Gaia: Learn, Share, Act for Darfur and Beyond - Sharing Center

Darfur Artwork to Print and Post in Community

http://visionofspirit.gaia.com — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 04:20:12 GMT

Do any of you guys know of any Darfur artwork that can be posted in the local community in order to spread the word but in perhaps an artistic or oblique way that makes a statement?

Thanks!
Advait

Burma Demonstration in DC

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 22:40:53 GMT

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- About 100 demonstrators rallied outside Myanmar's embassy in Washington on Saturday, joining an international day of action in cities around the world to "free Burma."

A demonstrator in Washington joins the campaign to "free Burma."

1 of 2 more photos »

Demonstrators gathered at noon and marched to the Chinese and Indian embassies to support the cause of the monks in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.

Those in the group chanted, "Free Burma," "We want democracy," and "Free Aung San Sui Kyi," the detained pro-democracy leader.

Many wore red to show support for the monks who were dispersed by military force when they demonstrated by the thousands across Myanmar last week.

"I'm here to support the people who want to see a free Burma," said Julio Rodriquez, a retired nurse who joined the demonstrators.

"I'm appalled by the way the people have been treated there. And I'd like to encourage China to stop supporting them and India to stop supporting them so that you can get a democratic government."

Pat Salomon, a retired pediatrician, said he was "appalled that this would ever happen to monks."

"I think everyone who lives in a more free society has to come out and speak because the people of Burma can't," he said. See images of the global protests for Myanmar »

LifeNets No Fly Zone Campaign Update

http://Jeanine.gaia.com — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 15:21:25 GMT

Hi everyone - Jeanine here : )

Since the campaign closing, LifeNets has been working on future endeavors and will be starting another campaign possibly in the beginning of October. Our next letter campaign will be focused supporting the Darfur Accountability and Divestment Act (DADA), with a strong focus on Alabama, since Senator Shelby (R-Ala.) is the only Senator in the US who has blocked the bill. Please contact me if you'd like to become involved in this campaign.

The LifeNets CEO and a few others (unfortunately I'm unable to attend) will be flying to D.C. and hand-delivering the 10,000 letters to the White House on October 3. They will be speaking with senators while they're there and it may (this is not confirmed) be televised by Good Morning America. While they are there, they will be asking the senators to support us in our next campaign.

Last night I watched the independent film/documentary, "The Devil Came on Horseback" with ex-Marine Captain Brian Steidle, which is a photographic journey of his 6 month investigative stint in Darfur. It is brutal, heartwrenching and very inspiring. I highly recommend you seeing the film if it is playing in your area. Visit www.thedevilcameonhorseback.com for listings.

I hope everyone is doing well.

Peace,
Jeanine

Echoes of Genocide in Darfur and Eastern Chad

http://Morgenlicht.gaia.com — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 14:04:25 GMT

Chaotic conditions and increased violence in both Darfur and eastern Chad are the echoes of the genocidal policy promoted by Sudan. John Prendergast and Colin Thomas-Jensen, respective co-chair and policy advisor to ENOUGH and co-authors of the paper, challenge recent news reports that suggest the genocidal attacks by Khartoum's militias have largely ended and that Darfur's agony is now borne of anarchy.

Read ENOUGH's latest strategy briefing: http://www.enoughproject.org/reports/darfurechoes_20070905.php

Prendergast says, "The rise in inter-communal fighting -- one of the principal objectives of the genocidal counter-insurgency strategy -- masks the more intentional, better resourced, and well camouflaged strategy pursued by the Sudanese regime to control Darfur and its people, within which many of those leading the fighting on the ground today are but pawns."

The paper elaborates policy implications from this analysis, including ensuring that negotiators better understand Khartoum's use of negotiations as war by other means; that the AU-UN hybrid force currently planning for deployment ensure that its central focus is the protection of civilians; and that the UN Security Council and European Union be prepared to impose targeted sanctions on any government or rebel official who obstructs the peace process or hybrid force deployment.

Read ENOUGH's latest strategy briefing: http://www.enoughproject.org/reports/darfurechoes_20070905.php

'It is not too late to reverse the situation in Darfur and eastern Chad,' says Thomas-Jensen, 'but it will require correct analysis and increased engagement on the part of key Security Council and African Union countries to ensure that the regime's efforts to create total anarchy do not succeed.'

To read 'Echoes of Genocide in Darfur and Eastern Chad,'go to: www.enoughproject.org

The ENOUGH Project is an initiative to end genocide and crimes against humanity.

Re: Do Americans Care About Darfur?

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 17:57:02 GMT

Like I had mentioned on my own blog, there's a huge disconnect between what Americans feel should be done, and the politics being played by our politicians.

Do you think that part of the reluctance of the US gov't to respond to Darfur is because the rebels are being supported by Eritrea, who also supports the Somali Islamists? You be it is.

Of course, the Sudan gov't itself is supported by China, who has made it clear in their foreign policy that they don't care what a country does to it's population, as long as they have access to resources. So which is the greater evil?

Donate your points to Darfur

http://creativeandfresh.gaia.com — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 19:03:19 GMT

Hi Everyone,

I have recently been educated via Janine and Mike, about Darfur. I wholeheartedly embraced the efforts and feel that this issue is an urgent one.

I am part of a word-of-mouth buzz marketing community called Bzzagent, and have been since 2003.
Now, why am I telling you this? Because it is connected with efforts to donate to Darfur.

As a Bzzagent (anyone can sign up to become a Bzzagent for FREE), you accumulate Bzzpoints by participating in campaigns to sample and Bzz new products they invite you to try, based on your profile.

Once you have tried the products, and Bzzed about them to your friends/family, et al. You go online to their site and fill out a Bzz report. Once they read your Bzz report you are given Bzz points to spend on other cool stuff or to donate for causes like Darfur.

I recently donated $10 to Darfur, by redeeming 100 points I had accumulated. So...I wanted to share this with you all. Please feel free to send me a message if you have questions or a general interest in this effort to help Darfur. It's a pretty cool and fun way to so!

(Here's a cut paste of the actual Bzzreward donation to Darfur, and their Web site if you want to check it out...www.bzzagent.com)

$10 Donation to The Save Darfur Coalition

Darfur has been embroiled in a deadly conflict for over three years. At least 400,000 people have been killed; more than 2 million innocent civilians have been forced to flee their homes and now live in displaced-persons camps in Sudan or in refugee camps in neighboring Chad; and more than 3.5 million men, women, and children are completely reliant on international aid for survival. Not since the Rwandan genocide of 1994 has the world seen such a calculated campaign of displacement, starvation, rape, and mass slaughter.

Your gift will help fund our crucial awareness and advocacy programs that play a critical role in building the political pressure needed to end the crisis in Darfur.

100

Cheers,
Cecelia

Re: Professor Reeves response to the NYT article

http://Morgenlicht.gaia.com — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 14:03:48 GMT

Darfur Mortality: Shoddy Journalism at the New York Times

Eric Reeves
August 13, 2007

A recent op/ed on human mortality in Darfur, which appeared in the New
York Times (“An Atrocity That Needs No Exaggeration,” Sunday, August 12,
2007), has garnered considerable attention, indeed notoriety. The piece
is by Sam Dealey, Time Magazine’s Africa correspondent---someone who
gives no evidence of previous engagement with the complex issues
attending any assessment of human mortality in Darfur. Nor does he
demonstrate real familiarity with the relevant research and reports, or
with whole reams of relevant data.

I will be writing at length about this truly disgraceful and destructive
piece of shoddy work, with includes some of the most egregious errors
I've seen in almost nine years of assessing journalists reporting on
Sudan. But since Dealey has, apparently effortlessly and without
qualms, produced what is to date demonstrably the most inaccurate and
misleading account of Darfur mortality, some preliminary reckoning is
called for.

In the most spectacular example of ignorance on display, Dealey reveals
that he is unaware of the September 2006 article on Darfur mortality
that appeared in the distinguished journal Science (“Death in Darfur,”
Science, 15 September 2006, Vol. 313. no. 5793, pp. 1578 - 1579). As
any close historical reading of Darfur news reporting will reveal, this
article is the true basis for the common news estimate of 200,000 deaths
in Darfur. Astonishingly, Dealey declares that June 2005 was the last
time a credible new report on mortality was published (“[no] responsible
outlet has released a tabulation of the death toll after June 2005,"
Dealey erroneously declares; New York Times, August 12, 2007). Such a
claim makes of Science---one of the most distinguished journals in the
world, and certainly one of the most carefully fact-checked---something
other than a "responsible outlet.” There could not be a more egregious
or revealing error on Dealey’s part.

In my own view, there are immense problems with the exclusion of key
data concerning violent mortality in the Science study by John Hagan and
his colleague, Alberto Palloni, a demographer at the University of
Wisconsin (data that Hagan had used in a previous study with another
co-author; see below). These will be reviewed in a later analysis.
Even so, here is what Hagan said---ironically, to the New York
Times---on the occasion of the publication of his article in Science:

"two researchers [Hagan and Palloni] based in the United States
estimated that as many as 255,000 people have died, though they believe
the actual number may be much higher.”

“‘We could easily be talking about 400,000 deaths,’ said John Hagan, a
sociologist at Northwestern University and an author of the article,
along with Alberto Palloni, a demographer at the University of
Wisconsin.” (New York Times, September 15, 2006)

This key assertion---“We could easily be talking about 400,000
deaths”---of course appears nowhere in Dealey’s scandalously
ill-informed op/ed, which is perversely bent on ridiculing and
excoriating the commonly cited figure of 400,000 deaths in Darfur and
eastern Chad---from all causes, since the outbreak of major insurgency
warfare in February 2003. Perversely, Dealey presumes to establish, on
the basis of a couple of sentences of data assessment, a figure of
200,000 by a new method of calculation. This is utterly astonishing,
the more so since as I note above Hagan and Palloni’s publication in
Science (September 2006) is the real provenance for what over the past
eleven months has been the commonly cited figure of 200,000 human deaths
in Darfur.

Instead of doing the research that would have revealed this, Dealey
presumes to compute his own figure of 200,000 using a completely
unsubstantiated mortality rate. He simply asserts that humanitarian
efficacy has improved so much since the “last half of 2006, [that]
civilian deaths [have] avbeen no global morality data-gathering or global excess Crude Mortality
Rate promulgated since 2005, by the UN or any other organization. The
data have been analyzed more recently, but have not been accumulated in
globally relevant fashion. This mortality figure of “200 per month” is
sheer contrivance.

There is a reason for this dearth of data and new global mortality
assessments. Following the UN morality rate survey and report of 2005,
a senior UN official declared to this writer, in emphatic terms, that
there would be no further global mortality studies done because of
insecurity and severe harassment by Khartoum. The regime had determined
upon a policy of making global mortality assessments impossible. And
even the 2005 UN data and excess morality-rate study excluded most of
South Darfur state because of insecurity; South Darfur has approximately
half the population of Darfur as a whole. There is simply no way to
establish, beyond extrapolation from past global data, what the current
global excess mortality rate might be.

To gain a sense of what Dealey so confidently excludes from any possible
estimation, consider the implications of monthly excess mortality simply
among the population within Darfur that has no access to humanitarian
aid. This number has fluctuated, but over the past year and more has
been between 500,000 and 1 million---and many more if we include eastern
Chad. But if, for a month, a population of 1 million people beyond
humanitarian access experiences a minimal rise in the excess Crude
Mortality Rate (0.1), 300 excess deaths can be expected, a figure that
by itself---representing only inaccessible populations and a minimal
rise in CMR---is 50% greater than Dealey’s absurd suggestion of 200
deaths per month (for calculation and brief explanation of terms, see
below; for a full explanation, see my extended mortality assessment of
April/May 2006, cited below).

Of course in the absence of humanitarian access to vulnerable
populations, the excess Crude Mortality Rate (CMR) is extremely likely
to rise by much more than 0.1, especially in children under five (see
Appendix below).

There may be another issue worth noting, since Dealey seems so intent on
defining various mortality assessments as not “responsible.” While
Dealey fastens hard on the expertise of a panel assembled last year by
the General Accounting Office (GAO) (whose report mentions the September
2006 Science article by Hagan and Palloni more than once), he might have
looked more widely at what one member of this panel of experts has
publicly asserted of my own mortality assessments, the most recent of
which (in two parts) appeared in April/May 2006 (at

http://www.sudanreeves.org/Article102.html
http://www.sudanreeves.org/Article104.html)

In this lengthy account, I synthesized the results of my 15 previous
mortality assessments, ranging back to January 2004, when the official
UN figure for total mortality in Darfur was 3,000 human beings---almost
a year into the most violent phase of the genocide. My conclusion in
April 2006 was that,

“Currently extant data, in aggregate, strongly suggest that total excess
mortality in Darfur, over the course of more than three years of deadly
conflict, now significantly exceeds 450,000.”

What to make of this claim, which has been cited by the Washington Post
and other news organizations as a legitimate high-end figure?

Francesco Checchi (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) was
one of the epidemiologists included by the GAO on its panel of experts.
Checchi has the most extensive experience working in Darfur of anyone on
this panel, including involvement with humanitarian efforts in the
region. Significantly, Checchi is also author of a compelling and
important primer on mortality data/assessments. The report, co-authored
with Les Roberts, is entitled “Interpreting and using mortality data in
humanitarian emergencies: A primer for non-epidemiologists”
(Humanitarian Practice Network, NeChecchi and his co-author believe, quite rightly as we have seen in
Darfur, that in the midst of a conflict, professional methods and
appropriate statistical sampling by epidemiology experts may not be
fully possible for a variety of reasons. In light of this reality,
Checchi encourages responsible efforts by non-professionals to assess
mortality in places like Darfur. He and his co-author have as their
“focus” in this study,

“enabling readers to critically interpret mortality study reports, and
to understand how these are used (or misused) to formulate policy. The
intended audience therefore is all humanitarian actors, policy-makers,
the media, and members of affected communities who may be called upon to
comment or make use of mortality studies, regardless of their technical
background.” (From the Introduction, “Interpreting and using mortality
data in humanitarian emergencies: A primer for non-epidemiologists,”
Francesco Checchi and Les Roberts, Humanitarian Practice Network,
Network Paper No. 52, September 2005)

This is the context in which to understand what Checchi has said about
my own mortality work in an article from the Christian Science Monitor,
August 31, 2006, after my most recent full-dress mortality assessment
(April/May 2006):

“Controversy remains over the issue [of mortality studies]: Many
humanitarian groups (fellow travelers of Reeves's) dispute both his math
and genocide assertions, worried that this will harden the stance of the
Sudanese government. But Francesco Checchi, a London epidemiologist who
has worked in Sudan for humanitarian groups, says that Reeves has an
activist agenda but ‘he knows Darfur well.’ What he's done is
‘mathematically correct’ and ‘sufficiently legitimate’ to establish a
high-end count.”

“To those who think his focus on counting every last death may be
diplomatically deleterious, Reeves says, with a tremble of anger in his
voice: ‘If we want to understand how many people are going to die, [we]
better understand how many people have already died.’” (Christian
Science Monitor, August 31, 2006)

Dealey completely dismisses my work, as well as the work of Dutch
physician/epidemiologist Jan Coebergh---whose mortality work roughly
corroborates my own---and that of Professor John Hagan (Northwestern
University) in his first co-authored study (with Patricia Parker of the
University of Toronto), which found (in spring 2005) that 400,000 people
had died from all causes in Darfur.

[Peculiarly, Dealey gives some slight evidence of understanding that
Hagan is author of two reports on Darfur mortality, but alludes only in
the most oblique fashion to the Science study published in September
2006, speaking parenthetically of “Hagan revis[ing] his estimate sharply
downward.” But again, the (differently co-authored) Science study was
published in September 2006, and was of an entirely different nature
from Hagan’s first study, excluding crucial data on violent mortality
that he had previously included in his work; and again, Dealey baldly
declares in his New York Times piece that “[no] responsible outlet has
released a tabulation of the death toll after June 2005.” This is
crucially and revealingly false.]

In this cheap and poorly researched polemic on the critical question of
human mortality in Darfur, Dealey is a disgrace to journalism, and to
the New York Times opinion pages in particular. That this is put in
service of an attack on Darfur advocacy, and Dealey’s own preposterous
assessment of the genocidal Khartoum regime, only adds to the disgrace.

APPENDIX:

Key terms:

Crude Mortality Rate (CMR), deaths per day per 10,000 of population;
this is the primary figure in mortality assessments;

Excess Crude Mortality Rate: the rate of mortality in excess of what
would normally be found within a population---in Darfur, this is the
rate of morality due to violence, as well as mortality from disease and
malnutrition caused by violence or the threat of violence;

Crude Mortality Rate for Darfur (the “normal” Darfur CMR): 0.3,
according to UNICEF;

Current “conflict-affected population” in the greater humanitarian
theater of Darfur and eastern Chad, according to the most recent figures
from UN agencies: 4.7 million;

Calculation of hypothetical monthly mortality rate for a
conflict-affected population of 1 million in Darfur beyond humanitarian
reach and (necessarily) assessment:

0.1 (excess CMR) x 1,000,000 divided by 10,000 x 30 days = 300 excess
deaths per month within this population

A large spike in excess CMR within these acutely vulnerable and
inaccessible populations---for example, to 1.0---would yield a figure of
3,000 excess deaths per month. We have seen many such spikes in the
past. For example, the UN reported in its June 2005 (World Health
Organization-overseen) mortality study that in camps for displaced
persons in South Darfur the CMR for children under five was 2.6---well
above the “crisis level.”

Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) recently reported
from eastern Chad, which continues to suffer from a drastic
under-reporting, despite being a clear and massive extension of Darfur’s
ethnic violence:

“[MSF’s] survey revealed that one child in five was suffering from acute
malnutrition and that the mortality rates from March 30 to May 20, 2007,
were catastrophic.” (Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres
(MSF),“While attention is focused on Darfur, an emergency situation is
unfolding in eastern Chad,” June 8, 2007)

Needless to say, there is no discussion of “catastrophic mortality rates”
by Dealey, even as these have been reported at various times by MSF and
other humanitarian organizations going back to 2004, and continuing to
the present. Dealey has read little and understood less.

"I am a human being."

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 23:30:45 GMT

Amidst the thousands of archival materials displayed at the US Holocaust Museum, I found myself haunted by a photograph. It's a shot of a man standing in the middle of a busy thoroughfare as pedestrians pass him by. The man has a sign around his neck that says, "I am a human being." The pedestrians avert their eyes.

I find this photo particularly chilling -- the dehumanization of the man, and the acquiescence of the crowd. I wonder why nobody looked at the man, stopped, said something, did something. I'm sure some were simply busy, rushing to work. Perhaps others were Nazi sympathizers. But I suspect that most people in that crowd were both aware of and disturbed by the situation. And these people averted their eyes for one simple reason:

They had no idea what to do about it.

I think people around the world today feel similarly about the crisis in Darfur. We may not know the details of the murder, rape and pillage, but we know hundreds of thousands have died, and millions more have fled from their homes. We may not know the legalese behind the term "genocide", but we know that a brutal regime is targeting civilians because of who they are. What we don't know is what we can possibly do about it. In an increasingly interconnected, globalizing world, our greatest challenge is not apathy, but a sense of political powerlessness.

That's why I'm so excited to see the launch of 24 Hours for Darfur, a new advocacy campaign that empowers people to get informed and get involved -- on video, and online. 24 Hours for Darfur collects personal video messages from people around the world, calling on their political leaders to address the crisis in Darfur. These messages will be emailed directly to participants' political representatives and screened in front of the United Nations headquarters during a rally on September 16, 2007 as part of the Global Day for Darfur. And to help people make informed appeals, 24 Hours offers a comprehensive video analysis from Darfur experts such as John Prendergast, Nicholas Kristof and Georgette Gagnon.

After officially launching with a video on YouTube, the campaign is now going viral, as people record messages, post them on their blogs, embed them in the facebook pages, and forward them to their family and friends.

You can check out the site for video messages from such prominent individuals as presidential candidate John Edwards, actor-activist Mia Farrow, former UN Deputy Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown, Yale Law School Dean Harold Hongju Koh, and author Samantha Power.

But personally, I'm much more excited about the over six hours of footage already received from people on the street. People as young as eight and as old as 80, from across the US and around the world -- including people from Sudan itself. 24 Hours for Darfur has enabled people like Irwin Rothschild Jr., Amy Larsen, and Gouma Mahamat to share their voices with the world.

One day, these messages will be displayed in a museum about the Darfur genocide, alongside transcripts of congressional hearings and UN Security Council sessions, reports from humanitarian agencies and human rights workers, photos of peacekeepers and peace summits. These messages will serve as powerful archival evidence of people refusing to avert their eyes from the dehumanizing violence visited upon the people of Darfur.

But I wonder, can these appeals impact the situation on the ground now? My initial reaction is "no" -- a few people speaking out cannot possibly make a difference. But then I realize that that is the only thing that ever has.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/80fa0a2c-49ef-11dc-9ffe-0000779fd2ac.html

Re: Darfur & the need for care in reporting casualty tolls

http://Morgenlicht.gaia.com — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 12:06:43 GMT

Re: The number of deaths in Darfur.

I think it is very important for everyone to read through the following articles by Professor Eric Reeves.

http://www.sudanreeves.org/Article102.html
http://www.sudanreeves.org/Article104.html

Professor Reeves is one of, if not thee leading researcher on the genocide in Darfur. I was honored to receive an email from him in which he states that the New York Time's article in the previous post "is riddled with error and misrepresentation".

He suggested we read the articles he has written on his website. In the conclusion in his April 28, 2006 article 102, he writes:

"Assuming an average monthly mortality figure of 6,500 since the March 2005 UN promulgation of a figure of 180,000 deaths from disease and malnutrition, the total number of such deaths now stands at 260,000. If violent mortality is in the range of 220,000 to 270,000, total mortality, from all causes, is now approximately 480,000 to 530,000 human beings."

Then in his May 13, 2006 article 104 he further adds:

"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"

This statement does not include the deaths by violent mortality. So one could say then that the number of deaths since May 2006 could be at a minimum of 7,000 per month and most likely is over 7,000 per month.

Using the conservative number of 7,000 deaths per month since May 2006 and adding this to Professor Reeves number of 480,000 to 530,000, it is then likely to estimate that at this time the death toll could be (not including this month of August) at least 578,000 to 628,000.

So, to use the death toll that most people seem to be quoting of 400,000 is by these estimates not overstating the current research. One also has to keep in mind that many will say that death by disease and starvation would have occurred anyway, but even considering that, they would not have occurred at the rate they are occurring.

The death by disease and starvation has largely increased due to being forced from their land and having to live in refugee camps. Also, in many cases displaced people are not able to receive humanitarian aid due to the violence and aid workers being prevented from accessing the displaced people.

Getting Comfy with Genocide

http://Morgenlicht.gaia.com — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 05:55:35 GMT

the spectator

Getting Comfy With Genocide

Is the word losing its power to shock us into action?

By Ron Rosenbaum
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2007, at 1:40 PM ET

It's good that we're beginning to get all relaxed and comfy about genocide, isn't it? Samantha Power's important book on the subject was called A Problem From Hell. But in recent discourse, genocide seems to have become A Problem From Heck.

One aspect of the shift is a new "realism" about genocide that reflects the way the world has come to tolerate it: We now tacitly concede that in practice, we can't or won't do much more than deplore it and learn to live with it.

Another—more troubling—trend is toward what we might call "defining genocide down": redefining genocide to refer to lesser episodes of killing and thus lessening the power of the word to shock.

One has to admire the honesty of Barack Obama, who argued in the recent Democratic YouTube debate that even if rapid withdrawal of troops from Iraq might lead to genocide, he'd favor going ahead and getting the troops out. He wasn't saying he was happy about the possibility—he was just expressing the view that the word genocide shouldn't freeze all discourse: He wouldn't let it be a deal-breaker.

Some were shocked by this remark. Others agreed that fear of a future genocide should not inhibit efforts to stop the current killing.

It's something Obama has clearly thought about. As he told the Associated Press later, "If [genocide is] the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now—where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife—which we haven't done. We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven't done."

In other words, let's get real. Let's not pretend we care about the possibility of future genocide in Iraq if we do little or nothing about it where it's already happening now.

Obama's comments came in the context of an emerging debate over the consequences of U.S. withdrawal. The right half of the blogosphere points to the genocide in Cambodia after the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam and argues that something similar could transpire in Mesopotamia; the left half contends that to stay in Iraq is to contribute to an ongoing slow-motion genocide.

It's an argument in which the definition of genocide can get lost in the welter of terms that range from "ethnic strife" to "ethnic cleansing" to "mass murder." But by blurring the definition of genocide, by conflating it with various forms of what might be called "genocide-lite," we risk diminishing the moral weight and admonitory power of the term.

Samantha Power believes defining genocide properly is so important that she devotes three chapters, nearly 50 pages, of her book to the evolution of the definition of what would come to be called genocide in the 20^th century, focusing on the struggle of the man who coined the term, Raphael Lemkin, to come up with a way of naming the phenomenon he'd first seen in the Turkish slaughter of Armenians in 1919.

Lemkin's definition, which was finally adopted in 1948 by the U.N. General Assembly, classified as genocide "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group."

It is a definition that has lasted nearly six decades, and it is important to remember that it refers not merely to war between nations or war within nations, however terrible. It is not about the death of soldiers in armed combat or in foreign or civil strife. It is about the mass murder of defenseless civilians—men, women, and children—because they belong to a certain kind of group.

And it's not just a matter of words. The United Nations convention on the prevention of genocide, signed by 138 nations, holds genocide to be a special category of crime that justifies "action appropriate for the prevention and suppression of genocide." The convention does not exclude abrogation of the sovereignty of a nation engaged in genocide in order to effect a humanitarian military intervention.*

The problem is that while it's going on, when it can still be stopped, it's often not evident just how grave a crime is being committed or whether it will eventually result in genocide if it's allowed to go unchecked.

At what point, for instance, does "ethnic cleansing" become genocide? "Ethnic cleansing" can refer to the forced transfer of populations—bad enough—rather than the indiscriminate murder of them. "Ethnic cleansing," that hideous euphemism, becomes genocide when it involves mass murder with the intent to exterminate. Genocide is about annihilation.

In some respects, genocide occupies an unsettling moral category that gives the scale of the killing less weight than the intention behind it. Why was the death of an estimated 1 million Sunnis and Shiites in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s not a genocide, but the death of a "mere" tens of thousands in the former Yugoslavia often called at least incipient genocide? Does getting punctilious about the difference between ethnic cleansing and genocide tacitly serve to diminish outrage over the former? (We must intervene to stop genocide. Ethnic cleansing? It depends.)

In the run-up to the Iraq war, and in many retrospective defenses of it, Saddam Hussein was often characterized as guilty of genocide, and he was certainly responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. But one can make arguments for and against the use of the term. Did the gassing and slaughter of the Kurds and the murder of other dissidents and groups such as the Marsh Arabs constitute genocide or ethnic cleansing? And should it have made a difference?

Obama's comment that he would not let the prospect of genocide get in the way of a troop withdrawal in Iraq highlights the problem we have with the word and the thing. How would we distinguish between ethnic strife or ethnic cleansing and genocide in the sectarian violence that might follow an Iraq withdrawal? How much killing would prompt cries for reintervention of some kind to stop it?

For a period in the '90s, after 800,000 people were killed in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and after Bill Clinton's 1998 apology for failing to intervene and stop it, there was much brighter line: Genocide was seen as something that demanded both immediate action and blame for inaction. The lesson of Rwanda helped make the ultimately successful case for action to halt the incipient genocide in the former Yugoslavia, even though it was not yet clear whether the ethnic cleansing there amounted to genocide. The idea was to err on the side of preventive intervention.

And the success, however mixed, of action in the former Yugoslavia helped convince a faction of liberals who had fought for intervention there to support regime change in Iraq on humanitarian grounds. Genocide and its prevention, not the illusory WMD, was their prime rationale (if not Bush's).

But now realpolitik has entered the world of genocide calculations. For one thing, after Rwanda, after the former Yugoslavia, and during Darfur, there seems to be an emerging consensus, or at least an unspoken shared assumption, that genocide is not the exception but the rule in human affairs. The past century, from the Armenians to the Jews to the Rwandans, from Bosnia to the Congo to Darfur, certainly makes it seem that way.

And now that genocide seems so common, the word seems to have lost some of its special power to move us, to shock us into action.

As a result, even if you call the chaos and killing that might follow troop withdrawal genocide, it's not enough to derail the exit. Genocide: Happens all the time, we can't be paralyzed by the word.

While there's little doubt something bad would happen in Iraq—widely admired New York Times war correspondent John Burns has said, "It seems to me incontrovertible that the most likely outcome of an American withdrawal any time soon would be cataclysmic violence"—it's impossible to know whether that badness will amount to genocide and how we should react to the probability of "cataclysmic violence" that falls short of it.

Our reaction to Darfur, however, an unequivocal ongoing genocide, illustrates what one might call a feel-good reaction to the phenomenon. It keeps going on and on, and we keep denouncing it and feeling good about ourselves for denouncing it, and nothing gets done. Again, the Democratic YouTube debate is illustrative. A YouTube question from a Darfur refugee camp prompted New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to say he'd been there, at that very refugee camp. And Joe Biden, not to be outdone, proudly boasted that he'd been there, too.

And look how much these powerful politicians who have been there have accomplished! Their tireless advocacy for action to end the genocide in Darfur has decisively turned the tide, hasn't it? Oh, wait.

At least Biden offered some specific policies that might help Darfur: a no-fly zone to prevent the strafing of the starving and even, if I heard him right, U.S. troops. A vast army of, um, 2,500 troops that could somehow save the day. Good luck, Darfur.

But in general, the YouTube debate didn't advance the cause of Darfur much beyond offering candidates a feel-good way to announce you're against mass murder. (Nobody said they're for it.) The real question—the question that should be asked of every candidate, Republican and Democrat—is this one:

What would you do if you saw another Rwanda developing? In other words, a genocide that has little to do with previous U.S. intervention and is not our fault in any direct way, but one we could prevent—at a cost: U.S. troops, U.S. lives. President Clinton has apologized for his failure to intervene in Rwanda. Do you agree that the United States should commit itself to preventing genocide anywhere it threatens to occur?

Of course, every presidential candidate would evade the hard question by promising to "work with the United Nations and the world community" to prevent any such eventualities. But look how well that's worked in Darfur. (The July 30 U.N. resolution calling for a troop deployment to Darfur won't begin till the end of the year, may be too little, too late, and will encourage maximized killing for the next five months, at least until the troops arrive.) Tell us: When the United Nations fails, as it almost always does, how many U.S. troops, how many U.S. lives? To save how many people? The question asks the candidates to make a cold, hard calculation. But then, they want to be president, don't they? And that's one of the job requirements.

Not that presidential candidates are the only ones who need to struggle with these impossible questions. In surveying the post-Obama debate over genocide, I noticed how often the question of "intentions" came up. If our intentions were good, or if the invasion of Iraq could be defended on humanitarian grounds of the type liberals favor, do we then have more of a responsibility to remedy the results of our good intentions and mistaken calculations?

And if our intentions were bad—oil, bases, Halliburton, empire-building—do we have less of a duty to clean up the potentially genocidal mess, because our intentions were never humanitarian in the first place?

One of the most interesting discussions of this issue—an intellectual defense of the idea of getting comfortable with genocide—came in a recent column by the influential pseudonymous Asia Times columnist "Spengler."

Spengler's recent column cites David Rieff, a liberal who originally supported Iraq regime change on "humanitarian"—anti-genocide—grounds. Rieff has changed his mind about anti-genocide intervention, Spengler says:

[P]rominent journalist and humanitarian activist David Rieff believes that if genocide is inevitable in Iraq, we should stand back and watch. He asks '... why the U.S. should remain in Iraq at all: [1] The usual answer is that because if we leave [Iraq] there will be a genocide. ... The deeper questions are (a) whether short of open-ended colonization, the U.S. has the power to prevent the genocide whose preconditions we ourselves created through our hubris, (b) whether the future of the Iraqi polity should be one of the main foci of our concerns, and (c) whether the cost of preventing genocide is one we as a polity can afford to pay. My answer to all three questions is no.'

Rieff "penned the above words," Spengler says, "to defend Democratic Senator Barack Obama's statement that the danger of genocide is not sufficient cause to keep U.S. troops in Iraq." I don't know if I'm as certain of the answers as Rieff is, but he has defined the questions well.

Spengler, though, who seems to agree with Rieff's new position, goes on to offer some peculiar ideas about genocide which allow him to feel more comfortable about it. He argues we should look at it as a "normative" aspect of human history, not a new or especially abhorrent one.

He attempts to prove this by defining genocide down. By classifying virtually all war of any kind as "genocide," simply because lots of people are killed. While Raphael Lemkin took pains to define genocide as the deliberate attempt at the annihilation of groups, Spengler incorporates it into the ordinary course of human events. Nothing new, nothing to get excited about here. Move along.

He makes two questionable claims, for example: that the slaughter of Native Americans in America wasn't genocide, but that the Civil War was, although he pays tribute to its "moral splendor." A new notion entirely: morally splendid genocide.

Then he cites statistics about how many Southern males were killed in the Civil War (one-fourth of the military-age male population). That was genocide? No, that was the loss of many soldiers defending what was, arguably, the ongoing genocide of the slave system.

Yes, war may have civilian casualties in great numbers. But defeating an army is not committing genocide. Deliberately destroying civilian populations is. The North didn't intend to murder all slaveholding Southern whites, only to end the secession and (belatedly) to free the slaves. Intention matters, and it's hard to have useful discussion if terms are so far apart.

Samantha Power quotes Raphael Lemkin on this point: "Genocide is not war! It is more dangerous than war," and thus, he argued, deserves a separate abhorrent category.

The outlandishness of Spengler's reasoning, and the forcefulness of David Rieff's rejection of the genocide argument about the Iraq aftermath, indicate just how desperate we are not to be unduly disturbed or hindered by the special cruelty and hatefulness of genocide or even the word. If we say, Look, it's happened all the time in the past, every war is a genocide, and it seems like it's going to keep happening no matter how much or little we do, there's less to be outraged about, less to be alarmed about, less to take action against.

Of course it's more important to fight genocide than to fight over the definition of genocide, but getting too comfortable with genocide, blurring the definition, defining it down, can undermine the fight.

It's still a "problem from hell."

Correction, Aug. 7, 2007: This article originally stated that the United Nations "holds genocide to be a special category of crime that justifies the abrogation of the sovereignty of a nation engaged in it." The convention on the prevention of genocide calls for "action appropriate for the prevention and suppression of genocide" and doesn't exclude abrogation of sovereignty. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

Ron Rosenbaum is the author of Explaining Hitler.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2171429/

rs = PStax; DM_addToLoc("thisNode", rs); DM_tag();

Darfur & the need for care in reporting casualty tolls

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 15:47:25 GMT

Darfur & the need for care in reporting casualty tolls (again)

posted by Helena Cobban

The NYT had an informative and very thoughtful op-ed in today, by Sam Dealey, described as a writer on Africa for Time. He noted that on Wednesday, Britain's Advertising Standards Authority had ruled against the Save Darfur Coalition there, judging that the high death tolls the SDC claims in some of its public advertising there "breached standards of truthfulness."

Here is the ASA ruling.

It had to do with a national print ad campaign that stated, "In 2003, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir moved to crush opposition by unleashing vicious armed militias to slaughter entire villages of his own citizens. After three years, 400,000 innocent men, women and children have been killed ... ".

That ad campaign has run in the US, as well as in Britain. And it hasn't been cheap. Here in the US, I estimate it may well have cost more than half a million dollars.

In the UK, a complaint was launched by the European Sudanese Public Affairs Council against the claim made in the ad; and it was that complaint that was upheld by the ASA. The ASA ruling presented much of the evidence it considered, and concluded:

The ad breached CAP Code clauses 3.2 (Division of opinion) and 8.1 (Matters of opinion).

Action
We told SDC & AC to present the figure as opinion not fact in future. We urged them to consult the CAP Copy Advice team for help in amending their ad and we also advised them to state the source for such claims in future.

Of course, this is not the first time that Save Darfur campaigners have used unsubstantiated (and improbably high) casualty figures in order to enhance their case. In June last year I noted that Ruth Messinger had stated quite baldly in a letter to the NYT that "Half a million are dead... " I presented some of the counter-evidence to her claim, and also pointed out the need for rights-abuse reporting always to be very careful and where necessary err on the side of caution.

In his NYT piece today, Dealey is absolutely right to note that this sloppiness with the figures has real consequences on the ground in Darfur. He writes of SDC:

He then looks quickly at all the considerable (though not definitive) evidence that's available, and concludes that: "Combining these estimates suggests Darfur's death toll now hovers at 200,000 - just half of what Save Darfur claimed a year ago in its ad and still claims on its Web site."

He adds:

During debate on the House floor last month, for example, Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee claimed that "an estimated 400,000 people have been killed by the government of Sudan and its janjaweed allies." Ms. Jackson-Lee is hardly alone in making that allegation, and catering to the Sudanese government's sensitivities may not seem important. But the repeated error only hardens Khartoum against constructive dialogue. If diplomacy, not war, is the ultimate goal for resolving the conflict in Darfur, the United States must maintain its credibility as an honest broker.

Inaccurate data can also lead to prescriptive blunders. During the worst period of violence, for example, the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disaster estimated that nearly 70 percent of Darfur's excess deaths were due not to violence but to disease and malnutrition. This suggests that policy makers should look for ways to bolster and protect relief groups - by continuing to demand that the Sudanese government not hamper the delivery of aid, to be sure, but also by putting vigorous public pressure, so far lacking, on the dozen rebel groups that routinely raid convoys

BBC News Report

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 00:19:37 GMT

Darfur force 'to be all-African' African Union (AU) chairman Alpha Oumar Konare says enough African troops have been promised to a Sudan peacekeeping force for no outside help to be needed.

He said African countries can provide the 26,000 peacekeepers needed for the combined AU-United Nations force. The AU already has 7,000 troops in Darfur.

The UN had expected to call on Asian troops. Critics say Africa lacks enough trained troops for an effective force.

Sudan's government has long opposed the involvement of non-African soldiers.

Viable plan?

Speaking after talks in Khartoum with the Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, Mr Konare said: "I can confirm today that we have received sufficient commitments from African countries that we will not have to resort to non-African forces."

He added that the "ball is now in the court of the UN" to provide funding for the force.

Mr Bashir, who has long argued that a UN-backed force would be a violation of Sudan's sovereignty and could worsen the situation there, backed Mr Konare's plan.

"(We) support the AU force, which consolidates the efforts of the Sudanese government to ensure security, peace and stability in Darfur," he said after their meeting.

Mr Konare did not give a breakdown of the countries offering to supply more personnel, leading correspondents to question the viability of an all-African force.

The BBC's Africa editor, David Bamford, said it was unclear where so many African troops would come from.

Our correspondent questioned whether African nations would have the political commitment to stand alone against the forces seeking to continue to disrupt lives in Darfur.

Deadline looming

Mr Konare's announcement came just days after the UN published a list of Asian countries it said had already committed troops and police officers to a Darfur force.

UN officials said the joint AU-UN force would be "predominantly African", but confirmed that countries including Indonesia, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh had pledged personnel.

According to a UN resolution, the composition of the force must be decided by 30 August.

At least 200,000 people are believed to have died and more than two million have been left homeless in Darfur since fighting broke out in 2003.

Sudan's Arab government, and the pro-government Janjaweed militias, are accused of war crimes against the region's black African population - although the UN has stopped short of calling it genocide.

Story from BBC NEWS:

Do Americans Care About Darfur?

http://Morgenlicht.gaia.com — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 08:42:10 GMT

Read an International Crisis Group/Zogby Survery -
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=3492

Re: 7/31/2007 Darfur news video, John Ryle interviewed by Jon Sno

http://apollia.gaia.com — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 04:41:24 GMT

Thanks! Glad to know I had my facts straight.

I think even just this one post of yours has greatly expanded my understanding of the situation. Thank you. :-)

Re: 7/31/2007 Darfur news video, John Ryle interviewed by Jon Sno

http://Morgenlicht.gaia.com — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 12:23:56 GMT

Great Apollia. You did not say anything ignorant, you are right on!

There still is a lot to do. Even though things have been sounding promising, this is almost the same place that they were a year ago.

August 2006 the UN authorized to send in 22,000 peacekeepers and it never happened because of opposition from the Sudanese government.

The talks with some of the rebel groups over the weekend was to decide on how to approach the meetings with the Sudanese government. They still have to meet with the government and who knows how that will go.

And you are right a lot has been watered down.

We need the No-Fly Zone and it is quite possible we will need some military force to help the people of Darfur. I am certainly not an advocate for war, but sometimes force is necessary.

Unfortunately with all that is going on in Iraq right now too, I believe the US especially is reluctant to send troops somewhere else. However, it can be done. We can pull out some troops from Iraq and we could reallocate them to Darfur.

But, there is a lot of politics to happen yet and that makes it more difficult to speed up the help.

There are also other measures to put the pressure on - divestment being one, and more pressure on China to take a bigger role, and we need to keep writing and calling our legislators. If we keep this up they will have no choice but to make a decision.

Great summary of the video!

7/31/2007 Darfur news video, John Ryle interviewed by Jon Snow

http://apollia.gaia.com — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 10:56:10 GMT

Hi, I just watched http://videos.zaadz.com/235773/darfur_-_news_coverage, which is a YouTube video described as “John Ryle interviewed by Jon Snow”, with the title Channel 4 News 31 July 2007 (Darfur), which is 4 minutes and 32 seconds long.

Thanks for posting it, Mike!

I was about to post this over on that page, but I decided to post this here instead, since probably more people will read this here.

I found that video very interesting, but also rather distressing, since it sounds like more _could_ be done, but that some of the measures being considered are being watered down, or are rather weak and ineffective in the first place.

For instance, they talked about how instead of having the authority to seize weapons, they may only monitor the movement of weapons.

And, they mentioned something about how something engineered by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy may take a year to be put together. A _year_?!!! Isn't the situation far too urgent for them to take that long?

It's also rather distressing that they said the peacekeeping force may not be able to solve the problem of banditry and thuggery! I wonder if it may take an actual military force to protect the people of Darfur?

Or, if the good, decent, law-abiding civilians are defenseless and helpless against the armed thugs - why not at least arm the defenseless civilians? Even if no country sends in their own military force to get things under control, perhaps that could help.

If the thugs meet with strong, effective resistance from _anyone_ - whether it's a foreign military force, or the civilians themselves that they're trying to victimize - they might hesitate to attack in the first place.

And that could be combined with a military-enforced no-fly zone to avert the bombings.

I still need to study this topic more, so, sorry if I just said anything really ignorant or obvious.

Apollia

Re: A little bit about me...

http://Morgenlicht.gaia.com — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 19:32:01 GMT

Thanks for sharing about what you are working on Jeanine! We will all be here to help you and carry on with any campaigns you are running.

I have a tough time accepting thanks from you because it just seems like it is the natural thing to do - help save lives!

I am happy to be working on this Pod and be here with all of the people like you that are making a difference.

Like you, I am just a regular every day guy, trying to raise a family and living in everywhere suburbia. I feel this is our way to make a difference, being here, being present, and using the tools we have to create change!

You rock Jeanine! Keep doing what your doing!

Re: The daily challenge...

http://Morgenlicht.gaia.com — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 19:22:37 GMT

Great message Sparxx! The whole idea behind Give 'Em 8!

Is it really that hard to imagine that you could give 8 hours towards this cause?

How about 1 hour a week for 8 weeks? Or, 30 minutes a week for 16 weeks?

How much time do we all waste with other meaningless stuff? Like reading joke emails or sending joke emails. Like mindless surfing. Like playing online video games or poker. I have not even talked about TV watching.

We have the time to make a difference! It is no excuse. Believe me, I have a lot going on in my life and I could easily ignore what is happening, but it IS too important.

Genocide should not be happening in our life time. When are we going to learn?

You have the ability to change your life! You have the ability to change their lives!

You have the ability to change the World! Just Do It !!!

Re: A concern about some petitions - discuss it!

http://Morgenlicht.gaia.com — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 18:50:17 GMT

I guess I would have to leave up to each individual to decide for themselves. If you don't want to add this information but want to contribute to efforts to prevent the continuing crisis there are other ways to get involved.

I have always kind of looked at it this way though. There was concern when the people started doing purchasing over the Internet and then banking and bill paying. There is always concern about this. Systems could get comprimised, workers at one of these Internet companies could steal information. There are many ways.

However, even though there is plenty of information to support the rise of Identity Theft, I also believe that the media generates fear by publicizing extreme cases.

I have always felt that anyone could just as easily get your name from a phone book, or from your employee records at work, or simply when you go to a store or restaurant. I guess the big thing on the Internet is that you might use your credit cards and information more frequently than anywhere else so there may be a greater chance that information is acquired.

Am I getting to a point here :)

So one example is I have a co-worker who had a credit card that was basically an extra card that they really were not going to use unless they really needed to. Well they used it at two places for only about $40 worth of stuff in 6 months time. One was at her husband's place of work and another at a restaurant. Well they received a call a few weeks ago that someone charged $4000 on the card for travel and hotel expenses. So, I guess in this case they never put anything online, only used it 2 times and they are pretty certain that someone at her husbands company may have used the card information.

So, I guess my point is to be safe. Do not put things like social security numbers on a website, watch out for email phishing scams, only use your credit card on sites with secure servers which can be seen when the http:// changes to https:// and their is a lock symbol showing in your browser status bar.

I am pretty comfortable that when I fill the petitions out at SaveDarfur and notable sites that they will do all they can to protect the information and not let it out to everybody. Most sites will also have a note or information protection statement about how they use your information.

At any rate maybe I have gone on too long about this. Use your best judgement and what you feel comfortable with. I pretty much feel anyone could access my address information from my name if they really wanted too and then go from there.

For now I am still putting my name, email, and mailing address when asked. I usually do not include a phone number.

For more information on online security and scams see some of these links -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_theft
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing
http://www.idtheftcenter.org/

Who are the Bystanders? From the book Genocide.

http://Morgenlicht.gaia.com — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 12:17:20 GMT

I have to share these two items from the book Genocide that I am currently reading which is a great book that discusses the origin of the world genocide and how and where it has occured throughout our history.

The book is actually aimed at a teen audience, but I think it is a great book for anyone. I am amazed at the things that have taken place during my life that I have never really known like the 1.5 million people killed in Cambodia in the late 70s and the many other references to genocide that were never part of my history classes.

Excerpts from the book -

First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist - so I said nothing. Then they came for the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat - so I did nothing. Then came the trad unionists, but I was not a trade unionist. And then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew - so I did little. Then they came for me, there was no one left who could stand up for me. - Martin Niemoeller

Who are the Bystanders?
Bystanders are the people or groups of people or even whole countries who see events take place and who do nothing to stop them. As Martin Niemoeller's famous words...bystanders' indifference and their failure to act allow a genocide to continue. And unless the process of genocide is opposed, it continues to widen and take in more and more groups of victims.

...But many people "stand by" watching (or hiding their eyes) even when they are not personally in danger. They may not involve themselves because the "us-them" propaganda has been successful, and therefore they do not identify with the victims or recognize their humanity.

...like most of us in relation to Darfur - and who are capable of responding without threatening (our) own lives, ... (we) must respond.

Springer Jane. Genocide (Groundwork Guides). City: Groundwood Books, 2006

Link to Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/Genocide-Groundwork-Guides-Jane-Springer/dp/0888996829/ref=sr_1_1/002-9380232-7560843?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1185981049&sr=8-1