Abdullah in the lead?

Apparently, both Abdullah and Karzai are saying the results so far have them in the lead. Here’s a short interview with Abdullah:

Elections and Little Kabul

Little Kabul is an area in Fremont, California, which is known under that name because of its sizeable Afghan population. Below is a report on how Afghan women there feel about the elections.

Using rats to de-mine fields?

Saturday, 22 August 2009, 11:12 | Category : Crumbs, Curiosities, Politics, Human Rights & Other Serious Stuff
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Apparently, using trained rats is a much cheaper and faster way of de-mining fields *grin*

Belarus’ secret theatre

Thursday, 20 August 2009, 12:48 | Category : Crumbs, Politics, Human Rights & Other Serious Stuff
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Below is a news report on a theatre group in Belarus, which has to operate in secret because of the anti-government content in their plays.

The Lockerbie Case

Wednesday, 19 August 2009, 11:48 | Category : Crumbs, Politics, Human Rights & Other Serious Stuff
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Abdel Basset al-Megrahi is a Libyan man jailed for the 1998 airline bombing over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. His guilt or innocence has not been proved, it probably never will be proved because he has cancer and does not have much time left.
It’s a very interesting case because it happened way before 9/11 when [...]

The Pashtun vote and how it may turn the elections in Karzai’s favour

There’s a lot of reports now about how ethnic divides may decide results (just saw one about the Hazara community, but thought it was badly done, so I’m not linking :]). Here’s one about how Karzai is set to get the Pashtun vote:

Fraud in Afghan elections

A report about why election results are probably not going to be accurate…

Afghan elections and the future of the war on the Taliban

Afghan elections will take place on the 20th of August, the Taliban are naturally already trying to use force to stop people from voting. I wonder if, ironically, their call to boycott elections isn’t why the two main contenders are both very moderate and eloquent people. If Taliban supporters were voting that might not be [...]

The Venezuelan media and Hugo Chavez

I thought this was a rather interesting report. It says that Hugo Chavez is not a dictator as the international media suggests. The main argument here is that if he were a dictator then he would not allow media opposition as strong as what there is in Venezuela now. They even say that in the [...]

The plight of women in Iraq

Below is a long, but very interesting interview with Zainab Salbi, an activist who works with women in post-conflict areas. What I really loved about it was that she explains the situation so simply and practically. There are some issues there that I’ve never heard of before (for example I never knew that Saddam Hussain [...]