BLOG

Years ago, I worked for this behemoth, slightly high-end clothing store in the stock department. Stock, unlike sales a pretty motley group with all different ethnicities and incomes. I found that I got along with most people and it was one of the rare times in my life where I've managed to have more than just white friends. One friend was this girl named Shanda and as most people would guess, yes she was black. We would joke around a lot, but one day, I was sleepy, wasn't watching what I was doing and stepped on her shoe. Immediately I got, "Damn, Hudin, you just went and stepped on my kicks." "Oh, sorry. I wasn't watching what I was doing." "Yeah, well you better be careful or the next time I'm gonna get black on your ass." I still run with the assumption that she was joking, but to this day, I think that she could have easily have been serious and I wasn't really about to find out what, "getting black on my ass" meant. It didn't sound like a plate of jelly beans.       It appears that advertisers have picked up on the fact that most whites take the voice of the black woman to be the most authoritative and powerful. Especially since the Corn Refiners Association has pulled out the following ad to try and tell us that high fructose corn syrup isn't bad for us:              While it initially seems to make the black woman in the commercial is smarter than the white woman and in theory this is paying a compliment, it is actually quite insulting. They use the black woman to play off the fear of, "Oh no, she's black and I'm white. If I argue with what she's saying, I'll be racist." Thus, it allows the argument of high fructose corn syrup being not bad for you to stand. Let's make sure that we understand that they only say it's not bad for you. They never say that it's good for you and it must be had, "in moderation". "Moderation" is a term advertisers use when they want to say, "Yeah, this will probably be what kills you, but we've lobbied to be able to sell it, so use it just a little." Like many people, I've mentioned that high fructose corn syrup isn't good for you and apparently the message is catching on or the Corn Mafia wouldn't be on the defensive, which in reality is a pretty pathetic defense.       They also happen to have another ad, which plays on the issue of sexism instead of racism to try and back up their claims.              The couple seems all nice and pleasant, but the husband is terrified to contradict his wife because he has no facts and while she really has no facts either (no, the premise that corn syrup is from corn is not a fact, it's common sense) he defaults to her argument instead. This is much akin to two people finding a container of a toxic chemical and not knowing what's really in it and hurt each others' feelings trying to figure it out, they decide that they might as well just drink it. I'm rather terrified that we live in an age where the media is able to dictate and override primal instincts that got us to where we are today.

The always insightful #1 Fan wrote about a talk given by Ory Okolloh awhile back at TED Africa. The talk was interesting. Most of it was nothing new, but she did bring up the very important issue of perception. She was pointing out that because we in the West have a view of Africa as being the horrid, asshole of the world (that's from Apocalypse Now, not her) type of place that it ultimately fulfills this idea. Watch the video and you'll see her explain it better than I can summarize because she shows that it is very easy to view the West in just as bad a light as it is Africa.       Curious to expand on this, I took a look at BBC News yesterday as Monday is typically a big news days. I did a screen capture of BBC News - Americas and BBC News - Africa. Now, I happen to like BBC News a great deal as they and Reuters are some of the few large news outlets that really cover Africa with any depth. With that in mind, take a look at the headlines. I did a rough calculation. On the Americas page, about 81% of the articles were good news as compared to 19% bad news. For Africa, it was 80% bad news to 20% good. See a slight issue there?       This portrayal of Africa is unfair. Yes, a lot of bad things happen there like Malaria and the LRA, but there are good things happening there as well, except that you just don't hear about them as there is seemingly no outlet. It really is easier to report about the bad things and when you report about the bad, it's easier to sell things, which in this case is the constant need for aid to poor, poor Africa. I'm not saying that African countries don't need aid, but they don't need it as it currently is packaged as this system has shown to do very little in the decades since Colonial Rule was ousted in the continent.       Big Media really has little vested interest in showing a different side to Africa. Aid groups also have little interest because despite their altruism, if things don't look bad, the donations don't come in and admittedly some aid groups are far, far worse with this than others. This is one of the reasons why we've been working to create Maneno. Yeah, I know it's a shameless plug, but we're officially in Beta now and the site has come together in great leaps and bounds. This is an attempt to hear voices from those living on the African continent and try to showcase stories of good things which we can then publish in Afractal. Having actually been to Africa and seen that it isn't all disease, war, poverty, and rape, I hope that this project and others like it will work to change the perceptions as there is great power in how one is perceived, which again, Ory illustrated so well in her talk.       This article has been cross-posted on Subsaharska

I met up with David Cohn the other night to chat about projects. Mine being The Maneno Project, Watotees, and Afractal and his being spot.us. To recount a two hour conversation in a blog article is pretty stupid, but to summarize, I think what he's doing is pretty damned cool in that it could easily be the next step beyond blogging to truly democratize journalism.       Spot.us works on the principle that people work to chip in to a campaign that either someone in the community has pitched or a journalist has pitched to the spot.us community. The cost is put in to the pitch and once the amount has been reached, a journalist will pull together and research the article. It's a very novel concept that I had originally seen him pitch at the Social Media Barcamp a few weeks back.       He's coming along quite well in the project it seems and while I originally thought he was a web coding geek like me, he's actually a journalist by trade. While it may seem like this could hinder the development of the technology behind the site, he's smart enough to hire some people to do all the heavy binary lifting. He is spending his time spreading the word about the site and is also trying to do a couple of proof of concept projects based on how spot.us will eventually work. It's very interesting to watch and if you'd like to learn more about it, head on over to the campaign page.       You can also read the wiki where he is constantly updating the information. Even if you don't feel like putting in to this particular campaign (and if you live in San Francisco, I shame you!) keep checking it out and see what where this whole spot.us thing goes. I'm sure it will be an interesting ride as David is determined like crazy to make it work the best that it can.

From time to time, we all probably need to sit back and wonder whether the country we choose to inhabit is on the right path. Many of ours are not. A few are. Here's a simple checklist to see if you're country is ready to be considered the next best thing since pickled garlic:       

• The UN has not established an acronym for a mission in your country
• Your currency is pegged to (or is) the Euro
• Your currency is not pegged to (or isn't) the US Dollar
• There are commercial air flights to your capital
• Your national airline is not bankrupt and/or on the EU no-fly list
• The president of your country was elected democratically, yet does not have his own weekly television and/or radio show
• Your national cuisine is not claimed by another country
• Western Media only reports about train delays, food, and tourism in your country
• Sascha Baron Cohen's stereotypes of your country's citizens can actually be seen in your country
• You have time to bitch about how bad your national cuisine is and write stupid lists

It would appear that the State Department lost sight of where Andorra was:              I think my favorite part of the whole thing was the map of Africa that they used. It is so, so true.

It's not a lie that DR Congo is a fashionable tragedy story as of late. Celebrities and others have latched on to it as a way to get their name out as doing good in the world by bringing light to the issues there. Well, add to that list one Ben Affleck whose reportage appeared on ABC last month.       In all fairness, Ben's work is pretty good when taken from the perspective that an American was responsible for it. If you want to judge for yourself before reading more, you can watch Part 1 and Part 2.       Finished watching? Okay, good because I wanted to say that there is something of an honesty to this piece that he spearheaded. You get the feeling that he is a person with the means to do pretty much whatever he wants and he was curious about DR Congo, so he went there to actually try to understand, which is something most people don't do. He covers the country (mostly the east) from the viewpoint of what he sees. He even tries to put a positive message at the end by saying that there is hope, which of course there is, because there is always hope.       That being said, this report says nothing new. Much like the flood of redundant coverage of Panzi Hospital, Affleck is treading on a path worn deeply by those who have come before him. Maybe this reaches out to Americans somehow as Ben is a big name and he might appeal to the everyday person more than someone from academic or NGO circles. But the one really big point in all of this and why it is so unabashedly American is that the subjects of the video are not allowed to speak in their own voices. Ben becomes a mouthpiece for them, guiding we the viewers. Much like Lisa F. Jackson, no matter what good intentions he may have had when starting the project it comes across as Ben Affleck wanting to show what Ben Affleck can do and what place Ben Affleck went to. At one point, he even seems to me to come across as falling prey to the, "I'm here to save African babies!" syndrome that many who visit the region do.       I do respect what Ben is trying to do, but it's a shame that some of these things happened. I don't know if he watched work like Lumo or Darwin's Nightmare before going, but there is a lot to be learned from films like these. They allow the narration and story to happen from the subjects of the film and thus, it's much more engrossing and powerful work.       There are other little bits that I didn't like in how this story was presented, but they are quite subjective, so I won't get in to them unless people feel like commenting. I just really wish that people could get Bernard Kalume's job title correct though. Bernard is the fellow helping Ben with translations out in the bush. He is not a "contractor with the UN". He is a fulltime employee with the UN who friends of mine know well and I would have met had he still been in Bukavu and not up in Goma. I'm told that he's a great and extremely capable guy who speaks English, French, Swahili, and Kinyar Rwanda. In short, he's very smart and does his job well. Yet, he never gets credited as being a fulltime employee. The only reason that this must be the case is because it would paint the UN in a light that was less than negative and we just couldn't have that now, could we?

It's probably something of a non-event for seasoned journalists and probably even a bit of a pain in the ass to get their press passes, but I would warrant that a great many of them still have the first press pass that they got.       As you can see below, I managed to get a pass from MONUC, which as explained previously was quite useful. It's very cool that it actually comes on a card that will stand up to the test of time. Ultimately though, it's not the most elite of things since you can find guys selling blank case cards on the street which allow you to make any kind of ID that you'd like. It's also the case that often guards don't even look at them. They see that you're a mundele and they see the blue cord around the neck, so it must be okay for you to go in to HQ.       But that's about it. Now I've got a press pass for the DR Congo mission that's good until October. Note that this is only good there. I can't bop off to New York and get in there. That requires a whole new press pass. I suppose this is part of what they mean by, "Restricted Access".

Below is a quotation that I saw in a large article on BBC News about how the US military government seems to believe they are going to control the media here. It's obvious that we're dealing with a group that appears to be as quagmired in the past as traditional print media. Anyways, good quote:              "To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion.

      On the off-chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy's intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations.

      But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could."              Spoken in 1968 by Walter Cronkite upon his return from seeing the Tet Offensive first hand in Vietnam. Sad and scary to see how history repeats itself nearly 40 years later.

Crap, I guess you knew it was going to catch up with the guy sooner or later, but it appears the Crocodile Hunter is dead.       Oddly enough, it wasn't a croc that got him, but a stingray stinger? Weird. Very weird.       Of course, from my favoritest site in the whole world, What Would Tyler Durden Do?: "...he gets it from a damn stingray? They're supposed to sting and ray things, not impale people who entertain me. They're damn fish, not Jason. You're not funny Irony. This is why everybody hates you."