March, 2007

Stories from March, 2007

Palestine: US Spying on Arab Blogs

Palestinian blogger Haitham Sabbah believes that the US is spying on Arab blogs. “We are now officially tracked, monitored and harassed by a special team from the U.S. State Department calling themselves the ‘Digital Outreach Team’,” he writes.

Ukraine, Belarus: Chernobyl

  30 March 2007

MoldovAnn attends the opening of a photo exhibition of Belarus-based American photographer Kristina Brendel, held at the Chernobyl Museum in Kyiv; she discovers that the Belarusian government's treatment of the Chernobyl catastrophe differs drastically from that of the Ukrainian government: “…there is total denial by the Belarussian government that there...

Lebanon: Arab Summit

Lebanese blogger As'ad Abu Khalil shares with us his mother's opinion on the Arab Summit, held recently in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. “My mother was telling me about her opinions of the Arab summit. She said that she was happy about the Syrian-Saudi rapprochement but only because it will upset the...

Russia: Lenin, A Collector's Item

  30 March 2007

“Thus, what is so fascinating about the cult of Lenin is the efforts of an atheist regime to create a kind of religion for political control,” writes Darkness at Noon in a lengthy post about his own very impressive collection of the Soviet busts of Lenin and a recent ordeal...

Antigua: Human Rights Treaty

  30 March 2007

A new human rights treaty protecting the rights of persons with disabilities opens for signing today at the United Nations and Talk Antigua thinks it is a significant development: “How we as a progressive Caribbean people continue to treat such persons, will be the measure of our human development.”

Anguilla: Constitutional Reform

  30 March 2007

Don Mitchell at Corruption-Free Anguilla was invited by the Members of the House of Assembly to lead them through the Report of the Constitutional and Electoral Reform Commission as Anguilla begins the process of constitutional reform: “It is the consensus view that emerges from the series of public meetings that...

Bahrain: Guard Shot Dead

Bahraini blogger Mahmood Al Yousif says a hotel security guard was shot dead in his country this morning after “..a scuffle broke out between drunks, purportedly American, and hotel security guards. It is reported that one of the servicemen drew his pistol and shot the Bahraini night-shift guard Abbas Ali...

China: Nation's first citizen reporter?

  30 March 2007

Meet Zola Zhou, independent citizen reporter, blogging live from the nailhouse. But is Zola really China's first citizen reporter? Big-name bloggers like Herock, Doubleleaf and Zhan Bin say he is. Out of what Zola says is a ‘sensitivity to news’ and desire for fame, on Monday afternoon he hopped on...

Mexico: Protests Against New Retirement Age

  30 March 2007

“Streets blocked, schools and universities closed, public transportation services suspended and violent demonstrations in front of the National Senate, all in the name of . . . what, exactly, I'm not too sure.” But Mark in Mexico does his best to find out. Ana Maria Salazar has more on the...