Miscellany

I post this image in response to a comment by Frances Madeson on this previous post. This haunting image of a manacled person with schizophrenia in Beni, Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) entered into this story.

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If you don't read BDR's blog, BLCKDGRD, every day, you're missing something, whether it's politics, local news and sports, literature, music, poetry, or out-and-out or merely-tongue-in-cheek curmudgeonry. He misses little. For example, in this post, he refers to my previous post about Congo and Nicholas Kristof's important op-ed piece in Sunday's New York Times in the same sentence. The more attention brought to this seeming intractable humanitarian crisis the better.

BDR's clearly paying attention and has proven himself a true blegfriend over and over again. Frankly, I don't see how he finds the time to do what he does without getting paid.

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Over the weekend, there was a little get-together of about 600 people in Nashville, Tenn. You may have heard about it; they called themselves a tea party. Personally, I'm not sure why such a minuscule gathering garnered so much press and publicity and commentary in the media and around the blogosphere. You'd've thought it was a million-man march or a multi-city, multi-million person protest against the plan to invade Iraq (which didn't get anywhere near as much press). Even though I watched it on C-Span, I was planning to ignore Sarah Palin's closing keynote address. It was shallow. It lacked any sort of logic or reasoning. It was all ATTITUDE. But here's the thing: Andrew Sullivan, a former conservative Republican, heard the same speech and, as his ear is experientially attuned to the dog-whistles of the right wing, came away with a very different appreciation here and here. As he says, it was pure sophistry (something I wrote about recently here in my two "Feck" posts). Yet:

It was the most electrifying speech I have heard from a leader of the GOP since Reagan.

She can electrify a crowd. She has the kind of charisma that appeals to the sub-rational. and she has crafted a Peronist identity - utterly fraudulent, of course - that is political dynamite in a recession with populism roiling everyone and everything. She is Coughlin with boobs - except with a foreign policy agenda to expand Israel and unite with it in a war against Islam.

Do not under-estimate the appeal of a beautiful, big breasted, divinely chosen warrior-mother as a military leader in a global religious war.

I cannot vouch for his conclusion, but it does give me pause.

Family of Values: Humanity, Pt. 2

Even if you've been paying attention, you might not be aware that there's a humanitarian crisis going on in Central Africa. According to this article from the BBC, "The number of people killed in a decade of war in the Democratic Republic of Congo may be half of the accepted toll of 5.4 million, a study has suggested." Still, that means that close to 3 million people have been killed in DRC in the last ten years. Did you know that?

What is the civil war about? Poverty? No doubt. Ethnic hostilities? Sure, but these have been manipulated by outside interests seeking access to the region's most important resource: minerals. Sound familiar? No, I'm not talking about 'unobtainium', but close. According to this article by the Corporate Social Responsibility Newswire, "The DRC is one of the most mineral-rich countries in the world, with sizeable deposits of gold, tantalum, tin and tungsten. The majority of the minerals are smuggled to neighboring countries where they are sold to smelters, and ultimately find their way into products such as cell phones, laptops, and video games, as well as components for automobiles, airplane engines, and medical devices." Ever hear of 'coltan'—no, I hadn't either. Yet, apparently it's a crucial element in such conveniences as cell phones, computer chips, and nuclear reactors.

There are also diamonds. Did you know that Pat Robertson, the television huckster who claimed on his religion-themed informercial, the 700 Club, that the Haitian people deserved the devastation of the recent earthquake because they had made a "pact to the devil," owned a private diamond mine in Eastern Congo? According to investigative reporter Greg Palast:

"Through an emotional fundraising drive on his TV station, Robertson raised several million dollars for the tax-free charitable trust. Operation Blessing bought planes to shuttle medical supplies in and out of the refugee camp in Goma, Congo (then Zaire).

But investigative reporter Bill Sizemore of the Virginian Pilot discovered that over a six-month period - except for one medical flight - the planes were used to haul equipment for something called African Development Corporation, a diamond mining operation a long way from Goma. African Development is owned by Pat Robertson."

And that's to say nothing of the potential devastation to the habitat of the endangered mountain gorillas, of which there may be only some 700 individuals in the wild.

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Sometimes fiction can illuminate situations. Here's a story from the current Journal of War, Literature & the Arts about the region, its beauty and its brutality, its gorillas and its guerillas. [Full disclosure: I have what you might call an intimate knowledge of the author (as well as that grinning jackass in the photo above from 1988).]