The Cherry Orchard

Despite a weekend of worldwide protests and the ongoing flow of weak, ambivalent press releases about the situation in Sudan, it’s very difficult to discern what’s going on at all from news sources around the world.

I have been trying for days to write an informative article about the Sudan situation, and after much reading I am still mystified. Why is the African Union peacekeeping force leaving on September 30, and why is the United Nations waiting for the Sudanese government — the force, apparently, that hundreds of thousands of refugees need protection from — to give them permission to take the African Union’s place? Wikipedia’s not much help, and neither is the New York Times, which regularly devotes only a moderate amount of space to this growing crisis.

Despite the famous ineffectiveness of the United Nations, their email press releases have been more enlightening than other sources, and one cannot fault Security General Kofi Annan for failing to yell loudly enough. One can, however, fault various governments, media outlets and organizations around the world for not picking up the call.

Those who remember the Nazi holocaust used to repeat the phrase “Never again”, and I remember a time in my life when I was naive enough to take comfort in that thought. The problem is, never again always seems to start after the holocaust is over. I read Philip Gourevitch’s history of Rwandan genocide, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families and gained a crystal-clear understanding of how that disaster was allowed to happen in 1994. Similarly, it’s easy in retrospect to look back and comprehend the incredible massacres carried out by Pol Pot in Cambodia. But what do we do when the head of the United Nations tells the world “it’s happening again, right now” — and you look for a way to help and find none? It cannot be that we must wait for the atrocities to lapse into past tense before we can wrap our brains around them.

It’s happening again. Everybody knows it, and nobody knows how to help. Over in Iran, where the government pretends to care about humanitarian crises whenever Israel is to blame, a major conference is being planned to examine whether or not the Jewish Holocaust of the 20th Century was a fraud. The past is a comfortable place to dwell. Is anybody out there concerned with the present?

I’m not giving up on my wish to become knowledgable about the situation in Sudan, but I need to find better sources of information so I can hopefully say something better than “it’s bad” sometime soon.

Sorry I’ve been away! I’ve been doing some reading and thinking.

I put this site up in late July, and since then I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what I intend to do with it (no, I’m not much of a plan-ahead type, why do you ask?). I know I want to use this space to write about global issues — war, poverty, ecology — from an analytical and historical point of view, and I know I want to explore pacifist solutions to difficult problems. Okay, great, but how does that translate into running a blog? I’m not sure. I’ve found myself jumping from topic to topic, and I obviously haven’t managed to stick to one topic long enough to get many articles out. I’ve made some false starts, as well, and even though the site is brand new I think I’ve already got some deadwood to cut out.

I am doing some background work in preparation for the coming 61st session of the United Nations General Assembly, which I plan to cover in detail here. I’ve mentioned before that I plan to keep up a regular United Nations observation post here at The Cherry Orchard (hey, it’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it, and Daily Kos is too busy covering Lieberman vs. Lamont). I was kind of hard on the United Nations in a recent post, and in contrast to that I’d like to report that I’ve been paying attention to the tireless travels of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who’s been knocking himself out visiting militant politicans across the Middle East for the past two weeks. I say Annan’s doing admirable work (though I know Little Green Footballs doesn’t think so). I hope to write more about this soon as well.

Beyond that, I’m still scheming up my master plan here. Expect some design spruce-ups here. Most of all, expect some better articles, and a lot more. Soon.