Veronica Mars vs. the Lord's Resistance Army

I don't watch the tv show Veronica Mars, and the few episodes I have seen I did not find entertaining, but Crooks and Liars made note that at the end of the last week's episode they plugged the "Invisible Children" movement which is dedicated to helping the 19,000 children in northern Uganda who have been kidnapped by Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army in the past 20 years, as well as the "night commuter" children who live in fear of Kony. I've previously written that I consider the LRA to be the most evil organization on the planet.

Given that I gave the abominable Pat Robertson a plug and praise when his CBN network dedicated a segment to the "night commuters" of Uganda, it's a given that I'll extend that courtesy to Veronic Mars.

CBN and the "Night Commuters" of Uganda

I do not have a very high opinion of Pat Robertson or his CBN channel, but today I must give some sort of nod of approval to the station, because today it did a segment on the Night Commuters, children of Uganda and southern Sudan who suffer at the the hands of Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army, quite possibly the most evil organization on the planet in my opinion, which is believed to have stolen over 20,000 children over the course of its 19 year history. This HRW report is from 1997:

The rebels prefer children of fourteen to sixteen, but at times they abduct children as young as eight or nine, boys and girls alike. They tie the children to one another, and force them to carry heavy loads of looted goods as they march them off into the bush. Children who protest or resist are killed. Children who cannot keep up or become tired or ill are killed. Children who attempt to escape are killed.

Their deaths are not quick--a child killed by a single rebel bullet is a rarity. If one child attempts to escape, the rebels force the other abducted children to kill the would-be escapee, usually with clubs or machetes. Any child who refuses to participate in the killing may also be beaten or killed.

... it has eight years since that report was released and the Lord's Resistance Army has still not been brought to justice. They are still mutilating men, women, and children. They are still slicing children's ears and lips off. They are still raping and kidnapping chidren. They are still forcing women to cut-off appendages of daughters and sons at gunpoint.

A search at Human Rights Watch is an excercise in frustration. See year after year HRW release report after report of the horror committed by the LRA. Here's the most recent.

But you do not hear much about this on the news ... print or television. It is such a terrible shame that the power of the press is not being used to help these people suffering such misery and injustice, so I must commend CBN for bringing this issue to light, and for also speaking out on the genocide in Darfur, which goes, for the most part, unnoticed here in America.

Here HRW explains what the average person can do to help end this atrocity.

Neal Boortz is a moron: Part 2

The "Neal Boortz is a moron" series may have to be ongoing, as this post doesn't even contain the material that was going to be part two. I've mostly finished that one, but haven't gotten around to finishing it up, mainly because I've been doing some voracious reading, having yesterday finished Glenn Greenwald's new book. I'll review that and a couple of other books at the end of this week (I hope.)

But here's what Boortz said today that was moronic:

"All terrorists are Muslims."

Of course, he added the qualification that in this day and age "for all practical purposes" all terrorists are Muslims.

Boortz is a moron. How about: Timothy McVeigh, Aum Shirinkyo, Lord's Resistance Army, IRA, Tamil Tigers (the modern originators of suicide terrorism)

But if Boortz was just saying that a lot or most of the world's terrorism is committed by Muslims I wouldn't quibble with him. Yet that's not what he's doing. He is at the same time denying the existence of homegrown domestic terrorism like McVeigh and abortion clinic bombings that occurred during the Clinton presidency because America's right-wing was in a hysterical panic that the country had become a totalitarian communist state.

And it was idiots like Boortz on the AM radio that helped spark that furor.

On the same broadcast today, Neil was talking to a caller who was trying to convince him that there are plenty of Americans who would be willing to take up arms against their government in defense of their liberty, and that we are not that far away from another revolution.

Boortz hoped the caller was right but didn't think that many Americans believed in liberty. What was the caller so fired up about? What was this grave threat to liberty that would necessitate taking up violent insurrection? The prospect of a Democratic president and the paranoid conspiracy theory being pushed by Boortz that Democrats are going to shut down talk radio. Boortz himself describes Hillary Clinton as a "fascist socialist."

Around November or December of last year a caller suggested to Boortz that our gov't was so broken that it would take a dictator to fix it. That what we need is to elect a dictator for five years to come in and "fix" democracy. When Boortz asked who the caller would trust with such power the caller had an answer ready to go: Newt Gingrich. So what did the "libertarian" Neal Boortz then say to the caller? Did he passionately denounce the notion that the American republic should have a dictator? Did he ridicule the absurdity of notion that a dictator, once in power, would abide by a term limit? No, nothing like that. He gave some lukewarm skepticism, something to the effect of, "eh, I don't know ...".

I'm going to plug The Authoritarians again. If you haven't read that yet, the following might not make as much since. The conservative movement is comprised of authoritarians who are extremely comfortable investing their leaders (e.g. President Bush) with unlimited power to achieve their ideological ends, but at the same time are completely uncomfortable having any such power invested in their Enemy (e.g. Democrats, or what Boortz calls "collectivist liberalism" aka communism). They view the world in Black and White, Good vs. Evil. And the Democrats are Evil.

Which is why when a Democrat is elected in '08 the the conservative movement noise machine is going to be thrown into a fit of paranoid hysterical panic the likes of which we have never seen. The current administration has amassed more power than any other modern administration ... when they lose that power, the exact moment they lose it, they are going to be screaming non-stop that the United States is a communist totalitarian state controlled by "Dhimmicrats" that is being invaded by "Marxist" Mexicans "Requonquistas"

And then we'll see a resurgence in the militia movement and a rise in domestic terrorism. Maybe one of the Timothy McVeigh's in training - let me explain: see here

A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racist hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" to infiltrate the military, according to a watchdog organization

....

The report said that neo-Nazi groups like the National Alliance, whose founder, William Pierce, wrote "The Turner Diaries," the novel that was the inspiration and blueprint for Timothy J. McVeigh's bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, sought to enroll followers in the Army to get training for a race war.

The groups are being abetted, the report said, by pressure on recruiters, particularly for the Army, to meet quotas that are more difficult to reach because of the growing unpopularity of the war in Iraq.

The report quotes Scott Barfield, a Defense Department investigator, saying, "Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don't remove them from the military even after we positively identify them as extremists or gang members."

So like I was saying, maybe one of the McVeigh's in training will come back home, listen to the buzz from the noise machine about how the Evil Communist/Socialist/Fascist/Dhimmicrat DemocRats are in power, and maybe he'll decide to correct Ann Coulter's "only regret" about Timothy McVeigh and attempt blow-up the New York Times, especially since conservative movement pundits and right-wing demogogues have been accusing the paper of treason for years now.

There's a storm a coming, and it's going to be ugly. But you don't have to take my word for it. Dave Neiwert has been covering this beat for years and he's got the same feeling that something dark might be headed our way.

A quintessential example of why I despise Nancy Grace and CNN HLN so very, very much

I randomly turned to CNN HLN twice today. The first time I was informed by this "news" network something or another about Kat Von D (a reality show tatoo artist) hanging out with Jesse James (a reality show mechanic) ... I'm not sure exactly what important information the network had about the two as I tried to turn the channel as quickly as possible to avoid mental contamination.

The second time I flipped by the network I was confronted by an angry, scowling Nancy Grace (this is apparently her default facial posture for television) in her most serious and grave, indignant and outraged demeanor, covering the "BREAKING NEWS" that a nanny was caught on tape physically abusing an infant. The child's parents fired the nanny and turned the tape over to police, so what exactly is the news significance of this tragedy to a national audience?

On the other hand, I also flipped once randomly to NPR, and this is what I heard

Melissa Block speaks with Miel Hendrickson, regional coordinator for International Medical Corps in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hendrickson's team has treated more than 200 women who were raped in rebel attacks a month ago. The area is known for its gold and mineral deposits, and attacks on villages in the area is frequent.

While CNN HLN and Nancy Grace are trading on celebrity gossip and individual personal tragedy for profit, there actually is relevant news with important significance out there that goes generally unnoticed.

One can google the topic for more information about the systematic raping of women (and abuse of children) that is occurring in the Congo, but here is one that kind of puts in perspective the fraud that is CNN HLN

Cassiterite, wolframite, coltan: they might be the spoiled offspring of celebrity parents, or characters from an unfamiliar fairytale. The truth is much more prosaic. They are the minerals on which laptops and mobiles and even the tin of tomatoes in the cupboard depend. Cassiterite is the main component of tin oxide. Wolframite is a source of tungsten, used in many electrical applications. Coltan makes mobile phones work.

There are two reasons why it is necessary to know about these otherwise apparently esoteric minerals. First, the rich world has a capacious appetite for them, and second, it is fuelling conflict in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The rape of more than 150 [Note - now confirmed at 240] women and children earlier this month in Luvungi, North Kivu, in the DRC's mineral heartland is probably (it is not yet proven) directly connected with the exploitation of the mines from which these minerals come.

Despite the enormity of the crime – and even though it apparently took place over several nights – news of the rapes travelled only slowly into the western media. Even the UN's Monusco stabilisation force, based less than 20kms from the village, claims to have heard nothing. The force, due to leave in a year, has long been accused of spending too long in barracks, failing to patrol on foot, and making too little attempt to listen to the concerns of the people it is supposed to be there to protect. Partly because of its failings, Kivu, geographically and politically remote from Kinshasa, has become the killing field in what is being called Africa's world war. Proportionally, it is a conflict that dwarfs any British war: it has already claimed 5 million lives and cruelly disrupted millions more. Yesterday, a leaked report from the UN accused neighbouring Rwanda of a genocidal spree as its Tutsi-controlled army hunted down Hutu refugees in the late 1990s. Then soldiers of the Lord's Resistance Army, pushed out of Uganda, launched a series of deadly raids.

Oh, and this, too.

3 September 2010 – More than two dozen children were among the hundreds of civilians recently raped by members of armed groups active in the far east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the United Nations reported today.

...

The UN said today that 27 minors, including one boy, were among those assaulted, with one attempted rape reported as well.

You see, this is actually breaking news. It's been breaking for more than a god damned decade.

Here's a bit from the latest report on the Democratic Republic of the Congo from the International Rescue Committee:

"It was not uncommon to hear accounts of armed groups seizing young women from farms or water points and enslaving them and raping them for one to three months," says [IRC D. R. Congo Gender Based Violence team coordinator Sarah] Mosely. "Now women in North Kivu talk to me more about gunmen breaking into their homes and brutally raping them in front of their families."

She says the attacks have become so frequent that families in the north cross into Uganda at night to sleep in the forest. It's safer than staying at home.

That was written in 2007.

I'll close my little rant with the same question the above author asked 3 years ago: "Wonder when Nancy Grace will get around to those women."