Friday, September 30, 2011

Postcards from Hell


http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/06/20/postcards_from_hell_2011?page=0,0

I'm back to brooding about the world, humanitarian crises, what can actually be done about it.
I sit in my classes and am distracted by the fact that what we're studying is not abstract theory; the examples are not hypothetical. The suffering is real.
I wade through the stack of books and articles assigned each day and tear up at the heartbreaking accounts found within their pages. These details aren't fictional. The unending hardships aren't conjectured. The pain is real.
I flip through dozens of newspapers and history books for my final research paper and am continually surprised and appalled by my findings. I knew there were horrors in the world; just not the terrible extent of them.

Postcards from Hell is a collection of photographs from the world's most failed states. Read it. It's real. I know people from many of those countries. I love people from some of these countries. This isn't something to read about and apathetically sympathize. The suffering, the pain, the turmoil, the people, the blood...it's all so real.

Can anything be done? What? How?

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