EASTERN CONGO---DO SOMETHING!!!!

FOR CHRISTS SAKE, INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY, UNITED NATIONS, US, EU, AU, WHOEVER IS LISTENING------DO SOMETHING!!!!!
Have we learned NOTHING from our past? The United Nations has "expressed concern..." about the recent events in the east of Congo, around the city of Goma, where Tutsi rebel forces have dislodged the corrupt and inept Congolese Army forces. The historical rift and ethnic hatred, as well as the greed which plagues all, are all important factors in this renewed conflict; however, all factors need to be disregarded; the responsibility is to act, to avoid the talking points, to avoid the bureaucratic inertia of the past, which has allowed for the deaths of millions. Please stem the tide before it grows too large to control.

The region, historically unstable, is fast slipping into chaos. A country which has already lost FIVE MILLION people to war in the last decade. When will we act, not in our own self-interest, but in the interest of HUMANITY!!!!!

Small Steps, Big Steps

Michael Maniates, Allegheny College, on going green:

If we sum up the easy, cost-effective, eco-efficiency measures we should all embrace, the best we get is a slowing of the growth of environmental damage...obsessing over recycling and installing a few special light bulbs won't cut it. We need to be looking at a fundamental change in our energy, transportation and agricultural systems rather than technological tweakings on the margins, and this means changes and costs that our current and would-be leaders seem afraid to discuss. Which is a pity, since Americans are at their best when they are struggling together, and sometimes with one another, toward difficult goals....Surely we must do the easy thing: They slow the damage and themselves become enabling symbols of empathy for future generations. But we cannot permit our leaders to sell us short. To stop at "easy" is to say that the best we can do is accept an uninspired politics of guilt around a parade of uncoordinated individual action.

modern day slavery

A human life, a soul and a person, a lifetime's backbreaking toil and anguish, for $500.

50 years ago, slavery was outlawed in the international community; however, in many parts of the world, the age-old traditions of the past continue unabated. The international community must take an implacable and unified stance against the trade in human lives for the horrors, like those revealed in the West African state of Niger, to be condemmed to a darkened past.

December, 1948, The Universal Decalaration of Human Rights, on slavery:

Article 4.
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.


from the NYTimes:

Slavery is outlawed throughout Africa, but it persists in pockets of Niger, Mali, Mauritania and amid conflicts like the one in northern Uganda. Antislavery organizations estimate that 43,000 people are enslaved in Niger alone, where nomadic tribes like the Tuareg and Toubou have for centuries held members of other ethnic groups as slaves.
Ms. Mani’s experience was typical of the practice. She was born into a traditional slave class and sold to Souleymane Naroua when she was 12 for about $500.
Ms. Mani told court officials that Mr. Naroua had forced her to work his fields for a decade. She also claimed that he raped her repeatedly over the years.

The Alchemist.

...there is a great truth on this planet;
whoever, you are, or whatever it is you do,
when you really want something, its because that desire originated in the soul of the universe.
It's your mission on earth...
The Soul of the World is nourished by people's happiness.
And also by unhappiness, envy, and jealousy. To realize one's destiny
is a person's only real obligation.
All things are one.

-Paulo Coelho

distortion

Now, we have gotten what we have all prayed for; oil has dropped drastically in price, and the gasoline that fuels our lives has become more affordable. This is an opportune time, as the American citizen has been under a full economic assault as of late; relief at the pocketbook cannot be seen in a negative light. However, this looks to be a cruel repeat of the 1970's and 1980's, when the country went from oil embargoes to energy conservation and innovation (Carter put solar panels on the White House!) to an entrenching of oil as the medium of all exchange, as prices dropped and Regan removed the panels and turned up the heat. Low energy prices, though great for an already dependent consumer, destroy alternative innovation and dedication; this seems to be a cruel game of OPEC yo-yo....



From Hot, Flat, and Crowded:

It is a cruel joke the way Congress and the Bush administration count pennies when it comes to building new industries, as if the money for wind, solar, and biomass were coming out of their own children's piggybanks, and yet they throw money out the window, like a house full of drunken sailors, when it comes to the old, established, well-capitalized oil, coal, and gas industries-let alone the agricultural lobby...
Over the last 50 years, tens of billions of dollars in subsidies (which never expire) have been extended to the fossil fuel and nuclear industries....it is really sad that the United States has reached a point where the priorities of Congress could become so distorted by politics that Washington would turn its back on the next great global industry-clean power.

-Thomas Friedman

words

"...man makes his plans to be often upset by God, but, at the same time, where the ultimate goal is the search of truth, no matter how a man's plans are frustrated, the issue is never injurious and often better than anticipated."


"to conquer the subtle passions seems to me to be harder far than the physical conquest of the world by the force of arms."


-Mahatma Gandhi

words.

"wherever i go, with whomever i go,
may i see myself as less than all others,
and from the depth of my heart,
may i consider them supremely precious."
-H.H. The Dalai Lama


"not agitating the world nor agitated by it, he stands above the sway of elation, competition, and fear. Who looks upon friend and foe with equal regard, not buoyed up by praise or cast down by blame, alike in heat and cold, pleasure and pain, free from selfish attachments, the same in honor and dishonor, quiet, ever full, in harmony everywhere, firm in faith-such a one is dear to me."
-Bhagavad Gita

Easterlin Paradox

Exposing one of the major fallacies of the Western materialist mindset: money brings happiness. Thus, we must spend our waking moments working to earn to consume. The consumerism of our culture is pervasive and omnipresent; from womb to grave, a constant barrage. In other countries around the world, there has been an emphasis placed other facets of life, other means of measurement for economic progress. One such nation is tiny Bhutan, a former kingdom in the Himalayas, which uses the concept of gross national happiness, rather than gross domestic product, to measure its advancement. Gross national happiness consists of the four following pillars:

1) Good governance
2)Balanced economic development
3) Environmental Preservation
4) Preserving and promoting culture

This is seen as progress on the "Middle Path"-not eschewing advancement, but putting advancement in its proper context, and not allowing for the unbridled cultivation of materialism as a means to its own end. These four pillars are used to preserve the environment of Bhutan, to retain its rich culture and societal bonds, and to provide the people with education and healthcare, regardless of the remoteness of their village; though many lives are hard in this primarily subsistence agriculture-based economy, the people are notably happier than in many societies of the "developed world." The people are also raised with a deep understanding that happiness is not reliant on external stimuli-it needs to be derived from a carefully cultivated mind; and a carefully cultivated mind is not derived from consumer goods or the impulsive satisfaction of desire. I had a chance to witness this phenomenon in the film,
"Bhutan: Taking the Middle Path to Happiness."


And as Nicholas Kristof points out in today's Times:

Income doesn’t have much to do with happiness. Americans haven’t become any happier as they have prospered in the last half-century. And winning the lottery doesn’t make people happier in the long term.

This is called the Easterlin Paradox: Once they have met their basic needs, people don’t become happier as they become richer. In recent years, new research has undermined the Easterlin Paradox, yet it’s still true that happiness has less to do with money than with friendships and finding meaning in a cause larger than oneself.

“There’s pretty good evidence that money doesn’t matter much for how you feel moment to moment,” said Alan Krueger, a Princeton University economist who is conducting extensive research on happiness. “What seems to matter much more is having good friends and family, and time to spend on social activities.”

Matthieu Ricard on Happiness

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

18,000 a Day

NyTimes, Nicholas Kristof, 10/17/08....progress for the world's poor, quantified, a huge leap forward...

I know it: you’re looking at that headline and thinking, What terrible thing happens to 18,000 kids a day? What horror is Kristof going to inflict on us now?

But, no, this is good news. The latest World Health Report, just out from the World Health Organization, reports:

If children were still dying at 1978 rates, there would have been 16.2 million deaths globally in 2006. In fact, there were only 9.5 million such deaths. This difference of 6.7 million is equivalent to 18,329 children’s lives being saved each day.

One of the reasons there isn’t more support for foreign aid is the glum sense that places like Africa are tragic but hopeless, that poor countries are so corrupt and inefficient that it’s impossible to register progress. The report is a good antidote to that defeatism. Sure, aid is often inefficient and occasionally counter-productive, but on the other hand saving 18,000 children’s lives each day is quite an extraordinary achievement.

backward-looking

Thought it is always important to keep looking forward, to ruminate on the future and the path from our current location and situation to the ideal, it is also vital to learn from mistakes of the past, so they are not perpetrated repeatedly in our cyclical social and physical environments.
And the mistakes that have been made! The lies that have been perpetrated! The cloak that has been pulled over our collective eyes!
If misfortune and tragedy can beget progress and evolution, than what an opportunity was lost after the attacks of 9/11; what a vital energy squandered. What a chance at emboldening given to fear, a chance at building given to destruction, an obstinate leadership walled off from those they represent, making decisions in an ivory tower of deceit.

Thomas Friedman explains, from his important work, Hot Flat, and Crowded, the scenario and possibilities squandered...


Think about this: The price of gasoline on the morning of September 11, 2001, was between $1.60 and $1.80 a gallon in America. Had President Bush imposed a $1-a-gallon 'Patriot Tax' the next day, gasoline would have been close to $3 a gallon. The US Government would have gotten the revenue boost, demand for gasoline would have fallen, and demand for more fuel-efficient vehicles would have soared. It would not be out of bounds to speculate that even with the rising demand in China and India over the past seven years, gasoline at the pump in America would be $3 to $4 a gallon, but we would already have been through the transition. Many more Americans would be driving more fuel-efficient cars...and the US Treasury rather than the Iranian Treasury would be getting the extra dollar in the gasoline price. Because we did not have courage to make that transition on September 12, 2001, gasoline on September 12, 2008 was more than $4 a gallon, and the fuel economy of American cars was still lousy, and the billions of dollars we've paid out due to the doubling of gasoline prices since September 11 has all gone to the oil producers, including governments that have drawn a bulls-eye on our backs.

Energy and Development

Energy is like an other economic good. It needs decent governance, functioning institutions, and effective markets to get electrons from the producer to the consumer on a sustained basis. Without reliable energy, virtually every aspect of life is negatively affected. After all, energy, at its most basic, is the capacity to do work. At the village level, energy poverty means you can't pump clean water regularly, there's no communications, no way to have adult literacy classes, and certainly no way to run computers at school or have access to connectivity. This perpetuates social inequality. Its mostly women in rural villages that bear the greatest burden of energy poverty, because it is they who must walk for miles every day to fetch water for drinking and bathing, or to collect firewood. Young girls are often taken out of primary school to assist in the daily struggle for energy subsistence.

-Thomas Friedman, Hot, Flat and Crowded, on energy and development in the poverty stricken regions of the globe

water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink

the global financial meltdown has been closely accompanied by the global cash injection of trillions in aid to come to the rescue of the developed world's pinstriped warriors in distress.
every day, announcements of billions, hundreds of billions of euros and dollars flooding the global banking sector in a mad dash to stave off recession; in a mad dash to stave off a constriction of economies; in a mad dash to avoid having to *gasp* tightening our belts, consuming less, and adapting to a simpler lifestyle with fewer of the material items that have come to define the developed world.

and i think of the groveling, the begging, and the pleading that has been accompanied with the plight of the extreme poor in the world; the handouts that need to be forcibly extracted under threat of imminent mass death; the pleas for survival and the realities of demise for 10,000 people every day who are simply too poor to stay alive.

i think of the outpour of massive amounts of wealth when our wasteful, extravagent lifestyle is in jeopardy; i think of the feebly trickling spigot of dollars when others are facing starvation and terribly cruel lifespans.

I think this should be a moment of reflection for us all; a moment where the glaring inequalities are even more luminous; a moment where we see our self-serving interests and the selfish attitude of most of the developed world in all of its tragic worth.

changes

access to life

and on the abstinence theme....this is a remarkable piece of work by Magnum in Motion, 

teamed with the Global Fund, detailing 30 people in 9 countries around the world before and 4 months after they begin antiretroviral treatment for HIV.  bear witness to the ramifications and repercussions of ignorant reproductive policies. 

http://accesstolife.theglobalfund.org/

abstinence is a joke.

There is a new abstinence program at my high school in the Bronx, which is supposed to be educating our already-sexually-inundated-students on the ways of just saying no. To attempt to isolate high school students growing up in the inner city for 45 minutes and negate all influences that saturate their other 23.25 hours of ad-mad hip hop envy lives is quite simply arrogant.
Anybody with any idea, the slightest clue as to the workings of the human mind and the drives and desires of adolescents would come to the rational conclusion that this is more than a waste of our students time, our class resources, and teachers patience. Hand out condoms. Teach kids the risks. And pray they make the right choice. Abstinence is a sham. No stranger coming into a class of adolescent strangers for 45 minutes is going to change any outlook or perspective on the most primal of human desires.

And now, the madness spreads to more impoverished peoples around the globe, courtesy of the global stewards of the century, The Bush Administration, who have stopped funding non-abstinence reproductive health NGO's in Africa and around the world. What a shameful, negligent act. 

From Nicholas Kristof's Op Ed in the Times Thursday.


The Bush administration this month is quietly cutting off birth control supplies to some of the world’s poorest women in Africa...

Retrograde decisions on reproductive health are reached in conference rooms in Washington, but I’ve seen how they play out in African villages. A young woman lies in a hut, bleeding to death or swollen by infection, as untrained midwives offer her water or herbs. Her husband and children wait anxiously outside the hut, their faces frozen and perspiring as her groans weaken.

When she dies, her body is bundled in an old blanket and buried in a shallow hole, with brush piled on top to keep wild animals away. Her children sob and shriek and in the ensuing months they often endure neglect and are far more likely to die of hunger or disease.

In some parts of Africa, a woman now has a 1-in-10 risk of dying in childbirth. The idea that U.S. policy may increase that toll is infuriating.

Praying for a speedy recovery for His Holiness

from the AFP:

Dalai Lama has gallstones removed: aides
6 hours ago
NEW DELHI (AFP) — Indian doctors performed keyhole surgery on the Dalai Lama to remove gallstones Friday at a New Delhi hospital, aides to the Tibetan spiritual leader said.
"Doctors successfully removed the gall bladder stones of His Holiness," the Dalai Lama's spokesman Tenzin Takhla told AFP.
The procedure was swift, simple and "everything went without a hitch," Takhla said, adding that the 73-year-old Buddhist leader should be discharged within a day or two.
The keyhole procedure, or laparoscopy, involved using a thin, lighted tube with a miniature video camera to enable doctors to magnify and see the location of the organs and any stones.

shouting fire in a crowded room

Paul Krugman on the economic crisis:

"On a separate note, one good thing is that there haven’t been any reports of people on Wall Street jumping out of windows. That’s because the windows in modern office buildings don’t open."


This situation is truly unique, certainly in my lifetime. An amazing evaporation of wealth. There is not a single
stock exchange, anywhere in the world, that has not had dramatic declines in the last week. The globally integrated economy at its bleakest moment.
Fear pervades, incompetence leads, unobtainable promises flying, the country enters a new day.

CO2 visualization

California Institute of Technology energy chemist, Nate Lewis offers the following analogy: "Imagine you are driving in your car and every mile you throw a pound of trash out your window. And everyone else on the freeway in their cars and trucks is doing the exact same thing, and people driving Hummers are throwing two bags out at a time-one out of the driver side window and one out of the passenger side window. How would you feel? Not so good. Well, thats exactly what we are doing, you just can't see it. Only what we are throwing out is a pound of CO2-thats what goes into the atmosphere, on average, every mile we drive."



Tom Friedman
-Flat, Hot, and Crowded

brilliance

1 giant leap

what is missing is this real belief that business should be more about public good than private greed...what happens to the human spirit when more than 2 billion people live on less than $2 a day, and we don't give a fuck...
-anita roddick


the fallout of the unbridled pursuit of greed is living us now, in our daily lives.

Strongly Marked Opposites

The strong man holds in a living blend strongly marked opposites.
The idealists are usually not realistic, and the realists are usually not idealistic.
Seldom are the humble self assertive, or the self assertive humble.
But life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites, living together in fruitful harmony.

-Martin Luther King Jr.

The World's Most Utterly Failed State

When observing the outcome of lawlessness, when anarchy is allowed to reach out and take a bite of the global world order, we need to understand what has created this anarchy, what has melded these precarious conditions, to rightfully prescribe a prescription for a future. We need to understand the past to comprehend and appreciate the future. And starkly, we must take responsibility for past actions that have contributed to the state of affairs today, as Somali pirates terrorize one of the world's busiest shipping lanes in the Gulf of Aden. As per the Economist's report on Somalia this week, "...the outside world helped tip Somalia into chaos."
And chaos is now what the world order will need to help remedy, so the destabilizing factor does not spread in this already volatile of regions. Even more troubling, in this land of famine and complete lack of social services, is that the pirates have spawned the only viable industry; the take in ransoms dwarfs the rest of the economy in the region, and is now the only light and the end of many young, darkened, and dusty tunnels.

The descent of Somalia into anarchy was not a completely isolated, internal event; it was directly perpetrated by the outside world through negligence and outright interference, something the global powers have always excelled in. The last leader of Somalia, Siad Barre,
excelled at using the food aid of the west to prop up his corrupt and brutal dictatorship, often with the direct compliance of the West. Barre limped along in this manner for years, repressing the Somali people with sacks of grain stamped USAID. The US defended its staunch anti-communist ally in international forums, supplied him with hundreds of millions of dollars of weapons to further repress his people, and directly related in the simmering of civil society which resulted in the violent overthrown and anarchy which have reigned in the Horn of Africa ever since. All for the small price tag of a US military base and severing ties with the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War.

Michael Maren detailed the state of affairs as Somalia crumbled, in his critical work, The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of International Aid and Charity. Maren reported extensively from Somalia during the death throes of the Barre regime, and describes the role of international aid in the propping up of dysfunctional governments.

My experience in Beledweyne during the last few months has confirmed my growing suspicion that the Somali government is deliberately taking part in the diversion of refugee food, has deliberately inflated refugee figures in order to facilitate these diversions, and is now simply humoring donors by submitting itself to the impotent inspection and monitoring of these donors.
Our involvement in the refugee relief operation is a participation in a political ploy to gain support for an unpopular military government. I do not presume to influence the policy of the American government in this regard, however I believe that the situation should be recognized for what it is. Our continued support for the refugees makes possible continued activity of the WSLF in the Ogaden, which in turn results in more refugees...
There is a festering resentment among the general population towards the expatriates and the refugees. An old man stopped me on the streets of Beledweyne and demanded to know why he was not entitled to the rations and health care just because he had decided to settle in town instead of the refugee camp.
A man with four children working in Beledweyne for 800 shillings a month (an extraordinarily high salary) could not supply his family with the amount of food the refugees receive for free.
The future for refugees in the camps holds only years of relief. The efforts of the international community should be aimed at solving the problem-getting the refugees out of the camps. "

And in its present state, "...wretched as it is, Somalia can cause a lot of trouble-on land and at sea. It is a disaster that the rest of the world cannot shrug off."

Moments

"To practice Zen means to realize one's existence moment after moment, rather than letting life unravel in regret of the past and daydreaming of the future...as the clutter of ideas and emotions fall away and body and mind return to the natural harmony with all creation. Out of this emptiness can come a true insight into the nature of existence, which is no different from one's Buddha nature."

-Peter Mattheissen


"When an unpleasant thought or feeling, physical or mental, arises in him, a wise man does not worry, complain, weep, pound his chest, or torture his body and mind. He calmly observes his feeling and is aware that it is only a feeling. He knows that he is not the feeling, and he is not caught by the feeling. Therefor, the pain cannot bind him."


"Ignorance is the cause of all suffering. One must look deeply into things in order to penetrate their true nature. One cannot overcome ignorance through prayers and offerings."

"...as his pace slowed down, his heart quieted. He was wholeheartedly immersing himself, and this was his path. He turned around for one more glimpse of the only land and people he knew, and he saw them as mere specks merging with the shadows."

-Thich Nhat Hahn

The Link

unlocking the doors to the past.
unraveling the coiled thread that connects all events, seen and unseen, good and evil, profound and inane. following the line backwards, tracing the errors of the past, the cruelties of history, foreshadowing fundamental shifts in human interactions. seeing how we can get it wrong once again.
the thread seldom follows a simple route.
and the thread is often covered in blood.

"Then, the war started. This is the same place that the genocide happened. The heartbeat of that genocide came from about 15 km from the park boundary. This little patch of forest is where everybody hides. If you want to have a war, or do something bad, you're going to go into this forest where the gorillas are."
-Michael Nichols, National Geographic, talking of Virunga National Park, Congo

And thus, in a cruel twist of fate, the famous mountain gorillas of Central Africa, immortalized by the late Dian Fossey, magnificent beasts sharing 98% of the human genome, are cast into the murderous, demonized shadow of genocide in Rwanda. 800,000 people were murdered here in 100days in 1994; the perpetrators escaping to the lawless lands of neighboring Congo to continue their actions with impunity for more than a decade; the international community giving out little more than a wimper when faced with the continued images of massacre and desecration; the fallout continuing to this day, without mercy, without compassion, affecting both man and beast alike. The Rwandan Interahamwe militias, directly implicated in the bloodletting of their Tutsi countrymen, continue to ravage, punish, and destroy in this most delicate of lands.

And thus, we see the events unravel, not chronologically, but genealogically, and in the cruel chain of life, we massacre our closest relative, in addition to all others around, in a fit of madness, an offshoot of the horrific ethnic cleansing of 1994. and thus, the closest key in our short history on this small planet is brought closer to the brink; man's greed and destruction not hesitating to unravel the cord, and drench it in blood.



www.gorillafund.org
www.awf.org/content/wildlife/detail/mountaingorilla

Did You Know? (From the African Wildlife Foundation Website)

• There are only about 720 mountain gorillas left in the world.
• Humans and gorillas are 98% genetically identical.
• Male silverback gorillas can weigh 50-100 pounds more - and are about 10 times stronger - than the biggest American football players.
• When the group is attacked by humans, leopards, or other gorillas, the silverback will protect them even at the cost of his own life.

scary and pathetic

Life in Zimbabwe has been nothing but a waiting game for the last decade. A waiting out of a regime, oft thought to be in its death throes, but endures, and continues to punish instead of serve.
A country which was the breadbasket of Africa is now the basketcase, a completely failed state in decay. A report on the BBC News this morning detailed that 2 million Zimbabweans will be dependant on food aid for survival this year, in a country which had incredible surpluses only a decade ago. The numbers could add up to five million at risk of hunger this year, out of a total population of 10million. Lets imagine the scene if 150 million Americans were dependent on the World Food Program to fend off starvation. Not only is this damaging to the physical body; it is detrimental to the mind.
As the politicians sit in Harare and bicker over Cabinet posts, the country lies in absolute ruin. The government is bankrupt. People cue up in line at 3am to get worthless money out the few solvent banks. Inflation has passed an incredible 40 million percent; money taken out just minutes before, if not used, will soon be rendered worthless.
According to the NYTimes,

Economists here and abroad say Zimbabwe’s economic collapse is gaining velocity, radiating instability into the heart of southern Africa. As the bankrupt government prints ever more money, inflation has gone wild, rising from 1,000 percent in 2006 to 12,000 percent in 2007 to a figure so high the government had to lop 10 zeros off the currency in August to keep the nation’s calculators from being overwhelmed.

This is an extraordinary state of affairs, a test case of anarchy and disastrous rule. Mugabe has almost single-handedly performed one of the worst destructions of a civil society in history; his land reform policies dismantled the productive farmlands and landed them in the incapable hands of his cronies, where they have remained and rotted; and yet Mugabe remains in Harare, dictating terms, dictating lives. The mere fact that the people of Zimbabwe continue to endure, day in and day out, that they scratch out a living, that they somehow survive, is a true testament to the human spirit.

“It’s scary and it’s pathetic,” said Tendai Chikowore, president of the Zimbabwe Teachers Association, the largest and least radical of the teacher unions. She said a teacher’s monthly pay was not even enough to buy two bottles of cooking oil. “This is a collapse of the system, and it’s not only for teachers,” she said. “At the hospitals, there are no nurses, no drugs.”

The Laya Project

A phoenix of beauty arisen from the ashes of tragedy.
I met the producers of The Laya Project when I was in Chennai, India last year;
their work is both inspiration and exceptional.



From The Laya website:

Laya Project’s musicians are the people of coastal and surrounding communities in the 2004 tsunami-affected regions of Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia, Maldives, Myanmar and India.

This production is based on regional folk music traditions, recorded and brought back to the studio to create a composition that mixes and enhances the original recordings, and embarks on a musical journey crossing borders, while preserving the music of the people.

The Laya Project is a personal and collective tribute to the resilience of the human spirit, and is dedicated to the survivors of the 26th December 2004 Asian tsunami.

The Military Industrial Complex, Act Two: Imperialism

"The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes."
-Dwight Eisenhower, speaking on the Military Industrial Complex in his farewell address to the nation, January 1961.


The BBC News headline reads, "US Africom 'Has No Hidden Agenda.'", admitting their guilt with the first elementary denial. There has been decades of struggle and civil strife on the continent of Africa; millions of lives lost needlessly due, in part, to the aggressive non-attention of the Western world powers, with nary a government agency but USAID to hand out cooking oil and sacks of rice, emblazoned with the huge American flag. Rwanda, nothing. Congo, nothing. Sudan, next to nothing. Somalia, a half hearted effort, then nothing. Mozambique, nothing. In the cases that we have done more than nothing in the last decades since the Independence of Africa, it has meant fueling arms to "ideological partners" engaged in brutal civil wars, or assassinating democratically elected heads of state who do not fit our mold of the proper Central African Dictator.
So when the US finally acts to set up an African Central Military command, and says that they have "No Hidden Agenda," something smells fishy.
And something smelled fishy to the African heads of state who, despite the enormous leverage of US diplomatic pressure in the developing world, denied access to their soil for our military's newest foray into international affairs. All except Liberia, recently emerged from a decade of brutal civil war, and no doubt, scared senseless of slipping backwards into anarchy.
Which brings us to the unambiguously hidden agenda; OIL and NATURAL RESOURCES.

This is no secret. (See Fast Company's fantastic article on Africa's resource grab from May 2008...http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/126/special-report-china-in-africa.html)

The wars of the 21st century will be fought over all matters of resources; Africa will be one of the primary battlegrounds, with its rich deposits of Oil and Minerals, and weak,l corrupt governments little interested in unnecessary oversight. The wars of the 21st century are already being strategized on the ground in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola, where governments remain blind to the dire needs if their people in the face of Chinese and American resource imperialism.

The scary fact emerges out of the haze of the last sixty years; we simply cannot compete with the Chinese economically at this point in time. We cannot underbid the Chinese, we cannot play dirty like the Chinese, we do not have the desire to work like the Chinese to procure what we still consider to be our natural right in the world; so we call on the old American bulwark, the men and women in our "All Volunteer Army" to do our dirty work, to project American power across the globe, to squeeze what remains of our share of the pie in the throes of the decline of the American Empire. When we can no longer compete economically, when we have outsourced the last of our jobs, when we can no longer package and repackage the same debt instruments to make money for the few at the expense of the masses, when the full faith in the American government does no longer cover our outstanding debts and obligations, we still have our boys in camo to project the semblance of power across the globe.

Hence, the Military Industrial Complex, Take Two.

When Eisenhower first warned of the policy relationships between the government, military, and corporations, our country was sitting on top of the world order, an undisputed superpower; we continue, vainly, in the same mind state, in an increasingly diminished state; soon, we will be a shell of a country, a shell made of Kevlar body plating, carrying an M-16 rifle and driving a big gas guzzling Humvee through the anarchic 21st century battlegrounds of Central Africa.