Wednesday, January 30, 2008
A new Lebanon-based blog of note
My friend and fellow journalist Irina Prentice has a new blog written from her home in Beirut featuring her articles and observations about life and politics in Lebanon since her arrival in January 2005. It’s definitely worth a read to get some on-the-ground, unfiltered perspective on the complex political situation in the country, so you go have a look at it here.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Obama's election night party in Columbia, South Carolina.
There are about 300 million reasons why I like this picture.
Fidel's view
My review of Fidel Castro: My Life: A Spoken Autobiography, as told by Fidel Castro to Ignacio Ramonet, is the lead book review in today's Miami Herald. As Herald links tend to become defunct after a few week's time, following tradition, I am reposting the review in its entirety here. To read the original review, please click on the link below.
MD
AUTOBIOGRAPHY | FIDEL CASTRO: MY LIFE
Fidel's view
The lack of hard-nosed questioning by the interviewer disappoints, but the drama of the dictator's life remains.
Posted on Sun, Jan. 27, 2008
BY MICHAEL DEIBERT
The Miami Herald
(Read the original review here)
MD
AUTOBIOGRAPHY | FIDEL CASTRO: MY LIFE
Fidel's view
The lack of hard-nosed questioning by the interviewer disappoints, but the drama of the dictator's life remains.
Posted on Sun, Jan. 27, 2008
BY MICHAEL DEIBERT
The Miami Herald
(Read the original review here)
FIDEL CASTRO: MY LIFE: A Spoken Autobiography.
Fidel Castro and Ignacio Ramonet. Andrew Hurley, translator. Scribner. 724 pages. $40.
Deeply flawed but still fascinating, Cuban leader Fidel Castro's sprawling attempt at autobiography -- as told to Ignacio Ramonet, the editor of the left-wing French monthly Le Monde diplomatique -- represents perhaps the most sustained document yet extant of Castro's vision of himself and the nation he has ruled for almost 50 years.
The product of more than 100 hours of interviews conducted in Havana between 2003 and 2005, the book opens with an introduction by Ramonet that lets the reader know that any semblance of a vigorous interrogation in the book's 700-plus page Q&A format will not be in the offing.
Cuba is ''part of the vast offensive against neoliberalism and globalization'' in which ''the vindication of the figure of Fidel Castro (has) never been so strong,'' Ramonet writes before announcing that, at any rate, he never intended to be too confrontational in the questions put to his subject.
Fortunately, with a life rich in drama and with a subject as skilled in the nuances of sustained public speaking as Castro, there is still plenty here of interest.
Castro's accounts of his incipient rebel movement's disastrous attack on the Moncada Barracks in July 1953 (an attempt to oust the dictator Fulgencio Batista that resulted in the deaths of around 70 of the 160 men fighting and in Castro's imprisonment) and his later account of the guerrilla war against Batista's troops in the mountains of eastern Cuba make for riveting reading. Likewise, Castro's long ruminations on the person and legacy of the Argentine revolutionary Ernesto ''Che'' Guevara (whom Castro describes as having had ``a presence so strong, so powerful, so intense that you can't manage to conceive that [he is] dead''), and his dealings with the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis, add a welcome new personal dimension to already well-documented historical events.
In Castro's view of the world, whether admitting to supplying weapons to Algerian independence leader Ahmed Ben Bella's FLN in 1961 or to El Salvador's FMLN rebels in the 1970s, or in his fits of pique against the Soviet Union (''They negotiated everything without consulting us,'' he says bitterly and probably accurately), he speaks of a vision of Cuba as a global player in some of the great political struggles of the second half of the 20th century. Clearly, Castro seems to be saying, Cuba had an historical role to play in global liberation movements from Africa to Latin America, and the country under his leadership didn't shrink from its responsibility.
In the face of his garrulous subject, though, Ramonet appears to have a hard-time prioritizing different aspects of the book's narrative. Guevara's death during a guerrilla campaign in Bolivia warrants an entire chapter, but then again, Ramonet appears to think, so does former U.S. President Jimmy Carter's largely inconsequential 2002 visit to the island.
Diffuseness is not the book's Achilles heel, however, which instead comes from the over-awed nature of the questioner himself. Castro has a rather prickly attitude toward criticism, so it's likely that, with a less star-struck interviewer, this book might not exist at all. But it is hard not to be bothered by Ramonet's credulity, which often veers dangerously close to hagiography.
Castro's claims regarding Cuba's human rights record go unchallenged by undue mention of his government's systematic imprisonment of such writers as Reinaldo Arenas and Raúl Rivero, or human rights activists such as Oscar Elías Biscet (currently serving a 25-year sentence in a Cuban jail). Castro's explanation of the 1989 show trial and execution on drug trafficking and treason charges of Arnaldo Ochoa, a general whose independence and popularity were said to be viewed as a threat by the Cuban leader, rings brutally hollow, and Ramonet blithely allows the opportunity for a more rigorous examination of one of the most shadowy elements of recent Cuban history to slip away.
Similarly, some of Castro's more outlandish statements, such as that Batista's government (however wretched and violent) was guilty of ''genocide'' and that the United States supplied nuclear weapons to the apartheid regime in South Africa -- a charge for which no evidence at all exists -- are unquestioningly accepted. While lauding the country's progress in health care and education, Ramonet appears supremely unbothered that Castro leads a tightly controlled single-party state where public criticism of the government and its leader are strictly prohibido.
One concludes that, with more ambition and more objectivity, and by supplementing his unparalleled access to Cuba's leader with interviews from other sources pivotal in his history, personal and political, Ramonet could have well come up with a touchstone work of biography. Unfortunately, though, with its uncritical tone and unquestioning, doctrinaire approach, Fidel Castro, while interesting for the window it gives us into the thoughts and analysis of one of the 20th century's most important and iconic political figures, leaves the opportunity for the definitive portrait of this complex world figure yet to be written.
Michael Deibert is the author of Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
45,000 people dying a month in Congo, says report
As the government of President Joseph Kabila squabbled with representatives of renegade general Laurent Nkunda’s Congrès national pour la défense du peuple (CNDP) and local Mai-Mai militias over the terms of a peace deal in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s war-wracked east, a new report sheds light on the human cost of this largely-ignored conflict.
The report, by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and Australia's Burnet Institute, asserts that mortality rates remain “unchanged” since the group’s last survey in 2004 and that even as “mortality rates are significantly higher in the volatile eastern provinces than in the west of the country… mortality rates have risen significantly in the center of DR Congo.”
The study goes on to estimate that 5.4 million excess deaths have occurred between August 1998 and April 2007, and an estimated 2.1 million of those deaths have occurred since the formal end of war in 2002. That comes out to 45,000 people dying every month, largely from preventable and treatable conditions such as malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition. That is a monthly death rate nearly 60 percent higher than the average for the rest of sub-Saharan Africa.
Since the 1994 Rwandan genocide helped tip central Africa into perpetual war, a little-reported humanitarian disaster has unfolded, month by month, year by year, with the most vulnerable of Congo’s populace - especially women and children - being subject to unimaginable cruelties by various Congolese political factions as well as the cross-border ambitions of Rwanda, Angola and other countries. As multinationals line up to exploit Congo’s rich mineral resources, the political problems that have helped cause these problems still have yet to be addressed in a substantive way by the international community, despite the presence of nearly 17,000 United Nations troops in the country.
I depart for Congo in little more than a week, and over the next several months, will do my best to cover the struggles of the people there in the face of such violence and hardship. Hopefully, in some way, these reports will help turn the focus of international discourse to this long-suffering part of the world.
Peux ce que veux.
The report, by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and Australia's Burnet Institute, asserts that mortality rates remain “unchanged” since the group’s last survey in 2004 and that even as “mortality rates are significantly higher in the volatile eastern provinces than in the west of the country… mortality rates have risen significantly in the center of DR Congo.”
The study goes on to estimate that 5.4 million excess deaths have occurred between August 1998 and April 2007, and an estimated 2.1 million of those deaths have occurred since the formal end of war in 2002. That comes out to 45,000 people dying every month, largely from preventable and treatable conditions such as malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition. That is a monthly death rate nearly 60 percent higher than the average for the rest of sub-Saharan Africa.
Since the 1994 Rwandan genocide helped tip central Africa into perpetual war, a little-reported humanitarian disaster has unfolded, month by month, year by year, with the most vulnerable of Congo’s populace - especially women and children - being subject to unimaginable cruelties by various Congolese political factions as well as the cross-border ambitions of Rwanda, Angola and other countries. As multinationals line up to exploit Congo’s rich mineral resources, the political problems that have helped cause these problems still have yet to be addressed in a substantive way by the international community, despite the presence of nearly 17,000 United Nations troops in the country.
I depart for Congo in little more than a week, and over the next several months, will do my best to cover the struggles of the people there in the face of such violence and hardship. Hopefully, in some way, these reports will help turn the focus of international discourse to this long-suffering part of the world.
Peux ce que veux.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Reflections on Côte d’Ivoire’s economic outlook
My five-part series on Côte d’Ivoire’s economic prospects was published by the Financial Times’ Foreign Direct Investment magazine at the end of last year and recently became available online.
The report include a pair of overviews of the country’s current political-economic condition, which can be read here and here, an interview with Chairman and CEO of the Village de Technologies de l’Information et de la Biotechnologie Vincent Gadou Kragbe, an examination of other commodities looming on Côte d’Ivoire’s horizon beyond cocoa and a look at the country’s vibrant telecoms industry.
The report include a pair of overviews of the country’s current political-economic condition, which can be read here and here, an interview with Chairman and CEO of the Village de Technologies de l’Information et de la Biotechnologie Vincent Gadou Kragbe, an examination of other commodities looming on Côte d’Ivoire’s horizon beyond cocoa and a look at the country’s vibrant telecoms industry.
Remembering Andy Palacio
In the fall of 2003, I lived in Guatemala for a time while covering that country’s presidential election. My work reporting on the electoral contest between former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt and his opponent Óscar Berger, and the legacy of the country’s terrible 36-year civil war, took me to many parts of this often almost surreally beautiful place.
In Guatemala City, I spoke with people like Jose Ruben Zamora, editor of Guatemala's El Periodico newspaper, and listened to his struggle trying to function as an independent, investigative journalist in a country where clandestine forces attacked him physically and regularly threatened him with death. I traveled through the breathtaking but tragic Triángulo Ixil, the homeland of the Ixil Maya nestled in the Cuchumatanes mountains, interviewing Indians and religious officials about their experiences during the war and during the then-current rule of Rios Montt’s political party, the Frente Republicano Guatemalteco (FRG). I ventured into the lush jungle of the Petén to interview former members of the Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil (PAC) that Rios Montt had set up in the 1980s as a kind of civilian paramilitary against the Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres (EGP) rebels, as if the military’s scorched-earth attacks against Mayan civilians weren’t enough.
But I also saw the pleasant side of Guatemala, and one of the most lovely parts began with a voyage down the Rio Dulce on a small boat, fecund vegetation hanging from the opposite banks, on my way to a small town named Livingston on the Bahía de Amatique. Quite different from the indigenous and mestizo culture that dominated elsewhere in Guatemala, Livingston was in fact home to the Garifuna, the descendants of Amerindian tribes and African slaves who live scattered in coastal settlements in Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and Nicaragua, speaking an Arawakan language as well as an Spanish and often Caribbean-accented English.
When my boat pulled up to the jetty, a dreadlocked old man threw a rope around it and said “You don’t have to worry no more. You’re in Africa now.” I spent quite a few days in Livingston, decompressing from several stressful weeks reporting, and I got to see a bit of the Garifuna and their culture, which often included pumping Garifuna-language music blaring out of the speakers at hotels and restaurants. It was a constant echo in the background when I would stop to chat with the matrons sipping lemonade at the Café Bar Ubougarifuna.
Many Garifuna worry that their culture - the unique language, the music, the history, the very way of life - is disappearing amidst the influence of other Caribbean styles and, particularly, North American hip-hop culture.
No one in recent years did more to promote Garifuna culture than the songwriter, singer and guitarist Andy Palacio. Born in a small coastal village in Belize in 1960, Palacio defiantly sang the vast majority of his songs in Garifuna, and utilized distinctive Garifuna rhythms in his compositions. Named a UNESCO Artist for Peace last year, he also released an outstanding album, called Wátina (which means “I called out” in Garifuna) in 2007. Buoyant, uplifting, yet at the same time, thoughtful, music. Palacio’s recent success has helped spur a revival of interest in preserving Garifuna culture, not least of all among the Garifuna themselves.
Andy Palacio passed away, far too young, of a massive stroke and heart attack on Saturday evening. An eloquent spokesman and passionate artistic champion for an often-marginalized people, Andy Palacio’s loss will be deeply felt, but all his work at promoting and helping to preserve Garifuna culture will not be forgotten, not least of all by this journalist. When my African sojourn finishes this fall, it may very well be time to visit with the Garifuna again, and listen closely to what they and their music have to tell the world.
Ayo, Andy Palacio.
In Guatemala City, I spoke with people like Jose Ruben Zamora, editor of Guatemala's El Periodico newspaper, and listened to his struggle trying to function as an independent, investigative journalist in a country where clandestine forces attacked him physically and regularly threatened him with death. I traveled through the breathtaking but tragic Triángulo Ixil, the homeland of the Ixil Maya nestled in the Cuchumatanes mountains, interviewing Indians and religious officials about their experiences during the war and during the then-current rule of Rios Montt’s political party, the Frente Republicano Guatemalteco (FRG). I ventured into the lush jungle of the Petén to interview former members of the Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil (PAC) that Rios Montt had set up in the 1980s as a kind of civilian paramilitary against the Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres (EGP) rebels, as if the military’s scorched-earth attacks against Mayan civilians weren’t enough.
But I also saw the pleasant side of Guatemala, and one of the most lovely parts began with a voyage down the Rio Dulce on a small boat, fecund vegetation hanging from the opposite banks, on my way to a small town named Livingston on the Bahía de Amatique. Quite different from the indigenous and mestizo culture that dominated elsewhere in Guatemala, Livingston was in fact home to the Garifuna, the descendants of Amerindian tribes and African slaves who live scattered in coastal settlements in Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and Nicaragua, speaking an Arawakan language as well as an Spanish and often Caribbean-accented English.
When my boat pulled up to the jetty, a dreadlocked old man threw a rope around it and said “You don’t have to worry no more. You’re in Africa now.” I spent quite a few days in Livingston, decompressing from several stressful weeks reporting, and I got to see a bit of the Garifuna and their culture, which often included pumping Garifuna-language music blaring out of the speakers at hotels and restaurants. It was a constant echo in the background when I would stop to chat with the matrons sipping lemonade at the Café Bar Ubougarifuna.
Many Garifuna worry that their culture - the unique language, the music, the history, the very way of life - is disappearing amidst the influence of other Caribbean styles and, particularly, North American hip-hop culture.
No one in recent years did more to promote Garifuna culture than the songwriter, singer and guitarist Andy Palacio. Born in a small coastal village in Belize in 1960, Palacio defiantly sang the vast majority of his songs in Garifuna, and utilized distinctive Garifuna rhythms in his compositions. Named a UNESCO Artist for Peace last year, he also released an outstanding album, called Wátina (which means “I called out” in Garifuna) in 2007. Buoyant, uplifting, yet at the same time, thoughtful, music. Palacio’s recent success has helped spur a revival of interest in preserving Garifuna culture, not least of all among the Garifuna themselves.
Andy Palacio passed away, far too young, of a massive stroke and heart attack on Saturday evening. An eloquent spokesman and passionate artistic champion for an often-marginalized people, Andy Palacio’s loss will be deeply felt, but all his work at promoting and helping to preserve Garifuna culture will not be forgotten, not least of all by this journalist. When my African sojourn finishes this fall, it may very well be time to visit with the Garifuna again, and listen closely to what they and their music have to tell the world.
Ayo, Andy Palacio.
Friday, January 18, 2008
The case of Altaf Ahmad Khan
It is easy to destroy someone’s life and reputation. It is much harder to give such things back.
On my daily perusal of news this morning, the sky still hovering black over Paris, I came across the story of Altaf Ahmad Khan. On 7 January, the Times of India reported the following:
In what could be a pointer to the terror build-up in the state, Kerala cops on Saturday night arrested a Srinagar resident for his alleged links with Pakistan-based Hizb-ul Mujahideen. Altaf Ahmad Khan — wanted in several terror cases in Jammu & Kashmir — was held from the tourist town of Kumili in Idukki district where he was working in a shop, police said.
Terrible, the casual reader might say, that Kashmiri militant groups who have committed such acts as the December 2000 attack on New Delhi’s Red Fort , in which three people died, and the 2001 suicide attack on India’s parliament which left 14 dead, would set up shop in the Indian state known for its tropical Malabar Coast, one of the country’s main tourist attractions. In a follow-up article, the Times of India announced that “security in Kerala assembly was stepped up on Friday following an anonymous letter threatening to blow up the building to avenge the arrest of a Hizbul Mujahideen (HuM) terrorist in Idukki district,” going on later in the article to note that Altaf Ahmad Khan was “a Srinagar resident with alleged links to Pakistan-based HuM.”
All of this would be all well and good except for the fact that, as of yet, Altaf Ahmad Khan is apparently not, in fact, wanted for any terrorist activity at all in Jammu and Kashmir. This is a fact that the Times of India apparently feels no need to correct even given the attestation by Senior Superintendent of Police in Srinagar, S A Mujtabah, to the Greater Kashmir website, that “We have written to Kerala police that Altaf Ahmad Khan is not required by Jammu and Kashmir police and is not involved in any activity.” In fact, more than any great coup on the part of Kerala’s law enforcement agencies, the arrest of Altaf Ahmad Khan appears to be little more than the latest indication of a pattern of harassment of Kashmiri merchants in the state, a pattern I recall continuing from at least this time last year when I was living in Bombay and read about Kashmiri immigrants being harassed as “terrorists.”
I have hoped for a greater engagement with the complex political and ethno-religious dimensions of modern India by the international media, many of whose members seem as if they can barely be bothered to move from their desks in New Delhi. Having reported from places like Haiti over the years, where I have seen both mainstream journalist and shrieking activist types fall victim to the same newcomer arrogance, I have never thought that repeating one’s own opinions, without vigorously challenging them with boots-on-the-ground, enterprising journalism, is any way to go about what I still believe can be a fairly important and influential profession.
But I must say, particularly as I read this news about the casual defamation of an (apparently) blameless man, it did nothing to dissuade me of the notion that the local Indian press also has done a pretty underwhelming job of covering the country and its political and social developments, particularly in its constant uncritical repetition of the Indian government line when it comes to writing about "militants" in Kashmir. As I wrote in my article The Dead and the Missing in Kashmir, published in the Spring 2007 issue of the World Policy Journal and the product of many hours interviewing around the state, the Indian government's portrayal of the complex, violent conflict there has been so awash in lies and deception over the years that, in my view, it represents a terrible failure on the part of many sectors of the Indian press that they remain so silent on it.
Much of the pedestrian spleen-venting that does make into the (particularly) U.S. press as commentary on coverage of India (such as Samanth Subramanian's lazy, haphazard article in the recent New Republic) hardly helps matters, in my view, and is one of the reasons that the stereotypical images of India continue to dominate as opposed to measured, critical pieces on such subjects as the reelection of the xenophobic demagogue Narendra Modi as chief minister of Gujarat or the murderous actions of the government of West Bengal against the farmers of Nandigram, to say nothing of the country’s dazzling modern culture and intellectual life, which goes far beyond simply Bollywood to include thinkers running the gamut from Bangladeshi émigré writer Taslima Nasreen to Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen and beyond.
There are notable exceptions, of course, journalists who do a far better job writing about India’s complexity than most. I unfailingly learn things from reading local commentators like my friend Dilip D'Souza and Humra Quraishi, as well as nominally "foreign" journalists such as the New York Times’ Somini Sengupta, whose reporting has increasingly impressed me over the last year. Asia Society fellow Mira Kamdar, whose book, Planet India: How the Fastest-Growing Democracy is Transforming the World, I reviewed in the Miami Herald last year, also does a good job about educating folks on the nuances of India’s current milieu in two languages (English and French).
Even given these exceptions, though, as someone who consumes literature on India despite my geographic distance and recently finished reading Sanjib Baruah's excellent India Against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality, I wish that that some of the nuance that I find in academic texts such as Baruah's would filter down to the local and international media coverage of India
All journalists, local and foreign, can do better in covering the nuances of modern-day India, and I think that beginning to take the reputations of even humble shopkeepers like Altaf Ahmad Khan as seriously as we do those of politicians and titans of industry would be a good way to start. It is the least we owe to the people who entrust us to tell their stories.
On my daily perusal of news this morning, the sky still hovering black over Paris, I came across the story of Altaf Ahmad Khan. On 7 January, the Times of India reported the following:
In what could be a pointer to the terror build-up in the state, Kerala cops on Saturday night arrested a Srinagar resident for his alleged links with Pakistan-based Hizb-ul Mujahideen. Altaf Ahmad Khan — wanted in several terror cases in Jammu & Kashmir — was held from the tourist town of Kumili in Idukki district where he was working in a shop, police said.
Terrible, the casual reader might say, that Kashmiri militant groups who have committed such acts as the December 2000 attack on New Delhi’s Red Fort , in which three people died, and the 2001 suicide attack on India’s parliament which left 14 dead, would set up shop in the Indian state known for its tropical Malabar Coast, one of the country’s main tourist attractions. In a follow-up article, the Times of India announced that “security in Kerala assembly was stepped up on Friday following an anonymous letter threatening to blow up the building to avenge the arrest of a Hizbul Mujahideen (HuM) terrorist in Idukki district,” going on later in the article to note that Altaf Ahmad Khan was “a Srinagar resident with alleged links to Pakistan-based HuM.”
All of this would be all well and good except for the fact that, as of yet, Altaf Ahmad Khan is apparently not, in fact, wanted for any terrorist activity at all in Jammu and Kashmir. This is a fact that the Times of India apparently feels no need to correct even given the attestation by Senior Superintendent of Police in Srinagar, S A Mujtabah, to the Greater Kashmir website, that “We have written to Kerala police that Altaf Ahmad Khan is not required by Jammu and Kashmir police and is not involved in any activity.” In fact, more than any great coup on the part of Kerala’s law enforcement agencies, the arrest of Altaf Ahmad Khan appears to be little more than the latest indication of a pattern of harassment of Kashmiri merchants in the state, a pattern I recall continuing from at least this time last year when I was living in Bombay and read about Kashmiri immigrants being harassed as “terrorists.”
I have hoped for a greater engagement with the complex political and ethno-religious dimensions of modern India by the international media, many of whose members seem as if they can barely be bothered to move from their desks in New Delhi. Having reported from places like Haiti over the years, where I have seen both mainstream journalist and shrieking activist types fall victim to the same newcomer arrogance, I have never thought that repeating one’s own opinions, without vigorously challenging them with boots-on-the-ground, enterprising journalism, is any way to go about what I still believe can be a fairly important and influential profession.
But I must say, particularly as I read this news about the casual defamation of an (apparently) blameless man, it did nothing to dissuade me of the notion that the local Indian press also has done a pretty underwhelming job of covering the country and its political and social developments, particularly in its constant uncritical repetition of the Indian government line when it comes to writing about "militants" in Kashmir. As I wrote in my article The Dead and the Missing in Kashmir, published in the Spring 2007 issue of the World Policy Journal and the product of many hours interviewing around the state, the Indian government's portrayal of the complex, violent conflict there has been so awash in lies and deception over the years that, in my view, it represents a terrible failure on the part of many sectors of the Indian press that they remain so silent on it.
Much of the pedestrian spleen-venting that does make into the (particularly) U.S. press as commentary on coverage of India (such as Samanth Subramanian's lazy, haphazard article in the recent New Republic) hardly helps matters, in my view, and is one of the reasons that the stereotypical images of India continue to dominate as opposed to measured, critical pieces on such subjects as the reelection of the xenophobic demagogue Narendra Modi as chief minister of Gujarat or the murderous actions of the government of West Bengal against the farmers of Nandigram, to say nothing of the country’s dazzling modern culture and intellectual life, which goes far beyond simply Bollywood to include thinkers running the gamut from Bangladeshi émigré writer Taslima Nasreen to Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen and beyond.
There are notable exceptions, of course, journalists who do a far better job writing about India’s complexity than most. I unfailingly learn things from reading local commentators like my friend Dilip D'Souza and Humra Quraishi, as well as nominally "foreign" journalists such as the New York Times’ Somini Sengupta, whose reporting has increasingly impressed me over the last year. Asia Society fellow Mira Kamdar, whose book, Planet India: How the Fastest-Growing Democracy is Transforming the World, I reviewed in the Miami Herald last year, also does a good job about educating folks on the nuances of India’s current milieu in two languages (English and French).
Even given these exceptions, though, as someone who consumes literature on India despite my geographic distance and recently finished reading Sanjib Baruah's excellent India Against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality, I wish that that some of the nuance that I find in academic texts such as Baruah's would filter down to the local and international media coverage of India
All journalists, local and foreign, can do better in covering the nuances of modern-day India, and I think that beginning to take the reputations of even humble shopkeepers like Altaf Ahmad Khan as seriously as we do those of politicians and titans of industry would be a good way to start. It is the least we owe to the people who entrust us to tell their stories.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
How Cigna HealthCare killed Nataline Sarkisyan
I had a very pleasurable break visiting family and friends in the United States for Christmas and then visiting an old friend in Roma for New Year’s. Back in Paris, awaiting my eventual departure for Congo, the skies roll across the city, briefly blue in the morning and then various shades of gray for the rest of the day. 2008 stretches out before us all, with presidential elections this fall capping off what I hope will be a gentler, more humane and healthier year, with greater freedom married to a greater sense of local and global community than we saw in the one that just passed.
It is fitting I suppose, to this hoped-for sense of shared community, that my first post of the year pay tribute to the 150-odd people, including nurses, students and relatives, who rallied in front of the headquarters of Cigna HealthCare in Glendale, California last month, to demand that the health insurance company reverse its refusal to pay for an emergency liver transplant for 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan . The California teenager, who wanted to be a fashion designer and had battled leukemia for three years, was fully insured by Cigna when her brother became a donor for a bone marrow transplant that doctors hoped would save her life. When complications arose after the transplant and Sarkisyan’s liver failed, doctors recommended the emergency transplant procedure
Cigna, which expects to earn an income of around U $1.2bn next year, thought otherwise, though, and refused to pay for the liver transplant on December 11th, on the grounds that Sarkisyan’s health plan "does not cover experimental, investigational and unproven services.”
The doctors at UCLA's Pediatric Liver Transplant Program and elsewhere at the hospital called CIGNA begging them to reconsider their decision but, to their own eternal shame, if true, would not perform the procedure unless the Sarkisyan family placed an immediate down payment of US$75,000 which it was, needless to say, beyond their power to do.
Faced with over a hundred protesters on its front law, CIGNA finally reversed itself, but only after Sarkisyan had lapsed into a coma while her fate was decided. CIGNA’s momentary drift into magnanimity came too late, though, and Nataline Sarkisyan died on December 20th, the liver transplant having never been performed.
As one of the nearly 50 million Americans without health insurance, I know that this is the nightmare that many Americans dread every day. But even for the Americans, like Nataline Sarkisyan's family, who are lucky enough to have health insurance, what is the value of that insurance when it lets you die in a hospital while denying you a life-saving procedure? What kind of country would allow such a system to flourish in the first place? How do CIGNA executives like CEO H. Edward Hanway and Executive Vice President Michael W. Bell not throw themselves from the windows of their lavishly appointed offices when they realize what they have overseen?
In this election year, perhaps the American public’s patience with the malevolent joke our health care system has reached its limit. The three major Democratic candidates - Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton and John Edwards - all have substantial plans to revise the nation’s avaricious, inefficient health care industry, although none go as far towards the French model of low-cost (though paid through taxes), high-quality, universal health care as I would like them to.
In the meantime, Nataline Sarkisyan has been laid to rest and the family’s attorney, Mark Geragos, has announced his intention to press the Los Angeles district attorney to press murder or manslaughter charges against Cigna, on the grounds that the firm "maliciously killed" Nataline Sarkisyan with its unconscionable refusal to provide her with treatment. I hope that he succeeds in getting the courts to act and hold the executives of CIGNA responsible for its murderously adversarial and exploitative relationship with its customers (behaviour which, among health insurance companies, is the rule rather than the exception). And I hope that someone is elected in the United States this fall with the courage to implement the radical change that such a faltering system demands.
Here we come, 2008. Deye mon gen mon.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Controversy Follows Gaddafi's Rapprochement With Europe
Controversy Follows Gaddafi's Rapprochement With Europe
By Michael Deibert
Inter Press Service
PARIS, Dec 31, 2007 (IPS) - The re-emergence of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi into the diplomatic good graces of Europe has met with a decidedly mixed response, even in some of the governments ostensibly courting his favour.
Gaddafi's official visits to France and Spain earlier this month, the first in decades, come on the heels of an attendance at the European Union-Africa summit in Lisbon, also in December, and have lead to furious debates and soul searching about his past actions and the EU's much-professed commitment to human rights.
Read the full article here.
By Michael Deibert
Inter Press Service
PARIS, Dec 31, 2007 (IPS) - The re-emergence of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi into the diplomatic good graces of Europe has met with a decidedly mixed response, even in some of the governments ostensibly courting his favour.
Gaddafi's official visits to France and Spain earlier this month, the first in decades, come on the heels of an attendance at the European Union-Africa summit in Lisbon, also in December, and have lead to furious debates and soul searching about his past actions and the EU's much-professed commitment to human rights.
Read the full article here.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
2007: A Reporter's Notebook of the Year Gone By
This past year was a fairly interesting one for me, from a reporting perspective and otherwise, and saw me traveling to six countries on three continents.
Beginning in the slums of Bombay and the hills and valleys of Kashmir, continuing on through electoral politics and civil unrest in France and extending to the cocoa fields and rebel roadblocks of Côte d'Ivoire, it was a period during which I felt, as acutely as ever, the importance of the role that a journalist serves as witness and recorder of the struggles of the disenfranchised and how, in our ever-more fraught and divided world, that role of illuminating our common humanity as people - despite transitory national, linguistic, religious, racial or economic differences - is as important now as it has ever been.
What follows is a review of nearly all the articles I've published this year, spanning a number of subjects across the globe.
Here's to hoping for a gentler, more humane and healthier 2008, with greater freedom married to a greater sense of local and global community for all concerned.
Much love,
MD
Côte d'Ivoire: A Call for Solidarity in Resolving Fate of Missing Reporter for the Inter Press Service (December 14, 2007)
The Bitter Taste of Cocoa in Côte d'Ivoire for the Inter Press Service (December 3, 2007)
Interview with France Kassing on Davis, California’s KDVS radio (December 3, 2007)
Blood Diamonds No Longer Congo-Brazzaville's Best Friend for the Inter Press Service (November 30, 2007)
France's Troubled Suburbs Erupt Again for the Inter Press Service (November 29, 2007)
Update on Riots in France on WNYC's The Leonard Lopate Show (November 29, 2007)
Riots Rage in Paris Suburb After Police Collision, an interview with Robert Siegel on National Public Radio's All Things Considered (November 27, 2007)
In Ivory Coast, a Fragile Peace Is Framed by Promises Unfulfilled for the Washington Post (November 16, 2007)
On Lyrical Terrorists for Countercurrents (November 10, 2007)
Project May Boost Biofuels in East Africa for the Inter Press Service (October 30, 2007)
"We Don't Believe Gbagbo Will Organise Transparent Elections" An Interview with Alassane Ouattara for the Inter Press Service (October 23, 2007)
Puma pounces for Foreign Direct Investment magazine (October 03, 2007)
Burma: Criticism of Total Operations Grows for the Inter Press Service (October 4, 2007)
North Africa a Launch Pad For Auto Markets for the Inter Press Service (September 25, 2007)
'Silicon Ribbon' Pops Up Across the Maghreb for the Inter Press Service (September 29, 2007)
Trade-Africa: Improved Regional Integration Still Key For Success for the Inter Press Service (September 25, 2007)
France: Two Years After Riots, Little Has Changed for the Inter Press Service (September 24, 2007)
Sarkozy Hedges Free Market With Government Control for the Inter Press Service (September 15, 2007)
France: New Employment Law Sets Stage for Showdown for the Inter Press Service (September 3, 2007)
African Countries Stand Up to EU for the Inter Press Servce (August 28, 2007)
L'Affaire Libyenne Shows a New Policy for the Inter Press Service (August 27, 2007)
France: Differences Arise Over Education Law for the Inter Press Service (August 27, 2007)
In Defense Of Taslima Nasreen for Countercurrents (August 11, 2007)
France: Sarkozy Charges Ahead for the Inter Press Service (July 30, 2007)
Russian Roulette: A Review of Anna Politkovskaya's A Russian Diary: A Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption, and Death in Putin's Russia for the Miami Herald (July 29, 2007)
For Jazz Musicians, a Paris Tradition Continues for the Inter Press Service (July 25, 2007)
Hope, Concern Greet China's Growing Prominence in Africa for the Inter Press Service (July 23, 2007)
Following Oil Boom, Biofuel Eyed In Africa for the Inter Press Service (July 13, 2007)
France: Diaspora Trade Strengthens Communities for the Inter Press Service (June 29, 2007)
G8: Few Concrete Steps Proposed for Darfur for the Inter Press Service (June 27, 2007)
New Plans for Niger Basin for the Inter Press Service (Jun 26, 2007)
France: Immigrants Uneasy over Proposed Policies for the Inter Press Service (June 19, 2007)
Haiti-Dominican Republic: Film on Plantations Spurs Backlash for the Inter Press Service (June 4, 2007)
Trade-Africa: Europe Looks to Encourage Diaspora Investment for the Inter Press Service (May 31, 2007)
West Africa: Currency Integration Still A Few Years Off for the Inter Press Service (May 30, 2007)
An Appeal to Decency on behalf of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent: An address delivered to the Journalists & Editors Workshop on Latin America and the Caribbean delivered at the Biscayne Bay Marriott Hotel in Miami, Florida (May 12, 2007)
Underreported: An Update on Kashmir on WNYC's The Leonard Lopate Show (May 03, 2007)
The Dead and the Missing in Kashmir for The World Policy Journal (Spring 2007)
Politics-Sudan: "Do Something Now, Because People Are Dying Every Day" for the Inter Press Service (April 30, 2007)
Haiti: A Literary Icon for "Les Damnés de la Terre" for the Inter Press Service (April 11, 2007)
Haiti/Democratic Republic: Exhibit Reveals a Bitter Harvest for the Inter Press Service (May 13, 2007)
Kashmiri Separatist Seeks End To Armed Struggle for the Washington Times (February 25 , 2007)
Haiti : The terrible truth about Martissant for AlterPresse (February 13, 2007)
The Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM) calls for action on the Jean-Rémy Badio killing press release (January 30, 2007)
Haiti’s Mythical Man: The Novelist Madison Smartt Bell Humanizes the Person Behind the Legend of Haiti’s Independence for the Miami Herald (January 21, 2007)
Politics-US: Ailing Health System Defies Easy Fix for the Inter Press Service (January 3, 2007)
Beginning in the slums of Bombay and the hills and valleys of Kashmir, continuing on through electoral politics and civil unrest in France and extending to the cocoa fields and rebel roadblocks of Côte d'Ivoire, it was a period during which I felt, as acutely as ever, the importance of the role that a journalist serves as witness and recorder of the struggles of the disenfranchised and how, in our ever-more fraught and divided world, that role of illuminating our common humanity as people - despite transitory national, linguistic, religious, racial or economic differences - is as important now as it has ever been.
What follows is a review of nearly all the articles I've published this year, spanning a number of subjects across the globe.
Here's to hoping for a gentler, more humane and healthier 2008, with greater freedom married to a greater sense of local and global community for all concerned.
Much love,
MD
Côte d'Ivoire: A Call for Solidarity in Resolving Fate of Missing Reporter for the Inter Press Service (December 14, 2007)
The Bitter Taste of Cocoa in Côte d'Ivoire for the Inter Press Service (December 3, 2007)
Interview with France Kassing on Davis, California’s KDVS radio (December 3, 2007)
Blood Diamonds No Longer Congo-Brazzaville's Best Friend for the Inter Press Service (November 30, 2007)
France's Troubled Suburbs Erupt Again for the Inter Press Service (November 29, 2007)
Update on Riots in France on WNYC's The Leonard Lopate Show (November 29, 2007)
Riots Rage in Paris Suburb After Police Collision, an interview with Robert Siegel on National Public Radio's All Things Considered (November 27, 2007)
In Ivory Coast, a Fragile Peace Is Framed by Promises Unfulfilled for the Washington Post (November 16, 2007)
On Lyrical Terrorists for Countercurrents (November 10, 2007)
Project May Boost Biofuels in East Africa for the Inter Press Service (October 30, 2007)
"We Don't Believe Gbagbo Will Organise Transparent Elections" An Interview with Alassane Ouattara for the Inter Press Service (October 23, 2007)
Puma pounces for Foreign Direct Investment magazine (October 03, 2007)
Burma: Criticism of Total Operations Grows for the Inter Press Service (October 4, 2007)
North Africa a Launch Pad For Auto Markets for the Inter Press Service (September 25, 2007)
'Silicon Ribbon' Pops Up Across the Maghreb for the Inter Press Service (September 29, 2007)
Trade-Africa: Improved Regional Integration Still Key For Success for the Inter Press Service (September 25, 2007)
France: Two Years After Riots, Little Has Changed for the Inter Press Service (September 24, 2007)
Sarkozy Hedges Free Market With Government Control for the Inter Press Service (September 15, 2007)
France: New Employment Law Sets Stage for Showdown for the Inter Press Service (September 3, 2007)
African Countries Stand Up to EU for the Inter Press Servce (August 28, 2007)
L'Affaire Libyenne Shows a New Policy for the Inter Press Service (August 27, 2007)
France: Differences Arise Over Education Law for the Inter Press Service (August 27, 2007)
In Defense Of Taslima Nasreen for Countercurrents (August 11, 2007)
France: Sarkozy Charges Ahead for the Inter Press Service (July 30, 2007)
Russian Roulette: A Review of Anna Politkovskaya's A Russian Diary: A Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption, and Death in Putin's Russia for the Miami Herald (July 29, 2007)
For Jazz Musicians, a Paris Tradition Continues for the Inter Press Service (July 25, 2007)
Hope, Concern Greet China's Growing Prominence in Africa for the Inter Press Service (July 23, 2007)
Following Oil Boom, Biofuel Eyed In Africa for the Inter Press Service (July 13, 2007)
France: Diaspora Trade Strengthens Communities for the Inter Press Service (June 29, 2007)
G8: Few Concrete Steps Proposed for Darfur for the Inter Press Service (June 27, 2007)
New Plans for Niger Basin for the Inter Press Service (Jun 26, 2007)
France: Immigrants Uneasy over Proposed Policies for the Inter Press Service (June 19, 2007)
Haiti-Dominican Republic: Film on Plantations Spurs Backlash for the Inter Press Service (June 4, 2007)
Trade-Africa: Europe Looks to Encourage Diaspora Investment for the Inter Press Service (May 31, 2007)
West Africa: Currency Integration Still A Few Years Off for the Inter Press Service (May 30, 2007)
An Appeal to Decency on behalf of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent: An address delivered to the Journalists & Editors Workshop on Latin America and the Caribbean delivered at the Biscayne Bay Marriott Hotel in Miami, Florida (May 12, 2007)
Underreported: An Update on Kashmir on WNYC's The Leonard Lopate Show (May 03, 2007)
The Dead and the Missing in Kashmir for The World Policy Journal (Spring 2007)
Politics-Sudan: "Do Something Now, Because People Are Dying Every Day" for the Inter Press Service (April 30, 2007)
Haiti: A Literary Icon for "Les Damnés de la Terre" for the Inter Press Service (April 11, 2007)
Haiti/Democratic Republic: Exhibit Reveals a Bitter Harvest for the Inter Press Service (May 13, 2007)
Kashmiri Separatist Seeks End To Armed Struggle for the Washington Times (February 25 , 2007)
Haiti : The terrible truth about Martissant for AlterPresse (February 13, 2007)
The Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM) calls for action on the Jean-Rémy Badio killing press release (January 30, 2007)
Haiti’s Mythical Man: The Novelist Madison Smartt Bell Humanizes the Person Behind the Legend of Haiti’s Independence for the Miami Herald (January 21, 2007)
Politics-US: Ailing Health System Defies Easy Fix for the Inter Press Service (January 3, 2007)
Friday, December 14, 2007
COTE D'IVOIRE: A Call for Solidarity in Resolving Fate of Missing Reporter
COTE D'IVOIRE: A Call for Solidarity in Resolving Fate of Missing Reporter
By Michael Deibert
Inter Press Service
PARIS, Dec 14, 2007 (IPS) - Early one afternoon nearly four years ago, journalist Guy-André Kieffer was thrust into a waiting car by several armed men in a supermarket parking lot in Abidjan. He has not been seen since.
Following the reporter's disappearance in Côte d'Ivoire's economic capital in April 2004, however, a tangled and murky picture has emerged of the forces in the country which Kieffer had been covering, forces that apparently had good reason to want to silence the troublesome gadfly.
Born in France, Kieffer obtained dual French-Canadian citizenship during a marriage to a Canadian. He spent the better part of two decades as a journalist for the French business publication 'La Tribune' before starting to report from Africa on a freelance basis for a variety of publications. These included the French-published 'La Lettre du Continent' (Letter From the Continent).
Despite the gradual, often deceptive cooling down of the civil wars that tore West Africa asunder during the early part of the decade, Kieffer -- 54 at the time of his disappearance -- still found plenty of corruption, nepotism and violence to write about while working in the region. These problems were notably evident in Côte d'Ivoire.
Read the full article here.
By Michael Deibert
Inter Press Service
PARIS, Dec 14, 2007 (IPS) - Early one afternoon nearly four years ago, journalist Guy-André Kieffer was thrust into a waiting car by several armed men in a supermarket parking lot in Abidjan. He has not been seen since.
Following the reporter's disappearance in Côte d'Ivoire's economic capital in April 2004, however, a tangled and murky picture has emerged of the forces in the country which Kieffer had been covering, forces that apparently had good reason to want to silence the troublesome gadfly.
Born in France, Kieffer obtained dual French-Canadian citizenship during a marriage to a Canadian. He spent the better part of two decades as a journalist for the French business publication 'La Tribune' before starting to report from Africa on a freelance basis for a variety of publications. These included the French-published 'La Lettre du Continent' (Letter From the Continent).
Despite the gradual, often deceptive cooling down of the civil wars that tore West Africa asunder during the early part of the decade, Kieffer -- 54 at the time of his disappearance -- still found plenty of corruption, nepotism and violence to write about while working in the region. These problems were notably evident in Côte d'Ivoire.
Read the full article here.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
W’s Christmas present to American children: Vetoing health insurance
As one of the nearly 50 million Americans without health insurance, my feelings about the American healthcare system - where private health insurance companies and physicians reap enormous profits by charging exorbitant premiums, denying care to the sick and artificially inflating the price of drugs - could not be more vehement. The American healthcare system is utterly, completely broken and even some of the more well-known proposals for rectifying it (such as that of U.S. presidential candidate and New York senator Hillary Clinton) strike me as woefully feeble in terms of addressing what is a terrible crisis for so many Americans. Speaking as an American who has spent much of his life living abroad, I can say with some authority that I don’t think I have ever seen a more predatory, exploitative approach to healthcare than I have seen in the United States. When taken in tandem with a consumer culture than encourages people to eat unhealthy foods packed with unnecessary sugars and hormones, the approach seems doubly cynical.
Along with the Bush administration’s irresponsible, negligent approach to climate change (which has lead the European Union to threaten to “boycott U.S.-led climate talks next month unless Washington accepts a range of numbers for negotiating deep reductions of global-warming emissions”), the healthcare debacle has, in the last week, thrown in the starkest relief possible to me how terribly out of synch the U.S., for so long a leader on so many issues, is becoming with the rest of the world.
This week, as the United States enters its holiday season, President Bush marked the occasion by vetoing an extension of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which attempts to provides health insurance to children from families earning too much to qualify for Medicaid (a very low threshold indeed) but unable to afford private insurance. The SCHIP proposal sought to increase federal funding for the program by $35 billion over five years, adding around 4 million people, partially funded by a 61-cent rise on a package of cigarettes. To give you an example of the context of the price tag, the cost of the war in Iraq, by end of fiscal year 2007, was at least $456 billion, to say nothing of the lives of nearly 4,000 American service personnel and those of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Bush vetoed a similar bill in October and, in July, was quoted by The New York Times as saying that the bill was a step toward “government-run health care for every American,” "
You mean like every other country in the industrialized world? As the U.S. government has taken responsibility for the post office, the police, the fire department and the national defense, so should it take responsibility for providing health care for every American. Despite the many problems I have with the French government and other aspects of society here, I think that their health system, like that of some other European countries, remains a model of a responsible state approach to taking care of its citizens well-being that the United States could learn much from.
My native country simply cannot continue being so out-of-step with the rest of the world, so easily suckered by the false piety (married to brutal cynicism) of political snake oil salesmen like Bush and company. If the Democrats had any conviction at all and took their responsibility as guardians of the constitution seriously, we would be deep in impeachment proceedings by now. But alas, they greet this, like other outrages, with the feeblest murmurs of dissent.
My fellow countrymen have been fooled and lied to for so long by their government, I wonder if they will recognize the truth when it finally comes crashing down. Starting with the ridiculous banana republic farce of the 2000 election in Florida, continuing through the illegal use of torture and detention without trials of hundreds, possibly thousands, of people, through the illegal invasion of Iraq and the naked profiteering there that the administration’s cronies engaged in, the terrible abandonment of the people of Mississippi and Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina and now continuing with the denial of basic healthcare for American citizens, in a just world Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Feith, Mr Gonzales and many more fellow travelers would at least be facing criminal and civil prosecution in the United States if not an appearance at a tribunal in the Hague.
It a strange time to be an American with an internationalist outlook on the world, proud of the open, optimistic spirit and intense creative drive of my country, but very worried about the direction that its political leaders appear intent on taking it, which seems to be straight over a cliff, ever angrier, more closed-off from the rest of the world and more authoritarian by the day. It’s still not too late to change course, but I fear that the hour is growing ever more late.
I’ll be in a better mood next post, I promise.
Along with the Bush administration’s irresponsible, negligent approach to climate change (which has lead the European Union to threaten to “boycott U.S.-led climate talks next month unless Washington accepts a range of numbers for negotiating deep reductions of global-warming emissions”), the healthcare debacle has, in the last week, thrown in the starkest relief possible to me how terribly out of synch the U.S., for so long a leader on so many issues, is becoming with the rest of the world.
This week, as the United States enters its holiday season, President Bush marked the occasion by vetoing an extension of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which attempts to provides health insurance to children from families earning too much to qualify for Medicaid (a very low threshold indeed) but unable to afford private insurance. The SCHIP proposal sought to increase federal funding for the program by $35 billion over five years, adding around 4 million people, partially funded by a 61-cent rise on a package of cigarettes. To give you an example of the context of the price tag, the cost of the war in Iraq, by end of fiscal year 2007, was at least $456 billion, to say nothing of the lives of nearly 4,000 American service personnel and those of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Bush vetoed a similar bill in October and, in July, was quoted by The New York Times as saying that the bill was a step toward “government-run health care for every American,” "
You mean like every other country in the industrialized world? As the U.S. government has taken responsibility for the post office, the police, the fire department and the national defense, so should it take responsibility for providing health care for every American. Despite the many problems I have with the French government and other aspects of society here, I think that their health system, like that of some other European countries, remains a model of a responsible state approach to taking care of its citizens well-being that the United States could learn much from.
My native country simply cannot continue being so out-of-step with the rest of the world, so easily suckered by the false piety (married to brutal cynicism) of political snake oil salesmen like Bush and company. If the Democrats had any conviction at all and took their responsibility as guardians of the constitution seriously, we would be deep in impeachment proceedings by now. But alas, they greet this, like other outrages, with the feeblest murmurs of dissent.
My fellow countrymen have been fooled and lied to for so long by their government, I wonder if they will recognize the truth when it finally comes crashing down. Starting with the ridiculous banana republic farce of the 2000 election in Florida, continuing through the illegal use of torture and detention without trials of hundreds, possibly thousands, of people, through the illegal invasion of Iraq and the naked profiteering there that the administration’s cronies engaged in, the terrible abandonment of the people of Mississippi and Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina and now continuing with the denial of basic healthcare for American citizens, in a just world Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Feith, Mr Gonzales and many more fellow travelers would at least be facing criminal and civil prosecution in the United States if not an appearance at a tribunal in the Hague.
It a strange time to be an American with an internationalist outlook on the world, proud of the open, optimistic spirit and intense creative drive of my country, but very worried about the direction that its political leaders appear intent on taking it, which seems to be straight over a cliff, ever angrier, more closed-off from the rest of the world and more authoritarian by the day. It’s still not too late to change course, but I fear that the hour is growing ever more late.
I’ll be in a better mood next post, I promise.
Monday, December 10, 2007
How different the world might have been…
...If things had turned out differently in Florida during that November seven years ago…
He referred to or quoted several major world and literary figures such as George Orwell, Ghandi, Robert Frost, and Ibsen, and gave a litany of the world's environmental problems including cities that were running out of water, wild fires and temperature extremes.
Read more about former Vice President Al Gore's acceptance of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize here.
He referred to or quoted several major world and literary figures such as George Orwell, Ghandi, Robert Frost, and Ibsen, and gave a litany of the world's environmental problems including cities that were running out of water, wild fires and temperature extremes.
Read more about former Vice President Al Gore's acceptance of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize here.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
The fields of Nandigram
I have been following with concern in recent weeks the situation in the Indian state of West Bengal. Home to the world’s longest serving democratically elected communist government - the Communist Party of India Marxist (CPIM) - the region recently saw terrible state-sponsored violence last month in the form of a raid by Communist party cadres against the village of Nandigram, which resulted in the deaths of at least six people, the raping of several women, the burning of peasant homes and the flight of thousands of villagers into exile. This appalling display came about as a direct result of the CPIM’s desire to convert the Nandigram paddy fields to a special economic zone for an Indonesian-owned petrochemical complex.
Having reported on the brutal treatment of Haiti's peasants on that country's Maribahoux plain (evicted from some of the best farmland in the nation in 2002 to make way for a free-trade zone by the ostensibly-populist government of then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide), it would seem that Nandigram would be yet another case of a self-appointed political elite professing progress on one hand while trampling on the rights of the very people - the poor- that they claim to advocate for with the other. The sympathies of thinking, democratic progressives like myself could rest nowhere else than with the villagers victimized by the CPIM government. Indeed, as my friend Dilip D'Souza pointed out in a recent blog posting, “sensible, responsible thinkers on the left are appalled by the crimes of Nandigram, exactly as sensible, responsible thinkers on the right were appalled by the crimes of Gujarat 2002.”
Such simple humanity evidently still manages to escape sector of the international left, though.
In an open letter in The Hindu portentously addressed “To Our Friends in Bengal,” a handful of Western-based “radical” intellectuals lectured, not for justice, but rather, for “reconciliation” between the victimized peasants and the CPIM government, as if victimized and victimizers were operating on a ground of moral equivalency.
“The balance of forces in the world is such that it would be impetuous to split the Left,” the letter lectured the families of the dead and the raped, and the Indian left as a whole. “We are faced with a world power that has demolished one state (Iraq) and is now threatening another (Iran). This is not the time for division when the basis of division no longer appears to exist.”
The letter’s signatories counted among their number the usual assortment of cause-du-jour affluent commentators on world affairs, all making comfortable livings for themselves adopting “radical” positions while making sure to steer well clear of the line of fire.
There was Michael Albert, the founder of the frothing internet publication ZNet. There was Tariq Ali, the lavishly wealthy political dabbler and unreadable author of bad poetry. And, of course, never one to be left out of a poorly thought-out social critique, there was Noam Chomsky, who apparently also likes to dip his toes in Indian regional politics when not waging campaigns against books he doesn’t like or lauding revisionist histories in the 1990s Balkan wars.
Again, my experience in Haiti taught me a little something about dealing with this current of thought, where “solidarity” becomes a byword for lack of transparency, lack of accountability and lack of debate about the best means to help poor people create a better life for themselves. Alas for Haiti, many of its most articulate progressive intellectuals write with proficiency only in French, thus often not being able to contribute in any expansive way to the debate of the fate of their country in the English-language media, while many genuine English-proficient progressives with knowledge of the country, through either fear of reprisal or lack of interest, remain silent. In India, however, the democratic left said “not so fast.”
Responding to Chomsky et al on the Nandigram missive, an open letter by a group of Indian progressives including Arundhati Roy, Mahashweta Devi and Sumit Sarka, patiently explained that the CPIM, in their view, “today is to stand for unbridled capitalist development, nuclear energy at the cost of both ecological concerns and mass displacement of people…and the Stalinist arrogance that the party knows what ‘the people’ need better than the people themselves.”
“Moreover” the letter went on. “The violence that has been perpetrated by CPIM cadres to browbeat the peasants into submission, including time-tested weapons like rape, demonstrate that this ‘Left’ shares little with the Left ideals that we cherish.”
The Chomsky et al signatories responded to this with another open letter, which appeared to backtrack a bit from the initial, unequivocal call for unity, but this was not quite enough for Sumit Sarkar, who, in the pages of The Guardian, took the signatories of the initial letter to task for their authors had an "ignorance of what is happening in India. They have no idea of the on-the-ground facts."
As a progressive committed to trying to create a more just, equitable, healthy and humane planet, I was heartened to see the vigorousness with which India’s progressives responded to the attempted hijacking of the dialogue on the Nandigram debate on the world stage by a powerful self-fashioned intellectual elite, epitomized by the signatories of the initial letter. With genuine solidarity with oppressed peoples, with vigorous on-the-ground investigative reporting and with a continuing engagement in bringing the voices of the disenfranchised to the attention of a world where strident currents of both the left and the right have vested economic interests in ignoring them, I believe that, in time, the peasants of Nandigram, like the peasants of Maribahoux, may at long last see justice, and a government that genuinely represents and responds to the needs of its long-suffering people.
Having reported on the brutal treatment of Haiti's peasants on that country's Maribahoux plain (evicted from some of the best farmland in the nation in 2002 to make way for a free-trade zone by the ostensibly-populist government of then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide), it would seem that Nandigram would be yet another case of a self-appointed political elite professing progress on one hand while trampling on the rights of the very people - the poor- that they claim to advocate for with the other. The sympathies of thinking, democratic progressives like myself could rest nowhere else than with the villagers victimized by the CPIM government. Indeed, as my friend Dilip D'Souza pointed out in a recent blog posting, “sensible, responsible thinkers on the left are appalled by the crimes of Nandigram, exactly as sensible, responsible thinkers on the right were appalled by the crimes of Gujarat 2002.”
Such simple humanity evidently still manages to escape sector of the international left, though.
In an open letter in The Hindu portentously addressed “To Our Friends in Bengal,” a handful of Western-based “radical” intellectuals lectured, not for justice, but rather, for “reconciliation” between the victimized peasants and the CPIM government, as if victimized and victimizers were operating on a ground of moral equivalency.
“The balance of forces in the world is such that it would be impetuous to split the Left,” the letter lectured the families of the dead and the raped, and the Indian left as a whole. “We are faced with a world power that has demolished one state (Iraq) and is now threatening another (Iran). This is not the time for division when the basis of division no longer appears to exist.”
The letter’s signatories counted among their number the usual assortment of cause-du-jour affluent commentators on world affairs, all making comfortable livings for themselves adopting “radical” positions while making sure to steer well clear of the line of fire.
There was Michael Albert, the founder of the frothing internet publication ZNet. There was Tariq Ali, the lavishly wealthy political dabbler and unreadable author of bad poetry. And, of course, never one to be left out of a poorly thought-out social critique, there was Noam Chomsky, who apparently also likes to dip his toes in Indian regional politics when not waging campaigns against books he doesn’t like or lauding revisionist histories in the 1990s Balkan wars.
Again, my experience in Haiti taught me a little something about dealing with this current of thought, where “solidarity” becomes a byword for lack of transparency, lack of accountability and lack of debate about the best means to help poor people create a better life for themselves. Alas for Haiti, many of its most articulate progressive intellectuals write with proficiency only in French, thus often not being able to contribute in any expansive way to the debate of the fate of their country in the English-language media, while many genuine English-proficient progressives with knowledge of the country, through either fear of reprisal or lack of interest, remain silent. In India, however, the democratic left said “not so fast.”
Responding to Chomsky et al on the Nandigram missive, an open letter by a group of Indian progressives including Arundhati Roy, Mahashweta Devi and Sumit Sarka, patiently explained that the CPIM, in their view, “today is to stand for unbridled capitalist development, nuclear energy at the cost of both ecological concerns and mass displacement of people…and the Stalinist arrogance that the party knows what ‘the people’ need better than the people themselves.”
“Moreover” the letter went on. “The violence that has been perpetrated by CPIM cadres to browbeat the peasants into submission, including time-tested weapons like rape, demonstrate that this ‘Left’ shares little with the Left ideals that we cherish.”
The Chomsky et al signatories responded to this with another open letter, which appeared to backtrack a bit from the initial, unequivocal call for unity, but this was not quite enough for Sumit Sarkar, who, in the pages of The Guardian, took the signatories of the initial letter to task for their authors had an "ignorance of what is happening in India. They have no idea of the on-the-ground facts."
As a progressive committed to trying to create a more just, equitable, healthy and humane planet, I was heartened to see the vigorousness with which India’s progressives responded to the attempted hijacking of the dialogue on the Nandigram debate on the world stage by a powerful self-fashioned intellectual elite, epitomized by the signatories of the initial letter. With genuine solidarity with oppressed peoples, with vigorous on-the-ground investigative reporting and with a continuing engagement in bringing the voices of the disenfranchised to the attention of a world where strident currents of both the left and the right have vested economic interests in ignoring them, I believe that, in time, the peasants of Nandigram, like the peasants of Maribahoux, may at long last see justice, and a government that genuinely represents and responds to the needs of its long-suffering people.
Saturday, December 08, 2007
A good week for democracy, a bad week for democracy and the head-in-the-sand approach to climate change
Democratic progressives were alternately heartened and chastened by developments around the world in the past week.
In Venezuela, President Hugo Chávez’s referendum that would have allowed him to run for re-election indefinitely, declare states of emergency for unlimited periods and increase the state’s already-expansive control over the country’s economy there, was narrowly defeated, 51% to 49%. Abandoning the petulant tone that had marked his public statements in recent weeks (most notably in his exchange with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero at the Ibero-American summit in Santiago, Chile last month), Mr. Chávez was extremely gracious in accepting the verdict of his country’s electorate.
Were it only true that such an example of participatory democracy had been on display in Russia, where parliamentary elections that gave a sweeping majority to political parties aligned with Russian President Valdimir Putin were characterized by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) as “not fair” and christened as an illegitimate "merging of a (Putin’s United Russia) political party and the state…clear violation of international commitments and standards.” In Chechnya, ruled by Putin’s ally Ramzan Kadyrov, the president’s party took a Soviet-style 99.2% of the vote. Russia’s liberal democratic opposition, most eloquently represented in the West by former chess champion Garry Kasparov, alternately clapped in jail, ignored on the government-controlled airwaves, forbidden from marching and all-but-bullied off the ballot itself, was left to ponder their next move.
Where was the United States government amidst all this turbulence? Telling the world that it still wasn’t ready to commit to mandatory caps to cut global-warming gases at the United Nation’s global warming conference in Bali, of course. This continued the rather less-than-visionary Bush administration approach to global warming that has resulted in my native country being the only major industrial nation to have rejected Kyoto Protocol and its modest targets for reducing damaging greenhouse gases.
Let’s hope the coming week has more stories like the first one, and fewer like the last two.
A busy week ahead, and as it’s a rainy night in Paris, so time to turn back to watching a pirated version of The Darjeeling Limited.
In Venezuela, President Hugo Chávez’s referendum that would have allowed him to run for re-election indefinitely, declare states of emergency for unlimited periods and increase the state’s already-expansive control over the country’s economy there, was narrowly defeated, 51% to 49%. Abandoning the petulant tone that had marked his public statements in recent weeks (most notably in his exchange with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero at the Ibero-American summit in Santiago, Chile last month), Mr. Chávez was extremely gracious in accepting the verdict of his country’s electorate.
Were it only true that such an example of participatory democracy had been on display in Russia, where parliamentary elections that gave a sweeping majority to political parties aligned with Russian President Valdimir Putin were characterized by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) as “not fair” and christened as an illegitimate "merging of a (Putin’s United Russia) political party and the state…clear violation of international commitments and standards.” In Chechnya, ruled by Putin’s ally Ramzan Kadyrov, the president’s party took a Soviet-style 99.2% of the vote. Russia’s liberal democratic opposition, most eloquently represented in the West by former chess champion Garry Kasparov, alternately clapped in jail, ignored on the government-controlled airwaves, forbidden from marching and all-but-bullied off the ballot itself, was left to ponder their next move.
Where was the United States government amidst all this turbulence? Telling the world that it still wasn’t ready to commit to mandatory caps to cut global-warming gases at the United Nation’s global warming conference in Bali, of course. This continued the rather less-than-visionary Bush administration approach to global warming that has resulted in my native country being the only major industrial nation to have rejected Kyoto Protocol and its modest targets for reducing damaging greenhouse gases.
Let’s hope the coming week has more stories like the first one, and fewer like the last two.
A busy week ahead, and as it’s a rainy night in Paris, so time to turn back to watching a pirated version of The Darjeeling Limited.
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Interview with KDVS
I had a fairly wide-ranging interview with France Kassing of Davis, California’s KDVS yesterday, concerning the recent Paris riots, my exposé of the cocoa industry in the Côte d'Ivoire and my view of the peace process there, some recent developments in Haiti and other topics. The interview can be listened to in its entirety here.
Monday, December 03, 2007
The Bitter Taste of Cocoa in Côte d'Ivoire
ECONOMY
The Bitter Taste of Cocoa in Côte d'Ivoire
By Michael Deibert
Inter Press Service
BINAO, Southern Côte d'Ivoire, Dec 3, 2007 (IPS) - Hacking his way through the lush forest with a machete, his rubber boots sinking into the moist earth, Lambert Kwame surveys the plot of land that his family has worked for over 30 years, harvesting cocoa.
"We know that the national price for cocoa is very high," Kwame says, as he stands under a fecund canopy about an hour north of Côte d'Ivoire's commercial capital, Abidjan. Fat orange and yellow cacao pods from which cocoa beans are extracted cling to the trees. "But the obstacles set up between the farmers and the harbour take all the profit that we could make from the crop."
Hundreds of beans from Kwame's cocoa crop lie drying in the sun on a modest wooden stand before his home, along the highway that leads to Abidjan. For this harvest he will be paid about 90 cents per kilogramme by middlemen who will sell it to international exporters in Abidjan.
Côte d'Ivoire is the world's largest producer of cocoa, a distinction that remained even during the political crisis that has engulfed this West African country over recent years (a 2002-2003 civil war sparked by political and economic instability, as well as tensions over regional discrimination and immigration, led to Côte d'Ivoire being split into government and rebel zones). The nation's crop currently accounts for nearly 40 percent of global cocoa production.
Cocoa is also Côte d'Ivoire's main export, representing some 35 percent of goods sent abroad. This translates into about 1.4 billion dollars of revenue annually in the south, controlled by the government of President Laurent Gbagbo, according to official figures. In the northern sector, overseen by the rebel New Forces (Forces Nouvelles, FN), yearly cocoa revenues are thought to hover around 30 million dollars.
In addition, up to four million of Côte d'Ivoire's 17 million inhabitants work in some aspect of the cocoa trade.
But, concern been growing for several years as to how revenues generated by the crop are used by the maze of overlapping and often opaque organisations set up by both the government and rebels to manage cocoa.
Read the full article here.
The Bitter Taste of Cocoa in Côte d'Ivoire
By Michael Deibert
Inter Press Service
BINAO, Southern Côte d'Ivoire, Dec 3, 2007 (IPS) - Hacking his way through the lush forest with a machete, his rubber boots sinking into the moist earth, Lambert Kwame surveys the plot of land that his family has worked for over 30 years, harvesting cocoa.
"We know that the national price for cocoa is very high," Kwame says, as he stands under a fecund canopy about an hour north of Côte d'Ivoire's commercial capital, Abidjan. Fat orange and yellow cacao pods from which cocoa beans are extracted cling to the trees. "But the obstacles set up between the farmers and the harbour take all the profit that we could make from the crop."
Hundreds of beans from Kwame's cocoa crop lie drying in the sun on a modest wooden stand before his home, along the highway that leads to Abidjan. For this harvest he will be paid about 90 cents per kilogramme by middlemen who will sell it to international exporters in Abidjan.
Côte d'Ivoire is the world's largest producer of cocoa, a distinction that remained even during the political crisis that has engulfed this West African country over recent years (a 2002-2003 civil war sparked by political and economic instability, as well as tensions over regional discrimination and immigration, led to Côte d'Ivoire being split into government and rebel zones). The nation's crop currently accounts for nearly 40 percent of global cocoa production.
Cocoa is also Côte d'Ivoire's main export, representing some 35 percent of goods sent abroad. This translates into about 1.4 billion dollars of revenue annually in the south, controlled by the government of President Laurent Gbagbo, according to official figures. In the northern sector, overseen by the rebel New Forces (Forces Nouvelles, FN), yearly cocoa revenues are thought to hover around 30 million dollars.
In addition, up to four million of Côte d'Ivoire's 17 million inhabitants work in some aspect of the cocoa trade.
But, concern been growing for several years as to how revenues generated by the crop are used by the maze of overlapping and often opaque organisations set up by both the government and rebels to manage cocoa.
Read the full article here.
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Taslima Nasreen forced into hiding
News reaches me via an article in The Guardian and via a rushed instant message conversation with the author herself, who is in hiding, that the Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen has been driven from her home in Calcutta (Kolkata), India, by the violent protests of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind group, claiming that she had insulted Islam in here new book, Dwikhondito (Split in Two).
Readers of this blog and my other writing will recall that, this past August, Ms. Nasreen - a recipient of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thoughts from the European Parliament (1994), the Hellman-Hammett Grant from Human Rights Watch (1994) and the UNESCO Prize for the promotion of tolerance and non-violence (2004) - was physically attacked at a book release event in Hyderabad, India by members of the Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) party, including Indian lawmakers.
It is a depressing development of intolerance in a region of India that has always prided itself on being on of the great intellectual bastions of that great nation, birthplace of the poet Rabindranath Tagore and the film director Satyajit Ray, In response, Narseen has consented to delete the controversial passages in her book, something that I am sure any writer is loathe to do under public pressure
The decision must be doubly bitter for an author who, in her home country of Bangladesh, saw her books banned, her passport seized, her life threatened and was eventually forced to seek exile in Europe and the United States before settling in Calcutta. Criticizing the victimization of her country's Hindu minority and of women, and calling for a more moderate, humanistic and less extremist approach to faith in South Asia in general, is evidently not a path not endorsed by all.
Though Maulana Mahmood Madani, general secretary of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, has called on protests against Nasreen to stop if she withdraws the “objectionable” passages, the Milli Ittehad Parishad, an umbrella alliance of 12 Muslim groups including Jamait Ulema-i-Hind, still intends to meet on Sunday to discuss their further plan of action.
Events such as this in India, whether coming from the camps of Hindu extremists or Muslim fundamentalists, make a mockery of the concept of free speech and minority protections, when mob rule and violence become an accepted mode of public discourse and addressing one’s grievances.
The reaction the Indian government to all of this? In a statement, India's External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said the following: "We have never refused shelter to those who seek our protection, and the same applies to Nasreen...(But) those given shelter in India have always undertaken to eschew political activities in India or any actions which may harm India’s relations with friendly countries. It is also expected that the guests will refrain from activities and expressions that may hurt the sentiments of our people."
What kind of a defense of freedom of speech is that? In effect, it tells writers “Say what you want, just nothing too challenging,” when the purpose of writers, if they have any purpose, is to always challenge, push and provoke beyond merely entertaining.
“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear,“ said the British author George Orwell said in his preface to Animal Farm, a book that got him mercilessly vilified by the British left for its scathing satire of the Stalinist Soviet Union, Those words ring as true in our polarized world today as they did in 1945.
Hopefully, despite the increasingly shrill minorities on the right and the left; among the Christians, Hindus, Muslims; Americans, Indians, French, Russians et al, the bravery of genuine free thought and the wisdom of moderation will prevail and, I hope, that writers like Taslima Nasreen will continue to challenge and provoke us through these dark and difficult times.
Readers of this blog and my other writing will recall that, this past August, Ms. Nasreen - a recipient of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thoughts from the European Parliament (1994), the Hellman-Hammett Grant from Human Rights Watch (1994) and the UNESCO Prize for the promotion of tolerance and non-violence (2004) - was physically attacked at a book release event in Hyderabad, India by members of the Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) party, including Indian lawmakers.
It is a depressing development of intolerance in a region of India that has always prided itself on being on of the great intellectual bastions of that great nation, birthplace of the poet Rabindranath Tagore and the film director Satyajit Ray, In response, Narseen has consented to delete the controversial passages in her book, something that I am sure any writer is loathe to do under public pressure
The decision must be doubly bitter for an author who, in her home country of Bangladesh, saw her books banned, her passport seized, her life threatened and was eventually forced to seek exile in Europe and the United States before settling in Calcutta. Criticizing the victimization of her country's Hindu minority and of women, and calling for a more moderate, humanistic and less extremist approach to faith in South Asia in general, is evidently not a path not endorsed by all.
Though Maulana Mahmood Madani, general secretary of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, has called on protests against Nasreen to stop if she withdraws the “objectionable” passages, the Milli Ittehad Parishad, an umbrella alliance of 12 Muslim groups including Jamait Ulema-i-Hind, still intends to meet on Sunday to discuss their further plan of action.
Events such as this in India, whether coming from the camps of Hindu extremists or Muslim fundamentalists, make a mockery of the concept of free speech and minority protections, when mob rule and violence become an accepted mode of public discourse and addressing one’s grievances.
The reaction the Indian government to all of this? In a statement, India's External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said the following: "We have never refused shelter to those who seek our protection, and the same applies to Nasreen...(But) those given shelter in India have always undertaken to eschew political activities in India or any actions which may harm India’s relations with friendly countries. It is also expected that the guests will refrain from activities and expressions that may hurt the sentiments of our people."
What kind of a defense of freedom of speech is that? In effect, it tells writers “Say what you want, just nothing too challenging,” when the purpose of writers, if they have any purpose, is to always challenge, push and provoke beyond merely entertaining.
“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear,“ said the British author George Orwell said in his preface to Animal Farm, a book that got him mercilessly vilified by the British left for its scathing satire of the Stalinist Soviet Union, Those words ring as true in our polarized world today as they did in 1945.
Hopefully, despite the increasingly shrill minorities on the right and the left; among the Christians, Hindus, Muslims; Americans, Indians, French, Russians et al, the bravery of genuine free thought and the wisdom of moderation will prevail and, I hope, that writers like Taslima Nasreen will continue to challenge and provoke us through these dark and difficult times.
Friday, November 30, 2007
TRADE: Blood Diamonds No Longer Congo-Brazzaville's Best Friend
TRADE: Blood Diamonds No Longer Congo-Brazzaville's Best Friend
By Michael Deibert
Inter Press Service
PARIS, Nov 30, 2007 (IPS) - The announcement that the Republic of the Congo, or Congo-Brazzaville, has been readmitted to the Kimberley Process, which aims to stem the flow of conflict diamonds, marks a breakthrough.
Congo-Brazzaville was expelled from the-then year-old process in 2004 for exporting diamonds from its war-wracked neighbour, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and falsifying certificates of origin.
''Congo-Brazzaville comes back now after a very serious domestic effort to put their house in order and to get their domestic systems to the level required,'' Karel Kovanda, chairperson of the Kimberly Process secretariat, told IPS. ''It was quite an emotional moment. We're always happy to have new people (come on board the Kimberley Process).''
Congo-Brazzaville's fate is just the latest example of the enforcement procedure which gets its name from the South African city where one of the first meetings was held on stemming the flow of diamonds used by rebel armies or other groups to fund conflict.
Read the full article here.
By Michael Deibert
Inter Press Service
PARIS, Nov 30, 2007 (IPS) - The announcement that the Republic of the Congo, or Congo-Brazzaville, has been readmitted to the Kimberley Process, which aims to stem the flow of conflict diamonds, marks a breakthrough.
Congo-Brazzaville was expelled from the-then year-old process in 2004 for exporting diamonds from its war-wracked neighbour, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and falsifying certificates of origin.
''Congo-Brazzaville comes back now after a very serious domestic effort to put their house in order and to get their domestic systems to the level required,'' Karel Kovanda, chairperson of the Kimberly Process secretariat, told IPS. ''It was quite an emotional moment. We're always happy to have new people (come on board the Kimberley Process).''
Congo-Brazzaville's fate is just the latest example of the enforcement procedure which gets its name from the South African city where one of the first meetings was held on stemming the flow of diamonds used by rebel armies or other groups to fund conflict.
Read the full article here.
FRANCE: Troubled Suburbs Erupt Again
FRANCE: Troubled Suburbs Erupt Again
By Michael Deibert
Inter Press Service
VILLIERS-LE-BEL, France, Nov 29, 2007 (IPS) - The police station is a smouldering abandoned ruin, its roof gone, its walls charred black, and tiles scattered about its courtyard. From behind its locked gates the pungent stench of burned wood and plastic is carried on the wind into the street.
The commissariat of this town 10 miles north of Paris was ransacked and burned Sunday by rioters enraged by the deaths of two teenagers -- killed when the motorbike they were driving collided with a police cruiser.
Police say that they aided the two youths -- neither of whom was said to be wearing a crash helmet -- while some local residents maintain that police are at fault for leaving the scene before treating the boys. The boys have been identified as Laramy, 16, and Moushim, 15.
Pitched battles between police firing rubber bullets and tear gas, and masked and hooded rioters attacking with Molotov cocktails, bottles, and -- in a potentially lethal escalation of force -- firearms, continued Monday night.
According to police officials, by Tuesday morning over 80 officers had been injured -- some seriously -- and at least 63 vehicles in Villiers-le-Bel and neighbouring communities had been set aflame.
Residents have been left wondering whether there would be a repeat of the riots that shook the nation for weeks almost exactly two years ago.
"The commissariat was burned on the first night of the disturbances," Chanay Mahalinsnam, a Sri Lankan immigrant who runs the small Ocean Tropical supermarket just up the street from the destroyed building, told IPS.
Read the full article here.
By Michael Deibert
Inter Press Service
VILLIERS-LE-BEL, France, Nov 29, 2007 (IPS) - The police station is a smouldering abandoned ruin, its roof gone, its walls charred black, and tiles scattered about its courtyard. From behind its locked gates the pungent stench of burned wood and plastic is carried on the wind into the street.
The commissariat of this town 10 miles north of Paris was ransacked and burned Sunday by rioters enraged by the deaths of two teenagers -- killed when the motorbike they were driving collided with a police cruiser.
Police say that they aided the two youths -- neither of whom was said to be wearing a crash helmet -- while some local residents maintain that police are at fault for leaving the scene before treating the boys. The boys have been identified as Laramy, 16, and Moushim, 15.
Pitched battles between police firing rubber bullets and tear gas, and masked and hooded rioters attacking with Molotov cocktails, bottles, and -- in a potentially lethal escalation of force -- firearms, continued Monday night.
According to police officials, by Tuesday morning over 80 officers had been injured -- some seriously -- and at least 63 vehicles in Villiers-le-Bel and neighbouring communities had been set aflame.
Residents have been left wondering whether there would be a repeat of the riots that shook the nation for weeks almost exactly two years ago.
"The commissariat was burned on the first night of the disturbances," Chanay Mahalinsnam, a Sri Lankan immigrant who runs the small Ocean Tropical supermarket just up the street from the destroyed building, told IPS.
Read the full article here.
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