[Peace-discuss] Darfur and the Israel lobby

[C. G. Estabrook]

[On one point in this discussion -- the one Scott sums up rather 
sweepingly as "the Israeli-Jewish conspiracy thing" (to which he applies 
the analytic category "a bunch of crap") -- see the following account of 
the genesis of the big-budget propaganda film "Darfur Now": it grew out 
of "an American Jewish Committee-sponsored briefing on genocidal [sic] 
killing in Sudan."  It points out that "The idea for making a 
documentary was inspired by a presentation from Ruth Messinger, the 
executive director of the American Jewish World Service, which has been 
at the forefront of the Save Darfur movement." --CGE]

	'Darfur Now' film has roots in AJC office
	Jacob Berkman

Hollywood agent Dean Schramm was inspired by an American Jewish 
Committee-sponsored briefing on genocidal killing in Sudan. The result 
is "Darfur Now," a documentary starring Oscar-nominated actor Don 
Cheadle, produced by Academy Award-winner Cathy Schulman and backed in 
part by Steven Spielberg.

Published: 11/05/2007

NEW YORK (JTA) -- After listening to a presentation about genocidal 
killing in the Darfur region of Sudan, Dean Schramm and other members of 
the Los Angeles chapter of the American Jewish Committee decided that 
they had to do something.

A few of the group's initial suggestions were old hat -- contact 
legislators, participate in a march on Washington, form interreligious 
groups. But Schramm, a Hollywood agent who represents mostly writers and 
directors, had a different pitch: a documentary film.

The result was "Darfur Now," a $2 million film that premiered Friday, 
starring Oscar-nominated actor Don Cheadle. It was produced by Academy 
Award-winner Cathy Schulman and backed in part by Steven Spielberg.

An estimated 200,000 to 400,000 people have been killed in Darfur since 
2003, by militias enlisted by the Sudanese government to rout out rebel 
groups. The situation has turned into a tribal war between Arab and 
African Muslims in which some 2.5 million people have been driven from 
their homes.

Yet the film eschews extensive footage of violence and horrifying shots 
of what genocide looks like, instead focusing on the efforts of six 
activists attempting to help stop the killings.

"We decided to focus on hope versus atrocities," Schulman, who won the 
best picture Oscar for "Crash," told JTA. "And I think people are 
becoming increasingly desensitized by images of a tragic consequence. We 
can watch news all day and see dead bodies, and yet cook dinner at the 
same time. I also wanted people to be able to bear to sit in a movie 
theater for 90 minutes."

The film chronicles the efforts of student activist Adam Sterling, who 
started the Sudan Divestment Task Force; Cheadle; the star of the film 
"Hotel Rwanda" about the 1994 genocide in that African nation, who later 
wrote a book, "Not On Our Watch," about Darfur; the International 
Criminal Court attorney who will eventually prosecute war criminals in 
Darfur; a truck driver who convoys food for the World Food Program, and 
a Darfurian mother who became a rebel after she saw her 3-month-old son 
beaten to death as she was driven from her village by Janjaweed.

The film, distributed by Warner Independent films, premiered in Los 
Angeles and New York on Friday and will hit another 13 cities this week, 
playing mostly in smaller, art-house theaters as opposed to mega-plexes. 
Those behind the film hope that it will inspire those who see it to get 
involved in any way they can. Realizing that most do not have the means 
or resources to turn a good intention into a Hollywood film, they have 
started a Web site, (participate.net) which has suggestions for how 
anyone can get involved.

"The ultimate goal of this film is to move people to action and to stand 
up and say, 'I have to be able to do something,' " said Rabbi Gary 
Greenebaum, who was director of the Los Angeles chapter of the AJC when 
the film was set in motion.

The idea for making a documentary was inspired by a presentation from 
Ruth Messinger, the executive director of the American Jewish World 
Service, which has been at the forefront of the Save Darfur movement.

Schramm quickly signed up one of his clients, award-winning documentary 
filmmaker, Theodore Braun, who in turn enlisted another critically 
acclaimed documentarian, Mark Jonathan Harris.

The group tapped Greenebaum, who has since become the AJC's national 
director of interreligious affairs, to explain the situation to 
potential financial backers. He first approached Spielberg's Righteous 
Persons Foundation, which gave the producers a $100,000 grant for seed 
money.

At about the same time, Schramm and company approached Schulman, who was 
just coming off her Academy Award win for "Crash." As it turned out, 
Schulman had been turned on to the Save Darfur movement by Cheadle, one 
of the stars of the ensemble drama. In turn, she brought Cheadle into 
the AJC project.

"This was a little unusual because all of the pieces that were necessary 
to bring this film to fruition really fell into place relatively quickly 
by Hollywood standards," Schramm said. "It took about three months, when 
a difficult project like this could take several years to get off the 
ground."

"That is the point," he added. "To get something done, you have to first 
look at yourself and ask, 'What can I do?' "


Scott Edwards wrote:
> I've given up on trying to argue on this list that people who are being 
> slaughtered and oppressed--whether in the Occupied territories, Darfur, 
> or elsewhere--need "help". So I will limit my message here to correcting 
> the numerous factual errors of the article on Darfur.
>  
> A. "the Congo, with ten to twenty times as many African dead over the 
> same period is not called a "genocide" and passes almost unnoticed.
>  
> This is incorrect for two reasons. First, ten to twenty times as many 
> African dead over the same period would be somewhere between 2 and 8 
> million dead congolese in the past 4 years. That is factually incorrect. 
> Additionally, Darfur is not universally called a "genocide". Amnesty 
> International, Human Rights Watch, the UN, and all but a handful of 
> states have documented and identified crimes against humanity and 
> breaches of intl humanitarian law, not genocide. The use of the word 
> "genocide" is misleading and irresponsible, much in the same way 
> painting everyone in the Darfur advocacy movement with the same brush is.
>  
> B. Among the latest false realities being pushed upon the American 
> people are the simplistic pictures of Black vs. Arab genocide in Darfur, 
> and the proposed solution: a robust US-backed or US-led 
> military intervention in Western Sudan.
>  
> The author, by my estimate, has been, or continues to, live under a 
> rock. Who states these false realities? They certainly wouldn't be the 
> "latest" in any case. No one in the "Save Darfur" movement, none of 
> the credible  human rights orgs, hell--not even the US government 
> peddles that crap, and trust me, we are watching what the USG says 
> carefully. The false reality here is that the author is assuming what 
> the imperial administration *would* say, and what the Save Darfur 
> movement *would* say, were the former fulfilling it's machinations in 
> the Sudan, and the latter somehow complicit. I challenge anyone to 
> provide proof of a desire by the USG to place troops or back troops in 
> Darfur (they won't even give the peacekeepers some lousy trucks to help 
> move about supplies).
>  
> C. The unasked question is whether the nation's Republican 
> and Democratic foreign policy elite are using claims of genocide, 
> and appeals for "humanitarian intervention" to grease the way for the 
> next oil and resource wars on the African continent.
>  
> Really? Because I've been working on Darfur for 4+ years, and recently 
> at high levels of policy, and anytime the politicians say anything, we 
> evaluate their motives. Sometimes they are "pure" (i.e., meant to 
> appease the NGOs), most of the time, they are not. But one thing anyone 
> in Washington is lacking is any long-term plan wrt Darfur, evil or 
> otherwise.
>  
> D. It wouldn't be the first Big Lie our government and media elite 
> told us to justify a war.
> 
> Well, this isn't a factual error, but a logical one in its intent to 
> offer proof of save darfur/govnt complicity. A-->A
>  
> E. If stopping genocide in Africa really was on the agenda, why 
> the focus on Sudan with 200,000 to 400,000 dead rather than Congo with 
> five million dead?
>  
> I happen to not have proof that there is genocide in Darfur, and do not 
> claim there is. But the question posed by the author represents a clear 
> ignorance as to the language of the genocide convention. Numbers of dead 
> are irrelevant. What matters is agency, command responsibility, and 
> intent. The dead of Congo aren't so because of any coordinated campaign 
> to destroy-in whole or part-a people based on race, religion, etc. Congo 
> is clearly not a genocide, despite the immense number of dead. The 
> author would be well served--when discussing the rhetoric of the word 
> "genocide"--to actually bother to look the definition up.
>  
> F. Sudan, and the Darfur region in particular, sit atop a lake of oil.
>  
> Factually incorrect. There hasn't been any discovery of productive oil 
> wells in Darfur, and trust me, they've looked. The only oil is in 
> South Darfur state, and is in a block that is mined in neighboring 
> Kordorfan. There is jack-shit of market value in Darfur...that *is* why 
> the central government ignored it in the first place, and why the 
> opposition groups took up arms. The author would be well served to look 
> at a map.
>  
> G. It's all about Sudanese uranium, gum arabic and other natural resources.
> 
> Then the USG's further restriction of american business ties with the 
> GoS last month was sort of silly, wasn't it?
>  
> H. and with elements known for their uncritical support of Israeli 
> rejectionism in the Middle East, the Save Darfur movement is clearly an 
> establishment affair...
>  
> huh? who are these people? I thought we already did this--went 
> through the list of Jewish orgs and Muslim orgs participating in SDC and 
> decided the Israeli-Jewish conspiracy thing was a bunch of crap. The 
> author would be well served to study more about this "establishment", 
> who are primarily young, without personal affluence or influence, and 
> are people of color.
>  
> What the author does is provide a long list of characteristics about the 
> SDC (a particular organization), but no evidence that they are part of 
> this nefarious plot. Well fret not, because I, who actually am in 
> regular contact with the SDC wrt policy and advocacy goals, know for a 
> fact that the SDC isn't running any scams, plots, cabals, or whatever 
> the paranoid baseless language the author's clouded head vomits.
>  
> There are good articles out there that actually are critical of the 
> dominant approach w/in the advocacy community on Darfur, much of which I 
> agree with. This particular article is quite possible the worst and most 
> misleading thing I've read on the subject.
>  
> best,
> scott
>  
> 
>  > 1. Black Agenda Report on Darfur (C. G. Estabrook)
>  >
>  > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>  >
>  > Message: 1
>  > Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2007 00:26:52 -0600
>  > From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu>
>  > Subject: [Peace-discuss] Black Agenda Report on Darfur
>  > To: Peace Discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
>  > Message-ID: <474E5BAC.30705 at uiuc.edu>
>  > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed
>  >
>  > Ten Reasons Why "Save Darfur" is a PR Scam to
>  > Justify the Next US Oil and Resource Wars in Africa
>  > Tuesday, 27 November 2007
>  > by BAR managing editor Bruce Dixon
>  >
>  > The star-studded hue and cry to "Save Darfur" and "stop the genocide"
>  > has gained enormous traction in U.S. media along with bipartisan support
>  > in Congress and the White House. But the Congo, with ten to twenty
>  > times as many African dead over the same period is not called a
>  > "genocide" and passes almost unnoticed. Sudan sits atop lakes of oil. It
>  > has large supplies of uranium, and other minerals, significant water
>  > resources, and a strategic location near still more African oil and
>  > resources. The unasked question is whether the nation's Republican and
>  > Democratic foreign policy elite are using claims of genocide, and
>  > appeals for "humanitarian intervention" to grease the way for the next
>  > oil and resource wars on the African continent.
>  >
>  > The regular manufacture and the constant maintenance of false realities
>  > in the service of American empire is a core function of the public
>  > relations profession and the corporate news media. Whether it's fake
>  > news stories about wonder drugs and how toxic chemicals are good for
>  > you, bribed commentators and journalists discoursing on the benefits of
>  > No Child Left Behind, Hollywood stars advocating military intervention
>  > to save African orphans, or slick propaganda campaigns employing viral
>  > marketing techniques to reach out to college students, bloggers,
>  > churches and ordinary citizens, it pays to take a close look behind the
>  > facade.
>  >
>  > Among the latest false realities being pushed upon the American people
>  > are the simplistic pictures of Black vs. Arab genocide in Darfur, and
>  > the proposed solution: a robust US-backed or US-led military
>  > intervention in Western Sudan. Increasing scrutiny is being focused
>  > upon the “Save Darfur” lobby and the Save Darfur Coalition; upon its
>  > founders, its finances, its methods and motivations and its
>  > truthfulness. In the spirit of furthering that examination we here
>  > present ten reasons to suspect that the "Save Darfur" campaign is a PR
>  > scam to justify US intervention in Africa.
>  >
>  > 1. It wouldn't be the first Big Lie our government and media elite told
>  > us to justify a war.
>  >
>  > Elders among us can recall the Tonkin Gulf Incident, which the US
>  > government deliberately provoked to justify initiation of the war in
>  > Vietnam. This rationale was quickly succeeded by the need to help the
>  > struggling infant "democracy" in South Vietnam, and the still useful
>  > "fight 'em over there so we don't have to fight 'em over here" nonsense.
>  > More recently the bombings, invasions and occupations of Afghanistan
>  > and Iraq have been variously explained by people on the public payroll
>  > as necessary to "get Bin Laden" as revenge for 9-11, as measures to take
>  > "the world's most dangerous weapons" from the hands of "the world's most
>  > dangerous regimes", as measures to enable the struggling Iraqi
>  > "democracy" stand on its own two feet, and necessary because it's still
>  > better to "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here".
>  >
>  > 2. It wouldn't even be the first time the U.S. government and media
>  > elite employed "genocide prevention" as a rationale for military
>  > intervention in an oil-rich region.
>  >
>  > The 1999 US and NATO military intervention in Kosovo was supposedly a
>  > "peacekeeping" operation to stop a genocide. The lasting result of that
>  > campaign is Camp Bondsteel, one of the largest military bases on the
>  > planet. The U.S. is practically the only country in the world that
>  > maintains military bases outside its own borders. At just under a
>  > thousand acres, Camp Bondsteel offers the US military the ability to
>  > pre-position large quantities of equipment and supplies within striking
>  > distance of Caspian oil fields, pipeline routes and relevant sea lanes.
>  > It is also widely believed to be the site of one of the US's secret
>  > prison and torture facilities.
>  >
>  > 3. If stopping genocide in Africa really was on the agenda, why the
>  > focus on Sudan with 200,000 to 400,000 dead rather than Congo with five
>  > million dead?
>  >
>  > “The notion that a quarter million Darfuri dead are a genocide and five
>  > million dead Congolese are not is vicious and absurd," according to
>  > Congolese activist Nita Evele. "What's happened and what is still
>  > happening in Congo is not a tribal conflict and it's not a civil war. It
>  > is an invasion. It is a genocide with a death toll of five million,
>  > twenty times that of Darfur, conducted for the purpose of plundering
>  > Congolese mineral and natural resources."
>  >
>  > More than anything else, the selective and cynical application of the
>  > term "genocide" to Sudan, rather than to the Congo where ten to twenty
>  > times as many Africans have been murdered reveals the depth of hypocrisy
>  > around the "Save Darfur" movement. In the Congo, where local gangsters,
>  > mercenaries and warlords along with invading armies from Uganda, Rwanda,
>  > Burundi, Angola engage in slaughter, mass rape and regional depopulation
>  > on a scale that dwarfs anything happening in Sudan, all the players
>  > eagerly compete to guarantee that the extraction of vital coltan for
>  > Western computers and cell phones, the export of uranium for Western
>  > reactors and nukes, along with diamonds, gold, copper, timber and other
>  > Congolese resources continue undisturbed.
>  >
>  > Former UN Ambassador Andrew Young and George H.W. Bush both serve on the
>  > board of Barrcik Gold, one of the largest and most active mining
>  > concerns in war-torn Congo. Evidently, with profits from the brutal
>  > extraction of Congolese wealth flowing to the West, there can be no
>  > Congolese "genocide" worth noting, much less interfering with. For their
>  > purposes, U.S. strategic planners may regard their Congolese model as
>  > the ideal means of capturing African wealth at minimal cost without the
>  > bother of official U.S. boots on the ground.
>  >
>  > 4. It's all about Sudanese oil.
>  >
>  > Sudan, and the Darfur region in particular, sit atop a lake of oil. But
>  > Sudanese oil fields are not being developed and drilled by Exxon or
>  > Chevron or British Petroleum. Chinese banks, oil and construction firms
>  > are making the loans, drilling the wells, laying the pipelines to take
>  > Sudanese oil where they intend it to go, calling far too many shots for
>  > a twenty-first century in which the U.S. aspires to control the planet's
>  > energy supplies. A U.S. and NATO military intervention will solve that
>  > problem for U.S. planners.
>  >
>  > 5. It's all about Sudanese uranium, gum arabic and other natural 
> resources.
>  >
>  > Uranium is vital to the nuclear weapons industry and an essential fuel
>  > for nuclear reactors. Sudan possesses high quality deposits of uranium.
>  > Gum arabic is an essential ingredient in pharmaceuticals, candies and
>  > beverages like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and Sudanese exports of this
>  > commodity are 80% of the world's supply. When comprehensive U.S.
>  > sanctions against the Sudanese regime were being considered in 1997,
>  > industry lobbyists stepped up and secured an exemption in the sanctions
>  > bill to guarantee their supplies of this valuable Sudanese commodity.
>  > But an in-country U.S. and NATO military presence is a more secure
>  > guarantee that the extraction of Sudanese resources, like those of the
>  > Congo, flow westward to the U.S. and the European Union.
>  >
>  > 6. It's all about Sudan's strategic location
>  >
>  > Sudan sits opposite Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, where a large
>  > fraction of the world's easily extracted oil will be for a few more
>  > years. Darfur borders on Libya and Chad, with their own vast oil
>  > resources, is within striking distance of West and Central Africa, and
>  > is a likely pipeline route. The Nile River flows through Sudan before
>  > reaching Egypt, and Southern Sudan water resources of regional
>  > significance too. With the creation of AFRICOM, the new Pentagon
>  > command for the African continent, the U.S. has made open and explicit
>  > its intention to plant a strategic footprint on the African continent.
>  > From permanent Sudanese bases, the U.S. military could influence the
>  > politics and economies of Africa for a generation to come.
>  >
>  > 7. The backers and founders of the "Save Darfur" movement are the
>  > well-connected and well-funded U.S. foreign policy elite.
>  > According to a copyrighted Washington Post story this summer
>  >
>  > "The Save Darfur (Coalition) was created in 2005 by two groups concerned
>  > about genocide in the African country – the American Jewish World
>  > Service and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum...
>  >
>  > “The coalition has a staff of 30 with expertise in policy and public
>  > relations. Its budget was about $15 million in the most recent fiscal
>  > year...
>  >
>  > “Save Darfur will not say exactly how much it has spent on its ads,
>  > which this week have attempted to shame China, host of the 2008
>  > Olympics, into easing its support for Sudan. But a coalition spokeswoman
>  > said the amount is in the millions of dollars.”
>  >
>  > Though the "Save Darfur" PR campaign employs viral marketing techniques,
>  > reaching out to college students, even to black bloggers, it is not a
>  > grassroots affair, as were the movement against apartheid and in support
>  > of African liberation movements in South Africa, Namibia, Angola and
>  > Mozambique a generation ago. Top heavy with evangelical Christians who
>  > preach the coming war for the end of the world, and with elements known
>  > for their uncritical support of Israeli rejectionism in the Middle East,
>  > the Save Darfur movement is clearly an establishment affair, a
>  > propaganda campaign that spends millions of dollars each month to
>  > manufacture consent for US military intervention in Africa under the
>  > cloak of stopping or preventing genocide.
>  >
>  > 8. None of the funds raised by the "Save Darfur Coalition", the
>  > flagship of the "Save Darfur Movement" go to help needy Africans on the
>  > ground in Darfur, according to stories in both the Washington Post and
>  > the New York Times.
>  >
>  > “None of the money collected by Save Darfur goes to help the victims and
>  > their families. Instead, the coalition pours its proceeds into advocacy
>  > efforts that are primarily designed to persuade governments to act.”
>  >
>  > 9. "Save Darfur" partisans in the U.S. are not interested in political
>  > negotiations to end the conflict in Darfur
>  >
>  > President Bush has openly and repeatedly attempted to throw monkey
>  > wrenches at peace negotiations to end the war in Darfur. Even
>  > pro-intervention scholars and humanitarian organizations active on the
>  > ground have criticized the U.S. for endangering humanitarian relief
>  > workers, and for effectively urging rebel parties in Darfur to refuse
>  > peace talks and hold out for U.S. and NATO intervention on their behalf.
>  >
>  > The PR campaign which depicts the conflict as strictly a racial affair,
>  > in which Arabs, who are generally despised in the US media anyway, are
>  > exterminating the black population of Sudan, is slick, seamless and
>  > attractive, and seems to leave no room for negotiation. But in fact,
>  > many of Sudan's "Arabs", even the Janjiweed, are also black. In any
>  > case, they were armed and unleashed by a government which has the power
>  > to disarm them if it chooses, and refusing to talk to that government's
>  > negotiators is a sure way to avoid any settlement.
>  >
>  > 10. Blackwater and other U.S. mercenary contractors, the unofficial
>  > armed wings of the Republican party and the Pentagon are eagerly
>  > pitching their services as part of the solution to the Darfur crisis.
>  >
>  > "Chris Taylor, head of strategy for Blackwater, says his company has a
>  > database of thousands of former police and military officers for
>  > security assignments. He says Blackwater personnel could set up
>  > perimeters and guard Darfurian villages and refugee camp in support of
>  > the U.N. Blackwater officials say it would not take many men to fend off
>  > the Janjaweed, a militia that is supported by the Sudanese government
>  > and attacks villages on camelback."
>  >
>  > Apparently Blackwater doesn't need to come to the Congo, where hunger
>  > and malnutrition, depopulation, mass rape and the disappearance of
>  > schools, hospitals and civil society into vast law free zones ruled by
>  > an ever-changing cast of African proxies (like the son of the late and
>  > unlamented Idi Amin), all under a veil of complicit media silence
>  > already constitute the perfect business-friendly environment for
>  > siphoning off the vast wealth of that country at minimal cost.
>  >
>  > Look for the adoption of the Congolese model across the wide areas of
>  > Africa that U.S. strategic planners call "ungoverned spaces". Just
>  > don't look expect to see details on the evening news, or hear about them
>  > from Oprah, George Clooney or Angelina Jolie.
>  >
>  > 
> http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=453&Itemid=1
>  >
>  >
>  >
> 
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