Nat Hentoff, with his usual perspicacity, once again slays the UN for it's (non-)reaction to Sudan, and closes with this bit on one American's response:

On May 4, American ambassador Sichan Siv, walking out of the U.N. Human Rights Commission in disgust after it had re-elected Sudan to membership, said to The New York Sun, "The least we should be able to do is not elect a country to the only global body charged specifically with protecting human rights, at the precise time when tens of thousands of its citizens are being murdered or being left to die of starvation." It's "Never Again" again.

He notes speculation that Bush has grown silent on the Darfur issue so as not to detract from the peace being brokered between the Muslim establishment and the Christian minority in the south.

Are we wtinessing tolerance of genocide because this time it's Muslim on Muslim crime? And what of the fact that the victims are black? Neighboring countries refuse involvement on the grounds that "it would constitute interference in a member state's internal affairs."

I recall my old sociology professor's caution that cultural relativism is often nothing more than a subtle kind of racism, citing the practice of female genital mutilation. He asked us how we'd react if this were reported in some remote Canadian town or in Ireland. He was right, and many in the class came to realize in an instant that their tolerance was little more than a dismissal of (to borrow an academic term) "the other."

But I guess the U.N. is a bit preoccupied these days.