Amnesty criticizes War on Terror and Helpless Darfur

Amnesty's latest rapport tells us that the poor suffer from the so-called war on terror. And many countries choose national security above individual human rights. These kind of changes in national policies are a sign of the times. The whole world has significantly changed into a perceived war-zone.

So what do we do to change all this? We send peace-keepers to Afghanistan and Iraq. Strangely enough there is no peace yet; Afghanistan is still fighting and Iraq, well, about 2000-3000 deaths each month tell it all. So what are peace-KEEPERS going to do when a long lasting peace is not even in sight?

Let's agree that we have to get rid of the silly word peace-keepers, and call the peace-keeping operations for what they are: military operations. Oh, I've got one more up for a reality check; how about friendly fire? There's nothing friendly about being killed by your own people. It's probably the most stupid thing that can happen, so why mistake stupidity with friendliness?

A military operation is needed in Darfur. But we're not going. All our troops are situated in Afghanistan and, beside the current 17 (!) Canadian troops in Darfur, we are not willing to offer more help than committing $40 million. The US also has it's priorities straight. Over 100.000 troops in the oil-wealthy Iraq, but less than 5% of that in Darfur. Of course, Darfur doesn't directly threaten the US national security so why worry? Who cares about 180.000 deaths when there's money to be made from prison camps to oil? Finding the right words to describe the greed is a matter of choice: state-capitalism at work, or should we call in neo-colonialism? Either way it's power before people, greed before sharing, national security before human rights. And it's not that we haven't seen this before (Arundhati Roy).

See also today's interview of Democracy Now! with Arundhati Roy: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/23/1358250