Sometimes in April: When one fails, we all fail
Elliot Waring reviews the 2005 film Sometimes in April, written and directed by Raoul Peck.
Waring writes: “What is contained within this “review” is
a brief summary of the film and some of the questions which jump off the screen
as you watch. Other than that, this reviewer can only say, watch this film.
Watch this film and let it be a lesson to you to never forsake your fellow man,
to never let humanity fail on such an epic scale again, to never sit idly by
while atrocities are played out in front of you. Allowing violence and pain to
pass by you unquestioned is an act of violence in and of itself.”
Memory and denial: The Rwandan genocide fifteen years on
While most of
the world is familiar with Rwandan genocide, fifteen years later the influence
of a small band of deniers is growing thanks to the embrace of the deniers’
arguments by a small but influential number of left-wing, anti-American
journals and websites, cautions Gerald Caplan.
This article is cross posted from Pambazuka News
Oil, Aids and Africa
This unprecedented oil rush dwarfs the Western aid, Africa currently relies on and provides a unique opportunity to turn the continent around.
However the fear, of many of those who work in promoting sustainable development in Africa, is that this oil bonanza will never benefit the vast majority of Africans, who live in the worst poverty, and will plunge the continent further into chaos
The End of Diamond Wars?
It’s been a rough month for De Beers, the largest diamond manufacturer in the world. Facing stiff criticism and increasing competition, the company sold off 26 percent of its mining operations. And what’s this? Synthetic diamonds so real they can fool the experts? Maybe it time to sell, sell, sell.
Survival in Zimbabwe
Yvonne Vera, The Stone Virgins, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003, ISBN 0-374-27008-2
The Lost Jewel
President Robert Mugabe shows no sign of retiring or surrendering power to the growing opposition party in Zimbabwe. Martin Meredith’s Our Votes Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe published by Public Affairs, June 2003, provides the background to one of this week’s crises in Africa.
Brutal Legacy of Congo War
“There are thousands of violated ladies showing up. It’s like nothing we have ever seen anywhere in the world,” said Jo Lusi, head of a Congolese-run hospital in the eastern city of Goma that is working with the U.S.-based aid group Doctors on Call for Service.
Climate and ecocide
Climate change has been topping the headlines throughout Europe and the US this summer as northern hemisphere temperatures have reached unprecedented seasonal highs and lows. Nicholas Reader, in our guest ediorial, finds that the brouhaha has hidden some important truths about global warming. Africa and tropical and sub-tropical regions have been hit far worse.
If I had got married, I’d be dead today.
Better late – then never. A couple days after our official start at UPEACE (University for Peace), we noticed another colorful shirt and a new face of a tall strong man. As for many other African students the trip to UPEACE, was anything but easy. Sam’s journey included five stopovers, two countries in Africa, two in Europe and one in Venezuela before finally arriving in Costa Rica. Yes, many of us take the one-day trip and many other things for granted.
Nevertheless, Sam luckily made it.
Banks, Guns and Baguettes in Angolagate’s Missing Billions
Joseph Schumacher scrutinises the current situation in Angola, and finds the international financial system wanting. See also our current book review of Joseph E Stiglitz’s critique of the IMF and his prescription for reform.