· October, 2009

Stories about Governance from October, 2009

Bangladesh: Daylight Savings Time Confusion

  30 October 2009

Last June Bangladesh implemented Daylight Savings Time for the first time in the country. Expat blogger Meandering Memos writes about the confusion created among the citizens as the government has decided not to revert to the old timing.

Russia: “Twitter Against Tyrants”

  30 October 2009

Oleg Kozlovsky links to and quotes from the text of a briefing held by US Helsinki Commission/Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which included “a few recent examples of how we utilized Web 2.0 to spread information about electoral fraud” in Russia.

Russia: Riot Police vs “Senior Citizens”

  30 October 2009

Oleg Kozlovsky reports on a scandal that broke out after riot police used – during a drill – “water cannons, shock grenades, and tear gas” to disperse “a group of senior citizens that protested social injustice and blocked a federal highway.”

Maldives: The Price Of Environmental Activism

  29 October 2009

Maldives hosted the first underwater cabinet meeting to make people realize the threat of global warming and its effect on the country. Applauding the intention and activism behind this initiative Mohamed Nasheed opines that this will also hurt the tourism industry in Maldives as insurance premiums on investments have been...

Anguilla: No News is Bad News

  29 October 2009

“Six members of the Royal Anguilla Police Force arrested in the last five years. Traditionally, the Anguilla public administration operates under the assumption that any bad news is better not published”: Corruption-free Anguilla is “simply disgusted at this state of affairs.”

Jamaica: Police Corruption

  29 October 2009

“News of police corruption is sadly no surprise”: Letter from Jamaica wonders whether “we get the constabulary we deserve.”

Ukraine: Charity

  29 October 2009

Scenes From the Sidewalk writes about an encounter with one of Kyiv's many homeless children – and posts photos from actress Olga Kurilenko's visit to a CrossRoads Foundation/ChildRescue's rehabilitation center. Wild World of Sean's Blog reports on a charity visit to a Kyiv hospital for children affected by the Chernobyl...

Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia: “Dumping Grounds for People”

  29 October 2009

Dumping Grounds for People is a blog devoted to the results “of a four-months long journalistic investigation, conducted mostly undercover in ten institutions for adults with intellectual disabilities or mental illnesses in Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia.” A Flickr photo set, by Yana Buhrer Tavanier, is here, along with this note:...

Ukraine: Interview With A Drug Addict

  29 October 2009

David Sasaki shares thoughts on “engaging, not exoticizing human rights” and posts a video interview with Pavel Kutsev, a self-described “average drug addict” and “the co-founder of Drop-In Center, a Ukrainian organization which advocates for the rights of the injection drug user communication and for better national policy related to...

Hungary: 1956

  29 October 2009

Hungarian Spectrum writes about an online collection of testimony (HUN) on the events of 1956, which “helped the western powers understand the Hungarian situation, not just events that occurred during the revolution but more importantly the reasons for the outbreak of the uprising.” Remainder of Budapest wrote this on the...

Cuba: Contemplating Change

  28 October 2009

“I think that for Cuba to transition to an open society from a society ‘with some emergency exits’, some of the people now occupying positions of power in the government could take a long vacation…”: Octavo Cerco contemplates what's needed for meaningful change in Cuba.

Reunion: Creole becomes second official language

  28 October 2009

In the midst of the International Creole Month, Guadeloupean blogger CaribCreoleOne discusses [Fr] the now official use of Creole language alongside French in all the administrative procedures and places, in the city of Le Port in Reunion.