P.S. the air raid sirens have been tested too! No I didn't think it was the start of the war. Honestly. Ok, maybe a bit.

Ok, so Samir Jaja is in Washington, and he's going to be spreading his wisdom at an event on Thursday. As Mickey Mouse, I am disappointed not to have been invited. So as my revenge, I will reply to the RSVP email address telling them that in fact, Mickey Mouse will be attending.

If any of my friends - Donald Duck, Tweety Pie, or even Roger Rabbit - are out there, first of all I miss you. And secondly, I advise you to email them quickly, and tell them you will be attending. Even if you won't really!

It will be the most intellectual audience Samir Jaja has had for a long time.

That email address is LIC@LICUS.ORG. Do it now!



On a serious note, such email harassment will possibly give the organisers a hint that wherever Jaja goes, trouble (like us) follows. If I was in Washington, I would like nothing more than to organise a loud demonstration outside the building. Jaja is a war-criminal, and he shouldn't be welcome anywhere but prison.

I'll start this by saying that I have had a long-running campaign against Human Rights Watch, academically and on this blog.

HRW is an overwhelmingly American organisation - the vast majority of its membership, employees and offices are in the US. It contributes to the imbalance in NGOs working in the developing world - overall 89% of NGOs and their workers are Western. Only 11% are from the developing world.

So would it surprise you to learn that at the HRW Film Festival, which starts in London this week, only TWO of their 25 films come from the developing world (and one of those is from Eastern Europe).

More than half of the films come from the West - most of those from America. And a handful are mixed western-developing world productions.

I am prepared to accept that many developing world filmmakers need assistance from the west. But still, only nine of their films have ANY involvement at all from developing world.

This is a film festival of movies by Westerners for Westerners. They've picked cinemas in Notting Hill and Greenwich, just so the privileged don't have to drive their Mercedes far.

In case you care, my thesis was on the normative role of NGOs in the developing world. Put crudely, Western NGOs - with HRW leading the way - are unwitting vehicles for the export of Western morals and values. (And, no, it wasn't that tired argument about cultural sensitivity and the universality of human rights. Some human rights really are universal. Female genital mutilation and torture can't be explained away by 'tradition'.)

Isn't it tragic how we are staring at our TVs, watching the US election race with such enthusiasm.

This is an election in a country thousands of miles away, in which we have no control. But which will have a direct impact on all our lives.

Do Americans watch the outcome of the Swedish vote with such interest? Do the French care so much about the Italian elections? No, because by-and-large, whatever voters choose in those countries, only affects those countries.

The US election is the only international election, because the US is the only superpower. And we have no say over what happens in it - although it is Arabs who will live and die by the result of the vote.

Maybe the democracy parrots should think about that, the next time they trot out their worn out slogans.