Among the many activists, academics, conflict resolution experts, journalists, and others who have spoken out against the attempted genocide(s) in the Sudan, Samantha Power stands head-and-shoulders above much of the crowd. Her reports were among the first that caught my atteniton about 5 years ago along with the reporting and editorials by Nicolas Kristoff of the New York Times and Professor Eric Reeves.

I use genocide in the plural here because the GoS has attempted to wipeout many more indigenous tribes than those found in Darfur. People seem to forget the bloody, protracted wars that took place in the south of country for decades that cost the lives of millions of black Africans. And of course the GoS is reportedly very active in supporting brutal conflict and human rights abuses in Chad and the CAR today.

The guy who was sitting next to you at Power’s talk, Bruno what’s his name, is wrong about Europe having lots of movements to stop genocide in Sudan. Europe has practically nothing going on in comparison to the massive public awareness and political/economic pressure being applied by citizens, politicians, and religious and civic organizations in the United States. I live in Europe and I damn well know what’s happening here in re: to Darfur. If Bruno has any proof to backup what he claims, then show us Dude, because I sure can’t see it either at the political level or on the street. Europeans could care less about what their governments do to stop genocide in an African country so long as it doesn’t cost them anything or put the lives of their soldiers as risk___ just as European leaders hesitated to the very last minute to decide to take (limited) action together with the United States against Serbia for ethnic-cleansing in Kosovo. Ich bitte dich!

But there’s even more to this horrible, murderous nightmare of rule by the al-Bashir regime in Khartoum, and it is taking place in the north of the Sudan along the Nile river. When they finish (2008-2009) the GoS along with the China Ex-Im Bank, assorted banks and financiers from the Middle East, Chinese, French, and German engineering companies and a host of other assorted “friends and partners” will have succeeded in wiping-out something as important as life itself. They will have succeeded in drowning and burying much of the evidence of a highly advanced and civilized ancient black African culture (100′s of Nubian archaeological sites) under a 100 mile-long lake and billions of tons of Nile river water and mud.

And no one at TED 2008, or Dr. Samantha Power or Steven Spielberg or Nicolas Kristoff or Eric Reeves or UNESCO or the African Union or the Arab League will raise the alarm… because this crime against humanity is not a priority. It is not even on their crisis radar.

If you would like to learn more, stay tuned at my place this month or check the NatGeo online issue of February 2008. It’s amazing that no one in the GVO community seems to have picked up on this Genocide of African History story. Go figure.