Posts by Amy

Full size cartoon available on The Economist.

source: Times online

Read more Burmese stories and about how bloggers worldwide took action on yesterday's "International Bloggers' Day for Burma on the 4th of October".

Writers and journalists around the world emphasized the important role bloggers and citizen journalists play in the documentation of the crisis in Burma: While official journalists have restricted access to information and face limits in their research, bloggers, especially in Burma, take brave action and fight with keyboards and digital cameras to share information with the world.

I cleaned our Why Democracy? del.icio.us-account today: The unbundled tags are as reduced as possible, the bundles include all currently relevant tags and the stumb-tags are deleted. Furthermore, the del.icio.us-Show Room is prepared for providing a neat Press Room about our project.

The Democracy House Blog has a tidy new outfit and Siyi and Erick are finally in the sidebar with a picture and a short description like they are online for all the other house members. I changed the picture and description of the so tragically passed away Democracy House mascot Congo, who died in a car accident month ago.

Siyi and Charlotte provided some great blogposts about the last week and the funeral service for Tamara's husband we attended Sunday morning. Pictures will follow for these entries. I also wrote a post about what it means, to be involved with Why Democracy? - a real experience.

It is not only our documentary film maker
Sabiha Sumar who was lucky to attend a Dinner with her President, Pakistan's leader General Musharraf:

Some journalists had the opportunity to have supper alongside Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York last week. Among them was Richard Stengel reporting for Time magazine about his Dinner with Ahmadinejad:

Follow these brave bloggers and read about the reaction of the military regime in Burma at Times online:

"Armed with small digital cameras, they have documented the spectacular growth of the demonstrations from crowds of a few hundred to as many as 100,000. On weblogs they have recorded in words and pictures the regime’s bloody crackdown, in a city where only a handful of foreign journalists work undercover. With downloaded software, they have dodged and weaved around the regime’s increasingly desperate attempts to thwart their work. Now the bloggers, too, have been crushed. Having failed to stop the cyber-dissidents broadcasting to the world, the authorities have simply switched off the internet.

Now Ko Latt and his blogging comrades have abandoned their keyboards and gone underground, sleeping in a different place every night, watching and waiting to see if the democracy movement has been truly crushed or is simply on hold. “When things were hot on the streets, we were not the main worry,” Ko Latt says. “But as the situation cools down, they will follow us. They know who we are, they know we are bloggers, and I am afraid.”"

Follow Burmese bloggers and their resistance in Ko Htike's blog as well as on Burmese Bloggers without Borders.

(Picture taken by racoles.)

After denying the existance of homosexuality in Iran in his speech at Columbia University in New York, bloggers and analysts around the world discussing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statement.

Their books both started a global debate around free market politics,
especially in the context of the Blackwater shooting in Iraq earlier
this month. Both books are high priority publications this year and
both writers are highly discussed these weeks: But what do bloggers
think about Alan Greenspan's and Naomi Klein's latest work?

• Mizzima News: Speculation over possible confrontation among Burmese generals
• Telegraph: Japanese man killed in Burma: Pictures
• New America Media: Photo of the Day - Monks protesting in Myanmar
• Channel 4: Burma - a journalist's report
• The Burma Campaign
• Profiles of "The Lady" Aung San Suu Kyi on the Telegraph and BBC

Find a dossier with information about the current crisis and its background in Burma on BBC online and related articles and sources in our archive.

Watch a video on how the peaceful demonstration turns into violence against the protestors on Telegraph TV.

Either it is constitutional, or it's not - right?

But the good news is:

"Today, Judge Ann Aiken of the Oregon Federal District Court ruled
that two provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(FISA), "50 U.S.C. §§ 1804 and 1823, as amended by the Patriot Act, are
unconstitutional because they violate the Fourth Amendment of the
United States Constitution.""

Source: Kurt Opsahl on EFF - Deep Links

Found via: Xeni Jardin on Boing Boing

You can make your vote count in the voting room, by voting on Democracy vs. Capitalism!

If you'd like to discuss the topic further, our guest blogger Robert Reich and the Why Democracy? community are happy to join the debate! 

In order to be even more democratic and let more people know about the Why Democracy? project, we started digging today.

The News Room had already digg-this-icons in place but our house blog
lacked these democratic instrument of social networking. I implemented
the digg-this function in the blog today - make your vote count! Happy
Diggin'!

John & I implemented a few new feeds that show up in the sidebar of our news room. Enjoy the new documentary and news resources!