Norm!*

I find it easier to use my blogroll than to futz around with bookmarks. Perhaps I'm just too lazy to drag the cursor to the pull-down tab. Which is why I haven't read normblog since I stopped relying on Crooked Timber's and Harry's blogrolls and also why I've now added it (as well as a few others) to mine.

There's so much good stuff there. He calls attention to a single sentence in a Human Rights Watch report about the Arab ethnic cleansing of black Africans from western Sudan.

"The Khartoum government has tried to repress this rebellion with lightning speed in hope that the international community wouldn't have time to mobilize and press the government to halt its devastation of Darfur," added [Georgette Gagnon, deputy director for the Africa division of Human Rights Watch].

It is regrettable, though not surprising, that the Sudanese government has learned from the experience of those who have previously beaten this genocidal path for them. The international community will respond, but very, very slowly; therefore, one should seek to stablish facts on the ground as quickly as possible so as to encumber any efforts to undo the ethnic cleansing. In other words, blitzkrieg genocide.

On a more hopeful note, he cites the examples of Mr. and Mrs. Dennis Hopper as a couple who have radically different political views from each other, which gives comfort to those of us who have ever found ourselves in love with a person with whom we disagree vehemently about passionately held positions (the other kind of passionately held positions).

Last but most certainly not least is an unconditional condemnation of terrorism, even including what they call "the so-called Iraqi resistance," from a group of British Muslim healthcare professionals.

*pace Cheers