Life is a constant battle

As I am now struggling for my own battle --- exams, I came across something a little more important to know than the medical/scientific facts i learnt in class. yeah we know that the genocide is still going on in Darfur, Sudan. And we also know that big nations like the US is unwilling to give a hand, and UN peace keeping is done minimally there due to the devastation. But what I didn't know is this organization for rallie, savedarfur.org. And apparently this was started by George Clooney ... (yeah he is a cool leftist in the hollywood now, after the movies he produced.... or rather, just cool not to be a republican if you are in the US.) Something else related to Africa is about a water-project in Mozambique that I heard of today, which apparently will be an ecological disaster. Things like this remind me of the book by Nareen Hertz called I.O.U., in which she argues how detb and funds from IMF and World Bank have become a new currency for the developed nations to make money. In fact, when most of the developing (or as WTO now put it, Least Developed Countries) nations ask for money, they have stipulations: open up market, ease the trade barriers and tariffs, commit to an interest that the country themselves cannot even pay up within the time the current president is in the house. So a lot of these desparate nations then do anything they could to make money, then start to forget about the basic infrastructure, or worse, their basic production/industry and natural resources, and end up ruining the "motherland", which is arguably the continent with the richest resources. Debt indeed, is a new form of exploitation and colonization. Indeed, when I was reading the book I almost gave up reading halfway 'cause some of the things said are so disgustingly depressing. Like how some Wall Street traders would "trade" some countries "debt": in other words, all those debts of these countries, which include all nations between Uganda and Peru, were put on market as bonds so buyers can buy them like stocks, all around the world. This was one way that some developing countries make a bit more money...or for most of the time, forced to do so cause of the economic pressure. It's because of this kinda shit that we saw the crying mothers in Italy sometime ago in late 90's after they had known that all their pension were gone after being put on the Argentinian debt bonds, 'cause Argentina's then-new-leader refused to pay up. Or the East Asian Crisis in 1997, when this dude named Soros and others decided to "attack" our asian currency, and screwed us all up over here. That impact was just as damaging to Indonesia as the Tsunami. Yeah you gotta wonder what those traders in their cubicles were doing when these things happened. Punk ass capitalists. It's disgusting.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Something nice this week is that i finally got my ears on the 3rd Kobayashi album, straight up form Montreal. The Jazz grooves over the electro-beats are gonna be the only force that carries me through my upcoming two weeks of constant brain-stuffing. I would write about this album and my love for this Kobayashi sounds if I have time...just not now.... (i got a lot of things to write about when I finish exam, don't I). You know I would lend it to anyone who is interested, cause their sounds are just better be heard than said. (But if you are in Canada, just go get it. Don't be cheap on this one.) Peace out. Phil