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

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?

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?