2 posts tagged “africa”

*WARNING. SCROLL WITH CAUTION SOME IMAGES ARE NSFW*

Way to jump on a trend 5 years after it started NY Times: photographed celebs throw on a T-shirt, appear fresh faced with a look of pognaincy and smug self-satisfaction, urging you to buy a t-shirt to support whatever useless non-profit they donated to.

I have no tolerance or respect for millionaries who throw on a T-shirt and call it activism. Throwing on a T-shirt? I do that shit everyday. Sometimes I even put on a pair of pants. Every couple of days I brush my teeth. I go out there and  I do my job which is to organize non union workers, fight the boss, lose sleep, eat shit and then I'm supposed to have Christy Turlington shame me into a buying a pink rubber bracelet?

Ugh you can your donate your mouth to my nuts, Christy (why don't have nuts? that would make that joke so much better!)  Ya'll have seen hundreds of the ads I'm talking about. But really none compare to one particular AIDS campaign that made we want to have unprotected sex with multiple partners, roll around in used needles, and blow some Balitmore vagrants rather than donate to their campaign. I present it to thee:

Right. And I'm Jay-Z, you cooze.

Thank god some people are keeping it REAL for the rest of us!!!

Now I would like to show you some good ads. Creative and terrifying. They deliver their message clearly with the right balance of cheekiness AND gravity.

The French: always find a way to make sex more like death

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Would also serve as a charming St. Patty's day card (thnx matty)

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Visual Aide

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I've read :

"Awww - Africa. Who's a good-little-distressed-continent? That's right - you are"

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*Christopher Hitchens on Uganda.

*Robert Kaplan on Sub-Saharan Africa.

*And I wrote a  35 page paper on the civil war in Sierra Leone and Liberia.

So I know all about that uniquely African gore, blood, and grime.  But I've never bought any trendy humantarian t-shirt, tote-bag, plastic bracelet, disposable enema, whose proceeds went to some  African charity. And to be completely honest the only thing that has attracted me to Africa is a morbid curiosity of how failed states function, or um -- don't function.   But in studying Africa --that far away dark continent of machete wieldin youths and power hungry diamond smugglers-- a few things have become very clear.

1. Africa is by no means monolithic. The problems that plague West Africa are vastly different from those in Sub-Saharan Africa (just compare Nigeria to Angola). So blanket aid programs and continent wide education goals do not make sense.

2. No one (neither the West nor Africans) has found a decent solution for corruption in state governments and local governments.

3. Celebrities like to go hunting for the most gruesome and harrowing displays of poverty to get in a photo op raise awareness. But they avoid shedding light on the more complicated issues of trade, subsidies, corruption because that shit is far less salacious. So while the moral outrage level is considerably cranked up back here at home,  the result is confused, arbitrary, unattainable policy goals.

Theres a wonderful editorial in today's LA times that makes these points better than I do:

"Why do aid organizations and their celebrity backers want to make African successes look like failures? One can only speculate, but it certainly helps aid agencies get more publicity and more money if problems seem greater than they are. As for the stars — well, could Africa be saving celebrity careers more than celebrities are saving Africa?

In truth, Africans are and will be escaping poverty the same way everybody else did: through the efforts of resourceful entrepreneurs, democratic reformers and ordinary citizens at home, not through PR extravaganzas of ill-informed outsiders.

The real Africa needs increased trade from the West more than it needs more aid handouts. A respected Ugandan journalist, Andrew Mwenda, made this point at a recent African conference despite the fact that the world's most famous celebrity activist — Bono — was attempting to shout him down. Mwenda was suffering from too much reality for Bono's taste: "What man or nation has ever become rich by holding out a begging bowl?" asked Mwenda."

More here : What Bono Doesn't Say About Africa