Excuse my french, but what a fucked, fucked, fucked-up world we live in my friends.
Apparently, the U.N. and the U.S. stood by as the genocide occurred in Darfur, Sudan. The reason? Sudan is China's primary supplier of oil. We wouldn't want to upset the balance of the oil supply, now would we? (This is my own oversimplification. I'm sure the issues there are extremely complex, but still, this smacks of something very, very wrong.)
The cleansing of the non-Arab populace has been happening since 2005. I'm as guilty/ignorant as the next guy. I've heard about it (very little) in the media, but never investigated until I watched the documentary.
What can we do? What should we do? What can I do as an individual? What do we do when the priorities of our government do not match our own? The electoral/political process is too slow and too fucked up anyway. The system is broken. We need some vehicle to effect rapid response within our government. Some way to just say no - with teeth. Some way to get the attention of our leaders. Shouldn't we be able to go straight to the top? To the President? Isn't that where the buck stops?
Is it because "the public sucks" as George Carlin said? Do we really just not care? Are we more worried about NASCAR, beauty pageants, fantasy football, and sneakers with lights in them to care? Are we more worried about our super-duper self-propelled lawn mower, our new swimming pool, our latest capital gain, being upside down in our mortgage, our new GUCCI/Prada/LV handbag? The new Dolce & Gabbana shoes?
Hundreds of thousands of people have died in Darfur. Our priorities are all wrong, and we are paying for it. Our souls are paying for it.
There's no trailer on YouTube, but here is a Q&A session with the director.
Here is the film website :: http://www.sandandsorrow.org/
Here is the HBO film website :: http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/sandandsorrow/
1 comment:
Thanks for this post, Alex. I can't wait to see the documentary. Man are you ever right about our priorities being totally screwed up. Information like this, that people stood by and let the genocide happen because of oil, makes me so angry. I sometimes want to believe there's no way anyone could be so cruel.
It's easy to bury our heads. I had no idea what was going on in Darfur until I lived in Egypt. The number of Sudanese refugees living in Cairo meant the topic was in the mainstream media there. But little was being done. And the refugees were not very welcomed in Egypt. It's so similar to Rwanda. How could the world not have learned this lesson already?
Anyway, thanks for sharing this info. Keep it coming!
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