WHAT IN THE WORLD IS GOING ON?


This morning

I read the headlines:

Police: Up to 20 people witnessed gang rape
Authorities in Calif. city say nobody did anything to stop attack

No kidding. The article reports about a gang rape and beating of a 15-year-old sophomore girl, that occurred outside during a Homecoming dance at Richmond High School in Richmond, California. The attackers are said to range from 15 to 25. According to reports the girl was on her way to meet her father who was picking her up, when she was invited to drink with a group of her classmates. The girl agrees to have a drink with them when she is attacked, and according to the article as many as 20 PEOPLE watched and did absolutely nothing. She was found naked from the waist down and semi-conscious behind bleachers. They even suggested that some of the witnesses and participants recorded the crime on their cell phones and may have posted it on the internet.

Twenty people may have just watched it go on and then walked away! So many! So heartless, cold and disconnected!

This afternoon

I read that a month ago protesters in Guinea that had gathered at a sports stadium were systematically attacked and raped. According to the BBC, on September 28th, 157 of the protesters died, many of them trampled to death. Watch groups and activists say that because the police blocked the exits and because the rapes (many of them gang rapes by the police) occurred at the same time, they believe there was some type of permission granted to attack and sexually violate these women.

The violation of rape is a life-long mental and emotional scar. It is a vile subhuman act of pure evilness. To know that our teenage boys are capable of doing such a heinous act against one of their classmates is both grotesque and heart breaking. I was so enraged after reading that I wanted to spit (and then go out to Richmond, find them and slit their throats – I don’t care if they are minors).

Then to turn around and read that a government kills 157 of their own people and raped the women! It’s just too much. I’m so angry right now, I’ve given myself a headache.

Meme Theory: Share This

Last night before heading off for my fantastic adventures in Sleepy Land, I read an intriguing essay titled, Share This about the theory of memes, from a literary magazine, written by Jeff Porter (Antioch Review, Fall 2008, Volume 66, Number 4).

I wasn’t familiar with what a meme was but as it was introduced, I understand it to be a “thing” - a unit of some sort of cultural idea, phrase, jargon, symbol or practice that is passed from the mind of one person to another through various methods of transfer, including (but not limited to-) conversations, trends, rituals, visual and audio medium.

The theory of meme is not a new concept, or a new phenomena. According to Porter, theorists suggest that the mind has been practicing this type of transfer “since the saber tooth tiger.” If this is the case, it means that our minds are built to be copy machines or better yet scanners, that scans info from one mind and copies it to another. For example, a meme was activated when skinny jeans starred as the “it” item of street fashion a couple years back. Or remember when grown women were fighting in the stores over Cabbage Patch Dolls in the 80’s? It’s the reason EVERYONE knows the Happy Birthday song. It’s where urban myths and clichés come from.

As my daughter would say, that’s easy-peasy lemon breezy (another meme in the works here). Porter addresses and incorporates the idea of video swapping on social networks as a gigantic pulsating meme that will lead us to God-knows-where (another cliché, therefore I meme). Giving the site of YouTube as an example of the largest vehicle for memes through privately shot video to allow tiny memes to wiggle through the pinholes in our brains and lay egg to pass on to others. Those weren’t his exact words, I’m kind of paraphrasing here.

Where books were once the portal, in our complex world, memes have abandoned fibrous pages to aggressively pursue high-speed technology. Abandoning language as we simply cut and paste the words of others rather than creating. No longer hand picking and reproducing the words someone else has sweated over and sculpted with their own pen. We click and forward. Our language leaks from our culture with these holes new technology has created. Only the future can show us what will be left.

Emptying Guantanamo Bay: The Supreme Court Gets Involved

In 2006, five of 22 Chinese Muslims went to Albania and in June of this year, four were sent to Bermuda. The Pacific island nation of Palau has said it would take 12 of the remaining 13, but some of the detainees have expressed concern over their safety because of Palau’s proximity to China.

Go to:The Wrighter to view the video.

Speaking of genocide…

If any of you out there are near me, there are a couple of events coming up this weekend regarding the Rwandan genocide. On Friday, October 9th, OC for Darfur will be showing “Shake Hands With The Devil” based on the book of almost the same title about Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire.

Canadian Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire was tasked by the United Nations with ensuring that peace was maintained in Rwanda , but unsupported by U.N. headquarters and its Security Council far away in New York; Dallaire and his handful of soldiers were incapable of stopping the genocide.

There is also a discussion after the screening, and Carl Wilkens, the only American to stay in Rwanda during the Rwandan genocide in 1994, will be present as well.

On Saturday, October 10th, Carl Wilkens will speak on what he witnessed in Rwanda. According to the Living Ubutu website, as a humanitarian aid worker, Wilkens moved his young family to Rwanda in the spring of 1990 and refused to leave in 1994 when the genocide launched. When thousands of expatriates evacuated and the United Nations pulled out most of its troops, Carl was the only American to remain in the country. Venturing out each day into streets, he worked his way through roadblocks of angry, bloodstained soldiers and civilians armed with machetes and assault rifles in order to bring food, water and medicine to groups of orphans trapped around the city. His actions saved the lives of hundreds.


Friday, October 9 2009
7:00p
Irvine United Congregational Church
4915 Alton Parkway
Irvine, California 92604
Cost:
Free


Saturday, October 10 2009
7:00p
Irvine United Congregational Church
4915 Alton Parkway
Irvine, California 92604
Cost:
Free

For more information go to http://www.livingubuntu.org/

One of the Most Wanted for Rwandan Genocide - Arrested

Five years ago I wrote a volume of poetry dedicated to the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. Just last week, I was casually reviewing my book, Say it! Say Gen-o-cide!! to discern whether it’s content was brilliant enough to submit with an application for a fellowship. Today, before I had the opportunity to scan the website of BBC News, a headline leaped out at me: “Rwanda Queen-Killing Suspect Held.”

According to the report, a former head of intelligence in Rwanda’s army, Idelphonse Nizeyimana, was one of the most wanted suspects in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and has been arrested in Uganda.

In 1994, rumors had spread through word of mouth and hate-radio that the ethnic group called the Hutu were going to decimate another ethnic group called the Tutsi, but many of the country’s citizens didn’t put much weight behind these rumors because the act seemed too outrageous to bare teeth. In April, however, after the country’s Hutu president’s plane was shot out of the sky and crashed into the side of a mountain, it triggered the mass order of Tutsi extermination (along with moderate Hutus), resulting in the heinous killing of nearly 800,000 men women and children. The massacre lasted from April to July, nearly 100 days – the largest genocide in deaths per day, in history.

Recently captured Nizeyimana, according to the article, stands accused of setting up special military units to help carry out the murders. One of these units is said to have killed the Tutsi queen, 80-year-old Queen Rosalie Gicanda, along with several women who took care of her. Nizeyimana is also accused of setting up roadblocks where Tutsi’s were captured before being killed.

Like many Hutus after Tutsi rebels took over in July of ‘94, ending the genocide, Nizeyimana fled Rwanda to the DR Congo and became active in a pro-Hutu rebel army. Last week, according to Ugandan police, he crossed the border into Uganda, headed for Kenya and was arrested in a hotel in Kampala, Uganda’s capitol. He will soon appear before The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, based in Arusha Tanzania.