Ted's Nothing but Net Explorations

in support of consultancies and the courses that I teach at Columbia and New York University

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Genocide Studies and Prevention is an international, interdisciplinary journal dedicated to understanding the phenomenon of genocide, researching it, and sharing the findings as widely as possible so as to produce constructive results.

authoritative journal in the field

Filed under  //   genprev  

Book Review: The Politics of Genocide | Scoop News

The Politics of Genocide
Edward S. Herman and David Peterson
Monthly Review Press, 2010
U.S. $12.95*


By Rick Rozoff

In 1895 novelist Anatole France - who in the same decade took up cudgels in defense of persecuted Armenians in the Ottoman Empire while also entering the lists on behalf of Alfred Dreyfus - wrote an essay in which he maintained that words are like coins. When freshly minted the images and inscriptions on them are clear. But by dint of constant circulation they become effaced until the outlines are blurred and the words unintelligible.

polemical text

Filed under  //   genprev  

The Genocide Prevention Advisory Network | Genocide Prevention Advisory Network

The Genocide Prevention Advisory Network

The Advisory Group is an informal, international network of experts on the causes, consequences, and prevention of genocide and other mass atrocities. The Group has no staff, structure, or formal links to other organizations.  Its members provide risk assessments and advice to all interested parties, including the UN, individual governments, regional organizations, non-governmental organizations, and any other international political grouping that designs and promotes policies aimed at preventing and mitigating mass atrocities that have or may acquire genocidal dimensions.

A useful network to keep in in mind

Google's Rube Goldberg Logo Celebrates the 4th of July

Google has done it again with yet another cleverly executed logo on its home page. This time, it’s in honor of the 4th of July, 2010: a Rube Goldberg machine animation that culminates in fireworks.

Rube Goldberg was an American inventor in the early 20th century. The machines that carry his name execute long mechanical chain reactions to accomplish very simple tasks like lighting a fire cracker.

Google does humor, geek-style

Filed under  //   humor  
Posted July 4, 2010

Stanford Takes Lead on Conflict Minerals Issue: Trustees Adopt Groundbreaking Investment Policy

Stanford Takes Lead on Conflict Minerals Issue: Trustees Adopt Groundbreaking Investment Policy

Responding to a student-led initiative of Stanford STAND, Stanford becomes the nation’s first university to adjust its investment policy in light of conflict minerals' role in the ongoing mass atrocities in the DRC.

 

 

 

Stickers were used as part of an awareness campaign on the Stanford campus

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRLog (Press Release)Jun 20, 2010 – Stanford STAND: A Student Coalition to End and Prevent Genocide and Mass-Atrocities is delighted to report that the Stanford University Board of Trustees has voted in favor of the adoption of a new proxy voting guideline regarding the “conflict minerals” that sustain armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), as Stanford announced Friday June 18 at http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/june/conflict-mineral .... This vote makes Stanford University the first major institution to adopt an investment policy with respect to conflict minerals. Such early leadership on a major new investment responsibility issue is unprecedented in the University’s history.
The guideline states that the University will:

"…vote in favor of well-written and reasonable shareholder resolutions that ask companies for reports on their policies and efforts regarding their avoidance of conflict minerals and conflict mineral derivatives."

The term “conflict minerals” refers to the minerals that come from illegally controlled mines in the eastern part of the DRC. Civilians are caught in the deadly middle as armed militias struggle for control of mines and smuggling routes. According to the International Rescue Committee, over 5.4 million deaths have occurred as a result of the conflict. What's more, because of the widespread use of sexual violence against local populations as an intimidation tactic, the DRC has been called the rape capital of the world. Fueling this conflict is the lucrative process of mining and trading minerals like tantalum, tungsten, tin, and gold.

 

 

 

Innovative university policies brought on by STAND student activism

Filed under  //   drc   genprev   university  
Posted June 22, 2010

Diplomatic Memo - Value to Big Powers May Not Save Kyrgyzstan - NYTimes.com

MOSCOW — A year and a half ago, the world’s great powers were fighting like polecats over Kyrgyzstan, a landlocked stretch of mountains in the heart of Central Asia.

The United States was ferociously holding on to the Manas Air Base, a transit hub considered crucial to NATO efforts in Afghanistan. Russia was so jealous of its traditional dominance in the region that it promised the Kyrgyz president $2.15 billion in aid the day he announced he was closing Manas. With the bidding war that followed, Kyrgyzstan could be forgiven for seeing itself as a global player.

And yet for the past week, as spasms of violence threatened to break Kyrgyzstan apart, its citizens saw their hopes for an international intervention flicker and die. With each day it has become clearer that none of Kyrgyzstan’s powerful allies — most pointedly, its former overlords in Moscow — were prepared to get involved in a quagmire.

Russia did send in several hundred paratroopers, but only to defend its air base at Kant. For the most part, the powers have evacuated their citizens, apparently content to wait for the conflict to burn itself out.

The calculus was a pragmatic one, made “without the smallest thought to the moral side of the question,” said Aleksei V. Vlasov, an expert in the politics of post-Soviet countries at Moscow State University.

“We use the phrase ‘collective responsibility,’ but in fact this is a case of collective irresponsibility,” he added. “While they were fighting about whatever — about bases, about Afghanistan — they forgot that in the south of Kyrgyzstan there was extreme danger. The city was flammable. All they needed to do was throw a match on it.” He referred to the city of Osh, which suffered days of ethnic rioting.

Kyrgyzstan might have unraveled anyway, but competition between Moscow and Washington certainly sped the process.

To lock in its claim on the base after the threat of expulsion, the United States offered President Kurmanbek S. Bakiyev $110 million to back out of his agreement with Russia, which had already paid him $450 million. Congratulating itself on its victory, Washington raised the stakes by announcing the construction of several military training facilities in Kyrgyzstan, including one in the south, which further irritated Moscow.

This spring, the Kremlin won back its lost ground, employing a range of soft-power tactics to undermine Mr. Bakiyev’s government. Mr. Bakiyev was ousted by a coalition of opposition leaders in April, and conditions in Kyrgyzstan’s south — still loyal to the old government — hurtled toward disaster.

“Let’s be honest, Kyrgyzstan is turning into a collapsing state, or at least part of it is, and what was partially responsible is this geopolitical tug of war we had,” said Alexander A. Cooley, who included Manas in a recent book about the politics of military bases. “In our attempts to secure these levers of influence and support the governing regime, we destabilized these state institutions. We are part of that dynamic.”

How inter-state conflict contributes to the failure of weaker states and sets off ethnic violence

Filed under  //   Kyrgyzstan    ethnic   genprev   russia   us  
Posted June 19, 2010

Correction - UN Special Advisers of the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide and on the Responsibility to Protect on the Situation in Kyrgyzstan


UN Special Advisers of the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide and on the Responsibility to Protect
on the Situation in Kyrgyzstan

(New York - Tuesday 15 June, 2010)  Two Special Advisers of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Francis Deng on the Prevention of Genocide and Edward Luck on the responsibility to protect, expressed grave concern on Tuesday over the recent eruption of violence in Kyrgyzstan. “I am extremely concerned about the violence in South Kyrgyzstan, which has broken out along ethnic lines. I encourage the Interim Government and international actors to do all in their power to stop the violence and ensure the protection of vulnerable minority communities,” stated Mr. Deng.

The Special Advisers have been monitoring the situation in Kyrgyzstan closely since April 2010, when the ouster of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev brought ethnic tensions to the surface, particularly between the Kyrgyz and Uzbek communities in the south. The Special Advisers noted that the violence that started on 10 June appears to have targeted ethnic Uzbeks in particular.  “The pattern and scale of the violence, which has resulted in the mass displacement of Uzbeks from South Kyrgyzstan, could amount to ethnic cleansing,” warned Special Adviser Luck.  He reminded all parties that the 2005 World Summit banned either the commission or the incitement of ethnic cleansing, genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity.

Given the requests by the Interim Government for international assistance to  the people of Kyrgysztan, the Special Advisers called on the international community to operationalise  its “responsibility to protect”  by providing coordinated and timely assistance to stop the violence  and its incitement. They underscored the urgency of ensuring that the violence does not spread to other regions of Kyrgyzstan or to neigbouring countries.  

The Special Advisers called on the Interim Government, neighboring states, and the larger international community to take all possible steps to reduce the risk of violence along ethnic lines in the future. “The current crisis in Kyrgyzstan has revealed a clear ethnic fault-line that has developed over decades. Once they have curbed the violence, the Kyrgyzstan authorities should acknowledge and address its underlying causes in order to prevent any recurrence, put in place a process of reconciliation in collaboration with civil society, and work to preserve the country’s ethnic diversity and heritage.  The United Nations and the international community stand ready to assist in these efforts.”

Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide
E-mail: osapg@un.org
Website: http://www.un.org/genocide/prevention/

Att252035882

Posted June 16, 2010

The Associated Press: Emerging Congo mini-state raises fears of conflict

Emerging Congo mini-state raises fears of conflict

KITCHANGA, Congo — The scarlet-lettered flag flaps atop a lush green hill in an apparent declaration of ownership. Here, a rebel movement turned political party collects taxes, appoints local officials and even polices a border post.

These former rebels are accused of populating the land they have grabbed with thousands of people from neighboring Rwanda to form a mini-Tutsi state. The state-within-a-state is emerging in the shadow of Rwanda's genocide two decades ago, and is raising the specter of new violence in war-ravaged east Congo.

U.N. officials, legislators and traditional chiefs are already forming "pacification committees" to try and resolve the land conflicts.

"The situation is explosive," Jean Baumbiliya Kisoloni, vice president of the provincial assembly based in Goma, said of Masisi, one of the districts under the new flag. "I am not really optimistic that this can be resolved without conflict."

New states not always a good thing.

Filed under  //   drc   genprev  
Posted June 7, 2010