el Dios de la Muerte

"If there is no cessation of violence in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict and innocent Lebanese people continue to be killed or displaced, "I'm afraid of a major humanitarian disaster," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said.

"I hope that we move forward in the next day or two, things will crystallize, and that the parties will be prepared to do this," Annan told CNN's Larry King in an interview broadcast Friday. "Otherwise, Larry, I'm afraid of a major humanitarian disaster."

So far, Annan said, 500,000 Lebanese have been displaced in the country, and another 150,000 have crossed the border into Syria.

"With the destruction of the bridges and the infrastructure, it is extremely difficult to even get to the ground to assess how many people need help and how we are going to get it to them," he said.

On Thursday, similar remarks from Annan were interpreted as a call for a cease-fire, something the United States dismissed, but Annan said he had asked for a cessation of violence, not a cease-fire.

"If you wish, you can even describe it as a humanitarian truce for us to be able to get assistance to the people and allow us to organize ourselves to move logistics and supplies around and to help access the people," he said.

Annan also said he wanted an international force in Lebanon, which would give the Lebanese government the teeth it needs to enforce U.N. Security Council resolution 1559, which calls for disarming Hezbollah.

And while he blamed Hezbollah for sparking the conflict by kidnapping two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid July 12, he said that "the Israeli response has been excessive and disproportionate."

"The extensive bombing of Lebanese civilian infrastructure, of bridges, of the airport, and the blockade imposed on Lebanon, both sea and land, and the destruction of the bridges, making it very difficult for people to move around and eventually going to make it difficult to move in supplies of food, medication and others, is a punishment for the Lebanese people as a whole," Annan said.

If Israel continues, and images of wounded Lebanese continue to be broadcast around the globe, the public will "tend to forget the original sin, the original sin of the kidnapping of the soldiers," he said.

The situation could become even more dire if Israeli ground forces enter Lebanon in force, he added.

Annan said he spoke with the Israeli prime minister several times about the need to spare civilians and infrastructure. He also spoke with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday, and "there's very little disagreement between us."

Rice, who will travel next week to the Middle East and Europe over the crisis in Lebanon, said Friday that a quick cease-fire "will be a false promise if it returns us to the status quo."

She added that Hezbollah is the source of the problem in Lebanon and must be disarmed.

At least 261 people have been killed in Lebanon and 582 wounded in the strikes so far, internal security sources say. Fifteen Israeli civilians and 19 soldiers have died in attacks and fighting, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

"We must work urgently to create the conditions for stability and lasting peace," Rice said.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton reiterated that stance in remarks to the Security Council on Friday, saying that a cease-fire at this point would allow the militant group to regroup and plan its next wave of attacks and kidnappings.

Rice will be visiting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Israel and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank. She will also attend a meeting in Rome, Italy, of Lebanese diplomats.

"It is important to remember that the cause of the current violence was Hezbollah's illegal attack from Lebanese territory," she said. "It is unacceptable to have a situation where the decision of a terrorist group can drag an entire country, even an entire region, into violence."

Rice said Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, had been critical of Hezbollah's "provocation."

"What we're seeing here, in a sense, is the growing -- the birth pangs of a new Middle East. And whatever we do, we have to be certain that we are pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old one. "

A framework accompanied by "some kind of international assistance, perhaps significant international assistance" must be created to "push forward" the sovereignty of the Lebanese government and the deployment of Lebanese forces in the south, she said.

Referring to Security Council Resolution 1559, which calls for disarming and disbanding militias in Lebanon, she said: "It's now clear why 1559 anticipates a circumstance in which you cannot have people with one foot in politics and one foot in terror."

Hezbollah, which has claimed responsibility for terrorist acts, also operates an extensive network of social services in Lebanon, and its political wing holds seats in the Lebanese parliament.

Rice said the United States is working with Israel to open air and sea humanitarian corridors into Lebanon. U.N. emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland said Friday that he is heading to Lebanon to work on that issue, too.

Meanwhile, two congressional Democrats sent a letter to President Bush, asking that a special envoy be appointed to deal with the Israel-Hezbollah situation and to negotiate a settlement that would "prevent a return to the status quo."

"We are growing increasingly concerned that you lack a comprehensive diplomatic strategy to deal with the current crisis in the Middle East," said the letter from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware. "Unfortunately, the architecture that you have constructed to deal with the Middle East is not adequate, as it does not allow for the kind of high level and sustained involvement that is required."

A senior administration official, noting Rice's planned visit to the Mideast next week, said, "Our top envoy is being dispatched to the region."


The plan is simple - usher in Death so that in the ashes of this world, a new one might be constructed.

"But what about this world? What about these lives in the here and now?", Annan asked, and was told, "They don't matter."

Glory be to el Dios de la Muerte.

Our Diabolical Rapture.

The costs of War on Iraq is $200 million per day. The population of the U.S. is approximately $300 million. 200/300 is 0.666. Let’s round this number, the irony of which I cannot help but note, to 0.60. This is 60 cents per U.S. taxpayer per day. Just one war. But you’re being forced to pay for this. Alright, let’s try something else.

The price of a cheapest cup of coffee I’ve been able to find is also 60 cents. (Of course, it can be, and for many people is, $6.) 60 cents per person per day then. Just one cup of coffee. But you’re addicted to caffeine. Fair enough. Think about all the other 60 cents you spend in a day.

The price of a program which secures basic education and one meal per day for a child in Soweto is $10 per child per month. Divided by 30 days in a month, this is 30 cents per child per day. This is half of your watered-down, barely drinkable morning coffee. The price of a program which secures basic education, a roof over a head and a meal plan for a child in Soweto is $30 per child per month. This is $1 per day. If these children cannot go to school, their options are a) starvation, b) prostitution or c) crime. Option “c” results in possible, although improbable, survival of one, in the best case scenario one plus his family, but in the deaths of many (hundreds). The result of option “a” is clear – death. The result of option “b” (forget emotional/mental trauma and the high probability of instant death, because in this reality, these considerations are an unaffordable luxury -

Wish I'd died instead of lived
A zombie hides my face
(S)Hell forgotten
with its memories
Diaries left
with cryptic entries

- ), is HIV infection for the girl, all her possible children, and all her partners. An HIV infection in sub-Saharan Africa is a death sentence within 2 years of infection (1-18 months for an infant). Thus, the result of all “options” is – DEATH. It’s very simple, really. Life is simple in this reality. Death is simpler.

Never had a voice to protest
So you fed me shit to digest
I wish I had a reason;
my flaws are open season

You don't need to bother;
I don't need to be
I'll keep slipping farther...

The price of a life is 30 cents per day, or 1/2 a cup of cheap coffee.

Think about all the 30 cents in one day that you do not need, and I do not mean need in order to sustain survival in your reality, but in order to sustain luxury. I don’t want to talk about needs vs. wants, or the confusion of one for the other. This is individual and not mine to judge.

I want to talk economy. I want to talk practicality. We talk, for example, about the staggering cost of AIDS treatment in Africa. And the number, what it would take to provide the necessary medication for a land where 1 in 4 people, or 25% of the population, are dying of AIDS is so great that it is not only mentally overwhelming but practically unachievable. So is the dollar amount necessary to bring thousands of people brought to the brink of death by starvation and resulting health disasters (infection, anemia, etc). We talk of similar cost of international intervention and humanitarian aid in Rwanda, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, etc, etc, etc which is needed when bands of the starving and homeless take up guns and turn reality upside-down opening the flood gates of starvation, disease and death in countless refugee camps. When it gets to this point, the monetary resources needed are indeed, objectively, enormous. This costs some serious money. We’re talking hundreds of cups of coffee per day. Who’s going to pay for that? Who can?

Not you, not me. But you will. We all will. And then we’ll pay for those realities to be returned to their starting point – the 30 cents per day scenario. At best, that is. In most cases, it will be worse then it began.

And all this, or most of this (there are always fanatics and megalomaniacs to account for), can be prevented by keeping one child in school and fed. How many people, apart from herself, will a prostitute infect with HIV? Ten? A hundred? More. How much will then their treatment cost? How many will one teenage thug rob of food or a place to live? How much will it then cost to bring them back to life in some refugee camp?

So I’m not talking bleeding hearts, great sacrifices and great humanity. This has nothing to do with it. This is cold and calculating. This is simple mathematics. I’m talking practicality. I’m talking things that are economically sound.

The price tag of keeping one child in school and away from starvation is 30 cents per day. The price tag of not doing so is far, far greater.

http://www.galileeschool.org/

Bloody Hell.

People are raging against the use of organs from death row prisoners in China. In the United States a death row prisoner is not even allowed, by law, to donate his/her organs. Apparently, he/she cannot be in the rate state of mind to do so (makes one wonder why then the death penalty is justified if it drives people nuts to the point of not being able to make decisions what is too be done with their remains, but that’s another discussion). It’s barbaric, disgusting and immoral, critics say. And I quote: “My personal feeling is that transplanting parts is probably beyond what humans should be doing to each other in the first place, especially when you consider what scientists and doctors do to animals in order to reach the point of working on humans.”

On the other hand, there’s this horrifying statistic. And I quote: “As I surveyed the hospital situation, I calculated that at noon on Tuesday, there were only eight hospital beds available in the entire metropolitan New Orleans area (currently estimated at some 200,000 people). One bad pile up on I-10 and New Orleans would be in crisis mode again.” This I happen to know to be true. The state of healthcare, especially emergency health care, in New Orleans is surreal. I mean, this belongs into a horror film not reality, not here in America at least. This is reality. The focus has been on Charity Hospital. The reality is that while Charity was level 1 trauma as well as a place for those without medical insurance to go, there were other large-capacity hospitals here, LSU, Tulane, Memorial, etc. All were needed, all were operating to full capacity, and it wasn’t enough. All remain closed. That’s besides the multiple clinics, private offices, etc which served the city and are now closed. There was another stroke of brilliance, two portable hospitals (ships) were sent to New Orleans in September. For who? For what? Predictably, they were severely underused, so much so, that after a month, they were declared unnecessary and sailed away. So nurses, doctors etc are offering their services. And that’s fantastic. Except there’s no place to put them, there’s no equipment for them to use. It’s a log of absurdities. The message is – come to New Orleans, don’t get sick.

...

The use of organs from dead people is barbaric, disgusting and immoral, but the fact that the living of New Orleans are dying and will be dying because ten months after the storm we can’t seem to re-open the hospitals, nor is there any plan to do so in sight, is acceptable?

I understand the potential abuse of the use of organs from death row prisoners. But, god damn it, China does not pardon death row prisoners. They will most definitely die. The law forbidding these people to donate organs in the United States is even more absurd. What’s the most absurd is the view that organ donation is immoral, and not meant to be. Let’s face it, transplant list is nearly always a death sentence. Be that as it may, to each his own morality, I suppose. (Although outrage and morality would be much more useful if combined with common sense here. Makes sense to me to lose one life vs. at least two, and potentially more, but what do I know.) What is sickening is that the state of New Orleans healthcare is not seen as barbaric, disgusting and morally objectionable by many. Oh yea, that’s true too. Someone suggested that if people want healthcare in New Orleans, they’re simply insane. The government and FEMA definitely agree. Health care, levees weaker then before Katrina, people loosing their minds (wonder what the law has to say about that since it’s rendered prisoners legally insane), etc, etc, etc… (I’ll lose the point if I go on, some other night.)

But what am I to think about this paradoxical morality? Well, from where I’m standing, it seems to me that people are more concerned with the dead than with the living. With afterlife and souls then lives.

(Or is it only as long as it's not their own? "The life you save might be your own." I read a suggestion to this end actually. It stated that organs should be autumatically donated post mortem, and that people who do not wish this to be done say so, with one caveat - if they sign a form refusing to donate their organs, should they be in need of a transplant, they will not recieve one, and they cannot change their mind after being diagnosed with a terminal illness requiring a transpIant. I like that. But I'm derailing again.)

From where I’m standing, it looks like el Dios de la Muerte is exactly what is wanted. That too many want to live in post scripts of time. Then we can all gather at cemeteries, light candles, sing songs, pay respect to the dead and wail over their fates. You know the ones we refused to give a shit about while they were living, whose deaths we failed to prevent.

Does this make any bloody sense to you? What am I missing?

(p.s. So not to be misunderstood, I in fact think that el Dios de la Muerte, as it is “celebrated” and what it stands for in many places in this world, is a beautiful tradition. It’s just that as much beauty as I find in it, and as much as I by no means want to discount or trivialize peoples' ideas of the afterlife and destiny of souls, just that much ugliness I find in discounting and trivializing life and in unnecessary deaths.)

In this particular moment in time, I am optimistic. I have great faith in humanity. I believe in basic human goodness, in man’s compassion and selflessness. I believe that man is capable of rising above selfishness and greed. The moment won’t last. But while it does, my rational mind has arrived at the following conclusion.

I believe that, if the above is true, the obstacle to saving the peoples of the world, to extracting masses of people from the jaws of starvation, disease, poverty and death, is fear. I believe that if the above is true, this is a rational conclusion. In other words, I think that what prevents mass mobilization of humanitarian aid and the delivery of immediate necessary supplies (food, medicine), of an international military force to dispatch those who have put these people in need of such aid, as well as delivery of education (to form sustainable communities for the future and prevent the disaster from re-occurring), I think that what is preventing all these things from happening is fear.

I believe that if man wants to help, if he is all the things I have, in this moment of great faith, chosen to believe he is, then the only explanation for why he does not is fear. That this fear comes from two basic beliefs: 1) that there’s not enough food to feed the world; and 2) that it’s hopeless.

Both beliefs are erroneous. Both are a result of political propaganda and misinformation spread by various agendas constructed to pour money and popular support into other venues. The first plays to man’s basic instinct for survival. The second counts on man’s propensity to become overwhelmed by disaster. If people are told that in order to give to some other people, whatever is given must be taken away from them, that it’s their survival or your own, people will react with the only one sensible reaction – they will want to save themselves. If people are bombarded with statistics of endless horror, without suggestions of touchable, practical solutions, and with an accompanying commentary that it is completely unclear what exactly the problem is, let alone how to solve it, in other words if you can convince people that it’s completely hopeless, and that therefore any aid is useless and will be for nothing, if you can speak of corrupt governments, politicians and war-lords who will be the ones benefiting from any aid sent, while people you watch on television and for whom your heart bleeds will never see any of it, people will again react in a predictable, and, well, truth be told, sensible way – they will not want to send aid for nothing, they will especially not want to send it to feed the problem. Combine the two, and you have a powerful excuse for inaction indeed. Who in their right mind would want to deprive themselves and their families, put them in possible mortal peril, to help some murderers? Would you? I wouldn’t.

These scenarios are fiction used to perpetuate inaction, and mass murder. Crimes against humanity.

So I think about New Orleans again. You see, I and half the world, have been wracking our brains about this. About why a great, wealthy nation, a symbol of hope and prosperity to much of this world, has let this city drown and continue drowning. Why does it do nothing? Why does it keep saying that it can’t? How can this be? Well, it can’t be because it isn’t. America can, but it won’t. Why is that? There are multiple reasons why, some undoubtedly more relevant than what I am about to propose. But tonight, I am simplistic, remember tonight I believe in the basic goodness of man. So while I have this picture of man as opposed to a sulfur-breathing monster in my head, I think that part of the reason why is firmly connected to another governmental agenda. I think that the lack of aid to New Orleans on the pretense of inability, is a little more sinister then inapt leaders and ineffective disaster response teams, and a little broader then refusal to help the "undesirables" (the poor of this one city). I think that it can be used to justify inaction on other fronts. In the following way. If America is not able to, for whatever reason, adequately help its own citizens and cities, then how on earth can it help anyone else? Then how can this World expect aid from such a desperate and helpless country? Can’t they see we’re suffering here? We can’t help them.

It’s a horrifying logic, isn’t it? To let a city drown, to let people suffer so that you can further justify inaction. Horrifying, but perhaps not so far-fetched.

Furthermore, we send money and look what they do! New Orleans has squandered millions of dollars, some through ineffective policy, some through inaptness of those in charge, some through corruption. Why should we give them more? They’ll just do the same. This has been an excuse for inaction all over the world. New Orleans, the Balkans, Africa, South and Central America, Iraq. You name the place it’s been done. Because Big Brother knows best, is untouched by corruption and knows how to fix the problem.

But it doesn’t add up. If it knows how to fix the problem, then how is it unable to do so? I mean if it’s flawless, then the plea that it cannot help everyone is illogical. One contradicts the other.

Aha. You see this is where that – it’s a mess, no one knows what’s going on there, it’s enormous, it’s completely overwhelming comes in.

Reality is far different. There IS enough food to feed the world. It takes so little to turn what’s seemingly enormous and hopeless to enormous hope. Likewise, it is actually very easy to identify the causes of disaster, and remove them. It only takes a little research. There is no inability to feed the world, there is no inability of a wealthy country to support its own people and defend them from possible tragedies while also sending aid to other places in need, there is only a lack of want. American humanitarian aid, when the numbers are adjusted to per capita income and overall wealth of the nation, is one of the lowest in the world. The statistic is shameful.

I believe it, and other similar statistics, are a result of clever political propaganda which gave rise to those two erroneous beliefs.

What do we do? Destroy these murderous myths and replace them with reality. How?

1. Replace bullshit with real statistics.
2. Analyze real statistics with real mathematics, not the voodoo algorithms of agendas, which never make sense not because people are idiots and unable to understand the math. It impossible to understand because it’s not real.
3. Replace hysterical news broadcasts that speak of overwhelming disasters in which nothing makes sense with drama-free reporting supported by thorough research, clear identification of problems and statement of needs to eradicate the problem. All of this exists, the research, the facts, the point-by-point outlines of needs and solutions. Humanitarian organizations, including the UN, and so many NGOs, have this information. It’s just waiting.

Simple? In theory. Practice is a different story. Crimes against humanity flower in the fertile soil of ignorance.

I can’t think of a way to eradicate the type of ignorance I speak of here, except by educating yourself and then everyone you come in contact with, by plastering reality on every lamp post, on every door, by speaking to every mind, willing and unwilling, by repeating statistics and delivering practical solutions until you’re blue in the face and your throat is horse, and your eyes bloodshot (it takes a lot of time, sleep suffers). Also I think a critical component is supporting those whose voices will be heard by large audiences (like Anderson Cooper and Angelina Jolie), and any other working towards this goal, as well as, of course, relief workers themselves, in any way you can think of. Better yet, ask them what they need. They'll tell you. Sometimes they need a flier made, an article written. Sometimes they just need to know they’re not talking to walls. Sometimes they just need you to convince them (yes, even when you can’t convince yourself) that people are not monsters, that they really are essentially good and caring only frightened. Sometimes they just need to talk, tell someone the horros they've seen, or speak of frustration and doubt that's about to eat them alive, and all you have to do is free them of it by absorbing it into yourself (that's not so easy, be careful, know how much you can take, else you become useless).

We have got to get this message across. We have got to erradicate these myths. We must succeed. Failure is not an option. Failure means death. Failure means el Dios de la Muerte every day, with an ever decreasing attendance of the living and an ever increasing presence of screaming ghosts.

Here we are, again. What is the place of religion in politics?

The question which tragically eludes us again (always), however, is that of state and faith.

I don’t care which god you listen to or what book you read. Or what is the name of your church. It does not interest me whether you pray in the direction of the east, the west, the skies above or the earth below. Whether you kiss the Roman or the Greek cross, or no cross at all. I don’t care what god or hymn gets you through the day.

What interests me is, whether at the end of the day, at the end of all your prayers, you are man or monster. Whether you believe in the sanctity of life or death. I want to know whether you have respect and compassion for your fellow man, whether you believe that senseless deaths of thousands of people need to stop. And then, if you do, I want to know what you mean to do about it. I want a practical and efficient, rational and logical plan addressing the problems and delivering a solution. Then I want you to implement it. It does not interest me how you find faith, courage and strength to accomplish this, what, when the task seems impossible, spurs you on and keeps you from giving up. It interests me that you do.

Democrats want to speak about their faith so that they can connect with their fellow man, so that their voters see them as human beings, just as fragile, riddled with doubt, and in need of solace and a god to believe in. That’s wonderful. To forge a human connection, a link of flesh, blood and bone, and souls, to find some common ground and realize that stripped of all politics and pretense, we’re all the same. That’s beautiful. It could even be essential, it could stop massacres, starvation, suffering and death. It could.

It could if that’s where religion ends, at forming this basic connection, which would then become a stepping stone to rational thought, logical proposals to rid this world of useless and senseless suffering, and their implementation, if it did not transform into “God wants us to…”. If, at the end of the day, at the end of hugs and congratulations, the basic belief of all involved were a belief in humanity, and the basic tenant of this belief a statement of necessity to respect and improve ALL human life regardless of continents, flags, skin color and religions.

If…

This has never happened before. Faith has never entered politics before. Religion has. And religion has created Hell on this earth. For most of its peoples. How?

First, people are possessed by the Demon of greed. This Demon makes then think that each and every one is entitled to whatever he can get, to the most he can get, that if he can then he should. Unless the Democrats have an excellent exorcist on their payroll, their dream stops right here, at this reality.

This Demon is then used by clever rhetoric, by clever students of history (“secular” politicians and religious leaders alike) to ignite a basic human fear and a hard-wired survival instinct and turn it to mass hysteria and murder. In other words, it is used to perpetuate the lie that there’s not enough food to feed the world, that if one doesn’t grab all he can get, regardless of whether he needs it or not, it will all go away. That if another person gets medical attention, food, a roof over his head, that automatically must mean that the same will be taken away from you. It’s not true. It’s a grand lie. But it’s so effective. And perpetuated by forced reality. I’m making it up right? Let me explain.

Have you listened to the people in Mississippi screaming to stop paying attention to New Orleans lately, for example? Why are they screaming? Are they crazy? Of course not. They are completely rational. This is reasonable. They are screaming because their local politicians have told them that every minute New Orleans gets on air diminishes their own disaster, that every bit of aid sent to New Orleans is the bit they will not get. Are their local politicians crazy? Well, no, not really. You see, they have been told by FEMA and the federal government that that’s exactly how it goes down, how it MUST go down, because the great United States of America can’t afford to help everyone. This idea, this LIE trickles from the top. And when it gets to the bottom, it is used to further perpetuate inaction.

The War on Terror. Same LIE, different packaging. You see, if we send food and medical supplies to Niger, we won’t have money to defend good, hard-working Americans from these terrorists. Have you looked at the numbers? If you had, you’d quickly figure out that the numbers don’t add up. That the amount of money spent in Iraq in a week would provide enough food and medicine in Niger for 6 months. But you haven’t looked, because you believe what you’re told. You’ve taken it for granted that there’s not enough food to feed the world.

And why the hell should you, right? In time, your perception of what you need and what you want becomes completely distorted, and you are convinced that what are in fact your wants, luxuries, are bare necessities. More, of course, as any junkie could tell you, is never enough. The consequence is that no matter how much grain is stored, how many cars and how cheaply made, how many antibiotics or flu shots are produced, how much money in the national tresury, it’s never enough.

The result: “If I feed that child in Niger for a year, what will happen to my BMW? I NEED my BMW!” You think I’m exaggerating? The price of cable television is $50 per month. Multiplied by 12 months it is $600. $600 is enough to feed an entire village in Niger for a year. Will you give up your cable? No, of course not. But, you have a heart, it eats at you. So you go to church, and you pray for the dying in Niger. Then you turn on your cable television and, god damn it, on the screen is the devastation that is still New Orleans. You wow to pray for that too.

What are you praying for? Their souls? You think they give a damn about their souls?

So what then do Democrats embracing their religious beliefs hope to accomplish? Tell their potential voters that they too pray for the souls of the dying? That’s wonderful. I’m glad the politicians and the voters have found common ground and can now jointly howl in the church, petting each other on the back. I’m serious. I am not cynical enough not to find beauty in such a human to human bond. I think it’s beautiful.

I don’t care.

What I would care about is if this join crying produced some practical results. I mean, besides getting more seats in Congress. If this connection of human hearts would be used to transcend greed and fear to do some real good in this world, to promote well-being of every human being and stop human suffering in some practical reality, on this earth and in this life.

It’s never been accomplished. So, while I see great potential in forging human bonds on the basis of faith, although not religion (for faith leads to unity, religion invariably to division), I remain a skeptic that this potential will be transformed into the practical result of eradicating human suffering. And that is the only political platform that will ever interest me.

There is a place for faith in every life. People seek solace in faith, especially when nothing makes sense and atrocities multiply, especially in disasters. People turn to miracles. It’s completely human. It keeps people from walking off the edge. I’ve seen it over and over again. I’ll never argue against faith.

However, if people were not screaming in terror, in horror, in suffering, there would be no need for miracles. And the miracle that can accomplish this has nothing to do with church, or belief in a god. It most definitelly has nothing to do with kneeling at the gold-encrusted altar. It has everything to do with rational and logical action. It has everything to do with man’s Free Will, with his decision to do what’s right not on the basis of his religion but on the basis of very earthly evidence. God does not make that decision, man does. It has everything to do with believing in just one thing – humanity and the well-being of all world’s people. While I don’t care how a man acquires this belief, how he remembers that basic ethical and moral principle that separates man from monster, I have yet to see an earthly church, a religious belief that fosters that necessary transformation. I have seen people of great faith practicing their faith silently, unobtrusivelly, drawing strenght to facilitate some touchable political good from it, but never publically flaunting it. But I have never seen loud proclamations of faith, and certainly not religion, used in a positive way when combined with politics.

I’d love nothing more but to be proven wrong. I think that's improbable.

Now the Sun’s gone to Hell
And the Moon’s riding high
Let me bid you farewell
Every man has to die

It’s written in the starlight
In every line in your palm

The suicide rate in New Orleans has tripled since Katrina.

One upon a time, I judged suicides. I had given myself that right. What fools these mortals be. How dare people forsake their lives so willingly when thousands are taken by Death kicking and screaming, completely against their will? Cowards. Why can’t they dig themselves out of their own misery? Why can’t they put it in perspective? To Hell with them. It’s just natural selection. The week die, the strong survive.

Once upon a time I knew everything. Once upon a time I was so certain. Once upon a time things added up, things made sense. There were reasons. And the reason for suicide was always the same – weakness and selfishness.

There’re so many different worlds
So many different songs
And we have just one world
But we live in different ones

A few nights ago, upon being informed that a friend of mine was severely depressed, her sister brain-damaged from a car accident, her brother barely alive after a suicide attempt, her mother battling cancer, her other sister in the middle of a nasty divorce, she miserable in her job, I said the words, “That’s objectively fucked up”. Objectively fucked up… Wrap your mind around that one.

I’m classifying disasters. Weighing tragedies on a scale. Measuring suffering against a standard and deciding which ones deserve to be labeled objective. To Hell with them? To Hell with me. What is the standard against which disasters are to be measured? What makes one worse then the other? How do you quantify pain? By the number of deaths? By the deciliters of spilled blood? By the suicides of survivors of the initial tragedy?

I don’t know anything any more.

I know that a woman named Gina still exists in New Orleans, and that, like so many others, she is walking the thin line between life and death. Why? Why was M walking that same line five years ago? Why did he fall off? Why was B? Why was someone’s brother, father, mother, sister, or friend? Which was “objective”?

I could rattle off a litany of circumstances, a wrap-sheet of sequences of events. I can name no reasons. Are there ever reasons? Does it ever make sense? I’ve searched and searched for reasons. For that small difference which keeps some of us alive and others not. Why some of us continue holding on and others just let go?

Gina, Friends, Neighbors, Strangers, People of New Orleans,

I hear you. I feel you. I have also stood on that edge, imagining, clearly visualizing what it would feel like, how easy it would be to stop struggling – to just stop, to let go. On a bad day, I still do. Nothing makes sense here. Months have passed, eternities. Our lives are unrecognizable. Each day, we tell ourselves that tomorrow is another day, that something will change, get better, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. It doesn’t. Three weeks after Katrina, the disaster was over. Yea. It was over anywhere but here. Here, it had just begun. Just today, a neighbor of mine commented on the trash littering the streets, getting picked up every two weeks, with a resulting swarm of flies. I think of a potential health crisis. It’s nothing in comparison to lives extinguished forever, to homes destroyed. It’s nothing even in comparison to hundreds of people losing their jobs, just being dropped from payrolls that can no longer support them. It’s nothing compared to half of what has gone on here. It’s trivial, but it’s a reflection of one and the same problem, which is writing the obituary to this city – my neighbor says “We’re done with FEMA”. I’m thinking, “No, FEMA’s done with us.” The world is done with us.

I remember coming back to the city in early October. It resembled a war zone, no more and no less. The very few who had returned said it looked terrible. Desolate, dark, silent. To me, it looked fantastic. I had last seen it 5 days after the storm. Then I remember friends coming back to shattered homes, with no help in sight. FEMA sent them to the Red Cross, the Red Cross to FEMA, until finally someone felt sorry enough to inform them that if they want any help, they better get the hell out of here. Then I remember mid-November, when more people started coming back and civilians finally outnumbered military police and the national guard. I remember shops opening, bars, even coffee shops. It was far from normal, but it was something. There was an air of hope here then. You could feel it. Then people who returned began leaving, exhausted, frustrated, they said: “To hell with it, I tried. Enough’s enough.” In January 2006, first schools opened, more people came back. There was talk of rebuilding, grand plans, promises. For a moment, it looked like something was going to change here, for the better. Then they lay-offs began. 1/3 of one of the major universities and medical schools employees for example, and counting. People had lost their families, their homes, and now their jobs. Another wave of exodus. But some stuck with it. The stubborn ones. They stuck with it until now. And now? Now, there are “For Sale” signs popping up like mushrooms after the rain again. Everywhere. And frankly, the wast majority of the city looks exactly like it looked 3 weeks after the hurricane. Nothing has changed. Not one hospital has reopened. Not one neighborhood devastated by the storm has been rebuilt. There are patches here and there, one house in 4 blocks. The great hopes, the financial deals with the federal government, with FEMA, etc we had clung to in February and March, have fallen through on too many levels. All I hear is how many hundreds of thousands and millions dollars in the hole we are, and how the money is not and will not be coming.

It’s the hurricane season again. The levees are a minimum of 3 ft too low. We’re waiting. Just waiting. For another hurricane, for another flood to just wash us of the face of the earth once and for all. To finish what Katrina has began and the politicians continued – seal the coffin of New Orleans.

Nothing makes sense. Put it all together, it’s certainly enough to blow your brains out.

What do you do?

You let go. Or - you find something inside you, some stubborn will, something to keep you from giving up, some reason to go on, some secret no one knows. It will not come from the outside, that’s perfectly clear now. You have to find it within yourself. It’s something hurricanes and murderers can’t take away from you. I can’t tell you what it is. No one can. For me, it’s been simple things: opening my home to friends and random strangers in need, buying one person a dinner, learning how to jump through hoops to keep someone on the payroll, taking in an orphaned animal, building a fence, patching up a roof free of charge, cleaning a house, carting of trash, taking someone to the store, being a whiteness to atrocities committed against people, or just letting someone vent. I’m lucky. I am able to do these things. It’s not enough. It’s never enough. But it makes me feel better. It keeps me from walking off the edge. In the end it’s selfish. It’s even disgusting, to keep oneself alive by focusing on other people’s tragedies. In the end it’s just whatever gets you through the day. Just one more day. Whatever distracts you from your own personal disaster. The trick, the key to survival, for me, is to just keep moving. To focus on something outside myself, as long as it’s necessary, as long as it takes. The trick is individual. No trick is better than another. Whatever you can come up with.

Gina, everyone in this wasteland, whatever the extent of your personal disaster, you’re stronger then you think. Look deep inside you and figure out what it is that keeps you alive. You’ve gotten this far, please don’t give up. Every life is sacred. Every life that continues amidst disasters, betrayals and crimes against humanity is a victory, is a refusal of death, is a statement against oblivion. You’ve been screwed left, right and center, from above and below, give it the middle finger. It seems impossible, it’s against all odds that you’d manage to survive, beat the odds. No one will save you. Your disaster, our disaster is officially over. Save yourselves. You’re strong enough. Please.

What I didn’t say far surpasses what I did. I didn’t say that I take in human tragedies and feel nothing. That when others become paralyzed by horror, I just move through it. That perhaps all I’ve ever felt has transformed into a cold-blooded efficiency, which may save lives, including my own, but can’t feel the heartbeat. That I don’t know if it makes me man, monster or something in between. I didn’t say that I’m scared to death of what I don’t feel. That I’m scared to death of never feeling anything again. I didn’t say a lot of things. I didn’t say it because it doesn’t matter. Because the difference is individual. The difference is subjective. It never makes sense.

You’ve seen too much, heard to much, know too much, feel to much, and in a snap, enough is enough, and enough is too much. It can happen over the years, months, weeks, days or overnight. The abyss is always just one single picture, just one single step away. No one knows what picture it will be, not even you. Because you can’t measure disasters against a standard. Because all the charts of probabilities will never give you a definitive prediction.

Through these fields of destruction
Baptisms of fire
I’ve witnessed your suffering
As the battle raged higher

Some live and some die. There’s no objectivity. Pain is pain. We just have different degrees of tolerance, a different threshold.

It's exclusive. Because it's alone.

You would assume it’s simple. People are dying, it needs to stop. There is nothing intellectually difficult about the concept.

It’s fantastically tricky. You have to know when to break the story. If you speak too soon, the world either won’t do anything, or it will become bored (the acceptable term is exhausted or overwhelmed) with it before it’s over. If you speak too late, the consequences are obvious. Either way, people will die. You have to get the timing right. You also have to know how to package it for mass consumption in some far-away place, which even if it theoretically cares, cannot even imagine what you’re seeing, let alone understands that in a few days, a week at best, random killings will become massacres and genocides, an outbreak of some infectious disease an epidemic, a few burned homes an exodus, a conflict a war, some 100 people without a home thousands of refugees, a food shortage a famine, the underfed the starving, and the dead. But you do understand. It will happen in a week, it could happen overnight. You’ve seen it before, and other people who’ve seen it before are screaming into your ears, warning of the impending catastrophe. You know the urgency of the moment. You feel the hellfire, stench already in your nostrils, but no one believes you. “It just doesn’t look that bad”, they say. And you agree. You’ve seen worse. What you can’t seem to explain is that, without action, action now, bad always becomes worse, that bad can be dealt with but worse is too far gone and can’t. What do you do?

You show the pictures and tell it like it is in the present moment? Not good enough, or rather, not bad enough for the world to move. You wait until it is bad enough, and it will be too late. Thousands will die before a response. What do you do?

You become a calculating bastard. You’re reducing human tragedy to a theatre performance, to a drama that will impact the greatest possible amount of people, reducing human lives to effective characters. You don’t lie exactly, you just add, or subtract, embellish here, minimize there, until it’s something which will get a needed reaction, aka international aid before it’s too late. On the surface, you become everything you hate, everything that disgusts you, everything you’re fighting against, you become the exact reflection of what began and what perpetuates the entire mess. You realize you’re not addressing the core problem, the dripping molasses-like movement of the world, you’re working around it. It doesn’t take long before the thought strikes you. What has become of you? What do you do?

If you forget your purpose, if you forget who you are, it’s all over. You have to remember who you are. You have to remember that the story is true. But, you hold your soul and all your integrity in a balance between complete honesty and what you know is needed. Between idealism and practicality. It’s no balance at all. It’s mathematics of absurdity. These peoples’ lives hang on your ability to forsake your integrity, your idealism, your morality in favor of saving lives, of practicality. You don’t have time for idealism, or morality. The price of course, is your soul.

It’s no different for humanitarian workers. Too many times (most of the time) the only way to get food, medical supplies, etc to those who desperately need them is to negotiate with the very ones who have put them in that predicament. So you make deals with the cause of the problem. You make concessions. You give a little, or a lot, you start out with enough food for a week (you need at least a year), you end up with enough for barely a day. When you’re making deals with the Devil, you always come up short. If you refuse to make the deal, you’ll end up with nothing. And then you get to the camp, and you look into those starving faces and those terrified eyes, and they look back (if their eyes are not rolled up in their head, that is, or too sick to focus), and every one of them is an accusation. They know it’s not enough, they know what you’ve done. Or so you think. They don’t know in fact, they think you’re an angel. This filth, this dirt, this watered-down soup, this is Heaven compared to where they’ve been (they don’t remember the before that, they think it must have been a dream). They don’t know. But you do. You’re the one riddled by doubt, half-saint, half-monster, you’re in serious peril of forgetting you’re just a man. What do you do?

You’re a doctor running something that might bare loose resemblance to a military hospital from the 12th century. No anesthetics, no pain killers, no sterile surgical equipment, definitely no diagnostic equipment. Although you might not need the last, starvation and bodies mangled by landmines are rather obvious. So are bacterial infections, and you’ve learned not to be too meticulous, too detailed. Does it really matter exactly what bacterium it is? In your med school and the hospital you trained in it most certainly did. Here it doesn’t. But it matters that you don’t have enough antibiotics not for the 10 days they minimally need, but for two, or one, or a half. It matters that the supplemented milk concoction, which has been identified, by trial and error, to be the only thing that the starving, half-dead, half-alive by the time they get to you, can stomach, is running out and will be all gone tomorrow.

It also matters that you’ve got a hundred people (a grossly understated number used for illustration purposes only) in need of instant help. Tomorrow they’ll be dead. But you can only treat 50, or 40, or 30, the number dwindles every day. You have to make a choice. Which ones do you treat? The sickest? The ones with the greatest chance of survival? How do you triage that? Tomorrow it will be worse. What do you do?

You have to remember your purpose. You have to remember who you are. You have to convince yourself that something is better than nothing. They depend on your ability to believe that. If you stop believing that, you’re doomed, and they’ll ALL die.

It’s a failure of a system. It’s a failure of humanity. Not only is this world killing people by inaction, it is also forcing the only people who are doing something to make horrid decisions. And live with them. And all because the rest of the world can’t live with the truth. Because truth is not good enough to save lives. (Or is it that some lives are better than others? That different truths are true for different lives? Yea.) All because in order for any action, for any aid, human tragedy must be made into a story dancing precariously between not being good enough (I mean horrid enough) to warrant action and offending delicate sensibilities. Yea. Because it’s a greater crime to keep broadcasting the same story and boring people to death, or exhausting and overwhelming them with massacres and tragedies that take too long and have now become annoying because they’re cutting into their social life. Because it’s a greater crime to be responsible for nightmares induced by graphic pictures, obviously inappropriate for human consumption. Yea.

We’ve derailed somewhere. Something’s very wrong with this picture. There’s a serious disconnection. It will never add up.

On one end there are people dying by the thousands, very graphically. There are people struggling to save lives, very much annoyed (although for very different reasons), overwhelmed and exhausted, although not bored at all. On the other end, there are people bored to death, bored enough to have taken up disecting other peoples' lives as a hobby. The first group must alternatively placate or excite the second, give a grand performance or shut up depending on the mood of the world. Measure the pulse of the world and act accordingly. Cater to shifting political ideologies and whims of madmen, and to intellectual fantasies, philosophical vapor and mist, the morality of the day, or the hour – luxuries and vanities. Two Devils, in a murderous circle where the later perpetuates and enables the former. It’s so simple. It’s absolutely insane.

And the lives of thousands depend on the ability of man to keep believing in himself and his purpose when he has no reason to believe in anything any more. To keep remembering why, when all memory is a moving screen of horror, every memory a diamond knife heading straight for some vital organ or another. To remain himself when he’s sold every atom of his being that ever mattered to the various devils. And yet, they do.

Why am I harping on this? Why am I focusing on reporters, doctors and humanitarian workers instead of people caught in disasters? One, because we don’t think about that very often. Because we forget that they are a critical link in the very fragile chain of life, if it breaks there’s only death. Two, because unlike people caught in disasters, they chose this. All that stands between great good and great evil is to, when faced with the choice between what’s right and what’s easy, chose what’s right. While it may be argued that whatever ill befalls them on the account of their involvement is therefore their own fault, I don’t buy that argument. It is a philosophical argument and not applicable to this reality. In this reality, it’s nothing but an excuse. An excuse for failure and letting people slip through the cracks. And a betrayal. Three, because it’s an absurdity. I’ve always been a fan of logic. And this just doesn’t make any sense. How can you not stand the graphic pictures yet be the paint? How can you fall apart at the site of horror you’ve helped create? How can it be too horrible to watch or not bad enough to bother, but not bad enough to stop?

People don’t fall of edges, they get pushed. When simple concepts become fantastically complicated realities. When nothing makes sense any more.

Call it whatever you want. Words may keep nightmares at bay, but they don’t change realities. It is what it is, and it’s not acceptable.

That’s one of the headlines that appeared last night. Last week, Anderson Cooper interviewed Angelina for the World Refugee Day. Today the public reaction fills the page. Some see why it was done. These are supporters with an understanding. Others sing praises and love declarations, but without understanding. And some are slinging stones, at him for using her for a publicity stunt to feed the show ratings and his ego, at her for – I don’t know what for – for smiling, for being alive, for just being?

They spoke about the horrors they’ve both seen in refugee camps and war zones world-wide. Critics say it wasn’t informative. They spoke about her family. I guess she was smiling too much. She’s happy, so burn the witch. How dare she speak of happiness when people are dying. How dare she be happy. And him? How dare he speak to an actress who just happens to be a humanitarian worker, as an afterthought, of course. Burn him too.

I’m miffed.

These two were not born to war zones (man-made or created by natural disasters). These tragedies are not their legacy. They could, as most people who have the luxury, just walk away, just look the other way. They don’t. They go back, again and again and again. They look into the abyss. More than that, they actually allow themselves to see. And then, they survive it and talk about it. They use the recognition of their names and their financial resources to give faces and voices to the faceless, to the voiceless, to all those thousands and thousands of people whose tragedies would otherwise remain silent, be swept under the rug of other agendas. They give voices to all those nameless humanitarian workers who spend weeks, months, years or lifetimes drenched in sweat and blood, saving one life and losing ten because the relief truck got ambushed or was never sent, or because it just wasn’t enough (it’s never enough). In other words, these two use resources available to them to save lives. So stone them for it. Better yet, silence them, “kill” them. It was an actual suggestion by one of the critics, shut them both up, take him of the front pages, get her out of the UN and off the news.

Madness.

I’m not angry at the reaction of the critics. Most of these are people with essentially good intentions. They want factual details, the bad and the ugly in numbers, in graphs and charts. They want the refugees talking on television, not “celebrities”. They want the world to listen. They are frustrated, they want more. These are idealists. Some, of course, just sit in their comfortable living rooms, not lifting a finger or intending to, and slinging accusations they cannot and will not back up with any personal responsibility let alone action. Yea, I am pissed at the later. But I’m more baffled than pissed, at the lack of practicality obvious in the accusations of the former.

In an ideal world, people would want to save lives and would do so for the sake of those lives alone. There would be no need for Anderson Cooper or Angelina Jolie. We don’t live in an ideal world. We live in a world that doesn’t give a shit unless it’s on your doorstep. We live in a world where crimes against humanity are glossed over by politics and agendas. In a world where people die every day, just disappear silently without a trace, and the earth settles like they were never there. So you want to change it? Yea. I do too. But we don’t have time for utopias. We don’t have time for high morality. In a perfect world what I say, what a refugee in a stinking camp says, a mother who’s just buried her third child, a skeleton remnant of starvation which no one saw, what a doctor who’s just amputated ten legs mangled by landmines and lost another ten to lack of basic supplies or a lack of time, what a survivor of or a whiteness to any great tragedy has to say, would be listened to by as many people as listen to Anderson or Angelina. This is not reality. These are dreams. They are good dreams, but there’s no use in living in dreams. Idealism does not save lives. Practicality does. So if people do something, if they are moved to action, whatever that is, because they are star-struck, or they like a face, so what? Who bloody gives a damn why they do it, as long as they do it. You think that mother in Niger gives a shit why food came? She doesn’t. You think an old woman trapped in sniper fields of Sarajevo did? She didn’t. You think people in midst of disaster, where the mouth of Hell really has opened and swallows all, give a shit about ideological and philosophical dreams and discussions of the nature of man? We don’t. Whatever saves a life. By any means necessary. And now. So when someone is willing and able, when someone wants and can, it is the ideal combination.

I remember, with perfect clarity unaltered by the years, how we tugged on the sleeves of every foreign national, of every war correspondent we could get within ten feet off. You think we were star-struck? You know why? Because we realized that we can’t talk, but they can. We realized that we can’t effect the god-forsaken mess we were calling a life, but they can. So we used them. That’s right. Used them. Played to their emotions, to their ability to feel. We weren't particularly concerned with what the endless pleading, the making them soley responsible for our lives (because no one else would take on the responsibility) did to them. We didn't think about that at all. And they let themselves be used. Anderson and Angelina let themselves be used. They willingly become the tool for the war on senseless death, human suffering and crimes against humanity. They take on the responsibility, when everyone else is washing their hands of it. He did it in New Orleans as well. And then, the man writes a book and worries that he’s using snapshots of tragedies to get his point across. It seems indecent to him. Angelina has said the same, on several occasions. Well, I’m humbled. So while it’s all perhaps morally questionable, it’s nothing but right. It gets things done. It gets lives saved. And that’s the highest moral right I know off.

And another thing. I suppose the critics think that “celebrities” are immune to the atrocities they see. Alright. So it’s true that their physical bodies are marginally better protected, marginally being the key word. A sniper shot is still a sniper shot, deadly all the same and invisible. An ambush waiting behind every curve is less likely but still acutely possible, even if your truck has UN written on it. Yes, it’s also true that they can and do leave. At least physically. It’s definitely true that starvation is not a problem for them, well most of the time. Sometimes shit happens, and you end up stuck in say Sarajevo, behind enemy lines and with roads closed to all convoys of aid. You may have money in your pockets, but that will do you little good. Of course, money always makes a difference, I’m not a fool. Money finds a way through 99% of even the best barricades. So, physically, they’re, let’s say untouched by the disaster they’ve landed in. Unless they pick up malaria, or typhoid, or dysentery, or HIV.

However, the thing is – they still have hearts and souls. You think looking into the abyss when the abyss looks back (and it always looks back if you let it) is without consequence? It’s never without consequence. There are two probable reactions. The first is to become overwhelmed. The second is to become overwhelmed. The first is to drown in the horror, just let the current sweep you under, just let go. You let go, you lose yourself and your purpose, you forget what you have come for, and it’s one of three places you land. In the morgue, in the insane asylum, or in the very chaos you’ve attempted to save, i.e. you never leave, you drop your press pass, your camera, your name and identity and just stay. The first two end-points are obviously useless. I’ve seen war journalists and celebrities go mad, I’ve seen them drop all reason and die of carelessness, some idiotic act of heroism, or they just put a bullet through their own brain, because they can’t stand it any more. It’s too much. The third may do some good, it’s certainly a sacrifice. The thing is, war zones don’t need sacrifices of this type. War zones will always benefit more from exposure, from being the headline news, from truth revealed, from attention paid, from not being forgotten, from whatever help all those things eventually get. Help always comes too late. Yea. Murders must become genocides, starvation famine and disease an epidemic. Yea, it’s maddening. But help, even too little and too late (it’s too late from the minute the first life is lost to an idiocity, and it’s always an idiocity) is infinitely better then nothing. Put it on the scales of practicality. Does a war zone benefit more from just one single nameless, anonymous (because if you stay, you WILL become a nobody) pair of hands, or from their stories being told? How will you save more lives, by revealing a statistic of horror or becoming one?

The second probable reaction is to build a wall of defense which will prevent you from falling of the edge, i.e. doing 1-3 of the above. In other words, you become numb to it all. Indifferent. I’ve seen this too, everyone has. It’s always obvious. The news broadcasts become hollow, and inaccurate in both representing the feeling, the human heartbeat behind them and in representing fact. It’s a little tough to do the proper research necessary to report truth when you are indifferent to it. It’s impossible. And mangled stories, half-stories, distorted reflections are sometimes worse then none at all. The Balkans being just one such story. How genocide and mass graves and lives became “No one knows what’s going on over there, what can you do? Nothing”, I‘ll never know. I know one thing, it’s the sort of reporting, the lack of interest, the lack of passion to get to the facts, that did serious damage and cost thousands of lives. Preventable deaths.

I can’t judge either of these reactions. They are probable. The more you see, the more probable they become. And how can you blame someone for just having had enough of it and wanting out, wanting to remember what it’s like to not wake up to the stench of rott and decay, to the sound of pleading and screaming? You can’t. I can’t.

Anderson Cooper and Angelina Jolie seem to me to belong into a third group. The improbable group. A reaction against all odds, and perhaps against all reason, or even against human nature. Be that as it may, it’s the only reaction that leads to any real good. They go, they see, they allow the horror to rip them apart, to rip through them, they not only understand it, but feel it, and then they make themselves whole again, changed forever (you can never stay the same and you’ll never see the world through those innocent eyes again, you’ll lose the innocence forever, and it will never come back) but functional and useful, and go on to speak about what they’ve seen. They manage to remember their purpose. They stand on that edge and contemplate just letting go of the railing, but they don’t. They don’t let go. They walk the wire, and it’s a very thin wire indeed. One small slip, one short moment of not paying attention, and you’re gone. It takes very deliberate will, and some enormous strength to keep walking, to keep remembering your purpose. These people are heroes in my mind. And I have neither the time, the use or the interest for heroes without a clue. They are not the only ones, of course, but why is this world so hell-bent on crucifying people who have the hearts and the minds to do what’s right, people who can both be human enough to feel and practical enough to do something real?

What bloody good would it do if Anderson refused to ware his bullet-proof vest or his helmet? Or if Angelina refused modern medical technology to deliver her child? If they die, whom will it save? What life will be spared by their deaths? None. None at all. These would be actions not only reckless and idiotic but irresponsible.

Furthermore, Angelina it seems to me, has managed something very few do. Something so simple yet practically unachievable to many. In other words, she has created a family. And she’s happy. Humanitarian workers, or people who’ve seen horrors of this sort, by enlarge never manage such a trick. In fact, many become a source of great sadness and torment to their families. So if she’s happy and still doing what she does, how in hell is that wrong?

Finally, what has always struck me about both of them is the improbable combination of deep feeling, acute understanding of the situation on the ground and talking about it without pomp, hysteria or grand theatre. Without the very thing the critics accuse them both off today. I see them as nothing but very humble human beings who have just figured out how to do their jobs and do them right. Probably at great personal cost. Doctors Without Borders, journalists and actresses without egos. It wasn't informative. Really? How many people who now know about Niger knew about it a week ago? Pie charts, statistics, histories, politics, details are the responsibility of the viewer. They are all readily available. Click of a finger away. Just waiting. Waiting for you. To demand that they be handed to you is nothing but laziness, nothing but proof against all that you claim to be. A reporter's job, and that of a UN ambasador, is to rise awareness. Once you know, if you care, you'll go the lenght, you'll get your facts on your own. If you don't, then you don't care enough. To put it bluntly.

I hope I’ve clarified my initial statement of confusion.