Sudan?  HELL NO, Congo!

     Most all Democrats and Republicans I hear talk about the tragedy in Sudan.  How bad is it there, compared to other places?  The UN often tries to do the tallies, and they said that 50,000 Sudanese had been killed by the Janjaweed, the militia of the government.  It would be pointless to go into a discussion of the true number of Iraqi civilians killed by Americans in Iraq here.  The Sudanese government said it was more like five thousand, lower than any estimate of Iraqi civilian dead.

     Might there be something worse?  If there is, why don't you know about it? 

     What is going on in the Democratic Republic of Congo is worse, and there are more than a few reasons you don't know. 

     The UN is saying that in DRC 31,000 people were dying per month, and that far more than 3,800,000 people have died in the last eight years, most of which was while Bush has been President!.  Saddam, it might be noted, was killing only a hundred or two Iraqis per year while Bush was in office.

     Of course you care about senseless wastes of humanity.  The American Christian Right, the Arab haters, the francophone nature of DRC, the oil men, and political realities for Washington all prevent you from learning about this.

     Recent (repeat) White House guest, the butcher Kagame of Rwanda, sends troops into Congo to steal and slaughter.  The US Press would rather be a lapdog and play nicey-nice with Bush than point this out when Kagame comes to town.

     The Christian Right uses their radio and television stations to beat their viewers senseless with information about the tragedy in Sudan, and ignore Congo.  The Sudanese government, after all, is not Christian!  Uganda and Rwanda, some of the worst slaughterers in Congo, are.  Sudan also used to beat up Christians in the South, and things are not super yet, by any means, in that oil-rich part of the country.

     Oil men, of course, like oil. Sudan has some.

     And, honestly, of course, it is easier for an English speaking person to go into Sudan and meet with people and talk and find out the rumors.  Sudan was part of Anglo Egypt-Sudan for a long time, while, during Colonial times, Congo was Belgian Congo.  It seems to me that Americans have always had more contact with former British Colonies (see: Iraq) than with the Dutch speaking ones.

     Please help the world get its priorities straight.