| Land mine (August 6, 2000) Amid coverage of the presidential election, the booming dot-coms, and Christina Aguilera�s belly button, a boy called out to me from the front page of today�s newspaper. The story tells of civil war in Angola: refugees, land mines, makeshift hospitals overcrowded with wounded, villages populated by scarred and maimed survivors, and the parents and siblings, spouses and children of those who did not survive. The boy in the photo is ten. He was leaning over, cutting wood with a machete, when the bomb went off; an explosive device that human beings had hidden in the earth so as to inflict massive wounds on other human beings had performed its task, and now the boy has an empty socket on one side of his face and an eye that doesn�t work on the other, his limbs are bandaged and the skin of his chest is burnt. The bloodshed in the boy�s country, financed by diamonds and oil, has continued for decades. American newspapers rarely refer to it; fighting in Angola never makes the evening news. Is the boy�s tragedy�or the fate of any other person�of less importance to Americans because it takes place across artificially drawn borders, in lands that are represented with different colors on a map? Did any of the diamonds that sparkle from ads in today�s paper come from the same ground in which the mine was buried? Did any of the gasoline I put in my car this week originate beneath the bloody soil there? This week�s Republican Convention was a carefully orchestrated charade; no tough questions were asked and none were answered. The coming Democratic Convention will not be much better. And whichever of those two candidates can best talk about change while preserving the status quo will find favor with most of those who bother to vote. And the wealthy will continue to get wealthy and live their lives in big houses and gated communities and private schools and country clubs. And those without control of the resources will continue to live desperately, hounded by poverty and violence, addiction and incarceration, illness and unhappiness. Intelligence, ingenuity and technology have taken human beings so far from our simian ancestors; yet we are unable to untangle ourselves from a distrust and hatred of them�whoever they may be. And we continue to look outward for our salvation, when it lies here with us. In the newspaper photo, the boy�s father stands over the injured child and reads from a bible. �I ask God to heal my son,� the man is quoted as saying. �Please father, cover me,� the boys says. �I am cold.� |