Le Figaro News Quiz

Hey Class,

This is a French thing sent over to me by French friends, and though it is French, I thought you should check it out.

It's a news quiz from www.lefigaro.fr and it's a lot of fun. It challenges your knowledge of what happened this year, and I did score a not brilliant 14/20 (I didn't cheat, I didn't google the answers, I just answered fast & clean)
I can't find one in English quite yet, there's a BBC one and an MSNBC one but they are both very oriented (one very UK, one very US) Gonna try to find sthg "international"

How much did you score??

Best
CJ

Xmas Vocab

Some Christmas vocab

Advent l'Avent

angel un ange

Bogeyman Père Fouettard

candle une chandelle

Christmas card une carte de Noël

Christmas carol un noël, un chant de Noël -- I know, that’s also my name. Please spare the joke

Christmas Day le jour de Noël

Christmas feast le Réveillon

Christmas Eve la veille de Noël

Christmas tree le sapin or l'arbre de Noël

Epiphany, Twelfth Night la Fête des Rois

little saint un santon

manger la crèche

Merry Christmas! Joyeux Noël !

Midnight Mass la Messe de Minuit

mistletoe le gui

New Year's Day le Jour de l'An

New Year's Eve la Saint-Sylvestre

present un cadeau

reindeer un renne

Santa Claus Père Noël, Papa Noël

shepherd un berger

sleigh un traîneau

snowball une boule de neige

snowman un bonhomme de neige

stuffed animal une peluche

white Christmas Noël sous la neige

Yule log la bûche de Noël

Post Xmas French Gastronomy

This is from the SF Chronicle, a very funny article on French gastronomy to get over all the Xmas turkey and stuffed salmon and chocolate truffes and 'can I have an extra side of cheese & cream please?' ... And if you want to know something really gross, I know some people who season cheese with ketchup... hold on, I am one of them ;) (not all the time, don't rant yet).

A ONE-POT WONDER

France's iconic pot-au-feu is the perfect post-Christmas dish

by Janet Fletcher, Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Enough already with rich holiday food and daily overindulgence. Some year-end partying may lie ahead, but excess is losing its appeal. By now, most people are grateful for a reprieve from butter and cream.

For Laurent Manrique, the French-born executive chef of Aqua in San Francisco, the week between Christmas and New Year's is prime time for pot-au-feu. Only a Frenchman would consider this avalanche of boiled beef and vegetables to be a respite from excess, but Manrique makes the case.

"It cleans the stomach between Christmas and New Year's," claims the chef, who was raised in rural Gascony with a grandmother who made an expert pot-au-feu. With its restorative broth and plain but plentiful vegetables, a proper pot-au-feu provides a break between two holidays associated with feasting. "It's not diet food," admits the chef, "but it's considered a healthy dish."

And for a low-key New Year's Eve that's more about comfort than caviar, pot-au-feu - "the pot on the fire" - hits just the right note. It simmers slowly all day, perfuming the house with warm, beefy aromas. And leftovers to tide you through New Year's Day are all but assured.

Escoffier called pot-au-feu "the symbol of family life ... a thoroughly bourgeois dish which nothing may dethrone." Its origins are in the farmhouse kitchen, and although it has no particular regional affiliation, regional adaptations abound.

Waverley Root, who documented French regional cooking in the 1950s, mentioned at least four different renditions in his masterwork, "The Food of France": the Carcassonne version, which includes bacon, stuffed cabbage and white beans; the pot-au-feu albigeois (from the town of Albi), with stuffed goose neck; the Languedoc housewives' version, with salt pork; and the Béarn version, which he doesn't define.

Manrique still makes pot-au-feu at home the way his grandmother did, although she simmered it on the hearth and he has a Wolf range. Manrique's grandparents ran a modest auberge-cafe in their minuscule village, and his grandmother often cooked for the local laborers. Like French cooks everywhere, she used a variety of inexpensive, bony meats to give body to her pot-au-feu broth, and then used the broth to poach a garland of winter root vegetables. "I was lucky enough to do homework at the kitchen table, surrounded by those smells," says Manrique.

But while most recipes call for serving the broth first, with meat and vegetables following, Manrique says this is not the custom in his home. Instead, the fork-tender meats and vegetables come to the table on a warm platter and the hot broth accompanies them in a tureen. At the table, each diner gets a soup bowl with some of the meat, some of the vegetables, and a ladle of hot broth over all. Toasts spread with poached marrow are also part of the picture, as is a sauce curiously named gros sel (coarse salt). Resembling sauce gribiche, Manrique's gros sel is a mustardy vinaigrette with chopped herbs, cornichons and hard-boiled egg.

Hubert Keller, the Alsatian chef at Fleur de Lys in San Francisco, says he has never heard of Manrique's gros sel sauce. When his grandmother made pot-au-feu, the meal unfolded like this: first the boiled and cooled vegetables, sliced and served on a platter with a vinaigrette, fresh chives and deviled eggs; then the broth with marrow quenelles (dumplings); and finally the hot meats with a few more vegetables - hot this time - and a condiment of horseradish thinned with cream.

With so many grandmothers having a hand in this dish, it's not surprising that pot-au-feu stirs debate. Some insist on starting the meat in cold water to extract maximum flavor and produce the tastiest broth. Others immerse the meat in hot water, which coddles the meat but compromises the broth. The only way to achieve both objectives - rich broth and succulent beef - is via the Julia Child method: make a stock first, then cook the meat in barely simmering stock. But that's a refinement more suggestive of the restaurant than the farmhouse.

The beef chosen for pot-au-feu should be meaty cuts with some bone and a lot of cartilaginous tissue, the sort of meat that improves with slow cooking. Shank, shin, chuck, short ribs, oxtails and brisket work well, and an assortment makes the dish more compelling. The vegetables used to flavor the broth are eventually discarded; a fresh set of poached vegetables accompanies the meat.

For a home cook, the biggest challenge in reproducing a pot-au-feu may be finding the right pots. You need a large vessel, 16 quarts or more, to accommodate all the meats and vegetables - preferably a wide pot rather than a tall one so you can easily retrieve the meats as they are done and readily skim impurities from the surface. All-Clad makes a 16-quart stockpot in this wide shape; a tall stockpot will work, but is not ideal. You also need a second large, low-sided pot to poach the vegetables for serving.

Both Manrique and Keller insist that a pot-au-feu broth should glisten with fat. It needs to have "eyes" on the surface, or it isn't right. But some cuts, such as short ribs and oxtails, throw more fat than many diners may appreciate. To remove some or all of it, let the broth cool for at least an hour without stirring. The fat will rise to the top, and you can remove it with a ladle.

A youthful red wine of medium intensity pairs well with pot-au-feu. Manrique suggests a cru Beaujolais, such as St. Amour or Chiroubles, a Côtes du Rhône or a California Pinot Noir. Any first course should be light, and the same goes for dessert.

On the day Manrique demonstrated his pot-au-feu, he invited friends over for dinner to enjoy the results. They would start, he said, with a beet, endive and walnut salad and finish with whole Lady Apples roasted with butter and sugar, splashed with Armagnac and served with vanilla ice cream.

It would be hard to imagine a more inviting menu to launch the new year. And with Manrique's guidance, a fine pot-au-feu is within a novice cook's reach.

if you want to check out their recipe, here it is : http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/26/FDCTTUL3I.DTL

G'nite,

CJ

Santa & Basketball : Can Christmas possibly get any better?

There are not so many things I'm a huge fan of, but basketball and Christmas time are two of them. See how they collide.
From the San Francisco Chronicle, the SF Bay area legacy newspaper.

Warriors' Stephen Jackson plays Santa for Oakland families

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

In a small house in a modest area of East Oakland, two families have gathered to celebrate Christmas.

The families have fallen on hard times and Christmas looks a little grim this year. There's a Christmas tree in the living room, but no presents under it. The adults chat, and the kids run around and scream at each other.

They're all waiting. A big man is supposed to stop by and bring presents. A man in a costume leads the kids in song and cheer until sounds can be heard coming from the front porch. Then a loud, robust knock.

"He's here!" shouts one of the kids. The door opens. A tall man in a cream-colored track suit and very expensive earrings walks through the door. It's Stephen Jackson, starting forward for the Golden State Warriors.

"Merry Christmas everybody," he says with a shy smile.

"He's real!" says 12-year-old Bryan Burton. "He's really real."

And so began the Christmas that will forever be remembered in the Draper and Reed households. Not only did they get piles of presents, food and other gifts, they got it all hand-delivered by one of the best players in the NBA.

"These kids will never forget this moment," said Frances Draper, a 64-year-old grandmother taking care of eight young children. "Even when they're old, they're going to be telling this story to their family and friends."

The event was part of the Warriors' Season of Giving campaign. The team helps out about 5,000 people, and the players, coaches and staff get involved in disbursing presents and money to people in need.

Erika Smith, a spokeswoman for the team, said families ask for help and fill out a wish list of presents. The team buys the stuff and the players, like Jackson, pay for it and deliver the goods.

Jackson arrived late in a gleaming black Bentley. Inside the house, the Warriors' mascot, Thunder, kept the families entertained. Members of the Warriors staff told the families that something was up, but didn't say who was coming or what they were getting.

It was a lot like waiting for Santa to show up in a sleigh pulled by reindeer.

Jackson pulled up to the curb outside the little house with none of the fanfare he usually gets when he's at the Oakland Arena. Only a couple of reporters were on hand to mark the occasion.

The Warriors had brought the Reeds - Lamont and Cheryl and their three children - to Frances Draper's house. On the front porch, they stacked the presents and all sorts of grocery items that needy families might want, such as paper towels, ramen noodles, pies, cakes and vegetables.

Jackson squeezed into the small living room, crammed elbow-to-elbow with kids, and made his way to a small sofa in the corner. There, sitting next to his mother, Judy Jackson, he spent the next half-hour passing out wrapped presents to the kids. The presents were to be unwrapped later, but clearly one or two were basketballs.

"Come on now, Layla, give me some sugar," Jackson said as he reached for the baby of the bunch. She reached for his neck and gave him a kiss.

After Jackson passed out the presents, he told Lamont Reed that his Pacific Gas and Electric bill, a whopping $1,700, had been paid. And he told Draper that a new TV was on its way to her house later in the week.

"I had no idea that any of this was going to happen," said Reed, who was recently laid off from his job. "When I saw him coming through the door, I was like 'Whoa!' "

Jackson hung around for pictures with the parents and kids. After they started in on the pizzas he had brought, the tall man and his mother slipped out the front door.

"It always feels good to do stuff like this," Jackson said.

Jackson has an image on the basketball court for being a volatile and passionate player, but none of that was evident in the little house in East Oakland.

"That's just the way I play basketball," he said. "I hate to lose. But off court, I'm a humble person. God blessed me and gave me the ability to do something for other people, and that means a lot to me."

Draper was very emotional, too. She said taking care of eight kids has been hard. But with the help of her family, friends and church, the True Word Church of the Living God, she says, she gets by.

But there weren't going to be any Christmas presents this year.

"Everything was going toward expenses and utilities," she said. "And now, all this. I just can't believe it."

John Koopman

It's Christmas Week , Guys!

Christmas is just around the corner, so I'll try to have a Christmas oriented blog for a couple of days, including music, facts, articles, and other fun stuff!

Enjoy !!

The World Is Flat, and Chocolatiers Want to Coat It

By JOHN TAGLIABUE
The New York Times__ December 17, 2007

ZURICH — When the cold winter wind blows off Lake Zurich, the people who live around this sprawling factory, a 10-minute ride from the center of town, can smell the chocolate in the air. It is especially pungent this time of the year, when the factories are humming to meet holiday demand, the chocolate-maker’s bonanza.

“Some people who live around a factory mind the odor,” said Sara Bouachir, an official of Lindt & Sprüngli, the $2.1 billion-a-year Swiss chocolate giant that runs the factory. “But not here.”

But factories like this face a challenge. The Swiss already consume an average of more than 25 pounds of chocolate a year, placing them second only to the British, so how do you get them to eat more? This is driving the chocolate-makers of Zurich to new heights of innovation, with dark chocolates flavored like hot chili peppers, grappa or saffron.

It is also making Swiss chocolate a case study in globalization. Swiss chocolatiers, having long ago conquered markets in Europe and North America, are now aiming at the vast expanses of Russia, India and China.

Zurich itself remains a haven for chocolate-lovers, with cozy chocolate shops nestled among the big Swiss banks, like UBS and Credit Suisse, along the noble Bahnhofstrasse. Stores like Teuscher and Sprüngli stand next to luxury shops like Cartier and Chanel.

“People are more and more sensitive about quality; they buy less but higher quality,” said Ms. Bouachir. “People do tastings, as with wine, and they want to know the background of their chocolate.”

Barry Callebaut runs seven huge chocolate factories, including two in Switzerland, from which it supplies industrial chocolate to the likes of Hershey, Nestlé and Cadbury Schweppes. It also has its own consumer brands, like Van Houten and Van Leer. Listed on the Zurich stock exchange, its shares have soared more than 50 percent this year.

The strategy Barry Callebaut employs to lure the Swiss into eating more chocolate is essentially the one it uses to seduce consumers globally: emphasizing chocolate’s contribution to good health (some studies have found that dark chocolate may be good for the heart).

Some say the Swiss are saturated. “You could give chocolate away, not for free, but for much cheaper,” said Franz Urs Schmid, director of Chocosuisse, the chocolate-makers association. “But it wouldn’t increase the quantity the Swiss consume.”

Barry Callebaut is not waiting for the Swiss to eat more chocolate. This year, it opened a factory near Moscow, and in January will inaugurate another near Shanghai. “In North America, it’s the eight weeks prior to Christmas,” Ms. Tschofen said, listing the world’s chocolate-eating seasons. “In Germany it’s still Christmas, in Russia it’s New Year’s, and in Japan it’s St. Valentine’s Day.”

Is This The End of Wiki ?

Googlepedia - Knol is Google's knowledge base

Nick Carr used the moniker Googlepedia which I think in one word sums up the essence of Google's Knol announcement. This makes a lot of sense for Google. Over 70% of Wikipedia's page views originate from a Google search. And, Wikipedia is the number one search result for LOTs of queries. As Nick Carr pointed out, this trend is increasing. Wikipedia is the trusted source for unbiased, up to date, information on almost any subject.

Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineLand got a look at the Knol service, see the screen shot below, and says this about Knol;

Google Knol is designed to allow anyone to create a page on any topic, which others can comment on, rate, and contribute to if the primary author allows. The service is in a private test beta. You can't apply to be part of it, nor can the pubic see the pages that have been made. Google also stressed to me that what's shown in the screenshots it provided might change and that the service might not launch at all.

Udi Manber, Google VP of Engineering wrote a blog today about Knol, and describes it this way;

The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors' names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors -- but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content. At the heart, a knol is just a web page; we use the word "knol" as the name of the project and as an instance of an article interchangeably. It is well-organized, nicely presented, and has a distinct look and feel, but it is still just a web page. Google will provide easy-to-use tools for writing, editing, and so on, and it will provide free hosting of the content. Writers only need to write; we'll do the rest.
A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read. The goal is for knols to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions. Google will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content. All editorial responsibilities and control will rest with the authors. We hope that knols will include the opinions and points of view of the authors who will put their reputation on the line. Anyone will be free to write. For many topics, there will likely be competing knols on the same subject. Competition of ideas is a good thing.

From everything I have read Knol sounds like the best of Wikipedia and About.com, with great opportunities for quality traffic and advertising. Good move.

Posted by DonDodge on December 14, 2007

Don Dodge is a senior manager at Microsoft and he recently published this post on his blog. Check out his blog: http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/

Best,

CJ

USA Renamed for Countries with Similar GDPs.

Isn't this fun? :)
Click on the picture for a bigger size.

NY Times Article on Col. Qaddafi in France

It's always interesting to have the opinion from foreign countries on what's happening in France. This article talks about Col. Qaffadi's visit in France.

Divided, France Welcomes and Condemns Qaddafi

By ELAINE SCIOLINO

December 11, 2007

PARIS, Dec. 10 — Redemption, at last, seems to have come for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

The veteran Libyan leader began a five-day official visit to France on Monday — his first in more than three decades. His French hosts even pitched his heated Bedouin-style tent for receiving guests in the garden of the Paris mansion that houses visiting dignitaries.

But the visit was sharply criticized, even within the ranks of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government.

“Colonel Qaddafi must understand that our country is not a doormat on which a leader, terrorist or not, can come to wipe the blood of his crimes off his feet,” France’s secretary of state for human rights, Rama Yade, said in an interview in Monday’s issue of the newspaper Le Parisien. “France must not receive this kiss of death.”

Calling the timing of Colonel Qaddafi’s visit on World Human Rights Day “scandalously powerful,” Ms. Yade added of Libya: “People disappear in this country, and no one knows what has become of them. The press is not free. Prisoners are tortured. The death penalty has been abolished for Libyans but it is still used for sub-Saharan Africans.”

She told RTL radio that she would be attending the annual dinner at the International Federation of Human Rights in the evening — not the dinner in the colonel’s honor at the Élysée Palace, to which she had not been invited anyway.

Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, a long-time human rights activist, said he would not attend the Élysée dinner either. “By happy coincidence,” Mr. Kouchner explained, he had another commitment. The Foreign Ministry said he was having dinner with his German counterpart.

After meeting with Colonel Qaddafi in the afternoon, Mr. Sarkozy told reporters he had insisted to the Libyan that “it was necessary to continue to move forward on the path of human rights.” Mr. Sarkozy also replied to his critics, saying, “It is rather beautiful the principle that consists in not getting yourself wet, not taking risks,” he said, and “being so certain of everything you think while you’re having your latte on the Boulevard Saint-Germain.”

The visit to Paris was Mr. Sarkozy’s reward to Colonel Qaddafi for his orchestration of the release last July of Bulgarian medical workers and a Palestinian doctor who had been convicted of deliberately infecting children with the virus that causes AIDS. That gesture removed a major irritant in the relationship between France and Libya, opening the way for improved political ties — and billions of dollars in trade. […]

Jean-David Levitte, Mr. Sarkozy’s diplomatic adviser, recently said that a country like Libya had a “right to redemption.” Mr. Sarkozy visited Libya last July immediately after his wife, Cécilia, helped to arrange the release of the medical workers. (The Sarkozys have since divorced.)

At that time, the French leader showered his host with good wishes, and the two countries announced a generous arms deal. They also signed a memorandum of understanding for France to build a nuclear reactor in Libya to power water desalinization. Since their release, two of the medical workers have written memoirs in which they say they were tortured by Libyan guards.

Colonel Qaddafi, who is in his mid-60s, last visited France 34 years ago, his first trip to a Western country after he seized power in 1969 in a coup that overthrew the monarchy. He was received at the Élysée Palace by Georges Pompidou, then the French president.

After all this time, the French government was so eager to make Colonel Qaddafi comfortable that it abandoned protocol and let him pitch his receiving tent in the garden of the Hotel Marigny, the 19th-century mansion close to the president’s Élysée Palace that serves as an official guest house for state visits.

“I don’t think that Colonel Qaddafi sleeps in the tent, but conforming to the tradition of the desert that he follows to the letter, Colonel Qaddafi always travels with a tent that he pitches as soon as he can,” David Martinon, the Élysée spokesman, said last week.

On Tuesday, Colonel Qaddafi — or “Brother Guide” as he is known back home — will visit the National Assembly, where a parliamentary committee is investigating the warming of France’s relationship with Libya. According to press reports, he also will meet a delegation of women from France’s troubled suburbs, deliver a speech at Unesco, the Paris-based United Nations cultural organization, and take a tour of Versailles.

The Sarkozy government hopes to complete a number of deals during the trip. Colonel Qaddafi signed a “cooperation agreement” with France to develop civilian nuclear energy, including the purchase of one or several nuclear reactors. A memorandum on the subject was signed in July in Tripoli. The two countries also signed a memorandum of cooperation saying Libya would enter exclusive negotiations with France to purchase military equipment, Agence France-Presse said.

Libya has steadily shed its rogue-state reputation since 2003, when it announced the end of its nuclear weapons program, turning over crucial information to the International Atomic Energy Agency. That year, Libya formally took responsibility for the bombing of a Pan Am flight over Scotland in 1988 and agreed to pay compensation to the families of 270 people killed in the crash.

France’s relationship with Libya improved after the two countries reached agreement in 2004 on a Libyan compensation package for the victims of a French commercial airliner bombed over Niger in 1989. The crash killed 170 people, including 54 French citizens.

MME 1 Cover Letter

Hey everyone,

Here is the homework for next week. You have to write a cover letter for next week. I've sent to you the handout, but here are a few websites you should check out

* Monster: http://resume.monster.com/archives/coverletter/

* Boston College Career Center: http://www.bc.edu/offices/careers/skills/letters/cover/

* Nazareth College Career Center: http://www.naz.edu/dept/career_services/coverletters.html

Assignment for next week:

Write an application letter for an internship at ONE of the following companies:

* Morgan Stanley – USA (finance/banking)

* Ralph Lauren – USA (fashion/ready-to-wear/accessories)

* Cadbury – UK (food industry)

It must be computer typed and 1 ½ or DOUBLE SPACED.
It is due at class time - 9:00 am sharp.

MME 2 Exam Today !

The MME 2 had their final exam today! I hope everything went fine, and wish them best of luck for the upcoming Exam Week !!

Best,
CJ

The Devil Came On Horseback

The Devil Came On Horseback is a documentary that is currently being broadcast by Canal + in France (half dubbed, half subtitled) that I think you should watch.

Here is the trailer.

and below you will find Nicholas D. Kristof's extremely famous article published in the New York Times in March 2005. You should check his NYT blog:

The American Witness

By Nicholas D. KRISTOF

Published: March 2, 2005

American soldiers are trained to shoot at the enemy. They're prepared to be shot at. But what young men like Brian Steidle are not equipped for is witnessing a genocide but being unable to protect the civilians pleading for help.

If President Bush wants to figure out whether the U.S. should stand more firmly against the genocide in Darfur, I suggest that he invite Mr. Steidle to the White House to give a briefing. Mr. Steidle, a 28-year-old former Marine captain, was one of just three American military advisers for the African Union monitoring team in Darfur - and he is bursting with frustration.

"Every single day you go out to see another burned village, and more dead bodies," he said. "And the children - you see 6-month-old babies that have been shot, and 3-year-old kids with their faces smashed in with rifle butts. And you just have to stand there and write your reports."

While journalists and aid workers are sharply limited in their movements in Darfur, Mr. Steidle and the monitors traveled around by truck and helicopter to investigate massacres by the Sudanese government and the janjaweed militia it sponsors. They have sometimes been shot at, and once his group was held hostage, but they have persisted and become witnesses to systematic crimes against humanity.

So is it really genocide?

"I have no doubt about that," Mr. Steidle said. "It's a systematic cleansing of peoples by the Arab chiefs there. And when you talk to them, that's what they tell you. They're very blunt about it. One day we met a janjaweed leader and he said, 'Unless you get back four camels that were stolen in 2003, then we're going to go to these four villages and burn the villages, rape the women, kill everyone.' And they did."

The African Union doesn't have the troops, firepower or mandate to actually stop the slaughter, just to monitor it. Mr. Steidle said his single most frustrating moment came in December when the Sudanese government and the janjaweed attacked the village of Labado, which had 25,000 inhabitants. Mr. Steidle and his unit flew to the area in helicopters, but a Sudanese general refused to let them enter the village - and also refused to stop the attack.

"It was extremely frustrating - seeing the village burn, hearing gunshots, not being able to do anything," Mr. Steidle said. "The entire village is now gone. It's a big black spot on the earth."

When Sudan's government is preparing to send bombers or helicopter gunships to attack an African village, it shuts down the cellphone system so no one can send out warnings. Thus the international monitors know when a massacre is about to unfold. But there's usually nothing they can do.

The West, led by the Bush administration, is providing food and medical care that is keeping hundreds of thousands of people alive. But we're managing the genocide, not halting it.

"The world is failing Darfur," said Jan Egeland, the U.N. under secretary general for humanitarian affairs. "We're only playing the humanitarian card, and we're just witnessing the massacres."

President Bush is pushing for sanctions, but European countries like France are disgracefully cool to the idea - and China is downright hostile, playing the same supportive role for the Darfur genocide that it did for the Khmer Rouge genocide.

Mr. Steidle has just quit his job with the African Union, but he plans to continue working in Darfur to do his part to stand up to the killers. Most of us don't have to go to that extreme of risking our lives in Darfur - we just need to get off the fence and push our government off, too.

At one level, I blame President Bush - and, even more, the leaders of European, Arab and African nations - for their passivity. But if our leaders are acquiescing in genocide, that's because we citizens are passive, too. If American voters cared about Darfur's genocide as much as about, say, the Michael Jackson trial, then our political system would respond. One useful step would be the passage of the Darfur Accountability Act, to be introduced today by Senators Jon Corzine and Sam Brownback. The legislation calls for such desperately needed actions as expanding the African Union force and establishing a military no-fly zone to stop Sudan from bombing civilians.

As Martin Luther King Jr. put it: "Man's inhumanity to man is not only perpetrated by the vitriolic actions of those who are bad. It is also perpetrated by the vitiating inaction of those who are good."

---
Vocab:

To witness: to testify, to furnish proof of

To burst: to give way from an excess of emotion

To cleanse: to rid of impurities by or as if by washing (used in the text to be provocative)

Blunt: slow or deficient in feeling, insensitive

A slaughter : killing of great numbers of human beings (as in battle or a massacre)

To unfold: to make clear by gradual disclosure; to evolve.

A fence: a barrier intended to prevent escape or intrusion or to mark a boundary.