Yesterday saw both Governor Schwarzenegger and the U.S. House passing laws as a way by which to hold the government in Khartoum responsible for the continuing violence and such in Darfur. Arnold's bill (really, Assemblyman Paul Koretz's bill, but he's not famous, now is he) AB2941 takes some concrete steps -- preventing both the state's public employees' retirement program and the teachers' retirement program from investing in any companies that conduct business in Sudan.

H.R. 3127, on the other hand, is a little less hard edged. The bill frees the President to block the assets of "any individual who the President determines is complicit in, or responsible for, acts of genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity in Darfur" and restrict visas to the same, push for an expansion in the African Union mission and encourage NATO to do the same, and deny Khartoum oil revenue by blocking oil tankers doing business with Sudan to enter U.S. ports.

I wish that I didn't have as many cynical bones in my body as I do, but I'll leave it to others to convince me that 3127 has some teeth and isn't a just a way for this Congress to mark a check box next to "Darfur" and move on to the next.

The Sudan Divestment Task Force has done the hard work of compiling a report on what other U.S. entities have pledged to stop doing business in and around Sudan. They're pushing an interesting model for divestment -- just targeting the companies that are doing the most business with the government of Sudan and whose withdrawal will least adversely affect the people of Sudan.

If "divestment" sounds familiar, it was of course one of the world community's responses to South African apartheid. Did it do any good there? Did it bring a quicker end to apartheid than other wise would have come? I don't know.