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Louis Vuitton Sues Artist Over "Simple Living" Darfur Charity Image

Artist Nadia Plesner created this image to satirize the lack of media attention a genocide like Darfur gathers compared with the relative overexposure of say, skinny white women with little dogs and designer bags.

Louis Vuitton (who one writer claims, had ties to the Nazi Party) has responded with a lawsuit demanding that Plesner stop producing the image (which appears on shirts and as a poster print) and an additional $20K per day in damages for copyright infringement.

Now I know very little about copyright law so I have no idea where satire ends and infringement begins so I can't comment with any authority there. I do however think it's in poor taste (to say the least) that LV would even bother with a lawsuit. For all the money they are spending in legal fees, they could have just as easily made large splashy donation to Save Darfur! instead and reaped the benefits of good press.

West Bridgewater - West Bridgewater Middle-Senior High School students will hold a Save Darfur Night Friday, May 9, from 6 p.m. to approximately 10 p.m. in the school’s cafeteria.

Activities and discussions in a Contemporary American Issues class sparked Susan Cosgrove and Hannah Kincaid to organize an attempt to spread awareness to other students who want to help their cause.

Events include group discussions and a film revealing the atrocities occurring in the Sudan.

Also, guest speaker Franco Major, a former Sudanese citizen, left the country just as the genocide began.

The ultimate goal of the night is to write letters to the Massachusetts state legislature, urging them to call attention to this issue.

U.S. Policy On Sudan
01 May 2008

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Sudan is one of the highest priorities of United States foreign policy. The U.S. is committed to ending the violence in Darfur through an inclusive political settlement, providing humanitarian assistance to vulnerable populations, enabling the rapid deployment of the United Nations – African Union hybrid mission in Darfur and promoting democracy in Sudan.

The U.S. is pushing for full implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which was signed in January 2005 and ended twenty-one years of civil war between the North and the South. The U.S. also supports the implementation of the Darfur Peace Agreement, signed between the government of Sudan and the Sudan Liberation Movement led by Mini Minawi in May 2006. Together these agreements provide a framework for development of a peaceful, unified, and democratic Sudan. Democratic elections, to be held at the national, regional, and state levels in 2009, are a key component of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that the U.S. strongly supports.

In response to the violence in Darfur, the U.S. has imposed economic sanctions on a total of seven individuals and more than one-hundred-sixty companies owned or controlled by the government of Sudan or linked to militia. These efforts are part of a larger, comprehensive U.S. sanctions regime in place against the government of Sudan.

Despite the sanctions, the U.S. remains the largest single donor to Sudan, including Darfur, where more than two million-five-hundred-thousand people live in camps for internally displaced persons. The U.S. has provided over four billion dollars in humanitarian, peacekeeping and development assistance to the people of Sudan and Eastern Chad since 2005. In fiscal year 2007, the U.S. gave more than one billion dollars in assistance to the people of Sudan. President George Bush has requested a similar level of funding for fiscal year 2008. Additionally, the United States has provided more than eighty percent of the World Food Program’s food aid in Sudan to date. "The brutal treatment of innocent civilians in Darfur is unacceptable," said President Bush. "This status quo," he said, "must not continue."

Stop the suffering in Darfur, Farrow urges China