Washington, DC – This is perhaps one of the most important periods in our political history.
We have come a long way despite enormous challenges and difficulties. The Democratic Party elected Barak Obama as its presidential candidate. This is historic and significant in many ways. This sweeping momentum generated by Obama’s candidacy will bring much needed change, strengthen our country, and bring Americans together.
For many of us, we have been waiting for this for decades. At the core of this movement is the fact that people from all backgrounds came together not simply driven by race or political motive, but to bring change, and in doing so made many Americans who felt marginalized proud to be Americans.
Martin Luther King said once “In a real sense America is essentially a dream, a dream as yet unfulfilled. It is a dream where men of all races, of all nationalities, and of all creeds can live together as brothers.” And as Dr. King said “he has seen the Promised Land.” Indeed, my friend Barak has brought us all together and Martin Luther King’s dream of the Promised Land will come true.
There is an Ethiopian proverb that goes like this: “When the spiders unite they can tie down a lion.” And when people come together united behind a cause, victory is assured.
Obama is a man of principle, focused, and with a vision for a better America. When he first ran for the Senate, I went to Chicago to help. Your support for Obama is not just for one man, but for change. Your active and early participation in the political process also gives your community recognition and access to engage elected officials about issues you care about. In addition to the multiple domestic and international issues that presidential candidates often focus during their campaign, the Obama campaign has made Africa a major priority. The campaign has more than a dozen dedicated staff working in the Africa Team. We have two of them in this panel. Obama’s foreign policy chief, my good friend Susan Rice, is also a very dedicated Africa ally.
[ER disagrees here. Susan is no different from Jendayi Frazier — both are in the pockets of Africa’s vampires like Meles. On top of that, Susan is an arrogant woman who look down on African human rights activists.]
The challenges and opportunities facing Africa are many. The people of Africa have faced many difficulties over the years from natural disasters to brutal dictatorships; yet they managed to overcome these challenges. The struggle for democracy and respect for human rights continues, nonetheless, since many Africans continue to suffer under brutal dictatorships.
I am sure you all remember the more than 200 civilians gunned down by Ethiopian security forces for demanding democracy in 2005. In the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, the brutality of the Meles regime has forced thousands of innocent civilians to flee their country. I met last months and in January dozens of women who were raped and beaten by Ethiopian security forces now languishing in a refugee camp in Kenya.
Political and human rights conditions in Ethiopia have been of particular concern to me in recent years. The Ethiopian government spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on lobbyists to kill the Ethiopia Democracy and Accountability Act last year. I wish the Ethiopian government used these funds to build hospitals and schools. I said then that the U.S. Congress is not for sale. The primary objective was not to punish Ethiopia but to help the people of Ethiopia live in peace and democracy.
I was cautiously optimistic in 2005 that political and human rights conditions will improve after the elections. Indeed, the elections were much better organized and highly competitive compared to previous elections. I must confess, I was wrong. In fact, conditions got worse than before. I am absolutely sure that under an Obama Administration good governance, respect for human rights, peace and stability will become an important foundation of the Administration’s foreign policy. We are not going to turn a blind eye to abuses just because some governments pretend to be allies in the war on terror. Killing unarmed civilians and using food as a weapon is terrorism.
I am sure if the Ethiopian government and opposition groups were to come together to build a better, peaceful Ethiopia; they can achieve that goal. It is important to put country and people first before politics.
In Darfur, the brutal Bashir government continues its genocidal campaign against innocent civilians.
As you are well aware, more than 450,000 people have been killed since 2003, 2 million displaced, and more than 200,000 in refugee camps in Chad. As if the suffering of these victims is not enough, the Bashir security forces now routinely go into displaced camps to kill.
The challenges facing Africa are not limited to conflicts. If you look at the education sector, while Africa is home to 13.4-percent of the world’s population, only 1.1-percent of the world’s scientific researchers reside on the continent. There is one engineer or scientist per 10,000 people in Africa. In industrialized countries there are 20 to 50 per 10,000 people. We want to change this reality. I recently prepared a comprehensive legislation on higher education in Africa.
High child mortality rate is another major challenge facing the developing world. Every day 27,000 children under the age of 5 die, mostly from preventable diseases. We know how to prevent most of these deaths, but we have not spent the resources necessary to do so. We have the funds to spend billions of dollars a month in Iraq, yet we don’t seem to have the funds to build schools and hospitals in places like Somalia.
I strongly encourage you to vote for Obama. If you are not registered to vote, please do so and encourage friends and family members to do the same. I also urge you to donate to the campaign. Thank you and look forward to hear your questions and comments.
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Donald M. Payne (Democrat-New Jersey) chairs the U.S. House Sub-Committee on Africa and Global Health. He made these remarks to a gathering of Ethiopians in Washington, DC on September 14.
Julie Mehretu: City Sitings
North Carolina Museum of Art
On display through November 30, 2008
Julie Mehretu’s “Charioteer” (2007), ink and acrylic on linen
60 in. by 84 in. [Photo: Steven Gerlich]
For those of us who are still suffering from post-traumatic flashbacks of the opening ceremonies in Beijing this summer, a possible catharsis might be found in City Sitings at the N.C. Museum of Art.
The catharsis comes in the form of a triptych composed of three staggeringly complex and engulfing works entitled “Stadia I, II and III.” These huge canvases explode with stylized renderings of stadium architecture and overlays of international emblems, flags and corporate logos. The piece pulses with color in a brilliant antagonism, a massive diagram that lays bare the psycho-visio conquest for ideological and corporate brand loyalty on a global scale. Here the sports metaphor is milked for every possible association—war, power, competition, advertising, fascism, fanaticism, pageantry, media and on and on.
By driving us to the very limits of our capacity for image/ meaning absorption, this piece explains why corporate advertisers think of our visual field as real estate. This piece tells us that, within the confines of three monster canvases, we are always inhabiting multiple realms that include visual space, cognitive space, social space, corporate space and political space. The feeling in this and many of the artworks on display in City Sitings is that the paintings are conceptual machines, and they’ll continue churning out ideas and constructing new meanings after the lights go out and the museum closes for the night. The artist is Julie Mehretu, and “Stadia I, II and III” does something few single works of art can do—it surges with the impossibility of grasping the world and in so doing offers us a moment in which to try. Let the games begin.
Cartography is at the conceptual center of Mehretu’s project. Her Ethiopian father, Assefa Mehretu, is a cultural geographer, who initially focused his studies on his native Africa and later turned his critical inquiry toward the U.S. when the family moved to Lansing, Mich. Mehretu’s influence on his daughter shines through her work in its manifold themes of global migration, societal upheaval, shifting economies and manifestations of corporate, political and military power, seen through the organizing principal of mapping systems.
Mehretu herself was born and lived in Ethiopia before moving to the U.S., and this fact of her life seems have flipped something on inside her like a switch. The theme of displacement and relocation recurs in much of Mehretu’s work. Consider “Palimpsest (old gods)” (2006), in which she imposes the entire set of illustrations from a book of architectural history in the space of a single canvas, only to erase much of it by sanding it down. This almost compulsive adherence to concept and the capacity to load a single work with vast layers of information is a signature quality of Mehretu’s talent. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Mehretu was awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship (affectionately known as a “genius” grant) in 2005.
In Mehretu’s work, the space of the canvas is a site of convergence, a sublime accumulation of vectors, blueprints, logos, iconography and ink markings—a transparent archeology of surfaces that echo and refer back to each other. Mehretu integrates a multiplicity of references, images and meanings in works so dense they often feel like the product of a collective, rather than an individual. Case in point is a work such as “Drift of Light” (2007), an expanse in which geometric shapes float among a density of crosshatchings and scrawls, and technical architectural drawings reverberate in contrast to an underlying grid of white lines. Mehretu’s multiplicity of modalities undermines our grasp of the idea of authorship.
Mehretu says of her work, “My aim is to have a picture that appears one way from a distance—almost like a cosmology, city or universe from afar—but then when you approach the work, the overall image shatters into numerous other pictures, stories and events.” Upon first viewing, from five or 10 feet away, we encounter the feeling of a totality, a shimmering force of lines, gestures and particulate matter, a coherent chaos. What’s extraordinary is that when we move nearer to the surface of the work, we encounter an onslaught of fresh detail, of hand-inked lines and scratches, gestural marks and delineations, logos, structural referents and visual puns. Mehretu inhabits her own work like a citizen of an imaginary city, role-playing alternately as urban planner, itinerant vandal, mercenary soldier and intellectual theorist, commenting on the myriad complexities of socio-political space. Mehretu’s paintings have been described as virtual worlds, and, indeed, her immersive work shares some fascinating allegiances with such virtual spaces as Second Life, SimCity or World of Warcraft.
Mehretu fits into a breed of hybrid practitioners, creative visionaries who transcend rigid categorization. Her work brings to mind projects developed by The Center for Land Use Interpretation (Los Angeles) or Storefront for Art and Architecture (New York). Her capacity for seemingly infinite complexity aligns her with maniac/ genius Paul Lafolley and the epic diagrammatic paintings he creates in his Boston Visionary Cell. Mehretu’s painterly values connect her readily with recent work by artists like Mark Bradford and Mario Marzan as well as the multidimensional geometries of Ronald Davis in the 1970s. More off-the-wall associations I make with Mehretu’s work include the oddball architectural installations of Phoebe Washburn, the ever-expanding universe of design guru Bruce Mau, and the scientific cross-disciplinary breakthroughs of Adrian Bejan, professor of mechanical engineering at Duke and author of Constructal Theory.
Finally, in a lovely bit of synchronicity, I should mention that, coincidentally, this fall there will be a two-month series of presentations and events under the auspices of a local mapping collective called Counter Cartographies. This confluence of events in time and space holds the potential for some heady aesthetic and intellectual cross-pollinating. After you visit City Sitings at NCMA, check the mapping collective’s Web site at www.countercartographies.org for a list of events and to find out how you can become more involved in re-imagining the worlds around you.
(VOA News) – The main airport in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu has been effectively shut down, following a threat by Islamist militants Somali freedom fighters.
The militant group al-Shabab had warned it would attack any plane landing or taking off at the airport after midnight Tuesday.
Aviation officials say there are hundreds of soldiers guarding the airport Wednesday but that commercial airlines have ceased using the facility.
Somalia’s civil aviation authority has told the airlines that if they do not maintain their normal schedules, they will lose their licenses.
Al-Shabab issued the airport threat on Saturday. The group says the airport generates money for the Somali government’s Ethiopian Woyanne backers.
The Somali government has dismissed the claim and says the airport will operate as normal.
On Monday, a human rights group said fighting in Somalia has killed nearly 9,500 Somalis since the start of the Islamist insurgency early last year. The Elman Human Rights Organization says that number includes 838 civilians killed since June.
The insurgents are seeking to drive out Ethiopian Woyanne troops and topple the western-backed interim government.
JIJIGA – Ethiopia has been accused of deliberately underestimating the scale of a deadly drought facing millions of its people, some of whom are being deprived of emergency food aid by the country’s military.
The humanitarian crisis, caused by three years of failed rains, currently affects about 4.6 million people, though the official number could jump to as high as 6.7 million this week.
United Nations agencies say that the real number at risk is above 8 million, an estimate disputed hotly by Addis Ababa, which is insisting on publishing a much lower figure.
“The figure has risen very substantially, maybe even doubled,” said Sir John Holmes, the UN’s emergency relief co-ordinator, who visited Ethiopia earlier this month. “Any government doesn’t want to be perceived as always in the position of receiving aid.”
The crisis is at its most worrying in the vast deserts of the Ogaden region, where the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) says in a confidential alert to donors that it is receiving “increasing reports of hunger-related mortality”. About two million people are at risk until the main rains fall next spring – if they fall at all. The Ogaden is Ethiopia’s biggest and most remote state.
Nomadic tribes there are resorting to eating dead leaves and cactus fruit to survive the worst drought since the famines of 1984-85, when an estimated one million Ethiopians died.
A twenty-mile trek on foot into the bush revealed mediaeval mud-hut villages, where ethnic Somali herdsmen say that their children have died after eating poisonous buds from trees, for lack of anything else to eat. Others say that they depend on camel milk and meat because cattle, sheep and goats have perished in their thousands.
“I am ill and hungry,” said one man, removing his shirt to reveal his rib cage visible through taut skin. “Because of the drought we have nothing to eat. The only people who receive food are the military forces.”
The UN has raised about 60 per cent of $325 million (£181 million) it is seeking in emergency relief for Ethiopia and says that it is suffering a shortfall of about 300,000 tonnes of aid.
The WFP has told donors that it blames Ethiopia’s “delays in recognising the extent of need” for causing the rapid depletion of existing food stocks. But a Channel 4 News investigation tonight claims that the army has withheld food from villages in the Ogaden deliberately as part of a “scorched earth” policy against separatist rebels of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF).
Herdsmen in villages almost completely cut off from the outside world said that many of their animals had been killed by Ethiopian soldiers, who also deprived them of water.
“We walk for eight hours to collect water,” said Abdi, a villager about three hours from Jijiga, the regional capital. “Then the military take the water from us. They say the rebels pass through our villages and that we give them supplies. But what can we give? We are dying of hunger. We have nothing to give to our own children.”
The UN says that it has negotiated with the Ethiopian army for the military’s role in food distribution to be kept to a minimum. “If there is a situation where food is taken by the military, we protest,” said Mohammed Diab, the WFP’s Ethiopia director.
However, a confidential investigation by USAid, the US Government’s disaster relief agency, complained in March that “literally hundreds of areas . . . have neither been assessed nor received any food assistance”, with “populations we met terrorised by the inability to access food”.
“This situation would be shameful in any other country,” the report concludes. “The US Government cannot in good conscience allow the food operation to continue in its current manifestation.” The US is spending more than £230 million on food aid for Ethiopia this year but is hamstrung from being too critical in public; Washington sees Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, as an ally in the War on Terror after Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia in 2005, which ousted an Islamist administration from power.
Britain has doubled its annual aid to Ethiopia in the last three years to £130 million, including £15 million this summer through the UN’s Humanitarian Response Fund, while Save the Children (SCF) is halfway through a campaign to raise £10 million for the country. Two SCF workers were expelled from the Ogaden last year amid allegations – rejected by SCF – that they had diverted food to ONLF rebels. The British charity abandoned a full-scale feeding programme, fearing supplies could be diverted.
Sen. John McCain, accompanied by his wife Cindy, makes a statement after visiting a General Motors assembly plant in Lake Orion, Mich., Sept. 17, 2008. (Stephan Savoia/Associated Press)
John McCain has a fundamentals problem. It is political as well as economic, and it remains the biggest obstacle standing between the Arizona senator and the White House.
McCain didn’t single-handedly create this problem but he made it worse Monday when, as Wall Street was melting down, he uttered words — “the fundamentals of our economy are strong” — that totally muddied the real message he meant to deliver. Barack Obama has hammered him at every stop since as a man out of touch with reality.
Were McCain known as a student of the economy, this instance of a badly delivered statement would matter little. Because he is known as someone who is not, it matters plenty. McCain has responded by ratcheting up his rhetoric about cracking down on Wall Street and Washington.
As with his Monday misstep, once again the message is mixed. Guns blazing, McCain is promising to ride into town to — oversee the creation of a commission to study the problem. He is speaking out in favor of regulation but against a history of opposing a heavy government hand. He has expressed his outrage, but what is the balance he would strike between the old and new McCain?
In many ways, the opening to Obama provided by McCain’s verbal misstep is the least of his problems. What should worry the McCain camp most is the intersection of the renewed focus on the economy and the underlying political climate that has created such difficulties for McCain and his party all year.
McCain’s advisers have noted for months that the political environment could hardly be worse for their candidate. None of them has ever suggested that the political fundamentals remain sound. Quite the opposite.
President Bush’s approval rating appears stuck close to its lowest ever levels — hovering just above 30 percent. Nearly eight in 10 Americans believe the country is heading in the wrong direction. The Republican Party’s image is worse than the Democrats’ and well below its levels when Bush won reelection four years ago.
McCain’s party made some gains after his convention but it’s not clear whether that was temporary or lasting. Four years ago on election day, the exit polls showed an electorate at parity between Republicans and Democrats. That’s not likely to be the case this November.
Combine that with the economic indicators. The stock market’s plunge has wiped out recent gains and more. The unemployment rate now stands at 6.1 percent and has risen a full percentage point since March. Four years ago this month it was at 5.4 percent and heading down. The economy has been shedding jobs monthly throughout the year.
In the past, the unemployment rate was the most sensitive indicator politically. Today both the jobless rate and the stock market can send shivers of anxiety through the electorate — as they are this week. Nothing in all of that is good for John McCain’s hopes of winning the White House.
Only once since World War II has a political party maintained control of the presidency for three consecutive terms, which was from 1981-1993. Eisenhower’s eight years were followed by Kennedy’s and Johnson’s eight years, which were followed by Nixon’s and Ford’s eight years, which were followed by Carter’s four years.
Voters would not give Democrats a third term after the Clinton presidency, despite a robust economy and a nation at peace. After the tumult of Bush’s eight years, what might compel voters to reward the Republicans with a third consecutive term in control of the White House?
McCain has managed to make the best of this terrible environment. His pick of Sarah Palin proved enormously effective in the short term. His party appears newly energized, even enthusiastic about their ticket, even if they still distrust the leader of that ticket.
He has reinvented himself for the final stretch of the campaign — or perhaps found a voice that had been missing throughout this election cycle. As in the primaries, he has been reduced to basics and they have served him well over the past two months. His best hope of winning is to make the campaign a test of character.
How long can he sustain all this? Absent external events, he was doing well. With the economic news of this week, the polls hint at a deflation in his position. The playing field has once again tilted slightly toward Obama, who now must take advantage of it.
This remains as competitive a race as many had forecast. National polls are tight. Battleground states are tight. But the underlying structure that has governed this campaign from the start has not improved. That is the real fundamentals problem for John McCain.
(RFI) – Noah Samara grew up in Ethiopia, but fled the country with his family in his teens due to mounting political violence. He studied satellite technology in the United States, and embarked on a successful career in that field. But a newspaper article about Aids in Africa changed the course of his life. It inspired him to create the world’s first satellite radio, Worldspace.
Noah has served as Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer and the Director of WorldSpace. A veteran of the satellite industry, he has been an advisor to numerous global telecommunications and broadcasting organizations over the years, on a wide range of business and regulatory issues. He has published articles in the fields of satellite communications and broadcasting.
Noah Samara holds a MS Degree in International Business Diplomacy from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and a Juris Doctor from the Georgetown University School of Law. He has also received numerous awards from governments and institutions specifically for his work with WorldSpace.
Imogen Lamb of RFI talks to Noah Samara about the challenges he faced, and is still facing, to reach the listeners he thinks Worldspace could help. Click below to listen:
