Why is this not being covered by the MSM? Dafur.

[maveric]

http://www.darfurgenocide.org/
Hundreds of thousands have been killed and millions face starvation. Does CNN cover it? No! MSNBC? No! Fox News? Fuck No!

There is a genocide being brought about by evil forces who "kill their own people".
Is this less important than:
Aruba/Natalie Holloway
War on Easter
Bear attacks

?????????

[maveric]

1. Invisible?

Where's the UN?

[Ecumenist]

2. The People in Darfur happen to be extremely poor...

and high an inconveniently high melanin level. They are the exact opposite of what bush's psychotic band want to help. That's why.. They'd be going AGAINST the racist hatred of much of what's left of their hard core base.

[maveric]

3. And I take it that there's no oil there?

They cant make any money so FUCK EM?

[Ecumenist]

6. Give the man/woman a cigar...

A banana, if you're not a smoker....:sarcasm:

[Igel]

8. They have oil. Links.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sudan/story/0,14658,1503470,00.html

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12146

http://sudanwatch.blogspot.com/2005/04/oil-found-in-south-darfur-oil-issues.html

And if Sudan didn't have oil, China and France wouldn't be so glad to block UN resolutions and prevent Darfur from getting the designation 'genocide'. Can't let morality dictate business or foreign policy. 'Genocide' would mandate they would have to get off their tails and do something.

[Ecumenist]

20. thank you for the information

I wasn't aware that there was oil in an quantity that would place it and in the people in the region in an increasingly untenable situation. This just gets worse and worse...
Perhaps, for whatever reason, bush's psychotic band doesn't consider it to be strategically important to this country?

[Igel]

22. Most of the contracts are to other countries

(oil's sold by contract, of course). The US has banned US corporations from business in Sudan since I don't know when. Bush I? Clinton? Carter? Dunno.

As far as countries go, it's mostly been Britain and the US that have agitated for doing something about Darfur. But you can only agitate by yourself before you either have to shut up or do something. And 'doing something' is ruled out for so many different reasons.

If only because we're stuck in Iraq, and because it would interrupt a one of the supplies of oil to China.

[atreides1]

4. Not in the National Interest

The people of Darfur, are poor, black, and they aren't sitting atop a pool of oil.

The US has done about as much for the people of Darfur as they did for the Jews of Europe during WWII.


Now, if they crashed planes into buildings, then the US government would pay attention to them, long enough to bomb them back into the stone age, sorry they're already there.

[Ian David]

5. Do they have oil? n/t

[Igel]

9. Yes. n/t

[Ian David]

11. Oh! Then why aren't we all over the situation?

Does this genocidal war in any way interfere with the free flow of oil?

Oh, wait...

I bet the people who HAVE the oil are killing the people who DON'T have the oil.

Freedom doesn't want to march there?

[Igel]

17. No, it doesn't.

In fact, it makes it more sure that the central government will get--and keep--the revenues from it. But the discovery of oil postdates the start of the genocide there by a few years, and the genocide was already being denounced in some quarters as such even before oil was found.

Darfur may be a late-comer to the oil-producing game, but Sudan isn't. And Sudan's government is allegedly behind the people committing genocide against the rebels. The reason the UN couldn't declare what's going on to be genocide--but the US Congress could--is that the declaration would be blocked by oil-greedy amoral countries siding with repressive terror-supporting regimes against indigenous peoples.

To wit, France and China.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

7. dead black-skinned people when the HALLOWAY STORY is alive and well?

are you kidding?
sheesh.

disgusting, isn't it? I have been called senators and congresscritters for years now about Darfur. Nothing. No response.

[maveric]

10. I've written to Barbara Boxer and Tom Lantos about Dafur.

All I got back was some boilerplate buulshit stating that they appreciate my contacting them...
I at least thought that Lantos would do or say something. He's a Holocaust survivor who supposedly is big on human rights issues.

[Igel]

12. Yes, they covered it.

Numerous times.

But there's nothing to be done about it. Why? Lots of reasons.

The US and others dragged it before the UN; a committee looked at it, chewed their toes for a while, and decided it couldn't be. China looked on approvingly. The security council can't do squat because France and China like their oil contracts with Sudan, and they're on the security council.

At least one house of Congress declared it 'genocide'.

After a bunch of pressure, the international community finally did something. OK, not much. The African Union was hired, more or less, to send in monitors. That's what Sudan said was ok; and to ignore Sudan is to trample on the country's sovereignty and dignity. Mustn't do that.

The AU has stood around with their collective thumb up their collective rump, being told to stand in one place while a concentration camp is cleared in another place.

But for the US to do more is impossible. No neighboring country will give the US fly-over rights. Nobody wants white Xian US soldiers invading a Islamic shari'a-enforcing oil-exporting country populated by brown- and black-skinned Muslims, in which the difference between a dead good guy and a dead bad guy is whether or not there's a gun in the guy's hand.

[dzika]

13. The U.K. Media is Covering Darfur.

I've seen multiple extended reports on the BBC and London's Channel 4.

[applegrove]

14. Because MSM wants "winning news" and Bush isn't about to do anything?

[SoCalDem]

15. Darfur/Rwanda/any African war

"those people" are poor, uneducated, and other than the fact that they occupy a continent full of hardwoods, diamonds, oil, and other natural resources, most of the western world has no use for them.

That's the cruel hard truth.

Africans are "expendable" ..Truth be told, the republican leaders we have would be very glad if they all disappeared..(see AIDS response)

A depopulated Africa "works" for the captains of industry and the politicians who love them.

[nonconformist]

16. It is absolutely shameful that the genocide in Dafur is being ignored

Just shameful.

I guess they know if they covered this story, many Americans would demand that we do something. One is forced to conclude that this genocide is something that the powers of be would like to see continue, quietly.

[maveric]

18. Didnt bu$h invade Iraq to liberate them from an evil and oppressive...

regime. Against leaders that kill their own people?
The darker the skintone the less concern!

[Terran1212]

19. If Bush talked about it the media would too and then we'd act!

Too bad Bush is closely allied to Khartoum and refuses serious criticism.

[gatorboy]

21. Interesting article dealing with Darfur and Chad:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060417/wl_nm/chad_dc_21

N'DJAMENA (Reuters) - Chad softened threats to halt oil production and stop sheltering Sudanese refugees on Monday following rebel attacks as the United States offered to mediate in a dispute with the World Bank.
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President Idriss Deby's government pushed back until the end of April a deadline -- originally set for midday Tuesday -- for shutting off oil output by the landlocked central African state in a disagreement with the World Bank over frozen oil royalties.

Deby, facing attacks against his rule by rebels he says are backed by neighbor Sudan, also assured the United Nations he would not forcibly expel more than 200,000 refugees in Chad who have fled violence in the western Sudanese region of Darfur.

-----------------------

Then again, would we hear anything about this story if it didn't involve oil?

[killbotfactory]

23. If our past is any history

The US doesn't care about atrocities, as long as there is nothing in it for us to stop them.

[YouthInAsia]

24. Because they're black. eom