Some questions on the possible intervention in Sudan.

[Arrian]

But unleashing a bunch of muslim fanatics is?

The Serbs had a fair amount of support in the West, due to their efforts against the Nazis in WWII. I know many Brits remember that, and took it into account. They had to burn through that to bring NATO down on them.

As for Sudan, don't get your panties in a bunch. Nothing of substance will happen. It's all bleeding-heart lip service.

-Arrian

[Tripledoc]

Originally posted by Arrian
Personally, I feel our intervention in Kosovo was a mistake, or at the very least botched in that we picked sides without understanding the conflict - we found out later that the Kosovars were a bunch of *******s too.

But do people understand the conflict in Sudan enough to make a valid judgment on whether intervention is a good idea or not?

I still feel that this intervention is being sold to the public, not discussed by the public.

[Arrian]

I actually happen to agree that such things should be discussed/researched more, instead of spoonfed to people. But for different reasons than you state. You think "it's a Western conspiracy to serve their interests and screw everyone else." I think "why in the **** should we send OUR troops in THAT place, and risk screwing things up even MORE?" Translation: what is the goal? Is that goal realistic? What price are we willing to pay to acheive the goal?

-Arrian

[Tripledoc]

Bush Resists Pressure to Meddle in Sudan – for Now

by Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Bush administration continues to refrain from calling a campaign of ethnic cleansing against black Africans in Sudan's western Darfur province "genocide," although both houses of the U.S. Congress approved non-binding resolutions last week that used the term to describe the situation.

Such a determination would require signers of the Genocide Treaty, including the United States, to do what they can to stop the action – possibly including military intervention – but many experts have said recently the international community must not wait to act until the term is adopted.

Washington and its main allies in Europe are urgently pressing the United Nations Security Council to impose sanctions against leaders of the Arab militias (Janjaweed or "men on horseback") and their government supporters in Khartoum. A vote on a U.S. resolution is expected in the council this week.

On Monday, the 25 foreign ministers of the European Union (EU) indicated they were ready to sign on to the draft resolution, which would impose diplomatic and financial sanctions unless Khartoum acted immediately to stop the militias, whose raiding has killed as many as 50,000 people over the past 18 months and forced more than one million more to flee for their lives.

The EU ministers said they were "alarmed by reports of massive human rights violations" perpetrated by the militias, including the "systematic rape of women."

"The risk is very high for a potential catastrophe," said the EU's chief foreign policy official, former NATO chief Javier Solana.

Aid groups and the United Nations are reporting that access to camps, where many of the Africans who were forced from their homes are now being held, has improved over the past several days as the government pledged greater cooperation in the wake of steadily mounting pressure from abroad.

But at the same time, some Sudanese officials struck a defiant pose against the threat of sanctions, or even possible military intervention, which is being demanded by some humanitarian groups who have said the situation in Darfur amounts to "genocide."


"We don't need threatening; we don't need sanctions," said Sudanese Foreign Minister Osman Ismail during a trip in Turkey. He also assailed the pending UN resolution as "unbalanced," and stressed that the government has already pledged to disarm the militias and has arrested more than 100 militia members.

In addition to sanctions against yet-to-be-named Janjaweed leaders and Khartoum officials, the draft UN Resolution calls for an arms embargo.

The violence in Darfur has its roots in the competition for land and resources between Arab tribes that are mainly herders and the African population that consists mostly of peasants living in settled villages and towns.

In 2002, the Janjaweed stepped up raids on the African population. Angry that the government was not protecting them against such attacks, two African rebel groups retaliated against a government garrison, killing more than 70 soldiers.

At that point, Khartoum launched its counter-insurgency campaign, much of which was carried out on the ground by the newly supplied Janjaweed, who were also backed by government forces and warplanes.

More than one million people were forced to flee their homes; more than 200,000 of them have crossed the border into neighboring Chad, while the rest were internally displaced. Most of the latter have now been herded into overcrowded and unsanitary camps that lack adequate medical care, food supplies and even physical security.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) warned in May that even if humanitarian agencies are granted complete and unimpeded access to the camps and those who remain displaced, at least 300,000 people are almost certain to die by the end of the year.

The United Nations announced last weekend that it thought as many as 50,000 people have died already, both as a result of government-Janjaweed attacks and starvation and disease.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) echoed the urgency of the situation Monday, calling death rates "significantly above the emergency threshold."

"Hardly anyone is getting the care civilians should get in a conflict," said Dr. Rowan Gillies, MSF's international director, who just spent a month working in Darfur. "There are pockets of real disaster, where people are at grave risk of dying in large numbers."

"I am particularly concerned about the food situation," continued Gillies. "For example, in one big camp around El Geneina, only 35 percent of the displaced people even have a card entitling them to food from the UN And the last time they received any was at the end of May – over seven weeks ago."

The U.S. Congress' assessment that genocide is occurring in Darfur has been echoed by the U.S. Committee for Refugees, Africa Action and the Committee of Conscience of the U.S. Holocaust Museum.

Several human rights groups that have called for stronger international pressure, including sanctions, exerted on Khartoum have said they have not yet concluded the situation qualifies as "genocide." But they say serious war crimes and crimes against humanity have taken place in what has been, at least, a campaign of "ethnic cleansing."

Some analysts believe Khartoum is itself divided on how to respond to the pressure, with hardliners arguing that neither the United States nor the EU is prepared to do much more than impose sanctions.

"At the current level of pressure, Sudan's government will only go so far," John Prendergast, a Sudan specialist and former U.S. National Security Council aide, told the Christian Science Monitor. "They don't believe Washington or the UN Security Council have the political backbone to take it any further."

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has suggested he is willing to send troops to Darfur if necessary, while France has sent its foreign minister to Darfur and Chad, where several thousands French troops are already based.

France also has troops stationed in nearby Djibouti, where a former French base currently houses some 4,000 U.S. troops deployed there after the 9/11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

(Inter Press Service)

[Az]

I applaud Bush for resisting the west's evil scheming plot to destroy the muslim country of sudan.

umm, or something....

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Tripledoc
Exactly. Who in west gives anything about how the Albanians are treating the Serbs, now when they have the upper hand? The UN does nothing. Why? Because it is not in the strategic interest of the West to do so.

NATO is there for peacekeeping. I don't know if it has UN mandate or not, but I would believe so.

NATO troops there are trying to force a stability between Serbs and Albanians, and they somehow manage it. So far, the Serbs haven't been genocided, and many of them have even avoided being expelled.

Don't get me wrong: the situation is bad, and the Albanians are as monstrous as the Serbs, if not more. But to say the west doesn't do anything about it is wrong. Completely uninformed.

[Spiffor]

And as to the article you quoted re: the KFOR...

Of course, the surge of Albanian violence is because of the KFOR peacekeepers. If there was no NATO, they'd be happily lving in harmony

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Arrian
Tin. Foil. Hat.

It's pretty extraordinary to see Molly Bloom forced into the position of defending the United States government (though not the current one, really).

-Arrian

Yes. The irony of this thread simply overwhelms me.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Tripledoc


Just to give you an idea what I am talking about please read this synopsis from Arthur Koestlers book the Thirteenth Tribe, in which it is described how the Jews of Europe mostly originated from the Khazar Empire located in the Caucasus, and not from the Middle east. The question is that if the eastern Jews after the Holocaust where to have a homeland, why was it created in Palestine then?

The whole book is made available for reading online there too.

No the question is why would any sane person say: 'Jewish version' of history, when they don't in the same breath say black versions, or Muslim versions, or pick on any other 'race', or religion (other than Anglo-Saxon, but that fits in with your politics, too, I suppose)
and say their history cannot be trusted because it's 'Jewish'.

Not because it may or may not be accurate, or objective, but because it's 'jewish'

Does Simon Schama write 'Jewish' history because he's a Jew?
Or Martin Gilbert?

Are you of the opinion that their works are suspect because of their mother's religion or 'racial' origin, or if they happened to have been in a synagogue in the past 10 years?

Should we seriously question accounts of the Holocaust because a large number of dead were Jews?

I await your further suggestion that Sephardi Jews aren't real Jews either, but descendants of those Berber tribes who had converted to Judaism before the Islamic conquest of the Maghreb.

'The history of Khazaria presents us with a fascinating example of how Jewish life flourished in the Middle Ages. In a time when Jews were persecuted thruout Christian Europe, the kingdom of Khazaria was a beacon of hope. Jews were able to flourish in Khazaria because of the tolerance of the Khazar rulers, who invited Byzantine and Persian Jewish refugees to settle in their country. Due to the influence of these refugees, the Khazars found the Jewish religion to be appealing and adopted Judaism in large numbers.

Most of the available information about the Khazars comes from Arabic, Hebrew, Armenian, Byzantine, and Slavic sources, most of which are reliable. There is also a large quantity of archaeological evidence concerning the Khazars which illuminates multiple aspects of the Khazarian economy (arts and crafts, trade, agriculture, fishing, etc.) as well as burial practices.

Origins.

The Khazars were a Turkic1 people who originated in Central Asia. The early Turkic tribes were quite diverse, although it is believed that reddish hair was predominant among them prior to the Mongol conquests. In the beginning, the Khazars believed in Tengri shamanism, spoke a Turkic language, and were nomadic. Later, the Khazars adopted Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, learned Hebrew and Slavic, and became settled in cities and towns thruout the north Caucasus and Ukraine. The Khazars had a great history of ethnic independence extending approximately 800 years from the 5th to the 13th century. '

http://www.khazaria.com/khazar-history.html

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Sparta/3976/

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Azazel
I applaud Bush for resisting the west's evil scheming plot to destroy the muslim country of sudan.

umm, or something....

[Az]

The racial origin of the world jewry, that has been brought up by Tripledoc is probably the weirdest claim ever.

Do you claim, in that case, that all arabs of Nubian or african descent have no place in the Middle East?

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Azazel
The racial origin of the world jewry, that has been brought up by Tripledoc is probably the weirdest claim ever.

Do you claim, in that case, that all arabs of Nubian or african descent have no place in the Middle East?

I should inform you Azazel, you have let some Ethiopians and Indians into Israel believing they were Jews.


The neighbourhood is really going to go down now.


But yes, I agree, King Hassan II of Morocco should have gone back to where his ancestors came from, as should Anwar Sadat's descendants.

And what are all those Arab's descendants doing in North Africa?

Out! The lot of them!

[Tripledoc]

Originally posted by Azazel
Do you claim, in that case, that all arabs of Nubian or african descent have no place in the Middle East?

No. If Koestler is right, then I wonder why the Jewish homestate was set up in Palestine and not in the Caucasus. But that would have been imposible, since I don't think Stalin would have been amused. I am not being reactionary, and wishing for a relocation of the state of Israel, I just think that maybe the British were not thinking straight, back when Palestine was their mandate. Off course at that time the empire was falling apart, and maybe that confused them.

[Tripledoc]

Originally posted by Spiffor

NATO is there for peacekeeping. I don't know if it has UN mandate or not, but I would believe so.

NATO troops there are trying to force a stability between Serbs and Albanians, and they somehow manage it. So far, the Serbs haven't been genocided, and many of them have even avoided being expelled.

"Of Pristina's 40,000 Serb population, only 400 are left. Statistics from the Serb church and a human rights group in Pristina suggest as many as 316 Serbs have been murdered and 455 more kidnapped, many of them killed, since Nato's arrival."

http://www.balkanpeace.org/monitor/koskss/kss16.html

I think that if 40.000 are expelled and only 400 are left, the the statement that 'many' of them have not been expelled is not true.

You are right it is NATO who is 'protecting' them now, the same Nato who has the US and Turkey as members. the US supported the Croats in their 1995 offensive in Krajina where up to 200.000 serbs were expelled. The Turks have now for a long time waged ethnic war against the Kurds, and the casualty figure there far exceeds what the Serbians have perpetrated.

[Az]

I should inform you Azazel, you have let some Ethiopians and Indians into Israel believing they were Jews.


The neighbourhood is really going to go down now.

I know.

No. If Koestler is right, then I wonder why the Jewish homestate was set up in Palestine and not in the Caucasus. But that would have been imposible, since I don't think Stalin would have been amused. I am not being reactionary, and wishing for a relocation of the state of Israel, I just think that maybe the British were not thinking straight, back when Palestine was their mandate. Off course at that time the empire was falling apart, and maybe that confused them.

Why in the caucasus? Don't you know that the jews came from central asia? You're justifying opression.


In short, the connection between nation and ethnical origins is, well, stupid.

Look at, well, almost each and every nation on the med. We're all mixed up. Spaniards are a mixture of canaanites, arabs ( you'd call them jews or arabs now ), and germans, Italians are a mixture of Germans, and whatever the hell romans were. And the south med, and the east med? Turks, Greeks, Northen African Arabs, East mediterrenean arabs, Jews... All mixed up....