Stories from 18 January 2009
Syria: Sights to Behold
The Blog and the Shower commits a post to the beauty of the Sayyida Ruqqaya mosque.
Morocco: Medical Malpractice
The Magic of My Universe examines the cost of medical malpractice in Morocco in this chilling post.
Ukraine: Lily Hyde's “Dream Land” – the Crimean Tatar “Anne Frank”
Window on Eurasia writes about Lily Hyde’s “Dream Land” – a book by a Ukraine-based British freelance journalist, who “tells the story of the return of the Crimean Tatars to their homeland in the early 1990s from the perspective of Safi, a 12-year-old girl who comes back with her parents,...
Poland, Israel: “Using the Holocaust to Beat the Israelis”
The beatroot wrote on Jan. 8: “When protestors – who know little of either Gaza or Warsaw – shout slogans involving ‘holocaust’, or ‘genocide’ or ‘Warsaw ghetto’ they degrade all those terms and memories, and put off one person – me – who would like to join them in condemning...
Russia, Israel: Gaza War Online
IZO reports that “a blog in support of the current Israeli military action in Gaza on the super-popular social site odnoklassniki.ru (27 million members) was hacked and destroyed after it entered into polemics with an anti-Israel site on Facebook”; and comments on the controversial post by Anton Nossik/LJ user dolboeb,...
Russia, Israel: “Chechnya and Gaza”
A Step At A Time quotes a piece by Ben Cohen, comparing Israel's military actions in Gaza to those employed by Russia in Chechnya: “Oleg goes on to explain in his broken Hebrew that if Russian soldiers were sent into Gaza they would take care of things in three or...
Serbia: Mirror Pictures of Belgrade
Belgraded links to MightyNora's “Backwards Visual Travelogue” at B92 blog (SRP): “Belgrade pictures in mirror surfaces all over the city.”
The Balkans: Harold Pinter and Milosevic
Marko Attila Hoare of Greater Surbiton writes about Harold Pinter's association with the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic and explains why he feels “roughly as sad about Pinter’s death as Pinter was sad about the deaths of the tens of thousands killed by Milosevic or for the hundreds of...
The Balkans: “Britić”; “Beyond Sarajevo”
Balkan Anarchist writes about Britić, a new British Serb quarterly magazine. Bosnia Blog is seeking “co-bloggers and writers for Beyond Sarajevo, a wannabe directory of many wonderful (and sometimes not so wonderful) things about Sarajevo and Bosnia-Herzegovina.”
Russia, U.S.: “Spooked”
RFE/RL's The Power Vertical writes about Joshua Kucera's piece in The Atlantic about “a few encounters he had with a Russian Embassy ‘official’ who offered him a few hundred dollars every now and again to publish stories about ‘what we are doing in the Russian government’.”
Bosnia & Herzegovina: Accounts by Wojciech Tochman and Peter Lippman
Kirk Johnson of Americans for Bosnia writes about the newly-published English translation of a collection of Polish-language articles by journalist Wojciech Tochman (“Like Eating a Stone: Surviving the Past in Bosnia”): “I can only highly recommend that anyone interested in the human stories behind official statistics on refugee returns and...
Russia: St. Pete Panoramas
Copydude links to a collection of panoramas of St. Petersburg.
Ukraine: “Notes From an Underground”
Stephan Clark of Everybody I Love You links to an audio version of his essay on how not to starve in Ukraine: “When you learn you’re going to Ukraine for a year, become less of a fundamentalist. Don’t insist on being a vegetarian.”
Russia: Winter Travel By Car
At Way to Russia Blog, a photo report – here and here – on a car journey “through the whole country from Ekaterinburg through BAM (Baikal-Amur Railway) to Yakutsk (that's in the middle of Siberia) and back to Moscow in winter(!).”
Russia, Hungary: Cheating on Public Transportation
A story of “a fake ticket inspector operating on Budapest's trams” – at Pestiside.hu; and a video showing “how to travel on [Moscow] metro for free” – at IZO.
Poland: Nuclear Power?
Leopolis writes about the prospect of nuclear power in Poland.
French comedian launches “A Plane for Gaza”
French Moroccan comedian Jamel Debbouze launches, “A Plane for Gaza“, a plan to air lift humanitarian supplies to Gaza using three planes on loan from the King of Morocco. Le Blog de SmS urges readers to donate.
