Blood Diamond

I just saw Blood Diamond last night. This came out in December, while we were still coping with the leftover schedule of the wedding, so I didn't get a chance to see it at the time. I see the value of not going to see it in the theatres: if I saw it in the theatres, Heidi would have seen it with me, and she has an issue with overly intense, overly violent movies. This was one of those.

It's set in Sierre Leone, during a civil war in which the government was bad, and the rebels were worse. The RUF (Rebel United Front) attacked and burned villages, killing everybody but the boys that they could brainwash and use as combatants, and the men who would make good slaves for the diamond mines. With these diamonds, they would buy weapons with which they would carry on the fight with the government. It was very similar to my concept of hell.

This show is primarily focused on the RUF, as Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) was one of the men taken for labor in the diamond pits, but not before he gets his family on their way to relative saftey (compared to the rebel extermination of the village). During his slavery, he does find a huge, nearly perfect pink diamond (astonishingly rare and expensive), and manages to hide it from the rebel leader, burying it near the camp. Meanwhile, Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio, doing an exceptionally convincing South African accent) is a weapons dealer, being paid by the rebels in diamonds, and subsequently smuggling them across the border to sell them. Eventually the two come together, (more manipulated by Archer than by chance), and they subsequently set off in search of Solomon's family and the diamond.

It's an interesting and complex plot, but the biggest aspect of the film that stands out to me is the chaos the country is going through. I've seen a fair share of the chaos that happens with warlords throughout Africa on various TV shows and films, and by nature these are fictional accounts. But I know that horrible things are being done in Darfur, and I have doubts that it's much different than depicted. Certainly, Blood Diamond was only showing the horror of life plagued by these gangs of rebels, and not that African life is pretty similar to life everywhere else most of the time, but the horror is still pretty horrible.

I'm sure that was the point of the movie, and not so much the story (although the story was pretty good as well). It was a pretty heavy-handed call for people to do something about the hell in Africa. There's even a dialogue between Solomon and Jennifer Connelly's character (who is a journalist that ends up working with Danny and Solomon):

Solomon: Will [the American people] do anything?
JC: No. They might send a check, but that's about
it.

There are a few quips from Jennifer Connelly's character that talk about how the chaos and horror they're witnessing might be shown "between sports and the weather." Or that "the world is falling apart, and all they talk about is [the Clinton sex scandal]."

My own reaction to this was a sort of resigned acceptance. In America, we simply don't hear about what's going down in various other countries, simply because it's deemed unimportant or not ratings-friendly. It's also a little discouraging to be reminded just how messed up the world can be. I find myself overwhelmed to the point that I don't even know how to start, even in prayer.

So yeah, it's a good movie, and I'm glad I saw it, but I'm not sure I can recommend it. It's good, but be prepared to be really uncomfortable for a couple hours (or maybe an hour and a half... the last half hour is much more of a Hollywood movie).

People are cool

So first off, let me apologize for making it a slow blog month. I had a bit of blogger's malaise. Can't say I'm over it, but I was thinking about this today, and thought I'd share it.

People are cool. At my workplace, there are pictures of people around Chicago, not really doing anything; there's a picture of a Hasidic Jewish family (with a beautiful little kid) sitting in Union Station. There's a steelworker looking at something work-related off camera. There's a fat guy screaming out his orders on the trading floor of the Merck. There's an old man bowing his head before the wind on a cold, blustery day (hmmm, haven't seen much of that lately, have we?). Just pictures of people. Complex and different. Diverse and unique.

And then I look at all the people out on the roads. Take a drive down a highway at rush hour (I don't, I take the train, but work with me). Look at all the cars coming at you the other way. Each one has at least one person in there, possibly more. Each of those hundreds, if not thousands, of people has a story as complex as your own. Maybe a little more or less eventful, but they have the same ups and downs and cool stories and quirky relatives and aspirations and dreams and regrets and needs as you do. And that's only a fraction of people in this metropolitan area. Then there are the millions of people in other individual cities across the globe. Thinking about one city is mind-boggling enough, thinking of another specific one is even moreso.

It has been going through my mind lately: people are cool. Yes, people have their crap. You do, I do, someone else does. Not everybody lives to their potential, and a lot of people live in a half-stupor (yes, I'm speaking from personal experience). But when you open your eyes and see the world, how it's created, how the people in it live, thrive and survive in it, it's freakin' wonderful.

And yes, it's an epiphany, but it doesn't keep me loving everybody all the time. Just more appreciative of them.

Darfur

I recently learned of the genocide of Black Africans in Darfur from Jake's blog. I will post his post in it's entirety (updating it to include hotlinks). Please spread the word. Please contact someone. Please do something.

In about ten years people are going to go see a movie about Darfur, Sudan and they are going to ask why did the world let it happen?

When Hotel Rwanda came out three years ago people were asking how could the world let that happen? The world watched that movie and got angry, just like when Schindler's List came out and everyone asked, "How could that happen?" Why did the world let that happen?

Well, right now in Darfur, Sudan the Sudanese government is allowing (encouraging) a militia group called the Janjaweed to track down and kill Black Africans. The Janjaweed are Arab Africans, which constitutes this as an ethnic cleansing. The low estimate for number of people killed is 200,000 but the number could be as high as 400,000. However, because the Sudanese government is in control and won't let anybody in for any kind of official count, nobody really knows.

The methods of the Janjaweed are fairly simple. When it comes to men they kill them. When it comes to women rape is the preferred method. More specifically, gang rape. Militia will track down young women and literally bite their flesh to mark them as rape victims then rape them. If there is a group of soldiers then it is likely that the young women will be gang raped. The bite marks are designed to bring shame to the woman and her family. There are stories of older sisters sacrificing themselves to rape in order to save their little sisters. Children and Senior Citizens are beaten and killed. Villages are burned while people are still in their homes.

The refugees try to make it to safety in Chad but the Janjaweed have begun to travel to Chad to continue the pursuit. There is no way of efficiently protecting the borders so the Janjaweed can more or less do whatever they want.

I'm writing this blog post in response to a conversation I had with my friend Erin. We were talking about this subject and she said, " I don't think people know about it." Well I know a handful of people read this post, maybe they will tell others.

After Rwanda, Senator Paul Simon of said, " If a hundred people in every district would have written their congressman and demanded action things would have been done." We as a world community have a chance to stop this; the world has been destroying Africa for thousands of years. We use them for slaves, diamonds, and so many other resources. We ignore their cries for help in AIDS and other tragedies. It is time to start doing something for them.

When pressure has been applied to Sudan they have backed off, they don't stop but they back off. When the world takes their eyes off it strikes up again. Put pressure on them.

Here are some resources

Find your congressman at http://www.senate.gov/

Contact the White House at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

Please visit http://www.savedarfur.org/content and learn about this.

If you have iTunes go to the store and go to NBC's section and download a free news report with Ann Curry. It is under video but you don't need a video iPod to play it.

In the mean time please keep Darfur in your prayers. Please pray for God's justice in this land. Please pray for the ears of the world's leaders to be open to the cries of the refugees.

It is hard for one person to change the world, I would even say impossible. But if enough people care and if enough people do something about evil then the world will respond.

Please Don't Wait For The Movie

Proverbs 24:11-12 Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say, " But we knew nothing about this," Does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay each person according to what he has done?"

World AIDS Day

It's slow at work because of the obscene amount of snow we're having right now (fewer people in the office, fewer people asking for stuff). As a result, I have a lot of time to blog.

In any case, today is World AIDS Day. The AIDS epidemic is really something most Americans choose to ignore or minimize, but it is among the worst global plagues the world has ever seen. Sub-Saharan Africa is by far the worst hit by AIDS, with 64% of the infected people in the world residing there (please note, that DOES NOT mean 64% of Africans are HIV positive, but rather that of all the AIDS cases in the world, most of them are in Africa).

Now, what does this mean to us? Well, there are remarkably few people reading this that are sexually promiscuous or like to share needles, so personally, not a lot. Yet that is the attitude of a lot of America, and I think future generation will look upon our apathy with disgust, if not horror. And honestly, I'm not sure what World AIDS Day is trying to accomplish, other than awareness.

If you have the opportunity during this holiday gift-giving orgy, buy some (RED) products, which will help towards AIDS research or support for AIDS victims. You can find more information here.

The 23rd anniversary of the world not being destroyed

Wikipedia is one of my favorite sites. In its pages are an impossible wealth of information about darn near anything. For instance, on September 26th, 1983, Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet soldier monitoring his country's satellite early warning system, averted a fullscale nuclear war.

A few weeks before, their air force had shot down a Korean airliner that had strayed too far into Soviet airspace. 269 passengers had died onboard that plane, many of them American. The KGB at that time sent out a message to all their operatives, telling them to prepare for a nuclear attack. The entire government was on edge, preparing for a quick retaliation from an attack, and had a hairtrigger mentality. At 12:40 in the morning, Stanislov Petrov saw on his early warning system an American missile (which was a glitch in the computer). He had a few moments to inform his superiors of an imminent nuclear attack, but figured that if America was going to launch a nuclear attack, they'd send a lot of missiles all at once, not just one lone missile. He saw another one, and another, a total of five missiles being launched, all of which were computer glitches. He chose to trust his intuition and his instincts over his training, and saved the world from a nuclear cataclysm.

For disobeying orders and avoiding Armageddon, he was not rewarded, but neither was he severely punished. He was given a reprimand for improper filing of paperwork and reassigned to a less sensitive post, as his superiors found him to be unreliable. He now is retired in a small Russian town, and does not consider himself the hero that he is.

This information was made public in 1996, but very few people know about it. In 2004, he was awarded the World Citizen Award and given US$1000. In early 2006, he recived another World Citizen Award in a trip to the United Nations. A documentary will be realeased shortly (late 2006), called The Man Who Saved the World.

Incidentally, three months before was the movie WarGames, in which American missile command was given over to a computer, and through a series of apparent glitches in the program, a nuclear disaster almost happened. A few months after the event, ABC released the miniseries The Day After, in which people were suffering from the aftermath of a American/Soviet nuclear war.

Meet David

This is David. He's this little seven year old guy down in Ecuador, who I'm sponsoring through Children International. I figured if I can spend $14 a month to play World of Warcraft, I can spend $18 a month to let this guy have better medicine and education. And I know I'm not going to stop playing World of Warcraft (or whatever follows it in my obssessive gaming mind) anytime soon. His biggest love in life is soccer, but he likes to sing, and is a good kid (well, he says he is, so take that with however many grains of salt). I just got my first letter from him, which was as incoherent as most 7-year-old writing, but really cool to get anyway.