November 6th, 2006 | | Posted in Uncategorized
I have taken to ripping all of my DVD’s into mp4 files to put into iTunes so whenever, if ever, Apple’s iTV comes out (February?) I will be able to stream my entire movie collection, wirelessly, to my living room. I can then send all of my movies home to my parents and keep them out of my apartment where they take up space and are quite the liability.
However, ripping my DVD’s into iTunes has very little to do with this post.
I met a Hutu refugee a few years ago here at Mizzou. He was flying with the Uganda President when his plane was shot down by Tutsi rebels. This man was in another plane but witness it none the less. He was sent to Mizzou to learn journalism to help his country create a press system like we have in America. He survived the Tutsi and Hutu rebellion and came to our Rural Sociology class to tell the story of the genocide in his country.
Even through the slide show he presented us, the giant screen filled with dead Tutsis, video of rivers flowing red with the blood of innocent people; I never fully understood the terrible things that happened there.
As I was cleaning my room, I put on Hotel Rwanda, one of the DVD’s I had ripped from my collection to iTunes.
Never before have I found myself caught up emotionally in a movie. I knew this movie was a masterpeice, I had heard from many critics and friends alike; I, however, had never watched the movie. Hotel Rwanda has sat on a shelf of mine since they day it was released onto DVD. I had not even removed it from its celophane packaging until last night.
Don Cheadle and Nick Nolte gave mind blowing performances in thsi story of civil destruction. Why any of the actors in this movie did not win an award, I do not understand.
The story of Paul Rusesabagina simply could not have been better portrayed. I honestly can not write a statement regarding this movie that would do justice to the film.
I believe that the most painful part of the entire story stems from the fact that it is all entirely true. This really did happen. We really did just sit by and let 1,000,000 people be massacred. We really did turn our heads away from what was happening just around the globe from us.
With 1,000 US troops, we could have stopped this from happening. In the big scheme of things, in regards to all of the wars America has found itself in, especially those of late, this one without a doubt had the greatest chance of success.
Why did America let this happen? Quite simply because it would not be a profitable war. The war ON Iraq is going to make our country’s big businesses billion of dollars. Don’t believe me? Look at Halliburton. This country seems only to care about wars that will make us more powerful in the end. What resource does Africa have that we do not already have? Do we need their coffee? Their cocoa? Their diamonds? We have already stripped so much of their land for this, coffee we can get from Asia or Latin America and the diamonds are all but excavated entirely.
There is no oil for us there. There are huge deposits of natural gas, but this natural gas is stranded in pockets too unreliable or unprofitable for harvesting. Companies do exist that feed off of this undesirable energy. Syntroleum Corporation is able to turn this waste product into clean burning diesel.
Of course, our Lobby Friendly Republican “leadership” has prevented this technology from being taken into the mainstream, it would cost “Big Oil” too much money.
If you want the help of America, you better have oil. Otherwise you will find yourself like the victims in Terry George’s great film. Dead or dying.
She said the task was daunting and for a great while she just sat and looked at the blank pages (so to speak). Her inability to concentrate was preventing her from writing but it was that ADD/OCD that actually made her book… Instead of writing about herself, she wrote about Abraham Lincoln, as the story goes. Turns out, she could not keep on task about Lincoln through all of her research, began comparing his life to her life and there you have it, her latest book There’s Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say. I guess that is where the title of the book comes from…
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