We Are Not Alone: renewed hopes for peace in South Sudan
There is another glimmer of hope in the on-going tragedy that is South Sudan. In the next couple of weeks government leaders, the opposition, and a cadre of armed groups are expected to come together to try to get peace talks restarted.
The peace process is supposed to be lead by the east African regional body known as the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, or IGAD.
For the first time in months, a whiff of possibility hangs in the air - but we have heard this tune before, and much remains to be proven both to and by those involved.
Meanwhile, the past year has seen South Sudan’s humanitarian crisis sink to new lows. As armed conflict has spread, militia groups have fragmented and multiplied, making a comprehensive peace even more difficult. Some 7.6 million South Sudanese – about two-thirds of the entire population – depend on aid to survive and famine has been declared in two regions this year. Nearly four million are refugees.
The mission facing IGAD is enormous. But if the nations of the world will step up to back IGAD, it's not impossible.
And as Jan Egeland, Secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council wrote recently, "The merry-go-round of peace initiatives over the years have failed. This next attempt must not."
What's Left for the weeks of October 20 - November 2, 2017
This week:
Good News: TheRumps new travel ban blocked https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/10/17/us-judge-blocks-latest-trump-travel-restrictions/23246487/ https://news.google.com/news/story/dKpPn-G2Q8pxS5MqASK_8cm8qoX9M?ned=us&hl=en
Good News: memorial fund for Philando Castile wipes out school lunch debt https://splinternews.com/a-philando-castile-memorial-fund-has-wiped-out-all-stud-1819557723
Not Good News: Americans increasingly ignorant of Constitution and ready to jettison free press http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/18/trump-media-fake-news-poll-243884?cid=apn https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/08/daily-chart-0 https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/americans-are-poorly-informed-about-basic-constitutional-provisions
We Are Not Alone: Madagascar battles pneumonic plague http://www.france24.com/en/20171017-madagascar-plague-seychelles-health-disease
We Are Not Alone: renewed hopes for peace in South Sudan http://www.irinnews.org/opinion/2017/10/18/south-sudan-seize-chance-peace http://www.igadregion.org/the-igad/
Special Comment: some sympathy and understanding for the white working class https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/22/who-exactly-is-the-white-working-class-and-what-do-they-believe-good-questions/?utm_term=.6713db223385 https://www.salon.com/2015/11/29/the_truth_about_the_white_working_class_why_its_really_allergic_to_voting_for_democrats/ https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/robert-reich-and-cnns-erin-burnett-take-turns-debunking-trumps-favorite-economist https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6946196
Armed rebels in South Sudan claim that a significant number of pro-government troops have defected to the rebels.
It's not the defections that are the Not Good News - it's the reminder that the civil war in South Sudan, the youngest nation in the world, drags on.
I don't know exactly why bring this story up as I have four times before since I know few if any of you are interested in this except perhaps philosophically. It's just that I have followed this story at least to some degree for years, from Sudan's civil war to the settlement - complete with multiple near-breakdowns - that created an independent South Sudan, to a breakdown of its new government into a South Sudanese civil war, to a new settlement, to a new breakdown, to a hope for a new settlement - to more civil war.
The whole thing just breaks my heart. And this news just served as a reminder.
Not Good News: bumblebee listed as endangered
https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-lists-first-bumble-bee-species-endangered-212930972.html
http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/6045/20140215/ignores-petition-list-rusty-patched-bumblebee-endangered-species.htm
Not Good News: civil war in South Sudan continues
http://worldpress.org/link.cfm?http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article61350
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2014/01/1404-bad-news-south-sudan.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2014/01/1416-update-south-sudan.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/09/2184-more-tragedy-still-hope-in-south.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/03/2416-not-good-news-un-excoriates-south.html
Not Good News: internet consumer protection rules under attack
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/01/04/its-begun-cable-companies-are-pushing-to-repeal-obama-era-internet-privacy-rules/
http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/4/14167832/donald-trump-rupert-murdoch-fcc-chair-net-neutrality
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCQTyheuvU4
Outrage of the Week: TheRump considering panel desired by anti-vaxxers
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2014/12/1844-footnote-invalid-immunization-fears.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/04/2006-clown-award-robert-f-kennedy-jr.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal_controversy
https://theoutline.com/post/870/trump-kennedy-anti-vaccine-meeting-wont-make-america-great
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/01/10/the-facts-about-vaccines-autism-and-robert-f-kennedy-jr-s-conspiracy-theory/
https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2017/01/what_unites_trump_and_rfk_jr_is_a_scary_denial_that_they_re_anti_vaxxers.html
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2016/11/30/vaccine_skeptic_andrew_wakefield_is_excited_about_donald_trump_s_presidency.html
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/trump-meets-anti-vaccine-activist-after-raising-fringe-theory-trail-n705296
http://www.npr.org/2017/01/10/509185540/despite-the-facts-trump-once-again-embraces-vaccine-skeptics
Outrage of the Year 2016: Democratic Party presidential race
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/02/2364-rare-and-potentially-my-only.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/04/2455-what-now-for-progressives.html
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/04/after-new-york-win-clinton-campaign-says-bernie-sanders-attacks-help-republicans
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/06/2485-disqualifying-change-by.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/06/2492-part-2-issues-that-wont-be.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/11/36-democrats-refusing-to-recognize.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/11/22-but-we-have-to-carry-on-as-best-as.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/11/34-importance-of-continuing-protest.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/12/45-excuses-for-failures-of-democrats.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/12/58-latest-clintonite-excuses-for-losing.html
Not Good News: UN excoriates South Sudan over human rights violations
After all that good news, I have not some good news, also from the international file.
I have talked about this a few times before. I don't know exactly why I do since I know few if any of you are interested in this except perhaps philosophically, but this is a story I have been following at least to some degree for years. The last time I mentioned it was last fall, and at the time I said that I don't know why this particular world tragedy affects me more than others do, but I have found it a particularly sad tale. Maybe it's because it is so deeply marked with hopes being raised and then being shot down - usually literally.
It's the case of South Sudan.
The African nation of Sudan went through a 20 year civil war that set the Christian and traditionalist (or animist) southern part of the country against the mainly Muslim north. The war dragged on, brutal year after brutal year. By the time it all ended, about two million were dead, about four million more were homeless.
Finally, with both sides exhausted in every sense of the term a peace deal was worked out in January 2005. In accord with that agreement, in January 2011 a referendum was held in southern Sudan on independence. Over 95% voted yes and South Sudan became a nation.
What you have to understand is that I followed this story, I followed it through the first negotiations to end the fighting, through the draft agreement which looked like it would never come, through the final agreement which looked like it would never come, through the multiple near-breakdowns of the whole process, to the plebiscite which had at one time seemed so very far off it seemed like it would never come. I followed it. I followed it when two old rivals, Riek Machar and Salva Kiir, joined together in the new government of South Sudan.
And I followed it when at the end of 2013 that government broke down into competing tribal rivalries, plunging South Sudan into a civil war as treacherous as the one it had so recently survived. And - and again I don't know why this one more than others - but it breaks my heart to think about it.
And I follow it now as last week the UN Human Rights Office released a report that, quoting the press release,
describes "in searing detail" a multitude of horrendous human rights violations, including a Government-operated "scorched earth policy," and deliberate targeting of civilians for killing, rape, and pillage.
Children and the elderly burned alive. Men hung from trees, or cut into pieces. Parents forced to watch their children get raped. "Searing" barely describes it.
The report says both sides have committed "serious and systematic violence against civilians" since fighting broke out in December 2013, but since 2015 most of the blame falls on government forces and affiliated militias, largely because the opposition forces have been weakened.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein called called South Sudan "one of the most horrendous human rights situations in the world, with massive use of rape as an instrument of terror and weapon of war." In fact, there are reports of soldiers being allowed to rape women as a form of wages.
Salva Kiir Riek Machar
Not just the UN, Amnesty International also has condemned the government's behavior, accusing it of a war crime of stuffing 60 men and boys into a hot shipping container last October and leaving them there to suffocate and die.
Yet for all this, Commissioner al-Hussein said, South Sudan "has been more or less off the international radar." And that, too, breaks my heart.
But again again again there is hope. There always seems to be a flicker of hope. When I spoke here about South Sudan the last time, last fall, it was to talk about a new peace agreement reached in August.
Now, South Sudan rebels have said that 23 of their top generals are expected to arrive in the capitol city of Juba on March 21 to prepare for the coming of their leader, Riek Machar, who is the designated first vice president in a national unity government that is supposed to come out of that new settlement. They claim that sending the generals is proof of their intention to abide by the peace accord, but at the same time raised concerns by insisting that they be allowed to bring their heavy weapons - including tanks - and some 3000 troops with them.
The rebels responded to concerns by saying their experience with the South Sudan military gave them reason to be distrustful - which frankly is true but the same could be said of them.
And so we wait for March 21 and I try to stitch my heart together one more time. We'll see.
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About Lotus
Lotus has been at various times the newsletter of a local peace group, a column in a different group's newsletter, a stand-alone monthly, and now a blog. Posts appear bi-weekly; posts are drawn from my weekly cable-TV show "The Erickson Report," which can be found here.
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Our lives are not our own, we are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future. - author David Mitchell
There is another glimmer of hope in the on-going tragedy that is South Sudan. In the next couple of weeks government leaders, the opposition, and a cadre of armed groups are expected to come together to try to get peace talks restarted.
Meanwhile, the past year has seen South Sudan’s humanitarian crisis sink to new lows. As armed conflict has spread, militia groups have fragmented and multiplied, making a comprehensive peace even more difficult. Some 7.6 million South Sudanese – about two-thirds of the entire population – depend on aid to survive and famine has been declared in two regions this year. Nearly four million are refugees.
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