Yes, George Clooney’s idea to prevent and monitor human rights abuses and mass atrocities via satellite has come back down to earth. Unfortunately, instead of crashing and burning like SkyLab, it’s hanging out around 5,000 feet like SkyNET.

 

In today’s New York Times, Mark Hanis* and Andrew Stobo Sniderman of the (former) Genocide Intervention Network suggest non-governmental organizations use drones to monitor human rights and support accountability measures.

I say more, and make worse drone jokes, at Wings Over Iraq. Unsurprisingly, I take out my frustrations on human rights advocates again.

Imagine my disappointment when I learned there’s already an organization called “Free the Girls”. They, too, are collecting used bras, but instead of simply burning the bras, they’re sending the used bras overseas in order to free—get this—not boobies, but actual girls.

Yes, Free the Girls is another organization sending SWEDOW (Stuff We Don’t Want) to in order to save poor people from their poverty. But unlike some other SWEDOW initiatives, like yoga mats for Haiti, Free the Girls isn’t simply sending secondhand bras over to help fill out the free t-shirts others sent. Instead, Free the Girls intends that female human trafficking survivors will rejuvenate the used bras and sell them for a profit thereby generating income and uplifting the spirits of a nation.

Floppy freedom.

Even Bono and his moobs would celebrate.

Someone cynical might ask, “Aren’t there already used bras in Africa? Why collect used bras from Americans and then ship them overseas?” Even Free the Girls notes on Twitter that there is already a market for secondhand bras in Mozambique where they operate. In that case, instead of flooding the market with more used bras from America, and since Free the Girls clearly has an interest in supporting local entrepreneurs, why not raise money to buy used bras locally and create some miracle growth for local businesses while empowering women with economic opportunity?

But then again, it is Africa, I can think of no place better to send pink cheetah print Victoria’s Secret B-cups.

Indeed, for too long we’ve thrown this ridiculous “money” at the problem of “poverty” and “we” know now that more than “aid dollars” are needed. Such as the aforementioned pink cheetah print bras.

Here is how Free the Girls puts it, minus the scare quotes:

For too long in the West we have appeased our consciences with throwing money at people who live in poverty. The result is that very little has been accomplished in the places where most of the aid has gone. But for those of us who live and work on the front lines of global poverty, we know that more than aid dollars are needed.

What’s strange is that recently I threw money at a large aid organization and instead of literally throwing money at some starving Somalis, they set up a feeding station. Weird, I know. I was hoping my Andrew Jackson would end up one amongst a wad and hit some kid square in the face. Would have made me feel much better. Appeased my conscience, as it were. Lo.

The fact is that aid dollars turn into diverse job training and livelihood-building programs all over the world. Perhaps bras are a hot commodity in this particular community, but what if it’s cat berets in another? On their site, Free the Girls also says they believe business has an important role to play in ending poverty.

In some states, this would qualify as animal abuse.

A good business diversifies. Even Victoria’s Secret sells more than bras. Aid dollars can buy bras in one place and felt in another. Used bras are just bras (and they make terrible cat-hats.) Money has the magic power of turning into almost anything.

That’s why the effects of conditional cash-transfers are so interesting. For example, in Somalia, “Oxfam is implementing a life-saving cash transfer program that will assist around 66,000 highly vulnerable displaced people to meet their basic food needs, enhance their coping mechanisms, and reduce their vulnerability to future shocks.” Sometimes throwing money out of a plane actually works. Other times… not so much.

This villianization of aid dollars, when ultimately the donated bras are themselves just aid dollars restricted for use in the resale of secondhand bras, only serves to feed the monster that keeps development nerds up at night: the idea that sending money overseas is a waste, that instead we must send things so those corrupt Afghan police/Somali militants/development consultants don’t take a cut (or run off with the whole pot in the case of the development consultant.) But sending a copy of “The Feminine Mystique” or a jar of peanut butter overseas isn’t going to end poverty faster than donating $10 to an organization running women’s empowerment workshops or giving Plumpy’nut to starving babies (and running water and sanitation programs and doing cash transfers and….)

Female survivors of human trafficking need support, but not from my used bras.

Thanks to Jennifer for her post that inspired me and Gordon Ramsey.

While the U.S. military draws down in Iraq, next year the State Department is boosting its own army of private military contractors from 2,700 strong to a force of around 5,500. This build-up is “one of the most complex and dangerous endeavors the State Department has ever undertaken,” says Spencer Ackerman at Wired’s Danger Room. Yet despite the gravity of this new mission, significant details about how State plans to regulate, monitor, and hold its contractors accountable remain shrouded in secret. State isn’t even allowing the federal agency that audits Iraq reconstruction spending to conduct the oversight it’s created by law to do, Ackerman reports.

That’s yours truly writing over at UN Dispatch. Of course, the best bit about what kind of force $3 billion buys is from Spencer’s piece:

…even though there’s been a nearly 90 percent drop in violence since the surge, State’s hired army still acts like Iraq is a killing field, with death squads and insurgents around every corner.

“Have the standards for convoy travel changed at all from the worst moments of Iraq civil war? The answer’s no,” Bowen [the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction] says. Diplomats are allowed an hour for meetings outside secured U.S. fortresses. Then it’s time to hit the road, in armored cars full of men armed to the teeth and wearing black sunglasses

Could we buy DVDs of The A-Team for $20 and let the contractors live out their fantasies that way instead? Meanwhile, diplomats who control the purse strings on meager multi-million dollar grants won’t actually get out to the provinces and see the work local and international NGOs are doing in an increasingly hospitable operational environment.

But, of course, Congress has found a way to stop this exorbitant spending on private military contractors–but potentially shutting down the entire government.

Arming South Sudan with air defense systems would put them into deeper conflict with the North, not bring the two closer to peace. Further, South Sudan’s army still doesn’t have the requisite training to use and maintain an air defense system. That poses a distinct problem when it comes to distinguishing friendly aircraft from the North’s attack aircraft. In 2007, a UN panel of experts sent a report to the Security Council documenting the North’s use of attack aircraft painted to look like UN aircraft in bombing raids of Darfuri villages. Were the North to use this tactic in the South, it could put UN aircraft at risk.

David Sullivan, a policy analyst who—to borrow from Andrew Exum’s bag of tricks—I respect very much, responded for the Enough Project, an organization which promoted sending surface-to-air missiles to South Sudan, calling them a “less bad option.”

In a recent post for Think Progress, guest blogger Lauren Jenkins raises some salient concerns about the provision of air defense capabilities to the Government of Southern Sudan, an idea that Congressman Don Payne (D-NJ) proposed during last week’s hearing on Sudan. Given that Enough endorsed this approach in a press release that same day, it’s worth taking a moment to address some of these concerns.

Salient! That’s going on the resume. But I’m pretty sure “less bad” is still bad and bad is something of which South Sudan can’t afford much more.

Upon learning the former governever espoused a dreamy hope to meet with the Iron Lady, an ally of Thatcher’s responded with a very curt, “Lady Thatcher will not be seeing Sarah Palin. That would be belittling for Margaret. Sarah Palin is nuts.”

If Sarah Palin were a nut, she would be a "Me!"-nut.

And then in the very same sentence the Pyrite Lady prostrated herself at the altar of Thatcherism, she also announced her plans to travel to Sudan. From a corner of the internet more commonly found burning copies of “Three Cups of Tea” than commenting on Politico articles rose a collective, “Sarah Palin is nuts.”

About Palin’s unrequited crush, Alex Massie at the Daily Beast writes:

Why should Lady Thatcher have any interest in meeting Palin? Even if the Iron Lady were not in such rusty health, what would be the point or purpose of any such encounter? What possible interest could she have in meeting a two-bit, half-term governor of Alaska? To ask the question is to make the answer so clear that even Palin’s most deluded admirers might be able to understand it.

I have to ask, why should Sudan have any interest in hosting Palin? Even if the country weren’t in such a delicate state, what would be the point or purpose of any photo-op with Ann Curry? What interest could the Southern Sudanese have in hosting a governor who fought her state’s attempt to divest from companies working with the genocidal regime in Khartoum?

Why should the Southern Sudanese, who fought for over twenty years for their independence, become a backdrop for a campaign ad of a half-term governor who doesn’t know her own country’s historical anecdotes?

The answer, of course, is that it doesn’t really matter what the Southern Sudanese want. This is, as Laura Seay (née @texasinafrica) noted on Twitter, “about evangelicals and ‘foreign policy credentials.’”

Also, Sarah Palin is not what one would describe as “camera-shy.” Perhaps she heard about George Clooney’s satellites, the “anti-genocide paparazzi” and had to discover if they, too, were part of the “lamestream media.”

You may recall Clooney’s project, as recounted by TIME’s Mark Benjamin:

The idea was to take detailed pictures of the border area between the North and South in case civil war broke out as the country split in two, as it is set to do in July. The idea was that the spotlight might help prevent war and atrocities.

Interestingly, the next paragraph of the article goes on to describe a report by the Satellite Sentinel Project on atrocities documented by their satellites in Abyei rather than ones prevented by their satellites.

The UN workers on the ground as fighting broke out in Abyei didn’t need satellites to document the 20,000 civilians who fled the initial attacks. Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, didn’t need a flashy report to make serious accusations about Khartoum’s premeditated attack on Abyei.

The situation in Abyei is still volatile. The UN Refugee Agency says upwards of 100,000 are now displaced because of ongoing fighting.

Attention on the situation in Sudan will be critical as South Sudan officially gains its independence on July 9. Already, as seen in Abyei and now South Kordofan, Khartoum has shown a willingness to return to open conflict. But attention on The Situation or Sarah Palin (or George Clooney) in Sudan is not the same as attention on Sudan.

The Situation is only a threat to domestic security, not national security like the situation in Sudan

Sarah Palin is nuts, but so is the idea that any sort of paparazzi is going to prevent atrocities in Sudan. That’s like saying handing out $20 to every Afghan would end the war… ah crap.

So, in the grand tradition of those Geico commercials, Starbuck from Wings Over Iraq, and International Aid Worker Meets an African Villager, here is a video about dumb celebrities.

Regarding the t-shirts, Saundra at Good Intentions Are Not Enough has a round-up of blog posts on the most recent free crap controversy (which will be especially depressing if you’re a Steelers fan.) To crib a convention from Small Wars Journal, BLUF: “…any kind of in-kind donation that is not highly targeted and valued by recipients is a waste of effort, money, and resources.“

Regarding the hate mail, please send it to at.laurenist@gmail.com. You’re welcome. No celebrities were harmed in the making of this video.

What ideas does a respected Africanist like Clooney come up with, you ask? More Bono, perhaps? More used sneakers? More of Bono’s used sneakers?

Nay, it is the twinkle of sunlight off a photographer’s telephoto lens that holds the answer.

Clooney is launching an “anti-genocide paparazzi” service. Using commercial satellites in low-earth orbit, Clooney’s project will monitor the border between northern and southern Sudan for any signs of impending civil war, mass atrocities, or genocide. You know, the usual. Compared to what photos of a Miley Cyrus nipple slip will cost you, atrocity porn is downright cheap at $70,000 per shot.

Two nipples for free!

Clooney has big plans for this do-gooder paparazzi. After saving southern Sudan, he envisions it being used in other hotspots around the world.

“This is as if this were 1943 and we had a camera inside Auschwitz and we said, ‘O.K., if you guys don’t want to do anything about it, that’s one thing,’” Clooney says. “But you can’t say you did not know.”

Unfortunately for Clooney, the science doesn’t really back him up.

The best images from these satellites display about 8 sq. in. (50 sq cm) of the ground in each pixel on a computer screen. That is not enough granularity to read a car’s license plate or ID a person, but analysts can tell the difference between cars and trucks and track the movements of troops or horses.

Indeed, these satellites won’t catch any slipped nipples or baby bumps. In an interview with Clooney about the satellite project, Jake Tapper asked, “Will the world watching make a difference?”

The world only watches when royals or Justin Bieber are involved.

In 2007, Amnesty International and the American Association for the Advancement of Science launched “Eyes on Darfur,” a satellite project that monitored developments on the ground in Darfur. As you’ll recall, mere months later, Darfur was saved after millions of people updated their Facebook statuses with a link to blurry photos of sand.

The main idea behind Clooney’s Satellite Sentinel Project is, “If you know your actions are going to be covered, you tend to behave much differently than when you operate in a vacuum.” It’s about accountability.

Accountability for human rights violations are important, but satellites are not the best way to monitor which actors are at fault. Even Anonymous NGO security reports about drunken grenade brawls are more exciting than eight inches of sand turned into a pixel. Clooney getting into a fistfight in Juba is far more likely to make headlines at TMZ than his satellites capturing troop movements around Abyei.

As an advocacy tool to rally public opinion, satellites are about as useful as a non-combat littoral combat ship. As a deterrent to committing atrocities, satellites are about as useful as the threat of an ICC indictment.

If Clooney really wants to identify who is doing what and when—and if he wants to continue dredging up ideas from the annals of genocide prevention projects past—he should consider investing in some UAVs. What could go wrong?

At the very least, whatever hot genocidaire-on-cattle action the Clooney UAVs capture on video is sure to raise alarms among the activist community. Even if those activists are just PETA. Beggars can’t be choosers.

Since the late 1980s, he has led the quite blasphemously named Lord’s Resistance Army in a brutal insurgency nominally targeting the Ugandan government. I like blasphemy as much as the next person but next to Kony my jokes about gay angels and their role-playing fetishes sound like Sunday morning hymns.

For decades, Kony and the LRA have terrorized northern Uganda and environs by laying waste to towns, killing and maiming civilians, abducting and arming children, and generally recreating the goriest parts of the Old Testament.

Lately, and especially since refusing to sign a peace deal in 2008, Kony has taken his smiting band of misfits on a three-country tour, to the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Sudan, killing nearly 2,000 people and displacing over 400,000. As of a couple weeks ago, he has reportedly taken his smite-y band of bandits to Darfur.

Yes, that Darfur, the one not even George Clooney could save.

How do we stop him? Choose you own quagmire!

A Fellow suggests you kick back, open up a bottle of Bud Light Lime, and pop in a Black Hawk Down DVD. Intervening in East Africa failed once, he says, so it’s bound to always fail. If you agree with him, roll like M4 and chug your Bud. If you say, “Bite me,” and invoke the names Samantha Power and Gareth Evans, continue on.

Kony marauds through central Africa murdering civilians. His sins have convinced the International Criminal Court to issue a warrant for his arrest. Everyone agrees, Kony must be stopped. The African Union agrees and offers increased support for a joint brigade of Ugandan, CAR, DRC, and Sudanese forces to neutralize the LRA. If you say, “Sounds like a good start,” meet me at the Science Club for some happy hour prices and the hummus plate. If that doesn’t sound enough like a Bruce Willis movie for you, continue on!

At an estimated 250 men, the LRA isn’t a large force, but they’re consistently on the move. They cross countries’ borders like John Mayer crosses starlets off his “To Do” list. A military operation to capture Kony will require the consent of at least three countries. If you think this deserves a high-level meeting at the United Nations, fix yourself a hot toddy and go to bed. If you’re pretty sure everyone will agree with whatever you decide, continue on!

You’re out to arrest a wanted war criminal—who would disagree with such a military operation? Certainly not another wanted war criminal like President Omar al-Bashir. Of Sudan. Who the ICC would like to arrest for war crimes. In Darfur. Where Kony and the LRA might be. If you realize the err of your ways, take a shot of Jaeger and grab the nearest Gerard Prunier book.

If you think the only way to capture Kony and his lieutenants is by deploying United States Special Operations forces, congratulations! You’re Kenneth Roth, the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch!

And you’ve just started a messy, messy war in central Africa.

To paraphrase counter-terror expert Daveed Gartenstein-Ross: there’s obviously a lot that needs doing with regard to the LRA, but it isn’t obvious how to do what needs doing.

Unless you’re Roth who thinks it’s very obvious:

Yet as Barack Obama recognized in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, “Force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it was in the Balkans.”

Obama needs to put this principle into practice, and there is no better case for the humanitarian use of force than the urgent need to arrest Joseph Kony, the ruthless leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), and protect the civilians who are his prey.

…Uganda lacks the special forces, expert intelligence, and rapid-deployment capacity needed to stamp out this enemy.

In May, Obama signed a bill committing the United States to help arrest Kony and his commanders and protect the affected population. Now it is high time to act. Arresting Kony would reaffirm that mass murder cannot be committed with impunity. And it would show that, despite the difficulties in Iraq and Afghanistan, the humanitarian use of force remains a live option at the Obama White House.

Quite a few smarter people already beat me to the main point: sending U.S. Special Operations forces to arrest Kony is a bad idea, “off base,” “a recipe for disaster,” “an October Fools’ Day joke,” “the worst idea on the internet today.”

Seay points out the logistical difficulties the terrain poses, Albon finds little justification for putting U.S. forces and civilians at risk, Kate and Amanda note the diplomatic obstacles to deployment, and Exum reminds us how well our other hunt for a couple of terrorist leaders is going on the AfPak border.

All good points. Some other smart people at Resolve responded in defense of Roth. There’s a wide gap in interpretations, though, in that Resolve doesn’t read Roth as calling for U.S. Special Forces. Instead, Resolve reads Roth as calling for a more nuanced response to the LRA a la their report and recommendations from April.

I don’t disagree with a lot of what Resolve has written in their report.

I disagree that an international military force would be more effective than a regional one. The expeditionary nature of the operation for an international force—rather than a regional force that has operated in these areas before—would demand a lot more time and investment than watching an episode of “The Amazing Race.”

In defending an apprehension operation using international special forces, Paul Ronan at Resolve writes:

In fact, operations targeting critical vulnerabilities of rebel groups—for example, the LRA’s concentrated command structure—can be an integral part of broader strategies to improve civilian protection efforts. Effective operations to apprehend Kony and senior LRA commanders, alongside strengthened efforts to protect civilians and encourage defections from the LRA, represent the best hope for putting a permanent end to the rebel group’s offensive capacity and the threat it poses to civilians in the region.

Going after the command elements of the LRA with an international force would look a lot like Afghanistan circa 2003 through last month. It would be messy. It would be unsuccessful. Kony is an excellent strategist and has 25 years experience hiding in the bush. When he’s approached, he disappears. When he’s threatened, he attacks civilian populations.

“Broader strategies to improve civilian protection efforts” should be the focus. Why? Because in counterinsurgencies, “protecting the population… is doable, even though destroying the enemy is not,” writes David Kilcullen in the aptly titled Counterinsurgency.

It’s then not surprising that 150 pages later, Kilcullen says development wonks and defense wonks need to start talking to each other more often. Development people have good ideas about how to empower local populations. How to, if you will, “protect civilians.” Defense people, like, say, Andrew Exum, have good ideas about what proposed military expeditions are bad ideas.

Roth’s “Plan B” is a bad, bad idea. Good ideas? Ensuring more effective and sustainable deployments of existing military forces in LRA-affected areas, building the capacity of civilians to protect themselves and their communities, and integrating robust civilian protection strategies into all efforts to apprehend senior LRA commanders.

Those are, by the way, from Resolve’s April report making recommendations to President Obama. Let’s call it “Plan A.”

Hat tip to Starbuck, the Vader apologist—yes, that Vader, the one who caused millions of voices to suddenly cry out in terror and then suddenly silenced them—for this post on host nation legitimacy which reminded me about the two best pages in Counterinsurgency.

So Say We All?

P.S. These 1300 words were just an excuse to post that picture.

If so, I implore you to hit the back button. Pretend this post never happened. It’s okay because you already know everything I’m going to talk about. You know that over a billion people go without clean water. You know how essential water is to human life. You know that as water becomes scarcer, the idea of an international water war becomes likelier. Come back in a few days, I’ll have something new, astute, and worthy of our shared intelligence.

The rest of you—we need to talk.

Okay. Are they gone?

Today is Change.org’s Blog Action Day 2010. Thus, today a lot of blogs are talking about water. Why? “It’s an environmental issue, an animal welfare issue, a sustainability issue. Water is a global issue, deserving a global conversation,” says Change.org.

So let’s talk water. But let’s talk water and celebrities. Let’s talk nearly naked celebrities covered in water.

(Consider none of this safe for work.)

I want you to learn something, though. I can’t just go handing out pictures of half-naked celebrities all willy-nilly. You click on the correct answer to my questions, I’ll reward you. I need to have some semblance of substance. Water is a serious issue, after all.

1. You’re wearing a shirt. Ryan Reynolds is not. That t-shirt you’re wearing took liters and liters of clean water to produce. You monster. Take off your shirt! How many liters of water is Ryan saving by not wearing a shirt?
a. 938 liters b. 1,514 liters c. 2,200 liters d. 6,386 liters

2. I am a vegetarian. Angelina Jolie is not. This clearly makes me an infinitely better humanitarian than Angelina. You may call me a carrot killer, but my vegetarianism is also conserving water. How many liters of clean water does it take to produce one hamburger?
a. 6 liters b. 12 liters c. 18 liters d. 24 liters

3. On television, Shemar Moore profiles serial killers. Unsafe water isn’t a serial killer, it’s a mass murderer. How many children under the age of five die every week because their water is unsanitary?
a. 25,000 b. 38,000 c. 56,000 d. 120,000

4. Everybody poops. Even Megan Fox. Where does all of our excrement go? Some of it ends up in the ocean. Where people swim. In bikinis. I’m just saying. How many tons of human waste are dumped into water sources every day?
a. 700,000 tons b. 1.5 million tons c. 2 million tons d. 3 million tons

5. Proper sanitation is important. That’s why Alexander Skarsgard enjoys a nice, long soak in the bathtub. Unfortunately, not everyone has access to the same gothic facilities (and adorable waitresses) as our vampiric friend. How many people worldwide lack access to toilets?
a. 435 million b. 950 million c. 1.3 billion d. 2.5 billion

6. In the future, San Francisco will be better known as the capitol of the United Federation of Planets than for the Haight-Ashbury. There will still be hippies. Bottled water, at least, will be a thing of the past. Today, though, how many bottles of water does the average person—like, say, Zoe Saldana—drink per year?
a. 130 bottles b. 200 bottles c. 365 bottles d. 400 bottles

Pretty and pretty disturbing, right? Something as vital to sustaining life as water, something many of us take for granted, is a rare commodity for over a billion people. Without it, bodies suffer, livelihoods suffer, and the environment suffers. Clean water isn’t just an element that our body needs, it’s an element the earth needs.

Much like Milla Jovovich.

When other countries and other people have elements we need but don’t have, there’s usually only one way we humans solve that problem. Over at UN Dispatch, Alanna Shaikh says, “So far, we haven’t seen a international water war. We’ve been able to solve water conflicts through economic and diplomatic solutions.”

That doesn’t mean we’re in the clear. Shaikh continues:

Water for hydropower is one of the drivers of the Kashmir conflict, and it’s not the only water conflict dividing India and Pakistan. Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam are in constant, fraught negotiation over the Mekong River. Water scarcity exacerbated the violence in Darfur and the Rwandan genocide. Egypt and Sudan could break into a shooting war any time now over the waters of the Nile.

Water is a major factor in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and it’s driving Middle East tension in other countries. Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine fight over the Jordan River, while Turkey, Syria, and Iraq contend for the Tigris and the Euphrates.

International water disputes start between communities. Providing clean water to individuals and families will defuse the potential for conflict and competition over scarce water resources.

I’m not talking about shipping in bottles of water. Organizations like Oxfam America specialize in providing communities with sustainable water and sanitation solutions. Others, like Greenpeace, advocate for cleaner oceans and safer water sources. Check out Change.org’s partner organizations to see what other organizations are doing.

Think of Megan Fox. Think of her swimming in a sea of filth because we couldn’t take a moment of time to think about water. To think about its significance. Don’t let tragedy strike. Don’t take our celebrities’ bikinis away.

Senator Tom Coburn really grinds my gears. And not in any good or dirty way you might want to take that.

He really pisses me off.

Worse for Senator Coburn, he also pisses off Jon Stewart. To wit:

Like a Senator on a Friday, the embedded video refuses to work. Click here for more funny.

For those of you living copyright protected, bandwidth limited lives in far-flung, authoritarian strongholds like Vancouver and Camp Phoenix outside Kabul, Stewart starts with:

Nine months ago, Haiti was struck by a massive earthquake. America quickly promised Haiti three things: $1.15 billion in aid, Sean Penn, and Wyclef Jean. Well, good news! Two of those three came through because apparently only one of those options can die in the Senate.

You see, Senator Coburn put a hold on the bill that would have authorized Congress to send $1.15 billion dollars in aid to Haiti for relief and recovery efforts. That’s right, in our vibrant and coherent democracy, the whims of one man from Oklahoma can prevent $1.15 billion from going to life-saving efforts in Haiti because he’s worried $5 million of that—less than one half of one percent—will waste taxpayer money on a redundant coordination office. As if coordinating $1.15 billion dollars in aid might not need some redundancy.

There’s a reason the clip from The Daily Show is called “Tom Coburn: International Asshole of Mystery.”

His hold on the bill is endangering lives. Why use a hold, you ask? Here’s something boring from a Congressional Research Service report.

Today, holds are often used to stall action on legislation or nominations in order to extract concessions from other Senators or the Administration. They are also employed to “take hostages.” Senators may delay bills or nominations, which they do not oppose, so they might gain political or procedural leverage to achieve other extraneous objectives.

Would that have been more exciting if I told you CRS reports are technically secret and not meant for the public’s eye? Go ahead, read it again. I’ll wait.

Okay, so maybe it’s still not exciting, but hopefully by your second reading, you’re at least outraged—you’re pissed off, your gears, they are ground—because now you know a hold is less a moral stand against waste and more a political tool. Senator Coburn just punted $1.15 billion for Haiti like, well, okay, there aren’t any Hall of Fame punters to whom to compare his useless but well-honed punting skills. Let’s just agree that Coburn is a punter, a cad, a real git. (Watch more “Doctor Who,” is all I can say if your British slang needs an update.)

There is some good news. Just because Coburn has a hold on the bill doesn’t mean the bill is dead.

There is some bad news. No one seems to care.

Yeah, you care, you’re outraged, but where’s the rest of the outrage? Where are the advocacy groups? Where are the celebrities who purport to care about Haiti and Haiti’s future?

Oh.

They’re raising over $500,000 for one orphanage. By auctioning off Tweets.

By this point, I have a Pavlovian response to the word “orphanage” such that I immediately reach for an alcoholic beverage and a keyboard at which to write a ranting post about Misha Collins. True story.

Directly funding orphanages instead of empowering whole communities creates an imbalance which can lead to families sending their kids to orphanages. Voila, more orphans! Don’t directly fund orphanages.

No one listens. Eva Longoria and a cadre of A-list to D-list celebrities auctioned off Twitter follows, mentions, replies, and retweets all to benefit an orphanage to be built by A Home in Haiti. This building-an-orphanage thing is a change in direction for the organization. Previously, they had been raising money to send camping tents to Haiti as shelter for those left homeless by the earthquake.

Guess what?

Since the earthquake on Jan. 12, humanitarian experts have discouraged the distribution and donation of tents. They are expensive to buy and to transport. They take up more space than a tarp, and ultimately, they can’t withstand the weather. Despite this prediction, many charities, particularly those in the United States, persisted in their appeals for tents.

So A Home in Haiti doesn’t really have a history of listening. Well, okay. I mean, the result of their work could speak for itself. So:

[A Home in Haiti] brought 8,000 tents to Haiti, sending their final shipment this week. Though the charity encourages Haitian recipients to add tarps to their tents, it also has done “very little” monitoring and has no staff in the country.

So they have no way of knowing what the results of their project are because they’re doing no monitoring and no evaluations. On the plus side, they’re not monitoring or evaluating their project so they won’t have to report if and when it fails! Ah, the perfect system: accountability to no one!

Where is the outrage? Where are the celebrities using their voices to demand the United States fulfills its pledge to Haiti? $1.15 billion would go a lot farther and help a lot more Haitians than $500,000 for one orphanage will.

It would take a celebrity just about as much effort to Tweet the number of the Senate switchboard or Senator Coburn’s office as it would for them to auction themselves off on eBay for A Home in Haiti, too.

When Lady Gaga did that very thing in an effort to get “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repealed, she had Senators scrambling. Her Little Monsters were terrorizing interns and staff assistants throughout the glass hallways of the Hart building and Senators had to respond. Unfortunately, the repeal failed, but unfortunately, we also live in a country where teenagers bully their LGBT peers to their literal deaths.

Aid to Haiti is not “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” For one, no one has to fill out a survey about what they would do if they had to shower with known Haitians. We integrated the military in the 1950s. Haiti is not a wedge issue and Senator Coburn shouldn’t be allowed to make it one.

An outpouring of outrage is needed. Advocacy is needed. It’s not impossible to get Tom Coburn to say yes, to drop his hold. You don’t even need celebrities. Earlier this year, all it took was 50 activists with Resolve Uganda sitting outside Coburn’s office in Oklahoma for 11 straight days. And that’s dedication, staying in Oklahoma for 11 days.

Then, as now, Coburn was holding up legislation, a bill that would help northern Uganda recover from years of conflict and support the rehabilitation of former child soldiers. (No, there really are no redeeming qualities about Tom Coburn.) Here is how Resolve explains how they succeeded:

After two press conferences, over 10 appearances on the local news, and numerous outreach efforts into the community, Senator Coburn finally agreed to a personal phone call to members of the group in which he pledged his support for the legislation and announced his intention to accept a compromise.

So it’s not impossible.

How many of Misha Collins’ minions live in Oklahoma? How many would be willing to heed the instructions of their Overlord and call their Senator, demand he drop his hold? Demand that Congress fulfill its pledge to Haiti? He already raised $27,000 for his orphanages, he can spare a Tweet for $1.15 billion. How many of Lady Gaga’s Little Monsters are willing to act? Enough to scare Coburn out of his hold-induced power trip.

Just as there is a funding gap in Haiti, there is an outrage gap and it could end up costing us more than $1.15 billion. At the UN Dispatch, Penelope reminds us:

An investment in infrastructure development and reconstruction today might stave off the kind of political turmoil that has compelled the United States to deploy its military to Haiti three times in the last 15 years. It is way cheaper to pay organizations like CHF to hire Haitians to clear the streets than it is to send in the Marines.

Haiti’s recovery will be long and costly and yet donors are turning away from Haiti. The United States is turning away from Haiti. And, god help us, the celebrities are turning away from Haiti. Wyclef isn’t even running for President anymore. Sean Penn is off filming a movie somewhere. Okay, so maybe those are good things.

There is a serious housing crisis in Haiti. Over one million people need shelter; something more than a camping tent. Rubble still needs to be cleared. Schools need to reopen. $1.15 billion won’t solve all of Haiti’s problems, but it would be a good start. All it takes is some outrage. This is, I think, the kind of advocacy best suited to celebrities. There is a clear target, Senator Coburn, and a clear ask, drop the hold. The goal is simple.

Senator Tom Coburn’s office in Washington, DC, can be reached at 202-224-5754.