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History Forum / General / General Topics / October 2004The Sudan Situation Is Apparently Irrelevant
some absurd thoughts and other totally outrageous observations 10. It's a civil war, and thus none of my business to worry about or to utilize polemically 9. It's a-ok there because the competent United Nations has been as usual performing admirably there 8. There is no racism within the Sudan conflict phenomenon (by some kind of dishonest esoteric definition or something) 7. Because a third or fourth world country's presiding native (non-colonialist) government can't be racist by definition or whatever the nonsense 6. The worldwide news media have nearly all extensively reported and regularly/daily emphasized the deaths and degradations in the Sudan more than anywhere else, except that ugly chaos in Switzerland between the dominating, exploitative money-grubbing chocolate candy manufacturers and the minority pitiful clockmakers seeking justice & equal rights 5. The Sudan situation is neither a war about oil economics, nor culture, nor racialism, nor religion--it's simply about ownership of territory, stupid 4. The Durban Conference on racism a couple of years ago took due cognizance of the Sudan, because everybody wants to be fair & understannding of everybody else, especially the delegates whom spoke so courageously at Durbin about the true racialism 3. aw, screw it -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------ Google Home - Advertising Programs - Business Solutions - About Google ©2004 Google this is an american newspaper's version of the sudan situation (published today) http://www.nynewsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/nyc-wodafur0910,0,794839. story?coll=nyc-nationhome-headlines i would like to read (in english, please) an arabic/persian version (lebanese,or saudi, or egyptian, or iranian, or al jeezera et cetera newspaper's version) such might lead to a very interesting history n.g. discussion about subjectiveness, fairness, intellectual honesty, horseshit, exaggeration, distortion of news/reality/belief/fact notice the article in the newsday newspaper does openly discuss the "r" word in reference to an accusation COPYRIGHTED BY NEWSDAY & ASSOCIATED PRESS Powell: Sudan Abuses Qualify As Genocide By GEORGE GEDDA Associated Press Writer September 9, 2004, 10:14 AM EDT WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday that abuses by government-supported Arab militias in Sudan qualify as genocide against the black African population in the Darfur region -- a determination that should pressure the government to rein in the fighters. Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the conclusion was based on interviews conducted with refugees from the Darfur violence as well as other evidence. "We concluded that genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed (Arab militias) bear responsibility -- and genocide may still be occurring," he said. He added that that as a contracting party to an international genocide convention, Sudan is obliged to prevent and punish acts of genocide. "To us, at this time, it appears that Sudan has failed to do so," he said. Powell noted that Article VIII of the convention provides that parties to the accord may call on the United Nations to take such action under the U.N. charter "as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide ... ." Powell called on the United Nations to undertake a full investigation. "To this end, the U.S. will propose that the next U.N. Security Council resolution on Sudan request a U.N. investigation into all violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law that have occurred in Darfur, with a view to ensuring accountability," he said. He said the evidence corroborates the specific intent of perpetrators to destroy a "group in whole or part." The State Department said in a report released Thursday that the 1,136 interviews by U.S. officials with Darfur refugees revealed a "consistent and widespread pattern of atrocities committed against non-Arab villagers." The interview project was partly intended to help the Bush administration determine whether the abuses in Darfur should be classified as genocide. The interviews with the refugees took place over a five-week period this summer in Chad, which borders on Sudan. "Most respondents said government forces, militia fighters, or a combination of both had completely destroyed their villages," the department's report said. It said 61 percent witnessed the killing of a family member, 16 percent said they had been raped or had heard about a rape victim. "About one-third of the refugees heard racial epithets while under attack," it said, adding that four-fifths reported their livestock was stolen and nearly half said their personal property was looted. The administration has said that as a result of actions by government-backed militias, tens of thousands of Darfur residents have died and more than 1.2 million have been displaced from their homes. At the United Nations on Wednesday, the United States circulated a draft that calls for a stronger international force to monitor the situation in Darfur. The resolution also would threaten punitive action against the country's oil exports if the government doesn't act quickly to stop militia attacks and improve the security situation. The two rebel movements -- the Sudanese Liberation Army and the Justice, Equity Movement -- draw their support from African tribes in the Darfur region. The Sudanese government is accused of backing the Janjaweed in an effort to stamp out the rebellion, a charge the government denies. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Wednesday the attacks on Darfur's villages have followed a familiar pattern. The assaults, he said, begin with bombing raids by government aircraft on villages. Trucks with government soldiers and then Janjaweed militias on horseback or camels arrive in the villages and surround them. "People who flee are attacked and chased down, and the villages are looted and burned," Boucher said. "That, unfortunately, has been a pattern that we've seen again and again." He said designating whether the situation in Darfur constitutes genocide "is a matter of fact and law." Political considerations, such as whether any such designation would help or harm U.S. efforts on behalf of Darfur's victims, play only a minor role, he added. Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson said in a telephone interview that, given the grave humanitarian situation, the United States should deploy airplanes, helicopters and trucks to the region to deliver relief supplies. He also said Powell would be able to bring a quick end to the crisis if he engaged in shuttle diplomacy between Darfur and the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. Powell believes international pressure on the Sudanese government is the best way to end the crisis. The Darfur situation, Jackson said, is another example of excessive U.S. patience in the face of a crisis involving Africans. Earlier examples, he said, included American indifference to many years of racist rule in South Africa and to the Rwanda genocide a decade ago. Alluding to Darfur, Jackson said, "The sense of urgency obligates us to move from analysis to action." Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press > this is an american newspaper's version of the sudan situation (published > today) [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > notice the article in the newsday newspaper does openly discuss the "r" word in > reference to an accusation Well, the pro-government Arab militias continue to raid non-Arab villages. The government refuses to actually disband these militias and will not allow the African Union to send 3,000 peacekeepers into Darfur to do it. The US is trying to get the UN to approve sanctions against Sudan, especially against Sudan's million dollar a day oil sales. Of course, we all know how effective sanctions have been. But as Carol Cleveland in certain Monty Python skits said, "it's our only line." And even the sanctions probably won't happen. China, which can veto the effort, is a major investor in Sudan's young oil industry. Russia, which also has a veto, is a major supplier of weapons, and other goods, to the Sudan government. In other words, nothing has changed. Sudan is comparing itself to Iraq, which is more accurate than the Sudanese leadership intended. Saddam's Iraq slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who did not belong to the same tribes as the ruling Baath Party. Same situation in Sudan. The ruling Arab tribes are out to expel or kill the non-Arab tribes. But the Sudanese leadership understands how the Arab media has painted Iraq as not the expulsion of a mass murderer, but the invasion of an independent Arab country by infidels (non-Moslems.) The Sudanese government spokesmen are following the same line, downplaying the atrocities in Darfur, and playing up the threat of invasion. Unfortunately, they'll probably get away with it. The trouble is, the world -- especially Old Europe -- would rather talk than act. The American invasion of Iraq offended many of the talkers, exposing their lack of will to actually stop murder and tyranny. America hasn't got the troops available to go into Darfur, and no one else has guts to do it. So I don't expect much of a change. 7,000--10,000 (apparent) sudanese black (only?) moslems per month are being killed--seemingly to me, it's an on-going under-publicized outrageous racial genocide why is it being "under-publicized (if it is)?" could it be because it's white moslems slaughtering black moslems (if indeed it shamefully is)? (apparently) this article below is copyrighted by the new republic, where i got it, 2004 DAILY EXPRESS Speak Easy by Marisa Katz Printer friendly Only at TNR Online | Post date 09.23.04 E-mail this article t wasn't until 1989 that the United States got around to ratifying the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. And, since then, some Americans may have wondered why we even bothered. As Samantha Power demonstrates in her authoritative history, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, employing the term "genocide," for most of its existence, has been a political taboo. Government officials have danced, skirted, and run circles around it for fear that it would compel them to act. A Defense Department memo on Rwanda, dated May 1, 1994, captured the general sentiment when it warned: "Be Careful. Legal at State was worried about this yesterday--Genocide finding could commit [the U.S. government] to actually 'do something.'" But with Secretary of State Colin Powell's labeling of the ongoing atrocities in Darfur as genocide, the taboo has been lifted. We have entered a new paradigm: Rather than avoid action by avoiding the term, we can now avoid action by invoking it. Government officials must have discovered that it helps when you actually read what you sign on to. It turns out that the Genocide Convention's obligation to "prevent and punish" extends only to the borders of one's own country. When genocide is going on elsewhere in the world, contracting parties can name and shame to their hearts' content without having to lift a finger. If they like, they "may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations" to take appropriate action. Powell made motions to that effect when he requested that the U.N. "initiate a full investigation" (though calling for another investigation, when the State Department has just completed interviews with more than 1,000 Darfurian victims, seems a rather indirect and time-consuming means of halting genocide). But such recourse is purely optional. After taking the momentous step of using the "g-word," Powell reassured the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that "no new action is dictated by this determination." To be fair, the United States has done a good deal already when it comes to Darfur. Our efforts, however, are far from exhausted. According to the latest USAID figures, we have given $218 million in humanitarian assistance. That's more than any other country in absolute numbers. Britain trails with $112 million allocated to the Darfur crisis. But in relative terms, we have only given .002 percent of our GDP, whereas the British have given .007 percent of theirs. Additionally, while we have used our political capital to win access for relief workers and an expanded ceasefire-monitoring force, we have not pressed for an expansion of that force's mandate so that it can protect civilians. We have thanked the African Union for volunteering troops and Nigeria for mediating negotiations between the Sudanese government and rebel groups. Yet we have not volunteered troops of our own (2,000 of them are stationed in nearby Djibouti) nor accepted an active role in the peace talks. We have encouraged our Security Council colleagues to consider sanctions against the Sudanese government if it refuses to quell the violence. But we have already allowed Khartoum to miss one deadline without consequence. The oil is flowing and the country is still sitting pretty as head of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. Our existing trade restrictions on Sudan limit how much more economic pressure we can exert unilaterally. Still, the names of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, National Security Chief Salah Abdallah Gosh, and Janjaweed militia coordinator Musa Hilal have not been added to our list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons. "We are not trying to punish the Sudanese people or the Sudanese government. We're trying to save lives," Powell said. But this is not a natural disaster. It's a premeditated, elaborately orchestrated, man-made crisis--and deserves to be treated as such. There have been many roads not taken. Yet Powell's genocide designation obscured all that. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum welcomed it as "unprecedented and an important development." Members of Congress, who themselves declared back in July that genocide was occurring in Darfur, were able to pat themselves on the back for a job well done. "We acted early in this body ... really unanimously said this is genocide," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist boasted. Kansas Senator Sam Brownback similarly conflated rhetoric and action: "I think this is an enormously important time for the world, where we are stepping up while a genocide is occurring and calling it as such to protect the people there." No doubt, when Raphael Lemkin coined and started to promote the term genocide, he hoped it would acquire enough of a moral stigma to actually restrain perpetrators and save lives. But Powell, in debunking the myth that the genocide convention legally compels signatories to action, and by invoking the word while making it explicit that no corresponding action is forthcoming, has succeeded in diluting the convention of much of its moral power. The European Union has since echoed the genocide allegation. (The EU had only recently shied away from the term, claiming that its August fact-finding mission hadn't turned up adequate evidence to warrant it. But, oh, how easy to say it once you know that doing so compels no action!) And Sudan, not surprisingly, has dismissed all allegations and continued about its business. "It would be difficult for the U.S. or the Security Council of the United Nations to pass any sanctions on Sudan," Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail assessed quite accurately. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization estimates that between 6,000 and 10,000 Darfurians are dying each month. And so it comes to this: Unless the United States, the European Union, and the rest of the United Nations start to see past their legal responsibilities and accept their moral ones, Khartoum could be just the first government to take such a blasé attitude about accusations of genocide. And saying the word will be just as cowardly as not saying anything at all. Marisa Katz is a reporter-researcher at TNR. Printer friendly Get FOUR FREE WEEKS of The New Republic. E-mail this article SUBSCRIBE please try to read david brooks' column for some terrific on-point sarcasm about these same under-publicized phenomena in the saturday on-line issue of the nytimes, 25 sept 04 www.nytimes.com i tried to re-post the virtual column to this thread, but apparently nash-smashing gremlins at amc rambler 404ed it to oblivion (tho it could later show-up in infinty with a '53 yellowish ambassador or my brother's two-tone '51 metro) it's this week's time magazine cover story www.time.com i found the following opinion piece (below) in the ARAB NEWS which i think is a moderate saudi-based news company i read it twice, and it seems to be saying: The darfur conflict is relatively minor and there is no on-going racial genocide in any case i could find no sudan/darfur articles in AL JAZEERA, tho plenty of horrors about palestine-israel & iraq i suppose the darfur story treatment opinion contrast depicted in this thread is an interesting example of how history & reality & journalism & politics & opinion & morality are subjectively constructed/interpreted/portrayed/played if a reader thinks i'm distorting reality, perhaps exaggerating, making a dumb & specious argument, & portraying something unfairly, then this is a wide-open forum for such counter-argumentation propaganda versus propaganda emphasis upon one set of ideas versus emphasis on another set of ideas Sunday, 26, September, 2004 (12, Sha`ban, 1425) Mail Article | Print Article | Comment on Article Darfur and Crusaders Dr. Khaled M. Batarfi, kbatarfi@al-madina.com.sa An American friend asked me what I meant when I claimed in a previous article (Double Talk, Double Standards) that Evangelists collect billions to support Christian revolts in the Muslim world. I gave him three examples: East Timor, South Sudan and Darfur. He seemed to recognize the first two but not the last. I had to explain: In many wild parts of the globe there have been continuous struggles among various groups for racial, economic and religious reasons. Darfur is a huge countryside, the size of France. It has all kinds of tough terrains: Jungles, deserts and mountains. Most of its inhabitants, if not all, are Muslims. They come from Arab and African origins. The Arabs are mostly nomads and Africans farmers. In dry seasons, nomads move to farming areas to feed their camels and sheep. They fight over rights. This is an ancient, global phenomenon. It was worse when central governments were weaker, like before the present government took over. In recent years the nomads got stronger because they joined the state in fighting the southern revolt. After the peace accords, they returned home veterans and well-armed. In their absence, some Africans revolted with foreign help. Support comes from the same sources that sustained the southerners — Evangelical organizations, neighboring countries and Israel. The goal is to cut off the Arab Muslim Sudan from the rest of Africa. The state called on the Arab nomads again, this time against their old rivals. Another war ensued. Like in the southern war, the Western world took notice only when the government forces seemed to be winning. No one is denying that the situation is bad. Five thousand people were killed or died from both sides, more from the insurgents. Both rivals committed atrocities. The government should stop supporting the nomads, and the foreign powers must cut off arms to the separatists. Terrible as is, the situation has not reached the level of genocide, and the government cannot alone improve the situation. More than 2,500 Iraqis were killed in a month, half the number of people killed in Darfur in 18 months. Close to a million (and counting) of Hutus and Tutsis were killed lately in similar conflicts in Rwanda and Burundi. The situation is worsening there, as well as in Iraq, Afghanistan, the occupied Palestinian territories, Chechnya, Kashmir, Muslim parts of China and Philippines. No one is calling this genocide or charging the US and the concerned governments of responsibility. Why only Sudan is the focus of all attention and actions? Is it because in most other cases Muslims are the victims? Or is it because all the right ingredients are present here: Oil, Islam, Arab, Israel and the Bush-Blair crusade?! You tell me, my American friend! Mail Article | Print Article | Comment on Article Prince Ahmed Bin Salman Life of Prophet Muhammad 20 Years of King Fahd Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights this article in the VILLAGE VOICE (attempts to) debunks that darfur is very much about racism i do not know what the truth factually is; while in the interest of intellectual honesty, i perceive a rational rebuttal to the alleged racial genocide is herein appropriately linked meanwhile, i heard on the news yesterday that sudan is allowing-in some 3600 (non-arabic?, non-moslem?) african peacekeepers bottomline: nuthin is simple and so damnably outright hypocritical as this prolific (and pro-israel) internet poster would sometimes perceive/portray it to be COMPLEXITIES/NUANCES & BUMPER STICKERS ARE OFTEN MUTUAL EXCLUSIVES http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0439/coates.php interpreting pol-econ-soc dynamic reality is trying to understand ambiguity i perceive/suggest to you that the darfur situation of sudan, formerly "anglo egyptian sudan," is an on-going analogy/metaphor for ______ (fill-in the blank with a crisis, while no analogy is perfect) last week it seemed to be termed as being "racial genocide" by colin powell anyhow, here's today's ny times clarifying explanation/interpretation of the now so-called "ethnic" conflict moral of story for moi: CAVEAT: USE CARE IN OVER-SIMPLIFYING COMPLICATED HISTORIES WHEN POSTING ONE'S INHERENTLY HALF-BAKED SUBJECTIVE ANALYSES AS BEING TRUTH/REALITY copyrighted nytimes 2004 In Sudan, No Clear Difference Between Arab and African By SOMINI SENGUPTA Published: October 3, 2004 HARTOUM, Sudan — ABDALLA ADAM KHATIR, 50, is from Darfur, in western Sudan. His grandmother was an Arab, her grandfather was a member of an African tribe. He calls himself an African. As a boy in Kabkabiya, deep in the heart of Darfur, he traveled three days by camel caravan to reach the nearest town with an intermediate school. The caravan was led by an Arab, but at no point did he or his family feel unsafe. As a student here in the capital in the 1960's, he took up the banner of Arab-African unity, led by the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. But today, Mr. Khatir finds himself wrestling with the gut-wrenching fact that, in the past two years, 102 of his relatives have been killed in Darfur by those he calls Arabs. Yet in the end, Mr. Khatir, a writer and a member of the Darfur Writers and Journalists Association, does not view this as a war between Arabs and Africans. He blames it squarely on the government in Khartoum. Its leaders, he says, have deliberately inflamed nascent ethnic divisions in a bid to stay in power. War broke out in western Sudan in early 2003, when a rebel insurrection, frustrated by what it called the Sudan government's marginalization of Darfur, demanded economic and political reforms. The government swiftly struck back, deploying Arab militias across the region. The violence has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced around 1.5 million. Across Darfur, it was largely the villages of Africans that were torched, and with some exceptions, it was largely tribes that call themselves African that crowded into refugee camps or fled across the border to Chad. The United States and others have accused the attackers of committing "genocide," the systematic destruction of a national or ethnic group. Juan Mendez, the United Nations Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, has said that crimes against humanity and war crimes "probably occurred on a large and systematic scale." The question is how does race or ethnicity fit in. For generations, race itself has not been all that significant in Darfurian society. People regularly referred to themselves by their tribe affiliation, and rarely as just "Arab" or "African." Arabs have been in the region for almost 1,000 years, and the term has been used mostly to describe those who speak Arabic, as opposed to one of the dozens of local languages, or to those who lead nomadic, not agricultural, existences. "The implication that these are two different races, one indigenous and the other not, is dangerous," said Mahmood Mamdani, director of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University. But the Darfur crisis has laid bare an unspoken Arab-African fault line that runs across this arid belt of Africa - from Mauritania in the west, to Sudan in the east. Racial consciousness is, in fact, embedded in the history of central Africa. Sudan, for example, was once a center of the Arab slave trade. In Mauritania, in West Africa, blackness, which was associated with slavery, is today associated with servitude. Referring to underlying racial division, Breyten Breytenbach, the South African writer, said, "It is one of the most ambiguous problems and greatest taboos on the continent." What may have surprised everyone in Sudan was that as soon as the rebellion in Darfur began, divisions were drawn. By and large it was Arab tribes in Darfur that rallied to the government's side (some say in exchange for promises of land and power), while the government's political opponents raised the African banner and declared allegiance with the rebels. Those lines could harden even more. The racial character given to the fighting in Darfur by the government and the rebels has found many willing listeners - and the appeal to racial solidarity could extend itself to Chad or further afield to Niger or Mali, where the competition between farmers and nomadic herders could turn even uglier. "There's been a long-running effort to suppress recognition of racial tension," argued Salih Booker, executive director of Africa Action, a Washington-based advocacy group. "It is something the continent has to grapple with." But racial chauvinism, once let loose in a society, can be hard to put back in the bottle. And its effects can be murderous. It is foolish, said Mr. Khatir, for any Sudanese to consider himself an Arab. "We are not Arabs, not Sudanese - not even those who are telling themselves they are Arabs," he said. "I am an African," he added, "who has absorbed Arab and Islamic culture. The way I see it, our people, Arab tribes and African tribes, are victims of the national policies of this government. We are all victims." this angry essay i found in the l a times online discusses the wretched, underpublicized darfur situation of which (apparently) AL JAZEERA etal conveniently ignore & downplay please show me some recent articles of substance about darfur in an anti-zionist or moslem or arabic centric newspaper(s) i have been posting about darfur, because i deem it appropos in the forming of one's perspective about the complexities confronting jews & israel copyrighted by los angeles times 2004 October 4, 2004 E-mail story Print COMMENTARY By Robert I. Rotberg, Robert I. Rotberg is director of the Kennedy School of Government's Belfer Center Program on Intrastate Conflict at Harvard University and president of the World Peace Foundation. It is no longer a secret that more than 50,000 mostly black unfortunates have been killed in Darfur, Sudan, and that several hundred thousand more are refugees, lingering in forlorn camps within the nation or in neighboring Chad. Yet the killing goes on. Even as the world watches, as many as 10,000 people are continuing to die each month from combat and disease. If the world wants to stop this continued genocide, Washington and the United Nations need to squeeze Sudan much harder. The nice-guy approach is clearly not working. The authoritarian Arab government of Sudan promised in July to rein in its marauding vigilantes, the janjaweed, but their attacks persist. A supposed cease-fire is violated daily. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has urged the Security Council to vote strong sanctions against Sudan. Never before has it been so essential, he declared, for the U.N. to be resolute. But China, Russia, Algeria and Pakistan (all members of the Security Council) prefer to bring no pressure, and the Arab League and the African Union don't want to be seen criticizing one of their member states. Recently, the Security Council approved a weakened U.S. resolution that authorized an unspecified commission to spend months determining whether Sudan had really committed genocide. It also commended the deployment of African Union monitors and threatened unspecified sanctions if Sudan continued to kill its own people in the Darfur region. This is well and good, but it provides no incentive for the Sudanese government to change its behavior. As in the Rwandan genocide 10 years ago, the U.N. is found wanting. Unless Washington obtains U.N. assent for robust action, it needs to act firmly on its own, bolstered by the moral authority that comes from combating genocide. Secretary of State Colin Powell has already declared the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Darfur, Sudan's westernmost province, "genocide." Washington should immediately offer to provide logistical support for a significantly upgraded African Union force of monitors and soldiers. Having tried to give Sudanese officials ample time to act responsibly, the velvet-glove diplomatic initiatives should now be joined with the mailed fist of hard sanctions. Washington must concentrate on those who back, fund and arm the Arab janjaweed. A blockade of petroleum exports would make the government in Khartoum pay attention. U.N. Security Council approval of such a comprehensive embargo would be preferable, but the Chinese, who purchase much of Sudan's oil, might make that difficult. Oil is Sudan's only significant source of foreign exchange. It earns about $1 billion a year, pumping 250,000 barrels a day. If the U.S. can patrol the Persian Gulf, it can easily prevent tankers from taking on crude oil supplies at Port Sudan on the Red Sea. Washington should also persuade Sudan's neighbors — including Egypt and Libya — and Europe to ban overflights and landings by Sudan Airways. It could veto International Monetary Fund and World Bank assistance. It could ban travel to the U.S. from Sudan and freeze all assets of President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir and his key associates in the U.S. U.S. trade with Sudan could be halted. If blockades and other sanctions fail to turn the Sudanese government toward peace, then the U.N. and the U.S. will have to threaten intervention. A few thousand Nigerian or French troops could certainly impose the cease-fire that the Sudanese government and its janjaweed proxies now refuse to honor. The French already have Legionnaires in neighboring Chad; with American assistance, the Nigerians could fly soldiers from their own Muslim north across Chad and into Darfur. No one has really explained why Sudan launched its genocidal campaign 19 months ago, and why it has refused to curb its local militias there. But rumors of petroleum deposits are persistent, and the government does not want to share any such riches with Darfur's two rebel groups. The government is determined not to lose ground, as it did in the years-long fighting in the oil-rich south, to a rebel insurgency. But all of these understandable anxieties cannot excuse genocide. Having dithered for more than a year before focusing on the human tragedy in Darfur, the forces of world order are now obligated to act, preferably under U.N. authority or, if not, Washington should do so alone. http://nypost.com/news/worldnews/31235.htm non-jaded reactions to the above allegations: i'm shocked, shocked ripping-off the u.n.'s food/money meant for the hungry/poor wasn't very nice such kinds of activities surely couldn't be too widespread in any case and if any cross-border smuggling is happening today, then AL JEEZERA would publish about it, and the perpetrators duly arrested and prosecuted re: what historians, philosophers, economists, polisci majors and each of us may do when analyzing ugly conflict phenomena here's nat hentoff's apparent "marxist analysis" of darfur hell is it indeed a "marxian analysis," or a narrow, convenient way to glibly project one's natural greediness & other personal failings & limitation of intellect upon international perfidy & mega corporations ? http://www.villagevoice.com/hentoff/ according to a video report by SIXTY MINUTES, it is (at least partly) indeed actual "racial genocide" as the people of darfur are slaughtered-raped, they are simultaneously subjected to racialist taunting by the executioners-rapists, according to a SIXTY MINUTES interviewee in chad let me repeat the original self-interested reason i started posting about the sudan the zionists have been declared as racialists at the official un durban meeting so far as i know, no arabic nationalist state nor islamic-arabic movement has been declared as "racist" by the un general assembly or at a un sponsored meeting if i am incorrect/distorting/over-simplifying, then please tell me which arabic states and/or movements have been declared as being racialist by the un general assembly until advised otherwise, it's the united nations general assembly of hypocritical defamation "ethnic cleansing" does not really indicate the racialist element involved in this "darfur genocide," and i further suggest that black america (in general) is unaware of the on-going racialist murder-rape situation of the sudan Karl Rove's White House " Murder, Inc." By Wayne Madsen . Online Journal Contributing Writer . OCT, 2004- On September 15, 2001, just four days after the 9-11 attacks, CIA Director George Tenet provided President [sic] Bush with a Top Secret "Worldwide Attack Matrix"-a virtual license to kill targets deemed to be a threat to the United States in some 80 countries around the world. The Tenet plan, which was subsequently approved by Bush, essentially reversed the executive orders of four previous U.S. administrations that expressly prohibited political assassinations. According to high level European intelligence officials, Bush's counselor, Karl Rove, used the new presidential authority to silence a popular Lebanese Christian politician who was planning to offer irrefutable evidence that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon authorized the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian men, women, and children in the Beirut refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla in 1982. In addition, Sharon provided the Lebanese forces who carried out the grisly task. At the time of the massacres, Elie Hobeika was intelligence chief of Lebanese Christian forces in Lebanon who were battling Palestinians and other Muslim groups in a bloody civil war. He was also the chief liaison to Israeli Defense Force (IDF) personnel in Lebanon. An official Israeli inquiry into the massacre at the camps, the Kahan Commission, merely found Sharon "indirectly" responsible for the slaughter and fingered Hobeika as the chief instigator. The Kahan Commission never called on Hobeika to offer testimony in his defense. However, in response to charges brought against Sharon before a special war crimes court in Belgium, Hobeika was urged to testify against Sharon, according to well-informed Lebanese sources. Hobeika was prepared to offer a different version of events than what was contained in the Kahan report. A 1993 Belgian law permitting human rights prosecutions was unusual in that non-Belgians could be tried for violations against other non-Belgians in a Belgian court. Under pressure from the Bush administration, the law was severely amended and the extra territoriality provisions were curtailed. Hobeika headed the Lebanese forces intelligence agency since the mid- 1970s and he soon developed close ties to the CIA. He was a frequent visitor to the CIA's headquarters at Langley, Virginia. After the Syrian invasion of Lebanon in 1990, Hobeika held a number of cabinet positions in the Lebanese government, a proxy for the Syrian occupation authorities. He also served in the parliament. In July 2001, Hobeika called a press conference and announced he was prepared to testify against Sharon in Belgium and revealed that he had evidence of what actually occurred in Sabra and Shatilla. Hobeika also indicated that Israel had flown members of the South Lebanon Army (SLA) into Beirut International Airport in an Israeli Air Force C130 transport plane. In full view of dozens of witnesses, including members of the Lebanese army and others, SLA troops under the command of Major Saad Haddad were slipped into the camps to commit the massacres. The SLA troops were under the direct command of Ariel Sharon and an Israeli Mossad agent provocateur named Rafi Eitan. Hobeika offered evidence that a former U.S. ambassador to Lebanon was aware of the Israeli plot. In addition, the IDF had placed a camera in a strategic position to film the Sabra and Shatilla massacres. Hobeika was going to ask that the footage be released as part of the investigation of Sharon. After announcing he was willing to testify against Sharon, Hobeika became fearful for his safety and began moves to leave Lebanon. Hobeika was not aware that his threats to testify against Sharon had triggered a series of fateful events that reached well into the White House and Sharon's office. On January 24, 2002, Hobeika's car was blown up by a remote controlled bomb placed in a parked Mercedes along a street in the Hazmieh section of Beirut. The bomb exploded when Hobeika and his three associates, Fares Souweidan, Mitri Ajram, and Waleed Zein, were driving their Range Rover past the TNT-laden Mercedes at 9:40 am Beirut time. The Range Rover's four passengers were killed in the explosion. In case Hobeika's car had taken another route through the neighborhood, two additional parked cars, located at two other choke points, were also rigged with TNT. The powerful bomb wounded a number of other people on the street. Other parked cars were destroyed and buildings and homes were damaged. The Lebanese president, prime minister, and interior minister all claimed that Israeli agents were behind the attack. It is noteworthy that the State Department's list of global terrorist incidents for 2002 worldwide failed to list the car bombing attack on Hobeika and his party. The White House wanted to ensure the attack was censored from the report. The reason was simple: the attack ultimately had Washington's fingerprints on it. High level European intelligence sources now report that Karl Rove personally coordinated Hobeika's assassination. The hit on Hobeika employed Syrian intelligence agents. Syrian President Bashar Assad was trying to curry favor with the Bush administration in the aftermath of 9-11 and was more than willing to help the White House. In addition, Assad's father, Hafez Assad, had been an ally of Bush's father during Desert Storm, a period that saw Washington give a "wink and a nod" to Syria's occupation of Lebanon. Rove wanted to help Sharon avoid any political embarrassment from an in absentia trial in Brussels where Hobeika would be a star witness. Rove and Sharon agreed on the plan to use Syrian Military Intelligence agents to assassinate Hobeika. Rove saw Sharon as an indispensable ally of Bush in ensuring the loyalty of the Christian evangelical and Jewish voting blocs in the United States. Sharon saw the plan to have the United States coordinate the hit as a way to mask all connections to Jerusalem. The Syrian hit team was ordered by Assef Shawkat, the number two man in Syrian military intelligence and a good friend and brother in law of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Assad's intelligence services had already cooperated with U.S. intelligence in resorting to unconventional methods to extract information from al Qaeda detainees deported to Syria from the United States and other countries in the wake of 9-11. The order to take out Hobeika was transmitted by Shawkat to Roustom Ghazali, the head of Syrian military intelligence in Beirut. Ghazali arranged for the three remote controlled cars to be parked along Hobeika's route in Hazmieh; only few hundred yards from the Barracks of Syrian Special Forces which are stationed in the area near the Presidential palace , the ministry of Defense and various Government and officers quarters . This particular area is covered 24/7 by a very sophisticated USA multi-agency surveillance system to monitor Syrian and Lebanese security activities and is a " Choice " area to live in for its perceived high security .... [Courtesy of the Special Collections Services.] ... SCS... ; CIA & NSA & DIA.... The plan to kill Hobeika had all the necessary caveats and built-in denial mechanisms. If the Syrians were discovered beforehand or afterwards, Karl Rove and his associates in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans would be ensured plausible deniability. Hobeika's CIA intermediary in Beirut, a man only referred to as "Jason" by Hobeika, was a frequent companion of the Lebanese politician during official and off-duty hours. During Hobeika's election campaigns for his parliamentary seat, Jason was often in Hobeika's office offering support and advice. After Hobeika's assassination, Jason became despondent over the death of his colleague. Eventually, Jason disappeared abruptly from Lebanon and reportedly later emerged in Pakistan. Karl Rove's involvement in the assassination of Hobeika may not have been the last "hit" he ordered to help out Sharon. In March 2002, a few months after Hobeika's assassination, another Lebanese Christian with knowledge of Sharon's involvement in the Sabra and Shatilla massacres was gunned down along with his wife in Sao Paulo, Brazil. A bullet fired at Michael Nassar's car flattened one of his tires. Nassar pulled into a gasoline station for repairs. A professional assassin, firing a gun with a silencer, shot Nassar and his wife in the head, killing them both instantly. The assailant fled and was never captured. Nassar was also involved with the Phalange militia at Sabra and Shatilla. Nassar was also reportedly willing to testify against Sharon in Belgium and, as a nephew of SLA Commander General Antoine Lahd, may have had important evidence to bolster Hobeika's charge that Sharon ordered SLA forces into the camps to wipe out the Palestinians. Based on what European intelligence claims is concrete intelligence on Rove's involvement in the assassination of Hobeika, the Bush administration can now add political assassination to its laundry list of other misdeeds, from lying about the reasons to go to war to the torture tactics in violation of the Geneva Conventions that have been employed by the Pentagon and "third country" nationals at prisons in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist. He served in the National Security Agency (NSA) during the Reagan administration and wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth. He is the co-author, with John Stanton, of "America's Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II." His forthcoming book is titled: "Jaded Tasks: Big Oil, Black Ops, and Brass Plates." Madsen can be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com This is some of the evidence for you and for the World .... ********************************************* ~~~encrypted/logs/access ~~~ Not to mention hundreds of private companies and governments. Anyway... ********************************************************* Lines 10-36 of my logfiles show a lot of interest in this article: # grep sid=1052 /encrypted/logs/access_log|awk '{print $1,$7}'|sed -n '10,36p' spb-213-33-248-190.sovintel.ru /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052 ext1.shape.nato.int /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052 server1.namsa.nato.int /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052 ns1.saclantc.nato.int /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052 bxlproxyb.europarl.eu.int /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052 wdcsun18.usdoj.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052 wdcsun21.usdoj.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052 tcs-gateway11.treas.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052 tcs-gateway13.treas.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052 relay1.ucia.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052 relay2.cia.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052 relay2.ucia.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052 n021.dhs.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052 legion.dera.gov.uk /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052 gateway-fincen.uscg.mil /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052 crawler2.googlebot.com /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052 crawler1.googlebot.com /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052 gateway101.gsi.gov.uk /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052 gate11-quantico.nmci.usmc.mil /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052 gate13-quantico.nmci.usmc.mil /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052 fw1-a.osis.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052 crawler13.googlebot.com /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052 fw1-b.osis.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052 bouncer.nics.gov.uk /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052 beluha.ssu.gov.ua /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052 zukprxpro02.zreo.compaq.com /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052.... To be continued ....For Decades.!!!!! HOLLYWOOD FL.... ATTA & Aris2F...Dis...ney... DENVER CO... ART STUDENTS... MOVERS- INC.@ORG.IL Lakam & LAPAM ...Mr.X. MEGA....Feith, woolfowitz...Perle, Maaloof, etc. OSP, SCS, DIA, M.I. etc.... Etc. Etc. ------------ And now a word from our sponsor ------------------ Do your users want the best web-email gateway? Don't let your customers drift off to free webmail services install your own web gateway! -- See http://netwinsite.com/sponsor/sponsor_webmail.htm ---- more hentoff/more reeves (i correct a mis-statement: so far as i know from readings/tv news, colin powell did not use the explicit phrase "racial genocide," it was my interpretation of powell's overall statement) http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0439/hentoff.php Wednesday night, 20 oct 04 SIXTY MINUTES is running another mini-documentary about Sudan Bob Simon is the narrator www.cbs.com My point: it is important in the understanding of political current affairs and poltical history that some very awful phenomena are ignored while others are emphasized to influence negative "world opinion" about zionism The ugly Palestine-Israel mess--imho--pales in comparison in degree of on-going depravity-persecution-cruelty-force-death The Arab-Moslem media/society (apparently) finds it ... convenient & easy to trash or condemn Israel and to simply ignore or to de-emphasize Sudan-Darfur Everything I post is duly subject to criticism and correction, and I encourage the reader to post links/articles about the on-going situation in Sudan from the Arabic and/or Moslem media/press Such would be the newspaper or other medium that I'd have to grudgingly respect would you agree with such a seat-of-the-pants standard? thus, enlighten me, please meanwhile, please see <haaretz.com> for Israeli news & criticisms about the Israel--Palestine situation well, what is reality, and how does/can one know? isn't it so much about the news & the inherent/implied propaganda that one is constantly exposed to? "there is an on-going joint dynamic construction/reinforcement of cultural reality," as a semi-lucid professor of philosophy would say tom friedman doesn't mention "sudan" this morning (if you wanna be informed/depressed, see the whole column) (because his overall subject today is more worse) "This wider trend has been fanned by Arab satellite TV stations, which deliberately show split-screen images of Israelis bashing Palestinians and U.S. forces bashing the Iraqi insurgents. The trend has also been encouraged by some mosque preachers looking to explain away all the Arab world's ills by wrapping all the Satans together into JIA. This trend has been helped by the ... " is there a bottomline here? press & tv emphasis drive reality(ies), and such has been very bad for darfur here is another unpleasant reality/situation, apparently getting relatively sparse coverage, although i have not yet seen any of the major u.s. network tv news programs tonight (hope to see some later via tivo, b-t-w a vunderful thing) bottomline: the medium is often the overwhelming message, meaning that the coverages or emphases by news media definitely influence/change public/political opinion(s) in the ole soviet union, as far as i can surmise, the "media" were duly-primarily thought of as "propaganda,:" and perhaps such is a valid ... connotation/semantic in the rest of the world as wll (including to an extent the much relatively freer press u.s.a.) i am referring in previous note to this apparently relatively underplayed news/article/awfulness copyrighted by the ny times 2004 78 Arrested in Thai Protests Suffocate in Crowded Trucks By SETH MYDANS Published: October 27, 2004 BANGKOK, Oct. 26 - At least 78 people died from suffocation while being transported in overcrowded military trucks after a violent demonstration in Thailand's largely Muslim south, officials said Tuesday. Six others were shot to death and about 20 were wounded during the demonstration on Monday when the police fired live rounds as well as water cannons and tear gas into wild, rock-throwing crowds, witnesses and officials said. It was the latest surge in violence in the increasingly restive region, where the government has opted for strong-arm measures to quell what seems to be a rising tide of anger and militancy. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra appeared to have little sympathy for the victims. Referring to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which is under way, he said: "This is typical. It's about bodies made weak from fasting. Nobody hurt them." Though he has blamed bandits and drug runners in the past, he now points the finger at separatists. "We cannot allow these people to harass innocent people and authorities any longer," he said, adding, "We have no choice but to use force to suppress them." The deaths occurred when the detainees were taken in trucks on a five-hour journey to a military barracks in Pattani Province, Maj. Gen. Sinchai Nutsatit said at a news conference. He said more than 1,300 people were packed into six-wheeled trucks, but did not say how many trucks were involved. An army spokesman, Akom Pongprom, confirmed the toll to reporters and said the cause was suffocation. A forensic pathologist, Pornthip Rojansunan, said at a news conference in Pattani that 80 percent of the victims had died because they could not breathe, according to news agency reports. "We didn't find any bodies with broken arms or legs, but two or three of them had broken necks, which may have occurred during transportation," she said. Reporters were barred from the area and did not see the loading of detainees into the trucks. Prisoners were seen earlier lying in rows on the ground, stripped of their shirts, with their hands tied behind their backs. The volatility of Thailand's deep south was underscored by the relatively minor grievance that brought a furious crowd estimated at up to 2,000 into the streets in Narathiwat Province. Their demand was the release from police detention of six men arrested on suspicion of selling weapons to Muslim fighters. Plans for a rally had apparently been under way and security officials had prepared for it, Siwa Saengmanee, a senior official of the Interior Ministry, told a Bangkok radio station. "If we had not set up roadblocks on various highways, there could have been 10,000 people there," he said. Most of Thailand's Muslims, who make up about 10 percent of its largely Buddhist population of 63 million, live in the southern region, which for years has felt neglected and disparaged by the distant central government. The region was in earlier centuries the Pattani Sultanate, a center of Muslim culture. It was annexed by Thailand in 1902, but there have been only periodic efforts to integrate it into the cultural and economic mainstream of the country. The three southernmost provinces, Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani, have large populations of Malay speakers and have more in common with the people of neighboring Malaysia than with those of the distant capital, Bangkok. Hundreds of people have been killed there this year, including 107 men, most of them armed only with machetes, who were shot and killed on April 28 when they attacked police outposts and other targets. Many were killed in an assault by government forces on a mosque. On Jan. 4, more than 100 attackers raided a military depot, killed four soldiers and stole up to 400 firearms in an operation whose meticulous planning and execution led to suspicions of outside training and participation. Members of Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional Islamist group with links to Al Qaeda, are known to have passed through southern Thailand, but no evidence has been shown of their involvement. Thai authorities have recently focused on militant Muslim preachers as a cause of the unrest. The almost daily attacks continued Tuesday as gunmen on motorcycles wounded six people in separate incidents in Narathiwat Province. The attacks have mostly been directed against soldiers, police officers, teachers, suspected informers and Buddhist monks. Small bombs have been set off and dozens of schools have been burned. One more school was burned Monday night, after the demonstration. Southern Thailand has been plagued with violence for years, involving military and police rivalries, political feuds, smugglers, drug runners and criminal syndicates. Increasingly, the unrest has been driven by a rise in Muslim radicalism as well as a revival of a dormant separatist movement, experts say. Now, after months of brutality, anger and revenge are an added motive. hmmmm, i see this booger in the ny times, though not yet in my local atlanta journal-constitution, while it may be in there by now too is it being reported in the arab/moslem media? i'm curious, and i suppose it would be (?) why wouldn't it (?) i betcha that the communist chinese media report every awful-ugly thing that happens in israel--palestine, and especially whatever is slanted in israel's disfavor copyrighted by the ny times 2004 Ethnic Clashes Erupt in China, Leaving 150 Dead By JOSEPH KAHN Published: October 31, 2004 BEIJING, Oct. 31 - Violent clashes between members of the Muslim Hui ethnic group and the majority Han group left nearly 150 people dead and forced authorities to declare martial law in a section of Henan Province in central China, journalists and witnesses in the region said today. The fighting flared late last week and continued into the weekend after a Hui taxi driver fatally struck a 6-year-old Han girl, prompting recriminations between different ethnic groups in neighboring villages, these people said. One person who was briefed on the incident by the police said that 148 people had been killed, including 18 police officers sent to quell the violence. Chinese media have reported nothing about unrest in Henan. But a news blackout would not be unusual, as propaganda authorities routinely suppress information about ethnic tensions. Although most Chinese belong to the dominant Han ethnic group, the country has 55 other groups, including several Muslim minorities and others who have ties to Tibet, Southeast Asia, Korea and Mongolia. Ethnic Muslim Uighurs in China's northwestern region of Xinjiang have led sporadic uprisings against Chinese rule and authorities maintain a heavy police presence there to prevent an Islamic insurgency. Hui Muslims, scattered in several provinces in the central and Western part of the country, are more integrated and generally are not considered a threat to social stability. But outbreaks of Hui unrest were not uncommon in the 1980's and tensions can bubble to the surface after even minor provocations. Many Hui areas remain economically impoverished despite rapid economic growth in China's urban and coastal regions, and some members of minority groups say the Han-dominated government does little to steer prosperity to them. Friday's road accident set off large-scale fighting after relatives, friends and fellow villagers of the young victim, most of them Han, traveled to the taxi driver's village, home mainly to Hui, to demand compensation. The rival villagers failed to settle their dispute, which quickly grew to involve thousands of people in Zhongmou County, located between the cities of Zhengzhou and Kaifeng, according to two accounts of the incident. Local police failed to contain the unrest and authorities deployed the quasi-military People's Armed Police to restore order. Martial law was declared over the weekend, people in the area said, adding that the situation has since stabilized. One person briefed about the clashes said that authorities may have been particularly alarmed after police stopped a 17-truck convoy carrying Hui men to the area from other counties and provinces as it passed through Qi County, near Zhongmou. Road blocks were set up on major roads in the area and some bus services were halted. The incident suggests that word of the violence may have spread through a network of Hui and perhaps other Muslim groups and that mutual support among them is relatively strong. But the details were sketchy and difficult to confirm. A police officer who answered the phone in the Zhongmou County public security office tonight declined to comment on the matter. China's countryside and second-tier cities are rife with unrest among peasants and workers complaining about corruption, unpaid wages and a host of other issues. Violent protests, once extremely rare in the authoritarian country, now are frequent occurrences. Last week rioters looted and set fire to police cars and a government building in Wanzhou, Chongqing, after an argument among several people triggered a mass riot involving as many as 10,000, residents, Western news agencies reported. The uprising came after one local resident identified himself - apparently falsely - as a government official and beat another man who offended him, prompting numerous bystanders to spread the word that a local official had abused his authority. Chris Buckley contributed reporting from Beijing for this article. |
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