Italian filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi’s documentary, Fire at Sea, is a film about the southern Italian island of Lampedusa in the Mediterranean Sea; an island where thousands of migrants on boats from Africa and the Middle East have landed on in recent years. Historically, in the last two decades, this island which is referred to as the “door of Europe”, has seen an estimate of 400,000 migrants land on its shores. The film is primarily shown from the perspective of the native inhabitants of Lampedusa, specifically a young boy named Samuele and a doctor cares for the natives and the migrants alike. We are shown not only life on this island but also how it and its people are affected by the influx of refugees that have arrived there in recent years. …show more content…
Saul Tobias, a Professor of Liberal Studies at California State University, that gave me the most digestible argument of how religion can help frame the issue of addressing the refugee crisis. In class we read Lyndsey Stonebridge’s “Refugee style: Hannah Arendt and the perplexities of rights” an article that offers analysis of Arendt’s “We Refugees” in which she also talks about Arendt’s cosmopolitan view on rights and refugeehood. In “Pragmatic Pluralism” Tobias offers a counterview in which he sees what he calls “pragmatic pluralism” as an alternative to the conventional cosmopolitan approach to international human rights. To better understand the opposition of these two theories and how religion comes to play a role in the argument, it helps to understand the definitions that Tobias offers for them. First, he often refers to the “contemporary liberal cosmopolitan theory”. I understood this theory to be one that sees international human rights as something that comes with universal citizenship and should be universally honored by all nation-states. It is a Kantian idea based on Kant’s “cosmopolitan right”, the right to hospitality. In “Kant's Cosmopolitan Law: World Citizenship for a Global Order” Pauline Kleingeld offers Kant’s definition of this theory
Disasters can be so impactful; some can forever change the course of history. While many at the time thought this story would soon pass, and with it all the potential bad publicity, the story of the Triangle fire spread quickly, and outraged many people. On a beautiful spring day in March 1911 when 146 workers lost their lives, a fire would prove it could do what years of reformers had failed to do, get the government on the side of the workers. I would argue that the fire largely impacted the country. Specifically, the Triangle Fire ended up changing New York’s interconnected political and economic scene, and spurred on the creation of stricter safety codes. For the first time owners would hold responsibility for their actions. Max Blanck and Isaac Harris; being indicted for manslaughter was proof of this. Social change seemed to be spurred as well; the general public and newspapers would come back the workers of New York. Large institutions would suffer as well. Tammany Hall would be feared less and less by waves of new immigrants. The largest change brought about by the blaze would be legislation. Twenty-five bills, recasting the labor laws of the state
In 1901, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory opened on the 8th floor of the Asch Building in the Greenwich Village neighborhood in lower Manhattan. By 1908, the company also occupied the 9th and 10th floors; however, the owners Max Blanck and Isaac Harris were notorious for ignoring fire and safety standards (The Triangle Factory Fire; von Drehle). There was a severe lack of regulations in regards to fire safety for both the physical factory conditions, as well as those for the workforce and the ones that were in place were mostly ignored (“Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire”). The disregard for these regulations lead to the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, which lead to the death of 146 employees on March 25, 1911 (Marrin 1). This tragedy brought many necessary changes to fire safety rules and regulations regarding the American work environment. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire forced multiple demands for improvements in Gilded Age workplace safety conditions, which went on to cause lasting improvements in the working conditions of the United States.
Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel Jane Eyre depicts the passionate love Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester have for each other, and as Bertha Mason stands in the way of the happiness of Brontë's heroine, the reader sees Mason as little more than a villainous demon and a raving lunatic. Jean Rhys' serves as Mason's defendant, as the author's 1966 novella Wide Sargasso Sea, a prequel to Jane Eyre, seeks to explore and explain Bertha's (or Antoinette Cosway's) descent into madness. Rhys rejects the notion that Antoinette has been born into a family of lunatics and is therefore destined to become one herself. Instead, Rhys suggests that the Cosways are sane people thrown into madness as a result of oppression. Parallels are drawn between Jane and Antoinette in an attempt to win the latter the reader's sympathy and understanding. Just as they did in Jane Eyre, readers of Wide Sargasso Sea bear witness to a young woman's struggle to escape and overcome her repressive surroundings. Brontë makes heavy use of the motif of fire in her novel and Rhys does the same in Wide Sargasso Sea. In Rhys' novella, fire represents defiance in the face of oppression and the destructive nature of this resistance.
He argues that human rights are universal at the level of concept, but not, nor should they be, at the level of implementation. I think this ties in very well with his claim that no specific culture had human rights as a result of that culture, but most cultures had some concepts that tied into human rights. He has already established in chapter 6 that most cultures had some concepts that relate to human rights, and now he expands to the present to claim that all cutlures embrace human rights at the concept level. I really enjoy this formulation of human rights. I think we can all agree that people have a right to live, but there are clear disagreements on how to protect that right.
Daphne Matziaraki’s documentary 4.1 Miles chronicles a single day in the life of the Greek Coast Guard men who are saving Syrian refugees from the Aegean Sea. Matziaraki is a native Greek, but lives and works as a documentary filmmaker in the San Francisco Bay Area. This documentary was released on September 1, 2016, during one of the most desperate times of the refugee crisis. Though the documentary is short, it is undeniable that Matziaraki has developed a theme of collective responsibility in this film, by way of cinematography and content. As stated, Matziaraki’s 4.1 Miles is the report of just one day in the life of a select few Greek Coast Guard men.
Condé, H. Victor. A Handbook on International Human Rights Terminology Human Rights in International Perspective; V. 8 Lincoln University of Nebraska Press, 2004.
A: The film begins with a fire. It narrates the story of men running from a fire when, suddenly, one of the men stop and sets fire to the ground in front of him and the steps into the new safety zone he had just created. The term for his discovery became known as an escape fire. The directors used the idea of an escape fire as a metaphor for our health care system. Currently, our health care system is like a raging fire. The consuming flames of rising costs and a “disease maintenance” mind-set are about to consume our country and we must find a way out, an escape fire, before we perish. Like the men running away from the eminent death by the flames, we as a nation are sprinting towards
Developed within the last century, an international regime has created a system of norms and principles surrounding human rights that international actors follow in lieu of credibility. These international norms and principles are to be nationally implemented and enforced. The institutions and mechanisms surrounding human rights regime preserve life, dignity, and security of people throughout the world. While individuals benefit from the freedom of life, sustenance, liberty, and freedom from fear, states benefit by being able to strong-arm other states that violate human rights regulations as well as being able to incorporate additional human rights regulations into their own rule of
Yukio Mishima’s The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, is the story of three people: Fusako, a widow who owns her own luxury brand store, her son, thirteen-year old Noboru and a sailor Ryuji Tsukazaki. The novel examines the constantly evolving relationships among the three and explores their relations with ideas of glory, loyalty and even death. Many minor characters are also featured to complicate and characterize the protagonists. Mishima uses one character called Yoriko juxtaposed with the protagonist, Fusako to reveal conflicts that are not on the surface in order to comment on the dangers of westernization and modernity.
Jonathan Fox and Shmuel Sandler . Bringing Religion into International Relations. (June 2004) Palgrave Macmillan. 22 March 2014
While on one hand there is a growing consensus that human rights are universal on the other exist critics who fiercely oppose the idea. Of the many questions posed by critics revolve around the world’s pluri-cultural and multipolarity nature and whether anything in such a situation can be really universal.
Wars, civil wars, poverty, natural disasters and many more factors forces people to leave their home behind in search of a new place to settle down. There are around 15.4 million refugees in the world – people who has nowhere to go because their homes have been destroyed. But who are going to help these refugees, who have already lost so much. This short story, The Go-Between written by Ali Smith focuses on a 33 years old African refugee, who has repeatedly tried to cross the Spanish border unsuccessfully.
“Somlian Refugees Tell Their Stories – Interactive,” The Guardian.
The role that globalization plays in spreading and promoting human rights and democracy is a subject that is capable spurring great debate. Human rights are to be seen as the standards that gives any human walking the earth regardless of any differences equal privileges. The United Nations goes a step further and defines human rights as,
Sailing has been around for millennia, and is considered to be one of the earliest and most environmentally friendly methods of water transport. Sailboats act as a method of transportation, exercise, and entertainment. These now more structurally developed and masterfully modeled ships have been engineered for efficiency, and these advancements have ensured durability and speed among modern sailboats. The great strength and ability of sailboats has given competitive owners the opportunity to participate in races, but generally sailboats have come to exist as more of a relaxed hobby. The expensive activity of sailing is demanding both physically and mentally, as it tests anticipative abilities and endurance. To understand the physics concepts at work in a sailboat is immensely advantageous, as it can generally improve one’s performance.