It happened again at today’s peace day observance, somebody snuck a SAVE DARFUR .ORG banner into the International Peace Day signage. What part of Save Darfur from Muslim Encroachment on Western Exploitation don’t these White Man’s Burden throwbacks understand?
I’d rather tolerate freedom of diverse expression in making our public statements, but some of us agree to temper our indignity about Bush, why can’t others play ball? The immediate challenge: how to keep the Darfur war drums from infecting our otherwise peace-seeking message? The only thing the Darfur Meme has to do with Peace are the armed, imperialist peace-keepers the UN wants to send in to protect Sudanese oil and other Western investments from falling into the hands of the Chinese.
These are actual graphics from the SaveDarfur.org website! Above, they are soliciting online petition signatures to favor a militarized Western occupation, read re-colonial administration of the Sudan. Below, they are perfectly satisfied to have President Bush make the appeal to the UN to, hehe, send in the troops.
The Save Darfur Coalition has made a promise to the Sudanese, apparently, in your name. Now they want you to help them keep YOUR PROMISE. What wankers!
Your criticism of these efforts puzzles me. There is a massive human rights crisis going on in Darfur, complete with murder, torture and mass displacement. The Sudanese government is responsible, and neither China nor the African Union troops have done anything to stop it. What are we supposed to do? Stand by and watch people slaughered? Expect them to live long term in humongous Refugee camps where women are raped and all residents suffer violence?
Get a grip, Eric. Their is not one shred of evidence to back up what you are alleging about the UN involverment, unless maybe you are listening to the mad ravings of the President of Sudan, who denies that there even is genocide. It is so easy to criticize, but where are the alternatives? When Hitler tried to exterminate the Jews, we did nothing. Now people are doing something to stop another genocide, and you criticize them. Go figure…..
No, the Sudanese government is not alone responsible for the slaughter, Prairie Chix. Your comment exhibits all the customary propaganda elements in support of US and European military interventionism, Number 1 which is a rabid hysteria against some supposed enemy of the US and its Western European allies that must be immediately stopped, or in this case 2 of them (China and Sudan).
Murder, torture, and displacement is a global problem most often caused by the actual same forces that you want to provide supposed humanitarian intervention into Sudan with! It is not a regional problem confined to Darfur.
Don’t you see the problem that proPeace/ anti-interventionist people might have with calls to intervene militarily? You ask what is the alternative then? And I might ask in return, why can’t you seem to see the alternatives there actually are rather than calling for sending in the troops?
The cost of the ‘War on Terrorism’ is costing us way over several trillions of US dollars. Can’t you call for some some small percentage of that to be used as humanitarian ECONOMIC AID for Africa, rather than more militarism into Africa on the part of the US government? Apparently not. Still, the solution you asked for lies in using economic influence to stop regional fighting rather than military interventionism designed to create yet more Western exploitation of Third World resources.
The ‘Save Darfur’ group is actually a campaign for military intervention into Africa rather than an effort to stop it. As such, its propaganda needs to be exposed and not encouraged. In the weaks ahead we can expect this campaign to increasingly move in the worst direction. We should not participate in it, but should boycott it instead.
Did you not read my article on this blog about the reportage on how the French has just entered neighboring Chad, which shares borders with Darfurweeks, all under the flag of the United Nations Security Council? You are pushing for more troops under UN Security Council control to once again violate the territorial integrity of another nation. The UN rather than upholding international law has become an agent of the Pentagon in violating those laws. By cheerleading these efforts you are actually helping the international Right Wing continue to continually violate international laws.
Actually, there are two regions in Africa (at least) with a worse record of mass mayhem than in Sudan. Where is your call to end the US started conflict in Somalia? Where is your call to help end the mess that the French and Belgians have made with US and British support of Eastern Congo and Rwanda? Where is your campaign against the new Pentagon command center called AFRICOM?
You are silent on these important issues yet go into a hysteria to stop China, in essence. Work on your own government first, PLEASE. Stop their military interventionism rather than asking that it be used in yet another African country.
Sorry, Tony, I just want to see the killing and raping stop. If that is a less high-road postion than yours, so be it. True, Africa is a F.U. place and foreign intervention is behind lots of it. But tell me: what solutions are you proposing to protect the Darfurian residents, especially considering how well-educated you are about the history? It sounds like you are saying we should stand by and tolerate it because it is bad all over.
I personally find a big difference between sending in a US peacekeeping force to stop genocide and a unilateral preemptive invasion of another country like the US carried out. And I think it is justified when it is to protect civillians from murder.
P.S. Just to set the record straight, Eric had it wrong when he said a “Save Darfur” banner was snuck into the Peace Rally for the International Day of Peace on Sept. 21st. I asked him to correct it, but he did not. There was no deception involved, the organizer asked for the banner to be brought.
How can you believe any author who doesn’t check the facts before making outrageous statements?
PrairieChix, I don’t doubt your good motives in being concerned about Darfur for one instant. Others, too, feel concerned about the mass killings that have occurred in that region and there is a division amongst some in the local Justice and Peace Commission group about what stance to take. The last issue of the paper had 2 diametrically opposed viewpoints published about whether calling for intervention is a good thing or bad.
But Darfur is not the only issue we face. I would argue that it is not even the principle issue in regards to Africa we in the national antiwar community face, yet somehow, most of the Save Darfur people seem to think that it is? I think that it principally due to money being pumped into this blowing this issue up from the Right Wing of the political spectrum.
You say that there is a big difference in your view between sending in the troops to save lives, and sending them in to murder people, as in Somalia perhaps? That’s is always the argument behind calling for humanitarian military intervention to be always principally directed by one’s own government, one might add. After all, you are not calling for the Arab League to send in troops, but the US controlled UN Security Council and/or the European Union, etc. to do so.
But how is that so different from people who called for the same to have Saddam Hussein removed from power? It is not. And many called for the troops to supposedly be sent in to save the women of Afghanistan from the Taliban. All US military interventions are claimed to be humanitarian, are they not?
What is different about Darfur in this regard? Nothing. That is the reason we need to stick to being for a non-interventionist approach, instead of trying to pick and choose. Our government is not trustworthy when it sends in the military.
Hell, I don’t even think they should be sent in to help the people of New Orleans and coastal Mississippi, let alone a remote unobservable area in another country like Darfur. There are other solutions to problems than calling in troops. The troops were sent in to New Orleans, and still that area is left a mess today! Same as with Haiti. Same as with Kosovo and East Timor.
Let me touch on the question now about the banner on Darfur that was brought to the International Day of Peace vigil. IMO, there is no way to police banners brought to peace activities. People simply have differing opinions about different issues. They will put their opinions out on their own banners and they will use them.
I have a banner that calls for US Out of Africa! You had one that called essentially for US Into Africa! At a ‘Save Darfur’ rally in Denver I had my banner out, and I was received quite hostilely by some I might add. Similarly you will find that some don’t take kindly to your banner calling for the US to intervene into Africa. Some don’t believe that that interveniton will be humanitarian, though of course you assure us that it would be.
BTW, did you know that Blackwater is already in South Sudan, and is looking forward to intervening in Darfurintervention, too? Here is there newsletter where they mention they’re eagerness to do so.
http://www.blackwaterusa.com/btw2006/archive/071706btw.html
Do you think that this time they will be humanitarians instead of murderers as in Iraq? I rather doubt it. They will be war profiteers as they were set up to be.
PrairieChix, I hope that we can continue to talk about this in a cordial manner. I think that you have good intentions, but the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, it is often said. Please reconsider your pro-intervenionist position in regard to Darfur. Actiivstinterventionists are Activistslimited in number and should work together, rather than lock horns if we can avoid it.
Best wishes.
You totally missed my point about the false accusations regarding the Darfur Banner at the peace rally. To state publicly that someone “snuck” in a banner indicates that something dishonest was done or that it was for their own purposes. It defames the person who brought the banner. The fact that Eric wrote this without checking the facts, and then refused to correct it when they were brought to his attention privately, speaks volumes about the accuracy of this site and the trustworthiness of its authors. This was not a matter of being unable to control the banners displayed. I am opposed to public criticism of people working in the peace community — we can discuss our strategy differences without making accusations of dishonesty, or defaming fellow peace workers on blogs.
You wrote earlier that ‘the organizer’ asked that a ‘Save Darfur’ banner be brought to the action. ‘Organizer’ of what? And who was that ‘organizer’, PrairieChix? I thought that the J&P as a whole organized the vigil?
Rather than talking about whether intervention from the US government should be sought to go into a region of Sudan, you seem to only want to talk about the word ‘snuck’ and say that Eric’s use of it implies some level of criminality? Not really though.
I ‘snuck’ my signs demanding an end to US intervention in Africa into a ‘Save Darfur’ rally in Denver and I don’t think that I was sneaky at all in doing it. You and others had the right to bring any sign you feel expresses your beliefs as far as I am concerned. But some people at the ‘Save Darfur’ rally were out right nasty when I showed up with my signs. So emotions run high on this issue of intervention versus non-intervention, whether the region of intervention be in Darfur, Iraq, Afgahnistan, or Yugoslavia. I find it upsetting that so many in the ‘Peace’ camp seem to be for military interventions. I find that painful, really.
Some people don’t agree with your position just like many don’t believe that demanding an end to US interventions in Africa is right, as my signs ask for. However, I do think that I was asking for no US intervention into Darfur at a pro inAfghanistanterventionist rally, and you were demanding US interventionism at a rally where the main theme was asking for an end to US interventionism in other parts of the world. What do you think?
BTW, one other ‘peace’ leader in Colorado Springs actively working to get the US to intervene into Sudan, also was for intervention into Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein. Was that the case with you, too? Or were you against the US ‘humanitarian’ intervention to take Saddam Hussein out of his position of power?
One thing we do probably agree on, is that we both probably want economic aid to be given to help the people of Sudan out? Oh wait a sec! You want economic sanctions to be applied though, don’t you? Why? Do the folk of Sudan have too much money in your opinion, or what?
I’m not being sarcastic here. I just think it rather impossible to go micro-managing when you want bad US governments to intervene in the affairs of other nations, and when you don’t. I’m just think we should not boss other nations around whether we think it good to or not. Frankly, our government ‘leaders’ don’t know their asses from a hole in the ground.