or simply observe this religion.

Article 19 - Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to have opinions and to seek and receive information and ideas through the media, regardless of frontiers [limits].

Article 20 - 1)) Everyone has their right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. [Egypt....this is, once again, for you.] 2)) No one may be forced to join an association.

Article 21 - 1)) Everyone has the right to take part in their government either directly or through chosen representatives. 2)) Everyone has equal right to public service. 3)) The will of the people is the basis of the government. Meaning? People are to elect their reps.

Article 22 - Everyone, as a member of society, has a right to social security.

Article 23 - 1)) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and fair conditions of work, and to protection against unemployment. 2)) Everyone has a right to equal pay. 3)) Everyone who works has a right to just and fair remuneration [compensation], ensuring themself and their family a dignified existence and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. 4)) Everyone has the right to form an join trade unions to protect themselves.

Article 24 - Everyone has the right to rest and relaxation, including reasonable working hours and some holidays with pay.

Article 25 - 1)) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health, well-being of themself and their family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care and social services if necessary, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age, of other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond their control. 2)) Mothers and kids are entitled to special care and assistance. All children shall be given the same social protection.

Article 26 - 1)) Everyone has a right to education. 2)) Education shall promote understanding, tolerance, and friendhsip among all nations, racial, or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace. 3)) Parents have the right to choose what kind of education to give to their children.

Article 27 - 1)) Everyone has the right to participate in a community, to enjoy the arts and share in advancements and their benefits. 2)) Everyone has a right to protection of moral and material interests of anything they have created or written. Basically? No plagiarizing.

Article 28 - Everyone is entitled to have their rights fulfilled by a social and international order.

Article 29 - 1)) Everyone has duties in the community so they can be free and prosper. 2)) Treat others how you want to be treated. Don't go and abuse your rights or there will be consequences. 3)) Your rights and freedom may not be used in a manner that will contradict/annoy the United Nations. Anger not the UN.

Article 30 - Nothing in this epic-speech-thingy may be interpreted in a manner that allows you or anyone else to go and engage in an act or activity that aims to destroy any of these rights or freedoms.

Overall: Treat others how you want to be treated. You are innocent until proven guilty. Leave the UN alone and they'll leave you alone. But most importantly: Fuck not with these rights, neither yours nor someone else's.

So you get what I'm saying, everyone?

Basically, I'm saying that this says we're all human. We're all equal. We're all in this together. Stop fucking with your peers, take a stand, make a voice for yourself and the others around you.

27 million people in this world are enslaved at this moment. We could be doing something to prevent this. These articles prove as much.

So why aren’t we?

If we make a choice and be the voice for those who won't speak up for themselves
How many lives would be saved, changed, and rearranged
Now it's our time to pick a side
So don't keep walkin' by
Not wantin' to intervene
'cause you wanna exist and never be seen
So let's wake up and change the world
Our time is now

Ever Yours,
The Night Thief

Rant = HUMANITY, YOU FAIL!

So today, after braving the icy streets, the slick sidewalks, and the terror that is the Piano class for Music Majors, I shuffled my way across the Baker campus, climbed two flights of stairs, and sat down for what I hoped to be a class that was interesting enough that I could keep my eye open.

I didn't expect to be so engaged in the discussion that even now, six odd hours later, I'm still gnawing on the topic.

[rant]

I have no idea where my teacher lives, but it's far enough away that she listens to the news on the way here. And when she turned on the radio in searchh of decent tunage, she got a station broadcasting about a woman about to jump off a bridge in Kansas City.

And the people that couldn't use the bridge were more annoyed by the fact that they were going to be late for work than horrified by the fact that a person no longer had a reason to live.

The radio station was interviewing people, and appearantly someone said something along the lines of, "This bitch is making me late for work, I wish she'd just piss or get off the pot."

It's that terrible?

I understand that things get bad, and people get angry because beign late too often can mean that you'll lose your job... But this woman was about to leap off of a bridge! Do they not understand that she was going to die? That no one cared enough to stop her, not even the police?

After that, our class discussed other situations.

The one that really got to me and set our class discussion in motion was the story of this woman who had been headed home from someone and had been attacked by a robber. It was in the 1970s or 1980s, and I can't remember her name, though as soon as I find out, I'll update this.

In any case, she was headed home at 10-ish at night and she was attacked by a robber who began beating her. There was a huge commotion, and lights began flickering on the the apartments overlooking the scene and the robber, probably thinking someone would have called the police, fled. The woman was in no condition to move, so she lay there, helpless and moaning in agony, waiting for the sirens signaling an ambulence or the police. But no help came, not even from the lit apaertments. A short time later, the robber returned, finished robbing her, killed her, then left.

And still the apartments stayed lit. They'd seen the whole thing, were witness to a murder, and yet nothing had been done.

Their excuse? "I thought someone else would have called the police."

So this is what humanity is becoming? We rely on other people to make things known and get things done?

We talked about the Holocaust for a while, too, about the hows and whys behind the reasoning. Why people went along with Hitler, why they betrayed each other.

Eventually we simply decided that it simply boiled down to the fact that people were terrified about their lives and the lives of their loved ones. Anyone that defied Hitler was rustled up along with the Jews, gypsies, and the homosexuals, and they were put in the camps to die. People did what they did, as they do in every war (included the war depicted in Scott Simon's Pretty Birds), they looked out for themselvesd and their families. They either pretended to agree with Hitler's regime, or they really did.

We talked about other things for a while, all of them related to this topic by the base of them being communities and how they dealt with things when someone mentioned zombies. And something in me clicked.

I'm not sure what came over me, but I ended up raising my hand and saying, "This may sound silly, but the way this sounds, it's like we're all battling some sort of zombie apocalypse, but we're the 'lone survivor', and humanity is the horde of zombies."

And, surprise, surprise, my teacher actually agreed. She said that though she didn't like zombie movies, that was the best anaolgy she'd heard on the case so far. We've all been raised to be independant, to look out for only ourselves, and the result? We're going to survive the zombie invasion! ... But we're also going to live our lives alone and, in a sense, in isolation.

Isn't that ironic?

[/rant]

So, yeah.

Here's humanity for you. And it's just getting worse.

***

In other news, it's slicker than snot outside.

Icy and all that jazz. Can't wait to see what tonight and tomorrow brings. We're currently under a blizzard watch until 6 tomorrow morning, then a warning until tomorrow night/Wednesday mroning. Supposedly 3 inches of ice, 12 to 18 inches of snow, and lots of fun time for my collegemates and I shall ensue shortly.

Why?

Because Baker. Never. Closes.

Anyway, time for choir. Then dinner. Whee!

Ever yours,
And definitely hoping that school is CANCELLED tomorrow,
*fingers crosseD*
The Night Thief