Google sents you to any place .. ( Archived) (7)

Google Earth Highlights Darfur Atrocities
Google Earth has added extra information to satellite images of the Darfur region to publicize atrocities there. The project is intended to highlight the destruction caused by the conflict -- even if a search for 'Darfur' causes the software to zoom in on Minnesota rather than Sudan.

The Internet search company Google is venturing into political territory. Together with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the popular online mapping service Google Earth inaugurated Tuesday a project to call attention to atrocities in the Darfur region of Sudan.

Google Earth users can now travel virtually to Darfur and get a bird's eye view of areas of Sudan affected by the ongoing violence. High-resolution satellite images of Darfur document displaced people, refugee camps and razed villages.

Users can zoom in to get a close-up of more than 1,600 destroyed or damaged villages, and images of remnants of more than 100,000 destroyed houses, schools, mosques and other structures are visible. Icons on the maps represent destroyed villages with flames and refugee camps with tents. Clicking on an icon opens a window showing statistics on the extent of destruction.

Google's incursion into political territory may well prove controversial. The company was recently criticized for replacing post-Hurricane Katrina imagery of New Orleans on its map portal with views of the city as it had existed before the storm.

Meanwhile the Google Darfur project seems to be not entirely free of bugs. A search for "Darfur" in Google Earth conducted Thursday caused the software to zoom in on the small American town of Darfur, Minnesota, instead of the Sudanese region.

Google's incursion into political territory may well prove controversial. The company was recently criticized for replacing post-Hurricane Katrina imagery of New Orleans on its map portal with views of the city as it had existed before the storm.


what are your thoughts on that subject ?

ok.........pause........ ..........who cares!

thats ok dont worry !!! ... pause ... have a beer

Lovely, just what the world needs! More images to numb people's minds or provide a cheap shock thrill.
I doubt that this 24/7 inundation will really help the poor peoples of that blighted region, in fact it may result in either a "who cares" attitude or a cheap thrill for those wanting to "see lots of death and destruction" I am not optimistic about any "good" that may emerge for so much coverage; it may me too much.
There has been an on-going war/conflict there since I served with the French in Tchad in the early 70's; it has not changed. Back then it was the Arabic north trying to wipe out the black south to put very simply, in fact several of my old comrades joined them ; only a few came back, including my old C.O from Biafra, who recently turned up alive in Berlin. He had been reported as being executed in Khartoum back in the 70's. He had been put into a prison there and disappeared from the world.
Thousands of land mines had been placed throughout the border area with Tchad and into the southern Juba area. In the mid 70's, then again in the 80's the UN was offered by some of us to show their inspectors maps and locations of the mined areas, we were told, that the UN doesn't deal with "les mercenaire salos" ...so much for the UN wanting to really help them. It got nastier and they even turned people over that were seeking protection, to the Khartoum authorities. It was not to be my last experience with these so called "humanitarians" of the UN or their soldiers while serving in another country there. They are as vile and corrupt and murderous as the any of the lunatic dictators anywhere.

I did not know that about New Orleans. Did they do the same thing with all the regions affected by tsaunami a couple of years ago? What irritates me about Google Earth is that for rural areas in USA and Canada, it will not let you get too close. I can't figure out why this is and it may just be the areas I was trying.