In an audiotape broadcast last week, Osama bin Laden urged Muslims to rise up in protest of any U.N. or NATO intervention.

My e-mail in-box immediately was filled with outraged messages from Darfurians who had kept in touch and lived in cities around Sudan.

“I believe — as many of my fellow Darfurians do — bin Laden is very mistaken by calling for Jihad in Darfur,” Ahmad Shugar, a Darfur leader, wrote in an e-mail. “. . . We are all Muslims here. It is really humiliating when a fellow Muslim looks down on you and calls for jihad against you.”

The first genocide of the 21st century continues. Like the Holocaust by the Nazis, too much of the world remains disengaged, apathetic, and some openly bigoted.

For all the hoopla heard about ‘the greatest generation’, America’s majority was not so great in the 1930s. Many shared the feeling that the Jews brought misery upon themselves. Many feel that way about Muslims today.

The real battle here, as it was back then, is within yourself. Will you wait to see every visible sign of atrocities before feeling the shame the majority of the world will share?

Or can you speak up now for the sake of all humanity, especially the humanity of your self?

Will you be a part of a greater generation? Will you, even alone, choose to be great?

Or will you succumb to the bigots who say they brought it on to themselves? Or the naysayers who say we can accomplish nothing?

I suppose it depends on one thing only: how you intend to sleep tonight.

Echidne worries that democracy is ending, as low approval ratings don’t translate into citizen action to change.

I’ve been asking around offline, why folks don’t seem to track all that’s going on behind the curtain, and whether they care. The most common response boils down to a lack of time. They’re so busy working and trying to make headway, trying to reach that place where they don’t have to worry how to get by, or grant their kids something better than they had, or a retirement where they can actually relax.

They know things are wrong. They may not know how badly corrupted that their government’s become. But it’s not complacency. It’s near exhaustion.

Of course, when things get so awry that they can feel it directly - like the wallet squeezin’ of the gas crunch - they do get more disgruntled. That does motivate them to display their disgust.

Thus, as an activist, I face this constant dillemma. If it’s wallet issues that provide the greatest motivation for people to question their government and move them to register that disapproval in meaningful ways, then why bother trying to change things or to try and persuade them to act? Isn’t it easier just to let things slide, letting things go downhill till the majority gets fed up and does something?

Of course, I’ve reached my own answer to that dillemma. But I could be wrong.

So why do YOU think there’s a useful purpose in agitating for positive change and human progress? Or do you? Are we accomplishing anything?

And before you answer, consider how heartfelt the feelings and how many were motivated into action by Howard Dean in 2004. What got accomplished? Did anything really change? Is it just normal human nature for most to respond only when their ox is being gored ‘bushed’?

Glenn Greenwald provides the detail of the presidential power grab, the most of any administration since Lincoln (who acted when the union itself was dissolving, and had to take emergency measures to slow that).

What I’m least sure of is whether it’s a concerted strategy with a master plan behind it. Or is Bush’s claim to omnipotence merely the snobby dismissal of convention because, as a privileged kid, he always did what he wanted and left it to Daddy to bail him out from every law violation? I can’t tell.

Is he capable of having a philosophy, of framing complicated arguments toward that? Or has he always acted without recognizing he, like everyone else, must be bound by rules? Is his philosophy merely “I wanna” ?

If that’s the case, it’s a lesson for all parents to heed. If you always kowtow to your impertinent brat, you are a rotten, stinky, lousy, sloppy, ugly parent. If that’s true, Bush has put Barbara and George the First in their proper light: they’ve created a son who emulates sociopathic behaviors. They are miserable failures, deserving our scorn and repudiation.

Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are near. George has given his parents the appropriate gift: portraits of them as complete losers as human beings.

I hope they appreciate the gift. It appears like they’ve earned it.