The actor's Satellite Sentinel Project is
collaborating with other organizations to aim
commercial satellites at the nation's north-south
border in hopes of preventing possible genocide.George Clooney would like to bring a bit of
Hollywood to one of the most remote and tense
regions in Africa. Not red carpets and swag bags
but the cold, intrusive, constant eye of a camera.
"You can go on Google Earth and Google my
house," said the actor. "I thought, if that's the
way it is and they're gonna be able to Google my
house, then people who are committing war
crimes, specifically the government of Sudan,
should be able to enjoy the same level of celebrity
that I do. These people are public figures, and
we're gonna take their pictures."
Clooney is spearheading an effort to deploy
commercial satellites to monitor the border
between northern and southern Sudan as the
country faces a referendum starting Sunday that
is likely to split it in two. Should fighting break
out, his wildly ambitious goal — the culmination
of his years of engagement with the war-torn
country — is to do no less than prevent
genocide.
The Satellite Sentinel Project is a collaboration
among Not on Our Watch (the human rights
organization Clooney co-founded), the Enough
Project (an anti-genocide group), the United
Nations, Harvard University, Google and Trellon,
a company that builds websites. On the project's
site, http://www.satsentinel.org, anyone will be
able to see high-resolution images of the 1,250-
mile border. If violence breaks out, the site's
backers hope its photographic evidence will put
pressure on the U.N. Security Council or other
countries to intervene.
Not on Our Watch, which Clooney founded with
actors Don Cheadle, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon
plus producer Jerry Weintraub and former
Clinton State Department official David Pressman,
provided the project's $650,000 in startup funds.
"We have the ability to create deterrence," said
Clooney, now on his seventh trip to Sudan and
its bordering nation of Chad. "You might not
want to put tanks, helicopters or planes on the
ground or in these border regions, 'cause we're
watching."
More than 2 million people died in Sudan's
1983-2005 civil war, and sporadic fighting has
continued since then between the lighter-skinned
Sudanese Arabs in the north who want Islamic
law and the darker-skinned Africans of the
semiautonomous south. President Omar Hassan
Ahmed Bashir, based in Khartoum in the north, is
wanted by the International Criminal Court on
charges of genocide and crimes against humanity
stemming from the violence. If southern
Sudanese, who are largely Christian and animist,
vote to secede from the north, the south would
take with it about 80% of Sudan's oil output, a
vexing problem for Bashir.
Clooney first visited Sudan in 2006 and filmed a
documentary there with his father, broadcast
journalist Nick Clooney. Later that year, the actor
addressed the U.N. Security Council about the
issue and traveled to China and Egypt with
Cheadle to try to persuade officials there to use
their ties with Sudan's government to help stop
the violence.
"George keeps showing up," said John
Prendergast, co-founder of the Enough Project,
who has traveled with Clooney in Sudan. "He's a
very serious and committed analyst. He's gone to
remote locations. He's put himself at extreme risk.
He stays in mud huts and straw huts, he gets
sick because of the sanitation."
Clooney's pleas for peace in Sudan have taken
him from the White House, where he met with
President Obama a month after his inauguration,
to remote border villages. In one attempt to
persuade a rebel leader to attend a peace
conference, the actor donated money to his
father's shoe store. (It didn't work.)
For someone who leads the peculiar life of a
celebrity, Clooney can find a rare anonymity in
Sudan.
"It's kind of calm for him," said Prendergast.
"When we go to New York and L.A., they're all
over him. But you go out to a village or refugee
camp, and he's just some aid worker or human
rights analyst who shows up."
Clooney's idea for the Satellite Sentinel Project
began to take shape on a trip to Sudan in
October. After Not On Our Watch provided the
start-up money, other organizations and
companies quickly joined the partnership in time
for its launch in late December.
"This is George Clooney's brainchild, and the
scope of it is unprecedented," said David
Yanagizawa-Drott, an assistant professor of
public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of
Government, who will be evaluating the
program's results for the Harvard Humanitarian
Initiative. "It takes state-of-the-art technology and
makes human rights documentation public and
visual in near real time. This is not just
postmortem documentation of a conflict. This is
saying, before a potential civil war breaks out, we
will document it."
Clooney is well aware that geopolitical activism by
Hollywood figures is often met with cynicism, if
not outright scorn, but he's undeterred.
"The people who roll their eyes, most of those
people don't know anything," he said. "I have
rebel leaders on my speed dial. I've spent time
with the president of Chad, of south Sudan. I've
been to Khartoum. I know most of the factions
personally. So I have at least a rudimentary
understanding of what's going on, which is more
than most. If that means I'm able to get in the
mix and to bring attention to people who really
know what they're doing, then I'm doing my
job."
Still, Clooney has been circumspect about his
work in the region, calling his efforts "the greatest
failure of my life" in an interview with Britain's the
Sun newspaper last September.
"Nothing's really changed," he said this week.
"When 300,000 innocent civilians are
systematically raped and murdered, then it's a
failure on every level. I'm old-fashioned. I like to
win the ballgame, not just say we played really
well and lost."
Source: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-clooney-sudan-20110110,0,2121388.story
collaborating with other organizations to aim
commercial satellites at the nation's north-south
border in hopes of preventing possible genocide.George Clooney would like to bring a bit of
Hollywood to one of the most remote and tense
regions in Africa. Not red carpets and swag bags
but the cold, intrusive, constant eye of a camera.
"You can go on Google Earth and Google my
house," said the actor. "I thought, if that's the
way it is and they're gonna be able to Google my
house, then people who are committing war
crimes, specifically the government of Sudan,
should be able to enjoy the same level of celebrity
that I do. These people are public figures, and
we're gonna take their pictures."
Clooney is spearheading an effort to deploy
commercial satellites to monitor the border
between northern and southern Sudan as the
country faces a referendum starting Sunday that
is likely to split it in two. Should fighting break
out, his wildly ambitious goal — the culmination
of his years of engagement with the war-torn
country — is to do no less than prevent
genocide.
The Satellite Sentinel Project is a collaboration
among Not on Our Watch (the human rights
organization Clooney co-founded), the Enough
Project (an anti-genocide group), the United
Nations, Harvard University, Google and Trellon,
a company that builds websites. On the project's
site, http://www.satsentinel.org, anyone will be
able to see high-resolution images of the 1,250-
mile border. If violence breaks out, the site's
backers hope its photographic evidence will put
pressure on the U.N. Security Council or other
countries to intervene.
Not on Our Watch, which Clooney founded with
actors Don Cheadle, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon
plus producer Jerry Weintraub and former
Clinton State Department official David Pressman,
provided the project's $650,000 in startup funds.
"We have the ability to create deterrence," said
Clooney, now on his seventh trip to Sudan and
its bordering nation of Chad. "You might not
want to put tanks, helicopters or planes on the
ground or in these border regions, 'cause we're
watching."
More than 2 million people died in Sudan's
1983-2005 civil war, and sporadic fighting has
continued since then between the lighter-skinned
Sudanese Arabs in the north who want Islamic
law and the darker-skinned Africans of the
semiautonomous south. President Omar Hassan
Ahmed Bashir, based in Khartoum in the north, is
wanted by the International Criminal Court on
charges of genocide and crimes against humanity
stemming from the violence. If southern
Sudanese, who are largely Christian and animist,
vote to secede from the north, the south would
take with it about 80% of Sudan's oil output, a
vexing problem for Bashir.
Clooney first visited Sudan in 2006 and filmed a
documentary there with his father, broadcast
journalist Nick Clooney. Later that year, the actor
addressed the U.N. Security Council about the
issue and traveled to China and Egypt with
Cheadle to try to persuade officials there to use
their ties with Sudan's government to help stop
the violence.
"George keeps showing up," said John
Prendergast, co-founder of the Enough Project,
who has traveled with Clooney in Sudan. "He's a
very serious and committed analyst. He's gone to
remote locations. He's put himself at extreme risk.
He stays in mud huts and straw huts, he gets
sick because of the sanitation."
Clooney's pleas for peace in Sudan have taken
him from the White House, where he met with
President Obama a month after his inauguration,
to remote border villages. In one attempt to
persuade a rebel leader to attend a peace
conference, the actor donated money to his
father's shoe store. (It didn't work.)
For someone who leads the peculiar life of a
celebrity, Clooney can find a rare anonymity in
Sudan.
"It's kind of calm for him," said Prendergast.
"When we go to New York and L.A., they're all
over him. But you go out to a village or refugee
camp, and he's just some aid worker or human
rights analyst who shows up."
Clooney's idea for the Satellite Sentinel Project
began to take shape on a trip to Sudan in
October. After Not On Our Watch provided the
start-up money, other organizations and
companies quickly joined the partnership in time
for its launch in late December.
"This is George Clooney's brainchild, and the
scope of it is unprecedented," said David
Yanagizawa-Drott, an assistant professor of
public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of
Government, who will be evaluating the
program's results for the Harvard Humanitarian
Initiative. "It takes state-of-the-art technology and
makes human rights documentation public and
visual in near real time. This is not just
postmortem documentation of a conflict. This is
saying, before a potential civil war breaks out, we
will document it."
Clooney is well aware that geopolitical activism by
Hollywood figures is often met with cynicism, if
not outright scorn, but he's undeterred.
"The people who roll their eyes, most of those
people don't know anything," he said. "I have
rebel leaders on my speed dial. I've spent time
with the president of Chad, of south Sudan. I've
been to Khartoum. I know most of the factions
personally. So I have at least a rudimentary
understanding of what's going on, which is more
than most. If that means I'm able to get in the
mix and to bring attention to people who really
know what they're doing, then I'm doing my
job."
Still, Clooney has been circumspect about his
work in the region, calling his efforts "the greatest
failure of my life" in an interview with Britain's the
Sun newspaper last September.
"Nothing's really changed," he said this week.
"When 300,000 innocent civilians are
systematically raped and murdered, then it's a
failure on every level. I'm old-fashioned. I like to
win the ballgame, not just say we played really
well and lost."
Source: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-clooney-sudan-20110110,0,2121388.story
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