Sudan's Ravines of Death

[gottaB]

by John Prendergrast

While Secretary of State Colin Powell, Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations, and several members of Congress were in government-controlled areas of Darfur a few weeks ago, I crossed into Darfur's rebel-held territory. This is the part of Sudan that the regime doesn't want anyone to see, for good reason.

I expected to see a depopulated wasteland rife with deteriorating evidence of the ethnic cleansing campaign pursued by the government of Sudan. The regime, in response to a rebellion begun by primarily non-Arab groups in early 2003, armed the Janjaweed militia, giving them impunity to attack.

I did indeed see numbing evidence of such a campaign in this Muslim region of Sudan, which is populated by Arabs and non-Arabs. Burned villages confirmed harrowing stories we had heard from Darfurians who were lucky enough to make it to refugee camps in Chad. About 1.5 million people have been left homeless, and as many as 300,000 may be dead by year's end. In village after village that I visited, the painstakingly accumulated wealth of the non-Arab population of Darfur — their livestock, their homes, their grainstocks — had been destroyed in a matter of minutes.

I was not prepared for the far more sinister scene I encountered in a ravine deep in the Darfur desert. Bodies of young men were lined up in ditches, eerily preserved by the 130-degree desert heat. The story the rebels told us seemed plausible: the dead were civilians who had been marched up a hill and executed by the Arab-led government before its troops abandoned the area the previous month. The rebels assert that there were many other such scenes.

Sudan's Ravines of Death....

[Ekova]

1. Sometimes I just don't know what to say.

The human animal has to be the most ruthless thing history has ever seen.

[reorg]

3. yes, some Africans are no better than some Americans

or wherever the animals hail from.

[Senior citizen]

2. Here we go with the genocides again

Every time we have a big die-off, with millions or billions of people killed, life becomes precious for a generation or two afterwards. We say, "Never again," and, "Lest we forget," etc. For a while there are plenty of jobs, homes, and resources to go around.

But by the third generation we have started to overpopulate again. Life becomes cheaper and everyone is so busy struggling for scarcer and scarcer resources that when the genocides start we can barely begin to pay attention because we are struggling to survive ourselves. And the genocides continue until more millions or billions have been killed, after which life become precious again for a generation or two afterwards. We day, "Never again," and, "Lest we forget." For a while there are plenty of jobs, homes, and resources to go around.

But by the third generation we have started to overpopulate again....

That's why one of the top puke priorities is banning abortion. They make their fortunes on the genocides of our cyclical overpopulation die-offs. There are some species of brainless amoebae that are smarter than we are. They are somehow aware of the resources available to them, and they never overpopulate. But then, they are sexless creatures, so they can function as a species and have evolved so that their species can survive. We function as if we were two species, and the battle of the sexes prevents us from functioning in our own best interests. Those who wish a nurturing civilization are mocked and murdered by those who prefer the bloody law of the jungle where might makes right. How can those with respect for life ever prevail over those who glorify the taking of lives?

We are not a viable species. We cannot control our reproduction in accordance with available resources so that there is enough for everyone. We prefer uncontrolled growth, or what is called metastasis--a cancer on the face of the earth. And like any nonviable species or any parasite that kills its host, we are desperately trying to expand our habitat to other systems. I hope the universe has a mechanism for coping with such diseases. We do not because we are the disease.

We know the problems, we know the answers, but those with the billions of dollars gained from previous genocides, who are using those billions to gain trillions more from present and future genocides, would nuke us all into oblivion before they'd listen to arguments that they should forfeit one dime to help anyone else.

The man who coined the word genocide noted that they occur with biological regularity. We overpopulate, life becomes cheap, millions or billions die, life becomes precious for a generation or two afterwards. We say, "Never again," and "Lest we forget," etc.

I am ashamed to be human.