A report is released today that highlights the forgotten war in Africa:
The rate of violent deaths in war-ravaged northern Uganda is three times higher than in Iraq and the 20-year insurgency has cost $1.7bn (£980m), according to a report by 50 international and local agencies released today.
The violent death rate for northern Uganda is 146 deaths a week or 0.17 violent deaths per 10,000 people per day. This is three times higher than in Iraq, where the incidence of violent death was 0.052 per 10,000 people per day, says the report.
Such shocking figures should also challenge journalists and the mainstream media to remember that African lives are equally important as our own.
Uganda is a classic example of a basket-case. Exploitative colonialism, then brutal military dictatorships, then disintegrative multi-player civil war. To even begin to understand the current mess requires mountains of historical, cultural and political knowledge.
One would like to say this is the reason there is no little analysis of it in the media, but that of course is not the reason (ignorance has never stopped media insta-pundits in the past).
No, the Ugandan people’s problem is that they are (a) African and (b) bereft of oil. This guarantees they’re deaths will never make it onto page 17, let alone the front page.
No, there are no Jews to blame and this is why it doesn’t make it front page.
Can you please substantiate that claim, Captain?
Damian Doyle Mar 30th, 2006 at 11:15 pm
His substantiation is that he said it. His Word is that of God’s: Perfect, True and Eternal.
captain Mar 30th, 2006 at 8:48 pm
Or maybe it’s because there are no lobby groups saturating the media with absurd claims of anti-semitism. I always thought that the line “Never Again” was a universal humanitarian challenge to genocide. Now, thanks to people like El Capitan, that it is nothing of the sort; it is an exclusive, exclusionary and racially exceptionalist call.
And you can substabtiate your no oil, no media notice claim, can you?
Hi Nell. Whose claim is that?
ES claims “No, the Ugandan people’s problem is that they are (a) African and (b) bereft of oil.”
Apologies, it would have been more correct to inquire if the claim that the media ignores Uganda because they are African and lack oil can be substantiated?
If yhou loom at Sudan, it is almost the same situation. Muder on a massive scale and they are African, and hardly any reports in the MSM - though there is some oil in Sudan.
Sudan has enormous oil reserves.
I believe Cap is merely reporting a trend, not a theory.
Also, the government of Sudan is friendly with the US, whcih may keep it largeyl otu of the headlines.
The US declared that a Genocide is occuring. I’m sure that made Sudan very friendly.
Yes it did.
The US declard Sudan a partner in the war on terroir, effectively endoring the actions of the Sudanese government. It;s a familiar pattern. The Us publicly scolded Saddam for gassing the kurds while continuing to ship arms and gas to him.
The US Secretary of State Colin Powell has said the killings in Sudan’s Darfur region constitute genocide.
Speaking before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr Powell said the conclusion was based on interviews with refugees who had fled Darfur.
He spoke as the UN Security Council prepared to debate a second resolution threatening Sudan with sanctions.
Up to 50,000 people in Darfur may have died and a million have been made homeless during the conflict.
Mr Powell blamed the government of Sudan and pro-government Arab Janjaweed militias for the killings.
****************************************************
I don’t recall a similar newstory with the US promoting the Sudan as a partner against terrorism.
Official Pariah Sudan Valuable to
America’s War on Terrorism
http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/terrorwar/analysis/2005/0429sudan.htm
http://www.sudaneseonline.com/earticle2005/jun24-57740.shtml
You’ve provided no quote showing the US promoting the Sudan as a partner against terrorism.
Not enought for you? I trust you read the links?
Anyway:
Bush Administration Allied With Sudan Despite Role in Darfur Genocide
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/03/1357228&mode=thread&tid=25
Ken Silverstein, reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Read article: Official Pariah Sudan Valuable to America’s War on Terrorism.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-sudan29apr29,0,6605677.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Chris Mar 31st, 2006 at 1:46 am
Pfft. Yeah, but that’s not the issue. It’s a question of how fast it’s being exploited … and the Sudan’s production rate is one of the lowest in the world (only 401,300 bbl/day). Basically, if it’s just sitting there and no-one else is going after it, there is no problem. That’s pretty much what’s happening.
And let’s not even start on the congo ..
the where ?
wouldnt it be great if you could save every news item you read with a sensible tagline,
then when tossers like chris made their primary school comments you could grab relevent article and shove it in his mouth,
cos just the other day i read that the dude the UN had at the top of their ‘51 most dangerous warlords in sudan list’ was in washington on an official visit meeting top defence drongoes,
of course now i cant find it, thats right, i have no link to such claims,
what really amuses me is the level of delusion that it must take to still think america is actually a forec for good, doing everything it can to combat ‘global terrorism’
alice in wonderland is more realistic than the american led ‘war on terror’, sorry it changed didnt it, ‘global struggle against violent extremism’, oh wait, sorry, ‘the long war’
Lemmings like Chris and his predecessor, Ibraham, both were big defenders of US foreign policy simply becasue the US is Israel’s sugar daddy. They even turn a blind eye to the rapture addicted evangelicals who fawn around Israel like jackals, waiting for Jesus to give the nod to throw the Jewish people to the great fires unless they convert to Christianity.
Truly macabre.
boredinHK Mar 31st, 2006 at 1:24 pm
Exactly.
In the Academy: left-wing academics used to be interested in Africa esp. in the 1970s because it was believed there was hope for glorious socialist regimes coming to the fore. By the late 1980s that interest (and hope) had pretty much died, and so Africa again became the Ignored Continent. Even when it was of interest to Western academics, colonialism was casting its hand. Academics from where? From the former colonial powers themselves.
I thought his name was Ibrahamav ?
“….. like Chris and his predecessor, Ibraham “.
Nell Fenwick Mar 31st, 2006 at 12:21 am
Of course it’s not oil per se. It comes with those who are concerned with oil (and of course it doesn’t have to be only oil - oil is merely one of the most important sources of interest to oil-hungry major powers).
When a country has an essential resource necessary for a major power to not grind to a halt, that power, where necessary, starts to meddle with the non-power country’s internal politics. (Equally, geo-political-military concerns are also of central importance.)
The usual way this has been done in the past is to destablise a recalcitrant non-power government and support its replacement by a compliant dictatorship (e.g. Chile, Indonesia, Arab countries).
This is not the only ‘model’ possible. A compliant democracy is just as good as a dictatorship (e.g. Afghanistan) - often times, for a democracy already in existence, one can find institutionalised elites who are willing accept compliance in exchange for particular interests being met (e.g. Australia, Israel).
Anyway, being pulled into the ’sphere of interest and/or concern’ of a major power pretty much guarantees that major power’s media will follow - a media, that due to increasing market concentration within the major power itself finds its interests tied to the interests of its population and its government. This Western media will thus, with a few exceptions, give a fairly favourable ’spin’ to the major power’s actions within the non-power country (e.g. the Palestine/Israel conflict from Zionist premises), although it doesn’t follow that ‘messes’ get hidden forever (e.g. Iraq).
Anyway, that to me seems to be a fairly accurate, if very broad-brush overview, of the pattern of things for much of the 20th century. One will note the links between the major power’s spheres of influence and concern and the media’s focus of attention.
Poor old Uganda has nothing much to comment itself to the interest or concern of major powers’ and thus one does not see a proponderance of reporting in that country by Western (major power) media.