Google earth Darfur

[bluerose]

Hi Ya All Well i was reading the Montreal Gazette and they had a articale about Darfur and Google Earth Project? The article is from the U.K. so i am going to paste it here if anyone is interested? Just Google earth is COOL Also if your a BZZZ AGENT you can cash in your points for money for DAFUR. I did.
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Telegraph. co.uk
Google Earth maps 'genocide' in Darfur
By David Blair, Diplomatic Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:15am BST 13/04/2007

Satellite pictures of razed villages and squalid refugee camps scattered across Darfur can now be viewed by a global audience after Google Earth put the images online.

The satellite images document destroyed villages and refugee camps

Users of Google Earth, a satellite mapping service that attracts hundreds of millions of viewers, will see the war-torn region of western Sudan highlighted with yellow boundaries and labelled "Crisis in Darfur". Blue marks scattered across the pictures of Darfur's harsh, arid landscape indicate refugee camps, which are holding some two million people; red flames denote villages, which gunmen have destroyed.
Google Earth also carries graphic photographs and eyewitness testimony of atrocities committed during the civil war, which broke out in 2003 and has claimed about 300,000 lives through violence, starvation or disease.
"There was another rape of a young girl, aged 17," says a 35-year-old man whose account is carried on the site. "M was raped by six men in front of her house, in front of her mother. M's brother, S, was then tied up and thrown into a fire."
Links are provided for users to contact their governments and urge action over Darfur. "We believe technology can be a catalyst for education and action," said Elliot Schrage, Google's head of public affairs. "Crisis in Darfur will enable Google Earth users to visualise and learn about the destruction in Darfur as never before."
advertisementHuman rights workers commended the project, a joint venture by Google and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "It cuts through all the Sudanese government's attempts to hide what is happening in Darfur by stopping journalists from going there and expelling aid workers," said Ishbel Matheson of the Minority Rights Group who, as a BBC reporter, was among the first to cover the crisis.
"This is very important when it comes to rallying global support. If Darfur slips off the international agenda, if there is no public pressure, then nothing will happen."
But Google Earth has adopted a highly controversial view of the Darfur conflict. It unquestioningly labels the war a "genocide" even though a United Nations investigation ruled in 2005 that the term did not apply to the events in Darfur.
The atrocities detailed on Google Earth are overwhelmingly attributed to the Janjaweed, a brutal militia raised by Khartoum's Arab-dominated regime and unleashed upon Darfur's black African tribes.
Rebel armies have also committed atrocities in Darfur, but these are not detailed on the website. Sudan's regime may also ask why Google has chosen to highlight this war and not other crises. A spokesman said Google tried to highlight other crises "but we can't do it for every single one".