Seriously, this is not ironic. UNICEF is bottling Rihanna and other celebrities’ tap water and raffling it off.
This is all–to coincide with Water Week–to raise awareness about “… the lack of access to safe, clean water for nearly 900 million children and adults across the globe.”
Who dreams up these campaigns? We give up.
The producers at Al Jazeera English’s “People and Power” program investigates the appropriation of profits from rich natural resources, mainly oil, by Congo-Brazzaville’s political leadership. The family of life President Denis Sassou Nguesso (he’s in power for 25 of the last 30 years and just “won” another seven year term). In the oil rich country (nearly 1 million barrels of oil worth $48 million sold in February this year), the majority of the population to live in poverty.
My former PhD adviser, David Styan, pointed me to this mixing of popular protest and music in Senegal (not widely reported in English speaking media): Both old school crooner, Youssou N’Dour, and Senegalese rap pioneer, Didier Awadi, have just released songs (for free download and Senegalese radio) laying into the Senegalese government over electricity cuts. Countries in West Africa and the Sahel have faced floods in the past two months with the resultant water and electricity cuts that are leaving people frustrated.
Above are video mash-ups of Awadi’s “Da Foy Doi” and, below, Youssou’s “Leep le Lendem” (If the latter sounds familiar, it is the beat of the Beatles’ “Obla di, Obla da”?):
For the next two days South Africa’s Constitutional Court (the equivalent of the Supreme Court) will hear “… the final appeal in a case brought by five Soweto residents challenging Johannesburg’s discriminatory prepaid water meter system. Their six-year legal battle would reaffirm the constitutional right to water for all South Africans.”
The short film above, Amanzi Ngawethu (Water Is Ours), is by Christina Hotz of Friction Films.
Background at Links including a long essay by academic Patrick Bond.
[Via Blacklooks]
The media blog that is not about famine, Bono, or Barack Obama. Contributors are: Sean Jacobs (he started AIAC), Brett Davidson, Gregory Mann, Will Glass, Neelika Jayawardane, Kathryn Mathers, Marissa Moorman, Lily Saint, Melissa Levin, Dan Moshenberg; Caitlin L. Chandler; Dylan Valley; Abdourahman Waberi; Boima Tucker, Anni Lyngskaer, Sophia Azeb, Tom Devriendt, Loren Lynch, Basia Lewandowska Cummings, Elliot Ross, Orlando Reade and Megan Eardley; Hinda Talhaoui; ‘kola (Bukola Jejeloye); and Mikko Kapanen. Pre-August 2009 posts are archived here.
