Month: November 2008

Tim Butcher says mineral wealth is behind the violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo:

Those who try to explain the current fighting in terms of tribal differences, between the Tutsi-associated Banyamulenge of eastern Congo and some Hutu-linked groups, are missing the point. Yes, the spillover from the Rwandan genocide of 1994 affected this region. But, in a state as failed as the Congo, relatively small tribal frictions can be turned into a national crises. And the current crisis needs to be understood, as it was in King Leopold’s day, as a battle over Congo’s rich natural resources.

Many tribal groups across the country are resentful of the ruling elite in Kinshasa. These resentments have been exacerbated by jealousies over vast contracts recently signed between China and the government of President Joseph Kabila. Anger has focused on the likelihood of Kabila and his inner circle, from his base in the southern province of Katanga, skimming off vast sums from these opaque deals.

The appetite of China’s economy has created tension across Africa, with Chinese businessmen willing to spend vast sums for scarce raw materials. Countries like Zambia or Sierra Leone, long used to relying on aid, have found themselves with unprecedented revenues. Details of the contracts, and lucrative bribes and backhanders, are scant. But the scale became clear when, two years ago, China promised Congo $5bn in exchange for rights to much of its copper, cobalt, tin and other minerals.

This massive cash pot has stirred up the disenfranchised masses in Congo’s regions who won’t see a penny from Kinshasa as things stand. It has also inspired the Tutsi-influenced rebels of the Kivus, led by General Laurent Nkunda, whose insurgency is designed to force Kabila to share the spoils.

Roger Ebert on Harvey Milk’s assassin. I’m going to see the movie tonight. Will post a review tomorrow.

That was the cry that went up from the crowd at the Federalist Society dinner where attorney general Mukasey fainted. It came from a Washington state Supreme Court judge who, unlike so many now on the "right", still believes in liberty:

In his speech, Mukasey offered a defense against criticisms about the Bush administration’s policies in the war on terrorism. Sanders said he "passionately" disagrees with those policies and felt compelled to say so. Sanders, who is a Federalist Society member, said that he wasn’t heckling Mukasey, and left shortly after his outburst. "I believe we must speak our conscience in moments that demand it, even if we are but one voice," he said in a statement Tuesday.

A reader writes:

I was reading your post about George Weigel’s view of Catholics who voted for Obama, and it reminded me of something.  Weigel and people like him seem to think that ideology defines who is good and who is evil in our world.  It would be helpful for people who think this way to remember that the worst spy in American history was a conservative, devout Catholic family man who was a member of Opus Dei (Robert Hanssen) and that one of the heroes of the Cold War was an alcoholic, womanizing, pro-choice, liberal congressman from Texas who was accused of recreational drug use (Charlie Wilson).

History shows us repeatedly that ideology is meaningless when it comes to determining good and evil in the world.

Losing sight of the fact that all men are sinners and seeing the fight between good & evil in purely ideological terms is why I think so few Christians challenged the immorality and incompetence of the Bush administration and the Republican Party were doing. I fear that until more Christians realize this many Christians are going to continue to allow themselves to be used by the Republican Party.

Looking back on the campaign, I recall a seminal moment in the Saddleback Forum in August. Obama and McCain were asked their views of evil. McCain said his duty was to defeat it, whatever that means. Obama insisted that evil can be perpetrated by those who intend to do good, and that the Christian duty was to remember that. Obama lost the debate in political terms, but his answer was, in my judgment, the more authentically Christian one. McCain’s was Christianist. There’s a difference.

‘Pumpkin’, one of two turkeys pardoned by US President George W. Bush watches as the annual turkey pardoning ceremony on November 26, 2008, at the White House in Washington, DC. By Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty.

It begins with an inability to tell the truth in plain English and gets worse from there. Greenwald explains.

Via Dreher, a very readable piece by Tom Chiarella on taking up smoking at the age of 46:

As a nonsmoker, I always figured cigarettes were an indulgence run amok. But there is something tangible about need, even when it’s self-created. It feels good to need. There’s the moral confusion — do I need or do I want?

And three weeks in, on a day when I smoked fourteen cigarettes, I realized that I could finally enjoy one following sex.

This was because I could finally enjoy a cigarette, period. It had ceased to become a chore or a challenge. I liked it. I liked smoking. Dopamine? I don’t know. Didn’t care. Just wanted a smoke. I practically jumped out of bed. My girlfriend and I wrapped ourselves in blankets and stood on her porch. The smoke filled my chest so that my body heated itself in a new way. We jabbered. Winter approached. "I always wonder," I said, taking a drag of my cigarette, "how many more winters do you get?" I sounded morbid and wistful. Pathetic. I coughed a little. But that’s how it went with smoking. A cigarette amplified truth. If you were sad, you sounded sadder.

But the cigarette notched everything upward, too. Everything seemed more potent and brilliantly illuminated. The sex, the beer we were sharing, the apple I’d left at our bedside, even the cold breeze up under the blanket, tightening my scrotum. I was a dopamine factory just then.