Darfur,Genocide and Racism

Sudanese strongman Omar Bashir has expelled a whole bunch of NGO's from Darfur. This was his reaction to being found guilty of genocide and war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. Thanks to tireless work of Luis Moreno-Ocampo the ICC has charged numerous Sudanese with crimes, including Ahmed Harun, formerly in charge of the Darfur genocide operations and now Minister of human rights in Sudan(nice touch, Omar). With the departure of NGO's there is going to massive starvation in the refugee camps in Darfur. There will also be mass migrations of starving Darfuri to the Chad border, where NGO's can barely handle the current refugee influx. Those fleeing will be attacked by the Jangaweed(Arab militia armed by Bashir) and raped, tortured and killed.
After the extent of the Holocaust became known the phrase "never again" was uttered. Never again genocide? Or never again genocide for the Jews? We have encountered genocide in Rwanda, where the world did nothing. We have encountered it in Bosnia, where the world reaction was too late, and now here it is in Sudan. Both UN and African Union are underfunded,politically hamstrung and basically ineffectual. Sudan is a failed state. It is engaed in a systematic campaign against the African south, both Muslim(in Darfur) and Christian. But no one lifts a finger. If suddenly some dictator arose in Europe and began a campaign of genocide against Christians or Jews, there would be great outcry and fast movement to end the crisis. But who cares about a bunch of Black AND Muslims out there in the back of beyond in some shithole no one ever heard about. Certainly not America and Europe. These people have the double whammy, Black and Muslim.
Darfur, at one time, was an independent sultanate, and cultural beacon in the Sahel under the Keira dynasty. Now it the boondocks. It seems no one cares. Its seems "Never Again" doesn't apply to the people.

Balkan Wisdom

"When you are face to ace with a wolf,the only option is to work with it,until it becomes a pet"

Ejup Ganic former president of Bosnia and academician

History repeats

Its been over 90 years since the end of World War I.When the Ottoman empire fell, Lawrence,Balfour,Sykes,Picot and others made a lot of promises they couldn't keep. They redrew the map of the Middle East to suit their imperialistic appetites. We have suffered chaos there ever since. Now that Bush,Cheney,Rumsfeld,and Wolfowitz have redrawn the lines in the Middle East, we will have another 100 years of chaos. Perhaps reason will prevail in the end, perhaps the Arabs will enter the 21st century and perhaps there will be peace. We can only hope.
America bungled into Iraq with no knowledge of the Iraqi people and no plan for recovery. Now that she is withdrawing, will Iraq be plunged into more sectarian violence, or will some kind o government take root to weld the 3 separate parts of Iraq into a nation? No one in the west wants any kind of Arab unity because it would spell death or Israel and the mother of all energy crises. Islam has to find a way to enter the 21st century that's acceptable to most of ulema(muslim legal experts). As long as the Sharia and the Hadith are going to worry about beard length and whether you have enough ankle exposed(the Prophet liked his dishdasha on the short side), its going to be a tough job. The Sharia and Hadith is sort of like the Jewish Talmud, a body of religious law. No efforts have been made to accomodate these scared tradtions to a post modern world. Religious police(checking beard lengths etc) have been part of the Islamic world for centuries. The fundamentalists come and go, but remember it was Islamic civilization that studied and translated Aristotle,Galen,Plato and Hippocrates, and brought Europe out of a very deep sleep called the dark ages. Will this too happen again?

God and the law

God and the law seem to have been connected for ages. We see Moses with the tablets as an example of god being associated with the law. About this time is the civilized middle east, codes of law were being promulgated by rulers. Moses trumped Hammurabi by saying "God said so" Since then the two have have been indivisible. Religion became a way to control peoples lives. One only has to look at Jewish law and the Sharia to see how involved this concept has become. God's true law is beyond our understanding, and involves the way creation works. It is ever changing and totally fluid. One can't pin it down. We try but we fail. For example, we have set down "laws'' that govern the classification of species, however they don't fit. There is no firm border between one species and another, it is fluid. Canids are a great example, wolves, dogs and coyotes inter breed successfully beyond specific lines. Get into warblers and it gets really confusing.
One only has to look at the laws of Taliban to see how ridiculous these things can get. Taliban law regulates beard length, the length of your garment,etc, all based on traditions of the Prophet Muhammad. Christianity seemed to escape this kind of thing, at least the Talmudic law thing, thanks to St. Paul. Paul found that to gain conversion to his new faith, he had to put aside certain features of Jewish law, like circumcision and dietary laws. Paul realized no one was going convert to a faith that required penis mutilation. However, Christianity accepted Roman law and made it apart of the religion, especially after Constantine. For instance, one of the titles carried by the pope is Pontifex Maximus, or as it appears in English, Pontiff. The Pontifex Maximus was orginally the title of head priest of the old Roman state religion. Julius Caeser obtained this post early in his career and it became the province of the emperors ever since. Of course Caeser later was promoted to god status himself and this too became Roman tradition. Constantine had to drop this facade, but maintained, instead, to be god,s representive on earth, which later on translated into the divine right of kings.
Holy books are written by men, perhaps some divinely inspired, but men, none the less. The Torah,Bible, Buddhist sutras, and the Koran are examples of this. All written down after their prophet had died. Today the sun rose, the spring flowers are poking thru the snow, a possum decomposes into to food for myriad creatures. That is gods law.

Rush Limbaugh is a big fat TRAITOR!

Ole Rush, a traitor? Poster child for the republican party,prophet of hate, drug addict and all around hypocrite, a traitor? Say it ain't so, Mustafa. Well here's the deal. Rush wants Obama to fail, not very patriotic seeing as we are in an economic nightmare. Does he want his bailout to fail? Does he want his foreign policy to fail? Does he want more Americans needless killed in the Middle east? Is that enough? Probably not. Rush is demonizing Obama, with racist overtones(remember Barack the Magic Negro) to a large group of people whose main business is hate. One white supremist's website crashed on election night due the number of crazies who wanted to hate. So let's "energize'' all these people. All these gun toting, hate spitting crazies, let's get them riled up. Maybe, just maybe, he'll find some Lee Harvey Oswald or James Earl Ray to do the job he wants to do himself but is too much of a coward to try. Find a patsy, Rush. My faith in this country will greatly increase if Barack Obama makes it thru his 4 years without some asassination attempts,impeachment proceedings, or downright coup. If you are a spiritual person, please pray for the President, the crazies are loose.

Surrender

Well apparently Michael Steele and the RNC surrendered to Rush Limbaugh today. Steele issued the usual "misunderstanding" type statement after Limbaugh suggested he supported Obama/Pelosi. So the Republicans move one step more to the fringe right. Sad,while our nation falls apart, these idiots continue to sow the seeds of hate, so common in the Bush era. Wow lets all hope Obama fails, and our conomy collapses, unemployment becomes rampant and the rich continue to pad thier Swiss accounts. While we eat beans and possum gravy, we can rest contented that we didn't support "socialism". I'll bet the execs at AIG( bailed out for the second time) are planning another expensive taxpayer funded soiree, and I'm sure possum gravy won't be on the menu. Well gotta go, time to see if there's any fresh road kill out there for the pot.

The end of the Republicans

Remember the Federalists, the Whigs, The Bull Moose party? Political parties that lost favor with America because they lost sight of what America wants and needs. You would think, after the 2006 losses in Congress and the defeat of McCain/Palin, that the Republicans would reassess their priorities. Apparently not. With the economy in shambles, two wars in progress, they turn to the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter to re-energize the party. Wrong moves, guys. Your base, those rural American conservatives are no longer all that concerned with big government, gay rights, abortion and all the other nation dividing things that Karl Rove used to tear us apart. They are concerned with their wallets. Working class America is suffering most here and sooner or later they are going to figure out that your talk of tax cuts doesn't mean tax cuts for America's workers, but for the rich. The rich are sucking America dry, with the support of Republicans. They could fool their base with hate and fundamentalist principles but that dog won't hunt no more.
To empower a drug addicted hypocrite like Limbaugh as a party standard bearer is ridiculous. Where are the moderate Republicans? Where are Republicans who care about America not special interest groups. Wake up, boys, and save your party before it becomes a footnote in history books.