Blogs & Ecology

Some bit of not so bad news: Thailand’s tourism authorities have issued a list of hotels offering accommodation for stranded passengers. A special flight was arranged for Thai Muslim pilgrims to their annual Haj pilgrimage to Mecca. Foreign governments are making extra efforts to help their citizens.

As of this writing, the airport crisis is still not over. Dozens of empty planes were allowed to leave Bangkok, but protesters still control the two major airports in Thailand.

Localgd posted photos showing Guangzhou Taxi driver strike.

Hundreds of people are reported to have been killed in the violence that erupted in Jos, Plateau State, Central Nigeria on Friday November 28th over a disputed local election.

(Photo by citizen journalism portal Sahara Reporters)

Saralynn, a missionary based in Jos, described the situation on Saturday:

I fled my house today.

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Source: Global Voices Online

Taxi drivers from around the country have been in strike for a month. The first protest appeared in Chongqin in November 3, then it spread to Hainan, Gansu, Yunnan, Shandong, Qingdao, Jinan, Fujian, Shantou, Wubei, Shaanxi and etc.

Tomorrow (1 of December), it is likely that Guangzhou will have another Taxi driver strike, and a campaign letter has been circulating around. Beifeng scanned the letter and put it up on his blog; chong posted a backup copy at inmediahk.net:

Letter calling for strike

倡議書

全廣州市出租車駕駛員朋友們：

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Source: Global Voices Online

Some background and a translation of an Izvestiya piece on Ukraine's Ruthenians - at Robert Amsterdam's blog.

Robert Coalson of RFE/RL's The Power Vertical writes about “the open-again, closed-again, open-again trial of three men allegedly involved in the murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya” and the role that former juror Yevgeny Kolesov has played in it.

A note on the difference between “orange revolution” and “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine - at Leopolis: “The former represents the current state of politics: disappointment, disillusionment, distrust, financial crisis, brawls in parliament, corruption, broken promises. There is no reason to celebrate the ‘orange revolution.' But the latter recalls an amorphous historical, emotional and spiritual point in space that has passed. It can only be recalled through memory or via the end product of the photographer's eye.

Window on Eurasia writes: “Kyiv’s efforts to call attention to Stalin’s terror famine on the 75th anniversary of that tragedy and especially its moves to gain international recognition of it as a genocide against the Ukrainian people has generated much criticism by Russian officials from President Dmitry Medvedev on down as well as from numerous Moscow commentators.

Free Speech Emergency in Latvia wrote on Nov. 22: “A university lecturer was arrested for two days for making comments at a public discussion of the economy, while a musician was questioned for joking about taking money out of a bank during a concert.” More coverage of the situation - at All About Latvia. (From a Nov. 24 post: “It is as if the government has taken a page straight of the Kremlin rulebook.”)

After the municipal elections on November 9 in Nicaragua, there were conflicting claims of victory by the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) led by President Daniel Ortega and the Liberal Constitutionalist Party. The opposition accused the FSLN of massive election fraud and which resulted in street demonstrations and protests. The two groups clashed in the streets of the capital city of Managua making way for much uncertainty.

From Egypt, Elijah Zarwan writes: “Egyptian activists yesterday staged protests to call for the release of 16 people detained in the southern city of Samalout in mid-October. Police used tear gas and batons to disperse an angry crowd that gathered when police killed a pregnant woman on October 8 as they searched her house.”

Voice of Egypt is ashamed of Egyptian Lawyer Nagla Al Imam, the same lawyer who made Egyptians angry, for encouraging Arab men to sexually harass Israeli women during her interview on Al Arabia TV (Ar).

The Egyptian blog says:

The escalation of conflict between government troops and Muslim separatist rebels in several areas of Mindanao Island has affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Mindanao is located in south Philippines.

The intensified fighting began after a peace agreement was rejected by many politicians, and finally by the Philippine Supreme Court. Critics believe the agreement was unconstitutional since it would compromise the sovereignty of the Republic of the Philippines. They added that the agreement would pave the way for the establishment of a separate Moro-controlled state within the territories of the country.

On Nov. 15, Slovak prime minister Robert Fico and his Hungarian counterpart, Ferenc Gyurcsány, met in the border town of Komárno, Slovakia, in an attempt to ease nationalist tensions that have escalated due to Nov. 1 football game violence in Dunajská Streda, Slovakia.

Eva S. Balogh of Hungarian Spectrum has been blogging a lot recently about the Slovak-Hungarian relations, and here are some of the highlights.

Hartal, a blog against the culture of frequent strikes in India shows that even the shifting of a bus terminal to a new wider location in a municipality in Kerala can be a reason to stall an entire district with a day long strike.