Darfur genocide over because there's no one left to kill

This essay is part of a weekly feature on my blog that presents interesting stories from elsewhere in the world, particularly Africa, that are little reported in the American media. It's part of my campaign to get people to realize there is a lot going on in the world outside the US, Israel and Iraq.

South Africa's News24 carries a foreboding piece on the economic difficulties of the African Union peacekeeping operation in Darfur, Sudan. Apparently, the AU mission there will run out of money within four months unless more funding is found.

On Friday, the European Union donated some 70 million Euros (US$84 million) but the mission still has a shortfall of some $50 million. The AU's peace and security commissioner noted that in May, donors pledged $200 million to the mission, but obviously much of that has not been received.

For his part, Christopher Hitchens denounces the failure of the international community to adequately respond to the genocide in Darfur (though beware: the piece is filled with the distraction of not-so-subtle jibes at the anti-Iraq war arguments). He chillingly claims that the genocide is basically over... because there's no one left to kill.

As I've mentioned before, Darfur was the perfect opportunity to combine two oft-mentioned calls: for American multilateralism and for African solutions to African problems. I firmly believe that an American or western military intervention in Darfur would've been a disaster and would've resulted in much the same problems as are seen in Iraq. However, an African Union intervention might've avoided many of those problems. Of course, an AU intervention would've required logistical and financial support from the United States and European Union. (The Arab League could've been another candidate, but it serves no other purpose than to bash Israel)

I'm not a big fan of military interventionism but cases of genocide are one exception I unambiguously and unapologetically make.

The fledgling AU, the US and the Europeans all dropped the ball. None of this is surprising. Those who dared hope the AU would be different than its talking shop predecessor the Organization for African Unity have been bitterly disappointed. As with Zimbabwe, Ethiopia and other crises, the AU has been largely silent for fear of offending anybody. The Bush administration ignored the Darfur genocide for a long time, focusing on helping resolve the southern Sudanese civil war; this was admittedly an admirable effort and one that pleased Bush's religious conservative base but those in Darfur got short shaft. The silence was deafening until then Secretary of State Colin Powell called the situation there genocide, the first time an American administration had ever used the word. Then Powell resigned and normal service (silence) was resumed. The EU had other internal issues at the time, such as the absorption of a bunch of new members into the Union and the drafting of a new (and ultimately rejected) constitution.

The usual international response to genocide is this
1) ignore it while it's going on except for a few empty threats
2) try assuage international guilt by prosecuting a few people after the fact.
3) hold hand over heart and proclaim 'Never again' with enough fake solemnity so people think you mean it
4) when the next genocide occurs, return to step 1

Sadly, Darfur seems to be no exception.

A great week for freedom... almost

It seemed like a great week for freedom, but nowadays, you learn to not count your chickens before they hatch.

First, the Senate was going to require the White House to explain itself on the existence of alleged secret prisons overseas. European allies were angered to read reports of these alleged secret prisons and of claims that the CIA illegally transported abductees across European borders.

Then, the White House was finally shamed and humiliated into ceasing its sickening opposition to a proposed ban on torture by the Republican-controlled Congress. The US is already a signatory to the international Convention on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

Today, the Senate refused to make permanent several expiring provisions of the so-called Patriot Act. Opponents claimed that the provisions were an unacceptable infringement on civil liberties.

Observers are shocked to discover the presence of vertebrates on Capitol Hill after an absence of several years. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales called the provisions "essential to our efforts in the war on terrorism and their loss will damage our ability to prevent terrorist attacks. Our nation cannot afford to let these important counterterrorism tools lapse." Which makes it all the more curious that the administration rejected efforts by a bipartisan group to extend the provisions by another three months to strengthen civil liberties protections. If the Act is so essential according to the administration, isn't a temporary extension better than none at all?

Supporters of the big government Patriot Act insist that the provisions are necessary for national security. They insist that we must blindly trust that no excesses or abuses of power could possibly occur. And, most importantly, there must be no oversight of this exercise of massive power.

So perhaps the effort to renew these provisions of the Patriot Act were hampered by recent revelations that President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying.

And despite sniffing about the 'liberal media' and 'Bush-hating press' of which The New York Times is allegedly a pillar, The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting.

Notably, The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad.

I hope Iraqis don't use our president's conduct as their model for good governance and the responsible exercise of power. Secrecy is the enemy of democracy. And secrecy is the guiding principle of this administration.

Realizing Rights

The most recent program of the BBC World Service's The Interview featured a fascinating talk with former UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson, a woman I've always had a great deal of respect for. Though human rights is an unpopular topic in the post-9/11 world, the former Irish Republic president recently founded an non-governmental organization (NGO) devoted to the area: Realizing Rights.

What's interesting is this. Rather than opposing globalization (a hideous term so broad as to be almost meaningless), Ms. Robinson's organization recognizes the exceedingly dominant international power of multinational corporations and seeks to pressure them into ethical behavior. I've always believed that compulsory or punitive action against corporations should be a last resort and it's more effective (and realistic) to appeal to their enlightened self-interest, such as the creative use of shame, to improve their behavior. Corporations, by their very structure, are amoral: they will always act in their perceived self-interest. Realizing Rights and other NGOs hope to persuade those corporations that doing the right thing is in their own self-interest... and doing the wrong thing is not.

President admits a mistake! (sort of)

President Bush admitted a mistake.

My initial instinct was to shout, "STOP THE PRESSES!!!"

I thought for a second that accountability, a fate more painful than Ebola, had infected the White House.

But then I realized he was admitting a mistake made not by himself, but by the intelligence community.

"Many intelligence agencies judged that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and it's true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong," he said in a speech today.

He also insisted, "Saddam was a threat, and the American people and the world is better off because he is no longer in power."

So if Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, then how was he a threat to the American people?

Or maybe I should starting 'supporting our troops' by ceasing these infernal logic-based questions about their commander-in-chief's incompetent decisions that puts them; incompetent decisions that put them, more than anyone else, in harm's way.

Maybe I should stop giving 'aid and comfort to the enemy' by pointing out that the president's insane policies have made us far less safe and far more vulnerable than before. Sure, Bush's belligerence has been a Godsend to the terrorist recruiters, but I can't talk about that for some inexplicable reason.

Maybe if I turned off my brain, slapped a flag pin on my shirt, slapped a 'Nuke 'em all and let Allah sort 'em out' bumper sticker on my car; maybe I should just intone the phrase 'support our troops' while supporting policies that do the exact opposite. Then I might be seen as a good American by the patriotically correct class.

Instead of being submissive, I think I'll opt instead for being a responsible American and repeat my question: Mr. President, if Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, as you acknowledged today, then how was he a threat to the American people? If you can't answer that question, then why should we trust your decision making in the future?

Global Voices

I recently found a great new site called Global Voices. It's a site that basically collects entries from bloggers all around the world, particularly from countries that are not often represented in the mainstream western media.

From its website:

A growing number of bloggers around the world are emerging as “bridge bloggers:” people who are talking about their country or region to a global audience. Global Voices is your guide to the most interesting conversations, information, and ideas appearing around the world on various forms of participatory media such as blogs, podcasts, photo sharing sites, and videoblogs.
Our global team of regional blogger-editors is working to find, aggregate and track these conversations. Each day they link to 5-10 of the most interesting blog posts from their regions in the “daily roundups” section. A larger group of contributing bloggers is posting daily features in in the left-hand Weblog section, shedding light on what blogging communities in their countries have been talking about recently.

You should bookmark it.

Riots and counterriots in Australia

This essay is part of a weekly feature on my blog that presents interesting stories from elsewhere in the world, particularly Africa, that are little reported in the American media. It's part of my campaign to get people to realize there is a lot going on in the world outside the US, Israel and Iraq.

Much was made in the national and international media and in the blogosphere about the shameful, counterproductive riots in France's suburbs last month. Fair-minded essays and reports pointed out the poor treatment of Arabs by native Frenchmen, how many people have their job applications summarily rejected simply because of their Arab surname or family name and the failure of Arab immigrants to integrate into French society, a failure for which both Arabs and native French share blame. The violence was not helped by the reckless, inflammatory remarks by France's interior minister, the sleazy and ambitious Nicolas Sarkozy.

Banalyses blamed the rioting on various factors depending on the political biases of the writer. Alleged causes included: the inherent violence of Muslims, the inherent disregard for the law of Arabs, France's allegedly socialist economic system and France's opposition to the aggression in Iraq (ie: their 'appeasement' of extremism).

Fox News [sic] even referred to the violence as 'Muslim riots,' even Islam had nothing to do with it. It was about as disingenuous as if one had referred to the 1992 violence in Los Angeles as "Christian riots."

Given the massive media attention on the violence in France, it makes you wonder when and if the press will notice the rioting going on in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia.

There is one big difference between the violence in France and the violence in Australia: the rioting in Sydney has been directed AGAINST Arabs and Arab owned businesses... as well as people wrongly assumed to be Arab.

The premier of New South Wales, the state in which Australia's largest city is located, says violence over the weekend in Sydney's south was the ugly face of racism, with the State Government confirming that so-called "white supremacists" were involved in the riots, reports the Australian Broadcast Corporation.

The initial anti-Arab violence not surprisingly provoked counter-rioting by Middle Eastern mobs.

Much like in France, some Australians will surely deny that social conditions and attitudes are unfavorable toward those of Arab descent, but such a willfully blind approach will not help address underlying social tensions.



Update: I have this extreme right-wing Christian fundamentalist acquaintance who rationalizes the Australian riots in such breathtaking terms.

The loss of the Christian faith is the center of the downfall of culture in Europe and Australia. No longer are children brought up with Christian morality, no longer are they taught right and wrong from a scriptural perspective. Instead they are taught that right and wrong changes over time and really it's all up to you and your "heart" anyway. This post-Christian thinking makes it ok to attack Muslims just for the fun of it. The people involved in these riots have no idea that what they're doing is wrong, rather they think it is quite right. Why, they believe in their hearts that attacking innocent people without justification is ok. Thus is life in a post-Christian society. In a Christian society, those wrongdoers would in the very least understand that what they are doing is evil and there will and should be punishment for it.

It's hard to know where to begin with such self-delusional insanity..

We all know how stable and peaceful Europe was from the Middle Ages until the mid-1940s back when Christianity was the undisputed power of the continent. The continent is much worse off now with its peaceful democracies and well-fed people. Oh the horror!

In the past, it was INCONCEIVABLE that people attack Muslims in, I don't know, a Crusade-like manner. It didn't used to be ok to attack innocent people without justification: back then, you needed the decency to invent a justification like them being Jewish or Protestant or witches. In a Christian society, like America, wrongdoers at the very least understand that what they are doing is evil and that there will and should be punishment. Maybe this is why so many Americans have changed their minds about the Iraq aggression.

Bush admin to UN: our torture is none of your business

Louise Arbour, a former Canadian Supreme Court justice and highly respected former head of the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, is now the UN human rights' chief. Arbour recently criticized the US government for its ambiguous (at best) position on torture.

Well, its position on torture by its own representatives is ambiguous; it often condemns torture by other countries, such as the former Saddam dictatorship in Iraq.

Arbour noted that the "absolute ban on torture, a cornerstone of the international human rights edifice, is under attack." This confusion has been amplified by the Newspeak that's passed for the administration's position of the day on torture.

The administration's designated UN loudmouth John Bolton got his panties into a twist following Arbour's reasonable comments.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton criticized the statements, the [Washington] Post reported, saying Arbour had no proof of the allegations other "than what she reads in the newspapers."

I agree. Commenting on newspaper reports is not the best way to handle the situation. Instead, surely Bolton would concur that a proper UN Security Council or International Criminal Court investigation would be a better option, eh?

"I think it is inappropriate and illegitimate for an international civil servant to second-guess the conduct that we're engaged in in the war on terror," Bolton sniffed.

And this exemplifies better than anything else why the Bush administration's moral credibility has completely vanished.

Questioning dubious human rights practices is EXACTLY what the UN human rights' chief should be doing.

Early this year, the Bush administration launched a full scale attack on the UN Human Rights Commission for not being forceful enough. Yet when it IS forceful, the administration tells it to shut up, in much the same way as Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe.

Why would Arbour criticize the US when there are a million other bad things going on that deserve her attention."The UN only picks on America," bellow the uninformed and the willfully ignorant. But as usual, it's usually the uninformed and the willfully ignorant who bellow the loudest. They're wrong... but you probably already knew that.

When critics called the UN Human Rights Commission toothless, Arbour (and myself, for that matter) agreed. She, like Secretary General Kofi Annan, want a smaller Human Rights Council with more strength and authority to replace the bloated Human Rights Commission that's held hostage by repressive regimes like Libya and Zimbabwe. As a former judge and prosecutor, she realizes the Human Rights Commission is too dysfunctional, too sclerotic and has no authority and ought to be restructured..

It's obvious that the Bush administration doesn't want a restructured human rights body, especially one that might be independent enough to criticize... the Bush administration. A serious watchdog must criticize all human rights abuses, not just those committed by regimes hostile to the US government. But the far right doesn't want a watchdog; it wants a scapegoat.

Bravo to Ms. Arbour. Her intrevention was very important in upholding the principles of international human rights' standards and values. Standards that the United States has not only voluntarily accepted, but were crucial in formulating. If the United States can't invoke 'terrorism' in order to justify human rights' abuses, then dictators won't be able to either.

'Happy holidays' and other capitulations 'to the worst elements in our society'

Whether it's so-called adults trampling each other to get the latest toy or electronic fad or people spending ridiculous amounts of money on gaudy Christmas decorations, December in America is silly season.

The White House recently sent out greeting cards to whoever's on their list. The card said, "Happy holidays."

This seems inocuous enough.

Unless you have way too much time on your hands. William A. Donahue, the apparent cartoon-like figure who serves as president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. is just such a person.

Donahue was livid that the card didn't mention the word Christmas, even though it contained a passage from the Biblical Old Testament. So much so that he threw the card in the trash.

"This clearly demonstrates that the Bush administration has suffered a loss of will and that they have capitulated to the worst elements in our culture," he fumed.

Just ponder those words for a moment...


... then ask yourself how he expects anyone to take him seriously in the future when he makes bufoonish statements like this.

Personally, I won't spend a single second figuring out whether I say 'Happy holidays' to someone or 'Merry Christmas,' nor will a spend a second worrying about what others say to me. The worst elements in our culture are professional victims like Mr. Donahue who waste our time with angry rantings about nothing.

The self-described bleeding heart liberal Adirondack Musing blog has had a series of entries devoted to the so-called war on Christmas. There was the essay about how 42% of Americans surveyed think there is a War on Christmas, according to a Fox poll. As well as one about the history of the holiday.

One can reasonably argue that the purpose of Christmas has been lost in the avalanche of consumerism, gluttony and avoidable stress. Though even that's a stretch considering we celebrate it in much the same way we celebrate other birthdays (presents, dinner, etc), just on a much grander scale. That great opponent of secularism, Bill O'Reilly, argues that every businessman in America should scream 'Merry Christmas' because the holiday is so central to the American economy. He's right, but venerating Christmas as a business bonanza seems far more secular than saying 'Happy holidays.'

So what IS the purpose of Christmas then? For me, it's the idea of spending time together with my family in a more or less relaxing manner. Is this expression of family values a secular one? Yes. Is it a capitulation 'to the worst elements in our culture'? I think not.