Opinion Editorials are posted and archived on JNonline.us. Greenberg's View eteved0givenbei -art.com Editorial Divest Ourselves A s we enter the spring holiday season, our attention inevitably turns again to Darfur, the west- ern region of Sudan where hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and millions displaced while the world has fee- bly stood by. After all, Passover marks our liberation from Egypt, which long con- sidered Sudan to be its territory, and Yom HaShoah commemorates our genocide, a crime now being committed against the Darfurians. A winter that offered such promise for Darfur has slipped into a spring of discon- tent for those who believe in the need for urgent action. A little more than three months ago, President Bush signed the Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act, which not only established the principle that the U.S. government will not do business with foreign companies that do business with Sudan's war machine and the industries that finance it, but also offered protec- tion to states, municipalities and others that opt to follow the example of targeted divestment. Thus, when the United Nations' Holocaust Remembrance Day came along at the end of January, along with the annual rallies for Darfur, activists were optimistic that state legislatures across the country would embrace divestment. It hasn't happened that way. Only Arizona has enacted a Sudan divestment law this year. Two bills have languished all year in the hands of Michigan Senate committees. Meanwhile, the eruption of the long- stagnant issue of the oppression of Tibet could prove to be a costly distraction for Darfurians. Three months ago, there were rum- blings of a possible boycott of the Summer Olympics in Beijing. China is Sudan's top supporter and oil customer, and the hope was that a serious threat to tarnish China's international showcase would compel Beijing to force Khartoum to change its evil ways. But now all of the boycott talk revolves around Tibet, and the focus on China's oppressive behavior there makes it even less likely that China will put pressure on any other country to respect human rights. We can't give up the fight for Darfur, and we hope and expect to see renewed efforts to pass divestment laws next year. In the meantime, each of us can play a part in PRESIDENTIAL, CANDIDATE CAMP DAVID ACCORDS zoo.% plifirarpm. BUILDING HOMES FOR THE POOR IRAN HOSTAGE CRISIS applying pressure to Sudan. Israel's ambassador to the United States, Sallai Meridor, pointed the way when he addressed the Jewish Council for Public Affairs plenum in late February. Meridor explained that he wanted to ensure he wasn't supporting Iran with his retirement money, so he contacted his investment fund manager to find out whether his holdings included any companies doing business in Iran. After a couple of phone calls and several e-mail messages, his investments were Iran-free. We each can do the same for Darfur. Write or call the managers of any mutual funds you own and the customer rela- tions departments of your banks and credit card companies, and tell them in no uncertain terms that they should not invest in companies doing business in Darfur. Tell them that you and others like you who oppose genocide will not do business with financial companies that lack the moral clarity to make Sudan a pariah. If you don't get the answers you want, take your business elsewhere. If enough of us take a stand, divestment will become a reality with or without our legislators. They struggle to absorb a block of information and then answer questions about it, from simply regurgitating facts to drawing inferences that may not actually be writ- ten down. "Reading between the lines:' it used to be called. I'm not saying this is a uni- versal phenomenon among today's students. Significantly, though, reading scores are among the few areas that have not gone up on the ACT in the last several years. Most of these students say they never read for pleasure. Losing yourself in a book is one of life's greatest joys. When I hear some dismissive numbskull say that we are now in a post- literate age I want to ask which planet he inhabits. Because avid readers also tend to think and write well. They learn how to connect their thoughts through a chain of logic, how to choose the words that will propel these thoughts along, how to make the language work for them. They have a tre- mendous advantage in so many areas of life, from law to the sciences. When I tutor students I can teach them strategies for taking the test, things they can do to help with comprehension and maximize their scores. But I can't teach them how to read, and that's the frustrat- ing part. That's something they should have learned long ago. They learn, instead, about something called Communication. I have no idea what that means but it seems to involve YouTube, Facebook and people blogging opinions entirely divorced from fact and written in a form of English, rich only in invective, that would shame a third grader. Don't blame the kids. They'll do what's easiest. Unfortunately, easy isn't what life is about. ❑ Reality Check Ripping Yarns 0 n the bookshelf in my father's house was a set of some 25 thick volumes, modestly billed as Collected Works of the World's Greatest Writers. There were, indeed, some members of the literary all-star team — Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolstoy — in that crowd. But there were also lesser lights. Among them was the 19th-century British novelist H. Rider Haggard. Haggard wrote what the Monte Python troupe used to call Ripping Yarns. They were amazing adventure stories set in Africa, most of them involving the exploits of the great white hunter Alan Quatermain. I was a bit intimidated by these books. But when I was about 12, I picked up the Haggard volume and started reading his classic, King Solomon's Mines. What a tale! When I finished, I immediately wanted to turn back to page one and start all over again. Money was tight when my dad bought these books several years before I was born. But he felt it was essential to have the World's Greatest Writers in his home for his children to read ... when- ever they happened to come along. Haggard and several of his Victorian contemporaries, such as A. Conan Doyle and Robert Louis Stevenson, were gateway authors. Their works were best- sellers in their times, but long afterward they remained staples of juve- nile literature. You read them and were led to books with deeper complications and more adult themes, which challenged you to develop a sense of curiosity about the world. I think of Haggard whenever I tutor students in the reading portion of the ACT. For the most part, these are bright kids who get solid grades in high school. But somewhere along the line, many of them never really learned how to read. ❑ George Cantor's e-mail address is gcantor614@aohcom. May 1 • 2008 A25