To the extent that anyone who is shot in the face can be considered fortunate, Marian Spivey-Estrada can count her lucky stars. On March 21, the 26-year-old United States Agency for International Development (USAID) worker from Henderson, Kentucky, was traveling in a humanitarian convoy en route to a refugee camp in the south Darfur region […]
Mark Leon Goldberg
Mark Leon Goldberg is the executive editor of UN Dispatch and host of the Global Dispatches podcast.
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Anatomy of a Genocide
Brian Steidle understands the anatomy of a genocide. As one of three American State Department contractors on the African Union’s (AU) monitoring team in Sudan, the 28-year-old former Marine captain witnessed the systematic destruction of villages in south Darfur in late 2004. He’s now working with Gretchen Steidle Wallace (his sister), who runs a nongovernmental […]
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Bear Any Burden
As a general rule, 26-year-old National Guard members ought to be some of most physically fit people on the planet. For eight out of the nine years that Randi Airola served as a technician in the Army and Air National Guard, she met that description. Then, in March 1999, in a moment that would the […]
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Stubborn on Sudan
In a grisly coincidence, on January 27, 2005, one day before a report on suspected crimes against humanity from the U.N.’s International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur was to be delivered to the Security Council, the government of Sudan broke a short-lived ceasefire and leveled a village in northern Darfur with an air strike that […]
Posted inDispatches
Is Moore Less?
Late last December, in a particularly dim installment of end-of-year political punditry, the assembled talking heads on the Sunday-morning Chris Matthews Show were debating who deserved the title “biggest noisemaker of 2004.” The choices Matthews offered them were Mel Gibson, Jon Stewart, and Michael Moore. Andrew Sullivan mused a bit about Gibson. Then Cokie Roberts […]
Posted inSpecial Report
Don’t Count on It
For election officials in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, November 2 had passed with merciful ease. The balloting was deemed an administrative success — until two days later, that is, when election workers noticed a mathematical oddity: As they canvassed more votes, the tallies in certain races had decreased. After some hand-wringing, election officials discovered that the […]
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Passive Aggression
Monday marks the one-year anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s capture. The day after the capture, December 14, 2003, the Coalition Provisional Authority’s chief, Paul Bremer exclaimed, “We got him!” The phrase was reprinted in headlines throughout the world. But now that we got him, a surprising dilemma has surfaced: Do we want him convicted? On one […]
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The Death of van Gogh
In the weeks after the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim extremist on November 2, Holland, a country known for its culture of tolerance, experienced unprecedented levels of racial and ethnic violence. Last Wednesday, Marc Chavannes, Washington correspondent for the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad, talked with TAP‘s Mark Goldberg about the […]
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Rock ‘n’ Roll, D.C.–Style
So there I was, leaving the Vote for Change after-party at a swanky downtown restaurant, thinking how super cool I was for making it past the velvet rope in the first place. And then, as I headed through the door, I suddenly got cooler still, because walking in as I was walking out was Bruce […]
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Some Gratitude
During his recent speech at the National Guard Association’s annual convention in Las Vegas, President Bush touted his pride and steadfast support for his erstwhile brothers in arms. Not surprisingly, the president’s speech was filled with invocations of September 11 heroism and resolute statements in favor of freedom. But the speech also included some nuggets […]