Hundreds of thousands of PEOPLE have been killed in Darfur...

[Sapphire Blue]

... and the genocide continues. Right now.

Please do not be indifferent; please do not be a bystander.


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Save Darfur: http://www.savedarfur.org/home

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Be A witness: http://beawitness.org/splash/

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Elie Wiesel: The Perils of Indifference

(Excerpt)

In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony. One does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it.

Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees -- not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity, we betray our own.

Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment.

(snip)

In the place that I come from, society was composed of three simple categories: the killers, the victims, and the bystanders. During the darkest of times, inside the ghettoes and death camps -- and I'm glad that Mrs. Clinton mentioned that we are now commemorating that event, that period, that we are now in the Days of Remembrance -- but then, we felt abandoned, forgotten. All of us did.

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ewieselperilsofindifference.html (text & audio)

[ismnotwasm]

1. And it goes on and on and on

Like the video shows, We get fed bullshit news while an entire people are being wiped out. How many times does this have to happen before we wake up?
Every time the topic of Darfar is raised-- the news is the same-- it doesn't change. We hear nothing in our media. No outcry, no outrage, few statements from our politicians, and the ones they make mean nothing.
Everytime I see one of those commercials asking for money for poor children in poor countries, (a worthy cause) I think of Darfar.
Darfar is dying, suffocating, suffering. And it seems so forgotten.
I always wonder if we would be hearing more about it if it was one of the "Eastern Bloc" nations

[Sapphire Blue]

5. Maybe people will care when it becomes a movie starring Denzel Washington.

... & is nominated for an Academy Award. Right now, it doesn't seem that much of the public cares... not much outcry or outrage from the public.

[ismnotwasm]

15. So it would seem

Movie of the week.
Innocent people caught between opposing forces because of thier ethnicity. Sounds familier doesn't it?
Here's a bit of history-- Q @A for any interested:
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/05/05/darfur8536.htm

[AlamoDemoc]

2. There are more innocent civilians killed in Iraq and Afghanistan

...and not that I am advocating what has been happening in Darfur, of course far from it, but we always tent to focus on what others are doing to their own, and not focusing on what we are doing to those we bomb and occupy. Of course, we need to stop the war in Darfur, but we shouldn't base on this civil war on guilt over how we felt when we didn't stop the Rwanda genocide. This war is indeed a civil war, and should be solved the same way we solved Sudan's 20 year long Northern and the Southern civil war.

[ShortnFiery]

3. Well pack it all up troops, we're getting prepared to march on Tehran!

:wow:

[Sapphire Blue]

6. Tell it to the people of Darfur who are being massacred by the Janjaweed.

The people being killed are not fighting any civil war; they are being massacred. It is genocide. Genocide.

But, please, don't lose any sleep over it. :sarcasm:

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

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[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

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[AlamoDemoc]

12. Thank you! By and By, no BS intended

[Sapphire Blue]

13. Bye.

[Guaranteed]

4. I just watched a Frontline documentary on what happened in Rwanda.

We fucked up really, really badly.

They even showed Clinton saying that we could have saved a couple hundred thousand people, possibly even half of the 800,000, if we had taken it seriously in the first weeks.

We just didn't take it seriously.

EXTREMELY sad. A true tragedy.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

8. Worse. Clinton and Albright sabotaged UN efforts to halt the genocide.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/rwanda/story/0,14451,1183889,00.html

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04E7D7123BF93AA15750C0A96E958260


To the Editor:

President Clinton's admission in Rwanda (front page, March 26) that the world community, including the United States, had failed to respond to the genocidal massacres in 1994 there was less than candid.

The Clinton Administration took the lead in opposing international action.

Its policy was a calculated political decision. Shocked by unexpected American military casualties in Somalia and a humiliating withdrawal, Washington insisted that a cease-fire in Rwanda, clearly impossible to attain quickly, had to precede humanitarian aid.

Perhaps the most important single reason for American inaction is still not admitted. Impoverished and perennially troubled little Rwanda had no strategic, political or economic significance. All it had were the mutilated victims of the most horrendous orgy of mass killings in modern times.

DAVID HEAPS
Princeton, N.J., March 26, 1998

The writer was a consultant for the Ford Foundation in Africa from 1960 to 1971.

[Guaranteed]

9. I'm not surprised by that.

It was fucked up all around, no matter what. Our lack of intervention in Rwanda is a serious source of shame for this country.

Let's not make the same mistake in Darfur.

But, of course- look who we have making decisions NOW.

[AlamoDemoc]

11. We can't intervene no more...the world lost trust in us

even as humanitarians. We are no longer seen as honest broker. We are seen as warmongers with interest and agenda. We need to let the honest brokers take lead and intervene places like Darfur and Palestine. This is sad but true.

[tyedyeto]

14. Did Darfur become one of the 'axis of evil' recently?

Move along... non story according the * admin.

It's only valid when Rummy sells chemical weapons to a dictator and they invade their country because of those sales.

:sarcasm: