Stories from and

European Citizens Call for the Protection of Media Pluralism

  20 January 2014

“European institutions should safeguard the right to free, independent and pluralistic information”. The quote, from the Media Initiative website, summarizes the main idea behind a pan-European campaign that aims at urging the European Commission to draft a Directive to protect Media Pluralism and Press Freedom. The Media Initiative is running a European Citizens’ Initiative – a tool...

Underwear Bombardment on North Korea?

  9 October 2013

A Swedish underwear brand launched a ridiculous Ad campaign entitled ‘Weapons of the Mass Seduction’ that pledges to drop 450 pairs of free underwear to the country voted the most in the poll on Oct 31 by an airdrop. North Korea, so far, was placed on top by garnering over 5,500 votes and news has...

Parallels Between Religious and Copyright Wars

  24 January 2013

Rick Falkvinge, the founder of Pirate Party, reinterprets the wars of religion that devastated Western Europe in the XVI and XVII centuries in terms of the current struggle to control information through overbearing legislation related to copyright and freedom of expression: The religious wars were never about religion as such....

France: Unexpected Parallel Between Assange and Strauss-Kahn

  23 August 2012

The blog de Casimira highlights some similarities [fr] between the timing of the charges and the ensuing judicial battles facing  J. Assange and D. Strauss-Kahn.  She also clarifies the peculiarities of the charge, “sex by surprise” [fr], for which the founder of WikilLeaks is being sued. This charge, which applies when the person refuses to wear...

Baltics-Sweden: Twenty Years of Independence

  17 August 2011

Albatros of Litauen blog reports about [ger] Swedish celebrations of 20 years of independence for Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and how Swedish Prime Minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, apologised to his Baltic colleagues for recognizing soviet annexation during World War II.

Europe: EU and LGBT Rights

  18 October 2010

Katerina Todorovska wrote [MKD] on the Macedonia in the European Union blog about EU's imperfect record on LGBT rights and its positive influence in relation to starting the debate and improving tolerance in the Western Balkans, as Croatia, Serbia, and Macedonia strive to join this supranational structure.

Azerbaijan: Journalists to visit Sweden ahead of November vote

  26 September 2010

Gulara Azimzadeh's blog reports that seven journalists from Azerbaijan will visit Stockholm to see how the media covered the 2010 elections in Sweden. The journalists were selected after a competition held by the Azerbaijan Media Center as the country prepares for its own parliamentary vote this November and recounts the...

Worldwide: Demonstrations for Palestine

Roba from Jordan published pictures from different demonstrations world wide against Israel's last attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, in Holland, Greece, Egypt, United Kingdom, Lebanon, Pakistan, Malaysia, Sweden, France, Turkey, India, Italy, Canada, Spain, Belgium, United States, Bulgaria and Austria.

MENA: Introducing, “The Circumventer”

Alexandra Sandels, from MENASSAT, writes her interview with Walid Al-Saqaf, a Sweden-based Yemeni Internet expert, regarding the launch of his new program Al-Kasir (means the circumventer in Arabic) – during a summit on blogging in Cairo which was entitled “Blogging for the Future“. Al-Kasir, which is currently available in its...

Russia, EU: “Policy-Media Interaction” and Blogging

  18 February 2009

Vilhelm Konnander posts his reflections on Russia-focused blogging and “policy-media interaction”: “So, by the end of the day, there is little room for deviance as the public policy-media discourse evolves. When one, to the contrary, gets one's message across, there is no saying how it will be processed by its...

Europe: “Who Needs the Euro?”

  4 February 2009

Andrei Tuch of AnTyx writes at Th!nk About It: “So, for the eleven member states who still use their own currencies – and especially the more developed ones, whose economies might have some chance of standing on their own without leaning on the European Central Bank – the question is:...

Europe: Entropa

  23 January 2009

Belatedly, links to some posts on Entropa: Margarete of The Foreigner's Guide to Living in Slovakia believes “it should be taken down”; Kosmopolito thinks that “the debate around the project is also part of the installation”; BBC's Mark Mardell writes that “the fact that it is a hoax does not...

Sweden: Immigration

  3 December 2008

Certain Ideas of Europe writes: “Not all of those Polish plumbers leaving Britain and Ireland as the economies slow are necessarily going straight home. Sweden has seen immigration surge to record levels this year.”