I still chuckle when I think of how, early in his presidency, Bush visited Brazil and was surprised that the country had black people. In fact, it had to be explained to him that Brazil had more black people than the United States. Of course, this was not before he asked the Brazilian president, “Do you have Blacks,too?”

With some 90 million black folks, Brazil has the largest population of black people outside of Africa. Unfortunately, even with all those black people, racism against blacks is still all too prevalent and more blatant than what many of us are used to here. So, like here, the lot of black people is one of disproportionate poverty and life at the lower rungs of society’s ladder.

However, more and more blacks are fed up and pushing back against the racism that has dominated their existences there.

From university classrooms to television airwaves, black Brazilians are fighting for what they say is long-denied space in a society that has kept them on the margins.

They’re pushing for two affirmative-action bills in Brazil’s Congress that would open college enrollment and government payrolls to more Brazilians of African descent. Already, many state universities have implemented their own affirmative-action programs.

In 2005, black entertainer Jose de Paula Neto launched the country’s first television station aimed at black audiences, TV da Gente. Meanwhile, hundreds of communities known as quilombos that were founded more than a century ago by escaped slaves are winning recognition and federal protections.

And Brazilians are finally discussing race after decades of telling themselves and the rest of the world that the country was free from racism.

“The Brazilian elite says this is not a racist country, but if you look at whatever social indicator, you’ll see exclusion is endemic,” said Sen. Paulo Paim, author of one of the pending affirmative-action bills. “We want to open up to more Brazilians the legitimate spaces they deserve.”

So, Black Brazil, stand up! In the process, maybe you’ll wake up your brethren up north out of their slumber, as well.

Popularity: 57% [?]

You know, it’s nice to see an invention aimed at actually helping people, especially those who need it most. Around the world, people are dying based on a concern that I never have had to deal with — a lack of safe drinking water. Now, granted, I do think about this more and more, which is why I am letting my lawn die as opposed to watering it and why my car gets washed so infrequently these days. I hate wasting water when I know what a lack of it means to the health of so many globally.

I came across something the other day that I hope will change the plight of people without safe drinking water. The device is called the Life Straw and the idea is to provide an inexpensive means for the 1 billion people around the world to drink water from sources that could otherwise cause them to be infected by waterborne illnesses.

When mass-produced, the Life Straw costs a mere $3 dollars and will work for up to one year so, this is not out of the reach of world governments with the will to aid the third world.

So, in the end, a company may make billions and help people at the same time. Don’t we need more ingenuity like this in the word?

Popularity: 57% [?]

Much to-do has been made about President Bush announcing more sanctions against Sudan over its government’s involvement in the genocide in Darfur. This comes on the heels of the Sudanese government’s refusal to let U.N. troops come to the aid of the people of Darfur. What we heard today was tough talk that rings hollow when certain facts are brought to light.

What Bush didn’t tell us was that these sanctions don’t really target the one commodity Sudan has at its disposal - oil. This means that sanctions targeting other areas of business in the Sudan don’t really mean that much to the bottom line when you have a country that pumps about 500,000 barrels of oil every day. If you multiply that by the roughly $63/barrel price, you can see that this country will be awash in enough cash to withstand any sanctions that don’t affect oil revenues.

So, while I am hopeful, I am not holding my breath on what Bush will do. As long as oil is in play, I believe that the lives of the people of Darfur will only continue to be in peril.

Popularity: 78% [?]

One of Bush’s and the neocon’s favorites slogans is that “we’re fighting them over there so, we don’t have to fight them over here.” I have always found that to be a ludicrous notion. I find it silly because, first of all, we have not done nearly enough to secure the homeland here (our ports and borders are still not secure and too many of our National Guardsmen are in Iraq) and, secondly, we are assuming that they aren’t already here.

However, there was another piece of wisdom offered, but ignored. It was that Iraq was becoming a training laboratory for terrorists. Basically, it is allowing militants to learn the skills needed to attack Americans and their allies. Now, this reality has become more apparent. Iraqi insurgents are traveling outside of Iraq and pose a very real danger to neighboring countries and beyond. What this means is that, instead of stopping terrorism, our presence in Iraq has only made more terrorists, this time with experience in battling our military.

Here’s a sobering excerpt from the New York Times article:

Militant leaders warn that the situation in Lebanon is indicative of the spread of fighters. “You have 50 fighters from Iraq in Lebanon now, but with good caution I can say there are a hundred times that many, 5,000 or higher, who are just waiting for the right moment to act,” Dr. Mohammad al-Massari, a Saudi dissident in Britain who runs the jihadist Internet forum, Tajdeed.net, said in an interview on Friday. “The flow of fighters is already going back and forth, and the fight will be everywhere until the United States is willing to cease and desist.”

There are signs of that traffic in and out of Iraq in other places.

In Saudi Arabia last month, government officials said they had arrested 172 men who had plans to attack oil installations, public officials and military posts, and some of the men appeared to have trained in Iraq.

Officials in Europe have said in interviews that they are trying to monitor small numbers of Muslim men who have returned home after traveling for short periods to Iraq, where they were likely to have fought alongside insurgents.

One of them, an Iraqi-born Dutch citizen, Wesam al-Delaema, was accused by United States prosecutors of making repeated trips to Iraq from his home in the Netherlands to prepare instructional videos on making roadside bombs, charges he denies. He was extradited to the United States in January and charged with conspiring to kill American citizens, possessing a destructive device and teaching the making or use of explosives.

In an April 17 report written for the United States government, Dennis Pluchinsky, a former senior intelligence analyst at the State Department, said battle-hardened militants from Iraq posed a greater threat to the West than extremists who trained in Afghanistan because Iraq had become a laboratory for urban guerrilla tactics.

So, my conclusion is that it’s not cowardice to leave Iraq. It’s about not creating a bigger mess. Perhaps we do need a war on terrorism but, like I’ve stated previously, the civilian leadership in charge of this war are not the people we need coming up with the policy. They have proven themselves to be not up to the task. Therefore, we need some real policy change and we, as Americans, have to lead the charge for that change.

Popularity: 50% [?]

Sometimes, it’s very hard to imagine what a genocide looks like. Of course, we know that a lot of people are killed but, without news footage, our imaginations don’t go into those dark places to create imagery stark enough to capture the real picture.

However, there are rare occasions where words can help create a mental image. If you follow the tale of a 42-year-old Darfur survivor by the name of Ibrahim, you can begin to get some idea of the level of brutality and inhumanity heaped upon the people of this region.

Uncovered by a restless wind, skulls and bones poke above the thin dirt in this corner of Darfur, lying surrounded by half-buried, rotting clothes.

A short, bearded man named Ibrahim, 42, scratches through the sand. He is quiet and serious, close to tears. There are other, bigger grave sites elsewhere, he says, but the bones he is looking at are those of 25 people who he is sure are his friends and fellow villagers.

Some of them were dragged from the prison where he was held and were axed to death, he says.

However, if this is not bad enough, imagine this as part of your reality:

Mukjar offers a sobering look at the results of a government victory: Impoverished and frightened ethnic Africans huddle in refugee camps where they survive on humanitarian aid, while Arab nomads control the hinterland, threatening any farmer who tries to return.

“They did such a good job at cleansing the region in 2003 that there’s not much left to fight over,” said an aid worker, who like all others interviewed refused to be quoted by name for fear of being expelled by the government.

Aid workers say the town is like “a security bubble,” where refugees can live in relative safety as long as they don’t venture more than a mile or so into the countryside.

Janjaweed fighters still stroll through the marketplace, automatic rifles slung over their shoulders.

“We live side by side with the murderers of our families, and we can’t do anything,” said Ibrahim.

Just imagine having to be in such close proximity to someone who has killed your family and threatens your life but, you are unable to do anything about it. The only thing you have is the frailest of hope that help will come. As I have stated before, Darfur can’t wait. This is another great moral test the world is failing.

Popularity: 70% [?]

Finally, the world is starting to recognize the dire situation in Darfur. After the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the displacement of millions, the international community is finally starting to take some action. Today, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for war crimes in Darfur.

The warrants were issued for Sudan’s former state minister of interior Ahmed Haroun and Janjaweed militia commander Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman.

The list of crimes for which they are accused are indicative of the brutality and depravity of those perpetrating these attacks:

Judges said there were “reasonable grounds to believe” the two were responsible for murder, rape, and torture, as well as the forced displacement of villagers, and other war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur, the court said.

Of course, Sudan’s government has no intention of cooperating but, at least we are now seeing this genocide be labeled the criminal act it is.

It is also interesting to not that, while 104 nations support the International Criminal Court, Russia, China and the United States do not.

Popularity: 77% [?]

The “Butterfly Effect” is the idea that meteoroligical patterns are chaotic because even the flapping of a butterfly’s wings can contribute to changes in these patterns. In other words, things are interrelated and the actions of one can affect another.

Well, the recent change of heart in the Sudan may be the butterfly effect on steroids.

We have seen the leadership of that country refuse to budge on allowing a U.N. peacekeeping force into its Darfur region to quell the genocide there. It was able to do so, in large part, due to the backing it had from the Chinese government.

However, when some Hollywood luminaries and activists threatened to tie Beijing’s hosting of the 2008 Olympics to the Darfur genocide, China began pressuring the Sudan to allow peacekeepers in the region.

Now, without a superpower watching its back, Sudan finds itself finally capitulating to the U.N. request that it bring in 3,000 troops to augment the 7,000 African Union troops already there.

This is by no means over. The U.N. wants even more troops and police in the region but, so far, Sudan’s President, Omar al-Bashir, is pushing back, claiming it would violate Sudan’s sovereignity.

But, hopefully, this is a step towards stopping the death and displacement of people whose only crime is being black.

Popularity: 81% [?]

Like I’ve heard former congressman Rev. Walter Fauntroy say before, “money rules in all matters.”

This seems to be holding true for China. China, in its capacity as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council has long blocked attempts for sanctions against Sudan for it’s policies on Darfur. However, it’s interesting to see how the pull of the purse strings can make even mighty China take notice. China is set to hold the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. However, it is getting some really bad press over its support of the Sudan and it fears that it could hurt attendance (read: money) for its hosting of the Olympics.

So, in a stunning move, China is now pressuring Sudan to accept a U.N. peacekeeping force in the region.

How did this come about? You could chalk it up to the work of some Hollywood luminaries (sadly, none of them black but, we may address that some other time):

So what gives? Credit goes to Hollywood — Mia Farrow and Steven Spielberg in particular. Just when it seemed safe to buy a plane ticket to Beijing for the 2008 Olympic Games, nongovernmental organizations and other groups appear to have scored a surprising success in an effort to link the Olympics, which the Chinese government holds very dear, to the killings in Darfur, which, until recently, Beijing had not seemed too concerned about.

Ms. Farrow, a good-will ambassador for the United Nations Children’s Fund, has played a crucial role, starting a campaign last month to label the Games in Beijing the “Genocide Olympics” and calling on corporate sponsors and even Mr. Spielberg, who is an artistic adviser to China for the Games, to publicly exhort China to do something about Darfur. In a March 28 op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal, she warned Mr. Spielberg that he could “go down in history as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games,” a reference to a German filmmaker who made Nazi propaganda films.

Four days later, Mr. Spielberg sent a letter to President Hu Jintao of China, condemning the killings in Darfur and asking the Chinese government to use its influence in the region “to bring an end to the human suffering there,” according to Mr. Spielberg’s spokesman, Marvin Levy.

China soon dispatched Mr. Zhai to Darfur, a turnaround that served as a classic study of how a pressure campaign, aimed to strike Beijing in a vulnerable spot at a vulnerable time, could accomplish what years of diplomacy could not.

So, money does indeed rule the day. I really don’t care what tactics are employed as long as the people of Darfur get the help they so desperately need.

Popularity: 85% [?]

It has been reported that the U.S. is holding of on further sanctions against Sudan at the request of the United Nations. The U.N. is pushing Sudan to accept more international peacekeepers in their country.

This is expected to delay more sanctions by, at least, 2-4 weeks.

Please understand, these are sanctions. So, the effects of these may not be felt immediately in Sudan. So, any delay only adds more time to Sudan seeing any negative financial impact to its policy of genocide in Darfur.

These sanctions will target 29 Sudanese companies. The U.S. is hoping that they will have the same effect as similar sanctions against Iran and North Korea.

However, as we continue to way, more people will be raped, maimed and killed. The time to act is long overdue. So, world, what are we waiting for?

Popularity: 76% [?]

Though we are reluctant to help Africa and Africans, we too easily go along with the violation of human rights of Africans. The latest comes in the form of FBI and CIA agents interrogating so-called terrorism suspects in an Ethiopion prison notorious for its use of torture.

We may argue that, when we are dealing with grown men accused of terrorism, you can’t handle them with kid gloves. But, what happens when women and children are being detained?

More than 100 of the detainees were originally arrested in Kenya in January, after almost all of them fled Somalia because of the intervention by Ethiopian troops accompanied by U.S. special forces advisers, according to Kenyan police reports and U.S. military officials.

Those people were then deported in clandestine pre-dawn flights to Somalia, according to the Kenya Muslim Human Rights Forum and airline documents. At least 19 were women and 15 were children.

In Somalia, they were handed over to Ethiopian intelligence officers and secretly flown to Ethiopia, where they are now in detention, the New York-based Human Rights Watch says.

…

When contacted by AP, Ethiopian officials denied that they held secret prisoners or that any detainees were questioned by U.S. officials.

“No such kind of secret prisons exist in Ethiopia,” said Bereket Simon, special adviser to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. He declined to comment further.

A former prisoner and the families of current and former captives tell a different story.

“It was a nightmare from start to finish,” Kamilya Mohammedi Tuweni, a 42-year-old mother of three who has a passport from the United Arab Emirates, told AP in her first comments after her release in Addis Ababa on March 24 from what she said was 2½ months in detention without charge.

She is the only released prisoner who has spoken publicly. She was freed a month after being interviewed, fingerprinted and photographed by a U.S. agent, she said. Tuweni, an Arabic-Swahili translator, said she was arrested while on a business trip to Kenya and had never been to Somalia or had any links to that country.

She said she was arrested Jan. 10. Tuweni said she was beaten in Kenya, then forced to sleep on a stone floor while held in Somalia in a single room with 22 other women and children for 10 days before being flown to Ethiopia on a military plane.

Finally, she said, she was taken blindfolded from prison to a private villa in the Ethiopian capital. There, she said, she was interrogated with other women by a male U.S. intelligence agent. He assured her that she would not be harmed but urged her to cooperate, she said.

So, do we honestly think that, by arresting women and children and putting them in harm’s way, we can win the war on terror? I only see this as pouring gasoline on a fire. I do think that we need to fight terrorism but, we need to do it by addressing the needs/conditions that make it easier for a person to consider this course of action. In other words, we need to address the root causes and not engage in actions that on exacerbate the problem.

Popularity: 56% [?]