In early May, the call for entries for A Logo for Human Rights (LHR), a "global creative online competition with cash prizes and open to everyone," was announced. The goal? To "create a human rights logo 'by people for people', thus making a contribution towards the global spread and implementation of human rights with the support of a large public." The process was your typical contest malarkey: People design, people upload, people vote on uploaded logos, designers e-mail friends and family to vote for their logos, participants complain about the voting process, the top 100 vote getters get presented to the jury (Spiekermann! Ai WeiWie! Jimmy Wales! Jimmy Carter!) and the "experts" (No! Idea! Who! They! Are!), the jurors select their own favorite ten logos, of those top vote getters ten finalists are presented again for online public voting, participants complain about the selection process, finalists designers e-mail friends and family to vote for their logos, a winner is announced. On Friday, LHR announced that Serbian designer Predrag Stakic had been selected as the winner from over 15,000 submissions.



The ten finalists. You can click through their concepts here.

Winner, original submission here.

"You talkin' to me?" Yes, you, you are holding the logo wrong.

Predrag's concept and rationalization.

What do you know? The result is not bad. It's easy to mock it or denounce it as the offspring of the evil process of a contest, but if you look at the two concept images above — the kids drawing their hands not that much more difficult than doing a handprint turkey and the image of protesters holding their open hand in the air — the logo has the potential to find lasting power. There is something weird about the way the thumb breaks into the dove and the dove has some mighty big feathers, but as a simple mark that could be adopted by a lot of people it works remarkably well. But it's all potential and maybes right now with this logo — its real success depends on whether people across the world use it.

Don't forget to cast your vote about this post online

Certaines musiques populaires sont utilisées comme instruments de torture par l'armée américaine. Du Panama au Moyen-Orient, ces pratiques s'inscrivent dans un programme plus vaste dénommé « psychological operations ».
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Cinéastes: une honte de dépendre des loteries? #culture #loterie #loro #loterieromande

Did you see that ludicrous display last night?
[Via Imgur]
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Monty Python fearlessly sent up Christianity almost three decades ago, but David Baddiel's comedy doesn't come close to doing the same for Islam. Could a film that poked fun at Islam actually get made?
There may well be a funny film to be made about Islam. The Infidel isn't it. This is not because the jokes fall flat, though some have found them to. It's because the film isn't about Islam. It's about cultures, not faiths, and aims to show only that people of different backgrounds should try to get along. To be fair to the film's makers, they claim no other ambition. All the same, a question presents itself. Could a film that did poke fun at Islam actually get made?
Some might say it's unfair to ask: a global mass medium can't be expected to mock things that many people hold sacred. Yet, if this were ever true, it isn't any longer. Thanks to the courage and determination of yesterday's film-makers, barriers against religious comedy on the big screen were long ago demolished.
It's almost three decades since Monty Python's Life of Brian was unleashed on a more readily shockable world. Stick on the DVD today, and the film may seem harmlessly amusing. Back then, however, its jests about religious worship as well as Jesus Christ and his crucifixion were genuinely unprecedented.
Its backers withdrew funding two days before the crew were to go on location, and it only got made at all because George Harrison volunteered to stump up the cash. Once released, it was called "a profane parody" by a spokesman for America's Lutherans and banned across the Bible belt. The Catholic film-monitoring office rated it C for "Condemned" and declared it a sin to see it. In Britain, 39 local authorities proscribed it, with a Cornish councillor demanding that all of those involved in its production should be locked up in Broadmoor.
Nonetheless, it went on to become 1979's fourth highest grossing film at the UK box office, and after this breakthrough, religious comedies eventually became commonplace. The Bible was plundered for yet more laughs in films like Evan Almighty, The God Complex, Year One and perhaps most rumbustiously of all, The Real Old Testament. Religion was also further debunked by the likes of Henry Poole Is Here, Bruce Almighty, Religulous and The Invention of Lying.
In Dogma, two fallen angels find a loophole in Catholic teaching that enables them to get back into heaven after God has cast them out. However, as existence is supposed to be based on the idea that the creator is infallible, their success would show God's powers to be limited and thus unmake the universe. A seraph commissions a Catholic woman to stop them returning, and during the resulting shenanigans an angel has his wings shot off with a machine-gun and a trio of demons get drowned in holy water.
The butt of most of the jokes in most of these films is Christianity or Judaism. However, the Mormons get guyed in Plan 10 from Outer Space, and even Scientology suffers a going-over in Bowfinger. Yet absent from all of this merriment is Islam.
This is no accident. Dogma's director, Kevin Smith, told fans on a messageboard that he'd had an idea for a sequel. Sadly, it was not to be. "The film would have to touch on Islam," he explained, "and unlike the Catholic League, when those cats don't like what you do, they issue a death warrant on yer ass." For 2012, director Roland Emmerich was happy to destroy Rio's statue of Christ the Redeemer. Apparently, he also wanted to destroy the Kaaba in Mecca, the most sacred building in Islam. "But my co-writer Harald [Kloser] said, 'I will not have a fatwa on my head because of a movie'. And he was right," Emmerich declared.
It's not entirely certain that fears like these are actually well-founded. Salman Rushdie and the Danish cartoons launched direct insults against the Prophet himself. That does seem to provoke inordinately, but it's not clear that Muslims couldn't take a few jokes about their creed. It would be good to find out. Perhaps for his next trick, Sacha Baron Cohen might lay off soft targets like Christian fundamentalists and wade into the mullahs. Don't hold your breath.
ComedyReligionIslamChristianityRoland EmmerichThe Rushdie fatwaMuhammad cartoons row 2006Kevin SmithDavid Coxguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Chloe Moretz's hit-girl has inadvertently dispatched our last big expletive. There's more than one reason why we shouldn't be pleasedWarning: this blog contains quotes that employ very explicit language
In Kick-Ass, an 11-year-old girl calls a roomful of grown-ups "cunts". And nobody gives a damn. The film has managed to evoke a half-hearted whimper from the Mail, while the Australian Family Association has deemed its language "offensive". Protest-wise, that's pretty much it. A sorry milestone has been passed. The c-word has become acceptable parlance for children in mainstream movies. We'll be the poorer for it.
One by one, the words with which we used to abuse our fellows have been gradually decommissioned. It's been a long time since you could successfully vent your wrath by calling some pain-in-the-neck a bugger or a bastard. Nowadays, it wouldn't be worth wasting the breath required. Employ the c-word, however, and you could still conceivably feel you'd made a point. Until now. Chloe Moretz's hit-girl has offed it too, without a thought for the consequences. Henceforth, road-hogs, round-dodgers and purblind refs will all get a verbal free pass.
A noble history has been brought to a close. What had been merely the label for a body part blossomed into an obscenity in the late middle ages. By 1785, the Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue felt obliged to list it as "C**t". During the 1960s, however, the word's profanity began to fade. In 1970, it took its first bow on British television, courtesy of The Frost Programme. Two years later, the OED gave it an unveiled listing for the first time. As decontamination gathered pace, cinema was quick to pitch in.
The first mainstream movie to unleash the c-word seems to have been Carnal Knowledge. Back in 1971, Jack Nicholson's Jonathan saw fit to inquire: "Is this an ultimatum? Answer me, you ball-busting, castrating, son of a cunt bitch." Four years later, when Nicholson's R P McMurphy opined of Nurse Ratched, "she's somethin' of a cunt, ain't she?" the shock was already wearing off. By 1991, Multiple Miggs was able to allude both lewdly and bluntly to Agent Starling's genitalia, while the Brits took things even further with Trainspotting in 1995 and then Ben Kingsley's c-word-fixated Don Logan in 2001. Thus was the puissance of anathema incontinently squandered. Nonetheless, until now, all wasn't totally lost. On the big screen, the c-word may have been uncaged, but it was only out on licence. Censors continued to treat it with impressive deference, thereby helping to sustain its waning import. For decades, use of this one word was in itself sufficient to earn a film an adults-only rating. Thus, even in 2002, the 20-odd appearances of the word "cunt" in Ken Loach's Sweet Sixteen were sufficient to secure it an 18 certificate, thereby ensuring that the kind of people depicted in the film wouldn't be able to see it.
It's in this respect that the Kick-Ass case is particularly disgraceful. According to the BBFC's guidelines, the word is acceptable in a 15-rated film only "if justified by the context". That might just cover Shaun of the Dead, which crawled under the wire in 2004 in spite of the line, "Can I get any of you cunts a drink?" Surely, however, an otherwise politely-spoken pre-teen could have perpetrated her bloodbath without involving this vulnerable malediction. The word wasn't even in the Kick-Ass script. It was added on set, apparently at the suggestion of Chloe's mum.
Yet Kick-Ass rejoices in a 15 certificate. The BBFC says the comic ambience makes everything OK, though true devotees of the c-word may think this makes things worse. Grave execrations are not to be trifled with. In America, the film has been rated R, so no one under 17 will be able to see it without an accompanying adult. Ireland's given it a 16, Canada an 18A and New Zealand an R18, all of which imply marginally more respect for our sadly doomed expletive than the film's country of origin has managed to stump up.
It's a sorry business. All in all, our film censors, Chloe Moretz's mother and the rest of the Kick-Ass crowd are a complete bunch of utter … what, exactly, can we term them now?
Jane GoldmanComicsCensorshipDavid Coxguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Emma Thompson's warty supernanny rules with a rod of iron, suggesting love isn't all you need to raise children – even in a family film
Though it's set in a stylised version of the 1940s, Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang is supposed to be all about us. The director, Susanna White, sees Maggie Gyllenhaal's juggling and harassed single mum as "such a contemporary figure". The father of her unruly brood happens to be away at the front, but White says: "I wanted the absent dad to feel universal." Doubtless many a fraught lone parent will indeed see something of her own plight in Mrs Green's travails. Whether the way in which they're resolved will bring her much comfort is another matter.
The torrent of conflicting guidance to which mothers shouting vainly at fractious children are subjected seems to have little effect, except perhaps in making them feel that their failure is their own fault. Many of them might welcome the arrival of a state-funded supernanny armed with a sure-fire means of imposing domestic order. Certainly, Nanny McPhee's five-point programme ought to be of interest, purporting as it does to make selfless paragons out of selfish brats.It certainly succeeds in sorting out Mrs Green's bothersome youngsters. Lesson two teaches them to share, lesson three to help each other, lesson four to be brave and lesson five to have faith. However, all of these triumphs depend on the effectiveness of the first lesson, which has to overcome initial childish recalcitrance. Until this has been learned, further progress is impossible.
Yet it's here that Mrs Green's real-life counterparts may be disappointed. To achieve her goal, Nanny McPhee requires the use of a magic walking stick. Sadly, this is an item not available to today's troubled mums, even at Sure Start centres. The spell that the stick is called upon to cast proves even more dispiriting. To correct their unseemly behaviour, the wayward babes get their heads preternaturally battered against walls and floorboards.
Though this procedure seems to do the trick, a latter-day Mrs Green who emulated it could surely expect to hear from social services. So, in what's an otherwise saccharine family movie, why have Ms White and writer Emma Thompson felt obliged to endorse such tactics? Mary Poppins was no soft touch, yet she didn't stoop to naked brutality.
Mary, however, was dealing with a household that did have a dad, and one who brooked no nonsense. It was a deficit of affection that she had to tackle, not of discipline. Nowadays, we seem to have the opposite problem. Parental love must be unconditional. Even if there's a dad available, children no longer need fear the warning "You just wait until your father gets home". Today's parents are expected to enforce their authority without effective sanctions against its defiance.
Told to set boundaries they're unable to police, they depend on their offspring's goodwill. Yet devilry is part of infancy. Children can be forgiven for giving rein to it if they know there'll be no really troubling consequences. Hence Nanny McPhee's reliance on force. Hence too, the wistfulness this may inspire in some cinema-going mums who'd no more dare to smack a sprog than smother it.
It's not just parents who've cause to ponder Nanny McPhee's first lesson. Once, the whole community used to share the task of controlling troublesome youngsters. Now, they've become untouchable. In place of the clip round the ear of yore, they're awarded asbos they can sport as badges of honour. Asbo breaches bring community penalties they can also cheerily deride.
Obviously, our offspring need love. We've come to believe that showing it precludes instilling fear. Maybe it does, but Nanny McPhee thinks not. She speaks softly, but carries a big stick. The first Nanny McPhee film carried the tagline "Behave or beware". This one's is "The magic is back". Perhaps the magic's simpler than it seems.
ParentsParents and parentingEmma ThompsonDavid Coxguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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