Archive for the ‘Analysis and Opinion’ Category
Thursday, September 9th, 2010
Analysis: Defining genocide
At what point does a mass killing or forced movement become genocide?
Genocide is understood by most to be the gravest crime against humanity it is possible to commit.
It is the mass extermination of a whole group of people, an attempt to destroy an entire group and wipe them out of existence.
But at the heart of this simple idea is a complicated tangle of legal definitions.
This has led to conflicting views on when a mass killing, or forced movement, of people can be called genocide.
There are people who say that there was only one genocide during the last century.
Others say there were at least three, possibly more.
What is genocide and when can that term be applied?
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Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Education, GENOCIDE | No Comments »
Thursday, September 9th, 2010
A compelling argument among scholars of genocide reflects the gradual development of the field beyond its point of origin, the Nazi murder of Europe’s Jews. The questions include whether and how different episodes of mass killing should be seen in a common frame; how such a development changes understanding of the Holocaust; and how historical interpretation and modern political argument intertwine, not least over Israel and anti-semitism. Martin Shaw, both participant and observer in this debate, presents an overview of its core issues.
Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Education, GENOCIDE, The Holocaust | No Comments »
Thursday, September 9th, 2010
Judge H. Lee Sarokin
If Pastor Jones carries out his plan to publicly burn Korans and the media continues to give him and the occasion unlimited publicity, pogroms against Muslims throughout the country are not unlikely. The current disparagement and discrimination against Muslims and desecration of their property has not reached the horrendous level of other pogroms in history — not yet. Nor are the attacks against Muslims government-sponsored, although numerous elected officials have added fuel to the fire. Rather than standing for principle, they have raised their fingers to test the wind and have gone with the popular flow. There has been growing opposition to new mosques, protest signs, graffiti, insults, destruction of property, possible arson, theft, desecration, discrimination and harassment. A teenager involved with others in an incident directed at a mosque in Watertown, N.Y., said he heard “it was a cult house where people drank blood.” (New York Times, 9/4/10) Where have we heard that before?
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Posted in Analysis and Opinion, FREEDOM OF SPEECH, Hate Speech, United States | No Comments »
Thursday, September 9th, 2010
(Aug. 24) — As Rwandan and Congolese rebels spent four days raping up to 200 women and baby boys within miles of a United Nations military camp, U.N. peacekeepers did … nothing. “There was no immediate explanation as to why the attacks were not reported until today,” AOL News reported on Monday.
And yet, the news of the U.N. soldiers’ non-response will surprise no one familiar with past U.N. peacekeeping efforts. The 1994 Rwandan genocide was arguably the organization’s greatest failure, for which the U.N. finally admitted responsibility in 2000. But there have been others: For instance, the 2005 massacre of 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in Srebrenica, Bosnia, which two years earlier been placed under U.N. protection, protected by 400 armed peacekeepers, none of whom fired upon the advancing Serbian soldiers. Similarly, the U.N. has not stopped the killings in Darfur.
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Posted in AFRICA, Analysis and Opinion, Darfur, GENDER HATE, GENOCIDE, War Crimes | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 8th, 2010
Published: August 28, 2010
When President Obama was seeking the White House, he criticized Republicans for not doing enough on Darfur and insisted that he would make Sudan a priority.
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Nicholas D. Kristof
On the Ground
Nicholas Kristof addresses reader feedback and posts short takes from his travels.
“What we have done has not been enough,” he told me in a 2006 interview when I was guest host for a “Charlie Rose” segment on Sudan. He added that Washington needed “a sustained diplomatic effort to put pressure on Sudan.”
Yet these days, Mr. Obama is presiding over an incoherent, contradictory and apparently failing Sudan policy. There is a growing risk that Sudan will be the site of the world’s bloodiest war in 2011, and perhaps a new round of genocide as well. This isn’t America’s fault, but neither are we using all of our leverage to avert it.
Posted in AFRICA, Analysis and Opinion, Darfur, Doing the Right Thing, ETHICS, GENOCIDE, Sudan, United States | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 8th, 2010
What we learn from the new report by “Darfurian Voices” (July 14, 2010)
By Eric Reeves
August 6, 2010 — In the late summer of 2004, during the most violently destructive phase of the Darfur genocide, the US State Department commissioned the International Coalition for Justice (CIJ) to oversee a systematic interviewing of Darfuri refugees who had fled to eastern Chad. It was on the basis of the report that emerged from these interviews (“Documenting Atrocities in Darfur” at http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf… ) that Secretary of State Colin Powell would make his September 2004 determination that genocide was being committed in Darfur. The personnel conducting the research included human rights experts, law enforcement officials, genocide scholars, forensic experts, and those with significant experience in the tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. They were provided with ample resources, including a full complement of translators.
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Posted in AFRICA, Analysis and Opinion, Darfur, GENOCIDE, Sudan, War Crimes | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 8th, 2010
Posted: August 19, 2010 05:25 PM
More than ever before, our world seems engulfed in humanitarian crises, with overwhelming suffering from conflict, hurricanes and earthquakes, and enormous dangers faced by those trying to help people in need.
Only twelve days ago, ten dedicated medical aid workers were brutally murdered in Afghanistan. Pakistan now confronts devastating floods of historical proportions. In Kyrgyzstan, violence and intimidation forced some 400,000 ethnic Uzbeks to flee their homes in June. Malnutrition is lurking in Niger, while multi-year relief efforts continue in Darfur and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
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Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Human Rights, Refugees | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 8th, 2010
By Melanie Jones
The bully stereotype is of a loner with low self-esteem who picks on kids more defenseless than he or she is. We think of the big kid threatening the little kid to get his lunch money, or a senior shoving a freshman in a locker. We think of swirlies and wedgies.
But physical altercations aren’t the norm.
Most bullies use words. Words that hurt. Words that can kill.
In Massachusetts, six students faced felony charges in March when 15-year-old Phoebe Prince hanged herself in a stairwell following months of relentless taunts and threats.
Jon Carmichael was an eighth-grader at a Texas school when he took his own life in March. His friends reported that the 13-year-old had been bullied for years.
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Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Bullying | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 8th, 2010
By SUSAN ENGEL and MARLENE SANDSTROM
Published: July 22, 2010
HERE in Massachusetts, teachers and administrators are spending their summers becoming familiar with the new state law that requires schools to institute an anti-bullying curriculum, investigate acts of bullying and report the most serious cases to law enforcement officers.
This new law was passed in April after a group of South Hadley, Mass., students were indicted in the bullying of a 15-year-old girl, Phoebe Prince, who committed suicide. To the extent that it underlines the importance of the problem and demands that schools figure out how to address it, it is a move in the right direction. But legislation alone can’t create kinder communities or teach children how to get along. That will take a much deeper rethinking of what schools should do for their students.
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Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Bullying | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 31st, 2010
By: Rabbi Jack Bemporad, Center for Interreligious Understanding
Professor Marshall Breger, Catholic University of America
Suhail A. Khan, Institute for Global Engagement
The Very Reverend Dr. James A. Kowalski, Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine
We are here as a single voice that comes from the three Abrahamic faiths, because we are seeing a new slogan ripple from downtown Manhattan across the US. Its timing particularly resonates as some of us have just returned from an unprecedented tour of concentration campsin Europe, where we stood side by side with a delegation of the most influential US Imams and Muslim leadership. Together, those of us who are Jewish and Muslim, came face-to-face with the unambiguous lesson that religious demonization can and does lead to unimaginable violence and horror.
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Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Antisemitism, Bullying, Civil Rights, Crimes Against Humanity, Democracy, Doing the Right Thing, ETHICS, FREEDOM OF SPEECH, Hate Speech, History, Holocaust Denial, Human Rights, Human Rights Abuses, Interfaith relations, RELIGION-BASED MURDERS, Righteous People of All Faiths, words that wound | No Comments »
