Friday, June 04, 2004

weep for yourselves, the world still cares too little:

'Thousands starving in Darfur'

A catastrophe is now unavoidable in Sudan's Darfur region, the United Nations and aid workers say.
Some 300,000 people will starve, even if emergency aid is delivered immediately, according to the head of the United States aid agency.

Some 10,000 people have died, and a million made homeless in a conflict between rebels and Arab militias.

bbc
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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

SUDAN BLOG

June 04, 2004

Best case scenario: 330,000 dead
.....

continued with a woeful account of the aid pledges @

http://www.passionofthepresent.com/

-----------------------------

Here's the thing, G_72, what is really bothering me lately...

WARNING, it's a rambling rant....
from the heart ramblings that I may refute, disavow later myself! Meant to provoke thought, thass all.

a French art dealer said to me a couple of weeks ago when I asked him something about the war in Iraq not affecting art prices: "what war in Iraq? more people die in Detroit every week!" Of course, the latter isn't true, and was meant for exaggeration purposes,

but but that really struck me!

And then I have been to parties and other gatherings where people talked about Bush and they talked about religion, and they talked about the world, but they didn't talk about Iraq like agonists or freepers do.

more and more I start to think the blogging world has really once again distorted, yes warped media coverage, warped our PERSPECTIVE of what is important, what is suffering, just like TV coverage does and did...

we all participate in a blog that originally got its "name" with the Iraq War, and therefore draws people interested in the Iraq War, and therefore we have all gotten expertise on and interest in the Iraq War...(now I actually got interested in Sean-Paul's pre-BB blog because he was into all around global issues! North Korea to the U.S. military to al Qaeda to Russia to Central Asia to India)

but have we let this all warp our perspective?

and more importantly, are we contributing to the warping of the perspective? by influencing the media frenzy?

In a way, is it not the same as the Palestinian crisis is to Arabs? It is ONLY because the U.S. "hegemony" power did it that it is so important to us...mostly because of its symbolism, mostly because the story has symbolic value, is about the Mideast, and is about oil?

Isn't it very self-centered in a way, to only care about the war we are involved in?

And we are therefore more and more in a vicious circle of not having perspective about it? And the whole world is participating because the media influences the whole world?

Meanwhile, 300K will die in Sudan and everyone shrugs? And at press conferences, Kofi Annan has to beg to please let him say something about something other than Iraq?

Now you know I know as much as most about what horrors are going on day-to-day in Iraq, but at the same time, do I have to be ashamed to say that a lot of times what I read about Baghdadis and what they have to deal with is very little different from what many in ghettoes in the U.S. had to deal with in the 1980's? And that sometimes they just seem to be whining continuously to reporters and blogs about electricity and the high crime level? That they were used to a well-oiled fascist machine that ran the trains on time and had no street crime because it simply was NOT allowed on pain of Abu Ghraib, and they are gonna be complaining about the security and electricity just as much no matter who is in charge unless it is another dictator? Because they expect someone to be "in charge" and won't "get" a participatory society where they have to do for themselves for at least a generation. That most of the danger now is to foreigners and those who work with them? And there is really such enormous suffering allover Africa that makes Iraq comparatively look like a society in a minor upheaval?

Am I bad, "Father Graham", for thinking these things, for trying to be practical, trying to get some perspective (adjusting tin foil in different direction), for making suffering comparisons?

The whole Iraq emphasis is really starting to bug me lately, especially the more and more I read of the Security Council's responses. They all seem to have motives just as suspicious as any Bushie.

Anonymous_Author_of_the_MDW_thread

12:10 PM, June 05, 2004
graham said...

Dear aaotmdwt,
we have chosen a course over the last year and a bit that has been our journey, not a journey for everyone, and some have travelled along like maddog as an irritant. We will not know probably in this life what effect this has had on the big picture but I believe very strongly that people have been influenced by what has been posted.

Our post initial focus on Iraq was a result of the Agonist feeding frenzy on SeanPauls, however all thru the past months other issues have been focused on by agonistas.

Truly the African problems are much much worse than Iraq. Sadly for the developed world the issues in the middle east have more impact due to oil and Israel. However suffering is suffering is suffering.
As I write this I am watching a druggie trying to maintain an upright position in the store - when do I ask him to leave?

so yes we weep for ourselves! for our failures (sometimes perceived failures not actual)
yet hopefully something of what we do has helped others.
witness Catherine Hamlin and many other unknowns who rely on the donations that trickle in...

little by little, but raise your head and heart high for you have contributed to the exposure of the widers ills of our world, and you have not pretended or hidden from them

please lose this "father graham" thingie though, I cannot forgive myself for who I am, so how can I forgive others...

1:05 PM, June 05, 2004
graham said...

Ron Rolheiser writes thus:
There is no simple truth, here or anywhere else. Truth is painfully complex (as are we) and truth is always bigger than our capacity to absorb and integrate it. To be open to truth is to be perpetually stretched and perpetually in tension, at least this side of eternity. And that's true in terms of the seeming opposition between these voices. At times they are in real opposition and we can't have it both ways, but have to choose one to the detriment of the other. Truth has real boundaries and there's a danger in letting it mean everything. But there's an equal danger in letting it mean too little, of reducing a full truth to a half-truth - and nowhere, at least in the spiritual life, is this danger greater than in our tendency to let either of these voices completely blot out the other.

1:27 PM, June 05, 2004
graham said...

Driving home from work I was reflecting on the prices paid at the auctions for the artwork for the museum in Qatar.

Puts my life in some kind of perspective....

3:40 PM, June 05, 2004
Anonymous said...

AAOTMDWT
Yes the the emphasis at home :) is the Iraq War and members emphasize the bad. They want talk radio(that group). They would rather argue abot a pistol. Who cares how many soldiers, Iraqis, Thais, Afghans, Liberian, Congolese, Nigerians, Sudanese...died today. It really disgusting how long that list could go.

How can we expect people to care about foreigners when they don't even pay attention to what is happening in their own backyards? As for the media it does boils down to who got what interview or exclusive. When did the news turn into comedy and reality TV into news?

4:19 PM, June 05, 2004

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