你好,苏丹!!! = Hello, Sudan!
"SPOC"
From the Taipei Times website:
Spielberg may step down as Beijing Olympics adviser
AFP, WASHINGTON
Saturday, Jul 28, 2007, Page 1
Director Steven Spielberg may step down as artistic adviser to next year's Beijing Olympics unless China adopts a tougher stance towards Sudan over the conflict in Darfur, ABC television said yesterday.
"Steven will make a determination in the next few weeks regarding his work with the Chinese," Spielberg's spokesman Andy Spahn told ABC television.
"Our main interest is ending the genocide. No one is clear on the best way to do this," Spahn said in an article that appeared on the network's Web site yesterday.
He said "all options were on the table," including resigning.
The director's final decision would depend also on a statement on Sudan by the Chinese government expected in the coming days, Spahn said.
"We expect to hear something from the Chinese government sometime soon, very soon," Spahn said.
"Steven is one [of] many advisers to the Beijing Games and he is trying to use the games to engage the Chinese on this issue. We are in the midst of that right now. We're engaged in a little bit of a back-and-forth private dialogue," Spahn said.
Spielberg came under criticism earlier this year from US actress and UNICEF goodwill ambassador Mia Farrow, who accuses China of lending financial support to Sudan as it backs militia attacks in the Darfur region.
"Is Mr. Spielberg, who in 1994 founded the Shoah Foundation to record the testimony of survivors of the Holocaust, aware that China is bankrolling Darfur's genocide?" she and her son wrote in a March commentary in the Wall Street Journal.
Farrow warned that the Oscar-winning director of the Holocaust film Schindler's List risked becoming a modern version of Nazi propaganda filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, known for her 1936 Berlin games film Olympia.
"Leni Riefenstahl." Ok. May I just say WTF?
It also occurs to me to say something stupid and obvious like "It blows my mind that Mia Farrow doesn't understand how these things work." But we don't have enough time.
This whole paradigm of condemnation, abandonment and disaster is just too obvious to me. Has Ms Farrow seen Hotel Rwanda, where, towards the end, the hotel would have welcomed any help whatsoever? Or The Godfather Parts I & II? "You left Pop alone at the hospital?" Or The Excorcist? "Mommy, make it stop!" "How dare you keep me away from my daughter!" This WSJ article is the kind of geopolitical global strategizing that puts Bill O'Reilly in the driver's seat. The Republicans blamed Bill Clinton for 9/11. Is Farrow getting an early start on Barack Obama's legacy? Is she falling asleep at the switch already?
As for me, not only have I been working on wikipedia African university articles, I have been writing and working on articles such as White Nile Limited, White Nile Petroleum Operating Company, Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company, Advanced Petroleum Company, Sudapak, and Sudapet. Not to keep mentioning Ms Farrow, but is she aware of how tuition bills get paid? Or, to continue, how lunch money is produced? Or car payments? Or how FTEs are created? But I am wasting time again.
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Actually, Mr Spielberg, I would think that you should put your career first in this case. The Holocaust in Europe was only 60 years ago and I really think that the grief hasn't really sunk in yet here in 2007. I would use my best judgement, and the politics of Sudan today may be quite complicated. The Chinese oil companies (and Petronas, TotalFina, UAE oil companies; and the Canadian and American companies who have withdrawn from work in Sudan as a result of liberal fear) are really the main source of hope in this situation and if one isn't on board with reading Chinese then one may not have the ability to point to evidence produced in the paper every day to support one's presence in the 2008 Olympics, and to defend oneself from film industry attack.
On the other hand, the fact that China wants you (Mr Spielberg) to be there in 2008 means that they want you to present your view, and it is a good opportunity to help Asians to explain what they are trying to do in Sudan - which is more or less what Schindler was trying to do in the movie Schindler's List.
Of course, right now is not after the fact, as the movie was after the fact of the Holocaust. It is more or less "during the fact" and it is somewhat as difficult as the work of Mr Schindler was at the time.
Maybe, if Oskar Schindler had been forced to justify himself to someone such as Eleanor Roosevelt, in 1943 or 1944, he might not have been able to say very much about his project at the time.
It might be helpful to think of the situation in terms of NYPD Blue/Stephen Bochco instead of in terms of Dick Wolf. The Chinese, Malaysian and European oil companies, and the American and Canadian oil companies if it were possible for them to be there, are working night and day to put people on the ground and to create lots and lots of jobs in Sudan. Maybe the movie Mean Girls by Tina Fey, in which Tina creates and develops a calming, energetic presence at a troubled middle school, is a model for what is really happening there now.
Not to sound like a jerk, but why does Frank Sinatra's ex-wife have a commanding voice in Steven Spielberg's career?; Mike D, Ad-Rock and MCA might be a more reliable source of guidance. Or Manny, Moe and Jack. Or Larry, Moe and Curly. Anybody, anybody, take military advice from anybody -- anybody except for Mia Farrow.
And in related news, why aren't these guys playing soccer instead of jacking around with guns in the middle of the woods? How will DRC produce a George Weah or a Didier Drogba if this stuff is going on? Picture is from SABC story "Volatile DRC distresses Security Council" dated July 24.
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Education in the Democratic Republic of the Congo en:Wiki
Petroleum in Africa at Africa, Asia America blog
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