· August, 2007

Stories about North America from August, 2007

Lebanon: Uproar at School in NY named after Khalil Gibran

Beirut Spring writes about an uproar surrounding a newly established public school in Brooklyn (NY), that is named after the Lebanese/Arab writer and poet Gibran Khalil Gibran. The school teaches many of its material in Arabic and has some courses on “Arab Culture”. Jewish groups demonstrated and condemned the opening...

Arabeyes: Just a Pretty Face

Miss South Carolina's response in the Miss USA Pageant to a question on why a fifth of US students couldn't locate their country on the map was the butt of jokes on Middle Eastern blogs today. Here's a quick review of what some bloggers had to say about her ramblings.

Iran:Iran, USA and Cheetah Project

Sepideh Saremi writes despite continued political tensions between the United States and Iran, the Iran Cheetah Project, a joint effort of the U.S.-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Iran’s Department of the Environment (DOE), is working to study and save the Asiatic cheetah (also referred to as the Iranian cheetah,...

Syria: Ambassador's Summer Holiday

Syria's Ambassador to the USA Mr. Imad Mustapha, takes some time off from Washington DC, hops on a plane back to Syria and spends his summer holiday with his family water-parachuting in Latakia's Cote d'Azure. He writes about his time here.

Egypt: Blood Money for Israel

Issandr El Amrani, from Egypt, describes US aid to Israel as ‘blood money’. He also asks: “Egyptians, you can ask yourself why your government has not told you that the Camp David agreement was amended.”

Raed Jarrar's Final Say

Iraqi Raed Jarrar will finally have his say in court after filing for a discrimination law suit against a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) official and JetBlue Airways for illegally discriminating against him based solely on the Arabic message on his t-shirt and his ethnicity.

Japan: 62 Years Later, Still Remembering

  10 August 2007

Sixty-two years have passed since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the close of World War Two. While people with first-hand experience of the bombing are disappearing, many people are fighting to keep their stories alive. Translations featured in this post include bloggers describing stories of the bombing, first-hand accounts of victims, a comparison of the way the history of events is taught in Japan and in the U.S., and thoughts about the relevance of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the world of today.