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.