Global Voices Online

Taking Aim links to a collection of pictures of Russian churches, taken in 1910 and recently.

Doug Muir of A Fistful of Euros writes that the Hungarian currency, forint, “lost about 10% of its value in a month,” so it's a good time to travel to Hungary now - because everything is “about 7% cheaper.”

Mohammed is disappoint. He says, “the media is keen to disappoint me every single time because after the short friendly introduction that leads into the main coverage of the terror attack I find a flood of blaming, condemnation, chastising and scorn directed against (guess who?)…the victim of course, the victim of that very terror attack!
It makes me feel there's only a fine line of shyness stopping those people from praying for the souls of the terrorists, after all they, in the mentality of the media, are also victims of America.“

Five years ago some people imagined that the time has come to attack America and teach the whole world a lesson. Those people divided the world to “us” and “others”….I refuse to link between what is happening in Iraq right now and the War on Terror. If Iraq now in a mess I guess that what the Iraqis themselves did. Operation Iraq Freedom was totally successful in saving the area from a real threat and what happened in Iraq next have many causes these lines wont be enough to deal with, I hope I will have more time in the future to discuss them individually, Sooni said.

The Limey reports on the situation in Hamilton, Bermuda the morning hurricane Florence was scheduled to have passed by, and posts some photos.

Rasheed wonders: “High unemployment among Saudi youth and the lure of religious extremism make them perfect targets to be enlisted in Bin Laden's war against the West. All Saudis must now reflect on what happened and try to find answers to the question: Why did happen? If we don't try to find quick solutions to this problem, Saudis will unfortunately be typecast as the terrorists of the 21st century. Do we really want that stigma?”

The Lebanese showed more guts and were more principled in their opposition to Blair than the Palestinians. Only a handful of protestors protested in Ramallah while thousands of angry protestors gathered in Beirut, Tony said.

While the anniversary will inevitably be exploited by Bush and Co. to further thier case for more bloodshed in the name of “freedom”, September 11 can also be a means to send an alternative messege; a message in support of our universal humanity. As humans we are all equal and deserving of our freedoms. If one genuinly accepts this premise and not the view that “some are more equal than others”, then the finacial and political systems which entrech exploitation and oppression fundamentally come into question, Odog said.

Brian Anthony wonders: In the decade before the 3,000 innocents died on 9/11, over 100 times that many innocents died in Iraq through UN-imposed sanctions…So perhaps a more introspective question, a slightly tougher one than ‘What were you doing on 9-11?' is this: What were you doing, America, for the three decades leading up to 9-11, while other people's innocents were being killed?