Save Darfur!

[GePap]

Originally posted by MOBIUS


Let's get caught up in semantics shall we!?

They are being driven from their lands, but just because they're doing it in a random and haphazard manner, Gepap here thinks that estimates of up to 400,000 dead does not constitute a 'genocide' because the Janjaweed (a different ethnic group/religion) aren't carrying around clipboards and being all systematic-like...

In fact I think the sheer randomness is all the more terrifying, with the people of Darfur playing a waiting game with death not knowing exactly which day will be their last - but reluctant to risk death as refugees in case the militias don't show up.

Indeed the randomness has a sort of slow burning 'systematic' logic to it - keeping things just underneath the West's gives a **** radar...

And as Che said, that is still NOT GENOCIDE. Its like in the penal law - Murder one is not murder two, nor manslaughter. They all involve killing a person, but there are differences in intention that matter.

Genocide is having a specific plan to exterminate a group of people. No one has shown that the Sudanese government has such intentions.

Ha ha! Instead we've got someone adding some cachet to their argument by arguing away hundreds of thousands of deaths with semantics - how wonderfully anal...

You think anyone really cares that the pro-Dafur people scream genocide? Its not like the world does anything to stop real genocides, so lets invoke the claim to back this cause? Please.

Also, read for one. Ethnic cleansing still bad. A crime against humanity does not have to be genocide to be a crime against humanity. Ass.

[chequita guevara]

The real problem is, they're Africans, and not white people. If they slaughter each other, we don't really care.

[Zevico]

The real problem is, they're Africans, and not white people. If they slaughter each other, we don't really care.

I don't get it. Is that some kind of stupid joke, or are you trying to say that "we" (who is "we") don't care because we're racist?

[fed1943]

The greatest help we (Americans, Europeans, Asian, New New World peoples) can give to Africans is let them live their lives as they see fit.

Then,perhaps do something, if and when, they ask. I say again they,not someone from Washinghton, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Madrid or Lisbon.

Best regards,

[Zevico]

Yeah, several of my Indian friends like to claim Indians are naturaly smart people with a superior education system (thus explaining why so many indian engineers move to the US). I must say if you go to a top school then a very high quality education can be achieved in India but what about the other 9/10ths+ of the population which didn't go to a top school and the 1/2 of the population which didn't even finish high school? For a third world country India has done well but it has a long way to go.

The Sudanese people have no voice, no truly representative government. Should we just sit around while people keep dieing, just because no one with a little sitcker saying "El Presidente" on their suit doesn't say he needs help?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by GePap
The word genocide is being abused. Kosovo was not ongoing "genocide". Albenians werew not being systematically exterminated. Ethnic cleasing does not equal genocide. IN Dafur there is obviously ethnic cleasing going on, but genocide??

Why must people misuse terms in order to add some cache to their arguement? Is ehtnic cleasing not enough of a crime itself, instead of trying to inflate the charges?

A more interesting question for me is why this has become such an international issue: after all, nowhere near as much was said about the war that began in 1989 and killed 10 time the people in southern Sudan, and little if anything was done about the war in Congo, which still has not really ended,killing far more millions.

So what is it about the abuses in Dafur that make it more worthy of intervention than much bigger crisises?

A. Because in this case the govt appears to be killing/brutalizing/exiling a particular ethnic group as a matter of policy. This was not the case in the other two instances, where deaths were more the haphazard results of war. You may not care about that distinction.

B. Because its not one or the other. There were speakers yesterday at the rally who definitely did think that in future we should deal more firmly with problems like the Congo civil war. But my own opinion, shared by many, is that if we cant deal with a relatively clear cut case of mass murder, how can we hope to deal with more ambivalent situations.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
The difference between ethnic cleansing and genocide is that when you are slaughtering villages in a genocide, you plan to go to the next village and slaughter it too, and then the next, and the next, until all the people are dead. In an ethnic cleanings, you slaughter the people of one village, in the hopes that the people in the next village will run away.

This is not to minimize the horror of ethnic cleasing, but to point out, there is a difference.

Except that the Ottomans were quite happy to have Armenians run away, and, IIUC, did NOT attack Armenians living in Constantinople. Similarly, the genocidaires in Rwanda would probably not have cared much if all Tutsis had fled the region. By this definition, there have been few genocides in the world, other than the Nazi one. Its an inadequate definition.

A genocide is when A. Members of an ethnic group are selected for murder AND Enough are killed to represent a significant portion of a group. Ethnic cleansing is when you expel a people. When you kill large numbers of a group, to get them to leave, you have BOTH a genocide and an ethnic cleansing. Whether the numbers were large enough in Kosovo to constitute genocide is debatable. The numbers in Darfur are significantly larger.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
The real problem is, they're Africans, and not white people. If they slaughter each other, we don't really care.

You should have been with us yesterday. Enough people cared, that it was crowded in the parts of the mall close to the podium. It was crowded were we where, and we were far enough from the podium you had to look at the screens to see who was speaking. There were groups from New York and NJ and Pittsburg and Massachusetts, as well as at least a few people from Colorado. There were black church groups, and Unitarians, and lefty antiwar types, and Jews - Reform Jews, and Conservative Jews, and modern orthodox rabbinical student from YU in NY, and even a couple of ultraorthodox jews in black hats.

Jews applauding for Al Sharpton. Blacks applauding Elie Wiesel. All of us listening to Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Frank Wolfe, all watching George Clooney and Joey Cheek. All listening to the words of survivors, survivors from the Nazi holocaust, from Bosnia, from Rwanda. And from Darfur.

IF we are to be listened to, we must not stop, but continue, and expand this movement.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by fed1943
The greatest help we (Americans, Europeans, Asian, New New World peoples) can give to Africans is let them live their lives as they see fit.

Then,perhaps do something, if and when, they ask. I say again they,not someone from Washinghton, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Madrid or Lisbon.

Best regards,

The people of Darfur are asking as best they can. At the rally we heard from many people whod been to Darfur, relief workers, a journalist, and a US Marine whod served as an advisor to the African Union forces there - they all said the people of Darfur want help.

[Japher]

If the US gets involved what are the odds that the US will then be critized in the near future for their involvement? Pretty good I think.

We are always damned if we do and damned if we don't

this is just another case

thus, I really have no opinion either way
also, the ethnicity has nothing to do with. however, the fact that African's always seem to be warring does. it builds a tolerance and makes one wonder why this "war" is any different than any other war they have had?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Japher
If the US gets involved what are the odds that the US will then be critized in the near future for their involvement? Pretty good I think.

We are always damned if we do and damned if we don't

this is just another case

thus, I really have no opinion either way
also, the ethnicity has nothing to do with. however, the fact that African's always seem to be warring does. it builds a tolerance and makes one wonder why this "war" is any different than any other war they have had?

Yeah, we'll be criticized by Serb, and by the Chomsky types. They still criticize us for Kosovo. So what? Doing what is right isnt about never being criticized.

As for your question at the end, I can only recommend you read more about what is actually taking place in Darfur.

[OzzyKP]

I was there LotM

[lord of the mark]

Thats fitting Ozzy, as there was a lot of youth empowerment visible. IIUC one of the lead promoters of the rally was a young person, and there were certainly tremendous numbers of young people at the rally. More power to youth, I say!

[Serb]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


Yeah, we'll be criticized by Serb, and by the Chomsky types. They still criticize us for Kosovo. So what? Doing what is right isnt about never being criticized.

Criticize? I curse you for Kosovo.

Poor Americans

Doing right in an American way:

[Serb]

That was Belgrade 1999. Now is NYC 2001: