5 August 2005

Stories from 5 August 2005

Bolivia: New Poll

Blog from Bolivia links to a new poll which has Jorge Quiroga firmly in the lead for December's presidential election.

5 August 2005

Venezuela: American Ambassador and Baseball

Tomas Sancio of Venezuelan Politics covers the reaction and controversy which followed after U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield distributed free baseball equipment to poor youth in the capitol city, Caracas.

5 August 2005

Colombia: Visiting Colombia

At the five year anniversary of Plan Colombia, Boz has some excellent and optimistic observations about his latest trip to Colombia/a>.

5 August 2005

Inside the Japanese Blogosphere

Japanese bloggers were able to offer almost realtime accounts of the recent earthquake in northern Japan. Says one Japanese blogger: The fridge door swung upon, the goldfish bowl fell off...

5 August 2005

Ghana: Kente Weavers of Ashanti

Last night, I put together a short video about traditional kente weaving in Ghana's Ashanti region. Kente, perhaps the most famous West African textile, is brightly colored, coming in a variety of patterns, some reserved for use by Ashanti royalty. The video was shot in the historic kente weaving village of Bonwire, about an hour south of Kumasi. Three weavers are featured, each using a traditional loom to make the cloth. The video also contains music performed by Ghanaian drummer Obo Addy, used with permission from Alula Records. There are two versions of the video: high resolution (13 megs) and low resolution (two megs).

 kente weavers

Kente Weavers of Ashanti:
High res video
Low res video

Production notes: The video was shot on July 23, 2005 in Bonwire village, Ashanti Region, Ghana, using a Konica-Minolta dImage A-200 digital camera. The Quicktime files shot on the camera were uploaded to a Macintosh G4 laptop and edited with Final Cut Pro HD 4.5. Both versions of the video were compressed using the 3ivx compression codec. Total editing time was about 90 minutes, including compression.

5 August 2005

Zimbabwe: No Fourth Estate?

The Zimbabwean Pundit points out an interview with “reviled media henchman Tafataona Mahoso”, where he explains why there's no such thing as journalism that has Zimbabwe's interests at heart.

5 August 2005

Philippines: Raul Roco, RIP

Torn and frayed in Manila mourns the death of former presidential candidate Raul Roco: “Philippine politics has lost perhaps its only intellectual heavyweight of recent years.”

5 August 2005

Macam-Macam: An apology

Macam-Macam reports that former deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has recieved an apology from the man who beat him while Ibrahim was in police custody in the late 1990s. Wikipedia...

5 August 2005

China: Trusting the Media

EastSouthWestNorth reports on the story of an entrepreneur, involved in a dispute with the local government, who disappeared after leaving for a meeting with a “reporter”. As far as anyone...

5 August 2005