Showing posts with label Darfur. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Darfur. Show all posts

30.10.07

Humanitarian work should be saved from 'Save Darfur'

Humanitarian work tainted by political motives harms the cause it claims it defends. That has been the case of some organisations claiming to work to stop a genocide in Darfur. Numbers of those who were killed in Darfur were inflated by the 'Save Darfur' campaign, from 200000 to 400000. Not that the fact diminishes the crime but it definitely lays a discredit on the cause.

The recent imprisonment in Chad of French 'humanitarian workers' from 'L'arche de Zoé' under suspicions of child kidnapping is a perfect example of how ideological and political manipulation of the Darfur cause has subverted the humanitarian label, despite France's foreign affairs minister Bernard Kouchner, the champion of armed humanitarian intervention who has been outspoken on the 'Darfur genocide', breaking his silence and embarrassement to condemn Arche de Zoé's actions, and despite France's government denying its involvement, contrary to declarations form the imprisoned 'humanitarian workers'.

"In April, Zoe's Ark announced a campaign to evacuate 10,000 orphans from Darfur alongside other French charities including Sauver le Darfour (Save Darfur).

It said it wanted to place orphaned Darfuri children aged under five in foster care with French families, invoking its right to do so under international law.

But the charity has been accused of child trafficking in the case of the 103 children it attempted to fly out of Chad.
UN officials say many of the children are from Chad, not Sudan, and there is no evidence that they are orphans."

Today, on a French radio, RTL, Rony Braumann, founder of 'Médecins Sans Frontières', accused directly Bernard Kouchner and French zionist Bernard Henri Lévy of bearing direct responsibility in overdramatizing the Darfur crisis causing the ensuing diplomatic deadlock that is going to hinder real humanitarian work, but not political agitation.

Look for example at the political contorsions and extortions found in an article Bernard Henri-Lévy wrote on March, 13, 2007 in Le Monde under the title 'Choses vues au Darfour' (Things seen in Darfur, article archived now):

"I tell myself while listening to him (a chief from the rebels whom BHL met in Chad), that I saw very few Mosques in devastated Darfur. I saw very few veiled women. I think of the school in ruins I have seen in Deissa, where the girls classes were next to the boys'. And the idea comes to me that, after all, another aspect of this war - which is at the same time another reason for us to mobilize: radical Islam against moderate Islam; the Sudanese regime which, at the end of the 90s, gave asylum to Bin Laden, to intimidate Muslim populations who refuse Islamism; in the heart of Africa, in the darkness of what may become, if we do nothing, the first genocide of the XXIst century, there is another scene for the clash of civilisations, the only clash that really count, the one between the two Islams."

Zionists like BHL have seized the Darfur issue as the example of the struggle within Islam, as the example of the 'barbarity' of Arabs against dark skinned Africans, as a way of distracting attention from what is going on in Iraq and Palestine, while bigger tragedies can be found everywhere, some of them on the same continent as Darfur, in Congo. None of the main claims of 'Save Darfur' campaign are true. Both sides in the conflict have committed atrocities and both sides in the conflict are dark skinned, from the same religion and the same race. Yet, distortions are made in order to substantiate an offensive humanitarian intervention paving the way for a more firendly regime change in Sudan opening access to its oil reserves.

The zionist narrative for Darfur has joined the western colonialist narrative where in every military campaign the main claim is to protect and civilize.

"Now, as then, imperial interventions claim to have a dual purpose: on the one hand, to rescue minority victims of ongoing barbarities and, on the other, to quarantine majority perpetrators with the stated aim of civilising them."

Ken Silverstein's Facts and Darfur (Harper's Magazine).

Update November 1st: Children not orphans and not from Darfur says UN. They were living in communities and were lured from their village with sweets.

Darfur Groupies. Do-gooders gone bad.

Update November, 30, 2007: Ten reasons to suspect 'Save Darfur' is a PR scam.






16.5.07

Western Liberals Humanitarian Values on Trial: Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Darfur, Somalia, Congo, and the rest...

Where anti-Arab prejudice and oil make the difference

The UN estimates that 3 million to 4 million Congolese have been killed, compared with the estimated 200,000 civilian deaths in Darfur. A peace deal agreed in December 2002 has never been adhered to, and atrocities have been particularly well documented in the province of Kivu - carried out by paramilitary organisations with strong governmental links. In the last month alone, thousands of civilians have been killed in heavy fighting between rebel and government forces vying for control of an area north of Goma, and the UN reckons that another 50,000 have been made refugees.
How curious, then, that so much more attention has been focused on Darfur than Congo. There are no pressure groups of any note that draw attention to the Congolese situation. In the media there is barely a word. The politicians are silent. Yet if ever there were a case for the outside world to intervene on humanitarian grounds alone - "liberal interventionism" - then surely this is it.


Read the whole article

The same people who are calling for a humanitarian intervention in Darfur were calling for the continuation of Israeli bombings of south Lebanese populations last summer with cluster bombs and for the non intervention of the UN and the international community to stop these bombings. These people are making more harm than good to the people of Darfur because their voice is sullied by their calls for belligerant and lethal policies elsehwere...

20.3.07

Random Thoughts on Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq

I was feeling some blog fatigue and wasn't going to blog for a while. Then I read that Bush wanted more time for his 'new strategy' in Iraq. It reminded me of Israel last summer when it was asking the US, UK and the international community for more time to crush Hezbollah. Instead, it crushed Lebanon's economy, seashore, half of its roads, bridges, houses, buildings, and orchards, killed thousand civilians, made refugees of about 30% of the population and went home leaving Lebanon with postdated cluster bombs, profound divisions, and Hezbollah with a 'divine victory'. Both Bush and Olmert remind me of failing students, you know those ones who, having prepared badly for the exam, sit in front of their white paper the last five minutes when everybody else is done, hoping to deliver !

While Bush, not recognising his defeat, is staying hopeful, Olmert is engaging his countrymen and women in byzantine discussions about the lost war in Lebanon, whose only virtue is to divert Israeli citizens attention from the real issues facing Israel after this war.
What are the issues facing Israel immediately ?
The failure of its leadership in war;
The failure of its leadership in peace (Israel declared it will not discuss with the new Palestinian unity government when most European countries and the US have shown their will to engage).
What are the questions debated in Israel right now ?
Was the attack on Lebanon an operation or a war ?
Giving a name to this war.
Protecting Darfur refugees and pointing out Human rights violations in Darfur.

And as Raptors always hunt in pair, Israel is supported in this Darfur effort by US and French zionists (Nicholas Kristof in the US and BHL in France are leading the efforts). In France, Bernard-Henri Lévy (BHL), who has just embarked, courageousely and bare chested, on his latest humanitarian cause, is leading a pack summoning French presidential candidates to sign an engagement for action in the Darfur crisis.

And because we are becoming numb to HUman rights violations, not only in Darfur, but everywhere, the main result of the Darfur media frenzy will be to divert the world's attention from noticing one more effort, in a long list of political compromises and progresses made by the Palestinians to stop the economic embargo from achieving a total isolation, erosion and disintegration of their lands, people and society. The new Palestinian unity government, in addition to being a unity (Fatah-Hamas) government, has given 25% of minsteries to independants from neither parties including four key ministeries, Interior, Information, Finance, and Foreign Affairs. But once again, BHL and other zionists will fail to notice, and once again, Israel won't talk to this government and will be hiding from reprieve behind a good cause; Darfur. Every time the Palestinians show their good will, Israel finds an excuse to look Elsewhere by instigating, through its zionist allies, a media frenzy about where the west should look and what its priorities should be . Israel and zionists are in an active state of denial.

There is a civil war in Darfur and the western media and Israel want us to believe that the Muslims are waging this war against the southern sudanese populations with the implicit blessing of the government for ethnic reasons. But there is another narrative to this story, Sudanese oil. Sudan, like the Middle East, is blessed with oil and cursed with oil.

And as long as I will be reading this kind of news everyday, my indignation at USrael's criminal wars against the people of Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, and the entire Middle East, will never fade. There is no room for blog fatigue on this blog.

Watch here a video on the children of Baghdad, Iraq (not of interest to Mr BHL's humanitarian preoccupations because their misery results from Mr. BHL's friends policies in the ME)

Good Night and Good Luck.




You have to excuse Le Monde, they don't know that Israel's war was on Lebanon and not on Hezbollah ! Another subject for my indignation, the western press's pro-zionist biases.









 
Since March 29th 2006