Have You Thought About the Life of Your Clothes Today?

If not, you should be ashamed.

Why? Because apparently, the "life" of your clothes is more important than the lives of real life, human beings.

Well, at least more important than 400 Congo victims who sought refuge at a Roman Catholic church, Christmas day, in a remote part of eastern Congo, only to be "hacked to death and forced into fires" by the Lord's Resistance Army rebel group.

In the last half hour to 45 minutes (it's now 10:30 AM EST), CNN reported on the following stories:

Swishing where women get together to swap gorgeous clothes and party at the same time, designed to "encourage people to think about the life of their clothes".

A white American woman who disappeared from a cruise ship (apparently a suicide).

An essay contest to win "free" tickets to Presidential inauguration where a donation is highly encouraged (The theme of the essay is "What the Inauguration Means to You." Essays are due by 1/8/2009).

The brutal year for investors, dismal housing market, and consumer confidence.

The fighting taking place in Gaza.

What do all these stories have in common? That's right. They all involve white people.

At the same exact time, the BBC was reporting (yes, I was listening to both) on the aforementioned Christmas Massacre in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Yesterday, I compared Obama to Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda, essentially praising him for what he's accomplished in Rwanda, however I neglected the dark side of that leadership - except to mention the spillover of Rwandan genocide into Congo - and that is the exploitation of Congo, where over 5.4 million Congolese deaths can be traced to Kagame's regime.

The death toll and carnage is far greater in Congo, than Darfur, yet numerous celebrities, such as George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Don Cheadle have joined in to raise money and focus media attention on the terrible tragedy of Darfur, which is wonderful, but what about the Congolese? Surely, there are other celebrities out there...

And, why is CNN reporting on what amounts to a woman's free-for-all over large sacks of designer frocks, instead of reporting real news? Could it be an issue of complicity involving Western companies, who profit immensely from genocide who sponsor media conglomerates?

I mean, what's more important? The life of 65-million dark-skinned people or the massive mineral wealth, that these 65-million people live amidst? If you chose "massive mineral wealth", you win free tickets to witness the giant plunder of, paradoxically, the richest country on earth.

This support of militias takes the form of arms transfers, financial assistance, military advice and training and safe harbor for those who flee the Congolese national government. In fact, several United Nations reports have accused Rwanda and Uganda of siphoning off Congo's mineral wealth with the complicity of Western companies

This is genocide.

• 1,250 Congolese citizens die every day. That’s 38,000 each month
• Over ¾ of the population is now malnourished
• No access to healthcare except what the Catholic Church provides.
  
• Rebels routinely hack off limbs and the lips of civilians
• Tens of thousands of children have been abducted to be fighters and sex slaves, and another 26,000 people have fled into the forests and a further 6,000 have sought sanctuary around churches.
• Brutal, mass rapes effect victims’ from 4-years old to 80, and subsequently disowned by their own families after being raped.

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Children's Drawings of Darfur Crisis:

Children draw Darfur as they see it:

“The Janjaweed came on camels and horses, very fast. Sometimes two on one camel, with guns. Many soldiers, with guns. This one is a machine gun. They were shooting us.”
In the same exercise book, Jamil had drawn a man with a radio transmitter, drawn larger than the man: “We needed help. There was no one to protect us.” -- Jamil, Age 12

“In the afternoon we returned from school and saw the planes. We were all looking, not imagining about bombing. Then they began the bombing. The first bomb [landed] in our garden, then four bombs at once in the garden. The bombs killed six people, including a young boy, a boy carried by his mother, and a girl. In another place in the garden a women was carrying her baby son—she was killed, not him. Now my nights are hard because I feel frightened. We became homeless. I cannot forget the bad images of the burning houses and fleeing at night because our village was burned…” -- Taha, Age 13 or 14

Like many other children, Ala‘ witnessed conflict between rebel groups and the Janjaweed. This drawing depicts a rebel soldier first shot in the arm, then executed by gunshots to the groin. Ali, a teacher in a refugee camp, said the rebels are killed this way to emasculate them. “They [the Janjaweed] know what they are doing,” he said. “They are doing it with purpose.” -- Ala‘, Age 13

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One Death a Tragedy...One Million a Statistic...

I had an immediate visceral reaction to "little Mary" a 12-year-old Ugandan girl whose lips were cut off by rebel fighters, and no visceral reaction to the 4 million killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Of course, I know that killing 4 million people is so heinous, it's beyond words but apparently it's beyond feeling as well, at least in my case.

Psychological research, reported by Professor Paul Slovic in the March edition of Foreign Policy, suggests we respond most to just one example of suffering. Big numbers don't move us and in fact, the higher the number of people involved in a crisis, the less likely we are to "feel" for each additional death.

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China and Russia Seek to Block Report on Darfur

March 16, 2007 (GENEVA) — China and Russia joined Arab and Muslim states on Friday in urging the U.N.’s human rights watchdog to ignore a report from a mission to Darfur that blamed Sudan for continuing war crimes against civilians there.

The two permanent United Nations Security Council members argued the mission, led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jody Williams, last month failed to gain access to the vast western region of Sudan and had not fulfilled its mandate.

Despite warnings from Western and some African states that failure to act would undermine the credibility of the newly formed Human Rights Council, Muslim and Arab states and their allies backed Sudan’s line that the report had no legal basis.

"The so-called mission failed to make an onsite visit. The report cannot be considered objective ... and has no legal basis," China said in a statement to the 47-state Council, which was echoed by Russia.

The mission’s report said the government of Sudan had orchestrated and taken part in war crimes. It appealed for the Council to take "urgent further action," to protect civilians.

Some African states, which are manning a 7,000-strong peacekeeping force in Darfur but are split over how to respond to the human rights crisis there, spoke out strongly about the need to accept the report and act on it.

Denial of access was not grounds for dismissing it, Zambia said, noting South Africa under apartheid and the then Rhodesia, also under white rule, routinely refused entry to such missions.

Deserve Better

"The people of Darfur deserve better," said Zambia’s ambassador Love Mtesa.

After initially agreeing to the mission, the government of Sudan refused visas to the five-person team because it said one of its members had previously spoken of genocide in Darfur and could not be objective.

The U.N. investigators, asked by the Council in December to examine reports of abuse in Darfur, were forced to conduct their work from neighbouring Chad and in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, headquarters of the African Union.

Observers estimate 200,000 people have been killed and more than 2 million driven from their homes since a revolt broke out fours ago. The government responded to the uprising by arming militias which have been accused of atrocities.

The Sudanese government denies responsibility for abuses and blames rebel groups that have refused to sign a 2006 peace deal.

The report, the latest international probe to point the finger at Khartoum over the violence in Darfur, also accused rebels of crimes against civilians.

"This report has no legal standing. This faulty report should not be discussed," Sudan’s Justice Minister Mohamed Ali Elmardi told the Council.

Williams told the Council it was its credibility that was on the line — not that of the mission — if it failed to act on her team’s recommendations.

"Innocent civilians continue to suffer and die. They do not need more reports. They are pleading for protection," she said.

"Our job is to attempt to try to alleviate the suffering of the people of Darfur who are being raped, pillaged and burned while political wrangling goes on here in the hallowed halls of the United Nations," she said, to applause.

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U.S. Slammed for Backing off 'Genocide' Charge

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 15 (OneWorld) - Human rights groups spoke out this week, condemning the United States Special Envoy to Sudan, Andrew Natsios, for claiming the crisis in Darfur no longer constitutes genocide.

"The term genocide is counter to the facts of what is really occurring in Darfur," Natsios told a gathering at Georgetown University February 7th.

The statement shocked many observers since both President Bush and the State Department have used the term "genocide" to describe the situation in western Sudan.

Since 2003, the Sudanese military and its allied militias have killed at least 400,000 people, while more than 2 million innocent civilians have been forced to flee their homes and now live in camps in Sudan and neighboring Chad. More than 3.5 million men, women, and children are now completely reliant on international aid for survival.

Not since the Rwandan genocide of 1994, campaigners argue, has the world seen such a calculated campaign of displacement, starvation, rape, and mass slaughter.

"Activists across the country are outraged by Natsios' denial of genocide in Darfur," Marie Clarke Brill of the group Africa Action said in a statement. "The death toll is mounting, and the U.S. must act now to stop the escalating violence by the Sudanese government and to provide protection to civilians and humanitarian operations in Darfur."

Brill's group is concerned that Natsios' statement marks a shift in U.S. policy and is an attempt to provide cover for his government's failure to convince Sudan to allow a stronger international peacekeeping force into the country. Africa Action has said the U.S. government holds the most sway with Sudanese officials and therefore is uniquely obligated to pressure Khartoum on peacekeeping.

Activists point out the killing continues unabated despite ongoing negotiations with the Sudanese government in Khartoum. On Wednesday, the United Nations Mission in Sudan reported that fresh violence has displaced at least 110,000 people in southern Darfur since December.

"Up to this week there is [still] bombing of civilians, so the lack of security still prevails," Dr. Ali Ali-Dinar told OneWorld. The native of Darfur is Outreach Director for the University of Pennsylvania's Africa Studies Center and runs the Web

"Civilians still face continuous harassment," he said. "They're still in their camps. It's still not safe to go back. So the ingredients are still there. Just because [U.S. envoy Natsios] mutters that there is not a genocide doesn't mean that one isn't going on."

Recently, an African Union military mission in Darfur was bolstered by United Nations blue berets, but Ali-Dinar said that hasn't done anything to improve the situation.

"They are there but with a very flimsy mandate and under its presence nothing is changing," he said. "The government is still bombing civilians. All this is going on even with the UN Mission. Nothing is new."

On Monday, the European Union Council released a statement from Brussels protesting what they called "an unsustainable level of insecurity" for humanitarian workers attempting to help refugees seeking relief from the killing.

Attacks on relief workers and their property have become common, the aid groups said. There have been at least five car-jackings this month.

Those actions prompted a fresh reaction from the U.S. Envoy, Andrew Natsios, on Wednesday. The same man who said "genocide is counter to what's occurring" told Reuters "the government has lost control. There is anarchy in large parts of Darfur. The risk is that if the NGOs (non-governmental organizations) leave, the UN humanitarian agencies leave...there will be no one to care for these people in the camps who can be trusted."

But those statements drew criticisms from campaigners as well. Far from losing control, they argued, the Sudanese government is itself behind much of the violence and displacement.

Increasingly, activists are trying to use their power as private citizens to press the government of Sudan to change its ways. Modeling their work on successful solidarity work that brought down the apartheid regime in South Africa, they're urging states, pension funds, and college campuses to restrict or eliminate their Sudan-related investments.

In 2005, the state of Oregon sold $35 million in holdings it had invested in four oil companies that work in Sudan. In January 2006, Maine followed suit, selling its holdings in Schlumberger Ltd., an oil company stock held by Maine's $24 million State Held Trusts.

Last September, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill directing the massive California Public Employees Retirement System and California State Teachers Retirement System, which together hold more than $350 billion in assets, to divest from companies doing business in Sudan.

According to the non-profit Genocide Intervention Network, there are active campaigns in an additional two-dozen colleges, 15 states, and numerous other countries.

"This is only the beginning," said Sam Bell, the group's advocacy director. Divestment campaigns are currently underway in Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and Virginia, Bell said.

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