cold relation

"...the decision by the most powerful governments in the UN to bypass a sovereign government in order to assist citizens in need impressed Vierra de Mello. Like many, he understood this to be the harbinger of a "new world order" in which citizens might be rescued from their abusive governments. He did not yet appreciate how unprepared the UN system was to tackle these complex new challenges."
-Samantha Power, Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vierra de Mello and the Fight to Save the World

Framed into the context of Zimbabwe, 2008, this passage concerning the hopeful changing role of the United Nations, circa 1991, seems painfully misguided. Again and again in the past and future, we hope that we learn from mistakes; that governments can take the moral and humane high road, act decisively, with human preservation and dignity as the compelling factor.
Zimbabwe, now: a catastrophe; the United Nations has delegated its authority to another governing body, another bloated bureaucracy, another largely ineffectual political tool, the African Union. Who knows if the leaders of Africa, many of whom have fought and couped their way into perpetual power, will create a defining moment in Sharm Al-Sheik, or if they will rest on their laurels, fall back on the typical, and the people of Zimbabwe, and Africa as a whole, will continue to struggle for survival.
Will the "new world order" that Sergio de Mello dreamed of decades ago begin to bear fruition with the condemnation and action against abhorrence? Will the African Union learn from the past, join together, understand that the common man is what all nations are built on, and act in defense of this lowest common denominator? Will the mechanisms that have been put into place to defend human rights function as their founders hoped?
One thing is clear; Mugabe must go. His mere presence is a cruel reminder of a day far gone; with him saddled up to the leadership table, it spoils the legitimacy of all others gathered.

“Zimbabwe is burning. It is on fire. It is important that the African leaders save it before it burns beyond recognition.”
-Thokozani Khupe, the vice president, Movement for Democratic Change

America in Decline

"My fellow Americans: We are a country in debt and in decline — not terminal, not irreversible, but in decline. Our political system seems incapable of producing long-range answers to big problems or big opportunities. We are the ones who need a better-functioning democracy — more than the Iraqis and Afghans. We are the ones in need of nation-building. It is our political system that is not working."

--Thomas Friedman

We are wrapped in a warped tailspin of delusion in this country. The thinkers continue to think; the writers continue to write; the workers continue to work, when are where they can; and the people continue to struggle more and more as the days move into the future.
The American people are under attack from their own government. The American way of life will never regain the peaks of the 1990's. And the worst part? Most are still blind to the decline.

A government of cronyism and corruption; not blatant corruption, but a corruption that has become so subtle and ingrained to the workings of the Capital that blame cannot be easily delegated. Who is at fault for the mess that our country has become? Is it the predatory lenders, the predatory President, or the predatory press? As the days wear on, the candidates start to sound more and more alike, the congress, the senate, the judges, quite simply exist in a separate plane than the American people who they have been chosen to represent.

“America and its political leaders, after two decades of failing to come together to solve big problems, seem to have lost faith in their ability to do so,” Wall Street Journal columnist Gerald Seib noted last week. “A political system that expects failure doesn’t try very hard to produce anything else...“the political system seems incapable of producing a critical mass to support any kind of serious long-term reform.”

Brilliant Column

Nicholas Kristof and another brilliant Sunday Op Ed in the Times. When Kristof first mentioned a respectable retirement for Mugabe in South Africa, my knee-jerk reaction what aghast...Mugabe is directly responsible for genocide in Maatabaland, and for the countless misery of millions more; however, reason must take precedent when dealing with politics, and especially, African Politics; things are not black and white; sparing more misery, for even one unfortunante soul caught in the Zimbabwean crossfire is far worth the trade off. For lack of an analogous penchant for words, here's some of his:

If Only Mugabe Were White

When I grew up in the 1970s, a central truth was that Ian Smith was evil and Mr. Mugabe heroic. So it was jolting on my last visit to Zimbabwe, in 2005, to see how many Zimbabweans looked back on oppressive white rule with nostalgia. They offered a refrain: “Back then, at least parents could feed their children.”

Africa’s rulers often complain, with justice, that the West’s perceptions of the continent are disproportionately shaped by buffoons and tyrants rather than by the increasing number of democratically elected presidents presiding over 6 percent growth rates. But as long as African presidents mollycoddle Mr. Mugabe, they are branding Africa with his image.

The solution is for leaders at the African Union summit this week to give Mr. Mugabe a clear choice.

One option would be for him to “retire” honorably — “for health reasons” after some face-saving claims of heart trouble — at a lovely estate in South Africa, taking top aides with him. He would be received respectfully and awarded a $5 million bank account to assure his comfort for the remainder of his days.

The other alternative is that he could dig in his heels and cling to power. African leaders should make clear that in that case, they will back an indictment of him and his aides in the International Criminal Court. Led by the Southern African Development Community, the world will also impose sanctions against Mr. Mugabe’s circle and cut off all military supplies and spare parts. Mozambique, South Africa and Congo will also cut off the electricity they provide to Zimbabwe.

If those are the alternatives, then the odds are that Mr. Mugabe will publicly clutch his chest and insist that he must step down. There will still be risks of civil conflict and a military coup, but Zimbabwe would have a reasonable prospect of again becoming, as Mr. Mugabe once called it, “the jewel of Africa.”

Some people will object that a tyrant shouldn’t be rewarded with a pot of cash and a comfortable exile. That’s true. But any other approach will likely result in far more deaths, perhaps even civil war.

If only Mr. Mugabe were a white racist! Then the regional powers might stand up to him. For the sake of Zimbabweans, we should be just as resolute in confronting African tyrants who are black as in confronting those who are white.

Yoo Who

Combating evil with evil, bad with bad, wrong with wrong seldom achieves anything but a further plummet into despair and disregard. Thus, masking as the moral strong road in the global war on militant Islam, some of this country's leaders took it upon themselves to completely deviate from the Geneva Convention and the regard for basic human dignity. Time is not on the side of those who made these atrocious and narrow minded decisions; men who have never picked up a weapon and fought for anything with their own two hands, but rather find no difficulty in sending so many others to die, and condoning cruel and unusual punishment of captives. These strong men, courageous with the lives of so many others, urban cowboys, will be found and charged with war crimes. Time is not on their side.
Nowhere should this treatment be acceptable; least of all the United States. This administration has deviated so drastically from the path of righteousness and serving the better interest of the citizens; it is hard to imagine how, and if, we will regain credibility in the greater world. We, the citizens of this nation, deserve better than this.

Yesterday, two of the architects of the torture in Guantanamo Bay came before the House of Representatives Subcommittee to testify; they said nothing; they held their tongues; they were a practice in evasiveness so obvious it literally made me laugh in disgust. David Addington and John Yoo represent fully the ideals of this administration. Yet their testimony received almost no press coverage; strange, considering prodigious international repercussions of their actions.
Scott Horton, a NY Human Rights Attorney, said, "By and large, it was an exercise in dodge ball with the two witnesses avoiding the questions."


From Today's NYTimes:

Physicians for Human Rights has released a report, called “Broken Laws, Broken Lives,” that puts an appropriately horrifying face on a practice that is so fundamentally evil that it cannot co-exist with the idea of a just and humane society.

The report profiles 11 detainees who were tortured while in U.S. custody and then released — their lives ruined — without ever having been charged with a crime or told why they were detained. All of the prisoners were men, and all were badly beaten. One was sodomized with a broomstick, the report said, and forced by his interrogators to howl like a dog while a soldier urinated on him....The ostensible purpose of mistreating prisoners is to inflict pain and induce disorientation and despair, creating so much agony that the prisoners give up valuable intelligence in order to end the suffering. But torture is not an interrogation technique; it’s a criminal attack on a human being.

24 Hours for Darfur

sudanreeves.org

from sudanreeves.org:

Eric Reeves is Professor of English Language and Literature at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. He has spent the past nine years working full-time as a Sudan researcher and analyst, publishing extensively both in the US and internationally. He has testified several times before the Congress, has lectured widely in academic settings, and has served as a consultant to a number of human rights and humanitarian organizations operating in Sudan. Working independently, he has written on all aspects of Sudan's recent history. His book about Darfur ("A Long Day's Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide") was published in May 2007. (Read critical praise for A Long Day's Dying.) He is also at work on a longer-range project surveying the international response to ongoing war and human destruction in Sudan over the past 25 years ("Sudan — Suffering a Long Way Off").

What this bio does not mention is that Professor Reeves has terminal leukemia; he has dedicated his remaining days to documenting the genocide taking place in the Darfur region of Sudan, claimant of the title, First Genocide of the 21st Century. Reeves is a tireless crusader for the voiceless in Darfur; this is the example of a man who should be celebrated as celebrity in this country. I came across Eric Reeves while viewing PBS Frontline's documentary, On Our Watch, which details the chronological massacre of Darfurian citizens set against the almost equally horrifying inaction of the United Nations and world community. This is a powerful and sobering work, an important work, from Frontline.

Living up to reputation

"It is hard for me to find the words to express what a massive, fraudulent, pathetic excuse for an energy policy this is."
-Thomas Friedman on Bush's new "energy policy"


Quite simple, when is enough, well, enough? John Stewart has taken to calling him "Still President Bush." And that is the cruel truth; this man who has single handedly (well, with a few more hands of his inner circle, to share the blame a bit) destroyed American credibility overseas, hollowed out the middle class, repeatedly crippled and disregarded the Constitution and will go down in history as perhaps the worst U.S. leader of modern times. But before he bows out in disgrace, before retiring to the Fox News speaking circuit, he will do everything in his power to further enrich himself and his cronies, to derail any progressive legislation in the realm of energy security, and continue to spread fear and hatred as the twin pillars of his time in power. When is enough enough, Still President Bush?

Who Murdered the Virunga Gorillas?

Heavily armed militias shatter the stillness in this central African park. Desperate refugees crowd park boundaries. Charcoal producers strip forests. Then, last summer, someone killed seven of these magnificent creatures in cold blood.

I became encapsulated in National Geographic's July cover story; this was a story with so many layers, so much virulent suffering and struggle, a microcosm of the greater battle between man and man, and man and natural world.
This region of the planet, this godforsaken corner of Africa, has seen so many lives extinguished on its fertile red soils that news of seven more should not have penetrated the yawning gap that lies between the world of the suffering and the world of survival. Except this time, the seven lives that were taken were those of the endangered Mountain Gorilla, 7 of perhaps 700 still left on the planet, left to die at the whim of a cruel fate in the cruelest part of this world. News of these deaths permeated even the insular news outlets of the U.S.; I recall seeing a giant Silverback being carried on a crude stretcher of branches through green fields; I recall being deeply saddened by this sight; the closeness of our evolutionary anatomy struck my heart.

There is so much tribulation, so much pain, so much death here in eastern Congo, that eyes glaze over and even the most compassionate of minds becomes calloused. More have died here than anywhere else since the final days of World War 2; they continue to suffer an almost unimaginable fate, puppets controlled with the crude strings of sadistic marionettes.

The dismantling of the mountain gorilla's habitat for fuel charcoal and the valuable mineral resources that lie beneath the earth is one story not unique to this planet; a story of man's insatiable appetite for everything at the table, an appetite that knows no bounds, an appetite that will only be satiated when there is nothing left to eat. In this part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, corruption is simply a way of life. Congolese National Army soldiers ride out of the jungles on trucks packed with freshly produced charcoal, blowing past roadblocks, into the heart of darkness. Little immediate thought is given to the habitat destruction taking place as a result; the hardwoods being churned into charcoal will provide fuel for a destitute family living in a displaced persons camp for perhaps two months; this is such a cruel trade off; its hard to imagine what is morally right in a situation as depraved as this.

This is a story of rebel armies and ethnic hatred; of mass rape and economic pillaging; and of the unfortunate creatures stuck in the crossfire, who just happen to bear a striking similarity to their close relatives, those other creatures who have wrought so much horror. So simply put by the article's author, Mark Jenkins, "North Kivu is a Hieronymus Bosch painting come alive."

This is also a story of hope; of a brave few who swim against the tide of nepotism and criminally negligent national management; who still bring hope despite so many setbacks. Men like Paulin Ngobobo, a ranger who almost lost his life along with his troop of men, who were massacred at the hands of corrupted rebel armies...
"Paulin, one man, was now going up against a system of corruption that has existed in the Congo for 50 years. Naturally, he was immediately arrested. It is very dangerous to be a principled man in the Congo."



How To Help?
http://gorillafund.org/

Growing Divide

Veteran newsman Bill Moyers brought an eye opening report to his pulpit this week, discussing the income gap and inequalities in America, in the context of "The Next Gilded Age.". Awareness of this gap is crucial; most Americans are so busy either trying to keep up with their bills by working two or three jobs in addition to raising families, or on the divergent side, spending vast amounts of disposable income on incredible luxuries, that they do not notice the burgeoning divide in this country. It is more than a divide; it is a virulent chasm in our landscape. The middle class, in a traditional sense, has been all but wiped out in the last decade, replaced by mounting debt cycles and lower real wages for many than they were making 50 years ago. Concurrently, the rich and affluent continue to get richer; hedge fund managers make billions speculating on the sub prime mortgage market, profiteering off of other Americans' destroyed lives. The capitalists scream for capitalism, until trouble brews; then they run for government handouts and bailouts, just like the poor they so bemoan. And who pays the bills in America? Its the citizens, the very ones who struggle to make ends meet, the ones who end up bailing out white gloved Wall Street banks for their misdeeds. Moyers remarks, quite clearly, "The government is us. The Taxpayers." And us, we, make up this country, which is rotting from within. We can do better than this.

CEO's make hundreds of millions of dollars annually, while the workers they represent struggle to survive on minimum wage and no health benefits; the chasm in this country is growing, and along with this, the American ideal is vanishing, its insides being devoured by greed and disconcern.



As Per Moyers:
"Even as our streets and highways crumble, our schools gasp for help, and health care becomes more and more costly for those who are fortunate enough to have it, wealth is being so ostentatiously squandered that historians are calling this the Second Gilded Age."

And his guest, Steve Fraser, of The Wall Street Journal:
"...when you have such enormous disparities of income and wealth, there's a kind of warped set of priorities. So that the amassing of wealth and this was true of the first Gilded Age, comes at the expense of funneling vital capitol resources into improving the material lives and even the cultural lives of ordinary folk. Because we're living in the Second Gilded Age during a period of downward mobility for millions of Americans, even while the hedge fund managers are or others are accumulating this wealth."


And, as usual, it comes back to the government, the elected representatives of the citizens of the United States, tasked with being the voices of the many, who fail to hear the cries of their citizenry. They are, in most cases, beholden to only the great dollar; the dollar that allows them to campaign for another election, to maintain their personal grip on power and affluence. "Money is the golden rule of politics; those who have it, rule," says Moyers. And wealth, in the hands of the few, buys the policies that only work to further enrich these few; it is a vicious cycle, one in which the only winners are those lined up to the feeding troughs.

There will be nothing left for the rest of us when they finish eating.

Boob Tube

"...television is also a one-way medium. Individuals receive but they do not send, they listen but they do not speak, they are given information but they do not share it in return, they do not comment on it in ways that others can hear. Therefore, automatically, their ability to use the tools of reason as participants in the national conversation is suspended."
-Al Gore


Therein lies the promise of the internet. While most of the content is still a one way street, it marks a vast improvement over the dominating qualities of its predecessor; and a fundamental change in how things are thought about. This changing of the playing field, this seismic shift, occurs so rarely, that when it does, it is always profound. At the very least, the internet gives us more choice, and flattens the content-based playing field so those who are not backed by Wall Street still have the opportunity to have their voices heard; many of these voices were extinguished in the 1980's media consolidation. And opportunity is what freedom and democracy are built on.

"When information is freely available to individuals and flows unimpeded throughout the political or economic system, the important decisions are not always made by the same small group of people. "
-Gore