Art Against Genocide

New Blog

2007-01-10T18:16:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone.

I will continue updating the stories coming out of Darfur, Burma, and other human rights hot spots, but I wanted to also make my readers aware of my new blog:

www.citizenboo.com

This is Citizen Boo's Rational Revolution! Come join in~

I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing, With Perfect Hypocrisy

2006-10-25T17:39:00.000-07:00

I’m wondering if anyone has seen any of the refugees in Darfur, whether in Mornei Camp or Kalma Camp, drinking a refreshing bottle of Coca-Cola? Me neither. However, Coke is doing great business in Khartoum, according to a recent New York Times article.

“In 2002, Sudanese investors opened a new Coca-Cola factory, with Coke syrup legally exported to Sudan under an exemption for food and medicine. The $140-million plant churns out 100,000 bottles of Coke, Sprite and Fanta per hour”. [1]

How interesting. Especially since the company has recently announced a land donation in Atlanta, Georgia worth $2 million for a museum that will exhibit the papers of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I wonder what Dr. King would say about the donation?

Representative John Lewis, D-GA said about the donation: “It helps to educate and sensitize [the business community]. When Coca-Cola speaks, the business community listens.” [2]

Maybe Coca-Cola needs to stop speaking, and start listening a little more. In their own words, Coke has this on their website:

“Our actions – the way we treat our people, produce our beverages, protect the environment and benefit communities – determine whether we will be invited [into people’s lives] again. We strive to listen and respond to the needs of people and the planet. For us, corporate responsibility is an ongoing journey, not a destination.”

Maybe the corporate heads of Coca-Cola need to journey to Kalma Camp. I’m sure they can afford the trip.

There’s a place on their site to talk back: http://www2.coca-cola.com/contactus/index.html

The address is:

The Coca-Cola Company
P.O. Box 1734
Atlanta, GA 30301

[1] Gettleman, Jeffrey. “War in Sudan? Not Where the Oil Wealth Flows.” The New York Times. 24 October 2006

[2] Dewan, Shaila. “Coca-Cola Donates Land to Civil Rights Museum in Atlanta.” The New York Times 23 October 2006.

2006-10-25T12:55:00.000-07:00

The Shame of Darfur

Estimates for the death toll in Darfur are reaching the 300,000 mark. I find it interesting that we use the phrase “death toll” and not “death count” for such things. It underlies the cost of the loss of life – this is a toll not on the victims, but on us, the communities of the world that allow such a price to be paid.

Collective guilt is not apropos to what we have allowed to happen. And let me be clear – we allow this to happen. We allow China to trade lives for cheap oil. We allow the Khartoum government to get away with genocide for tips on Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist cells. This last revelation, made during the 60 Minutes segment, is especially repulsive because it shows how little the White House values life in general, ineffectively trading a life for a life is no fair trade at all.

But collective guilt will not plague us if this ever ends. No, we will again feel collective shame. The shame we tried to brush off after Rwanda. The shame we tried to sweep under the rug after Cambodia. And we deserve this, this shame that haunts the world over our apathy to allow fellow mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters to die at the hands of men who have the ability to view human beings as animals.

Recently, I have been reading Primo Levi’s haunting last work, The Drowned and the Saved. He committed suicide shortly after he finished the work in 1987 as he was able to see history repeated in Cambodia while the world wrung its hands and said, “What can we do??”

The most interesting chapter Mr. Levi writes is that on Shame. The shame the survivors felt after liberation. The shame of knowing what they had to do in the camps to survive, and the shame of knowing they had been “diminished” by the world. Interestingly, Levi draws a line: prisoners were victimized by the Nazis, but they were diminished by the world.

“And there is another, vaster shame, the shame of the world. … And yet there are those who, faced by the crime of others or their own, turn their backs so as not to see it and not feel touched by it … deluding themselves that not seeing was a way of not knowing, and that not knowing relieved them of their share of complicity. … Never again could it be cleansed; it would prove that man, the human species – we, in short – had the potential to construct an infinite enormity of pain, and that pain is the only force created from nothing, without cost and without effort.”

~Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

How unfair, that survivors will feel the same shame of the world?

You can check out more of the 60 Minutes segment on Darfur by clicking on the following link: http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/60minutes/main3415.shtml

UN: New Offensives in Darfur and Chad Threaten Civilians

2006-10-24T18:42:00.000-07:00

Security Council Must React Strongly to Expulsion of UN Envoy

New Press Release from Human Rights Watch Africa

(New York, October 23, 2006) – Rising violence in eastern Chad and Darfur highlights the immediate need for the United Nations Security Council to strengthen civilian protection by the UN mission in Sudan following Khartoum’s expulsion of the UN secretary-general’s special representative in Sudan, Jan Pronk, Human Rights Watch said today.

“The Security Council should not accept Khartoum’s endless intransigence over any UN effort to protect Sudanese civilians,” said Peter Takirambudde, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Violence in Darfur and eastern Chad is escalating, and the strong UN force that the Security Council mandated back in August is urgently needed to protect civilians on both sides of the border.”

Violence against civilians in Darfur has been escalating in the past two months following clashes between the Sudanese government and a coalition of Darfur rebel factions that refused to sign the Darfur Peace Agreement in May.

The coalition, which calls itself the National Redemption Front, is mainly active in North Darfur, where civilians have been victims of indiscriminate bombing carried out by government forces as part of Khartoum’s recent military offensive.

The Sudanese government’s formal expulsion of Pronk on October 22 came two days after the Sudanese army voiced anger over the UN envoy’s statement in his weblog that the Sudanese army had suffered two major losses and declining morale in the clashes in North Darfur.

“Pronk’s expulsion is Khartoum’s latest tactic in its ongoing effort to subvert UN efforts to protect civilians in Sudan,” said Peter Takirambudde. “The Security Council needs to implement targeted sanctions against senior Sudanese officials to press Khartoum to cooperate with the UN.”

Inter-ethnic attacks on civilians by militias in eastern Chad have also been increasing since early October, partly due to an increase in armed groups and rising ethnic and political tensions linked both to the violence in Darfur and domestic politics in Chad.

On the same day as Pronk’s expulsion, a Chadian rebel group attacked the Chadian town of Goz Beida in a sign of escalating conflict in eastern Chad. The Chadian government claimed to have recaptured it later on October 22.

Although there were no reports of civilian casualties, concerned by the potential for ethnic reprisals against civilians Human Rights Watch called for all armed groups operating in the area, including the Chadian government, to fully respect the rights of civilians and their property to protection, and to always distinguish civilians from combatants in armed conflicts.

How Much Does Genocide Matter to You in the Voting Booth?

2006-10-19T17:02:00.000-07:00

As elections draw nearer, voters will be able to hold representatives accountable for their decisions, their representation, and their records. There are many issues on which to base your decision; however, I found a really great site that will inform you what your Congressman and Senator did about the situation in Darfur:

http://darfurscores.org/

Here you can find tons of good information about how your representatives voted on issues of human rights. And with Habeas Corpus just repealed, the rights of every human being on the planet lay in a delicate balance.

Barack Obama recently stated: "It is my job to represent my constituents to Washington, not represent Washington to my constituents."

What does genocide mean to you in the voting booth?

2006-10-18T19:33:00.001-07:00

The Fundamental Issue

First I would like to thank everyone who's been emailing me during my break from the blog. I was traveling and working on various other projects, but I'm excited to get back down to business ...

Fast forward video to 2:20.

I must admit that I've watched this clip at least a dozen times. First, a little background: Jack Straw of the British House of Commons recently declared that he will not speak with women who wear burqas because it is a "symbol of intolerance." Interestingly, the burqa for Muslim women has the same intention as a snood for Jewish woman, or a habit for a nun, i.e., because women are so often objectified by men, they dress modestly in order to avoid this objectification. The idea is that all you need to reveal in order to make your point is your hands and your face.

There is no doubt that this has been used to push women off the social strata in some Muslim countries, but to make this generalization about ALL MUSLIM WOMEN IS DISRIMINATION. After all, Jack Straw did not make this rule for Jewish women or Catholic nuns. He singled out Muslim women.

It is sad that 4 educated, albeit white, people could not make this connection between ethnocentrism and discrimination. Bill Maher even asked, "Why come to the West [if you're going to continue to wear your burqa]?" Maybe because Muslim women are under a delusion and still insist on believing that freedom of religious expression means something in the West.

What is even more ironic is that during Bill's New Rules segment, he had the audacity to call for action in Darfur. So let me ask you this Bill Maher:

African Muslims are being killed because they're black. If they find refuge here, who will tell them that they will be discriminated against because they are Muslim??

I am very disappointed with this show of disrespect ... I am a huge Bill Maher fan, but this - to answer Danielle Pletka's question - is where you draw the line.

EU: Darfur Escalation Demands Sanctions

2006-10-18T19:12:00.000-07:00

Sudanese Government Offensive Threatens Civilians
Most recent post from Human Rights Watch
(Brussels, October 19, 2006)

European governments must apply targeted sanctions on President Omar El Bashir and other top Sudanese officials responsible for the ongoing military offensive and associated abuses against civilians in Darfur, Human Rights Watch said today.

A summit of EU heads of state is scheduled for October 20, 2006 in Finland. In October, the UN Panel of Experts reported to the UN sanctions committee that almost all the warring parties in Darfur were blatantly violating the arms embargo and recommended that individual sanctions be applied to a confidential list of individuals.

“The UN Panel of Experts has recommended sanctions on those who continue to abuse civilians and violate the arms embargo. Clearly Khartoum policymakers should be top of this list,” said Peter Takirambudde, director of Human Rights Watch’s Africa division. “The European Union says it supports sanctions. If this is more than rhetoric then now is the time to apply them at the European level.”

In August, the Sudanese government launched a major offensive against rebel factions who refused to sign a May 2006 peace agreement. The past two months have seen fierce fighting in North Darfur, and Sudanese government aircraft have repeatedly bombed the area, on some occasions destroying villages and indiscriminately targeting civilians.

On October 7-8, fighting between the Sudanese armed forces and Darfur rebel groups could be heard in refugee camps in eastern Chad, and more than 100 wounded and detained Sudanese soldiers are reportedly being held across the border in Chad in circumstances that remain to be clarified. This development could mark a serious deterioration in the recently-restored relations between the governments of Chad and Sudan, each of whom continues to support insurgent groups against the other.

There are no reliable estimates of civilian casualties from the fighting in North Darfur due to the limited international access to the area, a result of the significant increase in attacks on humanitarian workers across Darfur. (The bold is my addition).

In South Darfur, attacks by various tribal militia groups have killed hundreds and displaced thousands of civilians in three areas: Buram, Greida, and in the vicinity of Muhajariya, all strategic areas for the Sudanese government due to rebel presence. Although the attacks are apparently undertaken by militia members, the groups appear to receive support – and possibly coordination – from Sudanese officials, and follow longstanding patterns of destruction, forced displacement and violence against civilians.

“Diplomacy is having no effect on the Sudanese government: Khartoum’s hand is clearly behind not only the aerial bombardment in North Darfur, but also, less obviously, the vicious militia attacks in South Darfur,” said Takirambudde. “As is the rule in Darfur, once again civilians are bearing the brunt of the Sudanese government offensive.”

The May 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA), which was signed by the Sudanese government and one faction of the main Darfur rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), has contributed to the serious deterioration in Darfur’s already appalling security situation.

Most of the non-signatory factions have grouped together under an alliance called the National Redemption Front (NRF), which has attacked government targets and has also been involved in bouts of inter-rebel fighting that have caused displacement and other serious abuses of civilians.

“Continuing Sudanese offensives and rebel fragmentation will produce nothing but more misery for the civilians of Darfur and an increasingly unstable Chad,” said Takirambudde.

Related Material
Crisis in DarufrCountry Page
U.N.: Sanction Sudanese Leaders for Failing to Protect CiviliansPress Release, September 15, 2006
Darfur: Indiscriminate Bombing Warrants U.N. Sanctions

2006-08-24T23:10:00.000-07:00

Khalid Kodi, Darfur Dirty Laundry

"When the challenge comes to examine what's been going on in Darfur, people will fail to answer the question of how can we have all these wonderful values and there is still 2 million [refugees] and more than 500,000 people [have] lost their life."

~Artist Khalid Kodi

2006-07-30T19:38:00.000-07:00

A Moment to Think

It is the poetry of this song that makes it so powerful. An idea that sometimes seems so far away encapsulated in a simple melody.

What is life worth to us?

Pray for Peace~

Great Blog

2006-07-25T12:45:00.000-07:00

http://mauberedigitalarmy.wordpress.com

This blog incorporates poetry, art, media and essays in a current events reflection of the world today. Amazing ... great work!

ASEAN Distancing Itself from Already Isolated Myanmar

2006-07-25T10:45:00.000-07:00

The situation in Myanmar is brutal - the country has been ruled by a military dictatorship for the past 40 years. Not only does the government rule absolutely, they have created an isolationist pocket within the region, one that reminds us of the days of the Khmer Rhouge.

The main opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi - a peace activist and Noble Peace Prize winner, has been detained by the government for 17 years.

This week, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations met for their annual conference. A statement demanding the release of Aung San Suu Kyi was deleted, even with pressure from Malaysia, the Phillipines, and Singapore.

"The final version [of the statement] released after one-day annual talks between the bloc's foreign ministers removed those elements [demanding the release of Suu Kyi], saying only that the ministers "expressed concern on the pace of the national reconciliation process."
"We reiterated our calls for the early release of those placed under detention and for effective dialogue with all parties concerned," it said. [1]

After this latest conference, ASEAN admitted to purposefully distancing itself from Myanmar in favor of allowing UN Under Secretary General Ibrahim Gambari to take the lead. From ASEAN's point of view, this gives Myanmar, "Enough to give them the space that they want and it also means that internationally we feel less of an obligation to defend them as a group."

However, this could prove disastrous to the people within the country, especially the rural Christian population who suffer the most from the military's corrupt rule. As we have seen in the past, the UN must cut through so much red tape to help those in need, that they often arrive with too little too late.

Gambari, who was welcomed by the government, made the following statement:"The United Nations will be engaged with them since they have already agreed for Gambari to do a second visit," he told reporters. "I think these are processes that are being made in order not to sideline Myanmar. I think Myanmar engaged is better than Myanmar isolated." [1]

For more information on Aung San Suu Kyi, please check out her wiki page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aung_San_Suu_Kyi. There are many great links to read more in depth the ideas and strength of this amazing woman.

Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear of death, fear of losing friends, family, property or means of livelihood, fear of poverty, fear of isolation, fear of failure. A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man's self-respect and inherent human dignity. It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man.
~Aung San Suu Kyi

[1] Southeast Asia waters down statement on Myanmar
Yahoo! News / AFP
by Sara Stewart
25 July 2006

Sudan Watch: Aid work suspended in Zalinge, Darfur after killing - UN

2006-07-21T11:42:00.000-07:00

Sudan Watch: Aid work suspended in Zalinge, Darfur after killing - UN

Bosnia Blog

2006-07-21T10:50:00.000-07:00

Another great blog is www.americansforbosnia.blogspot.com by our friend Kirk Johnson. Kirk is currently covering Fools Crusade by Diana Johnstone. He has a lot of insightful analysis of the author's work, who did not support the bombing of the Serbs in order to stop genocide.

Art & Culture: Sarajevo Film Fest

2006-07-21T10:32:00.000-07:00

Our friend Shaina from http://bavault.blogspot.com/ has an entry about the upcoming Sarajevo Film Festival.

In those days, Sarajevo was isolated from the outside world; the Festival became its window. Moving pictures could not stop the shooting and shelling, but they helped the citizens of Sarajevo get out of the vicious circle, to see the outside world and, in the same time, to make the world aware of their suffering and struggle in the besieged city. These pictures definitely did not impress politicians, but they did move artists across the world.

~~excerpt from Sarajevo Film Festival, Festival History page

The impact film festivals have on the culture and society of a region are vastly underrated, especially here in America. You must appreciate the deeply symbolic nature of the film festival, i.e, as a tool to promote the healing and education of a people divided by war.

It makes you think the impact of all artists collectively acting within a group to enact change. www.witness.org is an invaluable non-profit that provides video cameras to people in order to record human rights violations. These are documentary style videos meant to bear witness to atrocity.

What if there was an organization of artists that could provide an array of artistic tools (i.e, canvas and paint, cameras, instruments, etc) to help the people express themselves artistically after surviving atrocity. It could change the world. Idealist? That's an unapologetic 'yes'. Yet, in every raging river of cynicism, there has to be a pebble of hope.

If anyone has the opportunity to attend, please let me know!

Sudan Watch

2006-07-20T12:40:00.000-07:00

Please check out the following blog for up-to-date news and coverage of the unfolding situation in Sudan. This is one of the most informative and authoritative sites I've found:

http://sudanwatch.blogspot.com

U.S./Sudan: Bush Should Press for Promised Reforms

2006-07-20T12:18:00.000-07:00

Reprinted from Human Rights Watch
www.hrw.org
New York, 19 July 2006

Security Service Reforms Agreed in Southern Peace Deal Are Crucial for Darfur

When the president of Southern Sudan’s regional government visits the White House on July 20, U.S. President George W. Bush should call on Sudan to implement reforms to its security apparatus as agreed in the 2005 peace accord between the Sudanese government and the southern-based rebels, Human Rights Watch said today.

The South Sudanese president, Salva Kiir Mayardit, is the head of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). In 2005 this southern-based rebel movement and the Sudanese government signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, ending a 21-year conflict waged mostly in Southern Sudan. The accord brought the SPLM into government in partnership with the ruling National Congress Party, an Islamist party that has governed since 1989.

The United States helped to mediate the north-south Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which in turn served as the foundation for the Darfur Peace Agreement signed on May 5.

“Sudan’s peace-deal promises to reform its repressive security apparatus and political system are supposed to apply to the entire country, but they have not been fulfilled,” said Peter Takirambudde, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Arbitrary arrests and other abuses by security agents won’t end in Sudan, much less Darfur, until Khartoum implements these reforms.”

Sudan’s national security apparatus is a patchwork of unaccountable security agencies with ample funding and leaders who usually are not known publicly. Human Rights Watch and other human rights organizations have documented hundreds of cases of torture, mistreatment and death in detention – in prior years often in unacknowledged, unofficial and secret “ghost houses” – since the National Congress Party effectively came to power in 1989 through a military-Islamist coup.

The security agencies have also had a major role in managing the ethnic militias used by the government to conduct its abusive wars in Southern Sudan, the Nuba Mountains and Darfur. In its Protocol on Power Sharing, article 2.7.2, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement stipulates that there will be one national security service that is professional, with a mandate limited to advice and information gathering and analysis.

“The root causes of the conflicts in the south and now in Darfur are related to rampant human rights abuses throughout Sudan,” said Takirambudde. “The central government uses security agents and ethnic militias to do the dirty work of arbitrary arrests and attacks against civilians.”

Reforms of the security services, as promised in the 2005 peace accord, must be implemented to eliminate the systematic repression conducted by these agencies, which includes torture and mistreatment, arbitrary arrest and intimidation practiced by the existing national security agencies, Human Rights Watch said. The Sudanese government must also revoke the statutory immunity from prosecution that security agents enjoy.

Brokered with high-level U.S. involvement, the Darfur Peace Agreement signed by the Sudanese government and one of Darfur’s main rebel factions has not been accepted by two of the rebel factions and many civilians in Darfur. In recent weeks, fighting has escalated in Darfur, including between rebel factions who have committed abuses against the civilian population.

“The Bush administration took the lead in negotiations for peace accords in the south, then in Darfur,” said Takirambudde. “It cannot turn its back and walk away as soon as the agreements are signed. The U.S. needs to pressure the parties to uphold both agreements.”

At the White House, Salva Kiir is likely to urge Bush to pressure Khartoum to live up to its part of the peace agreements. Although the U.S. government has long supported the SPLM politically, Washington still maintains extensive economic sanctions on the Sudanese government because of widespread atrocities in Darfur since 2003. The regional government of Southern Sudan, dominated by the SPLM, is nevertheless part of the government of Sudan under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and thus still subject to sanctions.

“Khartoum is eager for the U.S. to lift its all-encompassing sanctions on anyone doing business with Sudan’s government, which gives the U.S. important leverage,” said Takirambudde. “The U.S. must use that influence decisively to insist that Khartoum reform its vast security apparatus. Sudan agreed to carry out these reforms more than a year and a half ago, but still hasn’t taken the first step.”

Human Rights Watch has received repeated reports of torture and summary execution by various arms of the security apparatus in Darfur. Despite pervasive presence of government security agents, most of Darfur’s population lives in conditions of mounting insecurity caused by these same agents, as well as by bandits, rebels and the government-backed militias known as Janjaweed.

At the urging of the United States, the U.N. Security Council deferred dealing with the mounting crisis in Darfur until after the north-south peace agreement was finalized in January 2005. By then, however, Sudanese armed forces and government-backed militias had forcibly evicted two million people from their homes in Darfur. None have been able to leave the displaced persons camps and return home because of continuing violence mostly at the hands of the government and its militias.

Neither the Security Council nor the United States favored expanding the north-south peace talks to include Darfur, because they feared that pressuring Khartoum on Darfur would derail any hope of north-south peace. Now Darfur has become the location of the same kind of widespread crimes that Southern Sudan suffered for years. With the unreformed security services, the central government has waged a scorched-earth campaign of forced displacement against civilians sharing the same ethnicity as local rebel groups, first in Southern Sudan and now in Darfur.

Great Blog on Bosnia

2006-07-19T17:11:00.000-07:00

Please check out this link: http://bavault.blogspot.com/

Journey

2006-07-18T17:38:00.000-07:00

While the road may be flat
The journey is always uphill
That spiritual metaphor sometimes mistaken for a curse

If it were easy, it would be done
If it were impossible, it could never be dreamt
If It is ignored, it will die

There is something in our difference
That makes us fear
Something beautiful unlike ourselves

There is something in our difference
That I have fallen in love with
A delicate orphan left on the porch of the world

(c) 2006 boo friedmann

Social Change Through the Power of Peace

2006-07-18T17:37:00.000-07:00

Social Change Through The Power of Peace

In a time when it seems the entire world is at war, which for the most part it is, I'd like to take a moment to honor a man who is a touchstone of peace - Nelson Mandela. It is his birthday today.

This video was put together masterfully by Sean, sellaseat, at www.youtube.com.

Sean was kind enough to email me some of his thoughts on the video:

I produced that video to be a juxtaposition to how a lot of people interpret "Adagio for Strings" (as a funereal sounding piece). It got that stigma because it was used in a radio broadcast mourning the death of FDR and of course the terrible "shoot up" scene at the end of the movie PLATOON.

Samuel Barber actually wrote it as a string quartet that was supposed to conjure pensive thoughts about whatever was relavent to the listener. I attempted to rekindle that spirit through my video and show that it can galvinize significant experiences of all kinds, not just death. Recent history and the heroic actions of many, prove that peaceful resistance has actually accomplished more than war. All I did was give it a soundtrack. . .

True Tales of Modern-Day Slaves

2006-07-17T17:14:00.000-07:00

By Anneli Rufus, AlterNet. Posted July 11, 2006.

Despite the Civil War, slavery hasn't gone away. Three writers consider what life is like for the more than 27 million people on Earth who don't even own themselves.

Say what you will about the USA, but slavery has been illegal here since the 13th Amendment was ratified in 1865, and was outlawed long before that in many states. North Americans tend to see slavery in sepia tones, as a legacy, because in practice it belongs to our receding past.

OK, not for the preteen girl forced to serve the large Orange County family of Abdelnasser Eid Youssef Ibrahim and Amal Ahmed Ewis-abd Motelib from 2000 to 2002 while being slapped and threatened and forbidden to go outside. But Ibrahim and Motelib are on trial, charged with keeping a child in involuntary servitude, facing an October 23 sentencing. As part of a plea deal, they must pay the now-16-year-old some $100,000 in restitution and back wages. In the courtroom, Motelib told the judge through a translator: "We did a mistake here in the United States of America because … at that time we were new here." The Los Angeles Times called the keeping of poor children as servants in wealthy households "a common though illegal practice in Egypt."

Slavery thrives. From Albanian sex workers to Indian cigarette-rollers to black Africans bought and sold in Mauritania and Sudan: According to latter-day abolitionists such as the Boston-based American Anti-Slavery Group, more people -- AASG estimates some 27 million -- are owned now than ever before.

As Andrew Crofts writes in The Little Hero: One Boy's Fight For Freedom (Vision Press, 2006), Iqbal Masih was four years old when his half-brother, contemplating marriage and seeking capital, sold the boy to a carpet maker. A few months later, the first carpet maker sold Iqbal to another carpet maker, in whose factory he joined rows of empty-eyed children who hunched coughing over looms, raped now and then by overseers. Far from home, the laborers "didn't even know the names of their villages … the single room of the factory was the only world they knew." Slashed sometimes by the sharp weaving-tools they plied in semidarkness, "they would have to dip the wounds into burning hot oil to seal them and then go back to work the moment the blood had stopped flowing." Sleeping on the crowded factory floor as those first few months turned into six years, Iqbal strained to remember his toddlerhood days spent splashing with friends in a sun-dappled canal.

Child labor and other forms of slavery are illegal in Pakistan, but Crofts describes a crushing silence and indifference that sustains the old system for money's sake: "Life is cheap in Lahore." One night Iqbal managed to flee through a window and find a policeman, whom he begged to arrest the factory boss. Instead, the cop brought him back to be punished by being hung upside down from a twirling ceiling fan. Escaping again, Iqbal lived on the street eating slops -- "a small boy flitting in and out of the shadows like a night insect," ventures Crofts, a British ghostwriter who under other bylines has written celebrity "autobiographies" and who recounts Iqbal's saga in passages by turns preachy and pretty ("a fanfare of horn blasts"; "a maze of towering walls"), but ever-earnest. How else, anyway, could you tell the true tale of someone the world imagines exists only in history books: a slave, born in 1982?

At a rally whose printed banners looked like mere squiggles to him, Iqbal discovered the Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF), an India-based NGO at whose Lahore Freedom Campus he and other ex-slaves slept serenely behind steel gates and learned "to read and write, to add up numbers, so [they] can get proper jobs." As the school's most outspoken crusader, joining rescue-raids on factories whose chattel escaped onto BLLF trucks shouting, "We are free," adolescent Iqbal gained international fame, winning a $10,000 Reebok Foundation Youth in Action Award at age 12. A few months later, he was gunned down while riding a bicycle in the Pakistani countryside. This isn't a spoiler, so don't say I've ruined your surprise. Croft starts his book with the death scene. The rest is in flashback. BLLF maintains that Iqbal was assassinated by a "carpet-mafia" hitman. Pakistani officials contend that the slaying was unrelated to Iqbal's activism, but that he mocked a farm worker whom he discovered having sex with a donkey, and the farm worker shot him.

Thanks largely to corporate giant Reebok -- and ABC News, which named him its Person of the Week -- Iqbal Masih became a household name, at least among Western confabs such as myhero.com and freethechildren.org, and in Western classrooms where his story has spawned countless antislavery assignments. By contrast, most unpaid laborers live and die in total obscurity, picking coffee beans in Benin, planting pipelines in Burma, scrubbing floors in Paris and sucking dick everywhere undreamed-of, which of course is the whole point of not paying them. Tourists snap temple photos. Shoppers simper over diamonds and silk. It's so easy not to imagine the loom, the plough, the Chinese prison yard where petty thieves and Falun Gongers paint Easter toys and knit sweaters all night for the Western world. Let a hundred boycotts bloom. But still.

It's the undocumented-immigrant sex trade that Juan Bonilla skewers in his novel "The Nubian Prince" (Metropolitan, 2006). Its narrator, Moisés Calderón, the restless intellectual twentysomething son of suicidal parents, travels far and wide as a scout for Club Olympus, the world's most exclusive hot box. Its "boys and girls … serve as companions or pets" to fantastically rich clients who pay 600 euros for actual acts and another 300 for "image rights": memories, jackoff-fodder -- "You know," Moiss explains with the shimmering boredom that Bonilla nails so well, "all the fantasy sex the clients will have after it's over."

Telling themselves that they're technically saving lives, Club Olympus scouts snatch radiant prey -- the "boys and girls," the "merchandise," the "pieces" -- from among the wretched refuse of the world's teeming shores. Boat people, dump-dwelling ragpickers, runaways and stowaways and throwaways, the dross of earthquakes and economic collapse: "I once succeeded in persuading a pair of Romanian shantytown dwellers to sell me their son … it's high season for shipwrecked refugees along the coast, and Brazil looks like it's about to go belly-up and that really is like taking candy from a baby, Brazil." Trained to perform, belted during off-hours with devices applying electrical charges to waists and thighs "so their muscles wouldn't relax for a single moment … and they wouldn't have to spend too much time in the gym in preparation for the moment when their bodies would be unveiled," the luscious Africans and Albanians and Argentineans that Moiss hauls in "transform … into machines."

It's fiction, a morally crisp saltwater dip of a summer read and, give or take a few electric belts, it reflects reality. Unknown numbers of kids were abducted and seduced right off the beach to be sold on the international sex and forced-labor markets after 2004's tsunami made them orphans. The Indonesian Social Welfare Ministry passed a law prohibiting the removal of anyone under age 16 from the islands. Too late.

Too late for the tiny whores, for Haitian cane-cutters, for anyone in Cambodia, Cuba, Qatar, Jamaica, Togo, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, North Korea, Ecuador, Bolivia, Burma, the United Arab Emirates and Sudan, which the U.S. Department of State cites as "Tier 3" nations that fail to comply with basic standards outlined in its annual "Trafficking in Persons" report. By the time we hear about cases -- or entire industries, such as the UAE's programs for buying boys from parents and turning them into camel jockeys -- it's always too late: not for tomorrow, but tell that to yesterday's HIV-positive 9-year-old amputee.

Americans, enslaved? Laughed at and lashed, left to die where they fell? Not in Southern plantations, pre-1865, but within modern memory, right around when Eric Clapton and Bob Marley and Divine were being born. We weren't supposed to know about this one, because the U.S. military -- ashamed, or eager to let bygones be bygones -- barely investigated the strange chapter of World War II which Roger Cohen probes in Soldiers and Slaves (Anchor, 2006). Its perpetrators were identified but served arguably light sentences. Reentering the real world bruised and paranoid, those who had survived were asked to keep mum.

In early 1945, the Wehrmacht sent 350 American POWs via cattle car to Berga, a concentration camp near Leipzig, where they joined legions of Eastern European Jews -- transferred there from Buchenwald -- in digging tunnels toward a planned underground fuel facility. Chosen because they were Jewish or, in some cases, looked Jewish, or got otherwise unlucky, the POWs were starved, systematically beaten, and sent to work with jackhammers through an East German winter and spring. "In coal mining, you spit black, but here you'd be spitting your lungs out," a survivor recalled. "Bloody." It was "a work-to-death program," another remembers realizing.

Geneva Conventions, ha ha ha, in a landscape that Cohen conjures with terse fury as "a madhouse filled with lost humanity," whose natives bore "a knowledge carried in the bones and so terrible as to be indelible, an awareness of a kind of collective suicide. … The European continent was dying." As one by one they neared death, these 19-year-old ex-students from Brooklyn and Detroit "were withdrawn, silent, their skin taut, their mouths open, and they made no attempt to remove the black dust and fecal matter that clung to them." Passing one corpse, a guard was overheard telling his companion: "Don't worry, it's just another American Jew." Pistol-whipping. Gangrene. Reaching into latrines to retrieve tempting potato peels. As "Nazi" becomes the 21st century's new N-word, popping up everywhere, it's sobering to be reminded of real Nazis and what they did.

One Berga survivor, now a retired obstetrician, has nightmares. He imagines his captors, his slavers, "enjoying hearty meals and embracing their children. Where inside them had they put the crime?"

Ask that 27 million times, over coffee, wearing a diamond ring.

2006-07-14T13:02:00.000-07:00

From the Genocide Intervention Network

An amazing 30 second spot. Check out www.beawitness.org

Great Blog

2006-07-13T22:38:00.000-07:00

I found this blog and wanted to pass it on to you. Some great reading and opinions.

http://hellonearth.wordpress.com/

2006-07-12T12:34:00.000-07:00

Darfur

Many students are doing great work on www.youtube.com to express their outrage and frustration over the inaction of our world leaders to stop the human rights violations in Darfur. Plus, with such a lack of media attention to human rights all over the world, students from high schools to universities are tackling this subject with profound honesty and skill.

Of the many I've found, this is one of the best from bamfer23. Their website is www.bamferproductions.com. Please visit them to express your support.

One image that especially struck me in the film was a student, Adam Zuckerman, attending the Save Darfur rally in April wearing a t-shirt that read, "There will be no future if we keep repeating the past." What is so striking about this sentiment is that we can assume that Adam, and even the students who made this film, don't remember Sbrenica, Kosovo, or even Rwanda as first hand news stories. And yet, they are the ones cognizent of inheriting its memory, it past, and what to do with it in the future.

Unless the people press the politicians to make human rights a national interest, the past will repeat and repeat and repeat. It begs the question: At what point is the apology for Western apathy and inaction no longer accepted? At what point do we say, "Enough is enough!" At what point will our apathy turn against us, on our own shores and in our own land. Will we care about genocide when the victim is us?

That question can only be answered by the people. And despite what anyone says, a united people have more power than any politician or any government. It is up to the people to prove that stopping genocide is more than a moral issue; it is an economic, cultural, social and political issue. It is in our national interest - immediately and in the long term - to stop genocide.

Jeff Heimbuch, the director of this video, was kind enough to send this information about the project, which he plans to expand into a full length documentary:

In about another 6 months or so, myself (Jeff) and my good friend Jake, will be releasing another, much longer, more in-depth, more professional looking documentary about the situation in Darfur. We will be including some of the same interviews in this video, along with interviewes with politicians, the organziers of the rally, and many others. We will gladly keep you posted on that, if you'd like as well.

As for inspiration, it's a lot of things. When I first heard of what is happening in Darfur from a teacher of mine, I thought it was terrible. What made matters even worse was the fact that NO ONE really knew what was going on, let alone ever heard the word "Darfur" before. Because of this, we thought it would be a great idea to make a documentary to help people understand what is going on, and to raise awareness to this terrible tragedy. Hence, the documentary was planned.

Krista & I also had a project due for our women's studies class this year, so we decided to use some of the footage I would be using for the full length documentary, and make a short educational video for the class. This was done mainly to (a) get a good grade and (b) gauge the reaction of the students, to see how well a longer, more in-depth documentary would be received.

Yes, this video is VERY different from all the others. I'm used to doing short comedy films. It's what I am good at, really. But I always wanted to try other genres, and this rally was a perfect opportunity to start! And, again, like I said before, we will be doing a more in-depth one in a few months. And I would love to tackle other subjects like this as well in the future!

As for personal experiences at the rally...it was different. I mean, I have never been to a rally before, this was my first. It was truly a life changing experience. Also, getting to speak with a lot of people there in support of the cause, and being able to hear accounts first hand was just breath taking. Some of things you could not possibly even imagine!

The respone from the class was very good! A lot of the students didn't believe us at first that we made that video...they thought it was very professionally made and well done. They were interested in learning more about the subject.

My teacher even passed it around the faculty, to try to get some of the other teachers involved in the topic!

Darfur’s fragile peace

2006-07-12T10:57:00.000-07:00

This essay by Alex de Waal, who wrote a great book with Julie Flint, Darfur: A Short History of a Long War, wrote this piece for www.opendemocracy.com on 5/7/06. I highly recommend that you check out this site, even the comments sections are full of useful information and debate.

The implementation of the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) signed on 5 May 2006 is stalling, amid new insecurity across the western Sudanese region. In these circumstances, more calls are being made for armed intervention by Nato or other western forces. A quick examination of the record of military intervention and of the problems that would await an intervention force in Darfur, counsels caution – and also suggests that the DPA's security-arrangements chapter can provide a blueprint for progress.

There are vigorous debates on the law and ethics of intervention that often serve to obscure the key criterion that justifies sending troops on a humanitarian mission: will they succeed? The limited patience of western publics for such missions – especially when casualties are involved – suggests that a variant on the criterion might be appropriate: will they succeed quickly?

The criterion of "quick success" immediately rules out the pundits' favourite proposals for intervention in Darfur. The central question for an intervention force is what to do about the janjaweed militia. The various militia groups that have been labeled janjaweed have over the last few years been responsible for horrendous atrocities. They have also been engaged in some fierce fighting against the combat-hardened guerrillas of the Darfur rebel movements. A Nato force able to protect civilians and disarm the janjaweed is the option favoured by many activists.

To disarm a militia, combat-tested and operating in its own terrain with support from its own communities, requires a counter-insurgency operation of formidable capacity. In 1988, a combined air-and-land attack by the Chadian army and France's Opération Épervier (Operation Sparrowhawk) crossed the border into Darfur and defeated the first janjaweed groups sheltering there. At that time there were fewer than 500 janjaweed militiamen; today there 20,000 or so, depending on what definition is used.

Similar commando strikes might be possible against the principal janjaweed headquarters today. But, as many janjaweed units are now part of the Sudanese regular forces, this would entail declaring war on the Sudan government. No doubt some advocates of intervention would be delighted to do just that.

A purely military solution to the janjaweed problem would be large, long and costly. The basic rule of thumb for suppressing insurgencies is that a force ration of ten to one is required. This implies an intervention force of 200,000 for an indefinite period.

A piece-by-piece plan

There are many reasons to criticise the Darfur Peace Agreement. But its provisions for disarming the janjaweed are not among them. Throughout the negotiations leading up to the final drafting of the DPA, all involved – the rebel movements, the Sudanese government, the African Union, the United Nations and international partners – agreed that disarming the janjaweed was the responsibility of those who had (for the most part) armed them in the first place, namely the Khartoum government.

The government plan has first to be approved by the African Union (this should have happened on 23 June, but procedural wrangles caused the meeting to be postponed). Then the Sudanese army has to do the tough work. Then the movements, the AU and the international community – including an international "security advisory team" – monitor and verify. This seems a sensible division of labour.

The real difficulties with the janjaweed disarmament plan are elsewhere. It is not at all clear that the Sudan government could actually disarm them. Although most were armed by Khartoum and have conducted joint operations with the army and air force, they have uncertain political loyalties. Most janjaweed leaders distrust Khartoum; many keep lines of communication open with the leaders of the Sudan Liberation Movement. Some could switch sides; all could resist an attempt at disarmament. Those absorbed into paramilitary forces might well mutiny. The army doesn't have much control outside its main garrisons and it certainly doesn't have the capacity to force the janjaweed to submit.

The trick is to break the problem down into manageable chunks and deal with them one by one. This is precisely what the DPA does. It specifies that the janjaweed should be confined to specific places, kept away from displacment camps and locations where people are returning home, and away from localities where the movements are withdrawing or encamping their forces. The first phase of disarmament focuses upon heavy weapons and vehicles.

Subsequent phases of the disarmament process include reforming and downsizing the paramilitary institutions that have absorbed janjaweed (to be done under the auspices of a commission headed by a nominee of the rebel movements), establishing controlled migration routes for nomadic pastoralists, and setting up a community disarmament process supervised by a group of tribal elders known as the "peace and reconciliation council".

The thinking behind this council is that community leaders – including the commanders of the majority of militia forces that are essentially community defence groups – should be allies of the arms-control process, and not fear it. Disarmament therefore becomes staged, reciprocal, and collectively monitored. It will take time to collect weapons – a minimum of five years, according to specialists – but the fruits in terms of increased security will be seen much earlier. Once community leaders are confident that the end state will leave no group disadvantaged vis-à-vis its neighbours, the process can be started relatively painlessly. By this mechanism, the main forces needed for neutralising and disarming aggressive militia elements thereby come from the Darfurian communities themselves.

This is not a new concept. It is an approach to disarmament that has been tried elsewhere in Africa, and to date it is the only approach that has registered any success. Among those who helped to design the Darfurian template in the DPA were former guerrillas and military officers who had run similar programmes in Ethiopia and Somaliland, as well as other parts of Sudan. They advised patience: a painstaking process of building confidence was first necessary. Peacekeeping troops would be necessary, but as long as they built up good relations with local leaders, their "force multiplier" would be those tribal chiefs themselves.

This approach points to a different kind of foreign intervention: smaller, smarter, and with a long-term perspective. Numbers, armaments and mandate may be important, but the key is the vision of what the mission is there to do. A force commander who knows that his troops will be on the ground for five years at least, and who regards tribal leaders and the commanders of community defence groups as his allies in a collective effort, will do far more with far less. A robust, quick reaction force may be needed for trouble-spots and to inspire confidence, but it should be ancillary to the main objective of the mission.

This is not fanciful. The level of bloodshed and turmoil in rural Somalia in 1993 was no less than Darfur today. 30,000 United States marines failed to control it. The last outpost outside Mogadishu where the marines remained was the town of Baardheere (Bardera) and the surrounding area. It was the toughest assignment and nobody wanted to take it over from a full-strength mechanized marine battalion with air support.

Finally, 200 Botswanans came in, with open-sided desert vehicles, no armour and no helicopters. "You'll never go outside the base", advised the departing American colonel. Within six weeks the Botswanans had made more progress in controlling the district than the Americans had made in six months. Their approach was simple: they asked the clan elders what their problems were and worked collaboratively to solve them.

Similarly, a few dozen unarmed ceasefire monitors kept the peace in the Nuba mountains, in the Kordofan region of Sudan that neighbours Darfur, for three years, following a conflict that was in many ways just as vicious as in Darfur.

A mission impossible

The African forces in Darfur have been given mission impossible. The world expects them to behave like a fully-armed protection force, but without the troops, the logistics or the mandate they need. A peace agreement has been signed – but not by enough of the Darfur factions to make it politically workable, yet. The African Union's mandate has now been extended by three months to the end of 2006 after discussions at the AU summit in Banjul, Gambia; but the AU remains desperate to hand the mission over to the United Nations, and its aim is primarily to hold the fort and get out with as few mishaps as possible.

The UN meanwhile contemplates a Darfur entanglement with trepidation. The UN special representative in Sudan, Jan Pronk, wrote at the end of June that he feared the peace agreement might collapse. The DPA was a sound text, he argued, but the AU had already missed the first major implementation deadlines and the political support to make it work simply wasn't there.

At the time of writing, it seems likely that a number of factors – the failure of the Abdul Wahid Mohamed Nur faction of the SLM to sign the agreement, the weakness of the Minni Minawi faction (which has signed), widespread distrust of the Khartoum government, and the incapacity of the African Union – will soon make the Darfur Peace Agreement a dead letter. An historic opportunity will have gone by. But the basic formula of a solution will remain unchanged.

Latest Human Rights Watch Press Release Covering Sudan

2006-07-05T19:00:00.000-07:00

Sudan: Security Council Must Push Khartoum to Accept U.N. Force

Delay Threatens to Escalate Violence in Darfur and Chad

(New York, June 29, 2006) – The U.N. Security Council and its members must secure Sudanese government consent to urgently deploy a U.N. force to protect civilians in Darfur, Human Rights Watch said today. Sudanese President Omar El Bashir has repeatedly rejected the request – made in the last two months by the Security Council, the African Union (AU) and the Arab League – that Khartoum consent to a U.N. mission in Darfur.

“The Security Council must now back its demands with action against high Sudanese officials if they continue to block a U.N. force for Darfur,” said Peter Takirambudde, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Security Council members have a duty to prevent new war crimes and ‘ethnic cleansing,’ and to protect civilians in Darfur.”

The AU Peace and Security Council on June 27 reaffirmed its decision to end its military mission to Darfur when its mandate ends on September 30, or shortly after. The new U.N. force that is proposed to replace the AU mission must be fully deployed by then to fill the protection gap for 2 million displaced civilians still at risk and avert further widespread attacks on civilians.

On May 5, the AU wrapped up negotiations between the Sudanese government and the largest of the Darfur rebel groups, resulting in the Darfur Peace Agreement. It now wants to fold the 7,000-strong African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) force into a larger U.N. force, with African troops continuing to form the core. But the situation in Darfur has deteriorated, as Sudanese government-backed “Janjaweed” militia are converted into police and regular soldiers, rebel groups fragment, and Chadian rebels entrench themselves in West Darfur.

Since December, continuing cross-border attacks from Darfur into Chad by the Janjaweed militia and Chadian rebels have displaced more than 50,000 Chadians. The cross-border conflict also threatens more than 208,000 Darfurian refugees in Chad.

“The Security Council’s reluctance to take on the Sudanese government has cost the lives of more people in Darfur,” said Takirambudde. “Any further delay will simply raise the death toll. A U.N. mission must have a mandate to use all necessary measures to protect civilians.”

The Security Council’s June 22 report of its mission to Sudan and Chad sets forth a seven-step process toward full U.N. operational capacity in Darfur. It highlights the need for a broader AMIS mandate and greater funding to provide maximum security while the full transition to U.N. forces is being completed – potentially by January 2007.

Human Rights Watch called especially on the Russian and Chinese members of the Security Council to tell Bashir that they will no longer consider vetoing strong measures against Sudan if Khartoum continues to oppose a U.N. force in Darfur. “If Khartoum knows that Russia and China will no longer provide it with a diplomatic shield, Bashir’s objections to U.N. forces in Darfur will melt away,” said Takirambudde, But the Security Council must be ready to apply further sanctions against Khartoum, and extend the arms embargo it enacted on arms supplies to Darfur to the whole of Sudan, Human Rights Watch said.

Human Rights Watch also urged the Security Council not to delay desperately needed action and thereby repeat in Darfur the mistakes made in Africa’s Great Lakes region during the 1990s, when almost a million people died and regional peace was destroyed.

2006-06-30T16:11:00.000-07:00

Independence Day

This is a blog essentially about human rights violations and the artistic confrontation to that form of injustice; however, I would be remiss to not take note of our upcoming Indepedence Day. Frederick Douglass, one of the greatest philosophers and orators in our nation's history, speaks to the timeless effort to confront our history as a prelude to our future. He speaks to the very essence of our struggle today.

Yes, we have a Declaration of Human Rights now. When will the people of all the nations unite and put power to the principals set forth in that most important document? When will we hold ourselves accountable for each other in our ever shrinking globe?

Frederick Douglass, at an Independence Day meeting sponsored by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in 1852, as reprinted by the Nation in 2005: [Note - bold is mine].

This...is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom.... It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act.... Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance.... The principles contained in [the Declaration of Independence] are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost....

Fellow-citizens--Pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?... Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions!... But, such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me.... This Fourth of July is yours, not mine....

I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. Standing there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future....

What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy--a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the every-day practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival....

Fellow-citizens, I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing and a byword to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your union. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement; the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice....

Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country.... While drawing encouragement from the "Declaration of Independence," the great principles it contains and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference.... A change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe.... Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are distinctly heard on the other.... No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light.

2006-06-27T17:06:00.000-07:00

George Clooney's video diary from Sudan and Chad - Part 3

"Hope Is Stubborn"

On a May 9th interview on CET connect, Nick Clooney was asked whether he would go back to the Sudan. He answered, "I would go back in a minute if I thought there was anything we [George Clooney and himself] could do."

The invaluable videos brought back by the Clooney Clan have shed light on the situation there - namely that the refugees themselves believe that they are being murdered because they are black Muslims. If there is anything that the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, the Cambodian Genocide, the Bosnian Genocide or Rwanda Genocide taught us, it is that refugees don't lie. They know, better than anyone, what they are trying to survive.

For all the talk and questions about the United States role in the world and the insane bickering about what to call the situation in Sudan, one thing is clear: the people have spoken, and they have named this tragedy genocide.

Mr. Clooney opened an exhibit in Cincinnati's Underground Railroad Freedom Center called "In Search of Darfur."

Thank G-d he and his son found it.

Please visit http://www.freedomcenter.org/attend-events/expired-events/nick-clooney-presents-in.html for more information.

2006-06-26T14:29:00.000-07:00

The Days Before ...

It is hard to remember that before Sudan witnessed genocide and civil war, they had a culture of their own. Songs were sung at weddings. Children went to school. Teenagers had a penchant for misbehaving - just like American teenagers. And parents worried - just like American parents.

Sudanese women mother much in the same way American mothers do, just as Sudanese fathers and Americans fathers are still fathers in the same way. It is a universal artform, that of parenthood. Parents pray that their children will grow up to be dignified adults, prosperous, happy and healthy with children of their own.

The people of Sudan want peace the way Americans want it - they want it the way we have a tendency to take it for granted.

The prayers of Sudanese parents for their children have become begging - let our children live. Don't let them starve. Don't let them be murdered. Don't let them be attacked, and if they are, don't let them suffer.

The parents of Sudan love their children as much as you love your's.

We will some day build it,

the home land of our daily dreams:

...........

Convert the prison into

a hospital

The banishment centre into

a college hall

The captives will become

a shift of working men

and women

Instead of anguish and sorrow

there will resound a song

Instead of a deadly bullet

a sparrow will fly

hover a bove a fountain

and have fun

With Kindergarten children

--Sung by Moamed Wordi,Written by Mahjoub Sharif (imprisoned Sudanese poet)

2006-06-23T13:06:00.000-07:00

Invisible Children of Uganda

In Northern Uganda, the LRA (Lord's Republican Army) is a rebel military group aimed at striking at the Ugandan Government. Until recently, they were supported by the Sudan Government.

Every night, thousands of children walk up to 20 miles to internally displaced persons camps to sake refuge from the LRA, who seek to enslave them as military combatants.

The LRA forces children out of school and into combat - raping, pillaging and killing.

You say "We see you are suffering", but so what! You have seen our suffering. Here we are. You go back, nothing is said. Life is a gift of G-d. It is a gift to be PROTECTED, DEFENDED, PROMOTED.

This excerpt is taken from the Invisible Children movie. Please visit their website at www.invisiblechildren.com to learn more.

2006-06-22T23:18:00.000-07:00

The new tyranny, like other recent ones, depends, to a large degree, on a systematic abuse of language. Together we have to reclaim our hi-jacked words and reject the tyranny's nefarious euphemisms; if we do not, we will be left with only the word 'shame.'
~John Berger.

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
~George Orwell

Literature is the opposite of a nuclear bomb.
~Arundhati Roy

2006-06-22T18:03:00.000-07:00

Radiohead and Unkle - Rabbit in your headlights

So you might want to know ... on a blog about genocide and human rights violations, why the hell did I link to the Radiohead video for "Rabbit In Your Headlights"???

This video, brilliantly directed by Jonathan Glazer, seems to hit such a cord with viewers. The man walking - the victim we don't want to see, the homeless man we swerve around to avoid, becomes a tangible metaphor for the most basic survival instinct buried within us all.

It is this survival, this basic instinct, that the refugees - the mothers, the fathers, the sons and the daughters - hold on to on a daily basis, exhausting all normal thresholds of what a human being should be able to bear.

It is heartbreaking and inspiring all at the same time.

Thanks to F0llowmearound for posting this on www.youtube.com.

For more information on this song, go to http://www.greenplastic.com/lyrics/

2006-06-22T14:11:00.000-07:00

A Mirror for the Twentieth Century

The Legacy Project is a global exchange of ideas where survivors of tragedies frame "a dialogue in the global language of loss — among works of creative art and scholarship — is an unprecedented cultural event. Through it, The Legacy Project seeks a collective, retrospective reflection on the losses that constitute the legacy of the last century." Visit their website at www.legacy-project.org.

On their homepage, this poem caught my attention. Notice how this mirror can only be translated through poetry, a sort of language of the soul. Humans reflect our times in phrases that do not roll off our tongues in our everyday language. Tragedy remembered affords a different kind of speech. The memory of collective loss - the loss of a Burmese father of his son, a Sudanese mother, a Jewish grandparent - these are collective human tragedies that painting, photographs, poetry and music unlock for passive observers. When we experience the art and expression of tragedy, no one can remain passive.

A coffin bearing the face of a boy
A book
Written on the belly of a crow
A wild beast hidden in a flower

A rock
Breathing with the lungs of a lunatic:

This is it
This is the Twentieth Century

-Adonis

Credit: Excerpted from Modern Poetry of the Arab World, edited by Abdullah al-Udhari. Translated by Abdullah al-Udhari, Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1986.

2006-06-21T22:44:00.000-07:00

An Artistic Confrontation of Genocide: Kofi Setordji

I happened to come across Kofi Setordji's art on the internet. Presented by the Virtual Museum of Contemporary African Art, the opening page simply states in bold black letters:

IN 1994 ABOUT 800,000 PEOPLE WERE KILLED IN RWANDA

As a passive viewer, I did not expect to be so engaged, so moved, by the internet version of a sculpture. However, Setordji's masterful piece communicates so powerfully the pain, the loss, the barbarity, and the inhumanity of genocide that you will not forget it. I hope that his work, currently on display in Germany, travels to America. It is important, and it is relevant to the current human condition and the state of our world.

Kofi Setordji about genocide and his work: "What is it that is making man waking up one day, deciding to exterminate a whole group of people? For what reason? I am trying to understand this phenomenon. That is why I pose the question. We have this with us, let's find out what it is. It has happened everywhere, on all continents and races. Let's come face to face with it and see that this is the way we are. Maybe one day we will come into terms with it. If we know ourselves, couldn't we be better people? And life better on this earth? We are running, but we do not know how to walk. We are not looking at ourselves as the centerpoint of the discussion. I am not here to answer the questions, I am also searching."

--Rhoda Woets Interview: Maarten Rens 28 May 2002

Please visit the site below. You can contribute in the comments section to show your support and appreciation for Mr. Setordji's art.

http://www.vmcaa.nl/genocide/engels/index2.html

2006-06-21T16:25:00.000-07:00

ASAP: the Afrobeat Sudan Aid Project

Started in 1968 by Fela A. Kuti, Afrobeat utilizes music to confront the issues, both humanitarian and policital, facing Africa today. Here, the focus on their efforts to raise awareness for the Sudan. This amazing video was posted on youtube.com by a group called modiba. Please visit their site and support their efforts.

2006-06-21T16:09:00.000-07:00

world refugee day

I wanted to include this entry about the situation in Burma. It offers video highlights about the refugee problem there - mainly that the Burmese Government is rounding up rural Burmese villagers for slave labor. The Burmese Government is extremely isolationist, and the crimes against humanity being witnessed there deserve the world's attention.

2006-06-21T16:06:00.000-07:00

Robert Zoellick on Darfur genocide, Part 2

Part II of the Robert Zoellick interview.

2006-06-21T16:05:00.000-07:00

Robert Zoellick on Darfur genocide, Part 1

Robert Zoellick recently resigned as Deputy Secretary of State under Condi Rice. He was one of the few influential moderates in the Bush Administration. Here he speaks with Jim Lehrer on 19 June about the situation in the Sudan.

2006-06-21T11:49:00.000-07:00

Dedication

A sandy coffin
With barely enough wind to make a sound
Bound and thrown in a well that used to combat thirst
Now a coffin of body parts
The slow decay of a bitter earth

A man-made drought of reason
Stings the eyes and makes one blind
Mistaking ashes for sand & puss for milk
And a well that once accepted wishes

Stitches of our humanity
~Lost~
In small specks of sand
In a land far away

We will fall to you someday

© 2006 boo friedmann

2006-06-20T16:50:00.000-07:00

Save Darfur

I noticed this video on youtube.com posted by thepadrino620. I think it's an extremely well done video that touches on the realities and consequences of genocide. Please check it out, then email thepadrino620 to support further efforts.

2006-06-20T12:21:00.000-07:00

The Policy of People

No one ever said that the Darfur conflict was easy. No one, not at the Darfur rally, not in the blogosphere, not on the news (when there is actually mention of it), has anyone ever said, "Well gee, let's call it genocide, send troops, give out some food, and everyone will live happily ever after!" No one has made this claim. Darfur presents a conflict that has no real "good guy alternative". We're not sure who might win, but we do know who's lost.

The best weapon for those who want to do nothing is to demonize those who want action. The tactic is to belittle activists and swallow the big picture of what pro-intervention groups are really requesting: enable a solution. Whether this is NATO troops, UN Peacekeepers to reinforce a struggling African Union presence, and/or empower further talks and communication between rebel groups and the government, this involves dealing with the problem. And yes, it's a complicated problem involving tribal strife, land, drought, and yes, ethnic divisions. Saying that this isn't genocide because it involves fighting on all sides, however, is laughable. Ask any Arab Muslim in Darfur if there is a difference between himself and an African Muslim, and he's bound to laugh you out of the country. Just because white men in the west can't tell the difference between an Arab Muslim and an African Muslim doesn't mean they can't.

"Another communiqué from Mr. Hilal's [a Janjaweed militia leader] headquarters in 2004, obtained by Mr. de Waal, demanded that the militias 'change the demography of Darfur and empty it of African tribes.' [1.] But we still have anti-intervention idealogues who claim "In Darfur, the Sudanese government has targeted African villagers. But it is not clear that the government's intent is to wipe out these Africans." [2.] Really? What proof do we need that Arab Muslims plan to rid themselves of their African Muslim problem? A million bodies? More letters stating so? Gas chambers for the love of G-d???

The history lesson here, of course, is that when someone tells you who he is, believe him. There were naysayers about the true intentions of Talaat, Hitler, Pol Pot and Milosevic. When do we learn the lesson? At what point is it fair to say, this is not acceptable in the world?

The attacks on the pro-intervention groups have even dipped into the realm of the absurd:

“'Save Darfur' ... describes itself as 'an alliance of over 130 diverse faith-based, humanitarian, and human rights organizations.' The Jerusalem Post provides additional information: 'Little known…is that the coalition…was actually begun exclusively as an initiative of the American Jewish community.' The American Holocaust Museum has been conspicuously involved, and while many people feel that the term “genocide” should be used very sparingly the Museum hasn’t hesitated to draw parallels between the Shoah and the Darfur situation. Joining Jewish organizations are evangelical Zionist Christian groups who see Sudan as a prime mission ground in these Latter Days." [3.]

Of course, when I read the above paragraph, my reaction was "and your point is ...?" Is Mr. Leupp implying that of all groups in the world, the Jews are less qualified to fight genocide, or that Jews can't fight genocide when the perpetrators are Muslim without tying themselves in some way to a neocon vision of Muslim as "terrorist"? Dare I remind Mr. Leupp that the victims here are also Muslim? Dare I further remind Mr. Leupp that since the Holocaust, the Jews have been at the forefront of fighting for anti-genocide policy?

Of course, the next argument is tried and true for anti-interventionists: calling it genocide will help the perpetrators. "Paradoxically, labeling the atrocities in Darfur genocide may exacerbate the underlying conflict and make it more difficult to create the conditions necessary for civilians to return and live in peace." [2.] For the record, no genocidal regime has ever wanted international attention from genocide. That's why they form isolationist policies. Why doesn't the Khartoum government want the UN in the Sudan? Because then they have to admit to the crime. It's harder to cover up if it's documented by an interntional agency.

Next, if the argument follows historically, these same people will claim that what happens inside a country's borders - even genocide - is merely an internal problem. Not our problem. Not our business. Turn away and ignore. That's sounds easy, until, of course, it sweeps into another nation ... like Chad. Until it gets so bad that it's embarressing. Until Sudan grooms itself to become the next Afghanistan.

"There is also a grave risk in raising the specter of genocide to galvanize a global response to the human rights abuses in Darfur — the international community may be less inclined to react to serious abuses that don't rise to the level of genocide." [2.] I had to include this quote because it reveals how little anti-interventionists know about world history. Sad to say, the international community has NEVER been inclined to react to serious abuses of human rights unless it served immediate, and dare I say, convenient, political ends. It took groups like the Save Darfur people to demand action from the government and the UN.

I do agree with one thing Mr. Clough wrote in his LA Times article: "If the world had noticed and responded in early 2003, when the Sudanese government first armed groups of Arab nomads, known as janjaweed, and ordered them to attack villages suspected of harboring antigovernment rebels, the question of genocide would have never arisen — and thousands could have been saved." [2.] Exactly. The point on which we agree is simple - act while there is still time to act, before it becomes the messy quagmire with an unforeseeable solution. Act before the stench of apathy outweighs the stench of genocide. Act before our guilt from idly standing by could be tried next to the perpetrators at the International Court of Justice.

But we can act now. There is still time. It will be difficult. It will be time consuming. But in the end, it will be worth it.

1. New York Times: "Over Tea, Sheik Denies Stirring Darfur's Torment". By LYDIA POLGREEN
Published: June 12, 2006

2. It's hell in Darfur, but is it genocide? The Sudanese government has targeted villagers, but not a whole race. By Michael Clough, director of the Africa program at the Council on Foreign Relations from 1987 to 1996. He is the author of "Free at Last? United States Policy Toward Africa and the End of the Cold War."May 14, 2006

3. Gary Leupp: “Out of Iraq, Into Darfur”?Source: dissidentvoice.org (5-1-06)

2006-06-19T13:56:00.000-07:00

So this is what we've come to ...

I have a confession to make. I'm not proud, and I should probably seek atonement. But the reality is, I've been following the Ann Coulter media circus. Yes, it's sad - like being unable to look at a car crash as you pass it on your way to work. But I didn't follow it because I cared a lick about what she said; I followed it because I simply couldn't believe what I was hearing during "news" casts (you know, the times when you're supposed to be informed about the world in which we live).

What started with Matt Lauer trying to steal the spotlight from the departed Katie Couric frenzy, ended in just about every person in the media and the blogosphere losing their minds.

A few highlights, if you will:

"It wasn't Ann who crossed the line. It was these widows who crossed the line."
-- 12 June 2006 David Horowitz on Larry King Live

“She calls somebody a harpy and you’d think that the world was on fire.”
--9 June 2006 Mary Matalin on Imus

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Do you find her physically attractive, Tucker?
TUCKER CARLSON: I'm not going to answer that, because the answer, I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. That's not the point.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Positively.
RITA COSBY: Don't ask me that question.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Mike, do you want to weigh in here as an older fellow. Do you find her to be a physically attractive woman?
MIKE BARNICLE: I'm too old to be doing that. I had enough fights in my life.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: OK, Rita, do you find her to be a physically attractive woman?
RITA COSBY: I'll throw it back to you, Chris, do you find her attractive?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: You guys are all afraid to answer. No, I find her—I wouldn't put her—well, she doesn't pass the Chris Matthews test.
--14 June 2006: The Huffington Post transcript from Hardball with Chris Matthews

Rahm Emanuel, is a former ballerina. And they wonder why the concerted effort of the MSM (as we call the mainstream media) and the Democratic Party can't lay a finger on me. A ballerina. Hey, if the padded, silky shoe fits ...
--Ann Coulter, 14 June 2006 blog Party of Rapists Proud to be G-dless

Ann Coulter, in an interview with a right-wing website, said the following about decorated veteran and Congressman John Murtha:
"The reason soldiers invented 'fragging.'"
Fragging, if you don't know, "means soldiers attempting to kill their own officers for one reason or another."
Al wants you to make your own "joke"-- at Ann Coulter's expense, of course. Fill in the joke:
ANN COULTER IS THE REASON THEY INVENTED ______
And email your response here. Please keep them radio appropriate.
We'll read the best ones on the air.
--19 June 2006, Al Franken's Air America show blog

Um ... hello??? Is this really something that should be lead stories, featured blog topics, and causing mass general hysteria on the news? This is worse than the Michael Jackson trial coverage - but the real question is why? Why is this worse?

One of the most powerful weapons against genocide and crimes against humanity is an educated public. When citizens know, comprehend and understand what is going on in the world, they demand answers - and the truth - from their leaders. But this requires a responsible media, a media that covers events as objective journalists with integrity and an ethic that does not interfere with the truth.

WE DO NOT HAVE THAT MEDIA. Who is reporting the important stories without bias or slant? Who reports the truth? When major media figures are fighting for the scraps of the right wing political Andy Kaufmen, who loses? We do.

Guess what? I don't give a crap about Ann Coulter. I find her amusing at best. I don't care because I don't take her seriously. I don't care about her liberal bashing, her purported voter fraud scandal, her adam's apple or her eating disorder. It's theatre - really good, entertaining theatre - but it's not news. But the news has become the theatre of the absurd, and the public has a hard time telling the difference.

There are so many issues more important than this. All I ask - FOR THE LOVE OF G-D ... ignore it. Turn off the TV. Write to the stations and ask them where their journalistic integrity has gone.

Leave the celebrity news and gossip for Entertainment Tonight. Mary Hart should be discussing Ann Coulter, not "news" anchors.

2006-06-15T17:45:00.000-07:00

It is interesting the way the world works. In an ideal utopia, government works for the people. All people. Governments, in essence, value the precious nature of every single human life.

But we don't live in utopia. A few of my friends have asked me why George Bush, who labeled what was going on in the Sudan genocide, has not brought up any charges of such to the International Criminal Court. The answer, I'm most sorry to say, is disheartening at best and revolting at worst.

From Samantha Power's book, "A Problem From Hell": America and the Age of Genocide, she details the long, harsh road the United States took in ratifying the Genocide Convention {Note - italics, parenthicals, and bolds are mine}:

"Recognizing that President Reagan's support for the law made passage inevitable [because of the Bitburg scandal - a public relations nightmare for the President], Senators Jesse Helms (R-NC), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Richard Lugar introduced a stringent Senate "sovereignty package" ... These interpretations of and disclaimers about the genocide convention had the effect of immunizing the United States from being charged with genocide but in so doing they also rendered the U.S. ratification a symbolic act.

"One reason advocates lobbied for U.S. ratification was to give the United States the legal standing to do what it had been unable to during the Cambodia genocide: file genocide charges at the International Court of Justice. ... Neither the Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee nor the president was prepared to see the United States judged by an international court, so they now conditioned their acceptance of the genocide convention on a potent reservation, an a la carte "opt-out" clause. The reservation held that before the United States could be called as a party to any case before the ICJ, the president would have to consent to the court's jurisdiction. ...

The legal consequence fo the U.S. reservation was that if the United States henceforth suspected that another state was committing genocide and attempted to bring the matter before the ICJ, the accused country could assert the American reservation against the United States under something called the doctrine and reciprocity. The United States was effectively blocked from ever filing genocide charges at the court against perpetrator states."

From the Chapt. Speaking Loudly, pgs 163-164.

Interesting how we play lip service to compassion. Mr. Bush spoke many times of "showing compassion" during his State of the Union. But you do not show compassion; you do compassion. Ratifying the Genocide Convention was simply an act of lip service.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On that note, below is an update on the situation in Darfur from the Human Rights Watch website.

Sudan: No Justice for Darfur Victims

Special Courts Failing to Prosecute War Crimes

(New York, June 8, 2006) – The courts established by the Sudanese government to deal with the widespread crimes in Darfur have failed to provide justice to victims of war crimes committed since early 2003, Human Rights Watch said in a briefing paper released today. On June 6, 2005, the Office of the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced it had opened an investigation into the events in Darfur. The next day Sudan’s chief justice announced the establishment of the Special Criminal Courts on the Events in Darfur (SCCED), telling the Sudanese media that the court was “considered a substitute to the international criminal court.”

“The cases before the court so far involve ordinary crimes like theft and receiving stolen goods, which don’t begin to reflect the massive scale of destruction in Darfur,” said Sara Darehshori, senior counsel to the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch and author of the briefing paper. “The Sudanese government must do more than pay lip service to the idea of justice.” Since early 2003, tens of thousands of civilians have been assaulted, raped and killed, hundreds of villages destroyed and approximately 2 million people forcibly displaced by the conflict. Human Rights Watch is aware of only 13 cases that have been brought before the new special court to date. The cases have involved low-ranking individuals accused of relatively minor offences. No senior commanders or superiors have been charged for their part in the atrocities.

In its 31-page briefing paper, Human Rights Watch examines the first year of the special court’s operations, and sets out the major roadblocks to the prosecution of war crimes in Darfur. These include:

• A lack of clarity in Sudanese law on which war crimes and crimes against humanity can be prosecuted;
• Absence of a legal basis to hold commanders accountable on the basis of “command responsibility” for crimes they may have failed to prevent or punish;
• Provisions granting immunity from prosecution to members of the armed forces, national security agencies and police that create potential obstacles to successful prosecution;
• The incorporation of many of the “Janjaweed” militia into the Popular Defense Force, special police forces and other paramilitary groups, possibly enabling them to invoke immunity to avoid prosecution;
• Failure to investigate complaints by victims; and
• Victims – particularly those of gender-based sexual violence – often being harassed and sometimes threatened with arrest or prosecution themselves when they go to the police. “The 13 cases brought so far are an insult to the victims,” said Darehshori. “The failure of the justice system in Darfur makes ICC prosecutions all the more important. Khartoum must now cooperate fully with the ICC investigations.”

For more information, please visit www.hrw.org.

2006-06-07T17:51:00.000-07:00

Dear George Clooney, You Might Want to Move to Darfur

We thought it was going to get better. The world – namely the press – started to pay attention. There’s genocide going on today. How did we know? Because George Clooney came back and told us in a surreal convergence of celebrity coverage and investigative journalism that millions of people are being slaughtered. George Clooney … of all people … G-d bless him, his wallet, and his celebrity. At this point, the people of Darfur need all the attention they can get, from wherever it comes.

And for a few days (did it even last a week?) the world paid attention. There were rallies and petitions and, what’s that called … oh, news coverage. There were promises made – the U.N. would get involved and world pressure on the government in Khaurtoum would help to halt the activities of its own government backed militias. There was George Clooney and his dad, Nick Clooney, dressed in khaki from head-to-toe doing what reporters should be doing. Giving the world an image, a face, to the most recent genocide in world history.

Even if the world had immediately taken action, we as humans would still have to grapple with our indifference. It took 200,000 murders, countless rape, terror, and destruction for it to become a blip on our radar. Why?

Yes, we are at war. Yes, we all have our own issues. But if we are to apologize for our apathy during the Holocaust – when we were at war and when we had our own issues – then these excuses have no merit.

Now we have to deal with more than just our own humanity. Now we have to grapple with how to phrase yet another apology.

Mr. Clooney, you must get your face on TV again. The news will cover a genocide, as long as a celebrity is there.

2006-05-31T13:15:00.000-07:00

The Meaning of a Few Words

Never Again was a lovely dream. I thank those who dreamt it, who repeated it, who spread those words in commemorative museums that bear witness to one of our darkest times in history. Those who survived to coin the phrase are a bridge to a time that should never be forgotten – a time that we should constantly struggle to understand and prevent.

It is indeed a struggle. The shipwreck of the phrase “Never Again” is a testament to that struggle. What was coined as a promise has been repeated as a plea – never let us allow it ever again, if not this time, then the next. My generation, those of us born in the 70s and 80s, have inherited the history of the Holocaust. What should we do with it? We’ve heard about it, read the Diary of Anne Frank, and visited the local Holocaust Museum. We have memorized the dates, the people involved, and the war tactics on all fronts. But what do we do with the Holocaust? If we have learned anything from previous generations, it is that repeating the events is not enough. Telling the story is important, but it is not everything. We know the numbers, and we have the dates. Now it’s time to process the information – to give it context and to apply what we have learned, not just about the history, but about ourselves.

What does the prevailing trend of genocide say about us? About the human condition as a whole?

One thing that we have learned is simple, yet rarely stated: we cannot stop genocide. Not in our current state. Corrupt regimes will always come to absolute power, and it will corrupt absolutely. Whether along national, ethnic and/or religious group lines, new hegemonies will always strive to destroy in whole or in part, those that are considered to be “other.” Fear will thrust human kind to do fearful things, to react in fearful ways toward fellow human beings. Man will never stop feeling threatened by his fellow man. There is no phrase that can prevent it.

Then what do we do?

It is time to frame history differently. To confront, head-on, what it says about us to live in a world where we allow genocide to rage so far out of control that the number dead must reach the hundreds of thousands before anyone takes notice. History, contrary to popular belief, does not occur long ago, in a time far gone; nor does history occur in a vacuum. History is made in the present. We make it; we mold it. We shape what our children will read in textbooks about what we allow to happen.

My generation learned that Adolf Hitler was a monster. That his regime was made up of evil men who behaved outside the confines of any natural state of humanity. But Adolf Hitler was not a monster, although it is more comfortable to label him thus. He was human. As was Pinochet, Milosevic, the Khmer Rouge, the Janjaweed. They are human. Humans who sanctioned unspeakable crimes against humanity, but humans nonetheless. That is what is so scary about this history – it is made by people like us, yet we can ill-afford to separate the humans from their humanity – from their crimes against humanity. These are crimes against us, all of us.

It is time for us to evolve emotionally and mentally to accept the global state of our world – that genocide, whether confronted sooner or later, will affect us not only morally and ethically, but economically, socially, culturally, and politically. We are globalizing (whether we like it or not) economically; we are globalizing politically. It is time to start globalizing socially.

Genocide is an issue that should constantly be kept in the public discourse. To contextualize it, understand it, so that we can recognize the fear that breeds it. Recognize it before hundreds of thousands of people are slaughtered and millions more displaced. It is time for us to evolve into the kind of humans who will not tolerate the intolerance that spreads genocide like a disease. We need to understand that preventing egregious human rights violations is cheaper than cleaning up after the damage they cause.

Does that mean we militarize the argument; do we fight it with war? No. We fight it with diplomacy, with world standards about how humans deserve to live. Enforcing codes of conduct through government and private oversight. Disallow government isolation and let every nation of the world know that torture, slaughter, forced hunger, and slave labor will not be tolerated as viable government programs. But most importantly, keep it in the public discourse. Inform the public about the state of the world. We deserve to know – to make a choice about the type of world in which we live.

I do not want another genocide museum to visit. I do not want another phrase to repeat.

That’s the test. That’s how we know when we’ve learned the lesson.

2006-05-23T17:15:00.000-07:00

I would like to take an informal poll of a cross section of America:

At what point do you want to be informed of mass genocide and/or grotesque human rights violations?

Please check ONE:

___ 1 – 50,000

___ 50,001 – 250,000

___ 250,001 – 500,000

___ 500,001 – 1,000,000

___ Other – don’t even bother with anything under 6 million

Harsh? Maybe. But that is the excuse being told to us by “news people”. Forgive me if I use the term loosely. We, the viewing public, aren’t interested in genocide, human rights, or the human condition around the world. It isn’t profitable. We just aren’t interested … that’s what the “news people” say. So it comes down to this:

Michael Jackson’s endless car ride to the courthouse to hear his verdict =

Profitable. Newsworthy. What the public wants to hear.

400,000 slaughtered black people in Sudan =

No, thanks. Not interested. Not only are we not interested, supposedly, we won’t buy that new and improved, faster and brighter gadget if you even attempt to inform us about the goings-on in the world today. What was that about the missing white woman?

Oh, and aren’t the people in Darfur black? Yeah, well … maybe if their skin was made of oil. We don’t want to hear about black people hurting. Unless they are on trial, or denied access into a French department store. Then tell the story. That’s profitable. That’s newsworthy.

That’s what the public wants to hear.

A small reality check:

Nicholas D. Kristof, op-ed columnist for the New York Times, has been one of the only journalists to cover the crisis in Darfur. In print. And you have to pay to read it. Just typing that sentence gives me a “Whaaaaah?!?!?” moment. Imagine Jon Stewart when he points out something strikingly ironic about the state of the world today, wiping his palms across his eyes then revealing cartoonish astonishment, proclaiming: “Whaaaaahhh?!?!?”

Why is Mr. Kristof one of the only mainstream journalists reporting on the events in Darfur? Is it for a lack of pictures? A lack of video-documented footage that would shock the public in that sexy, can’t-look-away-from-the-bloody-car-wreck sort of way? Does Darfur lack the human interest stories that tug on the public’s proverbial heart strings?

And yet, an abundance of primary source material exists on the subject – women who have been savagely raped, seeing their children beaten to death. Pictures of brave women who would rather get gang-raped gathering crops to eat, than risk their husbands being murdered. That is the trade-off some women live with on one corner of our planet. Is that not newsworthy? And the latter scenario exists at the refugee camp. Thousands of people live in extreme, life-threatening danger after they have arrived at the refugee camps. The places that are supposed to be safe. The places people run to – those places are perilous – just a little less perilous than their homes.

When will that become mainstream news? By mainstream, I mean: Iraq War, 2006 Elections, Events in the Middle East, GENOCIDE IN DARFUR. Because maybe we’d like to know if a country is grooming itself to becoming the next Afghanistan. Maybe it’s just me, but the Janjaweed are inheriting the Taliban’s place at the global table. Same trademark foreboding warning signs: intolerance of “others” (especially religious intolerance), disgraceful treatment of women, lack of educational infrastructure, and a bit ill-tempered. Is that not mainstream news? Are their any free minutes in the news cycle for news covering the extremely deadly conditions in other countries?

The powers that be in the media could at least devote more than 30 minutes per year covering these issues. The public might prove interested if given a choice to be interested. Who knows, the media might even tell us about an evil dictatorship in Burma too where rural Burmese run from their government for fear of torture and slave labor camps.

And let’s be clear – the media doesn’t make money off the news. They make money from advertisements. So the argument that a piece of news isn’t newsworthy basically means that if you hear coverage about Darfur, you won’t buy that new, and completely unessential yet ergonomically handled, toothbrush being advertised between segments. The ratings go down. The advertisers bolt. So that piece of news isn’t worthy to be aired. That’s how the argument is framed.

“Whaaaaahhhh?!?!?!?”