Moldova’s political class is discredited, fragmented and unpopular at home and abroad – but is the opposition too divided to challenge the failed leadership of Europe’s poorest country? A feature – published here in The Black Sea CAMP NUMBER ONE I call the phone number of Ilian Casu, the deputy chairman of Partidul Nostru […]
Author Archives: michaelbirdjournalist
A profile of Bucharest Mayoral candidate Nicusor Dan, published in CityMetric, part of the New Statesman group Standing behind 45 year-old doctor in maths Nicusor Dan is a wire shelf piled with hundreds of loose leaved files and cardboard folders. These are cases Dan and his team from NGO Save Bucharest! have brought against the […]
A feature published in The Black Sea and co-written with Zeynep Sentek Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is exporting his nation’s brand of Islam to over 30 multi-million mosque projects across five continents – but he risks creating monuments to a leadership in decline We map the mosque plans – from Havana to the Philippines, […]
A comment piece on Bucharest’s northern district Baneasa, published in English and Romanian in Jug Before the financial crash of 2008, Bucharest’s northern zone of Baneasa wanted sex appeal. Real estate agents targeted citizens living with their parents in Communist high-rises with the dream of a home that could be secure, fashionable and seductive. Adding the […]
A version of a feature published in EU Observer Click here for an in-depth story and map of Turkey’s global mega-mosque building plan Resistance is gearing up in Bucharest against a giant mosque proposed for the city and financed by Turkey, as part of its push to build huge religious centres in major global cities. […]
A comment piece published in Romanian on Contributors.ro In the Icoanei garden in Bucharest’s 19th century centre, there is a fountain which gushes out water and tumbles into a stream that winds to the other end of the park to meet a large pond. Children play here. They jump over the stream. Sometimes they kick […]
Stepping through the minefield of history to probe the prospect of unity between two countries at the choke point between the EU and Russia. A feature published in The Black Sea, EU Observer and Moldova.Org European empires have spent centuries carving up the territory of today’s Moldova, bartering pieces back and forth, stitching them together, attaching a […]
A comment piece published in The Black Sea in English and Contributors in Romanian. Western Europeans cannot get enough of Romanian poverty. In photos. In news. In features. In TV shows. The appetite is immense. It has become the biggest tourist attraction in the country. Foreigners now plan minibreaks here, hoping for three-day fix of extreme poverty – […]
1. Ukraine: Part of a series of three stories revealing the complexities of living with HIV in east Europe. Published in The Black Sea “I tried to escape from heroin in the city to my grandparents in the countryside – but there was the source of the drug. That’s where I think I contracted HIV,” says ex-user […]
2. Moldova: Part of a series of three stories revealing the complexities of living with HIV in eastern Europe. Published in The Black Sea “You don’t meet many couples where one is injecting drugs and the other is clean,” says Gary from Balti, Moldova Visual by Andrei Cotrut “My outer appearance has changed. If I brought […]
Michael Bird Writer & Journalist 