Hasta La Gadget!

HLAING THARYAR, Myanmar (AP) — “The food cart is coming!” the hungry little boy shouts, his face lighting up.

More than 100 people sitting in the grass and beneath the dark midday shadows of giant trees turn to look at the nearby Buddhist monastery. As a monk moves through the gates with a huge pot of rice and curry, orphans, homeless children and jobless men and women line up with crumpled plastic bags.

The monks ladle up food that was offered to them just hours earlier during their dawn collection of alms. That cycle of giving is part of what earned this impoverished Southeast Asian nation a seemingly unlikely title: the world’s most generous nation.

The Charities Aid Foundation looked at wide-ranging giving patterns by respondents globally over a month-long period. It ranked countries based on the percentage of people who said they had donated money, volunteered or helped strangers in the month before they were surveyed.

In its latest World Giving Index, released Tuesday, the U.K.-based group said that Myanmar — turned into one of the world’s poorest nations during a half-century of dictatorial rule, corruption and mismanagement — shared the top spot with the United States.

The index ranked 135 countries based on data from the Gallup World Poll, which last year surveyed 500 to 2,000 people in each of the countries involved. Most surveys, including the one conducted in Myanmar Sept. 24-Oct. 13, 2013, were of about 1,000 people. Myanmar’s survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points, and three states representing less than 5 percent of the population were not included in the face-to-face interviews.

The report said that in Myanmar, 91 percent of those surveyed said they had recently donated money, No. 1 in the world. It tied with the U.S. under the survey when volunteerism and helping strangers were also considered.

The foundations attributed Myanmar’s giving to the deeply rooted charitable traditions of Theravada Buddhism, the country’s dominant religion.

There are half a million Buddhist monks in Myanmar, making up about 1 percent of the country’s population of about 50 million — a higher percentage than any other country.

Giving monks money and food is a way for followers to earn merit. It enables monks, who cannot work, to spend their days meditating and reciting Buddhist prayers.

But in Hlaing Tharyar, a massive industrial zone outside the commercial capital, orange-robed men of faith are surrounded by suffering, and have given much of the food they receive to those in greater need.

Myanmar hoped that after its military rulers handed over power in 2011, the lifting of Western sanctions would help speed development. But the infusion of billions of dollars in foreign aid and investment has in many cases increased the gap between the rich and the poor.

Many of those in Hlaing Tharya were victims of Cyclone Nargis, which in 2008 swept away hundreds of thousands of people and their homes in the nearby delta region. Some migrated to Yangon and surrounding townships, hoping to find work at one of the many factories now popping up.

With more people than jobs, and no safety nets, large numbers ended up in the streets instead.

Every morning, just before dawn and then again just after, more than 50 monks and novices from Mahar Aung Myae monastery wind through the dark, uneven streets of their neighborhood to collect food from residents who stand in front of their small wooden shacks holding out offerings.

When the barefooted monks return to the monastery, they combine most of what they have gathered into a giant pot and bring it to those waiting outside their gates.

Those who donate are better off than those who receive, but there is poverty on both sides. And while other monasteries sometimes give food they don’t need to the poor, is it rare for one in an impoverished neighborhood to do so on a regular basis.

The child who first spots the food truck this sunny afternoon is around 6. A garbage picker, he survives on what others throw away.

Through his dark smudged face, his wide eyes sparkle as he watches his bag being filled with food. Moments later he disappears, eager to fill his stomach.

“If we equate freedom with choice, then we lose our ability to recognise that which actually enslaves us, and our choice-making both confirms and deepens our bondage, regardless of what we choose.” – Jean Baudrillard

For many Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is an important distinction in what makes up a human right. As long as most have a roof over their head, food, and water and etc. then their basic human rights are fulfilled. However, my claim in this post is that Maslow was a bit shortsighted in his sociological assessment, he was too universal, and forgot another element in the human story — the element of evolutionary desire. What about those who don’t want to live in some typical brick-and-mortar house? What about those who desire a baser existence? This post will explore the hidden ideology behind the current state of human rights and why we might need an alternative framework as we move into a post-human era. Let’s be honest, if rights-based thinking was as good as it promised, would we be where we are today?

These statistics demonstrate the failure of an ideology that purports to make the world better:

At least 80 percent of humanity lives on less than $10 a day. According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world”. Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names. Less than one percent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen. The arms trade is a major cause of human rights abuses. Some governments spend more on military expenditure than on social development, communications infrastructure and health combined.

What the idea of human rights does is setup a barrier between those who have rights, and those who don’t. One group is privileged and the other is not. To put this in a clearer context, let’s talk about the most ubiquitous object that defines how we all live — capital. If it is my right to have money, than without even intending to, we have already set up a dichotomy, where there will be people who don’t have money or don’t have the right to have money. Whether it be down to their lifestyle choice, whether they are in prison where their money is limited, or the homeless or those in underdeveloped countries.

Even the phrase “underdeveloped countries” implies that there is a lack that exists ‘there’, but not ‘here’. We then put ourselves in the privileged position of defining what underdeveloped even means. Since we are exploring the idea of money and how it relates to rights-based thinking, this also leads to the right to protect that money from others, from governments, from family, from taxing and so on. If someone were to come into your house and steal your money and you were able to stop them, would you? So now, we have an ethical dimension to protecting our right to have that money — at all costs.

Isn’t rights-based thinking not only naive, but also based on consumerist thinking? Meaning, that we want that commodity (the right to bear arms, for example) over there because we have been made to desire it, so we do all we can to acquire it. We want that new Iron Man T-shirt because it projects a sort of image that we ourselves either agree with or desire to project to others. How is this not the same with the current notion of human rights? I want my right to free speech because it’s over there, and when I have it, then I can acquire the image of what I think it means to be human, or how I want to present myself to others? So we picket, shout, and form organizations around these subjects.

But if we are already in the territory of defining what it means to be human, are we even human at all? That’s the irony we are investigating here. Human rights themselves set up an image of what it looks to be human, an image that goes before us, and that we chase, like a form of consumerism. It’s not that we have them, it’s that we must fight for them, even at the risk of someone else losing their lives for my rights. Hence why war is such an important necessity in this way of thinking, because, we must fight to maintain the boundaries we create around us.

The very fact that we need human rights is itself indicative of the times we live. We have to protect ourselves from one another. Rape victims. Racism. Bigotry. Homophobia. Religious Extremism. What if these have emerged because how we have come to address the notion of human rights? We now identify ourselves with what we own, which essentially owns us. We have privatized everything, from justice (i.e. courtrooms and prisons) to entertainment (i.e., television, Netflix, pornography), from relationships (i.e., family, marriage, friendships) to politics (i.e., local, regional, national, partisan). This is not to demonize these things, but to show how, if taken too far, rights-based thinking cares more about the individual (on a personal/self and corporate level — local society and nationalism — than the whole/humanity). Doh! We are already there. We need to change things.

If we address the world issues (including non-human entities) through a different perspective, such as the notion of responsibility, mutual reciprocity, and compassion than why would human rights even need to exist? If I take care of you, and you take care of the next person, and so on, then we reduce the need to fight for our rights, but stand in opposition of the privatization of the self, and embrace a new way to be human. We see this very practice in our human origins. In tribal communities. Where power was horizontal. Where identity wasn’t equated with property like it is today (i.e., I have a right to have what I work for). But as author Brent James Schmidt: “The ideal of contributing all personal property to the community formed the essential criterion for membership in each ancient community.”

There is this greek notion of love referred to as agape, the underlying implication is that we all come to the end of ourselves, the end of our egos, and in doing so, we find that our ego is found in the other. Is this not what responsibility implies? That each care for the other in the name of a more global community.

Fans of TLC’s hit reality show “19 Kids And Counting” are coming to the Duggar family’s aid following a viral petition calling for the show’s cancellation.

The initial Change.org petition, which asked TLC to cancel the show due to the family’s anti-LGBT activism and statements, has already surpassed the intended goal of 100,000 signatures, having cracked 163,000 at the time of publication of this story. The new iPetition counter-response claims that “the Duggar Family is under attack from anti-marriage advocates for standing for traditional marriage,” and has just over 56,000 signatures at the time of this post.

The controversy is a long-time coming, as the Duggar family has exhibited anti-LGBT sentiment at different points throughout the course of their time in the spotlight. In August, Michelle Duggar was taped a robocall against an Arkansas anti-discrimination housing law that specifically affected the transgender community. The reality star was quoted as saying that transgender individuals are “males with past child predator convictions that claim they are female” and opposed letting transgender people use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity.

More recently, the Duggars enraged the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community when the couple posted a photo of themselves kissing and encouraged other married couples to follow suit. When John Becker of LGBT blog The Bilerico Project posted a photo of him kissing his husband — accompanied with a message about marriage equality — the photo was reportedly taken down and Becker was banned from the Duggar’s page.

TLC has not responded to requests from The Huffington Post for comment about the petitions.

If today’s report on the sales of the Galaxy S5 are true, Samsung’s next release will need to be a doozy. We previously had a chat on what Samsung was potentially getting into with the Galaxy S6 – how they may be working on a “Project Zero”, a reboot of the entire series, a re-imagining of the smartphone monster they’ve … Continue reading

Ever wonder why big cable companies can do whatever they want ? It’s partly because the FCC keeps its revolving door spinning . But it’s also worth knowing that the politicians in charge of regulating the telecom industry not only receive campaign funds from them ; some of them directly invest in companies like AT&T and Comcast.

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