For all of you dog lovers ...

The world of politics doesn't always have to be harsh and heavy. Take a recent article I found on the search engine, Factiva, recently as an example.

Apparently, nearly 1,000 people dressed in black and protested throughout the streets in the Brazilian city of Pelotas last Saturday to protest the recent killing of a dog.

That's right people, a dog. Now I am a certified dog lover, but I have to admit I grew up near Baltimore City (Maryland, USA) where a protest over the murder of a child was rare! Perhaps we simply lack the Brazilian spirit?

Anyway, to continue the story, participants in the protest brought hundreds of pet dogs, after a group of young men tied a female dog to the bumper of a car and dragged her for several blocks 2 weeks earlier, killing the animal. The protesters traced the route along which the dog was dragged and held a rally at a nearby plaza, where emotional speeches and prayers were given over the dead dog and demonstrators then sang the national anthem.

Talk about spirit! I think it's amazing that Americans are currently dealing with school shootings, a war in Iraq, and questionable politicians, but we can't get protesters out in force at all!

Maybe it's time for a trip south?

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Does this really make a difference?

Does it ever seem like the United Nations is always two steps behind? Now obviously, that's probably in their nature - they are more of a reactive group, not a preventive agency. However, sometimes I have to wonder just what the point in their declarations are.

Point in case.

The U.N. Security Council has now widened an international arms embargo to include all rebel and militia groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Any violators of this will be punished with a travel ban and a freezing of assets.

Reality check here. The conflict in the DRC has been going on for over 7 years now and has involved 6 countries. The rebels are already fully armed to the teeth, and the reason the ban has been imposed is because many of them have refused to disarm.

Does it really matter if they don't get more weapons if they aren't giving up the ones they have now? The DRC is a society where the militiamen have just as many, if not more, weapons than the government and U.N. peacekeeping forces combating them. And if they ever run out, they will simply adopt the tactics of their neighbors in Uganda and simply mutilate their victims with machetes, knives, or anything else they can get.

On top of that, surrounding nations are expected to keep a registry of all flights. Right, so by surrounding nations we're looking at the countries of Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Central African Republic, the Congo, Angola, and Zambia. These countries have no idea who is living where or how to feed their residents, not to mention the internal or disease related conflicts that many of these countries are currently facing.

While the theory behind the U.N. sanction is good, the reality will be nothing. This will not stop any rebel group from getting arms - from any of those neighboring countries, nor will it help the conflict. It's simply a statement that the U.N. is unhappy with the militiamen, which is something they could care less about.

Better luck next time!

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Call that a democracy?

You almost have to wonder just what the term democracy means today. If you compare most of the countries in Europe to the U.S. or Canada or Australia, you'd discover a totally different meaning to the world democracy. But the country that really takes the cake on this one is Zimbabwe.

For those of you who don't know anything about this South African country, the president has ruled since the late 1980s. Not a big deal, but the problem is the way he is currently remaining in power.

Parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe took place on March 31. President Mugabe's ruling party, the ZANU-PF, won a sweeping two-thirds majority. Of course, if you consider the fact that all opposition supporters were harassed, intimidated, and threatened with starvation, that's not a big surprise. Through in the fact that Mugabe announced four days before the election that anyone who voted for the opposition was a traitor, it becomes even less surprising. And if you add in all of the ghost voters - votes counted that number thousands above the number of those registered to vote in certain areas, what's surprising is that the opposition got any seats.

The presidential elections in 2002 were even worse. Hundreds of people were arrested, violent protests abounded, and countless lives were lost. Both elections have been declared fraudulent by the European Union and the U.S., but it has little effect on the ruling party or Mugabe. The president even traveled to Rome for the pope's funeral last week, ignoring a travel ban that keeps him and his ruling party members out of all EU or U.S. controlled areas.

So what's the problem? Well for one thing, 70 percent of the population is facing starvation. Mugabe began a land reform plan in 2000 that takes white owned farmland and gives it to landless black farmers. At least that's what it's supposed to do. In reality, the white farmers have been pushed off of their land, but the land was then given to Mugabe's friends, who know nothing about farming and don't care. As a result, the land lies idle, and a country that was once a breadbasket for surrounding countries is now threatened with total famine.

When did children become the target?

As many as 20 children die per day in refugee camps in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, due to disease and a lack of clean water. For anyone like me who is horrible at math, that's 7,300 children per year. These children are the ones killed simply from disease, not from actual violence or fighting from the conflict.

For years, Lendu militias have targeted rival Hema tribespeople with murderous raids and massacres. Needless to say, the Hema respond by killing Lendu civilians. Raids have become almost daily and have spread throughout the Ituri province.

About 75,000 people have fled the violence to squalid refugee camps, camps that are unable to provide for those who left everything behind. And while the U.N. has a presence at the camp, that is more to protect the starving inhabitants from future attacks than to ensure their survival, as such camps are often the target of tribal militias.

What's even more stunning is what is killing these children. Most of them are victims of either diarrhea or the measles, diseases that are far from life-threatening in Western civilizations. Children make up nearly 80 percent of the camp populations, and humanitarian workers simply cannot help them all, despite offering round-the-clock service. Most people in the camp eat only every two days.

Fighting in the Congo has left more than 50,000 dead in Ituri since 1999, and Jan Egeland, the U.N. humanitarian chief has named the Congo conflict as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. And the Ituri conflict is merely part of a war that killed nearly 4 million before its end in 2002.

For more information: http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/africa/03/26/congo.victims.ap/index.html

China vs. Japan

Anyone who knows their history will have to admit that China has a right to be angry about the Japanese glossing over less favorable parts of there history - mainly massacres during WWII.
To a point, that is.

In a way, this seems almost like one criminal pointing their finger at another. If you look at Chinese textbooks, they have only one version of history. That version is whatever the communist government says it is going to be. And don't even think about questioning it - they'll likely shoot you.

Chinese textbooks do not mention that there were people killed at Tiananmen square - never mind the fact that has also been classified as a massacre. And the thousands of people who have disappeared under China's communist government? No mention of them either.

While Japan needs to admit to its past, what country in the world can claim otherwise about themselves? Most Western countries have also committed horrible atrocities, that are often glossed over.

So in regards to the Chinese government, this is simply a scenario of the pot calling the kettle black.

Going beyond the field of war

A recent editorial by Marc Lacey in the New York Times discusses how there are two different ways of dying in Africa's wars. One, the obvious one, is violence. Children and villagers in the Congo and Sudan are killed by militiamen and rebels, who often use crude methods to dispense death, such as the use of machetes.

The other, which would seem to equate life and not death, is flight. Millions of people flee their homes into the forests of Congo or the deserts of Sudan, and then arrive in refugee camps where they are surrounded by disease instead of food and relief.

The vast majority of those who die in African war zones are not killed directly by warriors. Rather, they are killed by the disruption that a few thousand armed men maurading in militias can create in the lives of millions of civilians they force to flee.

When these people flee, they leave everything they have behind. They have no food, no shelter, and no clothing other than what they're wearing. And even if they go back, untilled fields and burned shelters leave them destitute and starving.

Many times aid workers - who number way to few in conflicts such as these - are blocked from reaching the camps by further violence.

At camp Kakwa, near Lake Albert in the Congo, aid workers say that two or three people are dying each day in a camp of 5,000 people. There are many cases of severe diarrhea with dehydration, which is a leading killer in camps like this. A woman delivered her baby and then bled for several days and eventually just stopped breathing.

Jan Egeland, the U.N.'s top emergency relief official, estimated that 180,000 people may have died in Darfur of illness and malnutrition, far more than those who were shot, stabbed, bombed, or burned. The Democratic Republic of Congo is currently ranked as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world; Sudan is second.

One of the world's many forgotten conflicts

Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). The LRA claims that it's goal is to replace the government with one based on the biblical Ten Commandments.

As a Christian, I have to wonder if these rebels are talking about the same Bible that I read.

The group is notorious for terrorizing the population in northern Uganda, slaughtering innocent civilians like cattle. In the past month alone, the rebels have disfigured more than a dozen females by cutting off their lips, and just last week, they chopped off the lips, ears, and breasts of seven women.

There are no plastic surgeons in Uganda to repair the damage. The victims are lucky to see a doctor or make it to a hospital.

But perhaps what the LRA is most notorious for is their use of children. Throughout the conflict, more than 20,000 children have been abducted, to serve as fighters, porters, or sex slaves. A recent report by Agence France Presse described the story of a 13-year-old girl lucky enough to escape.

"We walked long distances in the bush . . . We were forced to batter to death those who couldn't carry on walking because their feet were swollen."

"Many children died of thirst . . . Sometimes we used to drink our own urine to survive or someone would ask for your urine while thirsty and she could drop dead when you refused."

This story in Uganda is simply one of the world's many forgotten conflicts, where children are not allowed to be children and neighbors dying daily is a common occurrence.