Beginning of a new week

So it seems I've started this week on the right note, getting up very early and actually getting stuff done at work for a change (still have a couple of things left to do). Also, I spent two hours reading human rights literature this morning. It seems whatever faint thread of a thesis I was developing in my head is going to be hard to argue. But more on that in a few days maybe.

But while we're on the topic of human rights, today's news includes former US president Clinton calling for Guantanamo prison to be 'closed down or cleaned up'.

Reminds me of what I read this morning in Human Rights as Politics and Idolatory, by Michael Ignatieff. Ignatieff calls American human rights policy in the past two decades or so 'increasingly distinctive and paradoxical'. The paradox is that the champion nation of the liberal human rights idea 'leads the world in denouncing the human rights violations of others but refuses to ratify key international conventions itself. The most important resistance to the domestic application of international rights norms comes... in fact, from within the heart of the Western rights tradition itself.'

Meanwhile, oil is at a new high, nearing $60 a barrel, in an uncertain geopolitical climate and of course a strained supply and ever rising demand. Don't know why but high oil prices make me happy for some reason. Heard on the radio though that Air Canada is to increase ticket prices, given the rising fuel costs. That does not make me happy, but we'll see how things are the next time I need to take a plane somewhere.