Google Earth Highlights Darfur

jc42 writes "Google Earth, in cooperation with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum now presents details of the growing disaster in Darfur. They give a virtual tour of the area, with details of events in many villages in the words of local residents. So in addition to their "Do no evil" motto, they apparently now have a policy of exposing evil. Needless to say, the Sudan government didn't exactly cooperate with this project."

Comments

And Irak?

[Anonymous Coward]

Next step? What about showing the destruction of Irak by US troops?

Amazing

[Kleokat]

I spent some time surfing the Darfur area.
It speaks it's own language.
I'm not good enough at English to find the right words (English is not my primary language).

However, this is an amazing tool, which other could use to document the horrors of history. Study the Scandinavian history 500 years ago, and you can make a similar map over the southern tip of present Sweden. Check it out for yourself: http://www.scania.org/facts/poster/index.html

Maybe som Palestinian group can make a similar map over, what Israel did to many Palestinian villages from 1947 until today. That would start up a *real* debate, and hopefully we can end the bloodshed there, that once raged Scandinavia.

Re:Amazing

[Das Modell]

Maybe som Palestinian group can make a similar map over, what Israel did to many Palestinian villages from 1947 until today. That would start up a *real* debate.

There can be no real debate about the subject. There is only the Concensus, and anyone outside the Consensus is a troll.

history will remember

[circletimessquare]

that the less well-off areas of the world experienced genocide while the rich (that means you, if you have the free time and resources to be reading this on slashdot right now, you are a rich person, really) played videogames

you say you can't do anything about it?

you can

or alternately, if you don't care, do nothing. and don't vote in the next presidential election. and loudly proclaim various opinions on world events. go ahead, be completely hypocritical and useless

Re:history will remember

[dreddnott]

That's not actually how it goes. Pastor Niemöller was quite the anti-Semite, actually.

The Weasel Rule

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Carl Sagan [warning. PDF]did a piece on various "rules", like the Golden Rule, Silver Rule, Iron Rule, etc. Essentially showing that the Golden Rule, "Treat others like you would like them to treat you" is unworkable. It lacks a reward-punishment mechanism. Then the silver rule, "treat them like they treat you", is a very stable, good strategy. But it leads to endless feuds. A little, but not too much of, forgiving is needed. The Iron rule is be a jerk to every one. That is known to be very bad.

Sagan then defines, what he would call, "The Weasel Rule". Be nice to strong people and be a jerk to weak people. Google caved in easily to strong governments like China and is currently exposing the evil in Darfar. So looks like, Google's motto is "Follow the Weasel Rule" not "Do no evil".

Re:Darfur

[de_valentin]

Do you actually have ANY idea what is going on there???

maybe genocide is the wrong word but hundreds of thousands dying and even more fleeing for their lives and living in refuge-camps is not something that is pushed by western governments.
There never was a reason to televise some Africans kill other Africans (in fact one party consists of muslim nomads)
To be specific the whole Darfur crisis is allready several years old most people don't give a damn because there is no oil.

I'm not saying Bush should have led the world in an war in Sudan but it would have probably been more usefull (not counting the oil) and saved more lives.

I'm sorry for not being very eloquent.
But the bottomline is this, the more people know what is going on out there the bigger the chance that something gets done.

Yahoo

[Threni]

Is Google about to show where the prisons were the Chinese torture people who try and spread democracy?

Re:Yahoo

[Hoi Polloi]

If we'd attacked Iraq during Saddam's war against the marsh arabs I would've been sympathetic. But we stood by and supported his bloody war against Iran and did nothing while he committed the crimes (gassings, etc) that were supposedly so horrible. We did nothing during Rawanda either. Our record has long been one of intervention for power or money (Spain, Guatemala, Vietnam) not for moral reasons. We only fought the Japanese when they attacked Pearl Harbor, not when they'd already been slaughtering the Chinese for many years. I'd say the Korean war was justifiable though as it was an invasion and Stalin's support was behind it.

We also need to learn to stay the hell out of civil wars unless genocide is taking place. You just end up with both sides hating you. You can bomb all you want but unless you address the root cause it'll never go away (Palestine).

BTW, Liberal Hawks were actually the norm in the 30-40s. Anti-fascist sentiment supported the use of military force.

Re:Yahoo

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say the Korean war was justifiable though as it was an invasion and Stalin's support was behind it. ...
We also need to learn to stay the hell out of civil wars unless genocide is taking place.

How the hell can say both of those and keep a straight face? Stalin's support? Russia didn't put a single troop in Korea, and you're claiming it was fine to take part in what was, in essence, a civil war? Tell me then, aside from a little French Imperialism early on, what was so different about intervening in Vietnam that made it so morally repugnant to you? The fact that we did it badly? That more Americans died? That is ex post facto justifaction and has no basis in logic. The problem with those conflicts wasn't the justification, it was the relative difficulty. So it is also in Iraq. If we could've gotten in and out in a year, and made a stable democratic Iraq, people would be lauding Bush, not complaining that it wasn't our right to do it.

Censorship

[LarsWestergren]

Google Earth (and all similar satelite imagery tools) are just amazing... How long before, for instance, China bans its citizens from using it you think?

In a similar area, Slashdot posted before about maps overAmerican strip mining. Others have collected other links to deforestation, coral reefs, etc.

Realistically

[rlp]

The UN, the EU, and the Arab League say it's not a problem. The US says it is a problem, but is stretched pretty thin right now. So, nothings going to change any time soon.

Re:"Do no evil"

[qwijibo]

I think the implied joke/dark humor is that the free market would enslave all of these people. The problem right now is that there is no market effect of genocide. If these people were made someone's property and worked for the man, the man would send merceneries to kill the people who want to kill his slaves. Either that, or he's suggesting that the market has determined that these people are non-essential, or even worse, non-consumers, and need to be removed to make room for future consumers.

Darfur is about oil - again.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you do a search on "darfur oil sudan" you will find some speculations, that this genocide is clandestinely orchestrated by western agents. Behind the scene it seems to be a covert struggle between China, Europe and US interests for these resources. The humanitarian efforts seem to be misused for gaining leverage. Of course this will be labeled as a conspiracy theory, but a grain of truth is always at the core of such speculations. Also notice how this aspect is not reported by the media.

Re:Well then I have a question for you...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that the anonymous gp was just pointing out that Darfur/Sudan == the next Iraq.

Or at least there are some strong hints of manipulation of the public opinion in a way that is very similar to what happened before we started to "free the Iraqi people". Remember all these atrocities in Iraq that were reported on TV and in the press? Remember how the Iraqi people were suffering under the rule of Saddam (not to mention the WMDs)? Doesn't this exposure of "genocide" in Darfur look surprisingly similar?

are you a human being?

[circletimessquare]

then it is your responsibility

why care about rwanda? why care about iraq? why care about tiananmen square? why care about auschwitz?

why care about any human tragedy? better to just say "not my problem", right?

solves the problem, doesn't it? just stop caring, "not my problem"

"I am not going to adjust my life just to make a few people with bleeding hearts feel better."

good for you. enjoy your life. remember your statement above, when you ask anyone to care about anything you think is important. society is predicated on the fact we look out for each other. if we don't, those who mean ill will succeed: they pick us a part, one by one

so you better care, now, when it is starving people in a third world country being butchered. tomorrow, it is something happening in your neighborhood

poverty and suffering breeds and spreads. it must be fought in all of it's forms, now, today, or that means you only fight it tomorrow, when it is a larger problem. it does not go away on it's own, the sort of problem plaguing darfur. it grows, and spreads. you WILL deal with it, one way or another. when it is small and distant, now, or later, when it is huge and at your doorstep

we live in a world where what happens in kandahar matters in downtown manhattan. what did you learn from 9/11?

OH and don't forget the most important part

[arcite]

Sudan's best buddy is China (long term contracts for cheap oil and timber and anything else they can rip out of the ground) , which will continue to use their VETO in the UN to prevent any foreign intervention.