As you can see in the screen capture of a twit below, even Israelis are getting tired of the lopsided coverage of the ongoing, never ending, ridiculous Israel-Palestine conflict that we've had with us for over a half century now. As always, this latest bout has been a massive loss of life and a horrid continuation of a war that just won't stop that ends up killing countless civilians in its wake. But, these things happen everywhere in the world. Why is it that when say, the Rwanda Genocide was happening, we heard nearly nothing about it in the us?
I find it amazing that a local paper I read a great deal like the SF Chronicle goes along with local coverage of news and events. The occasional US national item will pop in there and then BAM, 200 killed in Gaza Strip offensive. Yet, there is no coverage about the peaceful elections taking place today in Ghana or in any events happening in the rest of Africa unless of course it's massive atrocity in the Congo.
It's just the epitome of the lazy journalist and one of the reason that print media is dying. No one goes out and finds the stories anymore. Sure, they find out about what's happening in Israel, but that's their "go-to" foreign location. Anywhere else is largely ignored because trying to get there, digging in, and writing a proper story is too taxing and these days, too expensive despite the irony that flights cost a lot less than they did 20 years ago.
Yeah, I'll admit that getting in to the Kivus of Eastern Congo isn't the easiest place to get to, but Accra? Please... These aren't cut off locations in the middle of nowhere. They're large cities with regular flights and for the most part a great many have solid infrastructure that even the biggest loser newsman should be able to get around on.
Of course, as I'm reading "Chief of Station Congo: Fighting the Cold War in a Hot Zone" by Larry Devlin right now, I'm realizing that the US didn't give a fat rip about Africa until about 1960 or so. This naturally gave the whole shebang in Israel a nice, decade plus to be in the news more before Africa was even realized to exist.
In what is a rather complete lack of surprise, Ethiopia has continued to not pull its troops out of Somalia. This of course is a continued issue which apparently those in control claim, "Look, we upgraded to the new OS from Palm and well, it just isn't cutting it. You see, the calendar was just like, whacked, so yeah, we missed that Friday deadline thing. Sorry about that. Hope you don't mind the troops that are like, everywhere." Obviously these are people that need to switch to a Blackberry or maybe just get an organizing system in the first place.
Naturally, it's understandable why Ethiopia would want to have a toe hold in Somalia since they are receiving great swaths of refugees across their border with the country. Still, don't other countries get it that only the US and Britain are able to dump their forces inside a foreign state indefinitely? Let's see if they make the December deadline, although I'm sure that Christmas dinners and Boxing Day will be the blame for missing that one.
Well, it appears that all the Congo travelin' Mr. Affleck has been doing has resulted in the video I've embedded below. I agree with what Wronging Rights wrote. It's like Affleck was scanning the blogosphere just a bit after his whole Nightline thing and saw that people were really annoyed by him popping his mug in to the camera frame so often. In this video, he instead pimps the UNHCR of all things. I'll get to that a bit later though.
As with his previous attempts, I have to say that Affleck is working to be one of the least annoying celebrities prancing around Congo these days. That being said, he is still a celebrity and still an American. I'm guessing that Ben doesn't speak French. If he does and I'm wrong, je lui rends hommage. But, I would put money down that he doesn't. Why you might ask? Because instead of having a single word spoken by the subjects being filmed (despite this shot, Affleck was not the DP) he runs the Stones' "Gimme Shelter" as a soundtrack. Now, that's a great song and it would seem to be more than fitting given that the UNHCR does indeed give shelter (as well as food, water, basic medical care, and varied degrees of security), but again, it strays in to the gaping void that is Western objectification of a downtrodden people.
America is a damned fine country in that when we set our minds on doing something, we make it happen. I mean, we defeated Nazis, split the atom, went to the moon, outlasted most of Communism, and elected a (sorta) black president. That's a pretty impressive record despite all the backfires (Great Depression, Nixon, the 80's). But the reason this worked was because it was "us" doing it. We made it personal. The reason that the problems persist in Congo and we're still fighting a war in Iraq is because this strife is remote and/or with people we really don't care about. Affleck's video unfortunately falls prey to this and while it gives a boost to the UNHCR, it does absolutely nothing for the Congolese in the long term. Why were there no interviews? No personal stories? No perspectives of the actual people? You see how people are looking disdainfully at the cameras in so many of the shots? That's because they're freakin' tired of being zoo animals for the Western media to take pity shots off. I'd be tired of that crap too and I wouldn't give a damn if Oscar Winner (for screenwriting let's remember), Ben Affleck was making a five minute pity video about my life, which isn't really going to net me anything but (hopefully) another cup of rice.
I was wondering when Affleck would get on board and start directing his efforts at a specific agency. With this latest move, he has, but why oh freakin' why the UNHCR? I mean, I recognize that the UNHCR does a massive job that is so incredibly difficult most folks can't even comprehend it. Building an emergency city for a fleet of thousands of refugees is absolutely not like building Burning Man. The people coming a refugee camp have nothing and are often sick as opposed to Burners who come in their own cars funded by daddy's Amex.
The UNHCR has also done an atrocious job at times. In the Yugoslavian Wars, they helped the Serbs (unknowingly) in ethnically cleansing the Bosniaks out of Bosnia. While the collective, "Oh, seriously, our bad on that one" doesn't hold water, you'd think that would have learned and just a scant few three years later, they wouldn't set up a refugee camp that ended up (unknowingly) becoming the base of the Hutu genociders, from which they were able to emerge a regrouped and more powerful force. The "unknowingly" aspect to what the UNHCR does is pretty typical. They just plunk down in an area and don't really spend the resources needed to know what is really happening on the group. They claim that this is because they have to remain neutral and provide aid to all who need it, but in reality it makes them often guilty of helping the wrong side. These things happen I suppose.
The issue in the Afflecks and Jolies doing all this "work" for the UNHCR is that for better or worse, it's an agency that's going to stay with us forever. No matter how much positive or negative light is shined its way, nothing will really change it. They only move in to an area when the shit builds up so much you don't even know that there was fan under that pile to start with. And when they do move in, there will always be the money from foreign governments to take care of these issues. You see, it's the least they could do, since they don't work to actually stop the refugee problems before they start. In not even a perfect and more poignant world, the UNHCR would be completely unneeded.
So, the real problem in all of this is that Affleck's energy is still massively misdirected. I feel bad, since I can see he's really and truly making an effort to help and as opposed to what Jolie does, there is no glitterati element to this. He's out on the ground trying something, although because obviously no one close enough to him is educated enough in the issues, his shots aren't long enough on the subjects to reveal what a delightful people the Congolese are and how these constant stories of suffering only work to boost short term aid projects and not long term development work.
Being that I am neither metrosexual nor gay, I read Men's Journal about as often as I get my nails done; ie never. But, apparently in an attempt to get "edgy", in this month's issue, there between Ask Dr. Bob and an article on T. Boone Pickens on Page 60 is an Emile Hirsch's account of traveling to Congo on the protected wings of Oxfam.
Obviously, this is another case of "Celebrity Goes To Africa to Raise Awareness and/or Save African Babies". I don't like these cases. They're a flash in the pan and then they're gone. People forget about what whomever it was, was talking about when they did that thing that was... you know, somewhere over there.
But to just blindly say that Hirsch is an ass would be arrogant and childish. In his account, he is very honest about what he saw, what he knew going in, and what he got coming out. He was only there for five days, but he saw a lot. Of course, given such a short amount of time and such vast ground that he was covering around the Kivus, one could say that it was all pointless. But, what good does that do? Sure, it doesn't really help anyone and I don't really support celebrities doing this, but on some level he is trying do something, although like Ben Afflecks out there, the energy is largely misdirected. For better or worse, I can say that I've read the whole article and here are a few of the things that stuck out.
And I'm reading these pages and thinking about the $600 in 20s and 50s I was told to carry for "security reasons"...
Someone really told him wrong on this front. First of all, it's a cash economy and one that runs on external cash (dollars or euros) at that. Your day to day needs are going to have to be met solely with the cash that you bring in. $600 would probably be more than enough to cover his five days there given that his stay was taken care of by Oxfam. But the "security reasons" part was laughable. First, there was no way anything was going to happen to Hirsch and secondly, if it did, $600 was going to do little to make things better.
As we wait on the runway, Lyndsay points to a demolished plane nearby. Two months ago it crashed as it tried to take off, catching fire and killing 21 people. Gulp.
Why "gulp"? That was a pathetic sub-contractor airline of the slightly less, yet still completely, abysmal Hewa Bora airline. Again, there was no way Oxfam was going to toss Hirsch on anything close to resembling a Hewa Bora flight. Also, that flight crashed in the market nearby (which was the reason for all the ground casualties.) Maybe that was another plane they were referring to as it would seem it wouldn't be where the girl thought it was?
I can't believe it, but he's wearing a Marilyn Manson T-shirt.
Apparently no one filled him on on the whole t-shirt thing in Africa. Might have been a nice thing for him to know as he could have brought extra clothes to give someone to sell at the local market.
For a boy such as Prince, the support from NGO's represent a chance to take his destiny into his own hands. And for a rape victim such as Kimanizani, donations to Oxfam go toward her medical costs and food and give her a chance to rejoin the world.
I was sorta okay with Hirsch's whole account up to this point. This chunk makes me cringe as it feels like it was written by the marketing people at Oxfam. It cheapens the whole account by him as it makes it suddenly one big sales pitch for throwing more money in to the NGO's that in all truth really aren't making much progress. They're just bandaid solutions to the much bigger issue that the government of Congo and all those in MONUC actually need to actively work for change, which they aren't. Throwing money at Oxfam is not the answer, although I'm sure that readers of this article will see it that way.
The real solution is to educate yourself and not listen to some actor who is being used as a pawn. If you actually know what is going on in Africa (and know much more than Hirsch, whose soundbite history lesson left out France's involvement in the start of the Rwandan Genocide as well as other crucial facts) you are going to understand a lot better what needs to be done. Informed people can actually do something. Otherwise you're just a very obedient sheep foolishly giving your wool to an all too eager recipient who just waits for your next wool to grow in.
Google has released its 2008 Zeitgeist list. This is a list that compiles all the movers and shakers as far as terms go in their search index. In that link you can look through all the results which are, wait for it... amazingly American-centric. I know, I was shocked that 'obama' topped so many of the lists. That's a real stunner.
Of course, the more obvious truth in all of this is that when you get down to it, no one gives a damned about Africa. Despite all everything Mugabe does, the new/old conflict in the DRC, nice solid elections in Ghana, and whatever else, nothing about Africa managed to make the top 10 in the list for any country except South Africa, which is kinda a given. Of course even in the ZA, most of the terms are directed towards American events, places, people, and things. And for other countries, you can take a peek here.
All of this goes to show that yes, it's true that most people in the world don't really care what happens there or more to the point that they care more about information on Sarah Palin. But something that really skews the stats is the fact that Africa has such little internet penetration to the continent in general. South Africa is good, which is why they get a spot on Google's list (as well as the fact that Google probably figures they need to have at least one African country in there).
There is obviously room for improvement, but at the same time, people might want to look at how information is being spread about Africa. It is true that most people don't care what happens in the "dark continent", but at the same time Western media is doing little to help them care more. Stories about violence and tragedy only alienate the people in Africa more. We need more good stories and more real stories about everyday life.
For 2009, I'm sure there will be more of this to some degree though, at least out of Europe as the World Cup is going to be hosted in South Africa, which is the first time the Cup will be played on Africa in all its history. Hajdemo Hrvatska! Just had to get that out of the way right now ;)
