My World of Politics

For all of you dog lovers ...

2005-04-19T06:32:00.000-07:00

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?

Read the article

Does this really make a difference?

2005-04-18T06:52:00.000-07:00

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!

Read this article

Call that a democracy?

2005-04-12T14:01:00.000-07:00

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?

2005-04-11T13:43:00.000-07:00

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

2005-04-08T06:40:00.000-07:00

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

2005-03-29T10:12:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-24T08:46:00.000-08:00

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.

Easier than we thought?

2005-03-21T09:41:00.000-08:00

In the editorial section of today's washingtonpost.com, Sebastian Mallaby wrote a piece titled "Easy Ways to Aid Africa." Mallaby makes some excellent points which should probably be noted by first world countries concerned about giving aid.

Africa is in no doubt the most destitute region in the world. The majority of the population lives below the poverty line and many children are lucky to survive infancy. However, instead of pushing more aid in helping the struggling continent recover, from a legacy of violence and ill-fated boundary lines drawn during the days of colonialism, most people have given up. That Africa is hopeless, and helping them would cost impossible amounts, seems to be a worldwide belief.

However, as Mallaby points out, the world thought the same thing about Asia in the 1960s. Today, while many nations are still struggling, the continent is a totally separate world from Asia! Life expectancies have doubled in many of the nations and while the standard of living is nowhere near that to Western standards, most citizens are living much better than they were 40 years ago.

The Commission for Africa is calling for and extra $25 billion in annual aid to Africa, in which the U.S. would probably be on the hook for $12 billion. That equals .1 percent of the U.S. economy. Americans spend about $9 billion a year on movie tickets!

Blockbuster anyone?

Mallaby also pointed out several steps wealthy countries could do to aid Africa that would be free, one of the biggest which is to stop hiding corrupt money stolen by government officials in Western banks. Nigeria's government is currently fighting to retrieve money stolen by their former dictator, Sani Abacha. The Swiss have returned $458 million, but the British have only returned a fraction of the millions in their bank accounts. And yet, rich countries are more than prepared to force banks to cooperate in tracking terrorist finances. While not equal discretion on dictator finances?

When medicine clashes with tradition.

2005-03-18T06:52:00.000-08:00

Sierra Leone is struggling to over come an internal conflict that cost thousands of lives. However, when it comes to a tradition that can also cost lives, there is no problem with that.

When the president's wife sponsors the circumcision of 1,500 young girls to win votes for her husband, there is going to be a problem informing the populace of the dangers involved and why the practice should stop.

Female genital mutilation is a crudely performed operation to remove the clitoris from adolescent girls. The practice forms a key part of initiation ceremonies held by powerful , women-only secret societies that prepare young girls for adult life, marriage, and motherhood in many African countries.

Writing on this issue is a struggle for me. On the one hand, I want to respect the culture and beliefs of other societies. On the other hand, this just seems so brutal and wrong! Anything that involves the word mutilation just seems like a crime against humanity.

However, there seems to be little hope of the practice stopping in Sierra Leone any time soon, or of even convincing young girls that they have a choice. The Minister of Social Welfare, Gender, and Women's Affairs has threatened to sew up the mouths of those who preach against female genital mutilation.

The Crime worse than Murder?

2005-03-11T12:50:00.000-08:00

Yugoslavia. And what so many don't realize, is that often the targets of rape are Muslim females who are unable to marry after the crime. As such females are mainly valued for marriage and the production of male children, their lives are utterly ruined.

More than 40,000 rapes in Congo's two eastern provinces were reported during the 5-year civil war. Gunmen gang-raped children as young as three, according to the human rights group, and often raped women and young girls - some to the point of death - in front of their families. Boys and men have also been raped by the armed gangs.

While tens of thousands of rapes have been reported, thousands of others are thought to have been unreported. Many young girls are afraid to report rape to their parents or to authorities, for often they are blamed. Many of the victims die from lack of medical attention after being raped, and some commit suicide rather than seek help.

After all, what help is there when you life seems to be over?

What happens to the children we don't take care of?

2005-03-08T10:53:00.000-08:00

A new report, published by the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS warns of a possible link between AIDS orphans and future terrorists.

The organization is claiming that the steady stream of AIDS orphans in Africa, a place completely infiltrated by several key terrorist organizations, pose as the perfect targets for terrorist recruitment.

Why?

Let's think about this. These children have nothing, no parents, probably little family, and have lived a life of sadness and disease. In addition, hundreds of thousands of children have already fought in battles throughout Africa, in countries like Angola, Uganda, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda to name a few. So if a terrorist leader comes forth and preaches the idealism behind Islam, and the point of suicide bombings and the rewards that come in the next life from doing such a "noble cause", what's going to stop these children?

If they already have AIDS, and know that no one is coming to help them, what do they have to live for?

On top of that, the Islamic Jihad has been running schools throughout Africa to teach these students how to become suicide bombings. Someone takes these children in, feeds them, and tells them that their short and currently worthless lives can become worthwhile.

It seems the long years of neglect of these African nations is finally having an affect in this world. Watch out America, or perhaps it would be better to help out, all over the world, if it's not too late.

To see a Voice of America article on the topic, click here: http://www.voanews.com/english/Africa/2005-01-28-voa43.cfm

Polio - It Still Exists?

2005-03-01T09:09:00.000-08:00

The crippling disease of polio. To me, it was always a thing of the past, an event from my grandmother's era. Sure, I knew of a few names of individuals who suffered from this disease, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, but once more, it was in the past.

The vaccination was created in 1952. That's well over 50 years ago. Today, in 2005, scientists and doctors finally hope to completely eradicate polio.

(To see the story on this, follow the link)
http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/02/25/westafrica.polio.ap/index.html

I think it's fantastic, a wonderful medical breakthrough. But in an age where I can talk to someone in Africa or Asia instantly, this major breakthrough seems a little slow.

Perhaps it was an impossibility any sooner. After all, the violence and ongoing civil conflicts in Africa make it difficult to access many of the local children. Yet, 13 countries that are currently facing the illness were once polio-free.

In the next few days, health officials hope to vaccinate more than 100 million children in 22 West African and Central African countries. Good for them. Hopefully, movements such as this will spread onto other worldwide issues.

The Somali Crisis

2005-03-01T07:18:00.000-08:00

Several weeks ago the world was shocked, stunned, and saddened after the death of BBC producer and journalist Kate Peyton in Somalia.

Why?

By the why, I don't refer to the saddened part. Obviously, everyone will mourn the loss of a good journalist who died while doing her duty. But shocked? Surprised? In Somalia?

Has the world forgotten, now that the movie Black Hawk Down is no longer in theaters, just what the conditions are like in this hostile nation? The country has been controlled by rival warlords since 1991. That's over 13 years. The UN and U.S. tried to quell the violence, that has led to the deaths of thousands of people, but fled with their tail between their legs after several U.S. troops were violently murdered, their bodies dragged through the streets. Since then, Somalia has been a land of famine and hostilities, as its people have struggled to survive amidst raging warlord battles.

If the world had forgotten, then the bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in 1999 should have reminded them. The terrorists that were behind the attacks were based out of Somalia.

Somalia is now virtually a breeding ground for terrorists, rebel groups, and the lowest scum of the earth. The country is struggling to pull itself together, with the 14th attempt at national government finally returning to Mogadishu. However, the president is not well liked, being linked to a northern tribal area, which is not popular in southern Somalia. And the African Union plan to send in peacekeeping soldiers had been flat out refuted by the Mogadishu natives, who fear the motive of the incoming Ethiopian troops due to a dispute from several years ago. If these soldiers are sent into this hostile area, their days could be numbered.

The U.S. is fighting a war on terrorism. There are terrorists all over the world, there always have been, and there always will be. But would events such as the war in Iraq truly be necessary if the U.S. spent more time in humanitarian missions in countries such as Somalia, in an attempt to help stabilize the region? If the terrorists don't have hiding places, it's much harder to operate.

Welcome to the War on Terrorism

2005-02-22T10:12:00.000-08:00

You've got to hand it to the Bush administration. They are really good at taking charge, then blaming everyone else when things go wrong.

A little over three years ago, we started the war on terrorism. The war began for various reasons, which really depends on who you are, what your background beliefs are, etc., etc. I'm not going to bother going into whether or not the war is right or wrong. But an article from Reuters last week needs to be examined, to see just where the U.S.'s priorities are.

According to the article, Porter Goss, who was at the time head of the CIA, and the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, the constant turmoil in Africa is undermining the fight against terrorism and the region has become fertile ground for recruitment.

"In Africa, chronic instability will continue to hamper counterterrorism efforts and pose heavy humanitarian and peacekeeping burdens," says Goss. Well duh.

Africa has been the most destabilized, insecure region in the world for decades. While all of the other continents have their troubled areas, in Africa, just about anything seems to go. So why are we so surprised that this turmoiled continent is now the ideal breeding ground for terrorists? Afterall, who even knows they are there, or would care to stop them?

In addition, what has the U.S. government ever done to counter this threat? Obviously, we all remember the humiliating advance into Somalia in 1992. But since then, Africa has remained largely dead on the government screen. Perhaps a little humanitarian aid here, we'll ignore a little genocide there, but what have they ever done to deal with this extreme terrorist threat? Absolutely nothing.

The U.S. government has known that Africa was a breeding ground for Al-Qaida since the embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998. That's 3 years before 9/11 and the start of the war on terrorism. So the next time the Bush administration starts looking for Al-Qaida in Iraq, maybe we should point them south.

Click here to see the article: http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7652049

Why is the World So Messed Up?

2005-02-07T15:27:00.000-08:00

The world is more advanced than it has ever been before. We can talk to people across the world in about 10 seconds. With electronic mail, receivers get their messages instantly. Diseases are being cured, or at least better treated. We can travel across the Atlantic Ocean in about 3 hours.

So why is the world so messed up?

By messed up, I would refer to the hundreds of people starving to death throughout the world everyday. I'd refer to the children throughout much of Africa, Asia, and South America who are dying from diseases whose cures were discovered 50 years ago. In many of these same areas, people flee their countries, leaving their homes behind, everyday, seeking out another place that just might, might be a little bit safer, if they survive the journey.

Yet, so many of these stories are never heard. The American media often chooses to leave this stories out. These are poor people in troubled areas, what else should we expect? Why should we care, or even know, what is happening to them?

I think that we need to know, and that these stories should be on the front page of the paper, not hidden in the back. If there is 100 people dying in the Democratic Republic of Congo everyday, then we should know! If the Bolivian government is in turmoil, then we should know! We should know about the everyday, poor quality of life in the majority of the countries in the world, not just when some catastrophy occurs.

I'm currently a senior college student studying conflict resolution. Unless we know about these problems, we can't fix them. Therefore, this will be a board about the real issues in the world - not just problems in Iraq and Israel. This board will discuss the horrible living conditions and atrocities committed that the U.S. government doesn't bother looking at, because the countries are small, poor, and in no way beneficial to us. This board will discuss the conflicts in South America, Africa, and Asia, that may include war, famine, rebel disturbances, everything that the world needs to acknowledge. The truth cannot be swept under the rug forever.