· March, 2008

Stories about Digital Activism from March, 2008

Trinidad & Tobago: Robbed!

  25 March 2008

Trinidadian blogger Shivonne Du Barry‘s cell phone is stolen – recounting the incident, she says: “This country has me more emotionally conflicted than a cheating man. I love it so much but things keep happening to make me feel I have to get out. Still, I know it will pass...

Cuba: Blog Access

  25 March 2008

Child of the Revolution reports that “the Castro regime has restricted (and in some cases, blocked) access to semi-critical blogs written from inside Cuba.”

Bermuda: Tourist Trap?

  25 March 2008

After a tourist dies in a road accident, Bermudan blogger IMHO.bm asks: “Are we doing the right thing by continuing to rent auxiliary cycles to tourists?”

Guyana: Learning to Live

  25 March 2008

“The confusion I come to is this – something new growing in we the people”: Guyana-Gyal says that her fellow Guyanese are “learning to live despite the threats of badness, despite the thought that any minute, Fine Man and he pack can savage again.”

Iran:Protest against filtering

Key1one says[Fa] that Cloob.com,a Persian-language social networking website, mainly popular in Iran, has been filtered for about one month.About 2000 people signed a petition and protested against this filtering.

Armenia: Peaceful Protest

  25 March 2008

Halfway down the Danube gives reasons for not attending last Friday’s demonstration held the day after the state of emergency was lifted in Yerevan. The post also looks at the use of the Internet in what some have called an attempt at a “colored revolution” in Armenia. However, the blog...

Bosnia & Herzegovina: Writing a Book on Sarajevo

  25 March 2008

Pure Intent is working on a book on Sarajevo – and is asking his readers to share ideas: “It's your city too. What we're lookin’ for is nothing ordinary….quite the opposite actually. I want to tell stories of the water fountains, of the zanatlija, of tucano kahva, how we hid...

Poland: Warsaw; Online Forums

  24 March 2008

Among other things, Polandian writes about the Warsaw Ghetto in the final installment of “Inside Warsaw.” Also, there's a post on “why Polish people don’t smile” and a review of Polish-English online discussion forums.

World Water Day Ripples Across Videos.

  24 March 2008

Every year since the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, on March 22nd has been the World Water Day. In addition, this year it is the United Nation´s International Year of Sanitation and people from all over have started taking action through their video cameras, raising awareness at the importance of this finite resource.

Jamaica: Beauty and Race

  24 March 2008

“What beauty contests say about women is still an open and now tired debate, but what it says about race, particularly in a country like Jamaica is still up for grabs”: Marlon James explains.

Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, USA: Obama's Vision

  24 March 2008

Jamaican Geoffrey Philp thinks that Barack Obama “has a deep understanding of America and that he offers a transcendent vision of America that we haven't had in a long time”, while Notes from Port of Spain quotes Obama's “race speech”: “‘I am the son of a black man from Kenya...

Guyana: Commonweath Writers’ Prize

  24 March 2008

Signifyin’ Guyana notes that among the regional winners of the 2008 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize “was Guyanese-born, Nigerian-based Karen King-Aribisala for Best Book.”

Environment: A recipe for seed bombs

  24 March 2008

Rory of Carbon Copy posts a recipe for seed bombs which can be thrown into “…vacant lots, pavement cracks, long-standing rubbish piles, or anywhere that would benefit from a bit of random greenery.”

Japan: Eyes on Tibet

  24 March 2008

Essa at the Uncategorizable Blog proposes (in Japanese and also in English) a simple way for bloggers to focus attention on Tibet, by adding a Tibet-related link to their everyday posts. He emphasizes that: “This movement focuses on decentralized weak concerns. It suggests your readers just to see it. Not...

China: Bloggers declare war on Western media's Tibet coverage

  24 March 2008

Once the news of Tibetans slicing children's ears off and burning people alive sunk in, Chinese netizens worldwide seized onto initial misreported details from the situation in Tibet and don't seem willing to let this one go. In fact, they've declared cyberwar on major western media outlets, and anti-CNN.com is campaign headquarters.

Russia: Two Dagestani Journalists Killed

  23 March 2008

Ilyas Shurpaev, a Dagestani TV journalist who worked for a state-owned federal channel, was found dead Friday in Moscow. Later that day, Gadzhi Abashilov, director of Dagestan's state-owned broadcasting company, was shot to death in Makhachkala, the republic's capital. Below are a few bloggers' reactions to the murders, as well as the translation of Shurpaev's last blog post.

Guide: Bloguer pour une cause !

  22 March 2008

Global Voices Advocacy is pleased to announce the translation into French of its second guide "Blog for a Cause!", thanks to Claire Ulrich from Global Voices en Français. Blog for a Cause! has already been translated into Spanish; the translation into Arabic, Chinese and Bengali is on the way.