20 April 2008
Stories from 20 April 2008
Damascus: The Destruction of The Old City
Damascus prides itself on being the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. The history of Damascus goes back well into the 8000BC. In every corner of its ancient alleys there's a taste of every historical era there was to be found. The city that had withstood everything from earthquakes to invasions for nearly 10 millennia, is now crumbling under the threat of... "Modernism", writes Yazan Badran, who brings us the reactions of a Syrian blogger.
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Japan: About40, and what next?
Changing times in Japan are opening the door for a new style of television. "About40", aired for the first time on April 11th, has done something novel for a Japanese TV drama: aim at the age bracket of 35 to 45 year old women, and hit it big. The new drama targets the late-thirties demographic of single women who entered the work force during the 80s bubble, captured in the newly-coined term "arafo". Bloggers give their initial thoughts on the show, and provide their perspectives on being "arafo" in modern Japan.
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Sudan's Looming War
Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement may possibly collapse if the bad pile up of misfortunes continues, but before we go into that, let's proceed with the good news first. Drima is ecstatic about a new book by the Sudanese Muslim scholar Abdullahi An-Na'im whom Irshad Manji hosted as a guest recently at her latest initiative, the Moral Courage Project.
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Burkina Faso: Vegetarians need not apply
As much as Ouagalais love political intrigue, most people are much more preoccupied with the power cuts that have afflicted the city for the past five weeks or so. First, a galet poussoir, which translates as a roller tapet, failed at one of the city’s main power stations, forcing Sonabel, the local power company, to schedule rolling blackouts throughout the city every day for more than a week until someone was sent to France to pick it up a new piece.
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Hyejin Kim: A praised young novelist among GVO authors
Global Voices celebrates, this month, Hyejin Kim's first anniversary as the GVO Korean Language editor. She is also a celebrated young novelist: her debut book, 'Jia: A Novel of North Korea', has been highly praised as a very vivid and moving novel set in 1990’s North Korea. Is this story just fiction? Hyejin lets us know in this interview.
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Came to find this post after signing the AllOut petition (which already has almost 50k signatures, and needs to grow...
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