Lay Down the Law to the Killers of Khartoum By Kenneth Roth, published in The International Herald Tribune, June 3, 2004. When foreign ministers from major countries meet in Geneva on Thursday, June 3, to address the horror in Darfur, they must demand in no uncertain language that Sudan's government stop the ethnic cleansing there. GENEVA: When foreign ministers from major countries meet in Geneva on Thursday to address the horror in Darfur, they must demand in no uncertain language that Sudan's government stop the ethnic cleansing there. A million people have been chased from their homes in the west of Sudan; untold thousands have been murdered or raped. Hundreds of thousands face imminent death from starvation and disease. The public knows little about their plight because the Sudanese government has been refusing visas to humanitarian workers and journalists, and entering Darfur over the border from Chad is risky. But the Darfur crisis is just as pressing as Bosnia in 1993, if not more so. The United Nations recently called it the world's biggest humanitarian disaster. The foreign ministers meeting in Geneva should commit generous resources for humanitarian relief and human rights monitoring; insist on unhindered access; demand that the appointed UN humanitarian coordinator be allowed to take up his post, and ensure that humanitarian programs do not inadvertently promote ethnic cleansing. But they must not stop there. As in Bosnia, the people of Darfur need foreign aid so desperately because armed forces have been committing crimes against humanity in their villages. Unless those crimes are stopped, reversed and punished, the humanitarian crisis will continue. Left to its own devices, the Sudanese government will not stop those crimes; on the contrary, it is sponsoring them. Deploying militia known as Janjaweed with the backing of government troops and aircraft, it has pursued a scorched-earth campaign against the members of three African ethnic groups. Hundreds of villages have been left in smoking ruins. Intense international pressure is needed to force the government to end these atrocities and permit the displaced to return home. Last week, Human Rights Watch and others briefed the UN Security Council, the body most capable of putting pressure on Sudan. We told of the deadly campaign in Darfur. We described the remedial steps needed. Council members listened attentively. But their public statement fell short of what is needed. When the Security Council wants to insist on action, it adopts a mandatory resolution under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. But in the case of Darfur, it issued only a nonbinding statement. Instead of "demanding" action, it politely "urged" it. It did "condemn" the atrocities - a useful step. But it didn't even name the perpetrator, as if these government-directed atrocities were somehow spontaneous eruptions. Sudan's government undoubtedly noticed these distinctions. A few days later, on May 28, its aircraft attacked a village in northern Darfur on market day, killing at least 12. In a weeklong spree that coincided with the Security Council statement, 3,000 Janjaweed were reportedly marauding in southern Darfur, burning villages and killing civilians, apparently heeding President Omar al-Bashir's plea to "secure" the area. These atrocities make a mockery of a cease-fire agreement reached on April 8. Western governments are filled with excuses for why more can't be done. The African Union is handling it, they say. The African Union is playing a useful role trying to implement the cease-fire agreement, but it has no mandate to protect civilians or reverse ethnic cleansing. Nor does it begin to have the clout of the Security Council. Pressing too hard on Darfur might upset the peace process in southern Sudan, they say. There, a conflict decades long is waning, with a milestone political agreement signed last week. Growing international attention to Darfur has not upset that process. But Khartoum can hardly be a reliable partner for peace in the south if it is simultaneously murdering civilians and blocking emergency relief in the west. But where will peacekeepers for Darfur come from? some governments ask. The African Union has offered limited troops to protect cease-fire observers. But commitments in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in Africa mean that Western militaries are depleted. With slaughter raging in Darfur, the only way to avoid the need for peacekeepers is to send an unequivocal message to Khartoum now. It is time to move from lip service to conviction. The Security Council should insist, in mandatory language, on pain of targeted sanctions, that ethnic cleansing stop and conditions for the safe return of the displaced be established. Only such clarity stands a chance of being heeded by the killers of Khartoum. Kenneth Roth is executive director of Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch

Are you pro-life? Against abortion? If yes, here is golden oppurtunity to prove it. Stop my abortion

^Or lemming. Khalaf, Without sounding laconic, humans love life. When everything is smooth sailing, they feel no need for God.

Originally posted by Mr. Red Sea: they have something in common in being children of Satan. Satan is a real being that sires children? How do the children of satan look like? Horns, tail and walk around with pitch-fork?

Originally posted by Jaylaani: simply personal opinion of his and I agree with him so as many others. With the caveat: not all opinions are created equal. Some carry greater merit than others. Not all the twirls and swirls of sophistry and verbal legerdemain will absolve this dude from what he said. Dumb thing for him to say. Somalis are funny group. I get a kick out of meeting pitch black somalis, who you can't see their face if it wasn't for their teeth (the lucky few), tell me -- pointblank -- that they're arabs. Yeah right! And I'm the emperor of China!

Originally posted by KEYNAN22: IQ tests are based on education not intelligence as they claim to be. Interestingly, IQ tests were originally devised to sort out children who need extra help from those who didn't. It was intended to help children with learning disabilities early on in their schooling life before it was too late. It was never meant to test intelligence. This notion of IQ scores testifying to someone's intelligence was something imbued much later. In his own words Alfred Binet (the inventor of the IQ test) writes: “a general device for ranking all pupils according to mental worth.†Binet also noted that “the scale, properly speaking, does not permit the measure of intelligence, because intellectual qualities are not superposable, and therefore cannot be measured as linear surfaces are measured.†Note the part in bold, it directly refutes the mere idea of actually measuring intelligence. As intelligence is not "superposable," meaning intelligence comes in many forms and you can't combine all into a single unit. source

Originally posted by Femme: ... and edit if I don't like it. That, by definition, makes you unjust. You sound like a little mean girl with ant farm!

As someone mentioned, every group of people has their share of racists. A better question is who's more racist: men or women.

Isn't this the same thing you posted in another thread with different title? What are you trying to prove?

It's called vying for the market place of ideas. If Christians are spreading half-truths to win the hearts of their audience, well that kinda gives you as a muslim something to do. Get going!

What is this based on? IQ scores?

^^So are Muslim Arabs. Darfur: A Genocide We can Stop

Amelia, If the job is contractual based as you said, then no tax will be deducted from your monthly (or weekly) pay. However, when tax time comes around you can claim all sorts of outrageous expenses. Like $1000 cell phone bill; $1500 on gas/transportation; every penny you spent to do your job can be claimed on your tax return.

Yes, any girl can propose to me. Provided she passes my riffraff test.

Originally posted by Khalaf: How do you explain that? What's there to explain? Humans love life too much that they'd do anything to preserve it.

Originally posted by Castro: How then do you explain the United States? The exception that proves the rule. But even the US is not entirely impregnable to secularization tide sweeping through the industrialized world. Polls show more and more Americans are eschewing traditional religions for secularism and neo-paganism. A better conclusion could have been neither education nor wealth is a very good indicator of faith, or lack thereof. But the overall pattern across the globe emphatically shows direct corrolation between religiosity and wealth and education (# of professionals not just literate). For example, in the West the upper echelons of academia is over represented by non-believers. The poorer regions of Europe (S. Europe, Balkans etc) are more intensely religious than their well-off counterparts. HOw many countries can you come up with that are rich and at the same time benighted? Or the vice versa? Not too many.

This post is what you get when someone had too much loco in their cocoa.

Originally posted by Khayr: limit GOD to our own RELATIVE, limited, understanding. I'm curious Kheyr and I've been wanting to ask you this for sometime: do you have personal relationship with God that the rest of us aren't in on? You're soooo sure of things sometimes. Like our understanding of God being relative and limited. From whence did you get such illuminating ideas? How do they come to you? Via bolts of lightening? It is very hard to be humble and 'GOD FEARING' in an Age and TIME, wherein FOOD can be ordered over the food or net-in an instant. If this was true, how do you explain the fact upwards of 85% of the people in our world believing in some form of Higher Being? It seems to me, based entirely on the facts, it's a lot harder to have no faith in God than the other way around. Just like it's a lot harder to swim against the flow of river than not. About the article, the Pope got it wrong. It's anachronistic to suggest wealth and indigence predicate migratory patterns of faith. That misses the point entirely. Education is the absolute bare requirement for prosperity. The disadvantaged are generally benighted, while the privileged are highly educated. Therefore, we can establish that education is the driving force for dropping rate of faithful in the West or Rich World.

To sway this skeptic, you need: incontestable evidence for either Alien existence or governmental coverup. Sorry but personal testimonies and anecdotal accounts mean peanuts.

Originally posted by NGONGE: I’ll share a secret or two with you ( SB can join you if he likes). To what end? Certainly not to enlighten me. Not that you inherently unable to, just didn't deliver this time. My knee-jerk reaction to your (yet!) unmitigatedly prolix post was it's tone. So typical of you, so Manichean... dismissing anyone who disagrees with you as lacking ability to understand what you write. Sometimes that's true and in other times not so. Thus, it's incumbent on you to show which (translation: provide reasons and facts) and not reach in for your ready-made defense of incredulity of your detractors. Rather musty, passe by now don't you think? Case in point. I fully understood everything you squiggled down and came to a disparate, reasoned conclusion. In fact, your entire agruement is based on easily refutable premise: FEAR is what restraints man from debauchery, turpitude and lasciviousness. There were holes in your arguement large enough to fly several jumbo jets through 'em.

^^You get off at bloviating, don't you? Cheez man, how do you expect me to read all of that and find time to read other posts. I propose every post, from henceforth, be vetted for brevity, for brevity is soul of wit.

Xiin, Waayo Iyada? And you give Serenity 3 pts when it's self-evident to everyone her posts to you scream a dame drunk on the grapes of wrath... she got a chip on her shoulder as evinced by her ceaseless enthusiasm to bicker with you at every turn. I think you're waaaaaaaaaaaaay too nice.

The success of Somaliland doesn't sit well with me as well. Everytime I'm reminded of Somaliland's success, inexorably and helplessly I lose myself in paroxysm of envy and hate. I keep asking myself: why them and not us? These self-pity binges last quite sometime before they subside.

Galool, Much belated welcome. A word of advice: Idleness is the devil's workshop. We dislike idle members, those that stay silent, lurk around but never share their wisdom with us. So if you aint gonna say much, kindly fudge off! Originally posted by xiinfaniin: It’s not feasible for women to have multiple xalaal husbands’, walaal, but it’s possible for men. Women do and can have multiple husbands! It's called polyandry. You may have a point on the Xalaal business.

Originally posted by MC Xamar: Are you for real, SB? I think so, yeah. Are you?