Just so ashamed of people! Just got finished watching a movie

[southernleftylady]

About Rwanda... its called "Sometimes in April" and i just got disgusted! I was only 16ish when it happened so i dont remember (i wasnt into politics then) but i am just ASHAMED that the world let this happen!
and now there is genocide going on in the sudan...
how can we let this happen!!!
http://www.hbo.com/films/sometimesi...line/index.html
please look for this movie on HBO its incrediable!!

Day 1 - Estimated Death Toll: 8,000
Day 4 - Estimated Death Toll: 32,000
Day 8 - Estimated Death Toll: 64,000
Day 18 - Estimated Death Toll: 144,000
Day 21 - Estimated Death Toll: 168,000
Day 41 - Estimated Death Toll: 328,000
Day 49 - Estimated Death Toll: 392,000
Day 77 - Estimated Death Toll: 616,000
Day 100 - An estimated 800,000 Rwandans have been killed.


and just compare that to the 3,000 that tragicly got killed on 9/11...
can you just imagine 800,000????
im so sadden by this...
__________________

[tjdee]

1. To say nothing of the Congo and the wars we may have started...

Have been reading about...colum tantalite, or something like that, (google for "coltan")--it's used in cell phones, xboxes, etc. Apparently you can get it in the Congo, and it was almost like a new gold rush there. Western companies required it, Africans fought over who got to sell it to them. Now there's some ordinances about purchasing specifically NOT from that area, but the damage has been done.

One of the heads of one of the companies involved in coltan mining is now our Energy Secretary. How 'bout that?

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. It's a horrible story

I saw this movie a week or so ago.

Don't forget the role that hate radio played in exciting the people to kill each other.

[knowbody0]

3. it grasped my heart as well

there is no oil in Rwanda. they call this a civil war. IMHO this madness is the aftermath of the stench of colonization by white man. the film validates their pain. brother to brother. so sad.
as you bring new life to the planet and look around at humanity, the insanity of war becomes profound heartache. and the talking heads debate the term "genocide".

[Dunedain]

4. Yesterday, my friend met with the President of Rwanda

He is working with Tribunal. Should be interesting to talk with him when he comes back.

[Sandpiper]

5. And if you take that number as a percentage of the total population

And project it on to the United States, it would be the equivalent of about 4.35 million Americans killed.

[RevolutionaryActs]

7. Genocide, is genocide.

And at that time we were too busy covering the Simpson murder trial to care about it. Nor do we care about the people who have died Sudan and Uganda.

[johnaries]

6. Since there were no WMD's, isn't the reason for the Iraq

invasion supposed to be because Saddam killed so many of his own people?

:shrug:

[Dude_CalmDown]

8. Rwanda - A legitimate reason to hate "The Big Dawg"

And don't tell me he politically had his hands tied and so he couldn't do anything - that is no fucking excuse. In fact the Clinton Administration went beyond ignoring it by changing the wording in reports to exclude the word "genocide" to avoid having to act to stop it.

[vpigrad]

9. An "I hate Clinton message" from a guy...

with a logo from a damn car maker. The pro-destruction environment auto makers go hand-in-hand with Clinton-haters. So tell me, why are you here?

[Dude_CalmDown]

14. So Clinton was right? And in case you did not realize...

...Honda does not just make cars - and even if they did only make cars they are the greenest car maker on earth. Time to face reality buddy - I hate Clinton because he was and still is barely a Democrat. He allowed hundreds of thousands to die needlessly. What justification would you accept from him for that?

[merh]

11. Rwanda

The failure to restore the regulation of the media when he had the chance, his trade policies and the fact that he couldn't keep his pants zipped when he knew the RWer's were trying to destroy him and he got a blow job in the oval office "because he could" (his words, not mine).

Not to mention his ass kissing of the BFEE today!

And I don't have a car emblem as my avatar.

[Minstrel Boy]

13. Canadian leader of UN force in Rwanda: "I blame the American leadership"

Canadian General Romeo Dallaire led the UN force in Rwanda. To know how the international community failed, you need to know his story.

He kept asking for more troops - just a few thousand would have stopped the genocide, he believes. The UN refused. He, in turn, refused orders to leave. And Rwanda left him with awful Post Traumatic Stress, which finished his military career and almost killed him. He's become a national hero.

From the CBC:

After Rwanda, Dallaire blamed himself for everything. He sank deep into despair. He attempted suicide. Three years ago he sat on a park bench in Ottawa and drank from a bottle of alcohol. He's forbidden to drink because of the drugs he takes for depression. The mixture almost put him into a coma. Police had to take him to hospital.

...

So, who does he blame?

"I blame the American leadership, which includes the Pentagon, in projecting itself as the world policeman one day and a recluse the next," Dallaire says.

...

As the death toll mounted, General Dallaire submitted a detailed plan for a Rapid Reaction Force. He needed 5,000 soldiers to dismantle the killing machine of the genocidaire and to stop the Hutu power movement. The UN Security Council rejected the plan. The United States even refused to acknowledge the genocide to avoid any legal obligations to help.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/dallaire /



Dallaire defied U.N. orders to withdraw from Rwanda. Without the authority, manpower, or equipment to stop the slaughter, he saved the lives he could but nearly lost his sanity. In an indifferent world, Gen. Romeo Dallaire and a few thousand ill-equipped U.N. peacekeepers were all that stood between Rwandans and genocide. The Canadian commander did what he could-did more than anyone else-but he sees his mission as a terrible failure and counts himself among its casualties.

After a 100-day reign of terror, some 800,000 Rwandan civilians were dead, most killed by their machete-wielding neighbors. Dallaire had sounded the alarm. He'd begged. He'd bellowed. He'd even disobeyed orders. "l was ordered to withdraw...by Boutros Ghali about seven, eight days into it. .. and I said to him, 'I can't, I've got thousands' -by then we had over 20,000 people-'in areas under our control,"' Dallaire said in a recent interview with Amnesty Now. The general's hands, always moving, rose beside his face as if to block the memories. "The situation was going to shit....And, I said, 'No, I can't leave."'

...

Dallaire and his troops were about to become spectators to genocide. As bodies filled the streets and rivers, the general, backed by a U.N. mandate that didn't even allow him to disarm the militias, pleaded with his U.N. superiors for additional troops, ammunition, and the authority to seize Hutu arms caches. In an assessment that military experts now accept as realistic, Dallaire argued that with 5,000 well-equipped soldiers and a free hand to fight Hutu power, he could bring the genocide to a rapid halt.

The U.N. turned him down. He asked the U.S. to block the Hutu radio transmissions. The Clinton administration refused to do even that. Gun-shy after a humiliating retreat from Somalia, Washington saw nothing to gain from another intervention in Africa, and the Defense Department, according to a memo, assessed the cost of jamming the Hutu hate broadcasts at $8,500 per flight-hour.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Heroes/Gen_Romeo_Dallaire.html

[ghostsofgiants]

10. Hotel Rwanda is a really good movie on the subject too I think

Really got me thinking how fucked up the situation was/is.

[On the Road]

12. No Matter What Goes on in Africa,

it's not considered to be worth American lives.

The US allowed long, murderous destructive civil wars to go on in Liberia and Sierra Leone, not to mention a few other places. The US founded Liberia, for cryin' out loud, and they would have welcomed American intervention.

The only African country that I can think of with recent Western intervention is Equatorial Guinea, which is about the size of Staten Island. They only thing they have is oil.