hi Nannete - thanx for the notice & kind words Sunday!

I noticed a story a little while ago about a caucasian mummy recently found in one of NW China’s deserts - another reminder of the relentless journeyings of humanity

underdevelopment/unequal resource sharing between the central gov’t & people in both Darfur & the south of Sudan have b fueled both those conflicts—questions largely unsaked & unaswered are what’s fueling the continuance of conflict? who benefits? why intervention now? why can’t/couldn’t the AU force be supported by the west w/ $$$ & equipment? & many others . . .

I’m trying to wrap my head around so much competing takes on Sudan it’s dizzying - s& am so frustrated by narratives driven by good guys/bad guys roles - & distrust the insistance on “humanitarian intervention” - it’s like someone’s yanking somebody’s chain when (as lenin sez) Clooney & Bolton line up on the same foreign policy initiative

a few links I’ve gathered recently:

href=http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/steinberg080506.html

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n15/waal01_.html

http://leninology.blogspot.com/2006/09/sudan-and-lurid-morality-tales-for.html

have you heard of/read Kevin Snow? (don’t have a link now, mebbe at Znet, or thirdworldtraveler - his own site?) - writing not specifically on Darfur, but the general region

anyhoos, hi!

Hi Arcturus! Good to see you here!

Cool beans, a comment! ;)

I’d heard something about caucasian mummies in China before, somewhere along the Silk Road (of course)… I can’t remember much about them except that some had red hair and the cloth of the clothing they were wearing was of some particular weave that could be traced to...um… Scotland? at some particular early point in history.

I’m sure helpful, eh? lol

On Darfur, yes, that’s how it’s seemed to me too. Lies upon lies upon obfuscations and diverting of attention - the only thing that seems fairly certain is that people are dying.

I’m trying to wrap my head around so much competing takes on Sudan it’s dizzying - s& am so frustrated by narratives driven by good guys/bad guys roles - & distrust the insistance on “humanitarian intervention” - it’s like someone’s yanking somebody’s chain when (as lenin sez) Clooney & Bolton line up on the same foreign policy initiative

Exactly. I don’t write on the issue much, mainly because I don’t follow it closely enough to really know what is going on. If anyone not involved at the higher levels (Sudan, US, China, Russia, etc) knows. I feel like just pointing to the suffering people and saying “Just help them"… but one has to first get through the layers of profiters and their agenda (and, as you say, there definitely are some) in order to do so. Sigh.

I’ve not heard of Snow, but will look him up when I look at the other links. Probably Darfur itself would be be easier to understand in the context of the wider area and surrounding countries. Maybe, ;).

(btw, yr comments on the Clinton/blagher lunch are quiet astute. worth gathering imo.)

Apparently HumanBeams is censoring any mention of Snow’s website ("blacklisted" in the message). What’s that about??? friggin’ pain in the ass at best . . .

anyhoos, here are some of my notes (highly rec listening to the whole 2 part KPFA program):

Keith Snow: his dot com address is all things pass (with no spaces) - urls from it pick up after the intial directory

newsletter: http://www.____uploads/pdf-156Summer 2006 News[1].pdf
~
Begin by looking at the business interests of Joelle Tanguy—cited in your story for “bemoaning over lunch with Reeves the world’s “short attention span” with Sudan"—and the Global Business Compact, whose directors also include Mark Moody Stuart, Richard Holbroke and Betrand Collomb, and Cyril Ramaphosa. If anyone should go on trial for war crimes, or crimes against humanity, the list might very well begin here.

It’s no surprise that the last of these (Cyril) sits on The Coca-Cola Company Int’l Advisory Board and the Unilever Africa Advisory Council, or that the first of these (Stuart) is Chairman of Anglo-American mining, a board member of Royal/Dutch Shell and HSBC Holdings, and—most telling—an adviser to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. Holbroke’s history in orchestrating chaos and terrorism in Africa also demands scrutiny.

All these companies have been involved in the war and pillage in Sudan, and all seek to profit from the “regime change” that Eric Reeves advocates against the Sudanese government. HSBC Holdings provided loans to petroleum companies; Royal/Dutch Shell has supplied aviation fuel to the government’s combat helicopters, and Coca Cola—hungry for gum Arabic from Darfur—continues to be sold there.
letter to Sudan: http://www.____ /journalism.php?jid=158
~

DEPOPULATION & PERCEPTION MANAGEMENT: http://www.____/uploads/html-43matrix_sudan.htm

CENTRAL AFRICA: HIDDEN AGENDAS & THE WESTERN PRESS: http://www.____/ uploads/html-33DRC_Hidden Agendas.htm
Propaganda is often true. It is selective information used selectively and expeditiously to serve a certain purpose. On Africa, the media’s aim is to sow racism, apathy, indifference, inaction and – most critical—a sense of hopelessness in the public mind. This is the coup of the western media. It has succeeded.”
War in Congo has claimed over three million lives since 1998 alone. Innocent civilians have been brutalized, massacred, raped, and tortured by all parties to the conflict. It began with the U.S.-sponsored invasion of Rwanda in 1994, and followed with two subsequent U.S.-sponsored invasions of Congo (1996, 1998). These are not the simple “civil wars” declared by the western press. Even the Rwanda “genocide” (1994) has to some extent been manufactured in the American mind to serve the mythology of tribalism. Meanwhile American green berets and military advisors and Pentagon officials have participated from blackboard to battlefield.
Sierra Leone, Angola, Sudan, Rwanda and Congo/Zaire are wars where factions are armed with U.S. made weapons (M16’s, SAM’s, tanks); where U.S. covert forces undertake brutal secret missions and psychological operations – accountable to no one—behind the headlines. They are wars where the Central Intelligence Agency is deeply and maliciously entrenched in subverting democracy and orchestrating chaos that is expediently advertised – as such—by our dubious media. At the roots however, these are wars like any other war.
Essential to the superalloys and weaponry of the global economy of war are Congo’s cobalt, uranium and columbium tantalite (coltan). Cobalt is elemental to nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons, tank armor, industrial furnaces, aerospace, and for 50 years the CIA has insured the free flow of cobalt out of Congo. The human devastation in poverty, disease, torture and massacres is uncountable. Adjectives do not describe the suffering. Similarly, coltan is essential for cellphones and children’s playstations and companies like Sony and Nokia have been cashing in on this windfall – paid in human blood. While the bloody digressions of Japanese Zaibatsu have to some limited extent been exposed by the New York Times—likely scrambling for corporate leverage and market position—the greater involvement of powerful Americo-European interests remains obscured.”
~
Behind the Numbers: Untold Suffering in the Congo: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=2&ItemID=9832
“A group of physicians reported that about 4 million people have died since the “official” outbreak of the Congolese war in 1998 (1). The BBC reported the war in Congo has claimed more lives than any armed conflict since World War II (2). However, experts working in the Congo, and Congolese survivors, count over 10 million dead since war began in 1996—not 1998—with the U.S.-backed invasion to overthrow Zaire’s President Joseph Mobutu.”
~
State Terror Against Indigenous Peoples in Ethiopia: Another Secret War for Oil?
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Jun2004/snow0604.html
~
Darfur: An Open Discussion About Intervention, Regime Change and the Politics of Genocide:
Five different perspectives on the ongoing crisis in the Darfur region explore the ethical and political questions behind popular calls for humanitarian intervention and regime change in Sudan. Panelists include Co-Director of the IAC in New York, Sara Flounders; Professor of Anthropology, Dr. Elliot Fratkin; investigative journalist, Keith Harmon Snow; researcher on war crimes, Dimitri Oram; and Associate Professor of Anthropology, Enoch Page; and concludes with a panel discussion. This event on the crisis in Darfur was held on July 6, 2006 at Smith College in Massachusetts.
Part 1: http://www.kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=15665
Part 2: http://www.kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=15782
~
Why Sudan rejects UN troops, by Sara Flounders (on KPFA program), September 15, 2006: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=FLO20060907&articleId=3235
The U.S. has maintained that it is essential that UN forces replace the African Union troops because the latter are underfunded, understaffed and under-equipped for the “peacekeeping” role they were assigned to play. However, it is NATO, dominated by the U.S., which was suppos ed to provide logistics, airlifts, equipment and supplies for the African Union force.
The rally is a conscious attempt to divide the movement against the U.S. war in Iraq, further demonize Arab and Muslim people, and to try to sell a new war as a humanitarian effort.
Some of the groups expressing great concern for refugees in Darfur were silent or were active supporters of the Israeli bombing of Lebanon that created over 1 million refugees. They were among the strongest supporters of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. President George W. Bush met with Save Darfur Campaign organizers at the White House and praised their efforts.
Although the Save Darfur Campaign lists many religious and civil rights endorsers, the campaign is an initiative of the most right-wing evangelical Christians and major Zionist organizations.
There’s one topic that all the forces claiming concern for the people of Sudan never mention: the role of imperialism in keeping Sudan poor and underdeveloped. Sudan has vast resources and mineral wealth. Washington’s policy toward Sudan has revolved around inflaming national and regional antagonisms in both the south and the west so U.S. corporations could take control of developing the rich oil, gold, uranium and copper deposits that could make Sudan prosperous.
~
Excellent article: Tactical Use of Genocide in Sudan and the Five Lakes Region
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=GER20060217&articleId=1994
~
“Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999” (Wayne Madsen): http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MAD111A.html

I probably will go search out those comments and save them… maybe make them up into a post or something. Lots of stuff, many questions (about the meeting itself, who payed for it and all that stuff) are being ignored, along with all the rest of it, lol. Plus, I’m still angry ;) Talk about the gang that couldn’t shoot straight, though.

I have no idea why Snow’s site is blocked! I didn’t even know we *could* block a site from being typed in comments, lol. That’ll come in handy for repeated spammers.

If you want, you can email me the site url and I’ll look it up and see what’s going on with that. How very odd.

Related to the other stuff, I came across these articles in Pambazuka Magazine, about small arms in Africa and the damage they do. There is one and then the other is beneath it.

There is so much going on other than what we know is going on that it’s sometimes just overwhelming trying to follow it. Which is, I suppose, the point. Sigh.

Darfur never happend and nothing there is happening. its a peacefull place and nothings going on here.