paul

"in each and every hard heart there is a little soft corner or point, that you can squeeze." --paul rusesabagina, in regards to an important lession he learned the first time he had to negotiate with the hutu militia for the lives of the tutsi refugees under his care.

"history has repeated itself but has never taught us any lessons." --in regards to the unfortunately ridiculous assertion by western nations, after auschwitz, that 'never again' would the world fail to act against apparent acts of genocide. but what of rwanda? and now of darfur? the problem with the genocide convention is that by declaring a certain situation to be a genocide, it legally binds the ratified nations to act against it, which, unfortunately, is something that few nations are eager to do, regardless of how "moral" or benevolent they claim to be. so i suppose the problem is not with the convention itself, but rather with the failure of the ratified countries to act upon the promises they made in a desparate attempt to ease their consiences.