A Moment of Opportunity: Darfur and the 2008 Olympics

China, on a domestic and international cleaning binge, is seeking to cleanse its status and reputation by the time it begins hosting the Olympics in 2008 to appear as a developed nation in a first-world prom dress. While this may appear as a farcical whitewash operation by a totalitarian regime, it presents an opportunity for the international community to take concrete steps in resolving the Darfur crisis.

While the Darfur conflict has been well-documented (Wiki on Darfur Conflict) and officially labeled a genocide by the American government, the nations that allowed the situation to continue have until recently seen relatively little outside pressure else than the editorial page. China, as the leader in Sudanese oil imports, is at the center of enabling the Sudanese government. As the BBC states of the rise of China as an energy importer:

“From zero 15 years ago, China last year became the world’s number two oil importer… China has, we are told, been running around the world signing oil deals with everyone from Iran, to Sudan to Angola. In the race to secure future oil resources China is prepared to deal with even the dodgiest regimes, and pay the highest prices.”

China’s economic relations with the Sudanese government provided it with significant leverage that it has chosen not to use until of late. With concerns about manners, proper English, and all things image savvy that will hopefully provide an ideal experience for the foreign traveler visiting China for the first time at the 2008 Olympics, China is similarly trying to improve its image abroad as well. Helen Cooper writes in the New York Times about the collision between the internal worries of public image in China and the relation with diplomacy:

China’s decision to pressure Sudan about violence in Darfur, after years of protecting that government, can be traced to campaign to boycott 2009 Olympic Games in Beijing; Mia Farrow, good-will ambassador for United Nations Children’s Fund, started campaign to label Games in Beijing ‘Genocide Olympics’ and called on corporate sponsors to publicly exhort China to do something about Darfur; she challenged Steven Spielberg, artistic advisor to China for Games, to add his voice, prompting Spielberg to send letter to Pres Hu Jintao of China asking him to use his influence to stop killings in Darfur; senior Chinese official, Zhai Jun, recently traveled to Sudan to push government there to accept UN peacekeeping force, and then visited Darfur refugee camps; turnaround in China’s policy serves as classic study of how pressure campaign, aimed to strike Beijing in vulnerable spot at vulnerable time, could accomplish what years of diplomacy could not…

If the United Nations and the West are serious about ending one of the greatest humanitarian disasters of the decade, it must utilize the chance given in this pre-Olympic window by China. With the first noticeable signs that China is willing to act, a formidable and unified multilateral consensus should take advantage of a diplomatically-sensitive China to leverage a more proactive role in solving the Darfur crisis.

Sources

Darfur Collides With Olympics, and China Yields, by Helen Cooper, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/13/washington/13diplo.html?ex=1177473600&en=6dbe3623040dd8d8&ei=5070

Responsible China, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/05/AR2006090501187.html

Sudan vows to cut red tape on UN to support African peace mission in Darfur
http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_55224.shtml

Manners, Manners, http://www.cominganarchy.com/archives/2007/04/20/manners-manners/

Other Opinions

Black Gold: The Financer of Tyranny
http://www.prosebeforehos.com/international-relations/09/07/black-gold-the-financer-of-tyranny/

China and Sudan, Blood and Oil
http://coalitionfordarfur.blogspot.com/2006/04/china-and-sudan-blood-and-oil.html

Beware hypocrisy on Darfur, China
http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2007/04/beware_hypocrisy_on_darfur_chi.html

The Wrong Decision on Sudan
http://counterterrorismblog.org/2007/04/the_wrong_decision_on_sudan.php

Darfur Crisis: Towards An Ever Greater Tragedy by Amit Pyakurel
http://www.globalpolitician.com/articleshow.asp?ID=2688&cid=8

How to take a dump

How to take a dump, courtesy of Sheryl Crow and MetaFilter.

Speaking of taking a dump, look who has dumped all over America, oh what legacy awaits. Alternate portrait of America.

I think the poison was…. Asiiiiannnn

The Article: They done did it. Yes, THEY, the Chinese, poisoned our pets: From ABCNews: Officials: Pet Food Poison May Have Been Intentional, FDA Investigators Say Chinese Companies May Have Added Melamine to Appear to Boost Protein Content.

The Text: For the first time, investigators are saying the chemical that has sickened and killed pets in the United States may have been intentionally added to pet food ingredients by Chinese producers.

Food and Drug Administration investigators say the Chinese companies may have spiked products with the chemical melamine so that they would appear, in tests, to have more value as protein products.

Officials now suspect this possibility because a second ingredient from China, rice protein concentrate, has tested positive for melamine. So has corn gluten shipped to South Africa. That means there is a possibility for another round of recalls.

The FDA’s top veterinarian, Stephen Sundlof, says finding melamine in so many products “would certainly lend credibility to the theory that it was maybe intentional.”

Melamine, which is used to make plastics in the United States and as a fertilizer in Asia, contains nitrogen. Nitrogen can appear to boost the level of protein in products.

The revelations have led the FDA to expand the number of products it is testing as they enter the United States. So far, those inspections at the border have not turned up any melamine in wheat gluten. Tainted wheat gluten used by Menu Foods is suspected in sickening hundreds, if not thousands of pets.

Some of the tainted pet food has apparently made it into feed for hogs. Federal agencies are trying to determine if it was actually fed to animals and whether it may have reached the human food supply.

Analysis: I told you so. I told you we needed to round up all the Koreans in America and turn them into pet food for the Chinese. But you scoffed and scolded me, but now who is right? Me, that’s who, and now millions upon millions of lonely, pathetic spinsters will be without their Chinese-pet-food-dependent significant others (talking dogs, cats, corpses).

1 Crazy Gunman Is A Tragedy, 200 Dead Iraqi’s is a Statistic

This piece serves as a follow up piece to 33 Dead Americans is a Tragedy, 33 Dead Iraqi’s is a Statistic, which raised the point that while the Virginia Tech tragedy was a tragedy, these death tolls are all too familar to Iraqi’s — including multiple bombs detonated in January that killed 60 at a Baghdad university. In fact, the grand coincidence was 33 Iraqi’s were reported killed the same day that 33 were murdered at Virginia Tech, but obviosly their deaths generated far less publicity.

So a couple of days have past and some significant events have occured, including four bombs in Baghdad that killed over 157 people “as violence climbed toward levels not seen since before the U.S.-Iraqi campaign to pacify the capital began two months ago”. So, there’s some major acts of violence that fly in the face of the US-led troop surge, and what gets reported:

On FoxNews, you get ‘Imminent Danger’ and a picture of the ‘Mad Man’ himself on the front page — so more reporting on the psyche of our deranged Blacksburg shooter:

But where’s the information about the failures of the surge and the worst day of violence experienced in months in Iraq? Not even a text link on the front page, you have to go to the World section:

Conclusion: A tsunami of dead Iraqi’s would have to wash up to Dick Cheney’s underground bunker in Idaho itself for Fox News to report on the ‘progress’ being made in Iraq. Click here for the full front page picture of the FoxNews front page, which interestingly enough includes a large ad for bringing Imus back on the air, how a preachers wife was forced to watch porn, and how a whale was spotted in the New York Harbor. All of these deemed more important than violence that killed over 150 in Iraq.

On MSNBC, it’s more of the same, but they at least acknowledge what’s going on in Iraq under a litany of links providing full coverage of the shooters video tape:

Click here for the link for a full size picture of MSNBC’s front page.

On CNN, things didn’t get much better. Victims, online grief, shootings, video’s of victims, video’s of crazy lone gunmen, but we do get the pleasure of knowing ‘at least 170 died in Baghdad bombings’ (next to, of course, stories about preacher porn wife and ‘Bin Laden’s name used to lure people to polls):

And finally, on BBC (World Edition mind you, not UK or ‘American’ (though there is no such version as American), which still has its feature story on the Virginia gunmen:

Conclusion: While none of the mainstream media can be accused of sinking to Fox “What’s Iraq??” News, most of the American (save for BBC, which is British) did a fairly poor job of reporting on a very large issue. A story larger and more significant, than I would say, playing a video that makes a murderer into a celebrity.

For more commentary on this subject, I suggest you check out the following: CNN’s Sensationalism of the Virginia Tech Video is Disgusting, Bloody Wednesday: Guerrillas, Violence kill Nearly 300 Iraqis, and violence suggests the surge is failing.

Midlake

The artist of the Day is Midlake (Bella Union) [wikipedia] [myspace]

Head Home:

Young Bride:

Watch more videos