CommonPrejudice

A Rummy

A couple of days ago in an opinion article in the Toronto Globe and Mail this was the lede:

In the past few months, we have seen a serious deterioration of the situation in Darfur, which has now reached into neighbouring Chad. Massive militia attacks against civilians and displaced people have been reported, as well as indiscriminate aerial bombing of villages on both sides of the border.

Whether it be Iraq, or Afghanistan or Darfur, why does it seem that for years we have "seen a serious deterioration of the situation" "in the past few months."

We already have the appropriately named "a Friedman" to indicate the "critical period" of next six months, beginning at the moment the column or post is written, whenever that may be. Perhaps we need a simple term to refer to "a serious deterioration of the situation in the past few months."Nothing says "a serious deterioration of a situation" more than Donald Rumsfeld, and, besides, we need something to honour his outstanding performance as the Secretary of War now he as been relegated to the proverbial dustbin of history.  So it would be like, In Iraq there has been a Rummy and we have a Friedman to turn it around.

Much easier to type every couple of weeks.

(btw, in the column cited above the writer, Jean-Francois Thibault states:

But what was until recently a serious, yet limited, humanitarian crisis has now developed into a regional crisis threatening to extend farther into the Central African Republic and even, on the other side of Chad, to Niger, where Chadian rebels are seeking recruits to fight in Darfur.

Of course, a regional crisis would be worse and whenever the MSM notes the ongoing tragedy in Darfur that is positive. But, what exactly is Thibault's definition of a "limited humanitarian crisis?"

In September I noted how a study indicated that there could be 400 000 killed in Darfur, never mind the hundreds of thousands who have had to leave their homes. I really don't believe "limited" is the right word there.)

Priorities

It's probably best that I don't have a large readership because I'm sure this will be one of my least popular posts.

It seems like the entire left side of the blogoshere can not put up another post fast enough about the unsavoury scandal involving Republican congressman Mark Foley and his very lewd text messaging to teenage white house pages. In two plus years of blogging, I can't recall such a volume of posting consistently throughout all the big hitters on the left.

Of course it is a slow news week (Digby a day or two ago):

...if we lived in a nation that wasn't completely dysfunctional, this scandal [the Foley scandal] wouldn't be at the top of the list of scandals that have been revealed just in the last week:

    * A new book by the official court scribe describes an administration so inept, unorganized and incoherent that if most people were aware of the details, the president's fear campaign would blow back hard against him. If the terrorists really are coming to kill us in our beds any day now, then we are in deep shit with these guys in charge.
    * We have more news this week-end that Karl Rove and the white house were actively and personally involved in all the Jack Abramoff congressional corruption scandals which feature ripping off taxpayers of many millions of dollars.
    * It turns out that Bush fired Colin Powell.
    * The intelligence community agree that the invasion of Iraq super-charged the extremist jihadist moviement and is fuelling terrorism far more quickly and broadly than we would have had to deal with otherwise.
    * We have officially sanctioned torture and the repeal of habeas corpus --- at the least competent president in history's discretion.

I know the holier than thou so called purist left will be aghast when I say I find the whole thing very much overblown and a real distraction. Let me make myself clear; what Foley has done is wildly inappropriate in that he has used authority as a congressman to constantly hit on teenagers. And his text messaging is - to say the least - disturbing. But it is certainly not clear he did anything illegal if there was no one involved under the age of 16 - the legal age of consent in Washington, DC. I really don't see how Foley can be called a pedophile when all parties in question are above the legal age of consent. Does that make any sense to anyone?

And I'm sorry, but I can't help but feel that there is some homophobia in play here. The reactions of how disgusting the whole thing is makes me think that it is because the teenagers in question were males. Would all of the males who are saying this, for instance, say the behaviour was disgusting if it were, say, about someone who looks like these two? (apparently 16 years old)

Of course this isn't the case for the majority, male or female,  but almost certainly for some, perhaps even Foley himself as he speaks about how ashamed he is of his behaviour. Contrast this with the following:

In 1983, the House Ethics Committee revealed that two House members had been sexually involved with pages: liberal Massachusetts Democrat Gerry Studds and conservative Illinois Republican Daniel Crane. Crane was involved with a female, Studds a male; both pages were over the legal age of consent. Both Studds and Crane were censured by the House, but their responses -- and their political fates -- were very different.

Crane was repentant; tearfully apologized to his wife and family, asked for forgiveness.

As the rules require, he stood in the well of the House to receive his censure and faced his colleagues.

By contrast, Studds was unrepentant. He said the relationship was legal and consensual, talked about the difficulties of being a gay man in America, and when the House censured him, he turned his back on his colleagues, as if to reject their censure.

The next year, Crane, who had been an outspoken advocate of "family values," was soundly defeated by voters in his conservative district. Studds was re-elected handily, and served in the House for more than a dozen years, until his retirement.

Yes, once again the ugly head of Republican hypocrisy surfaces - when does it not? And yes, the covering up by the Republican leadership is, in a sense, emblematic of the entire party but, my god, what have done recently that isn't. There is the lying to go to war, the continued denial of Rice and others that they ignored the threats of terrorist attacks pre-9/11 and the pathetic attempts to blame Clinton for Bush's failure. (Rice's spokesperson now admits that Rice met with CIA director George Tenet who explicitly warned her about impending terrorist attacks two months prior to 9/11 - Initially - surprise surprise - Rice couldn't recall such a meeting)  There are the numerous lobbying scandals and the attempts to lie and cover those up. And the Orwellian debate on torture (tough tactics anyone?) and utter misrepresentation of the threat Iran poses in its run-up to another war (nuclear this time?). The list can go on and on.

But nothing tops a sex scandal in the United States.

I met a guy in Cuba, a Canadian close to 60, who was seeing a 19 year old Cuban. I believe they had started a relationship when the teenage boy was 16 or 17. I didn't really approve - it was kind of creepy - but he was hardly a pedophile. In fact he was a really nice guy.

This is an issue that the legal authorities should deal with. Foley rightfully resigned his post. But did anyone notice that North Korea is about to conduct a nuclear test or that the ongoing genocide in Darfur is actually threatening to get worse? From the Guardian on the North Korea tests:

North Korea Says Nuclear Test Is Set
North Korea announced plans today to test a nuclear weapon in a move aimed at ratcheting up tension in east Asia and forcing the US to halt financial sanctions.

The declaration - which comes less than three months after Pyongyang test-fired an intercontinental missile that would put Alaska and Hawaii within range of its warheads - was immediately condemned by the US, Japan and Britain.

And from the New Yorker on Darfur:

...the world’s gravest humanitarian disaster, lately deteriorating, and likely to get much worse in the coming weeks—perfectly reveals the international politics of the moment, showing all the principal actors as they are, rather than as they would like to appear. The pictures aren’t flattering. Since 2004, the Bush Administration has declared the death of several hundred thousand people in Darfur to be a case of genocide, but it has devoted only fitful rhetorical outrage and even more fitful attention to the subject. It has declined to offer any American contribution to a United Nations peacekeeping force in Darfur, even though President Bush scolded the opening session of the General Assembly last month, saying that the U.N.’s “credibility” is on the line. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, meanwhile, met with representatives of governments at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, in New York, and, according to the Washington Post, “renewed her call for Sudan to halt a military offensive in Darfur and yield to international pressure to allow more than 20,000 U.N. peacekeepers to protect civilians there.” The Bush Administration still seems to imagine that the world will jump when America tells it to. But at the U.N. the world wasn’t jumping. If anything, it was laughing.

And I am not even mentioning the ongoing hell that used to known as Iraq, nor the recent reports citing how we may be in fact much closer to the point of no return in terms of global warming than we had thought.

While there was plenty of outrage regarding the fact that torture is being made legal in the United States and the opposition party is 25% pro-torture, I am not seeing a lot posts about that now (yesterday's news eh?). And many are so upset that the U.S. has become a rogue republic that they actually tell those who feel perhaps supporting the Democrats isn't the best option to shut the fuck up ... forever. Really, I see far too much partisan politics at work in this whole thing than there should be. (btw I think the Editors can be at times seriously brilliant but since the Foley scandal broke I haven't seen him post this much in months)

I guess all that genocide, and nuclear testing and torture are just boring.

Blair calls for Action ... Well not quite

In the pursuit of the imaginary WMDs, the invasion of Iraq was something that could win Tony Blair the Nobel Peace Prize in his mind. Blair in 2003:

... if we do conquer Iraq, and remove Saddam Hussein, there's a chance we could win the Nobel Peace Prize, and you know, frankly, isn't that something worth going to war for?

Meanwhile after years of an actual violence in Darfur, Blair is a little less impatient. Today it is reported that the death toll is enormous (not that this wasn't anticipated):

...Between 170 000 and 255 000 people have died in Sudan's war-torn Darfur region since 2003, according to a new study that says the death toll is often under reported.

But the actual number of people who have died could be as high as 400 000, said one of the study's author's John Hagan, a sociology and law professor at Northwestern University in Illinois...

And will Blair step up to the plate and demand, as he did for Iraq, that the world can not wait any longer? Well, not quite.

In the letter to his counterparts in the other 24 member states as well as Commission President Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, Blair said the European Union should play a “central role in mobilising world opinion on this issue”.

Isn't it about 2 years too late for statements like this? Wouldn't a call to action be a tad more appropriate? I suppose he figures world opinion is not 'mobilised" enough to get him that evasive Nobel Prize.

Between 200 000 and 400 000 dead and with leadership so clearly needed he is talking about world opinion. When they invaded Iraq he didn't give a damn about world opinion. Disgusting.

Hardly Out of the Woods Yet

Recently there was a peace deal in Darfur. This is hardly the end of the crisis though I imagine it will be sufficient for the mainstream American media to ignore the situation once again.

It is truly mind boggling the focus on the supposed immigration crisis in the United States (why now?) given the very immediate and very real humanitarian disaster going on in Sudan. There is nothing logical or humane about ignoring what has been the biggest crisis on the planet in the last two years. It's simply that "they" don't matter.

A couple of relevant comments regarding Darfur.

“I first spoke to the UN Security Council on Darfur two years ago, calling it ethnic cleansing of the worst kind. Today, I could simply hit the rewind button on much of that earlier briefing. The world’s largest aid effort now hangs in the balance, unsustainable under present conditions. If we are to avoid an imminent, massive loss of life, we need immediate action---from the Government of Sudan, the rebels, UN Security Council members and donor governments.” (May 5, 2006)

-Jan Egeland (UN official)

Eric Reeves:

Part 1 of this mortality assessment (April 28, 2006), surveying all relevant extant data, concludes that since the outbreak of major conflict in Darfur (February 2003), over 450,000 people have died from violence, disease, and malnutrition (see Quantifying Genocide in Darfur: April 28, 2006 (Part 1) ). Moreover, despite the “peace agreement” reached in Abuja (Nigeria) last week, there is little reason to believe that the current mortality rate for disease and malnutrition (based on UN data) will decline from a level of almost 7,000 deaths per month (see Part 1). Indeed, this rate will likely soon rise dramatically: such a conclusion seems inevitable in light of a wide range of humanitarian indicators (including rising acute malnutrition rates), insecurity that paralyzes many aid operations, and general debilitation within a conflict-affected population that reaches to almost 4 million in Darfur and eastern Chad. Violent mortality will also explode upwards if no robust international force deploys to Darfur in order to protect civilians and humanitarian operations.

(via altercation and Jeff Weintraub)

Don't forget them.

 

 

Sudan vs Chad

You know what Darfur really needs; a new war.

The war in Sudan's anarchic region of Darfur spread across a swathe of Africa and engulfed neighbouring Chad yesterday when rebels attacked its capital, N'Djamena.

Gunfire echoed across the city and mortar rounds exploded in the streets as heavily-armed insurgents launched their dawn raid.

President Idriss Deby of Chad, holed up in his palace, ordered his tanks and helicopter gunships into action.

By early afternoon, when the fighting died down, he claimed in a broadcast that he was in "full control" of his capital. Mr Deby said the "rebel column" had been driven out and stability would soon

I will follow this story and post more later.

Hypocrisy and Lunacy

Great post at Liberal Oasis. While liar Condi Rice threatened Iran yesterday she stood proudly next to Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and called him a "good friend." As L.O. notes, the leader of Equatorial Guinea has made the list of the world's worst dictators four years in a row. From the post:

Rice’s “good friend” Mr. Obiang is primarily known for living the high life off his country’s relatively newfound oil revenues, while his people live on less than $1 a day without clean water...

... Gee, why does Obiang get to be Condi’s “good friend” and the Iran mullahs get threatened with tactical nuclear weapons?

Cause we already have our hands on Equatorial Guinea’s oil, silly.

Rice threatening of Iran while coddling Obiang puts Bush’s democracy hypocrisy in sharp focus.

Oil, eh ...ya think? I don't know. That kind of sounds like 'wild speculation.'

(Click the link to see some lowlights of Mbasogo's government noted by the U.S. State Department, you know the department Rice heads)

Those who believe that the Bush crime family is interested in the least in the promotion of democracy and freedom in countries where they don't have a strategic or economic interest are as clueless as senor Presidente. Of course, if they were, neither Darfur nor Iraq would be the absolute disaster they currently are.

And yes, sitting at the number one slot as the world's worst dictator for the second straight year is Sudan's Omar al-Bashir. From the Parade Magazine:

Since February 2003, Bashir’s campaign of ethnic and religious persecution has killed at least 180,000 civilians in Darfur in western Sudan and driven 2 million people from their homes.

But you see, Iran may have the capacity to build a nuclear weapon in several years. And if they were ever to launch this weapon they would be completely annihilated by Israel and the United States. So naturally Rice comes out with this:

"When the Security Council reconvenes [later this month], I think it will be time for action," Rice said. "We can't let this continue."

Or what? C'mon let's hear it. Lay it out there so we can see how ignorant you really are.  Is there anything in this country's history that would indicate that the nation as a whole is suicidal? Let me answer that. No!

How insanely incompetent, corrupt and mendacious do these imbeciles have to be before they are thrown on the scrap heap of history forever? If they are allowed to go nuclear on Iran, Allah help us all.

(There will be much much more to say on this.)

Quote of the Day

A fragile consensus has collapsed under the weight of the Sudan government's artful diplomacy campaign ... It played chicken with the broad international community, and once again the international community drove off the road. -John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group (via Passion of the Present)

How to stop genocide ... normalize relations

Wolfowitz in his new post at the World Bank.

Wolfowitz on Thursday called the situation in Darfur, a remote region of western Sudan where tens of thousands have been killed in fighting since 2003, a genocide...

Wolfowitz said he could not elaborate on exactly how the Bank, the world's biggest development lender, would be involved but said he was sure it would have a role in the region once fighting had died down.

"I would hope the World Bank would do everything it possibly can to support that process (of solving Darfur's problems)."

Everything it can? Like normalizing relations with the government that has played such a huge role in that genocide.

The Bank reopened its Sudan office in January after a more than 10-year absence and in March said it expected to normalise relations with the heavily indebted country within a year.

Talk is cheap.

Time is still running out as aid workers arrested in Darfur

One thing that has struck me as curious during the last year or so of coverage of the crisis in Darfur is how throughout the period, as the deaths mount (now estimated at 300 000), the media, commentators, and agency officials continually talk about time running out. While in Darfur, UN head Koni Annan today "warned that the world was running 'a race against time' to solve the Darfur crisis."

When has time run out? How many dead and displaced does that require? I suppose it is unfortunate that it is felt the best way to get support,aid and convince people to respond to the crisis is to emphasize how their isn't much time left. The rape and murder should have been sufficient.

Meanwhile these two guys get arrested by the Sudanese government. Unreal.

Sudanese authorities have charged one foreign aid worker with spreading false information and detained a second after their agency spoke out about alleged rape cases in Darfur.

Susanne Staals, spokeswoman for the Dutch branch of Medecins Sans Frontieres, said by telephone from Amsterdam on Tuesday that the group's Darfur co-ordinator had been arrested in the western region that morning and authorities were taking him to the capital. She said no other information was immediately available on the arrest of Vincent Hoedt, a Dutch aid worker.

The day before, Paul Foreman, the head of the group's operations for all of Sudan, was detained and questioned before being charged with spreading false information and released.

The Dutch government condemned the detentions and summoned the Sudanese ambassador to discuss the matter. "The arrests of the leader of the Dutch Medecins Sans Frontieres team and a Dutch aid worker are unacceptable," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Just 1/1000th of the cost, 1/10th of the manpower...

While the right gallops around claiming now that they have found their true calling as liberators of the oppressed, conquerors of evil regimes and champions of democracy, how is it they stand idly by while Darfur falls to pieces?

Where's the conservative outrage? It seems to me that the tragic events in Darfur should be a violation of their new found, yet highly cherished, principals principles (ha ha, again, ... getting sloppy).

The neo-cons will now have you believe the invasion and occupation of Iraq was primarily done for humanitarian reasons (as all other reasons have melted away). I mean Iraq couldn't have just been about Israel and control of a country in the prime oil producing region in the world, could it?

(They cry out whenever cornered on the huge quantity of death and destruction, the horrid post-war planning and the abysmal security situation, 'what? you want Saddam back?' ... If any conservative tries that nonsense on you, the simple response should be; 'what? you approve of tens of thousands of innocent people killed? ...no? ...you prefer to look at the bigger picture? ... well we do too'... then go from there)

But as the death toll is estimated at 300 000 in Darfur, the saddest part is that just a tiny fraction of the cost and effort in Iraq would suffice in Sudan. While the occupation forces in Iraq are well over hundred thousand and the weekly cost is upwards of a billion dollars with over 300 billion already spent, African Union estimates that a force of only 10 000 is needed to stabilize the Darfur region. And a tiny force of 200 African peacekeepers currently in place is actually making a difference.

A tiny African peacekeeping force is creating pockets of security in Sudan's western Darfur region - successfully heading off attacks on civilians, negotiating the release of hostages and providing safety for some villagers to return to their homes, officials said on Friday.

The limited success of the ... 200-strong force shows that a bigger force with more support from the international community could stabilise the region, said Kenneth Bacon, a former Pentagon spokesperson who now heads the advocacy group Refugees International. ...

In January, another AU commander foiled an attack on Labado, a town of 27 000 people, by deploying 100 peacekeepers to the area and a nearby town. He was acting on information that pro-government forces planned to raid the town that was levelled in late December in a bid to drive out rebels.

The AU Mission in Sudan, or AMIS, "is doing a spectacular job in the areas in which it has deployed. The best example is Labado, where it has stationed about 100 troops since January. More than 10 000 people have returned to the area because AMIS forces are providing a sense of security," Bacon said....

The AU force, however, needs to expand to at least 10 000 troops to fully stabilise Darfur, Bacon said..."As long as our hands and legs are tied by a lack of resources to finance peacekeeping operations, Africa cannot move forward to solve the crisis in Darfur," said AU spokesperson Desmond Orjiako.

And in terms of how much money is needed:

He [Alpha Oumar Konare, Chairperson of the AU Commission]  stated that only one tenth of the required 300 million US dollars has been secured for the Darfur mission.

So they need about 1/1000th of the money spent on Iraq but have only received 1/10000th. And they only need less than 1/10th of the manpower.

It is clear where their priorities lie, and they aren't on the humanitarian side.

In other developments in Darfur, the Sudanese government demonstrates that they may be the equals of the Bushies in creative distortion.

Sudan on Tuesday accused three international aid agencies of an orchestrated political campaign to play up the issue of rape in its troubled Darfur region to distract from problems in the rest of the world.

State Minister for Humanitarian Affairs Mohamed Yousif Abdalla told reporters it could not be coincidental that Oxfam, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) had all produced reports on rape at the same time.

"It is not normal that, coincidentally, three organisations come together and say one word. This is a kind of political, orchestrated kind of a movement," he said in Khartoum. [Or maybe it is so well-documented and obvious.]

...An MSF report on rape obtained by Reuters on Monday produced some of the first medical evidence that at least 500 rapes had occurred in Darfur in the past 4 1/2 months and said the number was likely to be much higher. The government had asked the agency not to release the report...

The government has in the past accused the international community of focusing on Darfur, rather than crimes it says the United States and Britain are committing in Iraq...

Yes, those international aid agencies are such Bush apologists...

What a tragedy the whole mess.