Cambodia-Phnom Penh-Tuol Sleng

three times now since waking up today, Cambodia's come to mind.

punjabican and i are coming to a place where our futures after college are nearing rapidly and we need to get a strong jump on exactly what will be involved in the process of metamorphosis between college and 'the real world'. though i understand the sentiment and reality of college being its own safe little world, i've also come to find that there is a great deal that is accessible in my life at this point.

i think that up until this point i've blinded myself to the options due to my location in nearly rural Indiana... a place i'm still hardly fond of, all things considered.

but now i'm starting to realize i really need to break out of this self-inflicted coma and strike out into the world bravely and recklessly. i've held back for fear of dead-ending (but worse dead-end can you come to than an intentional stand-still?) and for fear of not knowing enough and not being able to do anything. ignorance was never really bliss for me, because i've always wanted to learn that which i do not already know. and now that i'm learning more and more i only find my past and present ignorance to be an aggravation i wish to have dealt without.

i wish people here in the western world knew more about people beyond their borders, our borders... i wish people here cared about the Khmer Rouge's devastating affects, and knew what language is spoken in countries in the Horn of Africa, and knew how many years people have been held captive by FARC in Colombia, and understood what overpopulation can do to a country that is becoming the economic forefront with no moral accountability from the international community.

i wish a lot of things. i wish people didn't want to wage war on other people they don't understand. i wish they would change their minds.

so i pray for them, i pray for the future that people who learn and know and realise will be able to affect in some way. i pray that i can be effective as well in causing change.

i wish americans and the rest of us ruling the western world (and everyone underneath us) could learn to "...live simply so that others may simply live."

three times now since waking up today, Cambodia's come to mind. i'm not sure where to start, i'm relatively certain that people simply won't care about an aging museum documenting lost lives and forgotten atrocities, despite the fact that it's invaluable history is crumbling and yellowing and fading and walking precariously near the edge of oblivion and the unknown.

i don't think you will care to look anything up that i mentioned in here, after reading this. but i hope you will.

punjabican and i are aspiring to go to Tuol Sleng, a museum in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, that's taken a stand in the former prison building, known as S-21, where all the people whose faces and stories adorn the walls were executed en masse simply because the Khmer Rouge wanted to revitalize a nation 30 years ago...
we dream of being able to go to this museum and spend several months photographing and scanning everything into an electronic vault where it should hopefully never be forgotten. we're also hoping for grant money to stabilize the museum itself and all its displays of lives lost. though the specifics are not yet managed, this is our hope, and maybe God will see fit to send us to a forgotten place to help people everywhere else remember them.

please pray for us, pray for an end to ignorance around the world and in your own homes and schools.

Asanteni sana, watu wangu!

Peace be with you.

How to NOT vote pro-life:::

i read this on my friend Kristy's sister-in-law's blog...

http://theheidaway.blogspot.com/2008/05/now-this-just-makes-me-angrydoes-it-not.html

i work at Target, pushing carts. i see a lot of bumper stickers in a given day.

i see this one a lot, surprisingly:

"i vote pro-life". an american flag waves in the background.

this sticker reeks of two things i hate.
1. nationalism (as a Christian recognizing a global family, christian and non-christian, this is elementarily disgusting and elitist as a concept--especially when it provokes war)
2. the term pro-life (which in-and-of-itself should be concerned with ALL HUMAN LIFE. not so, with the republican party, whom i would imagine they are meaning to show support for, by donning this sticker)

"pro-life" should mean what it says, but since there's not one political party (i can find) that dodges nationalism and a pro-death stance... i think it's BS to vote for any single party ALL the TIME!

don't tell me you vote pro-life. we can't vote pro-life. i can't vote pro-life, but i can try to influence senators and representatives and candidates for all positions of power to lean away from killing american babies too, since at least the democrats are less happy about killing Iraqi babies, so far.

i hate double standards.

get angry. tell somebody else. try to change things and REALLY work for a pro-life stance. right now, obviously not enough people are.

and yes, i have every intention of tagging every single person in my friends list. hopefully i'll get a reaction, sisters and brothers.

instead of "voting pro-life", elect to live pro-life!

PAX.

not the norm.

i am going to break a lot of rules by writing what i will write next.

if you have a weak stomach, are patriotic, or know anyone who'd be offended by condemnation of particular US soldiers, or would be offended by an affront to the American psyche of super-importance... then stop reading this entry.

---

i first read a story of a woman named Maria Osman, a Mogadishu resident, about two weeks ago. Yahoo News journalist Kevin Sites has been touring the world's conflict zones for about a year. he stopped in Mogadishu and met a woman named Maria.

her arm is useless. rendered so by the bullet wound that she earned for trying to reach the crushed body of her dead young daughter... under US Black Hawk helicopter Super Six One. When the first Black Hawk went down on October 3, 1993, it would herald the end for 18 American soldiers.

and the same fate came to roughly 600 to 1,000 Somalis.

we glorify the black hawks.


and we ignore Maria Osman's story.


the film makes no mention of the girl crushed by Super Six One.

' "I hate the Americans," she says, her eyes maintaining their empty sadness rather than shifting to anger. "I hate them for what happened to my daughter. If I saw one I would cut them up into so many pieces." ' -Kevin Sites quoting Maria Osman

if you think this is wrong, i agree with you. i think hate is a horrible thing, but i can see where it comes from.
but apparently she's not the only one guilty of this.

"An anonymous man wearing a US Special Forces T-shirt is a war criminal, if his three-minute YouTube interview is to be believed. In it, he claims to have taken part in routine torture of Iraqis — Hajji’s in soldier slang — in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison..." -Captain Eric May, on Soldier X's Youtube interview (i won't put the link to it, but search "soldier x interview" if you absolutely don't believe me in any other way. but please, don't view it unless you're completely ready to hear what he has to say, while smiling)


last month i joined the All Somali Forum. i wrote a blog on there about the war crimes of the Transitional Federal Government in Somalia, and when someone read it, they posted a comment asking me if i am anti-TFG.

i told them that i am, for the time being, since they are committing war crimes and getting away with it. i am against any war criminal. frankly, as you can guess, that does mean tat my enemies include many americans. by far, hopefully not a majority, but definitely more than i'd normally think.

there are always people against people. but if it's going to go that way, it should only be the armed against the armed. civilians should never be targets. and there is such a thing as War Law. so if you're going to lose your head, at least do it by the rules.

things have changed...

brothers and sisters... something has changed in the manner of my writing. at least the subject matter.

so the heavier subject matter, like that which i last posted. like that which is now deleted.

it's posted elsewhere under another name and the whole works. if you want to read any of my new posts on my new site, ask me individually. i'll give you the link. but please be careful. if you read my last post--that looked more like a newspaper article--then you might have a hint of the dangers involved with using real information on either side of the atlantic.

please understand if things here seem suddenly less suspenseful. hopefully my protective measures in switching over will be worth something and will help protect the authors here, and all who have commented. i'll definitely try to work on both sites, of course!

p.s. if you're willing to go slightly undercover, i'd be glad to work on this with a partner or two (or more). there are many many human rights stories to cover. the world is only so big.

PAX.

2007 - a horrible but even wonderful year

Knut - this lovely, sweet, wonderful, cute little polar bear baby, who was born Dezember 5th 2006 in Berlin annoyed me sooo much..
Every Religion lesson we talked about this polar bear. My teacher was a real big fan of Knut. Our record of talking about Knut was 45 minutes. During that time our teacher told us how cute Knut was and how the Berlin Zoo managed to handle all the people who wanted to see Knut. Now no one talkes about Knut any more because he isn't that cute any longer. He's a huge polar bear now;Too big to be cute.

Marco W. - the 19 year old German who went on vacation to Antalya with this family and then spend about 8 months in prison because he had sex with a 17 year old Briton. Did he rape her or not? I can't really tell but he was on the news every week.

Madeleine - a four year old girl disappeared on May the 3rd in Portugal. Till today no one knows where she is.

Lea-Sophie - was one of six or even more babies who died in Germany this year.
A mother threw her baby out of the window, and many other babies died because of neglect.
Lea-Sophie died because she didn't get enough food.
2007 so many babies and children died because their parents didn't take enough care, were brutal or didn't want to have their own babies any longer.

Blacksburg - you might even know more about the crazed action of the 23 year old guy who killed 32 humans than me.
I don't really know what to write about Blacksburg because it's too horrible to write about it. But I know that heros were made that day. The most famouse one was Christopher Jamie Bishop. He died because he saved his students.
Every year so many crazed action happen and not only in the USA. Even here at my own school strange things happen.
I was shocked when I heared about Blacksburg because a few months earlier a self-made bomb was build and planted at my school. No one was hurt at our school but there's still this hole in the asphalt and since that time the police drives around our school more often.

Benazir Bhutto - was killed because of a suicide.
She was first woman elected to lead a Muslim state, Pakistan.



So many cruel things happend 2007; too many!


For me personal the last year was pretty split into good and bad times.
Some of my family members died and two guys I knew died in a car crash.
So people disapeared in my life but there were also some who appeared.
I got to know some people of my grade, we hang out together and now we're really good friends. We spend a lot of time together. I attend service at their church and they are really awesome friends.
I'm so glad they entered my life.



Now 2007 is almost over and I'm some kind of sad about it. 2007 was an emotional year and 2008 will be the year of changes for me.
I'll finish school, leave home, go to college and I'll have some cuts in my life.
My life will change a lot.



I wish you all a blessed and happy 2008 and a wonderful New Year's Eve!
-Krissi

P.S. When I finished this blog entry I realized that I wrote about more horrible things than wonderful things of 2007.
It's always like this. You don't remember the good things but the bad ones.
But surely there were some more wonderful events in 2007.