Sorry for the quiet spell, folks; dealing with some meatspace issues as well as writing on some other projects. Alas, you get to suffer me some more, especially as my time starts freeing up again soon.
Incidentally, thanks for the reasonably civil nature of the Slashdotting last week, guys. We at the Zone expected way more trouble than we got, the discussion on James' article was terrific, and I only got one really out-there kook email about evil Spanish-Vatican conspiracies which isn't even of enough quality to bother refuting publicly. Bah, tinhatters these days aren't quite as fun as they used to be.
Anyway, we are approaching the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. Although it took most of a decade to get to this point, the culprits who masterminded the acts of 1994 are finally beginning to get what they deserve, and the country has been showing signs of healing. Even Annan is openly stating that he screwed things up as head of the DPKO back in 1994, although of course certain national governments have yet to do anything to actually acknowledge their own responsibility for the genocide.
Annan's backing a call from Kigali to attempt to pull a minute of silence in as many countries as possible on April 7, to try and "let us be united in a way we were not ten years ago." It's just pretty words and a vaguely flashy plan, of course; nobody has to actually expend much energy to shut up for sixty seconds on the decennial of the beginning of the genocide. Aside from the standard "raise awareness" good-thoughts deal, there's no real plan to do much about helping Rwanda heal, or preventing other flashpoints from becoming something as bad or worse.
On the other hand, I can't help but like the symbolism put forth. A minute of silence can potentially accomplish something; a university undergrad back in the 1930s, wondering why sovereignty was explicitly allowed to permit genocide, resulted in the entry of the word into our language and the now-standard idea that genocide is not permissable. Someone might start asking questions around this one too, and lead in time to some anti-genocide laws that actually have teeth and claws attached.
I suppose we'll see what we'll see.
Posted by zibblsnrt at March 26, 2004 10:09 PM