Gates: U.S. would support Afghan peace talks with Taliban
10.10.08
posted by pondy
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the United States would be prepared to reconcile with the Taliban if the Afghan government pursued talks to end the seven-year conflict in that country. The Taliban has been battling a U.S.-led coalition since it was toppled from power in 2001 for harboring Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network.
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Athletes fight to end violence in Darfur
06.02.08
posted by pondy
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Jack Todd of the Gazette in Montreal writes, "China's slogan for the Beijing Olympic games set to begin in a little more than two months is 'One World, One Dream.' 'One World, One Nightmare' might be more accurate.
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More athletes should join Team Darfur
From the article:
After I wrote a column a couple of months ago to urge a boycott of the 2008 Olympics unless China alters its repressive murderous policies in Tibet, Canadian water-polo player Rosanna Tomiuk wrote to call attention to Chinese involvement in another troubled region. Tomiuk, a member of the women's national team that fell short of an Olympic berth, is also a member of Team Darfur - an international association of elite athletes attempting to call attention to the plight of Darfur.
Alouettes defensive-tackle Devone Claybrooks have joined Team Darfur in order to do what they can as athletes to shed light on one of the world's largest and least-understood humanitarian crises, the ongoing genocide in Darfur. (The United Nations has refused to call the killings in that region genocide, but both the U.S. government and a long list of humanitarian organizations call it precisely that.)
The Team Darfur athletes (many of them Olympians) are not urging a boycott. Team Darfur explicitly calls for "a celebration of the Olympic spirit, not a boycott." What they are attempting to do, Tomiuk says, is to "focus on what the world can do to help in Darfur without putting a target on the Chinese."
The situation in Darfur is as complex as it is tragic. The clash is between nomads moving south in search of water and the farming communities of Darfur. (This may be one of the first of the water-fuelled conflicts of the future, triggered by global warming.)
Militias backed by the Sudanese government (and, indirectly, by China) have been accused of mass killings in Darfur, with estimates of the dead ranging from as low as 100,000 to as high as 400,000 (the UN's estimate, even if it refuses to use the word "genocide") and another one to 2.5 million people, again depending on the estimates, displaced and relocated, many of them to refugee camps in neighbouring Chad.
The athletes of Team Darfur are hardly alone in decrying the killings carried about by Sudanese militias funded by the Chinese. All three of the remaining U.S. presidential candidates (Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain) signed their names to an ad that appeared in the New York Times Wednesday, accusing the Sudanese government of genocide in Darfur and urging an end to the violence.
But it is the nature of life in our One World, One Nightmare global village that a tragic earthquake in China will make it more difficult to stop the Chinese-funded genocide halfway around the world in Darfur.
The enormous disaster of the earthquake in Chongqing has had far-reaching implications outside China's borders. In Darfur and Tibet, there was hope that pressure for a boycott or some other gesture connected to the Beijing Olympics might persuade the Chinese regime to alter its policy. But sympathy for the earthquake victims has muted the protests to a degree, even though the regime's failings in areas such as school construction are part of the tragedy.