So for those who are really, really not reading the news, super duper, incredibly wanted, biggest butcher from Bosnia, Radovan Karadžić has been captured and is being prepared to stand trial in The Hague once his extradition hearings have concluded in Belgrade. Of course, there are a number of bizarre twists to all of this. For one, he was living in Belgrade, in the center, and working with an assumed alias. You can read all about this story everywhere as well as see the massive beard that Radovan was sporting to hide his true identity. What's even a good deal more amusing is the website: Dragan Dabić. This was the alias that Radovan was using in Belgrade and some smartass went and set up a website to appear as the good fake doctor's personal site. For everyone who thinks that this was Radovan's real site, let me emphasize that it most definitely was not. When you do a WHOIS lookup on the shebang, you see that it was registered July 22, 2008, which was one day after Radovan was taken in to custody. For those not good with math, this means it was registered yesterday. It's as fake a site as was Radovan's psychiatric care he was providing some people in Belgrade.       On another note, I have a request to make of all future war criminals that are most likely going to eventually stand trial before the ICTY which is: stating, "I am not guilty and I don't recognize the legitimacy of this court" is not original. It's so incredibly Milošević and most likely not even his to start with. I mean, yeah, we get it, you think you're not guilty and that this UN court is a sham. It doesn't matter because they're going to try you for genocide nonetheless and put you in their illegitimate jail. In the future, please just say, "Yeah, what Slobo said." or "Default Sentence #1. Default Sentence #2." when arrested and extradited. It would save me two redundant sentences in the news that I read and I need all the time that I can get as I'm a very busy man what with drinking tea, reading the news, sleeping, and waking up and all.       And for those interested, you can read a Croatian blog roundup of reactions to this event on Global Voices.

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?

So, do you remember that iPhone 3G launch about a week and a half ago? Something of a big deal for techie people who wanted the latest gadget. It was such a big deal for one goober that he waited in line for 36 hours to be the first to get the phone in San Francisco. Well, he got his 15 minutes of fame and was indeed the first. You can see him below. I realize that he's quite a catch, but sorry ladies, he's taken, although his wife was unavailable for comment as to his waiting for 36 hours to buy a cellphone. Once again proof that Apple is just as much a cult as the Moonies or Scientology because really, one's Mac is better than your God.

About a week or so ago, I attempted to write a post reflecting on the Global Voices Summit. One would think that writing about an event two weeks after it happened would warrant an article that was thoughtful, insightful, and provocative. In reality, it was really only the last of those three items and in a bad way. I wrote the article too fast in an attempt to finish out my list of topics to cover in my recent trip through The Europe. I also realized that this really isn't one article and that I should break it up over the course of a couple of posts to make it more easily digested.       This first post is quite short as I want to briefly describe what Global Voices is since I'm guessing that with the exception of a few, most of the people who read my blog haven't encountered this site. Started in 2005 by Ethan Zuckerman and Rebecca MacKinnon, the site works to aggregate and report on stories that aren't covered in mainstream media. It works much more "on the ground" by sourcing blogs written by people from countries outside Australia, New Zealand, the USA, Canada, and Western Europe. It's a very interesting approach that is getting a lot of acclaim and attention due the groundswell of supporting volunteers who do the majority of the work to write the articles as well as translate them in to 15 different languages.       Admittedly, it was a pretty hokey site three years ago, but has grown to be quite massive and informative which is due to the founders really believing in the site. I found it interesting enough that I have even started writing for it and #1 Fan has been writing for it for some time. I have no idea how much I'll be able to write for it as it takes a good deal of time to pull together all the source material for an article, especially since I'm scraping it all up out of blogs writing in Croatian, which is slow going.       But, that's the site in a nutshell. Over the next few days, as I can find time to write more intelligent articles, I'll talk more about the actual Summit, which was my first full exposure to the GV community.

I've hit the ground running once back in San Francisco and attended the Social Media Camp, which was a BarCamp style event last Tuesday.       The turnout for the event was decent, but from walking in on the first speaker Erica O'Grady it was apparent that this was going to be more of a concept camp and not a topic camp. By that I mean that there were a lot of buzzwords tossed around, but little technology or real dirt behind all of it like I want to see. This isn't a bad thing though. For instance, my mom could learn a lot from a camp like this. Marketing people would also do well.       The one gleaming exception was David Cohn who has become one of my new local heroes, despite his beard. I hate exaggerating, but this guy could truly change the face of media. He knows his shit and he's working to develop Spot.us which is a platform to facilitate community funding of journalism projects. In some ways, it's similar to ChipIn (also a cool project for crowdfunding) but takes it to another level. The talk he did shows that he's thought a great deal about what he's doing. Even if his system doesn't take off, one like it will. It really is the future of print media, which is dying a miserable death currently.       The rest of the event fell in to two main categories, which I will quote from the Cohn: "a. Meeting good people b. everyone selling a startup" It wasn't that it was bad by any shot, it's just that it wasn't insanely engaging with a good number of people really trying to sell things, like Yoono which is a decent idea, but nothing that I would ever install.       I'm realizing quite quickly as we move more in to Maneno that we need to pull together a PowerPoint presentation to keep at the ready on the X40. It makes a great deal more sense to be ready to present than just sit in the back and attempt to ask as smart a question as I can think of so that the presenter doesn't get bored.