“Sudan” on The Daily Caller

At the moment of his arrest outside of Sudan’s embassy in Washington, D.C., Oscar-winning actor George Clooney told The Daily Caller that he did not discuss the planned protest during his Thursday meeting with President Obama, and said that he was most “concerned” about his father who was also in handcuffs. (more)

Heartthrob actor George Clooney wants the U.S. government to help stop the Sudan government’s bombing raids and attacks on the many Christians and animists living in southern Sudan. (more)

JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — South Sudan raised the flag of its new nation for the first time Saturday, as thousands of South Sudanese citizens and dozens of international dignitaries swarmed the new country capital of Juba to celebrate the country’s birth. (more)

The recent popular uprising and military coup in Egypt has caused the historic and involuntary departure of the country’s 30-year dictator, Hosni Mubarak. His removal from power, and the earlier departure of Tunisia’s dictator, Ben Ali, marks the beginning of a new, uncertain period throughout the region. Arab people are purportedly demonstrating for freedom and democracy. If not careful, tyranny and Islamic religious repression may be what they get, with war the inevitable outcome. President Obama urgently needs to devise new strategies to effectively mitigate dangers to peace and security emanating from these uprisings. (more)

While often under the mainstream media radar, East Africa is a national security and foreign policy hot spot for the United States. (more)

HONOLULU (AP) — President Barack Obama is quietly but strategically stepping up his outreach to Africa, using this year to increase his engagement with a continent that is personally meaningful to him and important to U.S. interests. (more)

KHARTOUM — Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir pledged on Tuesday to help build a secure, stable and brotherly state in the south if it votes for independence in a referendum less than two weeks away. (more)

Liam Neeson is the voice of Aslan the Lion in the new 3-D Narnia film, “Voyage of the Dawn Treader.” He’s got a great voice for the role. Neeson is even from the North of Ireland, the same area from which C.S. Lewis, the beloved Christian author of The Chronicles of Narnia, hailed. (more)

Southern Sudan is likely to vote to secede from Sudan in a referendum next month, said Nafie Ali Nafie, an aide to President Umar al-Bashir. (more)

Humanity: an imperfect creation searching for salvation, seeking atonement, or simply the result of biology. Whatever we are also defines who we are today and the next stop on our common journey. Throughout history, the struggle for equality and human rights has been plagued by malice and corruption. Occasional examples of character emerge to inspire us all. Homer’s Hector was moral and good. He was a warrior. Unlike most characters in ancient Greek tales, he was a devoted husband and father. Hector honored his father, King Priam of Troy, simply by demonstrating restraint and profound loyalty. The courage and triumph of Moses, Cinque — the slave who led a mutiny aboard the Amistad — Nelson Mandela, Stephen Biko, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the uncommon valor of our Armed Forces, especially those who earned the Congressional Medal of Honor, figure prominently into the American identity and our concept of human rights. (more)

In a May 2009 speech, President Barack Obama announced that Ahmed Ghailani, a Guantanamo detainee suspected of involvement in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, would be transferred to the United States for trial in federal court.  The president assured his audience that civilian courts were “tough enough” to prosecute terrorists like Ghailani and that justice would be served. (more)

The liberal love affair with Islam is perplexing.  While liberals tend to hate traditional Christianity for its more socially conservative worldview, they insist on vigorously defending Islam and its adherents.  From Jon Stewart’s moralizing, to Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg’s outrage at Bill O’Reilly, to President Obama’s recent droning about the “spirit of tolerance” in the Indonesian Constitution (in spite of Indonesia’s laws prohibiting speech offensive to Islam), we are forever sermonized that there is a gulf between Islamist extremism and the “vast majority” of normal Muslims, whom we would apparently love to have as neighbors and run into at Whole Foods. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States may remove Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism as early as next July, U.S. officials said Sunday, provided the government in Khartoum meets an assortment of benchmarks. (more)

America has struggled with her identity, values and morals from the first day settlers to the New World arrived on these shores mores than 400 years ago. Tensions with Native Americans turned into ethnic cleansing on President Andrew Jackson’s watch. The Trail of Tears is one of those stains on the American conscience. Jackson is lionized by Democrats as a populist hero; never mind that by the standards set by the Geneva Convention in the post-Holocaust era, he would likely have been an indicted war criminal.  To be certain, slavery and the Middle Passage left scars on millions. The Civil War was about humanity as much as it was about “states’ rights” or “economics.” (more)

The United Nations refuses to condemn North Korea for deliberately sinking a South Korean ship and killing 46 South Koreans, but erupts, along with the rest of the European and American Left, over Israel killing nine people who attacked Israeli commandoes. (more)

Right here on earth. Hell exists. Famine, preventable diseases like malaria, yellow fever and cholera seem almost merciful – because once death comes, the sick are released from their earthly prison.  When the suffering finally abates, there is grace in that moment.  There are things worse than death.  Rape, fistula, sex slavery and child soldiers are becoming ever more common.  For decades, the images of suffering in Africa are pervasive. People make jokes about leaving food on their plate, instead of giving it to the starving children of Africa. It isn’t a joke though.  Just in my lifetime, the “skinnies” in Ethiopia, or hundreds of thousands of others across the continent suffered from waterborne illnesses that steal life through excruciating means – the fevers, the diarrhea and vomiting. The appalling conditions in South Africa under Apartheid.  The stories about Stephen Biko still ring in my ears. Or Mandela. Darfur. Blood Diamonds. Conflict minerals. The Congo. (more)

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (CNN) — The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has filed genocide charges against Sudan’s president for a five-year campaign of violence in Darfur. (more)

Self-interest and humanitarianism (more)

It was interesting being in Kenya this past week while the World Cup football (soccer) matches were being played near-by in South Africa. When Kenyan’s interrupted their viewing of a match to converse with me and learned that I was an American they inevitably wanted to know how I thought President Obama was doing. I hated telling them. The current World Cup in South Africa, however, made viewing Clint Eastwood’s “Invictus” on the plane on the way home even more moving than it would have been anyway. The movie dramatizes South Africa’s first post apartheid president, Nelson Mandela’s, decision to save and embrace South Africa’s national soccer team, “Springboks,” so loved by white South African’s and thus hated by black South Africans, as an element of his program of national reconciliation. (more)

Three peacekeepers have been killed in Sudan’s Darfur region, officials say. (more)