COPS Darfur
All murderous tyrants will be moderately pursued until something else distracts us.
Fri Mar. 13, 2009 11:20 AM PDT
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Mark Fiore is an editorial cartoonist and animator whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, and dozens of other publications. He is an active member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, and has a web site featuring his work.
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Comments
Never mind the entertainment, here is the real scoop.
Submitted by Trollstein on Sat Mar. 14, 2009 2:25 PM PDT.
The cartoon is not inaccurate. It is however, a VAST oversimplification.
Once again, the leader of the Troll kingdom comes to the rescue of the true story (and adds necessary depth and perspective).
Typically, North Africans do not consider themselves “Arabs”. Egyptians, Libyans and the tribes of the North East Sudan are a genetic mix of Arab (due to migration originating from the Arabian Peninsula) African, and a small amount of Greek/Turk. Moving South and West, the ethnic mix becomes strait African. The West (Darfour) Sudanese are typically Muslims while the South is the second oldest Christian population in Africa, only about 35 years younger then the Oldest Christian population in the entire world (outside of the Jerusalem area). So old in fact that a small percentage are Jews ( . . .were Jews, until they fell slaughter to the earlier wave of genocides).
According to an eye-witness, who’s life story is posted on the United Nations web page, literally millions of his (Southern-black-Mandingo) people have been killed and abducted into slavery in the Muslim/Arabic North. Rapes were also extremely commonplace.
This went on for over a decade and was typically ignored by the international press. When the mass murdering did get any mention, it was typically characterized as a “civil war”, which is not inaccurate, but mischaracterizes the overall situation because the civil war was the proximate effect of the genocides. The Southern victims were generally characterized as “rebels”. Pretty much the only press person who was devoted to exposing this was Pat Robertson—through his “700-club” broadcast network. The liberals of the world were far too occupied condemning Israel to be bothered with any such distraction. Especially so since the Sudanese victims were NOT Arabs/Muslims. Included in this group were Nobel Peace Prize winners Nelson Mandella and Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu, neither of whom lifted a pinky-finger to aid these fellow Black-Africans. Instead, Nelson Mandella was busy asserting his “brotherhood” with Yasser Arafat. Those, my liberal friends are the true-facts.
One of the very few things that Bush-W did right was to start pushing back. Not to award him too much credit--as I believe he did not push back nearly hard enough. However, compared with the totally lame response of the Clinton Admin., a small miracle was nonetheless, still a miracle. The result of the pressure was that a peace treaty between the North and South (and limited Southern autonomy) followed.
Pesky thing about state-sponsored death-squads . . . They can’t simple be deactivated at will. Thus, the rivers of blood in the South were not completely dry, when the so called “civil war” moved West to the (Muslim) Darfour region. As if by magic, all of a sudden the celebrities began gathering. George Clooney, Madeline Albright and Samantha Power, just to name a few. Although I had been active in this cause for over a decade, when I met Samantha Power at a pro-Darfour rally in NY’s Central Park, she listened for about 10 seconds--until I mentioned the South, at which time she promptly pretended to receive a cell-phone call and wandered away (one more Troll hero falls by the wayside.)
What’s with China? They have a stake in the politics since oil is involved and there are also vast mineral commodities that the Chinese want/need. We don’t want to piss them off too badly because they buy our (likely worthless) treasury bills—so Bush-W looses back his 1-point and two more--for his retarded handling of our economy.
What’s the bottom line?
The Leftists are trying to wake up but can’t quite drag their arsses out of bed. Why? Because doing so would still require two conclusions that they (we) are generally loathed to accept.
1. The world might just need a ‘police-officer‘ every now and again.
2. The United Nations is much less then worthless in this (supposedly appointed) role.
PS> If the Southern victoms are included in the totals proffered, the number of casulaties is already into the millions, not the 450-k mentioned by Fiore's alter-ego, officer Joe.
Respectfully submitted~
So, what is the United States supposed to do about this?
Submitted by GarySeven on Mon Mar. 16, 2009 2:57 PM PDT.
Ultimately, the question is actually, 'how many hundreds of billions of dollars worth of so-called defense spending is this going to set us back, here'?
What's the American angle? Will the United States be forced/conned into riding to the rescue, or are there other ways that we can deal with/be effective, somehow, in this situation that doesn't require air-dropping the 82nd Airborne into a foreign country to save it from itself?
The previous poster mentioned petroleum in Darfur. One way that we can help to protect oil-bearing nations that have problems and no means of defending themselves from greedy outsiders is to press ahead with alternative energy research.
When we can transport ourselves without imported petroleum, and China steals the secret from us, and then they can transport themselves without imported petroleum, then other countries will likely follow suit, and the contention for oilfields worldwide will diminish drastically, if not just vanish altogether. As long as there's demand for something located in a third-world country, there'll be first-world business interests in this country and in europe and east asia trying to figure out how to get it. So, instead of marching Johnny into another quagmire, let's see the science dept. really hit one out of the park, here. Congress could also help by shifting demand from overseas locations to our own offshore oilfields, such as they might be, and by getting people to reduce their demand for petroleum through conservation practices. Current efforts and market forces have resulted in a short-term oil GLUT in Texas at the shipping ports, so 3 cheers for progress there, but the long-term goal of simply not being reliant on petroleum as an energy source anymore, especially imported petroleum gotten under questionable circumstances from equally questionable countries, well I think a lot of people have the same view that I do, that it's not 'the haps' and we need to evolve, here, somehow.
Insofar as the violence in Darfur is concerned, well, there's one way to deal with that, and it's not a means restricted to the United States by any stretch of the imagination, and it's called, 'military ground forces, and air power'. Question is, does the international community support squashing the dictator, will countries like France, Britain, Russia, and China lend their arms and armies for the purpose, and once having done so, will that simply lead to more and more and more of military alliances being used to step on foreign countries that don't govern as we think they should? How about their neighbors, if all neighboring countries decide to have closed borders with Darfur, and no air cargo is permitted to fly to/land in Darfur, would that not put an end to the festivities, eventually? With all the millions that live in Africa, why have Darfur's neighbors not decided to unify, and act of themselves to stop this, after all these years? What ethic do they support or choose to personify, the mute witness, the willing accomplice, the silent supporter, so forth, and so on? Before Darfur, there was Rwanda, Hutu vs. Tutsi. Africa has a very bloody history. Remember Idi Amin? How about Winnie Mandela and necklacing? How about dead dutch farmers in Zimbabwe? Africa, by all reports, is a somewhat more violent continent, and there is christian vs. muslim, black vs. white anger and violence. But, ultimately, the burden of dealing with this kind of thing, dealing with violence, encouraging civility, public education, falls to residents of that continent themselves. If Darfur's neighboring countries stand by idly and do nothing/say nothing, while people are killed in Darfur, then they have tacitly given permission for this kind of thing, and until you address that, then any talk of assistance or intervention from abroad is moot.
Do any companies based in the U.S. do business in Darfur, do we have any government offices, there? If so, they should cease and desist, and/or close and come home, in protest. If the people that run the country have decided to be like this, then the least we can do is show that we do not condone it, that it is not 'business as usual', and they won't be doing business with our citizens/our country, and China and other nations should do likewise. That's my view.
Also, will Mother Jones be doing a sober, no-spin, no-frills report on actual facts and figures and gory details about Darfur? Cartoons are fun, but to really tell the story honestly, more is required, and might possibly yield insight helpful to putting a stop to the whole thing.
Klaatu marachas necktie
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