The Change Starts Here

So where's the change? That's the prattle, some sincere no doubt, some the usual self-serving, time-filling contrived drama the media feels it needs. PE Obama is appointing all these folks who've been around for awhile, doing stuff in the area of what they've been appointed to do. Where's the change in that?

Okay, so this is not a problem for most people who like to see clearly qualified people appointed to important jobs. CNN's poll shows 75% of the public approves of PE Obama's cabinet and other appointments. They're so thrilled with the appointment of Hillary that her approval rating is the highest it's been in ten years.

But for those who are worried, there are a lot of signs and signals about the change to come (beginning when they all take office, which is not until late next month.) The change doesn't have to look big right now to eventually be big.

For instance, in her brief remarks at the announcement of her appointment as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton mentioned several important issues and said: “America cannot solve these crises without the world and the world cannot solve them without America."

After eight years of Bushite unilateralism, of the refusal of the U.S. to take part in global negotiations and treaties on such essential issues as the Climate Crisis and nuclear proliferation, Hillary's statement is positively revolutionary.

She went on to spell out a little of what it means: “By electing Obama our next president, the American people have demanded not just a new direction at home, but a new effort to renew America’s standing in the world as a force for positive change.”

That's change we can believe in, change we need...and change we voted for.

While Robert Gates was a Bush appointee at Defense, he's an advocate for closing Guantanamo, and said he will carry out Obama's intention to end the Iraq war and bring the troops home.

Then there's Susan Rice, appointed as the US Ambassador to the UN (which Obama restored to full Cabinet department rank) who is an advocate for strong responses to genocide, particularly now in Darfur. Darfur has a powerful advocate! Change I can believe in, believe me!

Several articles about the entire national security team make the point that it represents a big change from primary reliance on military force and, to put it more bluntly, bullying, to more balance with diplomacy and aid, so-called "soft power." In the best of these I've seen, Marc Ambinder calls it "smart power."

Smart! Pretty big change there!

Eric Holder, appointed Attorney-General, made a point of talking about restoring Constitutional guarantees and traditional American positions (read: no torture.) More change!

Wednesday, Bill Richardson was named Commerce Secretary, and he talked about how "you open markets and minds with partnerships, innovation and hard work." For those who worry he got short-changed, his vision of the job includes international commerce, and he's on board on the overarching issues of addressing the Climate Crisis and creating the Green Deal economy: he mentioned "innovation" and technology several times, as well as clean energy jobs and--here's a word of change: "manufacturing."

You might say that some of this "change" is changing back, and that's true--but it's no less needed, and it's unfortunately no less change. But it's all change for the future. Manufacturing yes, but as Obama makes clear vis a vis the auto industry, manfacturing new kinds of stuff in new ways--the sustainable, clean energy economy of the future. Infrastructure yes, but not just roads and bridges--weatherizing homes, rebuilding the electrical grid, expanding broadband.

Finally, as Obama himself said, the big change is him. He's already showing that he's bringing intelligence to the presidency that's a huge change. So far nothing has knocked him off stride. The terrorist attack in India? Obama has been saying that a key to problems in that whole part of the world is solving the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. And that turns out to be implicated in that attack.

Joint Chiefs, governors, Republicans-- they're all impressed with what he says, but also with how he listens.

He's already said how important addressing the Climate Crisis will be, that Guantanamo must be closed, the troops brought home from Iraq, etc. He's told the governors that he's going to help the states deal with their crises, with money for infrastructure, but also for the Green Deal. He's indicated that he wants universal health care as part of the economic recovery and rebuilding.

And the American people are behind him. There's another change. He's saying he will do what he always said he would do. Because it's change he believes in.

Palin Lies About Darfur

Of all the "misstatements" and lies VP candidate Palin told or repeated in last night's debate, there is one that is truly immoral.

Palin made a big point of saying she supported a measure in Alaska for that state to divest its portfolio of investments in Sudan, because of that nation's sponsorship of those committing genocide in Darfur. She made it sound as if she backed it, it passed and was now being carried out in Alaska.

It's all lies. Her administration opposed it. Her lack of support--says a co-sponsor--caused the measure to fail.

It's all in this report from ABC News, supported by fact-checking from the Washington Post.

Her revenue commissioner testified against the bill in the legislature, even though it had bipartisan sponsorship. The Democratic co-sponsor was Les Garra, and he told ABC News: "I walked out of that hearing livid," Gara recalled of the February meeting. Because of the Palin administration's opposition to the bill, "We could not get a vote in that committee," he explained. At no point did Palin come out in support of the effort, Gara said.

There was some softening of total opposition later, when the move proved controversial. But the fact is that nothing has yet been done, and right now Alaska holds $22 million in Sudan-linked investment.

Sarah Palin's Alaska is investing in genocide. And before some 70 million Americans, she lied about it.

Update: Two other Palin matters before we forget her for awhile. First, Bill Clinton pointed out in his speech in Florida last week that the next President will need to concentrate on the economy and other domestic crises for at least his first two years, and it will be up to the vice-president to mend fences with world leaders. Think about that for a minute...

Second but not least, Jonathan Turley pointed out Friday evening on Rachel Maddow that VP candidate Palin is the first candidate for president or vice-president who is refusing to honor a lawful subpoena during the campaign. Why is this not a major issue?

Don't Forget Darfur

Refugees from Darfur. Reuters photo.

The Forgotten Genocide

While American politicians obsess about Russia and promote billions in relief for the country of Georgia, the genocide in Darfur goes on. While billions watch the Olympic Games in China, that nation remains the chief enabler of the Sudanese-sponsored rapes and murders.

The politics of the situation are complex, but limited attention span is mostly evidence, if we needed any more, that African peoples living in a drought-stricken land aren't as important as Europeans with oil. The International Criminal Court has accused the president of Sudan of crimes against humanity, and the UN peacekeeping force has been renewed for another year, although their numbers needed to be increased for them to be effective. Earlier this month, Doctors Without Borders had to withdraw staff from several areas because of persistent attacks on them, affecting the medical care of at least 65,000 refugees.

One small hope is the tactic that helped to end apartheid in South Africa: economic boycott. Today the California State Senate will consider a bill to ban any company that does business linked to supporting genocide from receiving state contracts. As the Save Darfur Coalition put it, "It will force companies to make a choice: they can either work with the genocidal government of Sudan or they can work with the state of California."

Readers in California should contact their State Senators and urge them to vote for this bill (the Darfur Contracting Act). Readers in other states should urge their legislators to consider and pass similar legislation. And candidates for Congress in this year's election should answer this question: what are you prepared to do to stop the genocide in Darfur?

Update: Although Barack Obama mentions stopping genocide in Darfur as he campaigns, it was Joe Biden--now his Vice Presidential candidate--who brought it up most passionately in the debates. That's encouraging.

from "Schindler's List"

A Holocaust Stamped "Made in China"

There are celebrities who use their stardom to support causes and candidates they believe in. But rarely has the action of a big name had greater potential impact than the announcement by Steven Spielberg that he will no longer serve as artistic advisor to the Beijing Olympics, because China is not doing enough to restrain the government of Sudan from genocide in Darfur.

It is important because the Olympics are very important to China, and Spielberg's action is part of a larger ongoing effort to pressure China on human rights issues, especially Darfur, through the Olympics. Spielberg's name is globally known, both as the creator of internationally popular movies such as E.T., and also of internationally important films such as Schindler's List.

He does so risking that to the public unfamiliar with the situation, his action seems quixotic. But it isn't. According to the Save Darfur Coalition, China is the main supporter of the Sudan regime, and the main barrier to effective international action to stop the genocide. "With China's protection, Sudanese President Bashir continues his brash defiance of the U.N.," their recent newsletter said. "Just last week Bashir appointed a militia leader who helped orchestrate genocide in Darfur as a senior advisor on ethnic affairs."

China is Sudan's biggest trade partner--it buys 2/3 of Sudan's oil--, its biggest foreign investor and arms supplier. It has opposed and weakened international response through the UN. China wants as much oil as it can get, and not many nations will deal with Sudan. Sudan gets the money--and weapons-- to continue its genocide from selling oil to China.

Continuing efforts include possible boycotts of Olympic sponsors, such as Coca Cola and McDonalds. According to The Guardian: Dr James Smith, chief executive of the Aegis Trust, which campaigns to prevent genocide around the world, said: "This is the biggest message to the Chinese that turning a blind eye to the atrocities in Darfur is unacceptable. Spielberg has demonstrated that collective responsibility means everyone's responsibility."

Spielberg has been urged to make this move for a long time, and suggested months ago that he might. As one commentator put it, " Steven Spielberg has finally decided he does not want to be part of a holocaust stamped "Made in China".

The China Syndrome

Bringing the Dalai Lama to the White prior to officially presenting him with the Congressional Medal of Freedom was a welcome distraction for the Bushites. Photographs with one of the most respected and beloved people in the world and especially in the U.S. helps diffuse the image of the vetoer of life-saving medical care for children, and it draws attention to the 1989 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and away from this year's winner, Al Gore, whose honor is yet to be acknowledged at the White House.

But it sure pissed off the Chinese government. Like most imperialists, it goes nuts when its brutal aggression and even more brutal colonial administration is even implictly, even theoretically or possibly questioned. In this case, China's armed takeover of Tibet included the murder of thousands of Buddhists, and its war against the Dalai Lama (the traditional political as well as spiritual leader of Tibet) has forced it into absurd embarrassments, the most recent of which is outlawing reincarnation without government approval.

But the White House doesn't want to piss them off too much. "We in no way want to stir the pot and make China feel that we are poking a stick in their eye for a country that we have a lot of relationships with on a variety of issues," said press secretary Dana Perino. " No, not with China financing the Iraq war and the further mega-enrichment of Bushites and their cronies, and leaving the piper to be paid by future American generations, one way or another.

Besides, China has become a kind of model for the Bushites: it has shown that a nation can get good p.r. for coming out against tyranny and murder in Darfur and Burma while still do nothing to endanger profits gained in relationships with those countries. And above all, the greatest lesson of China today, though no one wants to say it out loud, is that capitalism without democracy works just great. Something that the Bushites have certainly taken to heart.

Save Darfur Now

The headlines are all variations on UN to Send Troops to Darfur but we've been here before without that actually happening. Gordon Brown, the new Brit Prime Minister (and friend of the Queen---J.K. Rowling, that is) finessed a deal with the French and got Bush's support (after mumbling solidarity on Iraq) for a Security Council resolution, since passed,to deploy an international peacekeeping force of 26,000 "with a tough mandate to stop the massacres of civilians that have driven 2 million people from their homes."

But the Save Darfur Coalition points out that the UN voted to send such a force last August and it never was deployed, for the first time in UN history. The Coalition urges citizens to sign a petition in favor of this deployment.

Letters, faxes, emails and calls to representatives of national governments urging them to actually contribute to such a force also seem in order. This disgrace must end. Save Darfur now.

A Dream Darfured

Everybody talks about the killing in Darfur but nobody does anything about it. When Joe Biden repeated the fact that people are being killed every day there at a Democratic presidential debate, his fellow candidates stood in embarrassed silence. Clearly, China bears a lot of responsibility for international sanctions not working. But Western countries don't want to send a peacekeeping force there, which some observers (including Biden) say could stop the killing virtually overnight. Instead we send them to Iraq where it contributes to more death, including more dead and maimed Americans. And even though the UN is expected to authorize a peacekeeping force, and the Bush spokespeople--including most recently, Condi Rice--talk a lot about genocide and how the world is failing Darfur, it's the U.S. and its failure to pay its UN dues that threatens the peacekeeping effort before it starts.

Global Days for Darfur

The situation in Darfur continues to be dire. And confusing--as optimistic headlines are quickly followed by contradictory ones. There still has been no effective protection for either the population or aid workers. While the US is bogged down with many thousands of troops in the fruitless quagmire of Iraq, it's been said that as few as 2500 US troops in Sudan could make all the difference.

Half a million people have been killed and millions displaced in the violence in Darfur. A UN report warns that an entire generation of children is at risk. The Bush government has given the latest in a series of warnings to the government of Sudan, which is responsible for enabling the violence in the Darfur region, but the US continues to delay doing anything, even in terms of economic pressure.

April 23 to 30 are the Global Days for Darfur--some 332 events in 246 U.S. cities are planned so far. (Check here to see what's happening in your neighborhood.)

A form of protest that proved effective in changing the future of South Africa is being applied to this genocidal crisis: divestment. Eight states in the U.S. (California, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, New Jersey, Oregon and Vermont)are beginning that process by withdrawing state pension funds from any companies doing business with Sudan. Colorado just became the ninth. Dozens of US universities have also divested.

Another form of economic pressure is withdrawing businesses. Rolls-Royce is the latest international company to leave Sudan in protest. (Known here for its classic cars, the company is the second largest manufacturer of aircraft in the world, and the largest British based industry to leave Sudan.)

Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that a possible alliance between Arab and non-Arab rebels against the Sudanese government could change the nature of the conflict.

See It Now: Darfur

I wear my Save Darfur t-shirt enough to know from personal experience that few people know where it is and what's going on there. Now Google and the Holocaust Museum have stepped in to bring the evidence of the ongoing genocide in the Sudan to your computer, via Google Earth.

Using high resolution imagery, it's now possible to see some 1600 destroyed villages, more than 100,000 destroyed homes, schools and other buildings, in addition to seeing exactly where on the earth this is all taking place. Pop-ups provide facts and personal stories for even more understanding.

"When it comes to responding to genocide, the world's record is terrible. We hope this important initiative with Google will make it that much harder for the world to ignore those who need us the most," said Holocaust Museum director Sara Bloomfield in a statement.

You can find instructions on downloading Google Earth and finding the Darfur maps at the Holocaust Museum site here.

Waiting for water in Darfur. EU photo.

Darfur and the World

While hundreds of thousands have been slaughtered, and millions driven from their homes in Darfur, the world has found plenty of ways to look away. Now slowly, slowly they turn. According to an AP story:

A U.N. human rights team investigating crimes against humanity in Sudan's Darfur region zeroed in on the international community Monday for the first time, accusing the world's governments of an "inadequate and ineffective" response to widespread atrocities. In one of the hardest-hitting and most explicit reports in a series submitted to the world body, the team called for U.N. Security Council intervention, sanctions and criminal prosecution.

The Guardian adds: Headed by the Nobel peace laureate Jody Williams, the UN assessors found the Sudanese government was responsible for waging a ruthless campaign resulting in war crimes and human rights abuses. "The principal pattern is one of a violent counter-insurgency campaign waged by the government of the Sudan in concert with Janjaweed/militia, and targeting mostly civilians. Rebel forces are also guilty of serious abuses of human rights and violations of humanitarian law," Ms Williams's team found.

It calls on member states to raise a protection force in the Sudan. Among its other recommendations are that the UN Security Council "freeze funds, assets and economic resources" of those who commit the violations.

How bad is it? According to Time: If it's possible to degenerate from genocide, Darfur will probably do so in 2007. The four-year war that has caused the world's worst humanitarian crisis has spread and atomized. What was once a war zone the size of France has become an area the size of Western Europe. The 7,000 African Union peacekeepers in Darfur are overwhelmed. The threat of pullout hangs over the aid program in southern Sudan and Chad after persistent attacks on its workers. Last year the journal Science estimated the number killed since 2003 at more than 200,000. If news of another humanitarian crisis in Africa sounds grimly familiar, that's partly because the international response has also conformed to type: divided and ineffectual. China, which has large oil concessions in Sudan, continues to sell the government weapons and block sanctions at the U.N. Darfur is a test of man's humanity to man. So far, we're wanting.

It's not that nobody cares. There are efforts to raise money and awareness, such as Amnesty International's Global Music Activism Project, for which Yoko Ono has donated publishing royalties to the entire John Lennon catalog, to raise money for relief efforts in Darfur. But what little relief efforts are possible there now may be halted completely unless the violence is brought under some control.

While all of this--right down to the benefit concerts--seems sadly familiar, there is one new component: as mentioned in An Inconvenient Truth and supported in more detail by a new article in the Atlantic magazine (via Climate Progress ): one of the major causes of turmoil--the fight over dwindling resources in a prolonged drought--has as a major contributing cause: the Climate Crisis. “This was not caused by people cutting trees or overgrazing,” says Columbia University’s Alessandra Giannini, who led one of the analyses. The roots of the drying of Darfur, she and her colleagues had found, lay in changes to the global climate.

The article points out two conclusions from this: that the Climate Crisis contribution adds to the moral responsibility we have to address the Darfur genocide, because If the region’s collapse was in some part caused by the emissions from our factories, power plants, and automobiles, we bear some responsibility for the dying. And that, as the Climate Crisis continues and gets worse, this is likely to be only our first Darfur, and the first climate war of the century that may be characterized by them.

If this war now engulfs an area the size of western Europe, it comes close to what we call the First World War. It is in many way the whole world's first war of this century.

Important Steps in Darfur

Save Darfur just issued a release about the agreement made in Darfur through the good offices of Governor Bill Richardson.

The promises from President Bashir in this agreement are encouraging. They include commitments to:

A 60-day ceasefire with an international peace summit to be held before March 15, 2007.
Sudan's cooperation to work with the African Union and United Nations on the deployment of a hybrid peacekeeping force in Darfur.
Ensuring "zero tolerance" policies for gender-based violence in Darfur.
Free access for humanitarian aid workers and journalists.

Like everything about Darfur, this is likely to be overlooked today. Many are apt to be skeptical because Bashir has made promises before. But if it is implemented, it marks significant change. Allowing aid workers and journalists into the area is in itself a significant step.

Here's the full Save Darfur release. The group adds in its email: We call urgently upon Sudan, the United Nations, the African Union, and the Bush Administration to make these promises become a reality for the long-suffering people of Darfur.

More Darfur

Last time I wrote about the new TV spots from saveDarfur.org, which I found so moving. They presented Americans speaking for the "400,000 killed" who can't speak for themselves. Since then, that spot has been on a lot, and even though I know it's coming with the first deep chord before the first image, it moves me every time. For some reason I am particularly moved by the last face. A grandmotherly type says that the world hasn't done anything about it, someone else repeats "anything," and then a boy, junior high age maybe, dressed like a suburban white American kid, wearing glasses, looks at the camera and repeats, simply, "anything." That anything grabs at my gut every time.

Today I saw a new spot--the same format, but this time featuring Africans talking in the same terms about the fate of their loved ones, and it is also very powerful. George Clooney, who has been to the refugee camps on the Chad side of the border, said on Charlie Rose Thursday that the key to ending this ongoing genocide will be diplomacy, not necessarily the imposition of UN troops. But in either case, it will be people making this an issue, demanding attention to it, that will put the pressure on, and create the constituency for those who must put their political power and will behind insisting on a solution.

So the message is the same. Sign the petitions, write letters. Buy the bracelets and t-shirts saying SAVE DARFUR and wear them. I have and am, and I'm giving them as Christmas gifts. Those words must be part of everyone's perception, because of the two or three things this generation is going to be held most accountable for, Darfur is one. Genocide is happening, affecting millions of people. We can't say this time we didn't know. We do know.

Darfur and the Climate Crisis

Most of the crucial challenges of today and tomorrow are related in some ways, but there is a particularly direct connection between two problems that don't seem to have that much in common: Darfur and the Climate Crisis.

But as former president of Ireland and former UN Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson made a point of saying in an important environmental speech Monday, the economic and social effects of the Climate Crisis will hit the poorest people the hardest, and global heating directly affects some of those poor areas, throwing a vulnerable subsistence into chaos and catastrophe.

Some such areas are already being affected, like Inuit villages in the north but also vast areas of Africa, where persistent drought is diminishing arable land, and various groups may fight over what's left. That's what Kofi Annan, Al Gore and others claim has been happening when Lake Chad dried up, resulting in the ongoing genocide in Darfur, partly a grab of dwindling food-producing land and water.

Kofi Annan also pointed to areas like Kenya where drought partly attributable to global heating is displacing populations, and the spread of malaria, one of Africa's major diseases, to higher regions, as they become hotter and more hospitable to mosquitos. While global heating may be changing the environment in the Arctic, it is likely to be accelerating and exacerbating ongoing desertification in Africa which may have many causes, including manmade ones.

As a global matter, a report last month by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern said that while actions now to curb carbon emissions would cost one percent of world economic output, delay could push the price up to 20 percent. As usual, the brunt of any economic problem hits the poor hardest, even when they live in an area that's less directly affected. That's why Mary Robinson insists that the Climate Crisis be conceptualized as a human rights crisis as well as an environmental one.

 

Save Darfur

The most effective television spot I've seen for a long time is devilishly simple: it is comprised of a number of "people like us"--mostly white, but also Latino and African-American--reading briefly from horrific accounts of black Africans caught in the savagery of Darfur.

To hear a white person say he watched a spouse being raped, and then burned, cuts through the automatic numbness of our inability to understand how this can be happening. The actions are so unbelievable--so foreign to our own lives or even what we can imagine in a place like Iraq--that to see fleeting images of it happening to people we almost never see on our televisions--is incomprehensible. It's too much.

The genocide in Darfur but also in neighboring areas is overwhelming, and we hear almost nothing about it. At times like these, it becomes important to find something we can do.

This simple ad was created for an organization called Save Darfur, which is a coalition of faith-based and humanitarian organizations. Because we have all turned away from seeing this for so long, awareness is the necessary first step to effective international action.

This is a good time, because it seems action is possible. Here are some of the actions you can take, to become a voice for Darfur.

As those of us in the U.S. give thanks for what we have, let us remember that the ripples of injustice, need and violence go far across the seas to a place where great beauty and the worst humans seem capable of coexist in a heartbreaking land. Wearing a wristband, or sending an email isn't much. But it's not nothing.

Adut Wol Manuer, in Washington, DC Sunday. Photo: Jim Young