Darfur activists need to put up or shut up

Excerpt from Alec Brandon's opinion piece - Darfur activists need to put up or shut up - in University of Chicago's student newspaper, May 16, 2006:

The editors of the New Republic were spot-on when said that to "care about a problem without caring about its solution" is nothing but a "sophisticated form of indecency."

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[May 19 2006 Rebuttal by Caroline Buddenhagen, University of Chicago Darfur activists support realistic solutions]

Can US military intervention ever bring justice?

Excerpt from Lance Selfa's opinion piece - Can U.S. military intervention ever bring justice? - in the Socialist Worker May 19, 2006:

The Somalia invasion, memorialised in the film Black Hawk Down, is remembered as a failure. But in its initial stages, the Wall Street Journal hailed it for restoring the US military's "moral credibility." The Journal added, "There is a word for this: colonialism."

If the US intervenes in Darfur, "saving" Darfuris will be the last thing on its mind.

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NYT's Nick Kristof feeds twaddle to his readers

Excerpt from latest opinion piece - Darfur: Dithering Through Death - by NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof:

If other UN officials followed Mr Egeland's undiplomatic example and spent more time being offensive, devoting less energy to diplomatic receptions and more to dragging journalists through the world's hellholes, the globe would be a better place - and the UN would be more relevant.

John Bolton, now the US ambassador to the UN, once suggested it wouldn't matter if the UN's top 10 floors were lopped off. But let's not do that - the UN is far better than the alternative of having no such institution. But take it from this disillusioned fan of the UN system: let's also be realistic and drop any fantasy that the UN is going to save the day as a genocide unfolds. In that mission, the UN is failing about as badly as the League of Nations did.

[What a load of twaddle. Mr Egeland speaks out to raise funds. Thank goodness Egeland, Bolton and the Kristof's of this world are NOT in charge of the US or UN: we'd have World War III on our hands in no time!]