Barking Up the Wrong Tree
This past week, the attack dogs of the dictatorship in Ethiopia were unleashed against Amnesty International (AI) because that organization had requested publication of the names of suspects arrested for allegedly conspiring to assassinate high officials and blow up government buildings. More on Crimes of Willful Ignorance

 INTRODUCTION

For more than a decade, much of Africa has been moving forward. Economic growth is rising, poverty is falling and democratic governance is spreading. But the global financial crisis threatens to undo this progress by reducing investment, exports and aid just as they should be expanding to build on these successes.

While international attention has been understandably focused on events in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Darfur, Somalia and Zimbabwe, countries across Sub-Saharan Africa including Ghana, Tanzania, Mozambique, Botswana, Namibia, and Liberia have been quietly turning around. According to the World Bank, since 2000, poverty rates in these African nations are falling fast, from 58% down to 51% in just six years time. More on Ethiopia at Cry and Embedded Calamity

What Is Ethiopian Unity?

There are some who are working double overtime to make sure Ethiopia is strewn across the African continent like shards of broken ethnic glass. They have spent the last 18 years sleepless devising ways of defeating the people by separating them along ethnic, religious, cultural, regional and class lines. Now, we say emphatically: “Enough! Not This Time!” This is our time to come together and unite against a divisive, dastardly and devilish dictatorship. This is the time to stand up and declare: “Ethiopians united can never be defeated!” More on Ethiopians united can never be defeated!

Donkeys, Liars and War Criminals

What a difference two years make! In December 2006, Zenawi invaded Somalia to save it from the “terrorist axis of evil” — Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab and the Islamic Courts Union. In January 2007, he reassured the world, “We will be out of Somalia in a few weeks.” A year ago he likened opposition members of his Parliament who opposed his Somali invasion to that faithful beast of burden, the donkey. More on The Horn of Fear

If you must know, the very idea of dirtying one’s hands in the murky waters of Somali bickering leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Now if one were so naive as to become entangled with a bunch of foxy cliques, one would be pardoned for trying, but such charitable readings only happen in other environs, not in Somali hearts. More on President of the Disabled Tribes of Somalia?

Hyperbole is the currency of presidential campaigns, but this year the nation’s future truly hangs in the balance.

The United States is battered and drifting after eight years of President Bush’s failed leadership. He is saddling his successor with two wars, a scarred global image and a government systematically stripped of its ability to protect and help its citizens — whether they are fleeing a hurricane’s floodwaters, searching for affordable health care or struggling to hold on to their homes, jobs, savings and pensions in the midst of a financial crisis that was foretold and preventable. More on NY Times : Barack Obama for President

While Somalia in the south is in chaos, the north is safe and democratic – yet seems invisible to the international community

The recent spate of piracy off Somalia’s coast is yet another symptom of the country’s collapse of stability and some of its peoples’ intense desperation. Reports that the pirates or hijackers of the Ukrainian vessel had begun shooting each other formed a perfect microcosm of Somalia’s brutal inner turmoil. More on It’s time Somaliland declared independence

The pirates that captured the freighter Faina didn’t know the ship was full of tanks. They also were unaware that by hijacking the vessel, they had ruined an international weapons deal that may have been illegally sending arms to Sudan. Professionals have their standards, and they stick to their routines, regardless of their nationality or line of business. “As soon as we have entered a ship,” says Sugule Ali, a Somali pirate, “we normally do what we call inspection: we search everything.” More on Pirates Versus Weapons Dealers: Looking For The Good Guys off The Somali Coast

With the controversial indictment of Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, earlier this week, the International Criminal Court is putting its reputation on the line. The court has taken years to assemble its case against Bashir, in large part because it is by design a passive institution: it can neither conduct its own investigations, nor make arrests. Perhaps more significantly, international reaction to the move is divided, with Russia and China complaining that it violates Sudan’s sovereignty and NGOs worrying that the charges will endanger peacekeepers and aid workers in the country.

READ MORE  http://www.newsweek.com/id/147615

Somalia’s National Peace and Reconciliation Conference took place in Kenya from 2002 to 2004. It was held under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Authority for Development and largely funded by the European Commission. It was not so much a reconciliation conference or a negotiation between warring factions as a bold attempt at political engineering intended to deal with prolonged state collapse in Somalia. More on Somalia: The Demise of The Mbgathi Peace Process