Tim – Page 32 – geistweg

October 10, 2006

Darfur conflict continues

As peace in Darfur continues to be an elusive dream and the United Nations postures but remains hesitant to send troops without the consent of the Sudanese government, a flurry of reports of new attacks streamed out of the region this weekend. According to the Guardian, these renewed hostilities have been ongoing since August, leaving several hundred people dead.

The motives for the attack are unclear. The report points out that thousands of African migrants from the Zaghawa and Massalit tribes moved into the area after drought struck north Darfur in the 1970s. They started cultivating land belonging to the Habbania. Although there was always minor tension, some witnesses said the Habbania chose this moment to attack as they feared the possible arrival of foreign peacekeepers would allow the newcomers to settle permanently.

Other evidence suggests that the attacks were in response to raids by rebels from the National Redemption Front, which rejects an internationally brokered peace deal signed in May. According to one Habbania leader, “we attacked after we reported the incidents many times to the government and after we were provoked and attacked”. He said the rebels killed the brother of Agid Ayadi, a militia leader with links to the Sudanese army.

But witnesses claimed that Agid Ayadi had organised a meeting to get recruits for the attacks on the African villages. Two people recognised high-ranking government officials in uniform at the meeting, where the militia leaders boasted of having government blessing for the raids. The local government commissioner told the UN’s investigators that the attacks were a response “to earlier attacks by the rebels”.

Jean Christophe, a protection officer for the UN mission in Sudan, gave a third possible reason for the attacks – “the location of the emptied villages matches the map of oil concessions in south Darfur, so oil may have something to do with it.”

Even now, as reports from the UNHCR claim that they’re preparing to move several refugee camps further into Chad (away from the fighting), one has to wonder if they learned any lessons from Rwanda. With reports of Chadian military involvement in other border skirmishes, it’s hard not to draw parallels between the camps in Chad and those that existed in Zaire.

October 9, 2006

Mass grave unearthed

In a case that could easily appear on Prime Time television, residents of Menden, Germany have unearthed a mass grave that’s believed to be from the Holocaust. The grave, containing 51 bodies, appeared to be made up of mentally or physically handicapped victims.

Twenty-two of the skeletons appeared to be of children ranging from newborns to 7-year-olds. Some showed signs of physical or mental disabilities, such as those associated with Down syndrome, he said.

Maass, a prosecutor at the Dortmund-based Central Office for Investigation of Nazi-era Crimes, said he had begun a criminal investigation for at least 22 counts of murder. He declined to say who tipped off authorities about the grave.

An unnamed witness is said to have alerted prosecutors to the gravesite’s location, but nothing further has been released on the circumstances of this information. Despite the difficulties of successfully prosecuting a 60 year-old case from World War II, Maass stated that he was going forward with the investigation.

October 9, 2006

Myspace to aid refugees

Myspace, the social networking website, is putting together a series of concerts to raise money for humanitarian relief in genocide plagued Darfur. The bands involved have all agreed to donate a portion of their ticket sales to Oxfam, who are attempting to help refugees (some 2.5 million) in neighboring Chad.

September 27, 2006

Darfur Peace and Accountability Act

After swapping some language and dropping an amendment, the Senate (and House) passed the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act (HR3127) this week. The bill was originally passed by the House in April but stalled in the Senate when the dropped, which would have protected States from lawsuits if they divested from companies who do business with Sudan, became a sticking point.

The National Foreign Trade Council, a business organization with more than 300 member companies, lobbied against the provision because it has recently sued the state of Illinois, charging that Illinois’ divestment law is unconstitutional. The trade group’s president, William Reinsch, said the provision would have interfered with the organization’s case against Illinois, although he also said the group would have opposed divestment in the absence of an existing court battle.

“The president of the United States gets to deal with foreign policy, and the governor of Illinois does not,” said Reinsch, who worked with congressional and executive authorities to have the provision stripped from the bill.

How a state or individual’s right to divest from a particular company falls under the umbrella of “foreign policy” is murky at best, and at least one Congresswoman is determined to patch the gap. Rep. Barbara Lee (Oakland) stated that the debate concerning the bills interference in pending court cases was a smokescreen.

“Concern about the constitutionality of state divestment campaigns is just a smokescreen to cover for efforts by the financial services industry to quietly kill a divestment movement it sees as an inconvenience,” said Lee, who introduced new legislation late last week to make another attempt at providing divestment protection for states.

The bill in question is H.R. 6140 (Darfur Accountability and Divestment Act of 2006). Whether of not this bill makes it out of the House, the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act is a long-awaited first step in confronting the ongoing genocide in the Republic of Sudan.

September 25, 2006

Banned Books Week

On May 10, 1933, trucks loaded with 25,000 books from public, state, and university libraries rolled into the Opernplatz in Berlin. Members of the Sturm Abteilung and Nazi Student Groups placed the books on wooden pallets and proceeded to set them on fire. It was considered a “funeral pyre of the intellect.”

Across Germany, Nazi youth held similar ceremonies, clearing books out of libraries, temples, and churches. Eventually, the German Student Association created a list — Zwölf Thesen wider den undeutschen Geist – consisting of twelve criteria they thought needed to be met for acceptable German literature.

During the Opernplatz burnings, Goebbels gave a short speech to the gathered crowd:

The era of extreme Jewish intellectualism has come to an end and the German revolution has again opened the way for the true essence of being German. This revolution was not started at the top, it burst forth from the bottom, upwards. It is, therefore, in the very best sense of the word, the expression of the will of the Volk. There stands the worker next to the bourgeois, student next to soldier and young worker, here stand the intellectuals next to the proletariat.

During the past fourteen years while you, students, had to suffer in silent shame the humiliations of the November Republic, your libraries were inundated with the trash and filth of Jewish “asphalt” literati.
[…]
Therefore, you are doing the right thing as you, at this midnight hour, surrender to the flames the evil spirit of the past. There the intellectual basis of the November Republic is crushed to the ground. But from the rubble will arise victoriously the Phoenix of a new spirit, a spirit that we carry forth, that we nourish and to which we give decisive weight.

Among the authors that eventually made the Student Association’s list was Helen Keller. In an open letter to the students, she wrote:

History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas. Tyrants have tried to do that often before, and the ideas have risen up in their might and destroyed them.

You can burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe, but the ideas in them have seeped through a million channels and will continue to quicken other minds. I gave all the royalties of my books for all time to the German soldiers blinded in the World War with no thought in my heart but love and compassion for the German people

I deplore the injustice and unwisdom of passing on to unborn generations the stigma of your deeds.

The thirst to silence ideas continues today. In 2005, there were 405 attempts to remove books from libraries, and it’s estimated that only one in five challenges actually gets reported to the ALA. A dim reminder that even as we take a stand for freedom and democracy in other people’s country, we continue to struggle with the most basic of liberties in our own.