Jim Moore’s blog: Innovation, Strategy, Public Policy

http://passionofthepresent.org has links to the news stories re: US
Secretary of State Colin Powell’s meetings in Sudan’s capitol. 
Above, Secretary Powell shakes hands with President Bashir.

mla.org/census_map

This is so cool–the Modern Language Association has made an
interactive map showing language concentrations across the United
States, for 30 languages.  Thanks to Jonathan Dube at Poynteronline.

Matt Thompson on the invisibility of Sudan and Darfur

Sudan: The Untold Story
by Matt Thompson

Thirty thousand people have died over
the last year and a half in Darfur, Sudan. Even in a best-case
scenario, 300,000 more Sudanese will die over the summer.

Have you heard?

Maybe you have. The New York Times has given more than 10,000 words to stories that mention Darfur since May 23, says Lexis-Nexus.

In the same period, the paper has devoted at least 17,000 words to stories mentioning Paris Hilton.

[more]

Joseph Siegle, the Douglas Dillon fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, has a must-read editorial in this morning’s (Wednesday, June 30) Christian Science Monitor. Excerpts:

As with the other instances of the
international community rolling back ethnic cleansing, decisive action
is required: Action from the US - and, indispensably, UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the European Union, and the African Union
(AU). Politically, all of these actors must unambiguously and
forcefully condemn the ethnic cleansing in Darfur. Having violated the
terms of membership, Sudan should be prevented from voting in the UN.
And its leaders must be held personally accountable. International
travel by senior government officials and their families should be
barred, their personal assets frozen, and the prospect of war-crimes
charges against General Bashir and his ruling clique brandished.

..Economically, pending resolution of war-crimes charges,
claims can be made against Sudan’s oil exports for compensation to the
victims in Darfur - as well as to reimburse the international community
for the humanitarian resources expended to ameliorate this manufactured
crisis. Simultaneously, sanctions against Sudan’s oil exports can be
instituted. Shippers caught transporting Sudanese oil would lose their
tankers and cargo. The skyrocketing premiums on insurance and freight
charges would surely add pressure on Sudan’s primary customers - China,
Malaysia, and South Korea - to curtail these purchases even if moral
suasion alone would not.

..”Never again,” is the mandate forever etched into our
collective consciousness by the Holocaust. Yet, without an established
international protocol for responding to genocide, honoring this
mandate is never automatic - as we saw in Rwanda. Preventing it this
time depends on a quorum of global leaders acting in unison. By so
doing, they can prevent this disaster from becoming a catastrophe and
forever staining their places in history.

A problem, as I see it, is that the world does not have a single
body charged with monitoring for genocides and “certifying” those that
emerge. We have a treaty that requres intervention in the case of
genocide, but no way to trigger the application of the treaty. As a
result, we requre the “quorum of global leaders” that Seigle properly
asserts is necessary for action in Sudan. My observation is that we did
not get such a quorum in either Nazi Germany or in Rwanda, and we have
so far failed to get a quorum on Sudan. I pray we see a strong quorum
in the next few days.

More on Sudan and Darfur is available on http://passionofthepresent.org

The basic idea of an Africa Action piece that claims Colin Powell’s visit is dangerously naive:  you cannot negotiate with a genocidal regime.

I am sure that I agree with this.  I think that Colin Powell also
understands this.  So far the naive initiatives have seemed to be
Kofi Annan’s.  The US government has been ahead of the world on
Sudan and Darfur–and one possible result of today’s visit is for the
US to declare the
situation a genocide–now based on giving the government one last
warning, and on visiting directly.

Passionofthepresent.org has a good summary of the news and debates surrounding the visit.

Most amazing is the Sudanese government’s announcement that thousands of
refugees are spontaneously leaving the camps and returning home on the
(literal) eve of Colin Powell’s visit–and that the crisis is basically
over.

Hmmm.

So far those who have focused on Darfur in the US have come from across
the political spectrum. We have experienced common cause and
common  communion  of right and left, black and white, and
all faith communities.

This is refreshing in a political year, and necessary in order for a
comparatively small group of people to gain enough traction to achieve
something in the face of the world’s passivity and inertia.

An eventful week in terms of rising attention to Darfur.  I just
posted a summary at http://passionofthepresent.org 

The permalink is http://platform.blogs.com/passionofthepresent/2004/06/weekly_summary_.html

http://www.usaid.gov/locations/sub-saharan_africa/sudan/satelliteimages.html

The US government has made available the satellite images showing patterns of destruction of villages in Darfur Sudan that are consistent with ”ethnic cleansing” and genocide.

Here is a site worth visiting.  Lots of photos, good information on Darfur, and suggestions for personal direct action.