Brian Conley's News & Notes

Today President Clinton, in his infinite wisdom, told us that we should look to Rwanda as an example of a successful post-crisis recovery for a state in the developing world.

Mr. Clinton can perhaps be excused for missing this Digital Journal article about his friend Paul Kagame’s involvement in repression of independent political parties leading up to Rwanda’s next election. But surely he’s heard of his own party’s condemnation of Rwanda’s proposed anti-gay legislation?

Is that the Rwandan example he thinks Haiti should be following?

Or perhaps he’s cynically thinking only of Rwanda’s recent success supporting American corporate interests, despite the fact that  these very same agricultural projects, rather than feeding Rwandans, might ensure many continue to go hungry.

Which is quite appropriate, when you consider very similar policies, implemented in Haiti, are at the center of the destruction of Haiti’s rice production. Given the role of NAFTA in destruction of Haiti’s economy, and the role President Clinton played in pushing NAFTA, one has to wonder what words passed privately between the two men before Mr. Clinton ensured Mr. Aristide’s reinstatement as President of Haiti in October 1994.

If this isn’t enough evidence that perhaps Rwanda is not a model for Haiti so much as Haiti was a model for Rwanda which has now become a model for Haiti, we could investigate the mention of Indonesia as another success story, but how will Mr. Clinton’s Christian supporters feel about that suggestion?

PEOPLE. Right now we have a possible new solution to war in Afghanistan, a dramatic rise of the drone war in Pakistan, a collapsing state in Yemen, an opposition leader under assault in Sri Lanka, an election in Sudan that is on the verge of being delayed, a massive rewrite of the common understanding of the “genocide” in Darfur, an explosive situation in Haiti and the threat of a new war in the Middle East. All of these are bits of information I garnered from Twitter over the last few days.

But lets be clear, none of those are going to “change everything.” It will be this fab new gadget and a speech by Mr. Jobs that is going to mark a great turning point in modern history.

Its impossible to imagine that just before Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914 the world would have been so obsessed with a gadget that would be accessible only to the wealthiest 1% of the world population that the international media would be more interested in telling the story of such a gadget than publishing the latest gossip about imperial machinations of various world powers.

Perhaps the issue is that we have to low a barrier to access and to high a barrier toward making a living. Shock and Awe marketing and the ability to one up the breaking news of one’s competitor takes precedence over in-depth, contextualized, and investigative reporting.

I’d be more excited about the latest gadgets and gizmos if more was being done to improve the lives of the bottom 10-90%. Imagine if Apple was combining a strategy to engage in social good and increasing access to the digital communications space with their massively hyped presentation of a shiny new object that quite possibly is contributing to war in the Congo and ongiong human rights or labor violations at factories around the developing world.

It’s not all doom and gloom though, part of my point is that there *IS* a wide array of information out there, but it’s being drowned in a sea of marketing, PR, and hype. The question I’d like to see answered is not only why are so many people interested in hype, but how can those of us interested in improving the visibility of important international affairs be more successful? How can we be more effective at drawing connections between the various conflicts around the world and the policies of developed nations, whether they be political, social, financial, or otherwise?

I will probably try to wake early enough to watch the SoU, though let me tell you, I don’t expect much revolutionary world-changing new perspective to be unveiled then either.