I was fortunate enough this past year to report from five continents, something of a personal milestone for me. The work began in Paris and continued throughout Africa, including several months in the Democratic Republic of Congo which left me distressed at the plight of the civilians there and the international community's apparent inability or unwillingness to end their suffering. It continued with a return to Central America, where I was left charmed by Nicaragua, though dismayed at its political situation, and found Guatemala, that most evocative of Latin American countries, seemingly drowning in an ocean of blood and a hail of bullets. The results of my investigation into the causes of the latter will appear in the Winter 2008 edition of the World Policy Journal, published by the World Policy Institute in New York City.
Though such events do not leave one overly optimistic for the future, there was one notable cause for celebration this year: The election of Illinois Senator Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States, the first African-American to hold that post. Obama’s election resulted in scenes of jubilation in the United States and beyond, and served as a powerful "answer," in Obama's words, to "anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy." After the eight disastrous years of the administration of George W. Bush, it is my hope that Obama lives up to the slogan that he used throughout his campaign, change we can believe in. The United States and the world at large certainly needs it.
Based in Australia for the next few months, where the affects of climate change are increasingly present, I hope that my travels in the coming year will enable me to report on a more humane, more just and more responsive world, where that which unites us as humanity proves stronger than that which divides us, and we prove ever less susceptible to those who would exploit such divisions.
What follows is my entire oeuvre of reportage from the year 2008. Hopefully it will be of some interest, and the stories of those contained within will hold some resonance.
Much love,
MD
The Cuba problem: A review of The Cuba Wars: Fidel Castro, the United States and the Next Revolution by Daniel P. Erikson for the Miami Herald (7 December 2008)
Trial of Muslims grips Australians for the Washington Times (30 November 2008)
ECONOMY: EU Involvement in DRC Mining Project Draws Protest for the Inter Press Service (28 October 2008)
Mixed signals: What is an investor to make of Africa? for Foreign Direct Investment (7 October 2008)
Garífunas Confront Their Own Decline for Tierramérica (6 October 2008)
Nicaragua’s poisonous political brew for Folha de Sao Paulo (31 August 2008)
"Haiti Is Going From Catastrophe to Catastrophe": Michael Deibert interviews Chavannes Jean-Baptiste for the Inter Press Service (28 September 2008)
Congo: Between Hope and Despair for the World Policy Journal (Summer 2008)
Distilling the ties between Bacardi and Cuba: A review of Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba by Tom Gjelten for the Miami Herald (14 September 2008)
TRADE-AFRICA: New Technology to Sever Timber's Link to Conflict? for the Inter Press Service (8 August 2008)
CULTURE-ETHIOPIA: Debate Swirls Around Fate of Holy Sites for the Inter Press Service (3 July 2008)
A Glittering Demon: Mining, Poverty and Politics in the Democratic Republic of Congo for CorpWatch (26 June 2008)
POLITICS: Is Democracy Dangerous in Multi-ethnic Societies? An interview with Frances Stewart, Oxford University Professor of Development Economics for the Inter Press Service (26 June 2008)
POLITICS-ETHIOPIA : A Tangled Political Landscape Raises Questions About African Ally of the U.S. for the Inter Press Service (21 June 2008)
Ethiopia's Urban Poor Cannot Afford To Eat: Interview with Abera Tola, Director of Oxfam's Horn of Africa regional office for the Inter Press Service (21 June 200*)
TRADE-AFRICA: EU Seeks to Subdue Competitive China for the Inter Press Service (15 May 2008)
RIGHTS: In South Africa, Zimbabwean Refugees Find Sanctuary and Contempt for the Inter Press Service (4 May 2008)
"We Mustn't Think as South Africans That We Have Won the Day": An interview with Bishop Paul Verryn for the Inter Press Service (4 May 2008)
DRC: With Rebel Leader's Indictment, a Tentative Step to Accountability for the Inter Press Service (1 May 2008)
HEALTH-DRC: Water Everywhere, But Is It Safe To Drink? for the Inter Press Service (24 April 2008)
POLITICS-DRC: Cautious Calm Settles Over War-scarred Ituri Region for the Inter Press Service (17 April 2008)
Why I am voting for Barack Obama for Michael Deibert, Writer (15 April 2008)
Extraction from chaos: Embattled by war and corruption but laden with large deposits of diamonds and copper, DR Congo is largely avoided by investors. Might that change? for Foreign Direct Investment (10 April 2008)
The Fruits of Reform: Mozambique, whose history has been blighted by a long liberation struggle and years of civil war, is starting to reap the benefits of recent macroeconomic reforms for Foreign Direct Investment (10 April 2008)
Failure To Renew DRC Expert's Mandate Draws Criticism for the Inter Press Service (1 April 2008)
POLITICS-DRC: In a Governmental Vacuum, Yearnings for a Lost Empire for the Inter Press Service (21 March 2008)
A Review of Peter Hallward’s Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment for Michael Deibert, Writer (16 March 2008)
A Humanitarian Disaster Unfolds in Eastern DRC for the Inter Press Service (1 March 2008)
Fidel's view: A Review of Fidel Castro: My Life by Fidel Castro and Ignacio Ramonet for the Miami Herald (27 January 2008)
Showing posts with label Ethiopia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ethiopia. Show all posts
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Debate Swirls Around Fate of Holy Sites
CULTURE-ETHIOPIA:
Debate Swirls Around Fate of Holy Sites
By Michael Deibert
Inter Press Service
LALIBELA, Jul 3, 2008 (IPS) - Carved into the rugged mountains of northern Ethiopia, the eleven churches of Lalibela have for centuries remained among the most stunning visions a traveler can encounter.
Hewn out of the rock amidst a stark landscape, the structures represent perhaps the greatest flowering of the devotional creativity associated with Ethiopia's Orthodox Christian church, one of the oldest Christian denominations in the world.
Gebre Mesqel Lalibela, the ruler of the Zagwe dynasty, commenced construction of the churches following an extended period living in Jerusalem. Following Jerusalem's capture by Muslim forces in 1187, a dream told him to recreate the splendors of that city in Ethiopia. In a tribute to Lalibela's vision and the toil of an unknown number of labourers, the location has lost none of its power to awe even 800 years after its creation.
Among the houses of worship, one finds the Church of the Virgin Mary - the first church to be carved -- decorated with lush carpets and tapestries depicting angels, cherubs and seraphim. Prayer rooms hold crosses made out of gold, copper and iron whose intricate designs are fraught with religious symbolism; religious drums known as keberos rest against stone walls.
The Church of St. George, the last to be constructed, is carved in the shape of a giant cross four-stories high, seeking to symbolically represent Noah's Ark. Its spiritual power is such that the walls surrounding it are full of the bodies of pilgrims who, for hundreds of years, have chosen the church as the place to draw their final breath and were laid to rest in crevices in the structure. Lalibela himself is said to have been buried in the Bete Golgotha cathedral.
A complex engineering feat by any measure, the Lalibela churches also possess a sophisticated drainage system that assured that though the churches are cut deep into the surrounding rock, no water remains inside the complex.
Interrupting this architectural and religious splendour however, is a garish steel structure looming over five of the churches that could not look more ill-at-ease in its antique surroundings. Beneath the edifice, hovering like a spaceship making a tentative landing, a sign proclaims that the European Development Fund of the European Union is financing the project, which is being carried out be a team of architects from Italy.
Read the full article here.
Debate Swirls Around Fate of Holy Sites
By Michael Deibert
Inter Press Service
LALIBELA, Jul 3, 2008 (IPS) - Carved into the rugged mountains of northern Ethiopia, the eleven churches of Lalibela have for centuries remained among the most stunning visions a traveler can encounter.
Hewn out of the rock amidst a stark landscape, the structures represent perhaps the greatest flowering of the devotional creativity associated with Ethiopia's Orthodox Christian church, one of the oldest Christian denominations in the world.
Gebre Mesqel Lalibela, the ruler of the Zagwe dynasty, commenced construction of the churches following an extended period living in Jerusalem. Following Jerusalem's capture by Muslim forces in 1187, a dream told him to recreate the splendors of that city in Ethiopia. In a tribute to Lalibela's vision and the toil of an unknown number of labourers, the location has lost none of its power to awe even 800 years after its creation.
Among the houses of worship, one finds the Church of the Virgin Mary - the first church to be carved -- decorated with lush carpets and tapestries depicting angels, cherubs and seraphim. Prayer rooms hold crosses made out of gold, copper and iron whose intricate designs are fraught with religious symbolism; religious drums known as keberos rest against stone walls.
The Church of St. George, the last to be constructed, is carved in the shape of a giant cross four-stories high, seeking to symbolically represent Noah's Ark. Its spiritual power is such that the walls surrounding it are full of the bodies of pilgrims who, for hundreds of years, have chosen the church as the place to draw their final breath and were laid to rest in crevices in the structure. Lalibela himself is said to have been buried in the Bete Golgotha cathedral.
A complex engineering feat by any measure, the Lalibela churches also possess a sophisticated drainage system that assured that though the churches are cut deep into the surrounding rock, no water remains inside the complex.
Interrupting this architectural and religious splendour however, is a garish steel structure looming over five of the churches that could not look more ill-at-ease in its antique surroundings. Beneath the edifice, hovering like a spaceship making a tentative landing, a sign proclaims that the European Development Fund of the European Union is financing the project, which is being carried out be a team of architects from Italy.
Read the full article here.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
POLITICS-ETHIOPIA : A Tangled Political Landscape Raises Questions About African Ally of the U.S.
POLITICS-ETHIOPIA : A Tangled Political Landscape Raises Questions About African Ally of the U.S.
By Michael Deibert
Inter Press Service
ADDIS ABABA, Jun 21, 2008 (IPS) - When it was announced last month that the ruling party of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi had swept local polls in this vast Horn of Africa nation, few expressed surprise.
Zenawi's Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition was declared by the country's national electoral board to have won 559 districts in the kebele and woreda divisions of local government and all but one of 39 parliament seats contested in the by-election. Out of a total of 26 million registered voters, the electoral board claimed that 24.5 million, or 93 percent, voted.
April's ballot was the first chance for the EPRDF to flex the muscles of its electoral machinery since general elections in May 2005. Though early returns that year suggested an electoral triumph for the country's two main opposition parties, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) and the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces (UEDF). Prime Minister Zenawi declared a state of emergency before final results were announced. In the unrest that followed, hundreds of people were arrested and at least 200 killed by Ethiopian security forces. Official results -- not released until September -- gave 59 percent of the total vote to the EPRDF.
Cries of fraud stained the reputation of one of Washington's closest African allies. to whom, according to U.S. defense department figures, the Bush administration sold $6 million worth of weapons to in 2006, more armaments than went to any other African country. The weapons are used in part to aid Ethiopia in its war against Islamic militants based in neighboring Somalia, which Ethiopia invaded in late 2006 and where it remains involved in active combat to this day.
Read the full article here.
By Michael Deibert
Inter Press Service
ADDIS ABABA, Jun 21, 2008 (IPS) - When it was announced last month that the ruling party of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi had swept local polls in this vast Horn of Africa nation, few expressed surprise.
Zenawi's Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition was declared by the country's national electoral board to have won 559 districts in the kebele and woreda divisions of local government and all but one of 39 parliament seats contested in the by-election. Out of a total of 26 million registered voters, the electoral board claimed that 24.5 million, or 93 percent, voted.
April's ballot was the first chance for the EPRDF to flex the muscles of its electoral machinery since general elections in May 2005. Though early returns that year suggested an electoral triumph for the country's two main opposition parties, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) and the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces (UEDF). Prime Minister Zenawi declared a state of emergency before final results were announced. In the unrest that followed, hundreds of people were arrested and at least 200 killed by Ethiopian security forces. Official results -- not released until September -- gave 59 percent of the total vote to the EPRDF.
Cries of fraud stained the reputation of one of Washington's closest African allies. to whom, according to U.S. defense department figures, the Bush administration sold $6 million worth of weapons to in 2006, more armaments than went to any other African country. The weapons are used in part to aid Ethiopia in its war against Islamic militants based in neighboring Somalia, which Ethiopia invaded in late 2006 and where it remains involved in active combat to this day.
Read the full article here.
Q&A: Ethiopia's Urban Poor Cannot Afford To Eat
Q&A: Ethiopia's Urban Poor Cannot Afford To Eat
Interview with Abera Tola, Director of Oxfam's Horn of Africa regional office
Inter Press Service
ADDIS ABABA, Jun 21, 2008 (IPS) - Ethiopia, a nation of 80 million people, has been the site of famine and drought throughout its tumultuous history. Arising from a myriad of causes and often shepherded along by political instability, the country's 1984-85 famine, for example, left over a million dead and served as the impetus for the fund-raising concerts of Live Aid in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Today, Ethiopia once again stands at the brink of a substantial food crisis, with the Word Food Program currently estimating that, of Ethiopia's 80 million citizens, 3.4 million will need emergency food relief from July to September. This is in addition to the 8 million currently receiving assistance. UNICEF has asserted that the country's food shortage this year is the most severe since 2003, when droughts forced 13.2 million people to seek emergency food aid.
IPS correspondent Michael Deibert sat down in Addis Ababa with Abera Tola, Director of the Horn of Africa Regional Office of Oxfam America, to hear his insights as to Ethiopia's latest food crisis.
Read the full article here.
Interview with Abera Tola, Director of Oxfam's Horn of Africa regional office
Inter Press Service
ADDIS ABABA, Jun 21, 2008 (IPS) - Ethiopia, a nation of 80 million people, has been the site of famine and drought throughout its tumultuous history. Arising from a myriad of causes and often shepherded along by political instability, the country's 1984-85 famine, for example, left over a million dead and served as the impetus for the fund-raising concerts of Live Aid in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Today, Ethiopia once again stands at the brink of a substantial food crisis, with the Word Food Program currently estimating that, of Ethiopia's 80 million citizens, 3.4 million will need emergency food relief from July to September. This is in addition to the 8 million currently receiving assistance. UNICEF has asserted that the country's food shortage this year is the most severe since 2003, when droughts forced 13.2 million people to seek emergency food aid.
IPS correspondent Michael Deibert sat down in Addis Ababa with Abera Tola, Director of the Horn of Africa Regional Office of Oxfam America, to hear his insights as to Ethiopia's latest food crisis.
Read the full article here.
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