You will, I hope, forgive the length of this post. While we all know that there is ugliness happening throughout the world on our behalf, for our economic benefit, the bare truth of it never seems to reach the surface. It remains an idea for the background; seldom brought up and then only eliciting the odd pang of guilt before being buried once more. This is not a scolding -- I too can easily be accused to brushing these issues to one side.

Nevertheless, I am absolutely lost after processing this: A journey into the most savage war in the world. Would that I knew what to do about what I have just read, but I have no idea what that would be. Typing this, using this medium, while possibly cathartic, still seems to just mock the situation.

Some select portions of the article below. It gets very ... depressing doesn't really seem to be an appropriate description. If this is not the kind of thing you are wont to read, I can understand. Some of the quotes I've pulled are graphic and disturbing. (The wikipedia and United Nations versions are somewhat cleaner.)

This is the story of the deadliest war since Adolf Hitler’s armies marched across Europe. It is a war that has not ended. But is also the story of a trail of blood that leads directly to you: to your remote control, to your mobile phone, to your laptop and to your diamond necklace.
...

It starts with a ward full of women who have been gang-raped and then shot in the vagina. I am standing in a makeshift ward in the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, the only hospital that is trying to deal with the bushfire of sexual violence in Eastern Congo. Most have wrapped themselves deep in their blankets so I can only see their eyes, staring blankly at me. Dr Denis Mukwege is speaking. “Around ten percent of the gang-rape victims have had this happen to them,” he says softly, his big hands tucked into his white coat. “We are trying to reconstruct their vaginas, their anuses, their intestines. It is a long process.”
...

If you want to glimpse what all this death has been for, you drive four hours out of the town of Goma, on pocked and broken roller-coaster roads that melt into mud with the rain, until you reach a place called Kalehe. Scarring the lush green hills, there are what seem to be large red scabs that glisten in the sun. The technical term for these open wounds in the earth is ‘artisinal mines’, but this dry terminology conjures up images of technical digs with machines and lights and helmets. In reality, they are immense holes in the ground, in which men, women and children – lots of children – pick desperately with makeshift hammers or their bare hands at the red earth, hoping to find some coltan or cassiterite to set on the long conveyor belt to your house or mine. Coltan is a metal that conducts heat unusually brilliantly. It is contained in your mobile, your lap-top, your son’s Playstation – and 80 percent of the world’s supplies sit beneath the Democratic Republic of Congo.
...

Once the Congo was drenched in death, the UN commissioned a panel of international statesmen to travel the country and uncover the reasons behind the war. They found that the Rwandan government’s story hid a much darker truth. The Rwandans had one motive, right from the beginning: to seize Congo’s massive mineral wealth, to grab the coltan mine I am standing in now and thousands like it, and to sell it on to us, the waiting world, as we quickly flicked the channel away from the news of this war with our coltan-filled remote control. The other countries came in not because they believed in repelling aggression, but because they wanted a piece of the Congolese cake. The country was ravaged by “armies of business”, commanded by men who “carefully planned the redrawing of the regional map to redistribute wealth,” the UN declared.
...

The UN found that a Who’s Who of British, American and Belgian companies collaborated with this crime. The ones they recommended for further investigation included Anglo American PLC, Barclay’s Bank, Standard Chartered Bank and De Beers. The British government barely followed up the report, publicly acquitting a few corporations like Anglo-American who Human Rights Watch have shown to be “in league with some of the worst killers in the region”, and leaving others like De Beers in an “unresolved” and unpunished category.
...

Oh, and the reason why this invasion was so profitable? Global demand for coltan was soaring throughout the war because of the massive popularity of coltan-filled Sony Playstations. As Oona King, one of the few British politicians to notice Congo, explains as we travel together for a few days, “Kids in Congo were being sent down mines to die so that kids in Europe and America could kill imaginary aliens in their living rooms.”
...

By every Congolese roadside, there are women with ropes tearing into their foreheads as they bind a massive load onto their backs. With so few horses, so few cars and so few roads, starving women are used here as pack-horses, transporting anything that needs to be moved on their backs for fifty pence a day. They are given the quaint title of ‘porters’.
...

I realise it is not enough that our greed for resources started this war - it is vandalising any chance of bringing it to an end. While these state-building camps can offer only starvation and a sometimes-never $5 wage, UNICEF says the militias can are offering the same men $60-a-month to carry on seizing and raping and killing. They can afford it because they still control most of the coltan, gold and diamond mines, and Western and Chinese companies are still snapping up the sparklers they offer. So long as the militias can continue to use our money to outbid the national government in haggling for troops, there will never be a unified state in Congo, and life will continue to be a live-action replay of Thomas Hobbes’ bleakest descriptions.
...

Later, an aid agency head chastises the naivety of my questioning about Kabila. “In this country, all you can ask about a politician is - is this person corrupt and self-seeking and doesn’t give a damn about Congo, or is this person corrupt and self-seeking but wants what’s best for Congo too? Of course Kabila and his circle are corrupt. If they weren’t corrupt and self-seeking, they would have fallen at the first hurdle. To have power in this country you must be corrupt. It’s a corrupt system.” The best hope, it seems, is to drag Congo up from being a broken stateless warzone where millions die to being a bog-standard corrupt state.
...

Average life expectancy in Congo is now 43 and falling. I did not see any elderly people on my journey; they do not exist. In a country where the war is laughably referred to as “winding down”, a World Trade Centre-full of people is butchered every two days, and in the lost rural areas I could not reach, bubonic plague has made a triumphant come-back. A health minister says in despair, “I have been told by the UN to prepare a plan for avian flu. I had to write back and say I am powerless to deal with the plague, so what am I supposed to do about chickens?”
...

Today, we still buy, and the British government – along with the rest of the democratic world – obstructs any attempt to introduce legally enforceable regulations to stop corporations trading in Congolese blood. They ignore the UN’s warnings that “without the wealth generated by the illegal exploitation of natural resources arms cannot be bought, hence the conflict cannot be perpetuated” and insist that voluntary regulations – and asking corporations to be nice to Africans – is “the most effective route.”
...

It is only on my last day in Kinshasa, walking among the burned-out shells of buildings, that I realise what Congo reminds me of. In the movies from my 1980s childhood imagining what the world would be like after a nuclear winter, people were left to wander across a burned landscape, scavenging for the bare necessities of life. Water was contaminated. Food was sparse. Death was everywhere and inexplicable. Children suffered from brain damage en masse because of the malnutrition. Order was a memory, and the men with the biggest AK-47s ruled and raped. This is Congo, 2006.

Yeah that was a pretty funny movie. Like how everyone thought that Aaron was gay, and how his new friend also named Aaron thought he was gay as well. Lots of little things like that in the movie made it pretty interesting. Also the aspect of money and how it made all of Olivia's friends jaded, and crazy was pretty amusing. And how in the end her new boyfriend who was loaded, had people "issues" and how Olivia said she had "issues" as well. Pretty much she's going to end up like her "crazy" friends. Not the worst movie ever like how that one guy on IMDB put it, but I can see why someone might say this movie made them ashamed to be a white person. And I would like to end on a quote that pretty much sums up the movie for me:

" The feeling of wanting is more special then the feeling of having."
-Anoynomus (sic)

it was actually quite good, in my opinion. but i like movies like that... stories about lives, not necessarily about a specific event or any special story, just lives as they happen. really quite funny, I laughed a lot, and, well, I think I'd recommend it to a number of you all.


The previews held one for a movie I think we should all go to, once it's out: Art School Confidential. It looks pretty incredible, and it has John Malkovich in it, so I don't think you can go wrong.

holy crap, George Clooney turned 45 today (the 6th, technically yesterday, but since I haven't slept yet, it's 'today'). granted he doesn't look young, who'd've thought he was 45? or maybe men just become timeless as they age... or maybe just he does...

haha, Albert, someone also said the movie made them ashamed to be white. should be interesting, don't you think?

I'll give your movie a try Alison, but some dude on IMDB called it the worst movie ever! If you know me this means I'll want to watch it more!

Well, in the name of spending time watching movies with friends, I'm spreading the word...

Friends With Money at the Princess 7pm, tonight. (it's likely a chick-flick, just to pre-warn you)

Taylor, maybe they can't handle the blood and guts. sometimes one's sense of what's 'cool' is entirely different from other people, not that there's anything wrong with that. I've seen movies with horridly gory scenes that I, too, thought were cool, but others nearly puked. And I've been in the reverse, where I nearly puked too. So, you know, it can happen.


In other news, Access TV (channel 9) has the PRINCESS BRIDE on right now


thanks, Percy and Albert for the words. It's not a new feeling for me. certainly wanderlust is something I've had for years (and it gets stronger each time I travel somewhere). I fight a rather strong urge to drive out to the highway each time I hit the whitemud. I think things are just starting to come to a head because I've committed to this thing for probably 2-3 years, and it's different from an undergrad because there's so much more on me, and it's a commitment one can't get out of like taking a year off of your bachelor's, plus I've roped people in to vouching for me, and putting a mountain of faith in me. And yesterday was weird. suddenly I had my supervisors talking to me, helping me plan things, but I still was left with this feeling of missing substance. We spent four hours planning things and got as far as me burying temperature sensors in the ground, nothing much else. hopefully things will improve. I know Simon's looking out for me, so I have 1/2 of my super-crew at least!

june 6th, 2006.

666?

I did two awesome things last night:

1. I drank beer and ate deer.
2. I watched Silent Hill.

After band practice I went to my friend's parent's house. Her dad was excited to have me over because he only has 2 daughters and so there's hardly ever any guys in the house. So as soon as I walk in the door he's like "hey, here's a beer" and he promptly turns on the hockey game. It was pretty wicked. And then he barbecued deer steaks for us! Man, I never ate deer before but it was pretty tasty. We also made baked potatoes with swiss cheese and fried mushrooms, and ate bean-salad and cheese bread on the side. It was awesome.

Then we went to see Silent Hill. It was pretty good actually. But it wasn't nearly as scary as I had hoped it would be. Rather, it was mostly just "gross". But the good kind of gross that makes you go "coooooolll", so it was pretty fun visually. There were hardly any people in the theater at all, but even still I counted 6 people walking out on the movie. Man, they must be real pussies because I honestly didn't find anything scary about it. But then again, I semi-regularly have dreams that are as equally fucked up as that so maybe I'm abnormally used to that shit. If I was to compare that movie to anything, I would say it's similar to the movie "the Cell" except with better actors and a much better storyline. The reason I say this is because the Cell isn't particularly scary either, but it likewise has a lot of twisted visuals. There was this one part where this demon-girl holds up her arms and they light on fire and I was just like "my wrists are on fire". That shit cracked me up. But seriously, that movie is just fucked up enough that you should probably go see it.

Alison, it sounds like the problem you are describing requires a number of decisions. I'm not sure what's been going on but I think you have to deal with your super. You feel as if your life will be dictated from week to week. That only tells me that you've been sucked into life's pace. I say decide on what you're going to do and if you don't know where you're going with your life then make it up and happen.

Fight Alison! You're of the most intelligent people I know and I expect you to stomp on all who oppose you (figure of speech).