Over a year later...and still no action from George Bush....
From MSNBC.com:
In April 2006, a small group of Darfur activists -- including evangelical Christians, the representative of a Jewish group and a former Sudanese slave -- was ushered into the Roosevelt Room at the White House for a private meeting with President Bush. It was the eve of a major rally on the National Mall, and the president spent more than an hour holding forth, displaying a kind of passion that has led some in the White House to dub him the "Sudan desk officer."
Bush insisted there must be consequences for rape and murder, and he called for international troops on the ground to protect innocent Darfuris, according to contemporaneous notes by one of those present. He spoke of "bringing justice" to the Janjaweed, the Arab militias that have participated in atrocities that the president has repeatedly described as nothing less than "genocide."
"He had an understanding of the issue that went beyond simply responding to a briefing that had been given," said David Rubenstein, a participant who was then executive director of the Save Darfur Coalition, which has been sharply critical of the administration's response to the crisis. "He knew more facts than I expected him to know, and he had a broader political perspective than I expected him to have."
Yet a year and a half later, the situation on the ground in Darfur is little changed: More than 2 million displaced Darfuris, including hundreds of thousands in camps, have been unable to return to their homes. The perpetrators of the worst atrocities remain unpunished. Despite a renewed U.N. push, the international peacekeeping troops that Bush has long been seeking have yet to materialize.
Just this weekend, peace talks in Libya aimed at ending the four-year conflict appeared to be foundering because of a boycott by key rebel groups.
Many of those who have tracked the conflict over the years, including some in his own administration, say Bush has not matched his words with action, allowing initiatives to drop because of inertia or failure to follow up, while proving unable to mobilize either his bureaucracy or the international community.
The president who famously promised not to allow another Rwanda-style mass murder on his watch has never fully chosen between those inside his government advocating more pressure on Sudan and those advocating engagement with its Islamist government, so the policy has veered from one approach to another.
Meanwhile, a constant turnover of key administration advisers on Darfur, such as former deputy secretary of state Robert B. Zoellick and presidential aide Michael Gerson, has made it hard for the administration to maintain focus.
"Bush probably does want something done, but the lack of hands-on follow-up from this White House allowed this to drift," said one former State Department official involved in Darfur who did not want to be quoted by name criticizing the president. "If he says, 'There is not going to be genocide on my watch,' and then 2 1/2 years later we are just getting tough action, what gives? He has made statements, but his administration has not given meaning to those statements."
Cannot be seen 'invading another Muslim country'
Since the United States became the first and only government to call the killing in Darfur genocide, Bush and his aides have grappled with how to provide security for civilians in a large, remote area in the heart of Africa.
While almost everyone involved in Darfur policy agrees that an African Union peacekeeping force of just 7,000 troops is not up to the task, the United States has refused to send troops and, despite promises of reinforcements, has yet to secure many additional troops from other countries. At the same time, it has been unable to broker a diplomatic resolution that might ease the violence.
Even Bush has complained privately that his hands are tied on Darfur because, with the U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, he cannot be seen as "invading another Muslim country," according to people who have spoken with him about the issue.
"It's impossible to keep Iraq out of this picture," said Edward Mortimer, who served as a top aide to then-U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and says resentment over Iraq caused many countries to not want to cooperate with the United States on Darfur.
Bush advisers argue that the lack of success reflects the limitations of working through institutions such as the United Nations, NATO and the African Union. They cite the billions of dollars of U.S. relief aid that has kept millions of Sudanese alive. They say U.S. pressure has kept the issue on the world's agenda.
"If there was ever a case study where the president sees the limitations and frustrations of the multilateral organizations, it is the issue of Darfur," said Dan Bartlett, former White House counselor. "Everybody for the most part can come to a consensus: Whether you call it genocide or not, we have an urgent security and humanitarian crisis on our hands. Yet these institutions cannot garner the will or ability to come together to save people."
There is no doubt that responsibility for inaction on Darfur can be spread around. The Sudanese government has resisted cooperation at every step in the saga and has been shielded at the United Nations by China, its main international protector. Few other Western nations, with the notable exception of Britain and some Nordic countries, have shown much interest in resolving the crisis. The process of raising peacekeepers from U.N. members has proved tortuously slow.
"There's an enormous stain on the world's conscience," said Mitchell B. Reiss, former State Department policy planning chief. "We collectively stood by and let it happen a decade after it happened in Rwanda."
It's a pure crisis alright, but since Georgey wants to hunt for more oil, I guess people can get raped as much as they want to, right?
In late 2005, Bush gathered his most senior advisers to discuss what to do about Darfur. He wanted to know whether the U.S. military could send in helicopter gunships to attack the militias if they launched new attacks on the refugee camps. Could they also shoot down Sudanese military aircraft if necessary? he asked. His aides worried that the United States could get involved in another shooting war, and the president backed off.
"He wanted militant action, and people had to restrain him," said one senior official familiar with the episode. "He wanted to go in and kill the Janjaweed."
The meeting underscored both Bush's personal investment in Sudan, dating back to the beginning of his administration, and his instinct, which aides have kept in check, to take direct action.
Many close to Bush believe that this intense interest in the issue was heavily influenced by American evangelicals, who have adopted the cause of Christians in southern Sudan.
So, what your saying is that if they were all Muslim, you wouldn't even bother?
Even before the crisis in Darfur, in western Sudan, one of Bush's foreign policy goals was to try to end the civil war between the Muslim government in Khartoum and rebels in the south, a conflict that had lasted more than two decades and cost more than 2 million lives.
Former senator John C. Danforth (R-Mo.), whom Bush appointed as his special envoy for Sudan, said the president's interest in the country is rooted in a larger sense of morality. "This isn't a country that has much strategic interest for the United States," he observed.
Bush's initiative to broker a north-south deal worked. Despite difficult negotiations, Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir agreed in January 2005 to a plan to share power and oil revenues with the rebels -- and even gave the south the right to secede in six years if the leadership could not reconcile their differences.
But by then a separate conflict had exploded in Darfur, as long-standing conflicts between African farmers and Arab herders over land, and a failure by the Khartoum government to redress local grievances, boiled over into armed rebellion.
The government turned to a tactic it had employed in fighting the southern rebels: arming local Arab militias, the Janjaweed, to carry out a counterinsurgency on its behalf. The militias rampaged throughout Darfur starting in mid-2003, burning hundreds of villages, raping women and summarily executing African villagers, according to numerous human rights reports. More than 200,000 people have died in Darfur since the crisis erupted, according to U.N. estimates. Some estimates place the figure as high as 450,000.
Many familiar with Sudan believe that Bush and his aides initially averted their gaze to the flaring violence in Darfur because raising the issue might interfere with the difficult negotiations with Bashir. Some U.S. officials saw another reason for the reluctance to get involved: preserving a burgeoning intelligence relationship with Khartoum, which had begun sharing critical information about al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists.
"There was a tendency not to see Darfur initially for what it was," said Gerard Gallucci, who served in 2003 and 2004 as the top U.S. diplomat in Khartoum. It was well known among Western governments, he said, that Sudan "was using terror to cleanse black Muslim Africans from land that they had promised the Janjaweed."
Such claims are vigorously contested by Danforth and other Bush advisers, who say the president repeatedly warned Bashir about the consequences of sending Arab militias after defenseless civilians.
Over time, Bush has become increasingly outspoken about the situation in Darfur, raising the issue with foreign leaders and meeting privately with dissidents and other little-known political players in Sudan to encourage a solution. In recent months, he has singled out Bashir for harsh condemnation, accusing him of subverting efforts to bring peace to Darfur.
Meeting with the Darfur activists, Bush acknowledged that Sudan had cooperated in anti-terrorism initiatives -- but he insisted that Khartoum could not "buy off" the United States, Rubenstein said.
Last spring, when the White House worked on a new plan to try to press Sudan's government to accept international peacekeepers, it was the president himself who was the driving force in the interagency process, many officials involved the debate said. According to national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, Bush refused to accept a program developed to confront Sudan because he was concerned that it was not tough enough. He kicked it back to the bureaucracy.
"I've had it with this incrementalism," Hadley quoted the president as saying in the Oval Office. "We're going to lead, and if people don't want to follow us, they're going to have to stand up and explain why they are willing to let women continue to be raped in Darfur."
At one point, one senior official said, Bush wanted action to crimp Sudan's booming oil business, a move that would have severely aggravated relations with China -- and that no one else in the government favored.
There was stunned silence in the room, the official said, when Hadley disclosed Bush's idea to other government officials. Hadley made clear he was not interested in having a discussion, but the administration never went as far as the president seemed to be demanding. Instead, Treasury officials came up with a sanctions plan aimed at tracking and squeezing key individuals and companies in the Sudanese economy, including the oil business.
Hindsight is 20/20, sure, but Bush could have went into Sudan. Bush could have put Iraq on the back burner for maybe 2 or 3 years. He could have really won the hearts and minds of a lot of people by sending the military into Sudan and helped out.
I don't know how many times I have to talk about this...I really don't. I said from the beginning in 2001...the way to win the so-called War on Terror is through Africa. You have to use the same strategy that was used in WW2. Start through Africa, and everything else will fall into place.
Now, we have a mess in Iraq, and everyone is laughing at us. Hell, most Americans are laughing at Bush. Just come out and admit it, Bush, you messed up. You screwed up, be a big boy and say it, will you?
Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends....
Posted on 2007-Oct-29 at 05:35
What an intresting week last week! I have come to discover a ton about myself, and honestly, it's for the better. I think I am bipolar. No doctor has ever thought about treating it, because most of them probably doesn't know what it is. This would explain why I have such mood swings as I do. One moment, I can be happy, the next angry, and then depressed.
I am also (finally) dealing with my issues of self-confidence. It sounds cheesy, but every morning, I am now waking up and forcing myself to say one positive thing about me. It seems to be working pretty well. I am also trying to forgive myself of the past. There are things in my past that happened and I couldn't controll. Those things I need to forgive myself for, and just move on with my life. each day, when we wrong someone, or we do somthing wrong in general, we must learn from the mistakes, and move on. The old saying "what does not kill us, makes us stronger" is pretty dead on.
I am figuring that my anger problems are coming from my self-worth issue, and hopefually, as my confidence grows, so does my fuse. As I read further in the Satanic Bible, I am finding myself more and more the Satanist. LaVey nails some great points, granted I know a lot of his stuff was borrowed, but remember, Christianity was pretty much stolen from several diffrent regional religons.
Other than that, things are really looking up. I mean, I have great friends, a new outlook on life, and I am going to make the best of what I have right now. Don't worry, I'm still going to pick on those who deserve it. It's just right now, I want to improve myself first.
Thank you to all my friends who stood by me all this time, and belived that I was a better person then I wanted to belive. You guys mean a lot to me.
Yesterday, I didn't post because I was in mourning. Here's why...
Ministry bassist Paul Raven has died of an apparent heart attack, according to a statement from a Ministry publicist.
Raven's body was found Saturday in a private home in a small French village on the Swiss border. He was 46.
The British-born Raven, also known for his work with bands Killing Joke and Prong, was in Geneva working on a new release.
He established himself with the seminal post-punk/industrial group Killing Joke and most recently was nominated for a 2006 Grammy for best metal performance.
Raven's newest project, Mob Research, was in the final mixing and mastering phases and was set for release next year.
"Not only was Raven an extraordinary talent, but one of my closest dearest friends," Ministry's Al Jourgensen said Monday in the statement.
"Our condolences and prayers go to his immediate family. He will be truly missed by artists, musicians and his fans the world over."
I picked this song, because this song is 1000% pure inspiration. This song has helped me get over a ton of things, including bad breakups. If you are at a point in your life where you need something to pick you up...check the lyrics of this song out.
Maybe it's time we just nuked San Fran off the map.
City health officials took steps Thursday toward opening the nation’s first legal safe-injection room, where addicts could shoot up heroin, cocaine and other drugs under the supervision of nurses.
Hoping to reduce San Francisco’s high rate of fatal drug overdoses, the public health department co-sponsored a symposium on the only such facility in North America, a 4-year-old Vancouver site where an estimated 700 users a day self-administer narcotics under the supervision of nurses.
“Having the conversation today will help us figure out whether this is a way to reduce the harms and improve the health of our community,” said Grant Colfax, director of HIV prevention for the San Francisco Department of Public Health.
Ehcuse me? You going to what? First off, if you want a place like that, it's called. PRISON. Heroin is the single worse drug out there. So, you want your citizens of your own city to kill themselves while they become violent criminals?
Do propose to give these idiots money to buy the H, or do they still have to get it the old fashion way? Killing someone for what little crack money they can get?
Organizers of the daylong forum, which also included a coalition of nonprofit health and social-service groups, acknowledge that it could take years to get an injection facility up and running. Along with legal hurdles, such an effort would be almost sure to face political opposition.
Bertha Madras, deputy director of demand reduction for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, called San Francisco’s consideration of such a facility “disconcerting” and “poor public policy.”
“The underlying philosophy is, ’We accept drug addiction, we accept the state of affairs as acceptable,”’ Madras said. “This is a form of giving up.”
Sixty-five similar facilities exist in 27 cities in eight countries, but no other U.S. cities have considered creating one, according to Hilary McQuie, Western director for the Harm Reduction Coalition, a nonprofit that promotes alternative drug treatment methods.
“If it happens anywhere in the U.S., it will most likely start in San Francisco,” McQuie said. “It really just depends on if there is a political will here. How long it takes for that political will to develop is the main factor.”
Drug overdoses represented about one of every seven emergency calls handled by city paramedics between July 2006 and July 2007, according to San Francisco Fire Department Capt. Niels Tangherlini. At the same time, the number of deaths linked to overdoses has declined from a high of about 160 in 1995 to 40 in 2004, he said.
Colfax estimated that there are between 11,000 and 15,000 intravenous drug users in San Francisco, most of them homeless men. Like many large U.S. cities, the city operates a clean-needle exchange program to reduce HIV and hepatitis C infections.
Advocates plan to work on building community support for a safe-injection center, including backing from Mayor Gavin Newsom and the Board of Supervisors.
While it’s too early to tell what the room in San Francisco would look like, Vancouver’s InSite program is located on the upper floor of a low-rise building in a downtown neighborhood where drug users shoot up in the open.
Uhh, this is more than just poor public policy, this is just disgusting. Instead of HELPING these people with their problems, they're going to add on to them. Sure, they can't get arrested while taking the drugs there, but what happens when someone comes out of one of these, and starts killing people? Then what?
It's painfully obvious that San Francisco is being ran by a clueless moron. Gavin Newsome...PLEASE, I beg you don't run for President, we already see what one brain dead moron can do in 8 years. Just please, stop.
After the last few days, I really didn't know. Folks, I have been battling bronchitis for a few weeks, I'm sure some of you are aware of that. However, this week, it just knocked me on my ass, and I had to tap out for a few days.
I am back, and ready to get back on my pulpit to preach down the religion of stupidity, SHEEP BEWARE!!! I am back.
What happened while I was away?
- Ellen causes death threats over a dog...
Folks, if you have the free time to send a kennel you have probably never had seen before in your life a death threat for taking away a dog...then you have the free time to...I don't know GET A LIFE!!!
- Britney can't see her kids...
I know someone who's going in next year's death pool...right beside Lohan.
- That sick fuck Paul Neil was caught.
Let's rip his penis off and force him to give oral to himself as he bleeds to death.
- Amy Winehouse busted for pot
I love Amy, but come on...how many of you were shocked?
Ok, well, I shall be putting up the fight song a little later...plus writings and other random thoughts.
First off, a little background on the shootings at Success High School
A 14-year-old suspended student, dressed in black, opened fire in his downtown high school Wednesday, wounding four people as terrified schoolmates hid in closets and bathrooms and huddled under laboratory desks. He then killed himself.
A fellow student at SuccessTech Academy alternative school said Asa H. Coon, who was suspended for fighting two days earlier, had made threats in front of students and teachers last week.
"He's crazy. He threatened to blow up our school. He threatened to stab everybody," Doneisha LeVert said. "We didn't think nothing of it."
First off, with grammar like that, why was the school called "Success"
Coon was armed with two .38 caliber revolvers, and police found a duffel bag stocked with ammunition and three knives in a bathroom, officials said. Parents were angry that firearms got into a school equipped with metal detectors that students said were intermittently used.
Officials said two teachers and two students were shot, and that a 14-year-old girl fell and hurt her knee while running out of the school.
Witnesses said the shooter moved through the converted five-story downtown office building, working his way up through the first two floors of administrative offices to the third floor of classrooms. Officials said he was wearing a black Marilyn Manson concert shirt, black jeans and black-painted finger nails.
Oh of course, he's Gothic, that's why he did it, because all Goth kids blow up their schools. :rolleyes:
The first person shot, student Michael Peek, had punched Coon in the face right before the shootings began, said student Rasheem Smith, 15.
Coon "came out of the bathroom and bumped Mike and he (Mike) punched him in his face. Mike started walking. He shot Mike in the side." Peek, 14, didn't know Coon had a gun, Smith said.
Antonio Deberry, 17, said he and his classmates hid under laboratory tables and watched the shooter move down the hallway. "I saw him walking past. He didn't see us, we saw him." The shooter swore and shot several times, Deberry said.
LeVert said she hid in a closet with two other students after she heard a "Code Blue" alert over the loudspeaker. She said she heard about 10 shots.
Darnell Rodgers, 18, was walking up to another floor when the stairway suddenly became flooded with students.
"It took me a couple of minutes to realize that I was actually shot, when I felt my arm burning in the area, that's when I realized that I had got shot," Rodgers said.
"They were screaming, and they were saying, 'Oh my God, oh my God.' I knew something was wrong, but thought that it was probably just a fight, so I just kept going," Rodgers said.
Rodgers was released from a hospital after treatment for a graze wound to his right elbow.
Coon had been suspended since Monday for fighting near the school that day, said Charles Blackwell, president of SuccessTech's student-parent organization. He did not know how Coon got into the building Wednesday.
Blackwell said that there was a security guard on the first floor, but that the position of another guard on the third floor had been eliminated.
Student Frances Henderson, 14, said she often got into arguments with Coon, who once told her, "I got something for you all." He was a "gothic" who usually wore a trench coat, black boots and a dog collar, she said.
Students stood outside the building, many in tears, hugging one another and on cell phones. Others shouted at reporters with TV cameras to leave them alone. Family members also stood outside, waiting for their children to be released.
Math teacher David Kachadourian, 57, was in good condition; Michael Grassie, a 42-year-old teacher, was in surgery, but his condition was unavailable. The other two injured teens were taken to a children's hospital, which would not release their names, ages or conditions.
Deberry's mother, Lakisha Deberry, said she was upset that metal detectors at the school were not always in use.
"You never know what's going on in someone's mind," said Deberry, adding that she was required to go through a metal detector and present an identification card whenever she wanted to drop off something at school for her children.
The shooting occurred across the street from the FBI office in downtown Cleveland, and students were being sent to the FBI site.
Classes at all schools in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District will be canceled Thursday, said Eugene Sanders, chief executive officer of the district. Counseling will be available Thursday for students at recreation centers throughout the city, Sanders said.
SuccessTech Academy is an alternative high school in the public school district that stresses technology and entrepreneurship. It is housed on several floors of the district's downtown Cleveland Lakeside Avenue administration building.
"It's a shining beacon for the Cleveland Metropolitan School system," said John Zitzner, founder and president of E City Cleveland, a nonprofit group aimed at teaching business skills to inner-city teens. "It's orderly, it's disciplined, it's calm, it's focused."
The school has about 240 mainly black students with a small number of white and Hispanic students.
Coon was white and Henderson, the student who said she frequently argued with him, is black, but she said she didn't believe race played a role in the shootings.
The school, opened five years ago, ranks in the middle of the state's ratings for student performance. Its graduation rate is 94 percent, well above the district's rate of 55 percent.
Here's an idea...maybe if you stop shoving your hypocritical religious bullshit down other people's throats...maybe, just maybe, this kid wouldn't have done anything.
Let me tell you something, all of you people who just assume that the kid is "Gothic", so he must have problems are the problem.
It's time someone stood up for the Gothic subculture. You know why you "normal" people fear us? Because we think for ourselves. We are proud of who we are. Sure, just like in everything else, there are a few bad apples.
You want to blame a subculture, because you are either too scared or too lazy to turn the mirror on yourselves.
To my fellow Gothic brothers and sisters...defend who you are. We need a voice. We need someone to slap these people back into reality. We know the mirror. It's time to shine it on these sheep. It's time to shine the light and expose these American Idol watching, celebrity obsessed inbreed sheep for who they really are.
You're exposed, teenyboppers. You are exposed for what you are...frauds. You think you're all strong, because you know when Britney Spears took a crap. The truth is, you are uneducated, you know shit about life. You know nothing about treating another human being without using them.
The mother of a 14-year-old who authorities say had a cache of guns, knives and explosive devices in his bedroom for a possible school attack was charged Friday with buying her son three weapons.
Michele Cossey bought her home-schooled son, Dillon, a .22-caliber handgun, a .22-caliber rifle and a 9 mm semiautomatic rifle, authorities said. The teenager felt bullied and tried to recruit another boy for the possible attack at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School in suburban Philadelphia, authorities said.
Police officials told NBC News that the boy had confessed to plotting the attack.
Acting on a tip from a high school student and his father, police on Wednesday found the rifle, about 30 air-powered guns, swords, knives, a bomb-making book, videos of the 1999 Columbine attack in Colorado and violence-filled notebooks in the boy’s bedroom, Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor Jr. said.
This kid was completely messed up...oh but it gets even better
The boy’s father also tried to buy his son a rifle in 2005, but was not allowed to because he was a felon, police said.
The teen had a brief court appearance Friday at which the county public defender’s office and prosecutors agreed to continue holding him while they do psychiatric evaluations.
The boy was led out of the courtroom in shackles and he didn’t comment.
His mother was charged with unlawful transfer of a firearm, possession of a firearm by a minor, corruption of a minor, endangering the welfare of a child and two counts of reckless endangerment. She was not accused of helping the teen plot an attack, “but by virtue of her indulgence, she enabled him to get in this position,” Castor said.
The teen’s father, Frank Cossey, was sentenced to house arrest for lying about his criminal record when he went to buy a .22-caliber rifle for his son in December 2005, police said Friday. On his application he said he had never been convicted of a felony, but he had pleaded guilty in 1981 to manslaughter in a drunken driving death in Oklahoma and sent to prison, police said
Yeah, this family has a bunch of winners in it.
Here's my take on it...
Thanks, asshole. Not that many of us in the Gothic subculture already didn't have enough hassles, now it's time once again that we all have to be looked at. There are many of us in the subculture that doesn't want the spotlight. We are "normal" people, who belong in a certain subculture. We don't want to be bothered. Now, we have to be casted into a shit storm because some ass mite was picked on at school.
Ok, aside from the idiot for a second. This goes out to all you fucking idiots who think it's funny to pick on someone. Look, we all know the strong will survive. However, enough is enough. The truth of the matter is, if you have to pick on someone, you are making up for something you lack. It might be brain power or a (lack of a) large penis. It's time you idiots grew up, because in the end...it is you that is weak, it is you that is powerless, it is you that will suffer the wrath.
Maybe someone will blow your head off, or maybe, it's the fact you may end up needing a job. Those people will remember you, those people will be in position to make your life a living hell. When you enter the real world, you made the shit sandwich, now you have to eat it.
Now, to my young Gothic friends out there. Just because someone is picking on you, it's not a reason to kill them. You are the strong. You are the ones who will get your revenge one day, and it shall be the sweetest thing you have ever tasted. I have seen the revenge on some of my worst enemies. Some are dead (by various means..but none by me), others either in prison or crappy dead end jobs. Meanwhile, I'm living my dream job.
Revenge takes time. Don't kill anyone, but don't take it either. These idiots are just looking for attention. If they verbally assault you, ignore them. If they throw a punch, then you have the right to beat them within an inch of their lives. If they throw the first punch, then make them beg for mercy, but show none.
Death is too good for those who like to pick on the "weak"...watching them suffer by their own hand is the best revenge yet.
This is her ultra anti-semitic rant on Donny Deutsch.
So, let's do the tribute to Ann Coulter's idiotic mouth. Believe it or not, at one time, I had respect for her, when she was funny. Now, she's a moron.