As an online entity, Google is constantly evolving and improving its products. Some updates are silly, but some are far more serious and meant for good. Its update today to Google Earth to expand its Darfur coverage, is the latter.
Using data from the U.S. State Departments Humanitarian Information Unit and working with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Google now shows more than 3,300 villages (yes, entire villages) that have been decimated during the genocide. Google notes that while the numbers have been known for some time, actually seeing the decimation in more detail than ever before provides a clearer understanding of the devastation.
For example, using the service’s newer historical data feature, you can see before and after pictures of the region. The results are pretty stunning. This feature is available on some 200 of these sites in the region.
All of this data is available in the Global Awareness folder in Google Earth. And Google is urging people to visit the U.S. Holocaust Museum Memorial website to find out more about what you can do to take action about the atrocities in Darfur.
While talk has seemed to die down in recently months about Darfur after the election cycle made it a hot-button issue, it remains a very serious situation. And it’s good that Google is using its long reach to keep the spotlight on it.
Darfur (like Honduras) doesn’t have any wealth to offer us, so we won’t even blink an eye as injustices continue for decades.
On the other hand, places like Iran, Iraq, and Venezuela get our full attention!
Not true. Darfur is the oil producing region of Sudan, and China is pumping it. China is busily giving the Sudanese government money to pump the oil. The Sudanese government is paying arab militias to drive sub-Saharan (read: black) Africans out of the area. The sub-Saharan Africans began to stand up for themselves and demand part of the oil revenues that the Saharan (read: arab) cities are getting. When it wasn’t given to them, they tried to cut off the flow of that oil, which in turn led to the intense persecution we are witnessing now.
Unfortunately for the people there, the US doesn’t want and cannot afford to upset it’s banker and biggest creditor – China. Nothing we do as individuals will cause enough of a response to convince our politicians to cut off the flow of money and cheap goods from China.
It seems to me that china can’t sell you any ‘cheap goods’ unless you choose to buy them. Feel free to ‘buy American’ at twice the price.
If I could find more “Made in the USA” products I would. Do businesses and MNCs really pass on the savings to the consumer? The other day I was at Bed, Bath, Beyond buying hangers. I opted for the Made in USA ones vs the China ones. Price difference? None.
I try to buy american, but if I was really committed to it I wouldn’t be typing this because I wouldn’t have a computer and I wouldn’t know about Darfur because I probably wouldn’t have a TV or a radio either. And I couldn’t leave the house because I’d be arrested because I’d most likely be naked.
it’s not the flow of cheap Chinese consumer products that the gov’t is worried about- it’s their funding of our trillion-dollar budget deficit in treasury notes and the like…
Darfur is the Oil Region? No!
the south is where the oil is.
http://www.eia....dan%20b-map.gif
Also, Holocaust Museum is helping in Darfur?! Really fishy.
Can you elaborate on why it’s fishy?
this isn’t fishy at all- who knows better than Holocaust survivors the importance of stopping a genocide in progress
What an appropriately positioned attack on US foreign policy. *yawns*
China sell arms into the region also.
I wouldn’t have done better than Sandy Snowe (below)
I’m always saddened by these places and stories.
You just know how easy it would be to actually really solve it, rather than pretend it was a political thing. When I say solve it, I mean if you put yourself in the hypothetical position that you were the Prez of the US and your family and friends were in say, Darfur and you had till monday morning to sort it out, forever.
Then again , I bet hardly any readers even know which ocean that Darfur borders on.
This post, like Sarah Lacy’s coverage on Rwanda, lifts TC to new levels of tech journalism.
link to Lacy’s Rwanda coverage?
Mad props to Google for doing this. Respeck.
The Darfur crisis should be front and center in our collective attention, but the Western media doesn’t care about African issues relatively speaking.
Mad love for Google on this one, lets hope this action creates a collective wave accross the websphere,
Would be good to see a bing page photo to this extent…”Maybe a bit rich for MSN though”!;
Major Kudos to TC for posting about the atrocities happening in Darfur, it is a sad state of affairs and @BullJustin is correct in his statement regarding the events happening there.
Sometimes all it takes is a visual for people to get a clue.
~daddy b
hypocrites
99% of the world is made of hypocrites.
Stirring them up a little is one of the best things that can be done.
Google did the right thing! But I also wonder whether Google, the Holocaust Museum et. al gave similar attention to the genocide in Gaza, Israel few months ago? Did TechCrunch cover the Gaza massacre?
The democratically elected government of Israel and its actions are just as worse if not more than the idiots running the Sudanese government.
In contrast, lets look at India whose people and government has improved the conditions in Kashmir. Like China, India too is one of the significant creditors for the US government. India is a smart nation of hardworking people.
What has Israel done for the US taxpayers lately or for its own minorities? Since its establishment sixty years ago, the country has received more US taxpayer funds and military help than any other country.
Remember Rachel Corrie, the American peace-lover from Washington state? She was run over by the IDF tractor in broad daylight! That was the Israeli payback.
I am sorry to be upset but tech blogs like this should stay out of politics or be fair to all people.
Here here.
Israel is just as much a terrorist state as any regime in the “axis of evil”.
Why don’t you twitter about it then.
A lot of Africans in Isreali jails too.
I think you meant “destroyed” or “demolished”, not “decimated”. Look it up.
Thanks for writing about this. All the TC hits it gets from this will definitely raise awareness.
Words, protests and pictures will not stop this genocide in Darfur!
The only thing which can stop this is a massive military action against the aggressors!
But to do this there is no interest, because there are no natural resources of value there!
No government will take military action in Darfur!
The only thing which can be done could be a private – humanitarian force which is well equipt to fight the aggressors down.
All information about the aggressor is available, like quantity, armament, tags, etc.
Furthermore there are very much wealthy celebrities which could finance such operation.
You think this is a crazy idea. Yes it is of course! But the only effective solution to stop this, like it or not!
But nothing will happen to help Darfur, because it’s more comfortable and more secure to keep sitting in the armchair or talk about this during cocktail parties than to take any effective action!
Amazing how ignorant doltish people will manage to drag Israel through the mud no matter how detached the subject matter may be.
Maybe you should read up on your history or actually visit the region before you expound on your “fully informed” point of view. Africans in Isreali prisons, can you possible post a more inflammatory or irrelevant comment to this article??
All Israel wants is peace and a “Palestinian” state has been offered and rejected so many times its a wonder why they never accepted (maybe because it required stopping all terrorist actions??). Read up on your history and current events. If you take a close look and open your eyes you will see where the violence really originates.
Kicking people off their land and bulldozing their homes like Israel did this week, leaving them homeless is a unusual stop on the road to peace.
Israeli law not only bars Palestinians from returning to their homes in West Jerusalem, but even evicts them from the houses where they have lived for the last 60 years.
Settlements were agreed apon, then Isreal decided they did not want to keep to the agreement, so they expanded the settlements and at the same time want the Palestinians to beg for water to feed their familys and grow their crops.
Check the region, on one side you have feilds abundant with crops on the otherside the feilds are like a desert.
One of these settlements is called Obama town no-less.
You make only one valid point (though do learn how to spell ‘fields’): “on one side you have feilds abundant with crops on the otherside the feilds are like a desert”.
Israel supplies water and electricity to the Arabs in the West Bank, Gaza and even Jordan (though not for free to Jordan). Who do you think built this infrastructure?
The clear difference you point out in the comment above is simply the result of Israeli innovation. Without the State of Israel the land on which it sits would still be arid and useless.
But the most important question is this: what does Darfur have anything to do with Israel/Palestinians? In Darfur there is real genocide happening. This should be the topic people are discussing. That’s the subject of the blog post.
I wish there was a web based Google Earth that I could use to see the layer information. Downloading G Earth is a pain