This article titled “George Clooney and Google launch satellite plan to avert Sudan violence” was written by Chris McGreal in Washington, for The Guardian on Wednesday 29th December 2010 20.58 UTC

Google has joined the UN, Harvard University and a pressure group founded by George Clooney to use satellites to scour Sudan for evidence of state-organised violence before next month’s referendum that could see the country split in two.

Clooney said that he had launched the Satellite Sentinel Project to “stop a war before it starts” by warning the government in Khartoum that it would not be able to hide war crimes from the rest of the world, as it did for so long in Darfur, if there is violence in southern Sudan, which is likely to vote on 9 January to secede.

The project plans to reduce the waiting time for satellite images from more than a fortnight to less than 36 hours. The images will be scrutinised by the UN for evidence of mass movements of people, destruction of villages and other indicators of organised violence. The Harvard Humanitarian Initiative will also study the pictures.

The images will immediately be made public. If there is evidence of war crimes, appeals for action will be led in part by the Enough Project, an anti-genocide organisation led by the author and activist John Prendergast.

Clooney and Prendergast said today in a statement that there was a serious threat of violence.

“The government in Khartoum has armed militias in contested bordering regions, the government air force has bombed border areas, and both sides have massed military units and equipment along the hottest border spots,” they said. “These areas have witnessed some of the most deadly conflict in the world since world war two. The former director of national intelligence says that southern Sudan is the place in the world most likely to experience genocide.

“We were late to Rwanda. We were late to the Congo. We were late to Darfur. There is no time to wait.”

The referendum is the result of a 2005 peace deal to end more than two decades of civil war that cost more than two million lives. Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, has committed himself to respecting the result of the oil-rich south’s vote. But there has already been violence amid accusations that the government is funding armed groups opposed to independence. Last week, the US vice president, Joe Biden, called Sudan’s second vice president, Ali Osman Mohmed Taha, to express Washington’s concern about potential violence.

Jonathan Hutson of the Enough Project said that advances in technology had given humanitarian organisations an advantage that should help not only expose violence but prevent it. “This project is leveraging Google map makers open source platform to wage peace. Unlike previous satellite imagery gathering projects which were after-the-fact documentation exercises, this project aims to stop a war before it starts,” he said. “War criminals thrive in the dark. They behave differently when you shine a media spotlight on them, when you give them notice that satellite imagery can be quickly shared with the world. This is an open source public platform for waging peace and this transforms anti-war efforts from now on.”

“Passing over Sudan at any given time are perhaps a dozen commercial satellites that have high resolution images available for purchase. The cost barrier has been the key factor that has limited the effective use of satellite imagery analysis in the human rights field,” Hutson added.

The Sudan initiative is being funded for six months by Not On Our Watch, an organisation co-founded by Clooney and other film stars such as Matt Damon and Brad Pitt. “We want to let potential perpetrators of genocide and other war crimes know that we’re watching, the world is watching,” said Clooney.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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The grade-school teacher who was jailed in Sudan for allowing her students to name a teddy bear Muhammad was met at London’s Heathrow Airport this morning by her son John and daughter Jessica.

Gillian Gibbons was released a week early thanks to an intense British diplomatic effort led by two Muslim members of Britain’s House of Lords, who met with Sudanese President Omar al Bashir.

Gibbons also sent the president a statement saying she didn’t mean to offend anyone with her class project.

Some Sudanese protesters, however, demanded far more punishment, such as lashes or even death.

Gibbons only had kind words about the country and the Sudanese people.

“It has been an ordeal but I’d like want you to know that I was well-treated in prison and everybody was very kind to me,” she said. “I was very sorry to leave Sudan. I had a fabulous time there. It’s a really lovely place, and I managed to see some of the beautiful countryside while I was there.”

But fearing for her safety, she returned to England immediately. Now, she said, she is looking forward to a low-key holiday celebration and to eat her favorite meal, fish and chips.

Gibbons spent a total of 8 days in a Sudanese jail, while a lynch mob gathered outside calling for her death.

“I’m just an ordinary middle-aged school teacher who went out to have a bit of an adventure, and got a bit more than I bargained for,” Gibbons said at a brief press conference at the airport. “I don’t think anyone could have imagined it would have snowballed like this.”

-Chris Jones

Everyone’s favorite religion of peace strikes again! Apparently 15 days in a Sudanese prison for calling a teddy bear “Muhammad” just isn’t enough to quell the growing Islamic rage in Sudan.

Thousands of Sudanese, many armed with clubs and knives, rallied Friday in a central square and demanded the execution of a British teacher convicted of insulting Islam for allowing her students to name a teddy bear “Muhammad.”

The protesters streamed out of mosques after Friday sermons with their Islamic rage at full intensity, as pickup trucks with loudspeakers blared messages against Gillian Gibbons, the teacher who was sentenced Thursday to 15 days in prison and deportation. She avoided the more serious punishment of 40 lashes.

I think the Mosque is like a drug for these people. It seems like Islamic rage is right at it’s peak fury immediately after attending the local mosque.

I don’t think I could go to church anymore if the Pastor whipped the entire congregation into a blind fury every Sunday. I think that’s the problem here. They pray five times a day, so many attend the mosque five times a day. That’s at least five times in a single day that they’re thrown into a full scale Islamic rage!

Becoming that enraged so frequently just can’t be healthy. In the future maybe we should try a combination of 2000 lb. bombs and intensive anger management classes as a new strategy for taming the Islamic world.

-Kenneth Levine

Here is another shining example of that peaceful and tolerant religion known as Islam.

From CNN:

Gillian Gibbons, 54, has been accused of blasphemy and is being held by police in the capital Khartoum, Kirsty Saunders, British Foreign Office spokeswoman told CNN.

Police arrested the school teacher after she asked her class of seven-year-olds to come up with a name for the toy as part of a school project, according to widespread media reports.

Parents of students at the Unity High School in Khartoum informed the authorities and Gibbons was taken into custody Sunday, Saunders told CNN.

So far Gibbons has yet to be charged with any offense, however, under Sudanese law, insulting Islam is punishable with 40 lashes, a jail term of up to six months or a fine, she said.

However, a Sudanese official told CNN that if police decided that Gibbons had acted in good faith, she would most likely be spared punishment.

“If the intentions are good, definitely she will be absolved and will be cautioned not to repeat this thing again,” Mutrif Siddig, Sudan’s under secretary for foreign affairs, said.

Saunders said that under Sudan’s laws a person can be held for no more than 24 hours without charge.

Asked if British authorities were concerned that Gibbons had been held for longer than that time, she said “we are happy that all the correct procedures are being followed.”

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Tuesday he was “very sorry” about Gibbons’ arrest and that the British embassy in Khartoum was “giving all appropriate consular assistance to her.”

He said all efforts were being taken to ensure her early release and that government officials were in touch with the teacher’s family in the northern British city of Liverpool.

A representative for her two grown up children — her daughter Jessica and son John — told CNN they wished to be left alone until their mother was released.

Gibbons had been working at the school — popular with wealthy Sudanese and expatriates — since August, after leaving her position as deputy headteacher at a primary school in Liverpool this summer.

On her entry on the social networking Web site MySpace, Gibbons wrote: “I am a teacher in a school in Khartoum, in Sudan. I like to make the most out of life.”

According to the entry, she said her passion was travel and she was hoping to make the most of her time in Sudan by visiting nearby countries.

According to a report in The Times newspaper, Gibbons had asked the children to pick their favorite name for the new class mascot, which she was using to aid lessons about animals and their habitats.

A member of the Sudanese government told CNN Muslim parents at the school informed the authorities after considering that her actions were offensive to their faith.

Mutrif Siddig, Sudan’s under secretary for foreign affairs, said: “To give the name of Mohammed to this teddy bear, it was considered as insult by some parents. And this school is mixed, it is not all Christian students.”

Gibbons was recruited to work in Sudan by QTS Worldwide, an education consultancy based in the northern county of West Yorkshire.

Eric Liddell, who runs QTS, refused to comment on the incident but said that he had spoken to members of the Unity High School staff, who were hopeful that the British teacher would be released.

Separately, CNN contacted a member of staff, who confirmed the school had been shut down temporarily as a result of the incident involving Gibbons. He refused to give his name and said no other members of staff were available.

Ridiculous doesn’t even begin to describe that story. A teacher from Britain has no business being in a stink hole like Sudan to begin with, much less living there.

As terrible as her situation is, she’s actually pretty lucky it was only the Police who grabbed her. She could have very easily been kidnapped and beheaded by terrorists.

-Chris Jones 

Former President and frequent U.S. critic Jimmy Carter doesn’t like it when people use the prickly word “genocide” when referring to the situation in Darfur. He calls it factually inaccurate and unhelpful to use such language. Call me crazy, but I think I prefer to hear foreign policy advice from someone besides the worst President in U.S. history.

Everything that Jimmy Carter said while he was President and since is both factually inaccurate and very much unhelpful. He needs to come home from the Sudan and stick a peanut in it already!

-Chris Jones