On July 6 2011, the world’s diplomatic elite flocked to one of the globe’s most underdeveloped regions to bask in the warm glow of the birth of a new nation. That South Sudan’s struggle for independence had claimed the lives of an estimated 2million people, and that the majority of its inaugural citizens had been […]
* Damien Ma, at The Atlantic, blogs about a story on a Chinese website on “the growing phenomenon of Chinese men marrying African women, as Chinese presence in Africa continues to expand.” The post and comments are replete with insights and stereotypes; most of it not Ma’s fault. Here’s the caption on the original for […]
I struggled to make sense of Jane Dutton’s underwhelming performance this morning on Al Jazeera English trying to discuss what’s happening in Sudan’s disputed, oil producing region, Abyei. She could not contain two party hacks (from the North and South respectively) as well as an expert in Beirut. In contrast, I found this fact sheet […]
Recent demonstrations in Sudan’s capital Khartoum over road conditions and traffic signals have led some observers in the West to speculate about the possibilities of a Egypt-style revolution there (see FT, BBC and Al Jazeera English, for example; Sudan-specific blogs, like Making Sense of Sudan, are silent on the protests). For our sake, I asked a […]
The media buzz (including blogging, tumbling and retweeting, as well as Facebooking) around Newsweek magazine’s ridiculous cover story of film actor George Clooney (title: “On the ground with a new kind of statesman”) highlight the titilating; i.e. Clooney’s sexual conquests of “way too many chicks”). Too bad, since the piece is really about how Clooney has the […]
Today’s New York Times Magazine carries a fawning profile of John Prendergast, the force behind the Enough Project (reference: Congo, Darfur and now southern Sudan). Prendergast is described by reporter Daniel Bergner as “America’s most influential activist in Africa’s most troubled regions.” A former Clinton White House official, Prendergast probably wrote the book on how to utilize […]
I recently ask students in a graduate class I teach on ‘media, culture and international affairs’ to do an experiment: take a camera, go outside (really downstairs on the New School ‘campus’) and test people’s knowledge of Darfur and Eastern Congo. Quick context: We had been reading and discussing Mahmood Mamdani’s Saviors and Survivors as […]
Sudanese voters go to the polls from Sunday, 11 April through 13 April. The election results seems a foregone conclusion. Omar Al-Bashir will probably win given his control of state media, opposition parties are boycotting the elections and one of the opponents with a decent chance of challenging Bashir, the Southern Sudanese Yasir Arman, can’t […]
