Georgio gets what he gets, and I for one will offer an anti-prayer of deep gratitude to the Erinyes, for their balancing act of bacterial love.
***
Some recent background, wherein in a guy who's used to having cameras follow him around thinks aloud, with cameras rolling, that it's a wicked good idea to have constant surveillance, with corporate sponsorship, over untrustworthy Africans who cannot possibly govern themselves:
"George Clooney is joining Google, the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, and the United Nations in an effort called the Satellite Sentinel Project to monitor violence and human rights violations in Sudan as the country prepares to vote on January 9 on whether or not to split into two nations--North and South Sudan.
The explicit goal of the partnership is deterrence--Clooney and his partners want to make sure that Sudan does not erupt in another civil war. Some small pockets of violence have already been reported and the employment of satellites is meant to give war-mongers on the ground the message that the world is watching and genocide will not be tolerated.
Clooney's interest in Sudan is not new--back in 2007 he was featured in the documentary film, Darfur Now, co-produced by actor Don Cheadle. And he has maintained his interest in the embattled country since then, paying a recent visit amidst preparations for the upcoming referendum."
From 2006, Clooney pretending he understands Darfur:
"...The news is that two years after we've said "genocide" that it's still going on and it's increasing -- and that somewhere in there we can all talk about this and make speeches and say this is horrible and we have to do something. But every day we don't do something, and every day this goes on, thousands of people are dying and dying horrific deaths..."
And Corporate's standard line on Darfur:
"...In the ongoing genocide, African farmers and others in Darfur are being systematically displaced and murdered at the hands of the Janjaweed, a government-supported militia recruited from local Arab tribes. The genocide in Darfur has claimed 400,000 lives and displaced over 2,500,000 people. More than one hundred people continue to die each day; five thousand die every month..."
***
And all that has fuck all to do with the truth, or the facts on the ground* -
Over the past few months, China has made a series of initiatives aimed at retaining control of the oil fields, even those that will be developed in the distant future, in one of the richest "black gold" regions in the world—the African continent.
China currently imports 30% of its crude oil from Africa . This explains the jump in Chinese foreign policy initiatives, which cannot fail to displease Washington . China provides interest-free loans to African nations, including Sudan , and uses its own funds to build roads, schools and hospitals, while the United States attempts to control the African economy through the World Bank and the IMF by setting harsh economic and political conditions. Not surprisingly, the Africans prefer to cooperate with China . In addition, whereas any American project in the field of construction, mining or production involves a long preparatory stage for infrastructure development to build restaurants and bars, schools and hospitals, hair salons and fitness centers for American workers, specialists and their family members, the unpretentious Chinese put up tents when they arrive and set to work the next day while establishing everything they need concurrently—barracks with showers and canteens..."
The Chinese got an oil concession from the degraded Sudanese state, which state desperately needed the dough after it was drawn to a standstill in a ten year religious-civil war with UK-US backed rebels ruled by a vicious dictator.
Then, new rebels based in Tchad, using (surprise, surprise) US-EU backing, kicked up a fight right in the heart of the territory in which Khartoum had recently granted concessions to Beijing.
But...
Corporate cannot tell you it to you that way.You might get notions. You might force them to ignore you marching up and down the street, dragging placards to and from coffee shops and Times Square emporia.
And...
Presenting it to you in honest terms smacks of expensive oil interventionism. Which it is. But, since Khartoum made the "mistake" of hiring some horse-riding brigands to put down the rebellion, we get instead this:
"Terrible Muslim Arabs butcher and rape poor victimy tribal Blacks."
Which is, again and of course, factually deficient.
Some fairly basic data: nearly all of the participants are (a) black, (b) Muslim and (c) tribal. If you look at any given group photo of a Janjaweed rough rider, you're likely going to be looking at a (gasp!) very black man:
And their opponents in a Western financed civil war, as well as their victims, are black Muslims who speak the same koine, and have intermarried with them for generations.
In the Sudanese west, especially along the border with Tchad, "African" and "Arab" are economic/social tribal categories. They are not racial categories. Nearly every member of each tribe is black skinned and Muslim. "Arabs" are pastoralists with closer ties to Khartoum, and a tendency to use Arabic in exchange, while "Africans" are people tending more towards agriculture, especially around Lake Tchad.
In other words, it's not a simple story at all. Corporate doesn't want you to know that. With the information a search chain and an "enter" key away, it's no wonder that "net neutrality" pisses off the media bosses:
"...We will see that the story is not as simple as the conventional rendering in the news, which depicts a conflict between “Arabs” and “Africans.” The Zaghawa—one of the groups victimized by the violence and described in the mainstream press as “indigenous African”—are certainly indigenous, black and African: they share distant origins with the Berbers of Morocco and other ancient Saharan peoples. But the name of the “Bedeyat,” the Zaghawa’s close kin, should alert us to their true origins: pluralize in the more traditional Arab manner and we have “Bedeyiin” or Bedouins. Similarly, the Zaghawa’s adversaries in this war, the Darfurian Arabs, are “Arabs” in the ancient sense of “Bedouin,” meaning desert nomad, a sense that has only in the last few decades been used to describe the Arabs of the river Nile and the Fertile Crescent. Darfurian Arabs, too, are indigenous, black, and African. In fact there are no discernible racial or religious differences between the two: all have lived there for centuries; all are Muslims (Darfur’s non-Arabs are arguably more devout than the Arabs); and until very recently, conflict between these different groups was a matter of disputes over camel theft or grazing rights, not the systematic and ideological slaughter of one group by the other..."
But that just isn't sexy, is it? It's not easy to sell to the voters and other distracted parties in the UK and the US, where official policy encourages both distrust of Muslim Arabs and wafer thin justificatory guilt over bad things done to black people by the forebears of the white people still running things and making boatloads of cash today...
...and there's oil on the line here, people. Also, uranium. And gold.
Which is why Georgio was in the Sudan, pimping satellite surveillance and technocratic "democracy," counting on the camera man to cut to his manly jaw and his noble pose.
(Hat tip again to the Sudan's unsung mosquito population, doing the noble work Corporate's lap dog reporters continually fail to do. Better luck next time, tiny wing'd friends...)
* - quoting my own self, from elsewhere, in a piqued fit of vanity
Corporate would like you to conclude that the Sudan is a bad, bad place. That Corporate's government has humanitarian impulses towards Darfur and its luckless black bastards. That the noble and good people have justice in hand. They've got Right on their side, and they're in love with transparent democracy. Satellites for truth and voting, y'all. Don't bother yourself about it, unless you want to give money to Bono. Or watch Georgio make his square jaw squarer.
You should go back to worrying the outcome of the Superbowl. Or blogging the commercials.
Don't be assholes.
Don't fret the fundamentally suspect nature of Corporate's
seamless and enduring two hundred year project of co-integrationoverlap with government.You wouldn't like the Sudan if you went there, y'know.
The Sudan is probably not the sort of country that a good American would enjoy, unless he or she is fishing for a Pulitzer, a book deal or movie rights. It's hot, and Muslimy, and African. Terrorists live there. And pirates.
Also, the natives don't like Americans, what with Americans being dickhead Americans:
"...With foreign exchange reserves exceeding $1.3 trillion in the Peoples' National Bank of China , Beijing has begun engaging in active petroleum geopolitics with Africa as its main target and the Sudan-Chad region as its highest priority region on the continent. There appeared the line "a new front in the cold war" for possession of the main oil reserves—a war begun between the United States and China right after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. So far, Beijing has played its cards more effectively than Washington . It is possible that Darfur will soon become the main field of battle for oil between the two giants.