Everyone knows you can find a book at your public library, but did you know it's also not a bad place to look for a job?  And I don't mean as a librarian.

The Westchester (NY) Library System (where I am a trustee) has been a pioneer in offering career and educational counseling through our WEBS program. Literally thousands of Westchester library patrons have gone through the eight-week programs and various other programs and received individual counseling on everything from career management to job search techniques.

Help with your career is just one more way your public library contributes to the quality of your life. In a study released earlier this year by the American Library Association, 73 percent of public libraries reported that they were the only source of free public access to computers and the Internet in their communities. Why does this matter? Aside from the public’s never-sated need to update their MySpace pages, thousands of job hang in the balance, too. Seventy of the top 100 U.S. retailers accept online applications for hourly positions, and 16 accept only online applications, according to a 2006 study from Taleo Research . If you want to apply for a job, but don’t have a computer or Internet access in your home, you’re at a distinct disadvantage. Your public library levels the playing field.

But the library can do even more than help you file an online job application. It’s also the place to go for technology training, workshops on writing résumés and cover letters and on filling out online job applications, not to mention tips on establishing email accounts to receive the responses to your applications.

This is just one of many services provided to America’s communities by their public libraries. The cost to the average taxpayer? About $31 per year—or about the price of one hardcover book.

My eyes seldom leave the situation in the Congo, but Zimbabwe is almost impossible to ignore.  Right now, it's all over but the hand-wringing in what was once the breadbasket of the continent.  Morgan Tsvangirai's withdrawl from the Presidential run-off election means that Robert Mugabe has officially won, ensuring that his party, the Zimbabwe African National Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) will remain in power for the foreseeable future.  It's a big blow for democracy in Africa, not to mention another big nail in the coffin of what was once a beautiful, prosperous nation.

In a face-saving gesture, Tsvangirai will call (again) for a unity government.  His plea will be echoed by the US, Britain, and perhaps one or two regional nations.  The man and his party have no leverage, however, so Mugabe will certainly refuse to even consider the "demand" that he give up any power.  

Mugabe had already announced he wouldn't recognize the results of the election if he lost, why should he give in now?

There is no organized opposition to the Old Man in Zimbabwe, as the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)'s failure to nominate a viable candidate proved.  What about Tsvangirai?  With all due respect to his bravery in both mounting a campaign and then having the decency to call it off before more bloodshed occurs, he was never a strong opponent.  His past failures to pull his party together, previous half-hearted attempts to force a unity government on Mugabe, and apparent inability to rally the leaders of regional states around his cause have to be seen as contributing factors to his defeat. 

While there is no question that ZANU-PF's brutality destroyed the democratic process, Tsvangirai's weak candidacy was doomed to failure from the start. Until MDC finds a leader--or another opposition party emerges (a highly unlikely prospect)--Mugabe and whoever succeeds him as the head of ZANU-PF (even the Old Man won't live forever, but his power base might) will continue to rule Zimbabwe.

Is there anyone else who can bring about change?  Not really.  Simba Makoni, a senior member of ZANU-PF until he was expelled and a one-time Minister of Finance, staged a campaign in the first election, but I suspect he was allowed to run simply to split the opposition vote, which he did. Arthur Mutambara, a leader of an MDC faction opposed to Tsvangirai, threw his support to Makoni not long after he announced his candidacy.  The result was that Makoni essentially became Zimbabwe's Ralph Nader, garnering just enough votes (8.3%) to ensure no clear victory for MDC.  

There won't be any outside intervention, either, regardless of how loudly the New York Times and the rest of the Western press bang that drum.  Any action by the UN Security Council will be blocked by South Africa.  The US and Britain are in no position to start any other foreign wars--and who appointed them Africa's savior anyway?  Any action whatsoever by the West will simply play into Mugabe's claim that his opponents are no more than pawns of the colonialists, further inflaming his club-wielding supporters.

Nor will the regional states step in, even though they have the most to lose as Zimbabwe continues to sink into oblivion and its people flood over their borders looking for new lives.  South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki has done little more than jawbone around the situation, obviously reluctant to undercut his ally, Mugabe.  Levy Patrick Mwanawasa of Zambia and Botswana President Seretse Ian Khama have spoken harshly, but that's about all they can do without the heft of South Africa behind them.  

What does the future hold for Zimbabwe?  Much, much more of the same.  Harsher Western economic sanctions will take the remaining scraps of food off the tables of the poor but mean little or nothing to the "Big Men" at the top of the heap.  Food aid will resume, but be distributed (one way or the other) by Mugabe's men only to those who support the party.  Eventually, Chinese arms shipments will resume. 

The West will cry and protest, but the people of Zimbabwe will die in silence.  

The first trial to be held by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague got off to a rocky start, with the  release of a serious war criminal the probably outcome.  According to the UN News Service,  the prosecution of Congolese rebel militia leader Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, has been suspended by the court.  The move demonstrates the difficulty of prosecuting war crimes in a situation where everyone seems to be committing them.  It also shows, however, that the ICC is a legitimate organization trying to bring the rule of law to a lawless society. 

The stay on the case was imposed after the court found prosecutors had failed to disclose more than 200 documents to the defense.  Those documents have the potential to prove Lubanga's innocence, and failure to disclose exculpatory evidence is a fundamental violation of the accused's right to a fair trial.  The stay  effectively halts the trial and a hearing will be held next week to determine whether Lubanga should be released from custody.

Lubanga is the founder and leader of the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), an armed militia in Ituri in the northeasern Democratic Republic of Congo.  He was charged with "conscripting and enlisting children under the age of fifteen years and using them to participate actively in hostilities."  the UPC, which was aided by Uganda during the Second Congo War that forms the backdrop for my novel, Heart of Diamonds, was implicated in large-scale torture and rape of civilians and the murder of nine UN peace keepers.

The ICC is perceived by many (but certainly not all) Africans as a  kangaroo court whose principle function is to eliminate factions opposed to Western interests.  The refusal of the Bush administration to join the ICC, which was established in 2002, reinforced the opinion that there is one set of rules for the U.S. and another for Africa. 

Assuming Lubanga is released, it will be interesting to see whether the action polishes or tarnishes the ICC's legitimacy.  The U.S. has already dulled its own reputation in Africa.

Most of the violence and human right abuses reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo are in the eastern provinces, which border Rwanda, Uganda, and Sudan.  But there are long-standing problems in the south along the border with Angola.  Recently, a new wave of deportees arrived in Kasai Occidental province in the Congo (the setting for Heart of Diamonds) from the diamond mining region in Angola. Most of the women among the 27,000 people expelled by the Angolans have been sexually abused, according to local health officials.

"There are many injured people and 80 percent of the women had been raped," according to Pierre Didi Mpata, a doctor and director of an NGO running a local health center in Kamako, a village near the Congolese border with Angola not far from Mai-Munene where much of the story in Heart of Diamonds takes place. Some 5,000 refuges now crowd Kamako. The UN mission in DRC, MONUC, reports 22,230 more DRC citizens were sent back from Angola in the last two weeks. They are now between Kahungua and Tembo, some 95 kilometers from the Angolan border.

Mpata was quoted in a UN Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN) report that among the people who had been sexually abused was Caroline Lomelo (not her real name), a mother of two.

"I was badly beaten up and raped by five Angolan police officers when they forcefully expelled us," she said. Lomelo returned to the DRC five days ago from Angola. According to Mpata, Lomelo can barely stand because she has a sexually transmitted infection. She is also six months pregnant.

"She is in danger of having an abortion because of the [gonorrhoea] infection she contracted," Mpata said.

Lomelo, who was training to be a nurse, said she had gone to Angola from her home town of Lodja, in the central province of Kasai Oriental, to look for her brother.

Vultures are circling above the secne of recent food riots in Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, and elsewhere in Africa—but that may actually be a positive sign.   That's because the vultures, everyone from huge investment funds to ag industry titans like John Deere, Monsanto, and DuPont, are betting big bucks on the one place in the world where’s farming’s potential has barely been scratched—Africa. Whether they will do great good or great harm remains to be seen.

The NY Times reported recently that major money players like New York’s BlackRock and London’s Emergent Asset Management are buying up everything from great swaths of farmland to grain elevators and shipping concerns in order to cash in on the continuing shortages in world food markets. According to the Times, Emergent is raising as much as $750 million to invest in farmland in sub-Saharan Africa. The idea is to industrialize agriculture operations the way family farms were consolidated into corporate behemoths in the U.S. following the Great Depression.

Susan Payne, founder and chief executive of Emergent, was quoted as saying

“…land values are very, very inexpensive, compared to other agriculture-based economies. Its microclimates are enticing, allowing a range of different crops. There’s accessible labor. And there’s good logistics — wide open roads, good truck transport, sea transport.”

What wasn’t said, of course, is that labor is also excruciatingly cheap in most of Sub-Saharan Africa. When researching Heart of Diamonds, my novel set in the Democratic Republic of Congo, I was told by one large-scale farmer that he pays workers about $50 a month—wages considered quite generous in the region where entire families scrape by on incomes of $2 (or less) per day. It’s also worth noting that if he weren’t employing them, his workers would have absolutely no practical source of cash income. Their choices would be to feed themselves on dirt-scrabble crops or migrate to urban areas where their prospects might be even dimmer.

One of the big questions about industrial agriculture in Africa is what will happen to the subsistence farmers whose land is gobbled up by corporations on the other side of the globe? On the one hand, they can be expected to land jobs with the corporate farms or other industries like transportation and food processing that will come along with them and to otherwise benefit from the general economic growth. It should be pointed out that many small farmers in the region don’t own their real estate; often they farm it under permission from their tribe or another larger regional authority. They won’t profit from the sale of the land, but neither will they lose an asset.

On the other hand, the introduction of more modern technology and methods to increase yields and operational efficiency will mean those farms will require fewer workers overall, so there will probably be large-scale workforce displacement as there was in the consolidation phase of America’s agricultural economy. Recognizing the problem, Emergent told the Times it plans to provide clinics and schools for local labor. A facile answer to the problem, perhaps, but at least they recognize that their presence can have negative effects.

There are many, many other questions that deserve answers, too. Who will keep the bulldozers out of the rainforests? Large-scale farms managed by conglomerates thousands of miles away aren’t usually noted for eco-friendly practices unless strictly regulated. Will the ag industry titans grow crops and ship them elsewhere for processing and sale, or build plants and distribution centers closer to the land, providing more jobs and increasing the food supply in the countries of origin?

MONUC (the UN's military force in the Congo) reports the military situation remains relatively calm in the Democratic Republic of Congo although isolated clashes continue in the eastern provinces. It also said that hundreds of rebels in eastern DRC have surrendered to MONUC forces in the past week.

Clashes between the DRC Armed Forces (FARDC) and Mai-Mai militia were reported in Orientale Province close to the Ofiyo river, six kilometers from Balobe in Bafwasende territory. According to an initial assessment, four FARDC soldiers and up to 30 Mai-Mai were killed.  The Mai-Mai served as models for one of the rebel groups in Heart of Diamonds.

In Ituri, dissidents belonging to the Nationalists and Integrationists Front (FNI) and the Ituri Patriotic Resistance Front (FRPI) surrendered with their weapons to MONUC forces.

In North and South Kivu, sporadic violations of the cease-fire were reported. Elements of the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), Mai-Mai groups, and the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) regularly skirmish between themselves or against the FARDC. Incidents were reported between the CNDP and the PARECO in Kahira.

FARDC clashed with the PARECO in Mutebo. MONUC is investigating a report of several people killed during clashes between the CNDP and the PARECO. The clashes are believed to have taken place in the area of Kusuma, located between Katale and Mushake.

In South Kivu, several violations of the cease-fire were reported even though the signatories of the Goma Act of Engagement committed to a complete and immediate end to hostilities as well as to all acts of violence, movement, reinforcement and recruitment.

MONUC forces were also informed of forced recruitment of children by the Mai-Mai. Five minors aged between 14 and 15 years were abducted recently near Luzira and Ishovu. Clashes between various Mai-Mai groups of the Cobra Brigade took place in Muremana, north of Minova.

Even though these incidents are deplorable, they represent a lower level of violence than the region has seen in recent months.

The UN also reported even more positive news: More than 500 people presented themselves to the MONUC Mobile Operational Base (MOB) at Bambo, 120 kilometres north of Goma. This group was composed of some 260 "Mongol" Mai-Mai combatants, accompanied by 117 women and 154 children. They brought with them 24 rifles, 54 chargers, 13 grenades and a machine-gun. A day later, 46 combatants of the same Mai-Mai group surrendered at the same MONUC MOB.

In May 2008, 137 people comprising 82 armed foreign combatants, along with 55 dependents were repatriated within the framework of Disarmament, Demobilization, Repatriation, Reinsertion and Reintegration (DDRRR) program to Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, their countries of origin. That brings to 524 the total repatriated by MONUC's DDRRR division in 2008.

Skip lunch, buy a net, save a life. It’s so easy a child can do it and many are, according to the New York Times. The $10 mosquito net—a prime tool in the fight against malaria—has become the latest way for teenagers to show they give a damn.

The concept is beautiful in its simplicity. An insecticide-impregnated mosquito net costs $10, lasts three to five years, and saves the life of the family who uses it. I first heard of the potential from Simon Wilde, a friend in Zambia, who told me about it while I was gathering material for Heart of Diamonds. Simon pointed out that all the millions being spent on research to find a cure for malaria was wonderful, but a simple solution—the mosquito net—was already at hand if someone could find a way to get it to the people who needed it.

That’s what the kids are doing. While $10 may represent an African family’s income for a week, it’s chump change to a teen. As Bishop Thomas Bickerton told a crowd of 6,000 Methodist youths at a conference in North Carolina, “This represents your lunch today at McDonald’s or your pizza tonight from Domino’s. Or you could save a human life.”

He told the Times the kids showered the stage with Alexander Hamiltons–$16,000 worth in thirty seconds. Coolness indeed.

Some big names have jumped into the fray. “Nothing But Nets” is sponsored by the NBA and Major League Soccer. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Lutheran Church, the United Methodist Church, the Union for Reform Judaism, and even American Idol are making major contributions and George Bush started the President’s Malaria Initiative. The Times says some $2.5 billion is needed.

The movement has gone viral through the efforts of hordes of children and teens who have adopted the cause, which is the gist of the Times’ story. They’re holding bake sales, basketball tournaments, fashion shows, and presentations at their schools to raise money to buy nets.

A child dies of malaria every thirty seconds. A ten dollar donation can save one of them. Even if you’re not a teenager, you can help at Nothing But Nets.

Wholesale rape continues to terrorize regions of the Congo. The act goes beyond personal violation and borders on genocide the way it is practiced by guerilla groups and even rogue army units. The horrible effects of rape as a weapon of terror are seen in several scenes in Heart of Diamonds.

"The word 'rape' or 'sexual violence' cannot fully translate the horror that hundreds of thousands of women are living," according to Dr. Denis Mukwege, Director of the Panzi General Referral Hospital Bukavu, South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo. Dr. Mukwege made the statement during his recent testimony before the Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law Commitee on the Judiciary of the U.S. Senate.

As Dr. Mukwege points out, the act is done in a methodical manner by an armed group, usually in public in front of parents, husbands, children or neighbors, and followed by mutilations and other corporal torture. In many cases, it turns into sexual slavery that continues for months. Dr. Mukwege's testimony is not for the faint of heart, but it should be read by anyone doubting that rape has become the weapon of choice for armies and gangs throughout the eastern provinces of the DRC.

The effects on the individual of this type of rape are horrendous. Physically, genitals are destroyed by knives, guns, or other objects while infections of all sorts, including HIV, are rampant. On the psychological level, the act humiliates the woman, destroying her self worth and interest in living. These effects are compounded at the social level when women are rejected by their husbands. Families are destroyed, women and children turned into refugees with no resources.

The effects on society are, if anything, worse. As Dr. Mukwege testified:

In normal warfare, the men die at the front, but often the women reproduce children with some sick old men still alive. But the contrary is not true. When the uterus is destroyed, there is no possibility of reproducing. In the case of our species, when one destroys the genital apparatus, the men become useless, because they cannot reproduce children with sick women or women whose genital apparatus are destroyed.

10 healthy men can produce 1000 children if there are 1000 women. But 10 healthy women with 1000 healthy men can only produce 10 children under the same conditions. This analysis shows that man has been able to invent a horrible strategy of war which produces the same effect as a normal war (that is assassination, loss of property, occupation of land, internal displacements, and refugees with all the miseries that go with that) but worse yet, has an effect on the health of those concerned, with indelible marks that they will carry everywhere during their life span.

This situation is so much more serious because it does not concern ten thousand women, but rather several hundred thousand women.

It is believed that King Leopold's brutal regime killed, directly or indirectly, half the people of the Congo. Unless the crime of warfare by rape is stopped, the long-term impact of the current conflicts could be worse.

Declarations and proclamations, cease-fires and even treaties signed, sealed, ratified, and delivered by the combatants are useless in the fight to preserve human rights when one or even more parties to them decide they can be ignored.

That's exactly what Laurent Nkunda has done to the January 2008 peace accords he signed to end the strife in Kivu provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo. His forces continue to rape and pillage the region despite his vow to abide by the agreement. The rights of civilians in the Congo mean nothing without a champion to enforce them. The United Nations has tried, but MUNOC forces are spread thin trying to control an alphabet soup of rebels, war lords, and garden-variety gangsters in the eastern provinces.

Nkunda is a former psychology student who traveled to Rwanda to join the RPF and overthrow the genocidal Hutu-led government in 1995. After the Tutsi forces gained control of Rwanda, Nkunda returned to the DRC to fight alongside Laurent Kabila, who successfully overthrew Mobutu.

When the Second Congo War broke out in 2000, Nkunda became a Major in the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RDC), a group allied with Rwandan, Ugandan, Burundian, and other Tutsi-aligned forces operating in the DRC. This period of great unrest is the backdrop for my novel, Heart of Diamonds.

When the war officially ended in 2003, Nkunda joined his forces with the DRC army, but he soon rejected the government's authority and rebelled, taking his troops with him. It is believed that Nkunda is being at least partially funded by the government of Rwanda. In September 2005 he was indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court. Refugees International reports that his troops murder, rape, and pillage civilian populations in areas under his control and Amnesty International says his troops have adbucted children as young as 12, forcing them to serve as child soldiers.

The January peace deal provides the CNDP (Comité Nationale pour la Defence du Peuple, Nkunda's group) and other signatories with a general amnesty for "acts of war", but does not cover war crimes and crimes against humanity. Bloody clashes continue in North Kivu despite the peace agreement, with all sides in the conflict accused of gross human rights abuses. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that some 800,000 people have been displaced by fighting in North Kivu out of a population of 4.2 million.

For more thoughts on the state of human rights in the Democratic Republic of Congo and elsewhere, read all my contributions to “Bloggers Unite for Human Rights”

Rape - A Weapon Of Terror
Toys of Destruction
Human Rights Criminal On The Loose
Human Rights – Major Theme In Heart of Diamonds
Children of the Congo – Soldiers Still
A Century of Horror – Red Room
God Is Love
Eager To Learn
Is America A Human Rights Weakling?

To see what it’s all about, read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights then, to do your part, see these sixteen ways to make a difference.