Whatever It Takes

I have to wonder if your people have really done their homework on the Sudan. BTW, I'm not intending to be anonymous; I'm just not registered. Depends on whether I see some depth of knowledge here. I'm Holly Bergeim, and I live in Mexico, early-retired with a spinal disability. There. No longer anonymous!

So read - and LEARN. Everything I say here can be verified. It's lengthy, because it has a lot of stuff nobody is telling you about. If you're really interested in knowing as much as you can about this genocide, you'll bear with me.

Emily Roberts says that the genocide has gone on longer than WWII. She therefore seems to be ignorant of the fact that Darfur is only Phase II of an ongoing genocide that began in the late '80's, and lasted for 20 years, with a 2 1/2 MILLION body count among indigenous Nilotes, the southern black people. ALL of it, before Darfur even began. I don't diss her or blame her; most people share her ignorance. But the slaughter of 2 1/2 million people is no small shakes, folks.

And WE were never told. But it's true; Amnesty Int'l has whole rooms full of hard documentary evidence. Despite possession of all that proof, even THEY are afraid to call the earlier pogrom a genocide! It makes no sense, yet something has intimidated them. Don't you want to know why? I sure would. How about your group putting some pressure on AI to find out what has intimidated them?

That genocide was never recognized as such, but if Darfur is a genocide, the first one was a genocide-squared. Darfur is, relatively speaking, a "gentle" genocide, being conducted by surrogates, the janjaweed. Do you know why? It's because in the south, surrogates were unnecessary; the southern people had rejected Islam for centuries, so they could be slaughtered outright, being infidels.

In Darfur, the population is Muslim. Slaughtering them required some fancy footwork among the Muslim/Arab population in the north. It is against Islam to kill a fellow Muslim. So the surrogates do the dirty work and help keep Bashir's nose clean among his peers. It has also come in handy in keeping it clean against western critics. Until that fine day when Colin Powell courageously said that the situation in Darfur was a genocide. Then it became known, and became hard to put it back into Never-Never Land. But the first genocide remained hidden from us.

Yet today, most people think genocide in the Sudan began in Darfur, that this genocide exists in a vacuum, and is only a few years old. The prior 20 years of even more blatant genocide has managed to escape us all. It is STILL being kept from us. And, because most people don't bother doing their homework, and the mass media knows we accept whatever they tell us as "the news," they got away with misleading us. And still are doing so.

Why? Ask them. You can find the information, but no media source is going to give it to you. You'll have to do your own digging. But you'll find a LOT.

Go back to Amnesty Int'l's files from the 80's and 90's. If you can read those stories and NOT conclude it was a genocide, your humanity has abandoned you entirely. They ended up making a kind of "peace pact" with the southern people (which they have no intention of honoring, and the southern people know it), then promptly started their new pogrom in Darfur. But they'll be back. They hate the southern people even more than the Darfurians. Killing any infidel (and that includes YOU) is an open license from Allah. Unless they want to try to convert him first, but it isn't required. Their option to kill infidels is always open to them. They don't HAVE to kill infidels, but Allah prefers it that way. Did you know that? It's in the Quran, which you probably haven't read.

Troops entered villages, herding the entire population into their own thatched cattle-byres and set them to the torch, after which they killed their livestock and burned the fields and villages. Not genocide? These were not combatants; one and all, they were peaceful, unarmed villagers. Innocent civilians. Yet even then, nobody called it even "war crimes." Or "crimes against humanity." Targeting civilians IS both. Amnesty also reported that, by 1990, the entire Nuba population had been wiped out in a fierce pogrom against them. Why? They were sitting on uranium deposits. Were they combatants? The Nuba? They were as peaceable as anyone can get - extremely reclusive. So much so, that sometimes people in one Nuba village had trouble understanding the dialect of the one next door. While a very few of them did survive, most were killed.

Compared to the earlier pogrom, Darfur is a cakewalk.

Why weren't we told? Because the mass media were calling the whole thing a "civil war." Why? Because the people had formed militias. I guess they were supposed to lie down and open their veins, so WE couldn't call it a civil war. I guess the media assumed that we wouldn't want to be bothered having to end a genocide against a bunch of people nobody'd ever heard of, indigenous people (who don't count), and black (who count even less). Then later on, they couldn't back away from it. But now, with genocide FULLY acknowledged in Darfur, they're trying to do just that. What possible reason can they give us to justify it? "Objectivity" is no longer an option for them. The evidence is too mountainous and compelling. Especially if you're able to consider BOTH genocides.

And have we, the fickle, ignorant public, somehow forgotten that Sudan practices slavery? There was a brief media flap about it a few years ago, but it was more about those delightful schoolchildren trying to buy and free slaves than about the slavery itself. Do you really think it isn't still going on, just because nobody's reporting on it? CAN you believe they gave up slavery based on our publicity and disapproval? And all that, before Darfur even began.

Even today, nobody mentions this first genocide. Anyone who knows about it can't help but recognize it for what it is. If they can recognize genocide in Darfur, the earlier one is even more clear. Yet in all those many years, it was not once called a genocide.

To our everlasting shame.

I'd suggest that Ms. Roberts dig a little deeper into Amnesty's files, and learn about this first genocide. Together, the two genocides demonstrate a consistent pattern of genocidal behavior by the Khartoum regime. She can't study it if she doesn't know it occurred. I hope now she DOES, and that her future articles will reflect this discovery. I have an advantage, because I began studying Sudan long before she did. I give her full credit for good intentions (and good intentions are NOT the road to hell; they DO count, a lot). Unless I see, later, that she has learned of the first genocide but doesn't report on it or even refer to it. Then my attitude would change. I hope that doesn't happen.

Just because it was never "officially" recognized as a genocide, doesn't mean the genocide never happened, y'know. Blame? No single person or entity is to blame; it was a tacit agreement among ALL freeworld nations and mass media, to downplay this first genocide. Now, when they might be able to support tthe claim of genocide in Darfur with this first pogrom, they can't. Not without admitting to two decades of disinformation.

Even now, after Darfur has been generally accepted as a genocide, CNN just posted an article at:

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/02/26/darfur.refugees/index.html

In that article, they said, "The government of Darfur has waged a brutal counter-insurgency against militias for the past six years, a war that some international critics have characterized as genocide." Do you get the drift of what they're trying to do? They are giving credence and validity to those who don't want it to be called a genocide, implying that most people think it's a "counter-insurgency," instead. The effect is to deflate the claim of genocide and downgrade it to an "internal, sovereign people problem." The word "characterized" implies someone indulging in license in order to exaggerate. CNN is trying to back down from the word "genocide," and going back to the old policy where the first genocide was merely a "civil war." In other words, none of our business, a thing the people of the Sudan have to work out for themselves. What this tells me is that CNN, like the rest of the global mass media, is NOT sorry about mislabeling the first genocide, because they're trying the same stunt again.

Thus doth propaganda mislead us all. Warm-fuzzies are more easily digested by the public than brutal realities, which helps a lot. "Whew! And for a while there we thought there might REALLY be a genocide going on..." Yeah, right.

It shows that our governments and mass media do NOT want to have to deal with a genocide in Sudan. To that end, they seek to re-convince us that genocide isn't genocide.

Their victims tried to fight back; that makes it a civil war or a counter-insurgency, and no longer a genocide. Do you buy that line of reasoning? What would the people in YOUR state do if the federal government sent its armies there to kill every citizen? Would you try to defend yourselves? Would this attempt make the government's intentions for you somehow LESS than genocide? Would it be fair for outsiders to label the conflict as a civil war or an insurgency?

Oh, yes, words CAN kill.

I am appalled by this, because Darfur is so clearly a genocide, yet now our mass media wants to back away from it. Again.

If there is one genuine reason to go to war, it is to stop a genocide. Genocide is the worst "bad" there is.

Yet the U.N., whose own mandate against genocide appears to be an imperative for them, still sits idly, playing with their gonads.

It's the oil, stupid. Nobody wants to rub Arab/Muslim fur the wrong way, for that reason alone. Meanwhile, Sudan has supplied its buddy-nation, Iran, with uranium from the Nuba Mountains, and nobody tells us about THAT, either. They've been doing it since at least 1994.

So, for the oil, we've allowed 2 1/2 million to be slaughtered, PLUS those killed in the Darfur phase of the pogrom. Nice. And none of that includes the forced starvation, the rapes, the tortures and slavery, or the displacements.

I've studied this since 1994, when I first learned of it - by the purest accident, I'll add. When the headlines were braying about "the people's right to know" in the OJ trial, they were depriving the people of this right, themselves, in that first genocide. Which now appears on the verge of starting up again.

I'm no activist, but when I learned of this genocide in '94, I made it the one area where I would be an activist. It was just too terrible not to. At stake were multitudes of lives, but also the whole thing told me that our free press is anything BUT free. That concerns every one of us, and if you think it doesn't, wait...

The media can't refer to the first genocide, because they denied it existed while it was going on. But what reason do activist groups against genocide have? What is their excuse? I'm giving benefit of the doubt in assuming that they are merely ignorant, entirely, of the southern genocide. The FIRST genocide, and the WORST one.

This website can no longer treat Darfur as an isolated genocide. The material they'd need to FULLY verify the first one is ample and accessible. If they don't go and get that information, and include info about it in future articles, they're not sincere. Which implies another agenda than stopping genocide. I hope this doesn't prove to be so.

The media can't fess up to the first genocide; people would be outraged that they'd DELIBERATELY kept us all in the dark about it for 20 YEARS. If they could acknowledge the first genocide, the case of genocide in Darfur would be even more iron-clad. And yet...not a peep. I guess that first 2 1/2 million slaughtered victims just - never existed? Or it never happened? Try talking to the people in southern Sudan (the Dinka, the Nuer, the Shilluk and whatever's left of the Nuba). They will SURELY have opinions to share that would take you by surprise, even though they shouldn't surprise anyone.

WE - YOU - ALL of us, had an absolute RIGHT to know about the first genocide. We were deliberately deprived of that right, through the COLLECTIVE efforts of ALL free-world nations and mass media outlets. ALL of them. How you could remain unconcerned about THAT is hard for me to encompass.

So I guess Darfur is now going to be re-labeled as "just another civil war." And the public will suck that up like an Orange Julius. The media has the ear of most of the free world's population; they can foist this kind of disinformation on us, and it'll be accepted. Nothing WE say will be given more credence than our "objective" free press. Even when they are obviously neither objective nor free.

How can you be activists if you don't keep yourselves fully informed? It's vastly worse than just Darfur.

And remember this: if the media can wazoo the world's public on these genocides, they can wazoo us on a whole lot more than that. Your campaign against the genocide cannot possibly do a bit of good without a campaign to demand responsible reporting in our media. CNN is NOT the only culprit here; the entire mass-media industry, and our own governments, are acting collectively to avoid having to DO something about Khartoum's genocidal regime. To accomplish that, they have to soothe the sensibilities of the public by feeding them warm-fuzzies instead of reality. "No, no, don't worry, it's not a genocide; it's only SOME people who characterize it that way. You don't need to give them any heed at all." Propaganda works. Especially when the public is intellectually lazy.

Please also note that almost nobody in any Islamic nation has voiced outrage over the genocides, either. Wouldn't you think that if Islam IS a peaceful and tolerant faith, genocide against anyone would outrage them? Even when done by other Muslims? Their virtual silence is a tacit condoning of the genocide. It is THEY, after all, who should take responsibility for a regime change in Sudan. Are they?

And just WHAT can we learn about Islam from all that? If you're curious (and you should be), include a study of Islam itself in your homework on the history of Sudan's genocides. Read the Quran and Hadith, cover to cover; study Islam at its prosyletizing sites - learn, from the horse's mouth, what Islam is all about. Search, ACTIVELY, for any and all merit you can find. You can't really understand the Sudan's genocides without some grasp of Islam itself.

Oh, and while you're at it, learn what you can about the two official policies of Sudan, called "Islamization" and "Arabization." Just to get a bit more lucid perspective on things. I won't do ALL of your homework for you. You'll grasp it better by doing it yourself.

Then draw your conclusions.

Please note: Racism is the embryonic form of genocide. The Sudanese genocide is more racist than anything else. Of all cultures in the world, the Arab culture is most venomous of all toward black people. While other countries participated in it, it was Arabs who initiated the slave trade - and still practice it.

Genocide is like cancer; it metastacizes. Had we done the right thing with Sudan 25 years ago, Rwanda, Bosnia and other genocides might not have occurred. The success of one genocide emboldens others to start their own. We have ignored this genocide, to the peril of others later, and ultimately to our own. Why do you suppose John Donne said, "No man is an island," and "Any man's death affects me, because I am INVOLVED IN MANKIND." and "Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." What do you think he meant? Can you believe it isn't so? Can you believe that genocide can't come to YOU? That it is somehow limited to those "people way over there?" Do you think there cannot possibly be any people among your own country's population who would gladly commit genocide among us to gain political control? Dream on, bud.

There is only one way to deal with genocide: military intervention and SEVERE punishment of the perpetrators. The fact that a government can prey thus upon their own people means the people are not able to stop them. Only outside intervention can free them. That's why it isn't a civil war, or even close to it, however much the victims are resisting.

SCREW the oil! If people don't matter more, especially whole populations of them, we're sharing in the obscenity of genocide. There IS no pretty way to stop a genocide, but the activists I see about Darfur are more interested in meetings, conferences and such than about getting down-and-dirty accusing those who would minimize genocide into irrelevance.

History has taught us one thing about genocidal people and regimes: they never stop the slaughtering voluntarily. Only force can make that happen. It's all they understand. While we twiddle our thumbs, hold conferences, write letters to our lawmakers, the genocide rolls on unimpeded, while WE think we've now "done" our civil duty. The rest is now up to "someone else." And those "someone else's" know they don't need to do anything at all about it. The furor will die down on its own, and what's left won't affect them at all. They're right to think so, too.

You guys can't "make genocide history" without doing the homework needed first. I'm all for the idea. To succeed, though, you'll need to change the mindset of the mass media. They seem very disinclined to do that.

How can you end genocide if you can't even get the public to grasp the full scope of it? If you work with only SOME knowledge? What you have now isn't nearly enough. This applies not just to people who write articles; it applies to YOU, chum.

DO YOUR HOMEWORK, darn it.