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the only reason there is any semantic quibbling about what is going on in southern sudan and chad right now about the category genocide is simple: if it was characterized as genocide, then the un would have to act.
i frankly an baffled that the un has not already acted: i assume that a major explanation for it is a lack of viable coalition formation. one explanation for that is a breakdown in diplomacy. one factor in that could well have been john bolton.
from what i have been reading about his tenure, the strongest endorsements from anyone who is not an american conservative is that he occaisonally tried to start meetings on time.
sounds a bit like what they used to say about mussolini and the trains, but hey, i am sure that is only an accident.
otherwise, it does not sound like bolton has done anything to advance any diplomatic efforts, as there is a way in which the bush administration's politics tends to preclude functional alliances---and the question of action on sudan is pretty bloody important. but no-action seems to be ok with american conservatives: their boy bolton dicks around in the un scoring trivial points with the neo-john birch society set in the states while scores of people far away continue to die.
the political trick works efficiently too: the inability of the administration to do much of anything meaningful in the way of diplomacy within the un during bolton's sorry tenure can be blamed on the un itself by talking heads on fox news. see? the un doesnt do anything.
round and round.
no information required for conservatives to know exactly what they are supposed to think about this.
meanwhile, people continue to die needlessly.
nice going.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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