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IJM) — Fighting Injustice in the Developing World">International Justice Mission (IJM) — Fighting Injustice in the Developing World

Early last week, I found out about a unique non-profit, human­i­tar­ian orga­ni­za­tion called Inter­na­tional Jus­tice Mis­sion (IJM). I was invited to an info ses­sion and, though I knew noth­ing about the orga­ni­za­tion other than a basic premise of help­ing peo­ple in devel­op­ing coun­tries, I attended with an open mind.

What I found out about IJM impressed me.

IJM is a human­i­tar­ian orga­ni­za­tion unlike any other. Yes, there is a crit­i­cal role to play in ensur­ing that peo­ple can grow food & feed them­selves, have access to clean water, chil­dren are edu­cated for a bet­ter future, and fam­i­lies have access to microloans to build small busi­nesses to bet­ter their lives. How­ever, all the good that these works do can be undone through vio­lence, abuse, and exploita­tion imposed by oth­ers on those in need. IJM is a legal & social sup­port agency that fights injus­tice in devel­op­ing nations, help­ing those in need one case at a time, and chang­ing the legal sys­tems in those nations by build­ing a prece­dence base one case at a time.

There are 27 mil­lion slaves in the world right now. That’s more than the num­ber of slaves traded across the Atlantic dur­ing the colo­nial slave trade between Africa & the Amer­i­cas. Mod­ern slav­ery includes both forced labor and sex­ual slav­ery. Human traf­fick­ing is a busi­ness that gen­er­ates over $32 bil­lion in prof­its for those who enslave, abuse, and exploit oth­ers for labor or sex. It’s big busi­ness. It thrives because the weak can­not help them­selves, or do not know how to help themselves.

IJM fights injus­tice along 4 routes.

First, they help indi­vid­ual vic­tims. IJM works with local inves­ti­ga­tors to help vic­tims get out of imme­di­ate dan­ger.  Cases where slaves are forced into phys­i­cal labor or sex­ual labor are freed.  Wid­ows & orphans forced by vio­lence to cede their prop­erty & liveli­hood are guided to the legal sup­port that will enable them to reclaim and/or pro­tect what is right­fully theirs, and upon which their very liveli­hood depends. Vic­tims of rape are sup­ported to bring evi­dence & their cases to the authorities.

“We lift our voices on behalf of those who are voiceless.”

Sec­ond, IJM works with local lawyers to fight the vic­tims’ cases using the laws that already exist in the coun­tries in ques­tion. The laws exist, but as you know, with­out know­ing what the laws are, how they pro­tect you, and through what mech­a­nisms they pro­tect you, they are of lit­tle value to you when you are in dan­ger. The lawyers secure the prop­erty rights of the weak, from whom oth­ers wish to take their prop­erty & liveli­hood. The lawyers ensure that rapists are pun­ished and pre­vented from offend­ing again, and that the vic­tim and her fam­ily see that jus­tice is done. Slave­mas­ters are incar­cer­ated and pre­vented from open­ing slave-driven busi­nesses again.

Third, IJM pro­vides the social sup­port — or, as they call it, “after­care” — for those who have been freed. It’s all well and good to free some­one who has been trapped in forced phys­i­cal labor or forced sex­ual labor, but how do they then build a future for them­selves? They need the sup­port, care, and edu­ca­tion to be able to lead nor­mal lives once again and to bloom to their full potential.

Finally, IJM changes the legal sys­tems in the coun­tries by build­ing a prece­dence base. Our own lives here in North Amer­ica are built on a legal & jus­tice sys­tem that oper­ates on the notion that judg­ments ren­dered in court must be in line with prior legal prece­dence. With­out that prece­dence base, laws have much less pro­tec­tive power. How­ever, once that prece­dence base is there, it becomes eas­ier for the law to pro­tect oth­ers in the future.

“If you’re not safe, noth­ing else matters.”

I have been a sup­porter of World Vision Canada for a num­ber of years now, as I believe that help­ing fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties build solid foun­da­tions in terms of sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture, fresh water, child­hood edu­ca­tion, and basic med­ical care is absolutely crit­i­cal to cre­at­ing long-term change and improve­ment for oth­ers. That’s why it really hit me when the speaker from IJM told us that beyond all that, safety and pro­tec­tion is what makes it all work.

If you are not safe, noth­ing else mat­ters. If your child is being edu­cated in a school, how much will that really ben­e­fit her if she is being raped by the prin­ci­pal or her teacher and the fam­ily can­not do any­thing about it? If a fam­ily has started a small busi­ness thanks to a microloan, but they are being shaken down by local author­i­ties who extort money from local busi­nesses, how much has that really helped them? If a slave­mas­ter prof­its from the forced labor of slaves, which includes phys­i­cally pun­ish­ing them as he sees fit, how much does the fresh water really help the people?

Phys­i­cal secu­rity & safety, through the appli­ca­tion & edi­fi­ca­tion of the law, is just as impor­tant as food, water, edu­ca­tion, and medicine.

Four words sum up the key ele­ments of IJM:

1. Chris­t­ian
2. Legal
3. Local
4. Indi­vid­ual

IJM is a Chris­t­ian orga­ni­za­tion. They tell you that up-front, and you hear indi­vid­u­als talk­ing about prayer and being com­pelled to act through the God’s Word in the Bible. How­ever, they aren’t aggres­sive evan­gel­i­cals, and never in the offi­cial pre­sen­ta­tion was Chris­tian­ity or evan­ge­lism given the spot­light. The folks at IJM are Chris­t­ian, but the orga­ni­za­tion helps any­one and every­one, regard­less of race or faith.

IJM is built around its legal exper­tise and legal abil­ity. IJM’s lawyers uses local laws that already exist to pro­tect those who can­not defend themselves.

IJM is local, using locals to inves­ti­gate slave oper­a­tions, rape cases, and injus­tice against wid­ows & orphans. IJM uses local lawyers to fight their cases. IJM uses local social work­ers to pro­vide aftercare.

IJM is indi­vid­ual, fight­ing on behalf of one indi­vid­ual at a time, break­ing up one slave oper­a­tion at a time, help­ing one fam­ily a time. IJM’s goals are lofty, but their impact is at a very indi­vid­ual level.

“Poor peo­ple do not get the ben­e­fit of law enforce­ment unless some­one stands up for them.”

Yep, IJM could use your money to help their cause. No ques­tion about it. More than that, though, IJM wants more peo­ple to know about the plight of those whom they are help­ing, and to know that some­thing can be done to help them.

“Oppres­sors count on the com­plic­ity of others.”

Sup­port them finan­cially if you can. Spread the word about them if you can­not. Per­haps you’ve heard the quote by Edmund Burke: “All that is nec­es­sary for the tri­umph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

If the thought of child labor in slave fac­to­ries turns your stom­ach, do some­thing about it. If the thought of young girls forced into sex­ual slav­ery gets you angry, do some­thing about it. If the thought of all the good work done by count­less human­i­tar­ian orga­ni­za­tions being undone by the evil of oth­ers offends your sense of jus­tice, do some­thing about it.

Visit the the IJM or IJM Canada web­sites to learn more.

Spread the word and let oth­ers know that slav­ery still exists and that the fight against slav­ery con­tin­ues even now.

Help those who are in the fight, how­ever are able to.

& White View">Words Define Perspectives: The Security World’s Black & White View

Many movies, par­tic­u­larly block­buster action movies, are very sim­plis­tic in their por­tray­als and char­ac­ter­i­za­tions. Good guys vs bad guys — that’s it, that’s all you need to know, that’s all they’re telling you. That’s fine when it’s for enter­tain­ment, although even then my opin­ion is that more nuanced and com­plex char­ac­ters make for more inter­est­ing movies.

It is, how­ever, some­what dis­turb­ing to hear the world of secu­rity & polic­ing to make such sim­ple dis­tinc­tions. “Good guys go here, bad guys go there.” I can con­cede that such sim­pli­fi­ca­tions make things eas­ier, and in that regard, they are nec­es­sary. How­ever, the choice of words changes the way peo­ple behave and think from that moment onwards once the labels have been slapped on.

I was attend­ing an exer­cise about two weeks ago that involved the phys­i­cal sep­a­ra­tion of casu­al­ties for med­ical treat­ment. It really was pre­sented in words very much like “Good guys go over there, bad guys go over here, and we’ll make sure the two don’t mix.”

The “bad guys”, by the way, are arrested and detained pro­tes­tors. We’re not talk­ing about riot­ers & loot­ers, we’re not talk­ing about mur­der­ous hooli­gans or cap­tured pris­on­ers of war against a fas­cist nation. No, we’re talk­ing pro­tes­tors in a demo­c­ra­tic soci­ety who have, in some way, dis­obeyed police orders.

Some pro­tes­tors get way out of hand, that is true. How­ever, to actu­ally use the words “bad guys vs good guys” really skews peo­ples’ think­ing. Words have power. By say­ing the secu­rity forces the good guys & the pro­tes­tors are the bad guys, you are already prej­u­dic­ing the audi­ence into think­ing that there must be con­flict, and that the pro­tes­tors do not deserve your coop­er­a­tion and respect. It also prej­u­dices the audi­ence to think that every­thing the secu­rity forces do will be jus­ti­fied, even though it appears quite widely acknowl­edged by those on the other side of the line that some police offi­cers truly are bullies.

Words have power because they encap­su­late mean­ing, val­ues, beliefs and cor­re­la­tions. Most words are not neu­tral, and even those that are neu­tral in some respects carry other mean­ings and val­ues with them. They key as a speaker or writer is to choose words and labels care­fully, con­sciously tak­ing into account those mean­ings and val­ues that come along with them  As mem­bers of an audi­ence, it’s impor­tant to note what words and labels are being used, and to be con­sciously aware of the mean­ings and val­ues that go along with them as part of the message.

If the pre­sen­ter in ques­tion had said “Our guys go over here, detainees go over there,” his mes­sage would have a com­pletely dif­fer­ent feel and meaning.

Unfor­tu­nately, that’s not what he said. As a mat­ter of fact, many of those in the audi­ence seemed to accept the “good guys vs bad guys” labels with­out issue. I met once with an indi­vid­ual who, while not a police offi­cer, was cer­tainly on the secu­rity side of the fence and he was very obvi­ously dis­mis­sive of pro­tes­tors in general.

I can­not and will not say that this sim­plis­tic, dis­turb­ing world­view is shared deeply by all indi­vid­u­als in the secu­rity & polic­ing world. I know, for exam­ple, that some have been work­ing to actively engage protest orga­niz­ers in order to head off prob­lems and make sure that both the pro­tes­tors and the secu­rity forces meet their objec­tives.  How­ever, there are enough indi­vid­u­als in the secu­rity & polic­ing com­mu­nity who see the world as purely black & white that one can­not dis­miss the notion that the “good guys” may be grad­u­ally mov­ing them­selves into some­thing less-than-good.

Words and labels have power. When police agen­cies start defin­ing a sit­u­a­tion as “good guys vs bad guys”, I think it indi­cates that some­thing is amiss.

A Look at 2 Tanaka Petty Knives

In the world of Japan­ese knives, Tanaka is one of the oft-mentioned names for new­com­ers and those look­ing for solid value. They are very afford­able knives that per­form very well. You will eas­ily find peo­ple on the var­i­ous knife and cook­ing forums say­ing they per­form as well as knives 2 to 3 times the price.

That’s why I bought my first Tanaka, the VG-10 stain­less steel 150mm petty knife that I present in this post. Based on my expe­ri­ence with this knife, I ended up buy­ing a Tanaka 240mm VG-10 gyuto chef knife and 180mm aogami car­bon steel deba fish filet­ing knife. They are indeed very nice knives.

I’ve recently been get­ting more into car­bon steels, thanks to the great cut­ting expe­ri­ence I’ve been hav­ing lately with my Takeda 270mm gyuto with its mar­velous aogami super hagane cut­ting core. With that bug in my ear, I decided to buy another Tanaka petty knife.

At $40 for the aogami car­bon steel petty knife, I feel like I got a tremen­dous deal. Far bet­ter, in fact, than the $80 I had paid for the VG-10 one that started me down the Tanaka road to begin with.

The two knives really are fan­tas­tic lit­tle per­form­ers. Between the two of them, there really is a dif­fer­ence in feel: with the same sharp­en­ing skill (me!), the car­bon steel ver­sion gets a keener edge.

The VG-10 stain­less steel blade is great to use. It’s com­fort­able, agile, sharp, and more than gets the job done. The aogami car­bon steel blade is fan­tas­tic, tak­ing the per­for­mance just one notch higher. It really is just that lit­tle bit sharper.

There are slight phys­i­cal dif­fer­ences in blade pro­files, but they are triv­ial dif­fer­ences. The dif­fer­ence in per­for­mance is from the dif­fer­ent hagane cut­ting cores.

As I said in the video, both are great lit­tle petty knives. If you search dili­gently enough on eBay — buy­ing from either metal­mas­terjp or 330mate — you will find Tanaka blades at a great price, and you’ll have a great lit­tle petty knife in your hands.

Ferrari 458 Italia — Carpornstar of the Year, 2010

I love Fer­rari race­cars, and the 458 Italia is the new “pro­duc­tion model Berlinetta” (aka “cheap” Fer­rari) in the elite sta­ble from Mod­ena, Italy. Watch­ing videos of cool race­cars that get your heart rac­ing, but which you aren’t likely to own or drive any­time soon, is the very def­i­n­i­tion of watch­ing car­porn. This year’s star, in my opin­ion, is the Fer­rari 458 Italia.

The 458 fol­lows in the foot­steps of the great 355, 360, and 430. Each step of the way, Fer­rari has upped the ante and cre­ated a car bet­ter than the last. Con­sid­er­ing that in each gen­er­a­tion in the series, the Fer­raris have arguably been best-in-class, this is an extremely admirable and envi­able achievement.

If you haven’t seen any­thing about the 458, here’s a great lit­tle intro — an offi­cial intro, as a mat­ter of fact — from seven-time For­mula One World Cham­pion Michael Schumacher.

7-speed paddle-shift F1-based trans­mis­sion. 9000rpm. 500+ horse­power. All for the price of a freakin’ house. If I’m going to have a house on 4 wheels, I’d much rather have a Fer­rari than an RV.

The fol­low­ing video is, for any­one who is a race­car fan or for the diehard tifosi, pure carporn:

Michael Schu­macher has been a phe­nom­e­nal addi­tion to the Fer­rari fam­ily, not only on the race­track, but also for his con­tri­bu­tions to the devel­op­ment of Ferrari’s road-going thor­ough­breds. The 458 is, unfor­tu­nately, the last Fer­rari with which Schu­macher will have lent his influ­ence. It is the end of one era in the Fer­rari saga, but this ven­er­a­ble and for­mi­da­ble mar­que will cer­tainly con­tinue to pro­duce more gems.

But, for the moment, the 458 is Ferrari’s pro­duc­tion model. There will be plenty of time in the future to be nos­tal­gic about eras past. For now, the real ques­tion for those of us who wish we owned one of these 4-wheeled gems is “what’s the car like on the road?”

Some­one wrote that Fer­raris aren’t nec­es­sar­ily the most pow­er­ful cars on the road, nor are they nec­es­sar­ily the fastest, but they have soul and are fun to drive.

I cer­tainly “buy into” the Fer­rari mys­tique, as it were. Not hav­ing owned and dri­ven a Fer­rari or other com­pa­ra­ble sports­car to com­pare against, I can’t say whether that’s true or not. Maybe it’s just some­thing we Fer­rari fans tell our­selves to make our­selves feel bet­ter. True or not, though, a sports­car this expen­sive, owned for plea­sure and not for pure com­pe­ti­tion, will never be put to its paces at the very edge of its per­for­mance enve­lope. The plea­sure of own­ing the car is all about the emo­tion and the expe­ri­ence sit­ting in the driver’s seat.

Just to fin­ish off nicely, here’s a video clip of the Fer­rari 430 accel­er­at­ing. How­ever impres­sive this is, the 458 per­forms even bet­ter. That gets my heart rac­ing and puts a smile on my face!

Okay, I can’t help it, here’s some F430 car­porn to really fin­ish you off — and hold you over until I find some more cool videos of the 458 itself

Salsa @ Chimera Lounge — Variations on Turning the Lady

How many ways can you turn the lady in salsa danc­ing? Quite a few ways, and after learn­ing at least 5 ways dur­ing the group les­son at Chimera Lounge, my friends here demon­strate them for all to see.

I can’t guar­an­tee that you’ll dance this well after just one les­son, but come on by to take some big steps towards get­ting to this point!

As always, the les­son was fun this week, and I learned new ele­ments to add to my danc­ing. I’m gonna need to con­vince more of my friends to join in so that I can prac­tice more after class, though. No addi­tional prac­tice means stuff just leaks right back out my ears by the fol­low­ing week