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Genocide in Darfur: Brought to you by that most peaceful religion on earth..... Islam.

actually, religion's role is not the most important factor in the genocide by far. I would more likely call it genocide: brought to you by oil, ethnic tensions, and corruption. I would argue that religion, if indeed it is a factor, plays a secondary role to the above factors.

Dream on

Ignorance knows neither bounds nor shame...

How easy to condemn the religion of 1,000,000,000+. A religion that by the way encompasses the entire Judeo-Christian tradition and embraces all of Judeo Christian prophets, without turning them into idols ala ... you guessed it.

Timothy McVeigh was a committed Christian.

In Waco, Texas, David Koresh was the prophet of a heavily armed Christian sect.

In Utah, there are Christians who practice polygamy and arrange marriages with barely pubescent teens, requiring them to marry and have sex against their will.

In Washington, DC, an apocalyptic fundamentalist avowed Christian says he talks to God, who tells him to bomb children in their sleep and threaten peaceful countries with nuclear annihilation.

The list goes on. Be careful, anonymous, when you blame an entire religion for the extremisim of a few claimed adherents, lest others apply the same logic to you and yours.

The war between religions serves only nutcases. If that is the route you choose, please keep it to yourself.

See Raymond's post above - there are plenty of places we Americans could pay attention to right in front of our noses. We are watching the continuing genocide of the American Indian. We have killed several times as many innocent Iraqis directly in the last three years as have been reported killed in Darfur.

What is happening in Darfur is horrendous. But there is something twisted in Americans getting worked up for a humanitarian effort there while our own government is in the midst of perpetrating far worse crimes and killings. While we support and enable Israel's crimes in Palestine (see the Dispatches From Palestine post of a week or so ago).

So, the question: Why are you raising $3,700 for Darfur? What makes STAND think this money is going to the stated purpose? Why are you not coming first to the defense of the American Indian right in this country? Of the innocent Iraqis being bombed and raided and killed this very night? Of the Palestinian refugees being blown up with bombs stamped "Made In America," shot with U.S. issued M-16s?

Ethically, philosophically, there is a phrase: "Heal thyself." If we come as hypocrites to Darfur, do we not lack moral authority? If we come as hypocrites, can we truly achieve a humanitarian purpose?

History provides strong evidence that hypocrites have always done more damage than good to moral and ethical crusades. Should we not first heal ourselves? Or, if not first, at least begin healing ourselves simultaneously? I will suggest that in so doing, we will do better for Darfur and the victims of violence there than all of the STANDS we might take today.

Anonymous | December 20, 2007 11:08 PM:

This is the first time I've ever been quite this blunt here, and I'll probably pay for it, but --
just where would I begin if I wanted to tell you how utterly and irrevocably full of crap I think you are? I can't even imagine.

Phalarope is Phlummoxed.

The original anonymous post should have been more politic. Especially since these are high schoolers (albeit a rather privileged bunch over there as I understand it, including the children of the current Governator, you know the one who now proposes requiring all of us to buy private health insurance, since on whatever planet his mind lives in apparently that system has been working so well...)

STAND gives these kids invaluable experience. And at best, they really are saving lives. So it is full of crap to criticize them for doing something good, with good intentions. And of course these students personally are not hypocrites (I hope).

But, the point I think was that as Americans, we are represented abroad by our government, the one we have elected twice (subject to some dispute, but the rest of the world I think is justified in figuring that we as Americans generally approve of our foreign policies, in light of the fact that we continue them unabated and even reelected their author). When we as American citizens go talk with foreign governments, and condemn them for the very actions and tactics our own government is employing on this very day, we are perceived as hypocrites, and we lack credibility. When we as American citizens raise money to help victims of these horrors, without condemning and working to stop our own government that is perpetrating these very actions, and without even making similar efforts on behalf of the victims of our own government, there is a disconnect.

This is pernicious. As the original post above points out, STAND chapters started after the (Republican) Congress in 2004 passed a resolution condemning the genocide in Darfur - while at the same time, approving and escalating the one we are committing in Iraq. Thus, this appears intimately connected with Bush administration policy, whether we think it is or not. Abroad, when we condemn Darfur while refusing to acknowledge the crimes in Iraq, we do harm to the entire cause of human rights, by turning it from a matter of principal to one of politics. We legitimate others doing so, and we dilute the standard and rob it of moral force. International law and human rights become what our administration - the one with the most guns - says it is. Rather than deterring would be genocidal regimes as being beyond the pale, we merely encourage them to align to our administration, in which case their crimes are not only excused but enabled.

Indeed, we bolster the terrible message of the 2004 elections - that we as a people support what the Bush regime is doing. That we support its policies, justifications, and lies. The propaganda effect of STANDS of high schoolers coming out to help the victims of violence in Darfur - a Bush-"approved" atrocity - while remaining silent against the victims in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, is something I can assure you is not lost on people abroad.

Phalarope, perhaps this line of thinking is full of crap, but from past posts I know you can do a better job of pointing out why.

Everybody can't do everything. No one on Earth is Santa Claus -- no one on Earth is God. No one can deliver the right thing to all people at the same time. The best of us do what we can and are glad (and sometimes surprised) when we're able to do even that. And then, you have people who aren't doing anything at all to help anyone; they're just bad-mouthing the efforts of others.

Sliming the Thacher kids is a classic wing-nut tactic, straight from the Fox Cable News playbook. Sliming people who aren't helping every single person on the planet is yet another tactic from the same game plan. Sliming other people because they could have done better at whatever it is they're trying to do is the cheap and pathetic tactic of someone who probably does nothing at all to help anyone. Just because the person doing the sliming remains cordial & civil ( and condescending & patronizing) doesn't mean that they aren't in league with the Devil.

In another recent Ojai Post thread about the initiative that would require farm animals to be treated better, someone -- maybe you -- said that they couldn't support the initiative because it didn't go far enough. I do not believe for a moment that this person actually believed in what they wrote or that they cared one way or another about the actual issue, or that they even, in fact, cared about the plight of "crop" animals -- I think that this person was simply attempting to mindfuck the supporters of this initiative, and lay guilt on them in an attempt to undermine their confidence in what they were attempting to do. Yet another play from the wingnut book o' strategies.

One single person making even the most feeble attempt to help others, as long as those attempts are sincere and straight from the heart, is worth far more to the human race than all of those who would criticize that person.

If you want to help someone other than the Somalians, then go help those other people and quit doing nothing besides criticizing the efforts of those who are helping someone else.

Now, go ahead. Feed me some more crap. I don't care how you attempt to clean it up and disguise it. I can smell it the way a shark smells blood in the water, and it'll still smell like crap to me.

Recently, the American Psychiatric Association had a debate going on. Apparently, psychiatrists are working with the DOD in Gitmo, medicating and treating the prisoners there. Members of the Association sought to enact a rule forbidding psychiatrists from working at Gitmo, on the theory that they were enabling this inhumane treatment. The counterargument was that the Gitmo prisoners would be worse off without psychiatrists.

There has been a similar debate among doctors, as members of that profession have been assisting in keeping tortured detainees alive.

Sincere efforts to help people take place in a larger context. That they are sincere, and that some people receive some aid, may be sufficient. But not everyone agrees it is so. And it is a serious and legitimate question to ask if one's sincere efforts nevertheless help to perpetuate rather than deter and end the sorts of wrongs one is addressing.

You don't like those sorts of questions. Fine. But, I will suggest that the true Rove/Fox News tactic here is yours: Going ballistic and attacking the integrity of the questioner, rather than engaging the questions. That is straight out of Bush/Rove/Fox wingnut 101.

There is no sliming of Thacher students in raising questions about the purpose and effect of these particular efforts. These questions go to the heart of what STAND is doing and accomplishing - they are no diversion from the issues at stake as would be the case with true "wing nut tactics." And these questions do NOT advocate doing nothing, any more than the doctors and psychiatrists who believe that doctors and psychiatrists should not be involved in Gitmo and torture are advocating doing nothing.

Ballistic? Don't flatter yourself. You aren't worth a ballistic response. You've never seen ballistic here, nor will you. You've seen disgust, disdain, and well-deserved derision and you'll probably see it again.

With regard to your assertion that I was attacking your integrity, I don't think you actually have any. I think that you're just a bored sock puppet. James Hatch with spell check and a better sense of grammar. Ed Nemechek with an ascot and a pipe and an A.S. degree in PoliSci. Victoria without the Christian overlay. I don't even think that you believe in what you're saying -- you just enjoy saying it to a readership for whom you have little or no respect. (Call me on that if you wish -- if there's someone here you like and respect, tell me who it is/they are.)

How do you help the people you claim to support? What are you doing for the Iraqis? The Afghanis? The American Indians? The Palestinians? Anyone and everyone suffering under American foreign policy? There's a question you don't seem to like, either, since you haven't addressed it.

In my opinion, you're still chock full o' crap. You probably will be the next time you comment, too. Why? because you seem to believe, and you seem to be suggesting, that if you can't save everyone in a burning house you shouldn't save anyone. You seem to believe that if you can't get everyone into the lifeboat, everyone should be allowed to drown. And what's more, you seem to feel that the rescuers need to be castigated and ridiculed for trying to do anything at all, and that they should be made to see how their pathetic efforts have somehow made it worse.

If I go to pull someone out of a burning vehicle, I don't do it as an American, or a man, or a woman, or as a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim or as a heterosexual or a gay person or a Caucasian or an Asian or as a member of any other race or nationality. I do it as a human being. The only thing I care about is that other person. I'm not going to worry that someone like you might tell me that by saving that person I've somehow enabled the drunk driver that caused the accident, or the car manufacturer that made a car that caught on fire upon impact, or the highway agency that failed to put a center divider down the middle of the road. I wouldn't care about that kind of thinking then, and I don't care about it now.

If I recall correctly, a similiar argument was initiated by a previous post I made, and I have a similar response. I absolutely agree to the above comments; the problems in Iraq are indispuatbly egreqious, and the crisis is by no means a small one. By providing protection to women in refugee camps, STAND in no way intended to belittle the enormity of the humanitarian crisis in Iraq. While the violence in Iraq is indeed ghastly, it is also in the Darfurian region. Is our credibility to condemn the genocide in Darfur lessened because we arguably perpetrate similar violence in Iraq? Absolutely. It is further lessened by our response to inhumanities in the past; we need not look past our abominable response (or lack thereof) to the genocide in Rwanda. The opportunity to gain credibility in regards to genocide, however, has presented itself. We have the opporunity to have a hand in the termination of the violence and inhumanity that saturate the lives of Darfurian people. We have the opportunity to substantiate our now empty words "never again." We have alreadly labeled the situation in Darfur a genocide; something we failed to do regarding the Armenian genocide decades ago. We now have the opportunity to have a hand in its termination. The situation in both Iraq and Sudan is abonimable. I would like to hope, however, that we will find the means to bring an end to the violence in both, and not allow the fact that violence exists in both to limit and constrain our response to each.
I am not sure what Philanthrope was getting at when he said, "Especially since these are high schoolers"
Yes, we are highschoolers, this should by no means be a factor in softening one's response to a "hypocritcal" effort if this is truly how he/she feels. Bring your finest, you have nothing on us.

Does phalrope always suffer from a perpetual wedgee? Geez whadda ____!

I am not sure what Philanthrope was getting at when he said, "Especially since these are high schoolers"

If you mean phalarope, I didn't write those words; Anonymous wrote them today at 10:58 a.m.

There's an oft-repeated quote, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." You and your friends have taken one of those steps. I believe that you will probably take the rest of them, too.

The vast array of crimes which have been committed by others in no way lessen the value of your work and your commitment, and if all you had ever done was send a small bag of food to Darfur, that would have been 100% more than the contribution of your critics, I'm sure.

Congratulations to all of you for doing what you're doing. In my opinion, you deserve a bit more response and input here than what you've gotten so far.

Thanks Phalarope,
I appreciate your support. I should have checked who posted that, and I apologize for the slightly defensive response.
Happy Holidays!

Robin, you're a treasure among us. You communicate with more peace and clarity than 90% of the adults on this planet...thank you!

I echo those words!

I have been privileged to have a long relationship with the Thacher School and have spent enough time there to understand and appreciate the integrity of purpose which animates that community. I grow tired of hearing locals dismiss Thacher students as merely privileged, with all that might imply. While certainly many come from privileged circumstances (and a very many do not), the real privilege there is not only the privilege to rise at 6AM to shovel out a horse’s stall, but the privilege to make community service part of ones life, to share a classroom with minds that question, to live daily life within the common agreement to an Honor Code, and to live in a community where respect and care and intelligence and commitment are valued.
Robin, I am delighted that you have reached out from campus into this larger community. Ojai needs that and Thacher needs that. I appreciate your voice here, as well as your commitment to making a difference in the world. I join phalarope in congratulating you for the work that you are doing, as well as for your articulate response to your would be detractors. Indeed we have nothing on you.