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The sudanese are going to have a hard time getting any kind of attention or sympathy in the united states or even from. The ones already here are often treated with disgust and fear. As refugess they have it hard speaking mostly nuer (spelling?) and arabic. Their ways are very foreign to us; and frankly the nightly news doesnt think they are worth the coverage, most americans don't even know they exist.

I have to say I even had a very hard time dealing with them, our ways are just so different. There was a very large population of refugees in Omaha I had to work with. Very, very frustrating. I will say if they were more familiar to us westerners, and hence more like us, I do believe the atrocities commited there would be headline news. That is sad.

Koi

Empty chairs at empty tables, the room silent, forlorn.

there are two main reasons why this type of thing doesn't get coverage:

(1) people dying doesn't make the news unless it can be spun into a local angle. if this were a school shooting, the news would hype it up with stories like "are your kids safe????" but since this happened in an area known for fighting and with hardly any ties to the western world, it is not covered as pressing news. yes, you might see a blip about it if you are watching the little ticker at the bottom of the screen. but especially in america this blip will always be overshadowed by american idol and other celebrity "news".

(2) whenever something happens to a country that consists primarily of brown people, you can bet that it won't be covered. yes, i believe the mainstream western media is racist with their coverage of what is newsworthy. this is why a young white girl disappears from a wealthy resort is news, but a young black girl who disappears from the inner city is not. the story is the same: young girl is missing from her family. what actually makes the national news scene is completely different.

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and as for the legitimacy of the UN, about 70% of the UN's "teeth" are US soldiers. therefore the UN does what the US tells it to do, and very little more above that. it's not so much that the UN is irrelevant, more that there aren't enough other countries involved in enforcing UN resolutions besides the US. this is why the US can get away with ignoring UN resolutions, and why our closest allies can as well. if we want the UN to be the body it's intended to be, then other countries need to step up and share the responsibility. and it would also help if the UN were not stationed on american soil, but was a truly international body. but that isn't going to change any time soon, so for now the UN is largely irrelevant if the US says so

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"That's the trouble with political jokes in this country... they get elected!" -- Dave Lippman

it would be cool if they moved the UN to the north pole! that way it would be hard to attack it with out warning and it wouldnt be on anyones soil

That might be ok in winter, but the North Pole doesn't have any land...

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ok how about a UN cruise ship that has submersibable qualities? they could drive around and pick people up and then submerge so there meeting wont be interrupted

bout 70% of the UN's "teeth" are US soldiers.

There is much, much more to the UN than its military capacity. A fact seldom mentioned by the USA press, it would seem from general observation.

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I like to think that whoever designed marine life was thinking of it as basically an entertainment medium. That would explain some of the things down there, some of the unearthly biological contraptions

The mass graves attributed to Saddam make the US presence in Iraq legitamite. People killed because of the regime is in the six figures.

I agree the UN is a joke.

I only wish that the poorer countries would get the coverage they deserve.

No country should accept genocide, or religious murder. Whether in the middle east or africa or in north america.

The mass graves attributed to Saddam make the US presence in Iraq legitamite. People killed because of the regime is in the six figures.

not to pick nits, but saddam "gassed his own people" while the US sat back and watched and did nothing. donald rumsfeld himself met with saddam literally weeks after the gassing and took this famous picture:



if it is so legitimate to invade iraq *now*, why wasn't it legitimate back *then*?? besides the fact that we were arming saddam to fight iran i mean. and the fact that we let this gassing happen 15 years ago and did nothing about it. all of a sudden it's ok to invade iraq because of things that we allowed to take place 15 years ago...

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"That's the trouble with political jokes in this country... they get elected!" -- Dave Lippman

As they say, better late than never. I think that applies in this case.

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i disagree. if it was so bad something needed to be done, it should have been done when it happened instead of waiting for so long.

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"That's the trouble with political jokes in this country... they get elected!" -- Dave Lippman

Didn't say they shouldn't have done something sooner, I said better they recognise the problem late than letting it go on forever.

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well, that's my point really. there *was* no problem when it happened in the 80's. maybe if someone would admit that we should not have looked the other way for so long i would be ok with it, but to never admit that we made a mistake for allowing it to happen is not good enough for the situation we find ourselves in, imo

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"That's the trouble with political jokes in this country... they get elected!" -- Dave Lippman

So in dealing with the problem, they started a Civil War. No, that can not be justified, or right. It is a truth of democracy that people must come to democracy, it cannot be brought to them. The anti-war movement warned years ago that Iraq was such a fractured society that if it were destabilised, sectarian tensions would cause major problems, and here we are. And democracy cannot be possible until the sectarian tensions are overcome - and that hasnt happened since the death of Mohammed!

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I like to think that whoever designed marine life was thinking of it as basically an entertainment medium. That would explain some of the things down there, some of the unearthly biological contraptions

There already was a civil war, thus the mass graves.

So, if we let Darfur go on a couple of years more we should never do anything about it?? That is very short sighted.

Notice people, there are still US bases in Germany and Japan that relate directly to WWII. THere is no QUICK way out. There is no EASY way out. The leader of Iraq was a farce, no human rights, no political freedoms, NO rights for women. You could die for voicing your opinion.

OK we let it go on too long. I would have kept us there after the first Gulf war. But late is better than never.

Notice, we are enjoying our right to have our own opinion. Something the Iraqi's are still dying for. I believe that the process may be extremely painful, but it is the better choice.

After the American Civil War, everything was not immediately back to normal. There was still basic inequality. It took until the civil rights movement in the 1960's for African Americans to use the same bathroom as whites. Does that make the Civil War wrong?? Of course not. Change is a process and will never happen overnight, and rarely without lives lost.

it's disingenuous to compare the american civil war to the iraq civil war. in the case of america, nobody came in and *forced* america to do anything. it was a purely economic and political difference of opinion that started that war. whereas in iraq, the civil war never started until *after* the US invasion and after we botched the post-war changes.

back to darfur, yes they have had a civil war for some time. but civil wars are usually not places that other countries are willing to lend assistance to because a civil war is an internal battle for control of a country. in iraq, we made this mess so we are the only ones left to clean it up. but the mess should have never been made in the first place. it should not be US foreign policy to prop up dictators just to take them down but that's where we find ourselves yet again.

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"That's the trouble with political jokes in this country... they get elected!" -- Dave Lippman

So, if we let Darfur go on a couple of years more we should never do anything about it?? That is very short sighted.

My point is that you have to know what the effects of your intervention will be. No, there was not a civil war in Ba'athist Iraq, under any defimition of civil war. Yes, there was severe state sponsored repression. By destabilising the Ba'athist regime, the "Coalition" enabled a Civil War that was not occuring before. An event of which they were forewarned by some of the top scholars of democratisation theory and Iraq.

In Darfur, yes, there is a strong argument for intervention. But what has to be considered is the risk of causing more death and instability. There is compelling evidence that the Sudanese regime is destabilising Chad and other neighbours, and there is considerable pressure for intervention led by the African Union, not the USA.

NO rights for women

That is actually factually incorrect. Ba'athist Iraq was one of the most equal Middle Eastern regimes, women had equal rights to attend university, drive, take jobs, etc, etc. Yes, those rights were curtailed by the authoritarian context, but they were there. Sadly, woman's rights have actually been eroded since the collapse of the Ba'athist regime, as the power vacuum is increasingly replaced by Militant and Hardline Islamists.



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I like to think that whoever designed marine life was thinking of it as basically an entertainment medium. That would explain some of the things down there, some of the unearthly biological contraptions

This is in reply to the previous post, it is copied and pasted from

http://www.iheu.org/node/1306/print

UN Commission on Human Rights: 60th session. (15 March - 23 April 2004)

Integration of human rights [1] of women and a gender perspective:
Violence against women (12a)

[The words in square brackets [] were not spoken]

Thank you, Sir.

I am reading the statement of Azam Kamguian, Chairperson of the Committee to Defend Women in the Middle East, who is unable to be here.

Statement by Azam Kamguian on the Human Rights of Women in Iraq

Last Friday, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Mr. Abdelfattah Amor said in a panel discussion [in Room XXIV], “All religions have a problem with women
[“especially when the interpretation of religion is in the hands of men – and not often enlightened men”. Every day women continue to be the victims of discrimination based on, or attributed to, religion or tradition.]

This is a world-wide problem and by no means confined to the Middle East, but it is to the specific case of Iraq that I wish to draw the attention of the Commission.

[In most Islamic states a system of gender apartheid rules, and in several, women are still being stoned to death for being involved in sexual relations outside marriage. In Iran, the Sudan, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Islamic regimes are inexorably transforming women's homes into prison houses. In many states, the confinement of women, their exclusion from many fields of work and education, and their brutal treatment have became the law of the land. And the misogynistic rhetoric of the Islamists in the social sphere implicitly sanctions male violence towards women.]

[In these countries, Sharia law is used as a weapon in the hands of Islamic regimes to create a major barrier to the integration of the human rights of women into the mainstream.]

Despite efforts being made by some members of the interim Iraqi administration, there is strong opposition from many religious leaders to the creation of a society in which women can play their full part. The contribution of every Iraqi woman will be vital in the massive task of reconstruction following the years of bloody dictatorship and war, exacerbated by economic sanctions.

But the interim constitution, the Temporary Administrative Law, fails to give adequate protection to women’s human rights in at least three critical areas where women in the Middle East have historically suffered discrimination:
• It offers no explicit guarantee that women will have equal rights to marry, within marriage, and at its dissolution.
• It does not explicitly guarantee women the right to inherit on an equal basis with men, and
• it fails to guarantee Iraqi women married to non-Iraqis the right to confer citizenship to their children.

There is an increasing problem in Iraq of violence against women. [According to the "honour" system, a woman who has been raped or abducted is considered to have brought shame upon her family. Under Saddam's regime, a rape victim would frequently be killed by a brother or father to restore family honour unless she agreed to marry her abductor. Many women are victims of this inhumane custom and practice.]

[The day after Saddam Hussein's capture, the US administrator, Paul Bremer told Iraqis that there would be "no more suffering". But Violence against women is increasing.] Yannar Mohammed, chairwoman of the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq [OWFI], reports that since the end of the war, about 350 Iraqi women have been abducted. The few who survive their ordeal require protection from "honour" killings by their families. [The OWFI is about to open the first women's shelter in Baghdad, with no financial help from the occupation authorities.]

[The US State Department criticizes countries which fail to curb human trafficking, but the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq has treated the fate of kidnapped women as an isolated phenomenon.]

We urge the Commission and the international community to give all possible support and encouragement to the government of Iraq to provide full equality to women under the law, to implement measures to eliminate violence against women, and to prevent the killing and intimidation of women who have themselves been the victims of violence.

I draw your attention to the date of that document! I was talking about the rights of women under the Ba'athist regime. It is widely accepted that the rights of women have become more limited since the Occupation began and areas of Iraq have begun using Shar'ia law in the absence of other law.

But the interim constitution, the Temporary Administrative Law, fails to give adequate protection to women’s human rights in at least three critical areas where women in the Middle East have historically suffered discrimination:

The Temporary Administrative Law is a law enacted after the fall of the Ba'athist regime, not before.

There is an increasing problem in Iraq of violence against women

Please note the use of the word "increasing" in reference to after the Occupation began and in its continuing state.

Sadly, woman's rights have actually been eroded since the collapse of the Ba'athist regime, as the power vacuum is increasingly replaced by Militant and Hardline Islamists.

I stand by this statement and argue that the quoted document actually gives it credence.

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I like to think that whoever designed marine life was thinking of it as basically an entertainment medium. That would explain some of the things down there, some of the unearthly biological contraptions

In response to the original post, Oprah's covering it right now...

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