Word: darfur
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...things O'Reilly has taken issue with is Clooney's involvement in the crisis in Darfur, saying it's reverse racism from someone who didn't care about the Arabs being killed by Saddam Hussein. Clooney got interested in Darfur in 2005 after the campaign for Oscar votes for Syriana and Good Night, and Good Luck made him feel dirty. "You're campaigning for yourself. To compete for art," he says. His dad was also dejected and angry after losing an election for Congress, and Clooney had been reading about the lack of attention being given to Darfur...
...Even more pressing than Kenya is Darfur in western Sudan, where civil war has killed 200,000 people and made refugees of more than 2 million more; Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe, 83, presides over a deepening economic collapse; and Somalia, where civil war has raged for 17 years and where a U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion in early 2007 helped exacerbate what the U.N. now says is the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa. De Waal described Somalia as "the greatest" of the "major shortcomings" in the Administration's policy towards Africa, which also included a "largely negative" impact...
...Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman expressed regret over Spielberg's decision on Thursday, while the Beijing Games organizing committee noted that "linking the Darfur issue to the Olympic Games will not help to resolve this issue and is not in line with the Olympic Spirit that separates sports from politics." But those responses came nearly two days after Spielberg announced his decision to withdraw, adding yet another news cycle to an issue Beijing clearly wanted to go away. "They need to learn to do a better job of this, there's no doubt," says David Zweig, director of the Center...
...opponents are learning to exploit. "The more the government gives political priority to the Games, the more the international political pressure on the Chinese government will increase," says Yan Xuetong, director of the Institute of International Studies at Beijing's Tsinghua University. Indeed, given the success of the Darfur campaign, it is inevitable that other protests will follow on Tibet, the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement and China's support of Burma's ruling junta. Activists have also raised human rights issues like the jailing of Chinese journalists and activists like Hu Jia, who was detained in December over accusations...
...Having succeeded in turning Spielberg to their cause, Darfur campaigners are now trying to convince other stars such as director Ang Lee, who is also an artistic advisor to the Games, and producer Quincy Jones, who has been recruited to write a theme song. A group of Nobel laureates, actors and athletes wrote an open letter to President Hu coinciding with Spielberg's resignation, calling on Beijing to do more to promote peace in the war-ravaged region. And large corporate sponsors, such as General Electric, Microsoft and Coca-Cola, are also being lobbied to urge Beijing to do more...