Rebecca Tinsley, head of a British group called ‘Waging Peace’, spoke this past Tuesday at Colorado College. Her topic was Darfur and stopping a supposed genocide going on there. The report of the meeting in the Colorado College student newspaper neglected to mention that she was also director of this group, ‘Waging Peace’, nor that Tinsley is also a hotshot within the Carter Center.
And who else is hot within the Carter Center right now? Why it happens to be Madelyn Albright, who once told a CBC reporter that the deaths of half a million Iraqis per Clinton’s sanctions ‘were worth it’. Albright was also a featured speaker last year at an American rally calling for ‘action’ against Sudan. ‘Waging Peace’ it seems, is in reality making propaganda in favor of imperialist intervention rather than against it, though they might try to deny it.
I was unable to get to the Colorado College forum on time, but a quick google on Tinsley and ‘Waging Peace’ is quite educational in itself. Here is Tinsley calling for European imperialist intervention into the African country of Sudan from the website of that group she directs. See their Feb. 15, 2007 press release.
Rebecca Tinsley spends much of her time lobbying Tony Balir and George W. Bush to ‘intervene’ in Africa where she is fond of shouting GENOCIDE, GENOCIDE, GENOCIDE in every direction. It seems that she is not that interested in the genocides underway against the peoples of Iraq, Palestine, or Afghanistan, though. She specializes in calling for imperialist action, not for calling to stop imperialist action. She calls this ‘Waging Peace’!
Progressives need to educate themselves more about these NGO types that do as Rebecca Tinsley and the Carter Center associated liberal hawks like Madelyn Albright are doing with Darfur. Edward Herman has an interesting commentary today on Znet about Human Rights Watch, another NGO that is prone to shrill for starting off imperialist ‘actions’ by crying GENOCIDE, while staying rather mum on ongoing genocides by imperialist countries. See HRW in Service to the War Party
Of note: Rebecca Tinsley is also a member of the London Human Rights Watch committee.
So you don’t think that people being killed in vast numbers in Darfur (almost certainly more than in Iraq) is of much consquence? All you can do is bleat on about ‘imperialism’. A fine progressive you are.
I’m Rebecca’s husband and I can tell you that she was very actively against the Iraq War & visited palestine last year.
Did I say that the wars in Sudan are not of much consequence as you accuse me of saying, Henry? I did not, Sir, and you are falsifying my position, and further, I think you well know it, too.
Fine ‘progressives’ you are, to not ‘bleat’ about imperialism in Africa but to actually support more of just that! Hundreds of millions of Africans have lost their lives due to that imperialism you find unworthy of talking about, Sir. Instead, you and your wife actively campaign for European and Americans to militarily intervene in Africa, as they have already been doing for centuries.
You want a feel good issue to mobilize around? Try calling for less military intervention by British and American troops outside their countries, not more. Campaign against NATO, not for it. Oh, I am sorry, then you would have to break with the Carter Center, would you not? Imagine you, your wife, and Jimmy all calling for closing those jillion and one US foreign military bases. Instead, what would seem to please you most would be yet some more American/Brit bases to be built in Sudan. Then they could become torture centers like those in the Balkans so recently built by the US.
You and your wife are two moneyed twits running around knowing next to nothing of the parts of the world you call for interventions in. Great arbitrers you would be, ala Woodrow Wilson I guess? That too is the grand pretense of Carter these days. God save us from the machinations of do-gooders from the well off of Europe and America, pleading for the US and Euroepan governments to intervene in even more foreign countries. Disgraceful. Working to stop US and European imperialism is the cornerstone of fighting for progressive change in the world, and the fact that you do not understand that basic says it all about you and Rebecca, Henry.
You certainly diminished the deaths of some 400,000 people by referring to it as a ‘so called’ genocide. Presumably you think nothing should be done about the slaughter. No doubt you had the same view about Bosnia & Rwanda.
Most sane people do not want an ‘imperialist’ invasion of Sudan but a strengthened AU or UN force to stop the slaughter. Presumably you don’t know this or think the AU/UN themselves are an imperialist plot.
People like you are a disgrace to the ‘progressive’ cause, attacking The Carter Center, Human Rights Watch etc when the real problem is Bush & his cronies. You clearly know very little about the activities of such organisations and are off in your private ideological world. I am not wasting any more of my time reading the rubbish on this blog.
Henry. Not everyone here agrees with Tony’s semantics or beliefs.
And he certainly is not the dictator of my vote. Nor you.
Say hello to London for me. How did you find the blog? Searching for your wife’s name on the net? Net stockings are so romantic.
love, 13. (Stop the killing machines.)
13th is absolutely right. Not everybody who comments on this blog is in agreement on every single issue, Henry. This is a blog to help provoke thought and discussion, and people in Colorado Springs, like elsewhere, have multiple opinions regarding current affairs. True here, even on this blog itself.
The real problem is a lot more than Bush and his cronies as you postulate, and the issue of how to stop large slaughters of people through fighting wars and its after effects is a lot broader than you and your wife’s selective simplistic solutions would leave us to believe.
You consider yourselves pragmatists and don’t much care which troops are urged into regional conflicts. So you call for the intervention of the strong against the weaker, the European/ Americans against those who refuse to do as told, the UN against its weakest member states.
And yes Sir, Henry, you support the UN Security Council to be used in military actions against sovereign countries. This is an imperialist bloc almost totally controlled by the US government (of Bush I might add). This is the body that took Aristide out of office and occupied the county of Haiti against the will of its people). It is a body that actively engages in aggression against the people of Iraq for well over a decade. It is a body that did nothing but allow France to egg on the mass murders of its regional allies in Rwanda at the time.
In the case of Bosnia and other parts of the former Yugoslavia, you are perfectly happy that the Europeans and the US tore the country apart using its ethnic divisions for its own benefits, and pass all the blame for this off on the Serbs. Never mind that a single country has now been turned into a mishmash of non-viable dependencies, with US bases everywhere throughout the Balkans now.
In the commentary by ‘Wage Peace’ I linked to, this group applauds sending the European Union decision to send military hardware into the regional conflicts of Africa . ‘Waging Peace’ praised this decision to throw more fire on the flames there, supporting a decision by which could potentially increase the European/ US military intervention into the affairs of Sudan, plus other countries of Africa.!
The Carter Center is not against NATO, and neither are you and your wife it appears. You are FOR imperialist enforced decisions to be made regarding the Palestinians and others throughout the world. ‘Waging Peace’ is for imperialist enforcement, which is then called ‘peace’. There is nothing progressive at all about this undertaking that your wife is engaged in by heading up this group. In short, it is a propaganda effort to make ‘our’ soldiers appear as peace enforcers when they are sent to Third World style countries engulfed in internal conflicts. This is reaction parading itself as humanitarianism.
I too am concerned about not just the slaughter going on in the Sudan, but about the possibility of renewed slaughter elsewhere throughout Africa. The only long term solution is to demilitarize the continent and for Europeans and Americans to economically repatriate the entire continent for damages done through their centuries long interventions which you continue to support.
This is a solution that does not involve the European Union sending military components into conflicts, that does not involve the UN Security Council, nor even the military forces of the African Union itself, whioh is much directed for afar, out of the continent it directly represents. Peace though major economic assistance, and not through troop deployment, such as ‘Waging Peace’ is calling for.
So what would you do about the slaughter in Darfur? Just to repeat: it’s likely that 400,000 have been killed and millions have lost their homes. These people are being killed NOW.
You can’t avoid the issue by waffling on about ‘demilitarizing’ the continent and long term solutions. Are you seriously opposed to a UN/AU force? And do you really believe that the UN is controlled by the US government (er, they didn’t support the invasion of iraq, I seem to recollect)?
Still, it seems you wern’t unduly worried about the Serbs slaughtering loads of Bosnians etc. Maybe you think that Srebrenica was an invention by imperialist lackeys.
Perhaps you just don’t think Darfur is that important. Hey, they’re only black people after all…
Wrong, Henry, I do care about the slaughter of 400,000 people in Sudan. It is not something to just be shuffled off to the side, as neither were the slaughters of innocents in Rwanda and Yugoslavia. Similarly, the deaths of people in East Timor and Chechnya are tragedies, too. We are in agreement on that.
The problem I have with your politics is that when people in the major imperialist capitalist countries call for ‘humanitarian’ interventions by troops controlled by their own imperialist countries, they are in effect aggravating the humanitarian crises that we have throughout the world, not alleviating them.
You and your wife support separatism along national, religious, and racial lines, not overcoming divisions through multi-ethnic unity. You are supporting ethnic enclaves being formed everywhere, all dependent on the US and European powers to be traffic cops of sorts. Traffic cops that actually would then control the peoples under their thumb, and the natural resources in their lands.
The Europeans and the US have taken it upon themselves for centuries to decide national boundaries for others, and you think that just grand evidently. When you demand intervention into countries like Indonesia, Yugoslavia, Sudan, or the exSoviet Union to supposedly help groups of people out. You ignore that you are helping the dominant world super power out, too, as it sets out to continually divide peoples up and to set them against each other.
Your propaganda against people like Milosevic easily gets relayed into yet more Christian Crusades to ‘remove Saddam Hussein’ and to ‘save the women of Afghanistan from the Taliban’ and so on ad infinitum. What gets ensues are many worse ‘genocides’ than before, more US military bases, and more theft of the finite energy resources of others.
Your call to ‘save the people of Darfur’ easily becomes a call to send Ethiopia into Somalia, set up NATO militarism into all of Africa, etc. Why are you and Rebecca so oblivious to the consequences of what you set into motion? Your do-good crusading tendencies aid and abet the worst societal tendencies of militarism that your country and mine are already engaging in. That is horrible.
You ask what I would do NOW? It is not ‘waffling’ to call for and end to the bloated multi-trillion dollar US/ British militaries, and to demanding a real start to channel Western economic aid and reparations into not only Sudan, but all of Africa. It is ‘waffling’ to not demand that, but to actually incredibly call for the deployment of yet more troops into the frying pans of Sudan, Chad, Central Africa, Congo, Somalia, etc. Europe and the US out of Africa should be what we demand, not into it yet more!
In fact it is criminal insanity on the part of Western liberals like yourself and Rebecca, to be doing what you are doing. I say that firm in the belief that both of you have the best of intentions despite the damage that I think you are doing. But we need to stop imperialist interventions not call for them and acting as if they were benign engagements and even outright helpful to solving world crises.
Economic aid, not more military deployments. That is not ‘waffling’ at all. It is just common sense. The crises in Darfur does not arise from impoverished Arab raiders on camels, but from longterm US and British militarism, along with French and Belgium imperialism on the continent, too. That is what needs to be campaigned against.
I am not sure that it is we who are ‘criminally insane’. How do you think that economic aid will stop people in Darfur being slaughtered today and tomorrow? It’s absurd and no solution at all.
You really have nothing to say except to prattle on about ‘imperialism’ -which is wholly irrelevant to Darfur, not least as the colonialists left decades ago. Actually, the conflict is significantly about Arab vs Black Africans.
No-one is suggesting an Iraq-style invasion of Sudan, but a strengthened African Union/UN force and real pressure on the murderers in Khartoum.
I am shocked you grumble about my ‘propaganda’ against Milosevic. He was a truly wicked man, a socialist who turned into an extreme nationalist to advance his career. Only the belated intervention of NATO (yes NATO) ended the Bosnian war and the slaughter of the Bosnians. Of course, things are still difficult in some parts of ex Yugoslavia (they usually are in ex-war zones), but they’re a hell of a lot better than if we had done nothing.
Over and out.
OK, Henry, over and out. It is clear that it is pretty much hopeless to have any real dialog with somebody whose wife is working for an ex- US president’s think tank ‘center’, and who calls any discussion of the realities of current and past US and British imperialism as being nothing more than ‘prattle’.
You support all current military interventions using NATO which is the pure essence of US/ European imperialism, and yet have the incredible bizarreness to say that, and this just a few weeks after Bush set NATO up to directly intervene in Sudanese affairs and sent Ethiopian troops into Somalia, that US/ European colonialism (imperialism) is something abandoned decades ago! Talk about speaking out of both sides of one’s mouth at the same time! Colonialism/ imperialism is not something of the distant pass, but is an ongoing problem throughout much of the world.
In short, we have sort of an intellectual ‘apartheid’ in effect, I rather think. Pro- imperialists who don’t recognize the presence of imperialism as being real! What can one say at this point? Humanitarians that think that NATO is some sort of a charity ball instead of a yet another army under the control of principally the Pentagon and the world’s one super power.!
It amazes me, though, that you claim to be representing the interests of the oppressed peoples of world with such a deliberately ignorant mindset. Amazing and sad. Nobody in Russia, Africa, Latin America, Yugoslavia, or any Muslim country would ever buy into your claptrap. Or ‘prattle’ I might say, to use your vocabulary.
When are you, Henry, going to call for sending in the troops to stop the murderers in Washington DC and London, instead of agitating for NATO troops to be used to stop murderers way outside our own imperialist camps in DC, London, Berlin, and Paris? Never, I rather think. When are you going to declare Bush and Blair to be guilty of genocide? Never, I do believe. That accusation you throw out at others, instead. And you will never accuse Clinton/ Gore of genocide, even though their sanctions cost hundreds of thousands of Iraqis their lives. You and your wife Rebecca are extremely selective about when you choose to throw these charges out against others.
Thus, we have you, Henry and Rebecca, campaigning to label people in Darfur, Sudan as being victims of genocide, whereas Palestinians, Afghans, Iraqis are not labeled that by ‘Waging Peace’. That is an organization that calls for imperialism to correct the sins of others, and lets the imperialist camp totally off the hook for their own crimes., and even aids and abets them to commit more. And then calls this progressive!
This is pointless. You don’t even know what the Carter Center does. It’s not a think tank. Among other things, it helps solve major health problems in the developing world (eg river blindness, guinea worm) and monitors elections in emerging democracies. You can’t even be bothered to look at their website before sounding off.
And just for your info, I was against the Iraq War, went on several demos, organised petitions against it & helped raised money & volunteers for politicians who opposed it. What did you do?
Henry, I am quite aware of what the Carter Center does and would never say that it is doing pure evil. Who can be against Bill Gates and Jimmy Carter when they combat diseases like TB, AIDS, and the other diseases you mention via their respective foundations? And who can be against Carter working with Habitat for Humanity? Not I.
But that is not the main thing they do, no more was it when Clinton and Bush Sr toured the world supposedly on behalf to solely raise funds for Tsunami victims? Neither was Elizabeth Dole’s Red Cross work solely a humanitarian effort. In fact, I remember her turning over Red cross facilities to be used as detention camps for undocumented workers captured by La Migra. And the Clinton/ Bush couple did Hell to Iraq, not to mention other places.
The problem with the Carter Center and ‘Waging Peace’, is simply that both support only using the imperialist framework of the European bloc and the US calling all the shots for the rest of the world, whether with carrot or with the stick, which seems most often the case. This leads to liberal humanistic propaganda in support of military interventionism.
This propaganda for US/ European interventionism in the affairs of other nations stands side by side with the Rightist media’s efforts with their incessant stories of US soldiers giving candy to kids, or flying one or two sick Iraqi or Afghan kids back to the US for medical treatment, and so on. ‘We’re there to help! We’re the Pentagon!’
Why all the focus on Darfur? Why all the focus on Bosnia and Kosovo? Simply put, you focused on these issues to the exclusion of other concerns, simply to push for the use of US and Euroepan troops into intervening into other countries, and not because these global areas had even near the worst killings going on around the globe. Your push to intervene is for what you would see as a more benevolent interventionism (imperialism) in action, as opposed to the more vile form of a Bush Administration’s work.
We, to the contrary,are calling for no more US interventionism (imperialism) into controlling the affairs of other nations, not a supposedly more benign form of it. Nobody can doubt that to have a benign king in power is certainly seen as preferable to having a bad one on the throne. But the real solution is to do away with the throne all together. ‘Waging Peace’ and the carter Center are against that, and call talk of it as being ‘prattle’ and out of this world. It is not.
We want the US/ British militaries out of other people’s lives, and most of all we want it out of our lives here at home, too. I don’t see or hear of the Carter Center or ‘Waging Peace’ as calling for any of that. Your activities are in promotion of using the military in yet more and more intrusive a manner, but you camoflage this activity with more benign work, done side by side with your calls for military interventions. Not so different than how the Pentagon itself works.
Er, I’m sorry. Is there anywhere on the globe where there is worse killing than Darfur at present? Around 400,000 deaths to date, 2.5 million chased out of their homes. That’s the whole point.
And you’ve not managed to come up with any sensible suggestion as to how it might be stopped (except to falsely suggest that I want a US/British invasion). I suspect you just don’t care. After all, they’re only Africans.
http://www.friends-of-benin.org/ is world user-friendly…
Henry, you are ‘care’ baiting me now, lol.
The whole continent of Africa itself is, and has been for the longest time now, a slaughter house. You and Rebecca want to watch one region of one country through a non-comprehending AngloSaxon stilled lense though. What ever could you and your wife really know about Darfur, Sudan, and the region as whole? You are Western do-gooder butt-inskis, hopping from one unknown region of the world to another, calling for imperialist ‘interventions’.
The fact that you are a know-nothing when it comes to the areas that you push to send ‘aid’ to, is shown by your question to me about where else is such a loss of life going on as in the Darfur region of Sudan? Next door in Congo for just one obvious response. It might be on pause somewhat this very second, but…. nnd the Horn of Africa, too, which is now having conflict restarted by the US entering back into Somalian, Eriitrean, and Ethiopian affairs big time. Mozambique, Angolia, etc., too. The whole continent is a shambles from ongoing and previous ‘interventions’, yet Mr Henry and Mrs Rebecca are out there pushing for more? What gives?
And by the way, I have not falsely suggested or said that you want a ‘US/ British invasion’. Invasion of what? Sudan, or the continent of Africa as a whole? That’s not how US/ British militarism always works, Henry, though when it does go that way, you and Rebecca keep quite quiet, I have noticed.
Been making much effort to get US and NATO bases out of Bosnia, Kosovo and other Eastern European parts? No, you’re happy to see them there. You campaigned for that, did you not?
Other big slaughters much greater than in Sudan are occuring in the 2 countires of Iraq and Afghanistan. OH, but Darfur is the big one you say! We got to call that ‘genocide’ and act as if the other things are just say, misunderstanding? Why not genocides too, Henry?
What I have said about you, is that you ignore entirely how the US and Britain intervene for their own imperialist interests in areas like the Balkans, Africa, former SU, Middle East, Inodnesia, Philippines, etc. You call talk of that ‘prattle’. In your myopic and mistaken view, there are good interventions with the Pentagon, and bad. But in reality, ‘Waging Peace’ goes into battle for more intervenitons, and not for pullouts from interventions you already helped put into motion with your do-gooder claptrap.
‘I suspect you just don’t care.’ These are just dead millions of non-Westerners slaughtered world round by intereventions’ form our home countries of the US and Britain, and the rest of the imperialist gang. Our ‘interventions’ can do no harm by definition, I guess? Because we are all such nice people like you, me and Rebecca, I guess? Never mind that we are the Romans of the modern world. We just got to make sure the barbarians run their affairs in a civilized manner, right, Henry?
Sensible solutions? I offered one to you already, but your love affair with US/ European directed armies had you rejecting it. I said offer up some economic aid. Make it contingent on the killings stopping, too. Easy, workable, and the military industrial complex gets nothing. OH, that’s why it’s so impractical this ‘prattle’ in your book, I imagine. Too easy to implement and nobody makes a profit in the war zone back home.
You’re completely nuts!
Henry, let me respond in kind, and we can terminate our ‘dialog’ at this point. Henry, you are a dumb asshole.
And they wonder why I dislike politics….
I’d smoke a dys-jointed song for you guys called Dylan’s Rainy Day Women.
Grab your umbra here.
Politics is economics carried out with the bullshit added on top, 13th.
Luckily, both Henry and I are advocates of non-violent communication, and despite us comming from different parts of the economic pie, we were able to keep it civil and instructive.
Being “nuts” and “a asshole” are non-violent communication? Hell, that’s duck soup that even I can make, Tony. But don’t stutter on my acct. I agree with Eric’s post that word-violence at a certain point (last resort) is eminent. Likewise, the worst violence is Silence, saying nothing.
I would have liked to see Henry have chance to promote his beliefs in hyperlink, beyond sheer editorial. As we all enjoy fresh commentary, I’m glad the two of you aired exchange, but as he originally surfaced to “defend” (promote?) Rebecca at the podium, I’d liked to have seen her contributions as well (even if they are “partnered”).
Economic pie? Crap, you and I share crust, and even crust-ties! If there’s pie, it’s going in someone’s face, until more than a few of us get invited for the social mince, and not as the chopped meat.
A good friend of mine is in Benin Peace Corps. I try to think outside of my own pied eyes sometimes, but relevance helps.
Silence is Violence. Nice column (both of you!). If it’s common to withdraw by namecall, well I guess even peckerheads chip at the wood. The great politician Walter Lantz taught me that one!
HUD will help?! Happy Umbrage Day. Color me Tenement Flat, but I’m still better off than many, just the same…
13th, it is easy to find Rebecca’s ‘partnered contributions’ since she is the director of ‘Waging Peace’ and also a big wig at the UK Carter Center. Especially at ‘Waging Peace’ there is a lot of pretentious pseudo info about Darfur.
One might read it all at Tinsley Land and leave impressed that they are now well informed, but still not know as little as whether Darfur is the homeland of the Dar people or the homeland of the Fur people Or what languages other than Arabic anybody in the region speaks!
Heck, after all our education on Albanians, I bet you’d still flunk a test on that one, too, 13th. Still, ‘we’ saved the Albanians from ‘genocide’, did we not? lol… Who would ever have believed…..?
And let’s not forget the Hassaniya speaking Sahrawis people of South Western Morocco, that were once a cause celebre of the European do-gooder liberal set like the Tinsleys. Still not liberated and vicitms of a slow moving ‘genocide’, Rebecca and Henry seem to just not care about their fates any more. Send in the US and British troops Now! would normally be their call, but The Morocco King is in good with the US (especially with the Clinton wing of our ruling class)
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) the potash of the Western Sahara does not provoke the passions that crude oil does for imperial ‘humanitarians. And who wants to put an American military base there anyway? We need them in Central Asia between Russia, China, and India and the gas and oil supplies.
No tear drops for oil, 13th!