Inside A Congolese Displaced Persons Camp: Children Cling To Our Arms, Begging For Human Touch (PHOTOS)

Independent journlaist Georgianne Nienaber continues to write her eye-witness reports about the horrors besetting humanity in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Here is an excerpt from her latest article at Huffington Post.

Australian journalist Helen Thomas was the first to ask the question. "Do you find it hard to believe that we are able to function here and do our work?"

We were wading through a literal sea of humanity housed on a volcanic landscape that mirrored Dante's Inferno. Children clung to our arms as if our limbs were the branches of trees. The doctor warned us to avoid touching, since disease was present in every snotty nose and dirty hand that reached for comfort. You cannot say no to the begging for human touch, and soon rivers of green, yellow, and brown fluids from runny noses cover arms and hands and clothing, and eventually you give up trying to clean it off. The stench is overpowering--13,360 adults and 7,000 children crammed into huts unfit for animals. It is a little over a week since Christmas day and it occurs to you that even HE was born into better conditions than this.
(For the full article with photos, click here.)

A Poem for Gaza by Remi Kanazi

This poem was just written in response to the assault on Gaza by the prominent Palestinian-American poet Remi Kanazi, whose website is Poetic Injustice (http://www.poeticinjustice.net/)

OpEdNews Guest Editorial: The Moral Dead Zone by Bob Koehler

Here is another guest editorial from OpEdNews.com. This one will make you think hard.

OpEdNews

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Moral-Dead-Zone-by-Bob-Koehler-090116-455.html

January 16, 2009

The Moral Dead Zone

By Bob Koehler

“Mr. Ban said too many people had died and there had been too much civilian suffering.”

That almost bears repeating, but I won’t because I don’t believe it. Too many? In the moral dead zone of the human heart, perennially justified as “war” (evoking honor, triumph, glory), there’s no such thing as too much suffering. There’s no bleeding child or shattered family or contaminated water supply that can’t be overlooked in the name of some great goal or strategic advantage, or converted to fodder for the next round of hatred, revenge and arms purchase.

Ban Ki-Moon, the U.N. secretary general, about to embark on a peace and diplomacy tour of the Middle East, was speaking, of course, about the hellish conditions in the Gaza Strip, pummeled by Israel with modern weaponry and Old Testament fury for the last three weeks. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the coalition government. Close to a thousand have died. Many more thousands have been injured or displaced. Too many?

No. Not even close. If too many had died — if hell had reached its capacity, or some other limit had at last been achieved — something would change. The collective enterprise of human violence would convulse and start malfunctioning. Fear, perhaps, would mutate into courage, anger into forgiveness, hatred into love. Or at least we would start looking at what we’re doing . . . how do I say this? With evolved compassion? With an understanding, with a determination to survive, we now disdain and mock?

Israel’s invasion of Gaza is the world’s spotlight war right now, reaping headlines, global censure, a special endorsement from the U.S. Congress and, apparently, an audiotape hiss from Osama bin Laden, possibly from beyond the grave.

What all of these reactions do, it seems to me, is confer an unwarranted special status on the war, as though it were isolated, without a context any deeper than its accompanying propaganda. This forces us to try to understand the war strictly on its own terms — who started it? who’s the bad guy? who’s innocent? — rather than as an occurrence within a larger, dysfunctional system as deep as human history and as wide as planetary politics.

This war, and the nine or 10 other armed conflicts officially classified as wars that are going on right now — including wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (4 million dead since 1997), Darfur-Sudan (500,000 dead since 2003), Somalia (400,000 dead since 1988), Sri Lanka (80,000 dead since 1983), and of course Iraq (possibly a million or more dead) and Afghanistan (35,000 dead) — whatever they are on their own terms, are also symptoms of a human syndrome of self-destruction.

So are the local conflicts on city streets and other jungles that are too small to be called wars. So are the horrific aftermaths of conflicts that have officially ended, including poisoned environments, the ruined health of participants and bystanders, unexploded mines and bombs, the psycho-spiritual traumas that never go away, and the grievances that fester from generation to generation.

What links them in an immediate way is the global arms industry, as corrupt as it is invisible, which does a trillion dollars worth of business annually worldwide, is crucial to every major economy and is therefore served, either with overt collusion or discreet silence, by governments and the mass media.

But the problem is bigger than mere greed. The business of war, like war itself, defies rational control and containment because it is fed by the paradox of human fear. As we arm to protect ourselves and fight back, our enemy also arms, and thus is born, over and over again, the cycle of escalation, from which the cynical can profit handsomely. The industry of war is self-perpetuating.

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that, as Anup Shah noted recently in an essay on the arms industry for GlobalIssues.org, “The top five countries profiting from the arms trade are the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council: the U.S.A., U.K., France, Russia and China.”

Thus world peace — at least the sort of peace that most of us envision, which is sustained by international cooperation and universal disarmament rather than subjugation and the capacity for hair-trigger retaliation — would challenge the status quo of the world’s largest economies, as they have come to constitute themselves.

As long as we stay trapped in the paradox of fear, we can’t even use our intelligence to save ourselves. We have employed it to serve only our self-destruction. The ultimate paradox is that the military industrial complex, that highest of high-tech human endeavors, about which Dwight Eisenhower sounded the alarm nearly half a century ago, is wedded to the most primitive of human emotions. We have become trapped in our collective reptile brain.

Only if we disarm our intelligence do we have a chance to find wisdom. And only wisdom can save us.

- - -

Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at bkoehler@tribune.com or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com.

For All Children Who Must Suffer War's Horrors: Outlandish & Sami Yusuf Song, TRY NOT TO CRY

We have been watching with horror the damage done to children by the Gaza assault, the mangled bodies, the rivers of tears, the traumatized faces, and we have to ask, how can the adults in this world perpetrate such horrors? Where is their humanity, or their shame? If they have none, then they have already consigned themselves to the Devil and will enjoy His tender mercies at the appointed time. But for the rest of us who are still human, do we have it in us to put a stop to the scourge of war that is destroying, not only the children of Palestine, but the children of Israel, of Sudan, Somalia, the Congo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, to name a few? Only a higher identity, a belief in the brotherhood and sisterhood of humankind, can end this madness.

To quote from this video's sidebar, first posted on the Internet some two years ago by IstiArief:

Song featured in Sami Yusuf's "My Ummah" album, done with english text of the lyrics.

I made this after watching Sami Yusuf and Isam on a concert together performing this song. They pointed out that this song speaks of any troubled children in the world, even if some lyrics explicitly point to the Palestinian struggle. All of the videos on this song that I saw on YouTube represent that particular struggle only. I'd like to return to the concept of the creators of the music, and try to incorporate all of the world's children's suffering-- this is my attempt at it.

Please rate it and tell me what you think-- constructive criticism is highly preferred over blind offense, and appreciation is always welcomed.

If you want to help, give your time or your earnings to causes you believe in. It's not how much you give, it's that you give.

This is my preference charity outlet that I trust, but you can choose your own:
www.islamic-relief.com (International)
www.irw.org (USA) - recipient of Four Star Charity by Charity Navigator

Mayor Fraim's International Day of Peace Proclamation

United Nations International Day of Peace Soccer Tournament and More This Weekend (Sept 20-21)

Sunday, September 21 has been officially declared the International Day of Peace in Norfolk, as proclaimed by Mayor Fraim in recognition of the annual UN Peace Day. It has also just been declared the Day of Peace in the Commonwealth of Virginia by Governor Kaine.

This year the local organization, of which I am a part, the United Nations International Day of Peace, Hampton Roads, is holding the two following events to celebrate this annual call for a 24-hour global ceasefire by all nations, as well as the promotion of peace and reconciliation:


1) The third annual interfaith celebration of UN Peace Day to be held at the Unitarian Church of Norfolk, 739 Yarmouth Street, at 5:00 PM on Sunday, September 21. The church is located right across from Norfolk’s Chrysler Museum on the Hague. We will again have a program of prayer, speeches, music and dance, followed by a reception in the church hall with food and refreshments. SPECIAL NOTE: State Delegate Algie Howell of District 90 will read the Governor's Proclamation near the start of this service. Call Sonia at 717-0063 or Mac at 489-0769 for further information.


2) The first annual United Nations International Day of Peace Soccer Tournament at Larchmont Recreation Park in Norfolk, near Old Dominion University, on Saturday, September 20 and Sunday, September 21. This is in response to an international call by English film director Jeremy Gilley (who is the one who convinced the UN General Assembly to declare UN Peace Day) to hold soccer games around the world on or around UN Peace Day as way to bring peoples together through the world's most popular sport. Our motto is one day, one goal, one vision.

There will be games Saturday and Sunday, starting at 8:00 AM each day. There will also be musical and dance entertainment during the halftimes, as well as vendors and information booths. This is not merely a soccer tournament but a festive weekend event. The park is right behind WHRO near Bolling Avenue and Hampton Blvd in Norfolk. The trophy presentation will be during the above mentioned interfaith service on Sunday at the end of the service. The tournament is free, of course, to all spectators.

We are looking for eight teams, and still have a couple of berths left. Since this is our first year we are the new kid on the block and have to "prove" ourselves to the soccer leagues, so if you want to be in on the proof, please contact Dave, the soccer coach of West Indies United, at 675-1226, immediately to inquire about registering. Or call Sonia at 717-0063 or email her at Savanegas@yahoo.com. Or even leave a comment here and I will get back to you. Also see the soccer flyer below for Dave's email address and the registration site. Note that the player's fee is now $25. So many people were pleading hardship that we cut it in half. The West Indies United Site is at http://www.westindiesunitedva.org/. Scroll down until you get to the United Nations International Day of Peace blurb and click for more info.

The Culture of Palestine

There is an unbelievable amount of misunderstanding about the Palestinian people in the West, particularly in the United States, where Palestinians have been reduced to a stereotype in the minds of many, an ugly, deadly stereotype of sub-human, fanatic mad-bombers who deserve what they get from Israel and its allies.

But nothing could be farther from the truth, and this giant demonization of an entire people reeks of the same kind of hatred and vindictiveness that the Nazis perpetrated against the Jews in Europe, in a word, anti-Semitism. And where there is hatred, violence is not far behind.

But how can you call this anti-Semitism if is employed against Arabs? They are not Jewish.

Quite easily, because ethnically, the Arabs are also considered a Semitic people, just like the Jews. They all came out of the same cutural cauldron of southwestern Asia. The term Semite refers to any member of the various ancient and modern peoples originating in that area, including the Akkadians, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Arabs. Of course, even the term Arab, when applied to the Palestinians, is a cliche when applied to all of them, because there were Persian, Greek, Norman and Frank, Turkish and later British cultural influences, not to mention intermarriage. The bottom line is that they are humans made in the image of God (and Goddess).

So it is ironic that even some Jews fall into the trap today of demonizing the Palestinians, their Semitic brothers and sisters. But this is what power politics, propaganda and violence do. They turn brother against brother.

But here is a brief video to challenge this god-forsaken stereotype, one that shows us the historical cultural, even physical beauty of the Palestinian people, a culture that the world should both be proud of and want to see flourish again.