Demagogue

The Christian Science Monitor has a good editorial on the disconnect between peacekeeping in Congo and Darfur

But the striking contradiction between the UN's relative inaction in saving Darfur and its military boldness in Congo cannot go unnoticed. Perhaps Darfur needs action by NATO or the European Union's new force. Britain and France, on their own, have used force to solve recent conflicts in their former colonies in West Africa.

I sort of made this point yesterday and Passion of the Present has a good follow-up to the topic.

Sudan's Ambassador to the US, Khidir Haroun Ahmed, denies Musa Hilal's allegations that the government has been directing the Janjaweed. Ahmed told USA TODAY that the Sudanese government "has never given any license to kill or to burn or to loot in that part of the country."

The embassy of Sudan is none too pleased with the Corzine-Brownback "Darfur Accountability Act". If the government of Sudan has ever made a more ridiculous statement than this, I haven't seen it

We hope that the members of The US Congress will give peace a chance in Sudan for the sake of millions who have been waiting long enough to make a better future for their children and for the sake of the reputation of the United States as a gentler and compassionate super power in that part of the world.

Aid agencies are warning that Darfur is going to be facing a severe water shortage in the coming months.

Stanford University held a panel discussion on US/UN/Africa relations

“Most American attitudes on Africa are not deeply fixed in any African reality,” Devlin-Foltz said. “When they are lacking information, people will fall back on general principles.”

He said he blames television news for the widely-held American view that the world is full of unrelated catastrophic events and that the United States is the only nation that can make a difference.

Panelist Heather Hamilton, vice president of Citizens for Global Solutions, followed Devlin-Foltz’s call for education with a call to action, comparing the crisis in Darfur to last year’s tsunamis in Southeast Asia. Citizens for Global Solutions is a grassroots organization that encourages public officials to promote multilateral foreign policy.

“They were a massive natural event that took hundreds of thousands of lives and provoked the largest outpouring of shock and compassion,” Hamilton said. “What we’re facing now in Darfur is a man-made catastrophe in which a government is sponsoring a genocide. Over 220,000 have died and 10,000 a month are dying. But where is that surge of horror?”

Finally, there is this from Editor and Publisher

International pressure on the United States to refer the murders and violence in Darfur, Sudan, to the International Criminal Court has produced little action so far. But the American press has remained active in its coverage of what some are calling genocide in Sudan.

The wires, especially Reuters, have continued to break news from the region on nearly a daily basis, but daily newspapers are also continuing to regularly cover Sudan, with many stories lately probing the genocide question.

EP then gives a handful of examples of major news pieces on the genocide. This seems to me to be little more than self-serving nonsense. According to a search of major US news sources via Factiva, there have been 214 media stories that mentioned Darfur in the last week.

There have been 253 that mentioned Steve Fossett.

And there have been 887 that mention Michael Jackson.