Code Red: E.L.E. Cont

CHILD SOLDIER EPIDEMIC



It wasn't until I heard this track that I finally got a bit. Lupe is one of the illest new(ish) MCs out. He can rhyme, his beats are sick, and most importantly he talks about real shit that's going down in the world these days; some real poignant social commentary.

My curiosity was peaked, and when I happened on a book about the situation in the Congo, one of the places the epidemic is at its worst, I decided to pick it up. I was hooked after the first paragraph.


The book is called All Things Must Fight to Live: Stories of War and Deliverance in the Congo and it's written by journalist P. Narendorph. The things he describes are mind blowing man; teenage gunboys carrying 50 caliber machine guns (a bullet that size can cut you in half), men, women and children hacked to pieces with machete's, females from old women to three year olds getting raped, little kids being set on fire, genocide; the atrocities go on and on. What really got to me was when the author describing the gunboys eating the raw hearts of their victims right after they butcher them; they believe it will give them power and make them invincible.


Child soldier from Sudan. Picture from http://www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk/

But it's not just Africa. Child soldiers are being used across the globe, from Columbia to Nepal they're everywhere.

Global Child Soldier Report

The kids are recruited by warlords because they are more pliable and less likely to disobey orders. Usually they're shot full of drugs and alcohol to make them numb to the killing.

I can't imagine anything closer to hell on earth, and the U.N. and the U.S. are not doing nearly enough to prevent it.

That means it's up to us.

Code Red: Extinction Level Events (ELE)

Goddamnit yo, it seems like we're always so busy we can rarely find a way to sneak in a couple minutes of peace in quiet. I feel you, don't think I don't. Right now i'm writing this on no sleep; with not much last night and you can bet your ass it aint in the near enough future.

Right now there are only two things keeping me from slumping to the floor unconscious and this is one of them: the fact that there's thousands of kids, like cute little 5 year old brats across the world are being killed by the various global crisis's in a lot of seriously fucked up but preventable ways. And like we're coming to see, in this post-modern/matrix era the things going on around the world affect us in a thousand ways. So here we go.

THE GLOBAL LANDMINE CRISIS

Man suicide bombers suck. And they're scary as hell because there's only so much you can do against someone who has nothing to lose (personally, I think the gunboys and Rebels in the Congo are the true hardcore).

Suicide bombers with IED's are also mad dangerous because they have been known to blow even TANKS the hell up. And yea, I might not know exactly what it's like, but I know it really has to suck to get fragged in half by something exploding near you. Can't imagine things that suck too much more...

...except maybe that shit happening to you as a kid, with no warning, and it wasn't even done on purpose.

Now THAT fucking sucks hard for real, and it turns out is a problem all over the world; not just Iraq or the Middle East. Figures.

These pictures are from Landmines.org, which says:

A disproportionate number of victims are children, both because they are not educated about the dangers of landmines, and because their small size makes them more vulnerable to a landmine explosion.

Cambodian children who survived land mine explosions.





Tomorrow i'll be broadcasting more on this and other issues. Stay tuned, it's just getting started.

THE GLOBAL LANDMINE CRISIS poster created by me.