Reflections on Hotel Rwanda

I haven’t seen Hotel Rwanda.  I actually rented the movie, and my husband and I started to watch it, but we had to stop.  We knew what was going to happen, and we didn’t want to see it:  we would have known what was going to happen even if we hadn’t had advance knowledge of the story.  He and I know all about Africa.  Personally, I am too broken-hearted about what is happening there to watch it played out on a 42-inch plasma TV screen.

It’s not just happening in Rwanda.  We only hear about Ruanda more often now because this particular story has given that region a voice. 

The stories are endless, one more chilling than the next.  In South Africa, gangs of black youths who suspect an individual of not being “one of them” inflict horrible death.  And they do not reserve the torture for adults.  Children are not immune.  One favorite form of execution involves soaking a tire in gasoline, placing the tire around the neck of the bound victim, and setting it alight.  I repeat, this is done to children as well as adults.  It is done to blacks by blacks, and the rationale behind the brutality is obscure.  Sometimes it is tribal – amaZulu against any black not Zulu – sometimes there is a loosely formulated political agenda.  Sometimes it is simply a case of bloodlust.

This is no urban myth.  We have witnessed something like it personally.  On our last trip to South Africa …

Share

Continue ReadingReflections on Hotel Rwanda

With regard to vote counting, Mexico has “a lot to teach the United States.”

The Wall Street Journal argues that Mexico is far ahead of the United States with regard to preventing voter fraud.  That's good news in close election such as the one that just occurred in Mexico.  As the Wall Street Journal reports: Mexico has developed an elaborate system of safeguards to…

Continue ReadingWith regard to vote counting, Mexico has “a lot to teach the United States.”

Do unto thyself what thou wouldn’t let others do

Would we harm our selves in ways that we would never let others harm us?  Yes, actually.  We do this all the time.  This common occurrence has long intrigued me.

About fifteen years ago, I was trying to lose weight.  A diet book I was reading presented a hypothetical, which I have embellished:

Imagine that a gang of strangers repeatedly broke into your house.  Each time they broke in, they brought a large basket of food with them.  Each time they broke in, they tracked you down and forced you to eat food that you didn’t need or want.  “Stop that!”  You would yell.  “I’m not hungry.  Go away!”  Nonetheless, the strangers forced you to eat food that you didn’t want.  They returned every few hours and repeated his attack on you.  Every time you tried to exercise, the strangers appeared and made you sit on the couch to watch television instead. 

Over the course of months, the excess food the strangers forced you to eat caused your body to bloat larger and larger.  Your clothing stopped fitting.  It became difficult to get in and out of your car.  Most of your acquaintances gossiped about how you had become “fat.”  

And it got even worse.  You became diabetic. You got depressed.  You constantly cursed those strangers for making you obese and unhealthy.  You bought special burglar-proof doors and windows (but they didn’t work).  Because this gang repeatedly violated your rights, you even considered buying a gun to defend yourself from

…
Share

Continue ReadingDo unto thyself what thou wouldn’t let others do

“Fixing” the United Nations

We all know the story of the League of Nations. An early, botched attempt at international diplomacy, history tells us it collapsed due to its own lack of authority and under the chaos created by a body of countries all fighting for individual interest, rather than global good. In history classes, we read that the League of Nations proved totally ineffectual, doomed from the start by its own design.

In recent years, such criticisms have likewise fallen upon the League’s replacement, the United Nations. Citing failures such as Iraq’s 17 ignored resolutions since 1991, the corruption behind the Oil for Food Programme, and more recently, the UN’s inability to respond to crises such as the genocide in Darfur and the nuclear development of North Korea, the UN’s critics see the body as both powerless and bogged down in bureaucratic corruption. The UN either needs massive reform, critics say, or we should take John Bolton’s suggestion and blow ten stories off the UN Secretary Building and rid ourselves of the mess.

Share
…
Share

Continue Reading“Fixing” the United Nations