21 July 2012

Stories from 21 July 2012

Is Tunisia a Banana Republic?

Tunisian netizens react to a Tunisian MP's use of the term "President of the Banana Republic" to refer to interim President Moncef Marzouki, during a heated parliamentary debate.

21 July 2012

Egypt: Cairo's Urban Future

Cairo from Below has recently launched an urban competition as part of an international initiative entitled Our Urban Futures, in which participants should send their proposals about their vision for...

21 July 2012

Mauritania: A Journalist Behind Bars

Mauritanian journalist Obeid Ould Amegn, whose health is in bad condition [Ar], is still in the central prison of the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott. Obeid Ould Amegn, a journalist and an anti-slavery human rights activist, is the vice-president of the Club of Activist Journalists. Mauritanian police had arrested him on April 29, in the capital Nouakchott, after he gave a statement to Al Arabiya TV network regarding those arrested following a book-burning protest.

21 July 2012

Zambia: New Minimum Wage Pits Employers Against Government

The Statutory Instrument stipulating the minimum wage payable to domestic servants, shop workers and other general workers is arguably one of the most controversial policies of the 10 months old Patriotic Front (PF) government. This issue has divided Zambian netizens on citizen media and social network sites, those for and those against it, in equal measure.

21 July 2012

Moldova: Communism – Is It Really Over Now?

On June 12, Moldova’s parliament condemned the Soviet totalitarian communist regime and prohibited the use of the communist symbols, the hammer and sickle. Diana Lungu reports on the online reactions to this important yet belated decision.

21 July 2012

Wales: The State of Welsh Language Blogging

In the 1990s, William Owen Roberts, a Welsh author and playwright, remarked that writing in Welsh is akin to "writing on the edge of catastrophe". If that is the case, a Welsh language blogger might be half way off the edge already.

21 July 2012

Tajikistan: Young People Learn to Blog

Matrix [ru], a Central Asian youth TV project focusing on Internet and new technologies, has produced a video [ru] about bloggers in Tajikistan. While few Tajiks presently run blogs, some local organizations...

21 July 2012

Peru: Graffiti Overshadows Coverage of Anti-Mining Protests

During a recent protest march in Lima against the Conga mining project, the monument to the liberator Jose de San Martin was defaced with slogans against the government and the mining project. The media attention, and even in the blogosphere, was more focused on this "graffiti", obscuring the message of the protests.

21 July 2012