Hi Lisa!!

;)

slave labour

Found this unremarkable photo here. The caption underneath the photo read: "Slave labor... however, the car was dirtier after her little "cleaning."

The MoodGYM

I have just started working through MoodGYM, a self-help website. MoodGYM is based on cognitive behavioural therapy. It seeks to make the user of this site more aware of how they think, how thinking affects a person's mood and how to undue your "wrong" or what they call "warpy" thinking.

Le Carre!!

Just read a review on John Le Carre's latest novel. I will stop typing now because I imagine you are already halfway to the local bookstore.

We Are Fucked

Source: imagination.org

---

Source: slate.com

Bishop Desmond Tutu on Darfur

"We should be suspicious when people say the ethnic cleansing of defenceless civilians is in fact a civil war. They really mean: "These exotic people are all as bad as each other." How can we be expected to put our soldiers in harm's way when there is no good side to defend?"

Read the full article at: Timesonline.

And Now For Some Other Reality

“‘In many ways we are in a freefall in Darfur at the moment,’ UN humanitarian chief Jan Egeland [said]. [Egeland also said that] if insecurity forces aid agencies to pull out of Darfur, a region the size of France, hundreds of thousands of people would be left with absolutely nothing. ‘There is still a possibility to avoid that, but we have very little time, in my view, to avoid a collapse in Darfur.’ Egeland urged China as well as Arab and Islamic states to help convince the Khartoum-based government that ‘we need this UN force to avoid a collapse.’” (Associated Press [dateline: Nairobi], September 13, 2006)

Source: sudanreeves.org

John Prendergast is a Senior Adviser at the International Crisis Group. He worked in the White House and the State Department in the Clinton administration from 1996-2001 and has worked for a variety of NGOs and think tanks in Africa and the U.S. He has authored or co-authored seven books on Africa. What follows is his article which appeared on the Philadelphia Enquirer's web site philly.com on September 14, 2006.

"I just returned from rebel-held areas of Darfur on a trip with Scott Pelley of CBS's 60 Minutes, and I found that the crisis is spiraling out of control: Violence is increasing, malnutrition is soaring, and access to life-saving aid is shrinking. The Bush administration has made some noise about Darfur over the last two years, but it has made a series of deadly mistakes that have served only to make matters worse.

The administration's first deadly mistake is that while it helped broker a peace agreement in May, its negotiator left after only one rebel group signed, leaving at least two other rebel groups wanting more detail in the deal. The Khartoum regime is now partnering with the signatory group to launch a major offensive against the nonsignatories, thus deepening the divisions in Darfur.

Second, the United States and its partners did not make explicit in the peace deal the deployment of a U.N. peacekeeping operation to oversee implementation. U.S. officials took verbal promises from Khartoum as sufficient, which the regime has since renounced. Without a U.N. force, Darfurian displaced and refugee populations have no prospect of protection.

The third mistake was not ensuring sufficient international involvement in the dismantling of the deadly Janjaweed militia structures. The task was left to the very entity that arms the Janjaweed, the Khartoum regime. Without real international participation in the dismantling, no displaced Darfurian will ever go home.

Fourth, the United States has politically supported the rebel group that signed the peace deal, including having President Bush meet the group's leader. This faction has since effectively become a government militia that has been responsible for gross human-rights violations.

Fifth, after the senior U.S. official who helped negotiate the partial peace took a job on Wall Street, almost his entire team departed. For these last four critical months, State Department officials have opposed the naming of a presidential envoy to clean up the mess and make Darfur a genuine priority.

Sixth, the United States and Europeans have left the African Union force in Darfur in a state of limbo, not giving it the requisite resources and political support needed to protect the people of Darfur.

Seventh, the United States crafted a U.N. Security Council resolution that authorized targeted sanctions in early 2005, but has since imposed sanctions on only one regime official, a retired air force commander. This leaves Khartoum with the correct impression that there will be no accountability.

Eighth, the United States has not provided information and intelligence to the International Criminal Court as the latter conducts its investigation of the war crimes committed in Darfur. Sharing such material could be a critical part of leverage on Khartoum as it would face the prospect of accelerated indictments of senior officials.

Ninth, the United States invited the security chief of the regime to CIA headquarters in Virginia, thus cementing the relationship with a man believed to be the architect of the ethnic-cleansing campaign in Darfur. This tells Khartoum that as long as they are "with us" in the war on terror, they can continue to pursue what the U.S. president himself has labeled genocide in Darfur.

Tenth, and most recently, the United States continues to offer incentives rather than pressures in its bid to change Khartoum's behavior and induce it to support a U.N. force. An administration official went to Khartoum recently and offered President Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir a meeting with Bush and discussed the possibility of removing some of the U.S.-imposed sanctions. If we have learned anything over the last 15 years, it is this: Being soft on perpetrators of crimes against humanity does little to alter their behavior.

The administration's press statements and offers of incentives, and U.N. Security Council resolutions without real punitive actions have left the impression in Khartoum that Washington and the rest of the international community are all bark and no bite. "Constructive engagement" sometimes works, but it is making no impact here. Until the international stance, led by the United States, becomes much tougher, Khartoum can be expected to go on relentlessly targeting the civilian population in Darfur."

Wonderful Saturday

Today was a heaven sent day for me.

I spent time with Seth first at the dentist, then we had lunch together at Lick's. Tarah and Mom went out for their own walk. As usual, many questions were asked of me, some I could answer and others just fell by the wayside. After we came home and I had a proper nap, Seth, Tarah and I went out for a little walk so Marsh could have her nap. The day was summer warm and popsicles were had by all. On the way back, Seth discovered a new variety of ants...well, at least in our experience. Tarah did her best to give advice when she could. Went to the playground and came home to paint some of the rocks we had collected from the Rouge River earlier this summer. Tarah used her brush to paint her rock, then she tasted her paint, then used the brush to dig in the garden.

Gotta love Indian summer weather!

9/11

"O you who believe! when you go to war in Allah's way, make investigation, and do not say to any one who offers you peace: You are not a believer. Do you seek goods of this world's life! But with Allah there are abundant gains; you too were such before, then Allah conferred a benefit on you; therefore make investigation; surely Allah is aware of what you do."

The Holy Koran
Chapter: The Women (4.94)

---

"And make not Allah because of your swearing (by Him) an obstacle to your doing good and guarding (against evil) and making peace between men, and Allah is Hearing, Knowing."

The Holy Koran
Chapter: The Cow (2.224)


Source: The Humanities Text Initiative, a unit of the University of Michigan's Digital Library Production Service.

The Outsider

I was just surfing the net and happened upon a free web-based comic book called Outsider. I don't usually go looking for web based comics, in fact, I was looking for recent titles by Jack L. Chalker, when Google sent me to the Outsider website. Anyways, the art work is great, some of the writing is hokey but the story line seems promising. Be sure to read the "about the site" section of this guys website.

What a Fool Believes

He came from somewhere back in her long ago
The sentimental fool don't see
Tryin' hard to recreate
What had yet to be created once in her life

She musters a smile
For his nostalgic tale
Never coming near what he wanted to say
Only to realize
It never really was

She had a place in his life
He never made her think twice
As he rises to her apology
Anybody else would surely know
He's watching her go

But what a fool believes he sees
No wise man has the power to reason away
What seems to be
Is always better than nothing
And nothing at all keeps sending him...

Somewhere back in her long ago
Where he can still believe there's a place in her life
Someday, somewhere, she will return

She had a place in his life
He never made her think twice
As he rises to her apology
Anybody else would surely know
He's watching her go

But what a fool believes he sees
No wise man has the power to reason away
What seems to be
Is always better than nothing
There's nothing at all
But what a fool believes he sees...

michael mcdonald/kenny loggins
Source: lyricsfind.com

9/11 Report

I have been reading a fantastic adaptation of the 9/11 Report into a graphic novel of sorts at slate.com











This is a telling snippet which reminded me of exactly how early in the great game (being played out in Iraq now) that the Bush administration knew that 9/11 and Saddam Husein were not really linked. Click on the graphic to see it in a readable size.