Picture yourself here. Photo: nattu

Last month, when we announced the creation of the Matador Flickr pool (which, by the way, now has more than 80 members and more than 700 incredible photos!), we alluded to some big plans we’d soon be unveiling for photographers.

[Insert virtual drumroll here.]

Matador U, Matador’s travel writing school, will be expanding its course offerings in the first quarter of 2010 with the launch of a travel photography course.

Working in collaboration with some of the world’s best known travel photographers, the course has been developed by our in-house editors and professional travel photographers Lola Akinmade and Paul Sullivan. Between them, Lola and Paul have had their photography featured in Vogue, CITY Magazine, and Time Out and Hedonist’s guide book series, among others.

More details about the course will be announced here as the launch date nears. In the meantime, we invite you to download our FREE report, 15 Publications That Pay for Travel Photography to get you excited about the program.

Community Connection:

We’re always interested in featuring Matador members’ exceptional photos in our photo essays. If you’d like to see your photos published on Matador Trips, please contact Trips’ editors, Hal Amen and Carlo Alcos: hal@matadornetwork.com and carlo@matadornetwork.com.

Some of us were on tonight and saw the tweet, “It’s a girl” and couldn’t wait to say congrats:

Welcome to this world, nena! You’ve got viaje in your veins. Love- Sarah

“Wow! A baby girl! I’m so, so happy for you and Francisco. You guys are going to be amazing padres! -Ross

Julie, I’m so excited for you! Good luck and congratulations on this new journey! – Michelle

Yeeaaaa Julie! We are all so proud of you and can’t wait to meet the newest, littlest Matadorian!

Thanks for not Tweeting Live from during your new child’s birth. Congratulations! –Andy

“Come here, little one…” Here’s to hoping the baby makes it way out soon! Many congrats, Julie
and Francisco — Christine

bienvenida mariel from David Miller on Vimeo.

Photo: illuminating_9/11

Remember Muntadar al-Zaidi?

Nah, I didn’t think so.

How about the Iraqi “shoe throw” journalist?

Yes?

Well, al-Zaidi IS the journalist who famously threw his shoes at President Bush during a December 2008 press conference. He was subsequently arrested and sentenced to three years in prison.

Despite the long sentence, his total time was reduced to one year since he had no prior criminal record, and local authorities agreed he could be released three months early in recognition of his good behavior. He is scheduled to be released from a Baghdad prison tomorrow.

Though no one’s arguing that serving time is pleasant, al-Zaidi has been enjoying some unexpected benefits as the result of public support of his actions. In addition to continuing to receive his salary from the al-Baghdadiya news agency, al-Zaidi has allegedly been bought a house and has received multiple offers from parents who are eager to give their daughters’ hands to him in marriage. He (and his shoes) were also nominated as BBC’s Person of the Year.

Other promises–such as the Emir of Qatar’s pledge to buy al-Zaidi a golden horse–haven’t yet materialized.

No word yet on al-Zaidi’s post-prison plans, but his boss at al-Baghdadiya says he expects al-Zaidi to return to journalism.

Community Connection:

Are you a member of the armed forces who has served in Iraq or Afghanistan? Join Matador Travel today and start sharing your stories with our community.

Cuban artist Juan Antonio Picasso paints at his studio in Havana. Photo: Julie Schwietert

Despite the Obama administration’s stated commitment to improving Cuba-U.S. relations and reviewing U.S. foreign policy that prohibits most Americans from traveling freely to Cuba, actual policy changes have been slow in coming. The so-called travel ban remains intact for American citizens who are not from Cuba themselves or who do not have family in Cuba.

Fortunately, some organizations have been granted licenses to lead authorized trips to Cuba, and the Katonah Museum of Art, located in Katonah, New York, is one such institution. Museum administrators are now accepting reservations for a trip to Havana scheduled for January 17-23, 2010.

From the museum:

“Participants will spend the week immersed in Cuba’s… vibrant artistic culture through visits to museums, cultural centers, holy sites, and tours of the studios and homes of 14 Cuban artists led by Chelsea [New York] gallerist Alberto Magnan. Artists to be visited include contemporary surrealists Sandra Ramos and Los Carpinteros.”

In addition to the studio visits, trip participants will travel just outside Havana to the Cuban estate of American writer Ernest Hemingway and will have free time to explore Havana on their own. All participants will be lodging at the upscale Parque Central Hotel.

For full itinerary, rates and more information, contact Jacqui Potente at 914-232-9555, ext. 2968.

Community Connection:

Planning a trip to Havana? Check in with Matador’s Havana expert.

Prime Minister elect Yukio Hatoyama. Photo: World Economic Forum

You know, the wacky game show hosts humiliating their guests; super-high-tech robots about to usher in a new dawn of pampering; or geisha girls, earthquakes, and tea ceremonies typifying the “otherworldliness” of the Land of the Rising Sun. Maybe, just maybe, for a fleeting moment the world caught a glimpse of the real Japan last Sunday.

That would be the Japan that just voted out of office the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which apart from an eight-month period, has been in power continuously since 1955.

Is this a revolutionary change? Or just cosmetic?

The numbers speak of an electoral earthquake: In the 480 seat lower house of the Japanese parliament, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) took 308 for themselves, leaving the former party of government with a rump 119 seats and less than a third of the popular vote.

Ah, this is all about change. True, that was a strong element of the election. Talk to just about any Japanese person and they will tell you they are proud of finally changing the party in power. But there’s more to it than aping Obama or just rejecting what went before. In the next breath, that same voter will tell you, “But you know, in Japan, the bureaucrats run everything.”

And this was the key issue identified by the DPJ and went a long way to explaining its victory. But a war on bureaucracy doesn’t mean the perfunctory criticism of public sector budgets and cliched cries of “Cut the red tape!” common to elections throughout the West.

In Japan, the bureaucrats really do run the show. The ministries keep their ministers under tight rein and keep the private sector beholden to the bureaucrats, who can make or break companies by awarding lucrative contracts or revoking a key license. The diligent bureaucrat then gets a nice retirement with a cushy job in a company that he (and it’s always a he) was supposed to be regulating. This is standard operating procedure, for a recent example click here.

That incestuous relationship is ignored as an unwelcome but bearable fact of life when the economy is growing, but with years of economic stagnation and (official) unemployment rates at a postwar high of 5.9 percent, voters had a right to feel old ways just didn’t work anymore.

Did that mean voters turned their back on the free market and the right? You might have read throwaway lines about the DPJ being a hodgepodge party of the left – the unions back the party after all. Does this mean the country has veered away from the US and into the arms of China, as conservative commentators in the US fear?

Well, left and right tags aren’t that helpful. The man who will become Prime Minister on September 16, Yukio Hatoyama, has some powerful relatives. He is the grandson of a former PM and is married to the heiress of the Bridgestone fortune. In short, he’s no Red, and neither are the senior members of his party, many of whom started their careers with the LDP.

Sure, the victors offered voters nanny state payouts – more cash for farmers; a higher minimum wage; $250 for each child, every month; slashing school fees; and axing freeway tolls (there is a toll on every freeway). But what they didn’t offer was the massive dam projects, the concreting of local scenic spots, or the bridges to nowhere that are the beloved policy tools of the LDP and the bureaucrats to stimulate the economy. Already, the future’s looking bleak for the cement mixers.

If the election meant anything lasting, it was this: the interests of the consumer won out against the interests of the producers for the first time in living memory in Japan.

There’s just one catch. To pay for all the promises, the DPJ is banking on reining in the bureaucrats. And they may have other ideas.

Community Connection:

Get your fill of Japan content by checking out the Japan section of Matador’s archives.

Gustav Mahler

Either way, the message is the same: peace through music. This week, the World Orchestra, made up of 95 musicians from 35 countries, will be playing both to commemorate World War II and to celebrate 200 years of peace.

On September 1, the World Orchestra performed in Krakow, Poland, in a concert marking the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II. The program included Mahler’s “Symphony no. 5 in C# Minor”, as well the world premiere of a commissioned piece called “Prelude to Peace,” by Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki.

The orchestra will follow this somber event with a celebration in Stockholm, Sweden on September 2 at the Baltic Sea Festival. The festival’s theme this year is appropriately named “peace and reconciliation,” chosen for the 200th anniversary of a peace treaty between Sweden and Finland.

The World Orchestra for Peace was founded by the highly influential conductor Georg Solti, a Jewish-Hungarian who was forced to flee his homeland at the start of World War II. He first organized the orchestra at the request of the United Nations to celebrate their 50th anniversary in 1995.

The idea had been brewing in Solti’s mind since a concert at Buckingham Palace three years before, when 13 of the world’s most prolific musicians came together and performed in celebration of his 80th birthday. Solti later said, “I could not escape one very essential idea. Isn’t it amazing that we musicians can produce a united Europe or more… even a united world. Why can’t the politicians?”

Sadly, Solti passed away in 1997, and Valery Gergiev, the Principal Conductor for the London Symphony Orchestra, has led the group ever since, giving concerts in cities like Moscow, Berlin, Beijing, Jerusalem, and Budapest.

The World Orchestra is an elite organization which only admits musicians by invitation. These citizens, representing dozens of cultures and languages, sit side by side, often unable to communicate with words but still in perfect harmony. As Solti said, it would be nice if one day politicians could do the same.

Back in February of this year, 40,000 Mexicans gathered in the Zocalo, Mexico City’s main plaza, for a massive kiss-in, setting a new Guinness World Record for the largest number of people to gather together for a big collective kiss.

Still high from setting one record, they gathered again this weekend, this time to set a different record: the largest number of people to gather together simultaneously in a single place to re-enact Michael Jackson’s video for the song “Thriller.”

Feature photo: Guerry; Photo above: Eneas

While New Yorkers were gathering in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park to celebrate the late pop star’s birthday in a bash sponsored by the film director Spike Lee, Mexicans gathered at the Monument of the Revolution in full Jackson regalia: black fedoras, aviator sunglasses, and bloody make-up, according to NPR’s Mexico City correspondent, Jason Beaubien.

It didn’t take much to break the existing record, which was set by 242 people at the College of William and Mary earlier this year.

An estimated 12,000-13,000 people showed up to dance, while as many as 40,000 more showed up to watch.

While the Guinness officials convene to ensure whether all of the dancers performed the song from start to finish, you can check out some video footage from the event:

Community Connection:

Interested in bizarre record-breaking feats? Peru won the world’s largest ceviche title earlier this year, and Anandita Dutta Tamuly won a Guinness title for downing the most hot chiles –51–in less than a minute. I don’t know about you, but I think I’d rather moonwalk.

An inked finger is evidence that this woman has voted. Photos courtesy of author.

Bachelet will not run for re-election, as Chilean law prevents presidents from campaigning for a consecutive term after their first four year term has lapsed.

As the next election cycle gets underway, the question on everyone’s lips is, will the centrist-socialists (Concertación) pull off the vote again for a fifth consecutive win, or will the political right (Alianza) be swept in on an upset?

Chilean law requires that the president must win with more than 50% of the popular vote, and the 2005 election results had no clear majority, so the country held runoff elections. Bachelet (Concertación) won 53.49% of the runoff vote, and left Sebastian Piñera (Alianza) in second place, with four years to fortify his position for the December 13, 2009 elections.

The presidential palace.

Since the dictator Augusto Pinochet left power and democracy was restored to Chile in 1989, the nation has held four presidential elections, each of which has resulted in a win by the centrist-socialist Concertación group.

This year’s election sees six candidates gearing up for their campaigns: Sebastián Piñera, Eduardo Frei, Marco Enríquez-Ominami, Jorge Arrate, Alejandro Navarro, and Adolfo Zaldívar, with Piñera, Frei and Ominami as the frontrunners.

Of these candidates, first-round interviews of the public conducted by national newspaper La Tercera in late April indicated that Piñera (Alianza), the economist and investor who is responsible for bringing credit cards to Chile, is in the lead, with 30% of voters planning to cast their vote for him.

Frei (Concertación), who recently claimed himself to be heir to Bachelet’s presidency and said the Concertación always wins because it promotes progress for the nation and its people (reported on Radio Biobio, August 23, 2009), is in second place with 25%.

Dark horse Ominami (Concertación) who comes further from the left, has already garnered 21% of the intended vote according to the survey. He’s the son of the leader of Chile’s Leftist Revolutionary Movement (MIR) is just 36 years old.

Campaigining in Chile will not begin in earnest until one month before the election, when flag-waving, sandwich-boards, bulletins and telephone campaigns are legally permitted. Chile has universal suffrage, and voting is compulsory for registered voters (with some exceptions), who are subject to fines if they do not comply.

Approximately 8.2 million Chileans were eligible to vote in last year’s election, and those having reached the age of majority may register to vote this year by September 13. The election will be held December 13.

Community Connection:

Interested in learning more about Chile? Check out these articles from our archives:

*7 Reasons to Learn Spanish in Chile

*10 Reasons to Base Your Study Abroad Experience in Chile

Screenshot from WordPress Showcase

First up, many thanks to WordPress for including Matador at the WordPress Showcase. Currently we’re rated #1 based on our implementation and use of WordPress. To vote, please click here and roll over the number of stars you feel we deserve, then click the mouse. You don’t have to sign up or register for anything, however, please vote only once.

As far as why we were included in the showcase, WordPress wrote:

Matador is made up of a number WordPress blogs that work together to provide content on a variety of travel-related topics.The site averages more than 1.8 million monthly pageviews.

I fired off a couple questions to Ian MacKenzie, who (along with his wife Karen) has been the primary architect responsible for Matador’s design.

David: How many designs had you and Karen worked on before this latest one?

Ian: Well I’d say it was the second major theme makeover since the first one. We’re always making tweaks, but this was substantially different.

David: What was the overarching design element you were going for with this latest theme?

Ian: We mostly wanted to showcase more content from across the entire network, in a visual way, and make it easier to catch people’s eyes. We also wanted to increase the ability for people to scan many headlines.

David: What does it mean to you and karen as developers to have a design currently ranking # 1 in the WP showcase?

Ian: Ha, is it really?

David: Yes.

Ian: I’d say we’re happy people seem to like the theme, and we’re looking forward to its continued evolution in the future.

Spoken like a true developer, I think. Thanks again to everyone on the team and in the community–this is really the cumulative vision of many many people with lots of feedback.

Community Connection

Interested in site design, or just wondering about which blogging platform is best for your writing? We’ve been having a good discussion on this at the Notebook this week.

Photo: openDemocracy

No matter where he lodges when he visits New York to speak at the United Nations in September, Libya’s leader Muammar el-Qaddafi isn’t likely to receive a warm welcome, particularly after the jubilant homecoming his government orchestrated for the freed Lockerbie airline bomber last week.

But el-Qaddafi isn’t planning to join other world leaders at swanky, upscale hotels like the Waldorf Astoria.

Instead, he has made a request to pitch a tent in Central Park.

City officials were reported to have rejected el-Qaddafi’s request this afternoon.

He won’t be left without a bed, though: the Libyan mission to the United Nations is said to own a spacious mansion in nearby Englewood, New Jersey, where el-Qaddafi will be hosted.

Community Connection:

Looking for some unusual lodgings yourself? Check out “The World’s 10 Weirdest Hotels.”

Photo: elpablo

It was a small item in today’s New York Times: “Mexico Legalizes Drug Possession.”

But the news may have big implications for drug policy in the Americas.

Mexico’s federal government passed a law yesterday that decriminalizes possession of small amounts of marijuana, as well as cocaine, heroin, meth, and LSD.

The law, which established legal limits for personal possession, represents a shift from a punitive drug policy to one that treats drugs as a public health issue. If successful, the law may serve as a model for other countries in the region.

The law went into effect today.

Community Connection:

Drugs can be taken too far, of course. Read about Bolivia’s cocaine bars and weigh in: Do these represent a “Latin American Adventure or Playing With Fire?”

The now-deposed TCI Premier, Michael Misick (center); Photo: Foreign & Commonwealth Office

Nobody says postcolonialism’s been easy.

To go from a state of dependence to one of autonomy with little support has proven understandably challenging for many of Europe’s former colonial states, especially the small islands of the Caribbean. And in the age of globalization, which has prompted a form of economic neo-colonialism, fledgling independent governments have struggled to develop infrastructure, support, and services for their citizens.

Economies have hiccuped as traditional sources of labor and income have disappeared in the past decade, prompting many countries to focus almost exclusively on tourism as an industry (which was fine until the global economic crisis hit, literally shuttering hotels on some of the smaller islands).

With all the challenges, though, few of the newly independent nations have been interested in reverting back to colonial status. That’s just what happened today in the Turks and Caicos Islands, though local news reflects widespread discontent with the action, which resulted in the suspension of the TCI’s Constitution and the dismissal of the islands’ House of Assembly.

It’s true that the Turks and Caicos have been undergoing political challenges that may be unique: the government has been accused of rampant corruption and the economy has been in a shambles. But critics charge that the TCI haven’t received the support they need to really achieve independence in the fullest sense of the word, and that the rollback to colonialism is punitive and infantilizing.

A British governor, Gordon Wetherell, was appointed to serve as head of government; Wetherell, in turn, has begun appointing other Brits for key government positions, including chief executive of TCI public service. “Belongers” (locals) will be appointed to serve on an Advisory Council and a Consultative Forum, though the functions and specific level of influence these entities will have are not yet clear.

The move is a “smack in the face of democracy” and a “backward step to colonialism,” according to Rosalind Cummings-Yeates, a Chicago-based travel writer who commented about the take-over on Twitter.

Community Connection:

Learn more about colonialism, postcolonialism, and independence movements in the Caribbean:

U.S. House of Reps Approves Proposal to Consider Puerto Rico’s Status

Photo: Matt Biddulph

Freelance writers and cafes have always gone hand in hand, but according to the Wall Street Journal, the relationship may soon suffer a permanent break.

The romantic image of the freelance writer sitting in a cozy cafe, sipping a steaming latte and tapping away at their next National Geographic article or bestselling novel, is a common one.

For many writers, the allure of the coffee shop is more than just caffeine addiction. It’s an escape from the distractions at home, where laundry needs folding and the dishes in the sink are begging to be washed. It’s also a solution for lonely writer syndrome, when the need to be with other living, breathing humans becomes unbearable.

While cafe owners used to encourage the regular business, recent economic woes have caused some to change their tune.

At some time or another, most of us have been guilty of nursing a cup of the house blend for hours, plugged in and surfing the web. With the current unemployment rate, it’s no surprise that more and more workers are trying to become location independent.

True penny-pinchers are bringing everything from food to teabags and setting up for the work day in their local cafe, draining electricity and eliminating the need to pay for internet service at home. Meanwhile, potential customers are driven away when they can’t find a table to enjoy their mocha and muffin.

Reaction from management is mixed. Unsurprisingly, some have put time restrictions on laptop use, or locks and signs on outlets politely informing customers that laptop plugs are not welcome. A few actually have a ban on laptops altogether. Other cafe owners have expanded their businesses, adding more outlets to encourage regular visits.

That may seem like the ideal option- if, of course, owners can afford it. Cafes are a popular place for business meetings and interviews, and a no-laptop policy or limited WiFi could be a deal breaker in those situations. But if smaller shops are struggling just to keep their doors open, it’s hard to blame them for shooing squatters away.

Where does this leave the travel writer? It’s usually easy enough for someone backpacking in a foreign country to stop at a cafe for a quick drink and a blog update. Perhaps it’s time to pick up the notebook and pen again- saving electricity, sure, but still taking up hours of valuable table time.

What’s the solution? Some claim angry owners are making a mistake by discouraging freelancers, that any business is good business. Can WiFi addicted customers help support their favorite cafe by splurging on a venti macchiato now and then, or is this long romance finally at an end?

Community Connection:

If you’re a location independent professional in one of the Techiest Cities in the World, is this all a moot point?

And what is a location independent professional anyway? Learn more about this special kind of freelancing in 10 Tips for Becoming a Location Independent Professional.

Photo: irene.

Visitors are coming in record numbers, the National Park Service announced on Monday. Visits rose nearly 4% this year and June alone showed an increase in over 700,000 visitors compared to June of 2008.

Chalk it up to fee-free weekends, a handful of dates set aside this summer when entrance fees were waived. The economic downturn and lower gas prices compared to last summer have also been factors. Americans are choosing to visit parks—especially easily accessible ones near large metropolitan areas—as a cheap alternative to more pricey summer vacations. And with Ken Burns’ newest documentary, “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” set to air on September 27, interest in the parks is sure to continue to spike.

But what does all of this mean for the parks and the fragile ecosystems they protect? It seems the flock of visitors can potentially hurt the very environments the parks are intended to preserve.

The parks face numerous threats, according to the National Parks Conservation Association. “…[A]ir, noise, and water pollution, erosion, invasive species, inadequate storage facilities, insufficient funding and staffing, and inappropriate activities such as snowmobile and jet ski use—have compromised the integrity of the parks’ invaluable resources,” the NPCA website says.

Visitors, especially in large numbers, mean more trash, more cars that pollute, more hikers on fragile landscapes. All this will certainly strain the already huge backlog of maintenance projects and decades of underfunding for the 391 parks in the system.

The NPCA calls the parks “long-neglected and chronically underfunded,” reporting “a $750-million annual funding shortfall, and a backlog of maintenance and preservation projects of approximately $9 billion.” What’s more, the parks have some $2.5 billion in projects ready to go such as fixing roads and sewer systems and restoring historical buildings.

Some suggest capping the number of visitors allowed in the parks. Others look to the allotment of over $900 million to the parks in the Economic Recovery Bill and the goal to restore the parks by 2016—the NPS centennial.

Still, supporters and protectors of the park system straddle a fine line. Increased visitors mean a greater awareness and appreciation of this important part of America’s heritage. But more people driving near or walking through already fragile landscapes inevitably poses problems. The parks are also an important economic tool—an NPCA study found that every $1 invested by the government returns $4 in public economic value—but might this be counterproductive to their protection?

Is it possible to both protect the National Parks and encourage visitors in large numbers? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Community Connection:

Matador has lots of articles in our archives about national parks. Two of our favorites are:

Seven Best National Parks for Visiting Old Growth Forests

Photo Essay: The Stunning Colors of Glacier National Park

Matador member and Roads Scholar JoAnna Haugen has been on a tour of America’s national parks this summer. Visit her blog to read about her journey.

Colombian singer Juanes, in concert; Photo: Julio Enriquez

Artistically speaking, it’s been a banner year for Cubans.

In July, the Royal Ballet of London came to Havana for a joint performance with the Cuban National Ballet, appearing before a crowd so enormous that the Cuban government was forced to set up outdoor screens so the performance could be seen by those who hadn’t been lucky enough to snag a ticket.

The same week, the New York Philharmonic announced its intentions to perform in Havana this October.

But before then, the wildly popular Colombian pop singer Juanes is scheduled to play in a “Peace Without Borders” concert alongside beloved Cuban folk musician, Silvio Rodriguez, and the perennially popular Los Van Van.

He’s even met with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to seek her support, asking her to permit U.S. musicians to visit the island to take part in the event (they’d be the first to do so since Audioslave’s 2005 concert, which drew more than 60,000 Cuban fans).

The concert, scheduled to almost coincide with the United Nations’ International Day of Peace, is the latest stop on Juanes’s Peace Without Borders tour, the first leg of which kicked off on the Venezuelan/Colombian border in March, 2008.

Juanes, like his fellow Colombian superstar musician, Shakira, has been actively involved in using his music as a means of supporting causes he cares about– he’s also started a foundation to help survivors of land mine explosions. But not everyone–especially certain sectors of the Cuban American community–view Juanes’s Peace Without Borders tour as an act to celebrate.

The singer, who lives in Miami, has been the target of outspoken criticism. Some Miami Cubans have been reported to be burning his CDs in the streets there. Even his wife, who is eight months pregnant, has been threatened.

In the Spanish language newspaper El Pais, Juanes responded to the criticism that he’s being insensitive to Cuban exiles’ concerns. Some highlights from the interview, translated by this writer:

“I am convinced that art plays an important role in the construction of peace.”

“I’m not interested in the government of Cuba. I’m interested in people, in the youth….”

“I’m fed up with us asking one another whether we’re Muslim, gay, Cuban, or Venezuelan.”

“Why can I go to Spain and no one asks me if I’m singing to the president, but if I go to Cuba, [everyone thinks] I’m singing to Castro?…. Just let us sing!”

The concert is still scheduled for September 20.

If you’re not familiar with Juanes’s music, here’s a clip from the Venezuela/Colombia “Peace Without Borders” concert:

Community Connection:

To learn more about the New York Philharmonic’s scheduled performance, read “New York Philharmonic to Perform in Cuba?”

The right Sydney. Photo: Corey Leopold

It was definitely a long-haul flight for Joannes and Nick Rutten, a grandfather and his grandson who planned to take their holiday in Sydney… Australia.

But when their plane landed and they made their way toward Customs and Immigration, something seemed a bit amiss.

The pair weren’t in Sydney, Australia; they’d landed in Sydney, Nova Scotia, located on the east coast of Cape Breton Island.

The wrong Sydney. Photo: Smudge 9000

They weren’t the first pair of travelers to make the mistake, according to this article in The Cape Breton Post. Apparently, the two Sydneys are mixed up with relative regularity.

Who can blame the Ruttens for wandering onto a flight that they thought was going to Sydney? The question is, who was checking their tickets as they boarded?

Community Connection:

Have you ever ended up in the wrong destination? Share your story below!

Note: This is NOT the balloon. Photo: joshmadison

Organizers anticipated as many as 1,000 people would show up to drop their drawers in protest against a surveillance balloon the United States has hovering in the air above the U.S.-Canada border.

The idea was that the balloon–which is believed to have a powerful camera inside it that can spot objects from a considerable distance–would capture images of the protesters expressing their displeasure with its presence.

But the “Moon the Balloon” event, planned for this past Saturday, was a bit of a disappointment, as only a couple hundred Canadians put their asses on the line–literally–to flash the balloon.

Little good it did– the balloon was grounded after having sustained a tear in its fabric last week.

The balloon, which is being tested for Homeland Security purposes, is viewed by some residents on the Canadian side of the border as an infringement of their sovereignty.

Community Connection:

Read more about border issues–but to the South this time–in “Back in 1848? A Closer Look at the U.S./Mexico Border.”

Feature photo: peamasher; Photo above: Sami Keinanen

There are lots of jokes about Fidel Castro. Most make some reference to his propensity for making lengthy speeches.

Throughout his 48 years in power, Castro became renowned for his ability to orate for hours and hours on end. Though you’d probably be tired if you were a Cuban standing in the audience, you could certainly say you witnessed history in the making: some of his speeches, such as “History Will Absolve Me” (given in 1953 before he took power), are widely anthologized in history books around the world.

Just in time for Fidel’s birthday–which is today– Cuban professor Salomon Susi Sarfati published the 339-page Diccionario de Pensamientos de Fidel Castro, or Dictionary of Fidel Castro’s Thoughts, which was released to the public in Cuba last Saturday.

The dictionary defines words based on references from Castro’s speeches.

Castro, who turns 83 today, is reported to be in ill health.

If you happen to head down to Havana, be sure to snag your own copy of the dictionary. It’ll be one hell of a souvenir.

In the meantime, check out Castro’s oratory style in this video:

Feature photo: Rene Ehrhardt; Photo: DieselDemon

Jet Blue’s always trying out new strategies to engage customers.

It’s latest promo might just be of interest to those of you planning to do lots of traveling in the States between September 8 and October 8.

Now through August 21 you can purchase an All-You-Can-Jet Pass for a flat fee of $599 USD.

As the name suggests, you’ll be able to fly as often as you want between the 57 cities Jet Blue services, including its international destinations (though some international taxes and fees will bear an additional cost)– you’ll just need to make reservations three days in advance.

You can read all the fine print here.

Detainee cells. Photos: Julie Schwietert

Even before his inauguration, President Obama was working on making good on a campaign promise: closing the detention facility located on the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The original plan was to shutter the detention facility by January 2010–eight full years after the U.S. started housing alleged Al-Qaeda and Taliban loyalists there–but recent reports have indicated that the administration is concerned it will not be able to meet that deadline.

The sticking point–as I predicted after my visit to the base and detention facility last November–has been figuring out what to do with all of the detainees who have been cleared for release but who have no place to go.

Slowly, though, nations are beginning to express their support for closing Guantanamo by agreeing to take in detainees who are eligible for release but are unable to return home.

Last month, Ireland agreed to take two people currently being detained at the facility. This week, Portugal agreed to offer special visas to two Syrians being held at Guantanamo. And the agreement between the U.S. and Palau that was forged a couple months ago finally seems to be taking shape: the tiny island nation will take between four and 13 Uighurs eligible for release.

Still, there are more than 200 detainees who–for various reasons–are unable to return to their home countries and who need a third country to take them in. Read more about the issue in this article.

Community Connection:

What do you know about Guantanamo? Here are 5 Things You Should Know About Guantanamo.

Matador writer Sarah Shourd.

Earlier today, mainstream US media reported that three American hikers were arrested in Iran after crossing the Iran/Iraq border on Friday. According to this report in The New York Times, Iranian television confirmed the arrests.

The news hits close to home for Matador, as one of our contributors, Sarah Shourd, is believed to be one of the arrested hikers, though her name has been spelled inaccurately in various reports. The other two detained hikers have been named as Shane Bower and Joshua Steel.

The arrests were reported to the US Embassy in Iraq by Shaun Gabriel Maxwell, a fourth hiker who had not been with his friends when they were detained. Though some reports have indicated that the three hikers defied local warnings not to cross into Iranian territory, other reports tell a different story. USA Today reported that Maxwell stated that the detained hikers–who contacted him by phone–told him they had gotten lost and wandered across the border unintentionally, where they were surrounded by troops and arrested.

Shourd penned this story for Matador in November of 2008.

While details are still coming in, Matador will continue to follow the story and wishes the best for Shourd and her companions.

Feature photo: Lezan

Community Connection:

Read Sarah Shourd’s story, “Escape from Iraq: A Muslim Family Finds Solace in Ramadan,” here.

If I ever met Bill O’Reilly, I’d like to ask him about his travels.

His observations about the world just seem so astute.

He just discovered, apparently, that Amsterdam has long taken a liberal stance on drug use and prostitution.

Unfortunately, he hasn’t based any of his analysis about that stance on facts.

But a viewer from Amsterdam decided to set the record straight in this video:

Community Connection:

Check out this article from our archives about Amsterdam:

10 Things to Do In Amsterdam Besides Smoking Pot

Feature photo: earcos

Photo: divya_

First, some background.

The United States’ diplomatic presence in Cuba (if that’s not entirely a contradiction) is not to be found in an embassy or a consulate, but in a pseudo-consulate semantically distinguished as the “United States Interest Section Havana.”

Occupying some choice real estate along Havana’s ocean front, the Interest Section’s professional purview is a bit different from that of your typical embassy or consulate (you can read all about what they do–and what they don’t do–here). For one thing, the building itself became a tool for communicating US propaganda to Cuban people during the Bush administration.

Three Januaries ago, the Interest Section installed some snazzy new technology: an electronic ticker board, much like the electronic news spools you see in Times Square. The board was inaugurated on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, broadcasting the message: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up” (a rather crude appropriation of King’s message, if you ask me).

The message was changed periodically, and though the Interests Section says the billboard’s purpose was to display “news and information,” critics–notably, El Comandante himself–pointed out that the line between news and rhetoric was a little bit blurry.

In fact, the messages were so annoying to Castro that he had an installation art work erected to obscure the billboard from the public eye. The flag poles in the photo above– all 138 of them–prevented passersby from glimpsing the US’s messages. Castro even had competing billboards (not electronic–after all, 2006 was the Year of Energy in Cuba) put up, protesting US involvement in Cuban affairs.

Anyhow, earlier today, the Financial Times reported that the US quietly turned off the ticker recently, with little fanfare from either side. The fact that the US didn’t announce the ticker’s demise and that Cuba didn’t gloat about the dimmed electronic billboard clearly signals a detente, according to journalist Marc Frank.

Citing a “Western diplomat,” Frank wrote:

“’That they turned off the ticker is important – and that nobody has noticed is significant, too…. The Cubans could have howled victory – but [they] said nothing, indicating they are serious about improving relations.’ The diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said some local contact may have resumed already. Easing of travel restrictions for US and Cuban diplomats in each other’s capitals was expected soon.

It appears the standoff about the US mission – an attraction for tourists and a symbol of relations with the Bush administration – is winding down. The Cuban government took the billboards down soon after Barack Obama took office. There have been no marches past the building since Raul Castro took over from his ailing brother Fidel in February last year.”

Many individuals and advocacy groups who hoped for a speedier thaw in US-Cuba relations have criticized President Obama for what seems to be a deliberate pacing in bilateral negotiations. But it’s steps like these–which seem so little–that will ultimately lead to change in the decades long freeze between the US and Cuba.

Photo: Oscalito

The status of Puerto Rico is one of the most complicated, confusing, and fascinating political arrangements in the world.

Puerto Rico, formerly a Spanish colony, was ceded to the United States in 1898 as a consequence of the Spanish American War. For several decades afterward, the status and identity of the island were in limbo as the United States and islanders attempted to arrive at a viable political arrangement that would satisfy the interests of both parties.

The result was a strange compromise in which Puerto Rico became a commonwealth, or “free associated state,” of the US. The status granted some–but not all–of the benefits of US citizenship and left many Puerto Ricans wondering what, exactly, being a commonwealth meant.

It’s an issue that remains the focal point of politics on the island, with referenda being held every few years to determine what islanders want their status to be. There are those who favor statehood, others who favor complete independence, and still others who would be content to let the commonwealth continue as is.

Yesterday, the Associated Press reported that the US House of Representatives approved the island’s proposal to allow Puerto Ricans to hold a new referendum to vote on the island’s political future. Under the proposal, titled the Puerto Rico Democracy Act of 2009,

“[v]oters would choose between keeping the island’s commonwealth status, adopted in 1952, or to opt for something different. In the latter case, a second plebiscite would let them decide whether they wanted statehood, independence or independence with a loose association to the United States.”

Though no date has been scheduled for a vote, anxiety about the potential referendum is already high. The last referendum was held in 1998.

Photo: YamilGonzales

What’s happening in Honduras?

Good question.

In the US, at least, we’ve moved on, captivated by the Sotomayor Supreme Court confirmation hearings, former Liberian president Charles Taylor’s insistence of his purity and innocence in the war crimes case being heard against him at The Hague, and the rumblings that US Attorney General Eric Holder may appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration’s CIA interrogation practices.

Oh, and then there was that early week bit about the CIA’s naughty habit of lying to Congress (repeatedly. Since 2001… at least).

So excuse us if we’ve forgotten about Honduras (and Iran… but we’ll get to that later).

But we shouldn’t be so quick to put the Central American situation out of our minds.

According to the Latin America Working Group, “The situation in Honduras has only escalated since last week.” Remarking on the military’s role in the current political standoff, LAWG continued:

“Civilians in the streets of Tegucigalpa and throughout the country side continue to face brutal repression by military officials. Civil liberties remain gravely affected, including freedom of the press.”

Meanwhile, the Americas Society reported that “an inch, but not a mile” has been gained in the executive branch, thanks to negotiations between the elected Zelaya administration and the imposed Micheletti administration, which are being mediated by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias. The organization indicated that curfews have been lifted and the threat to imprison Zelaya has been reconsidered if the deposed president returns, as he has said he intends to do.

To continue following developments in the country, visit the Americas Society’s Resource Guide to the Crisis in Honduras, which provides links to primary sources, news, and multimedia, produced both in the country and outside it.

Community Connection:

Clueless about what occurred in Honduras? Check out these articles from our archives:

Honduran President Ousted in Military Coup

Photo Essay: Honduras After the Coup

To Coup or Not to Coup?

Honduran President Attempts to Return to Country; Military Prevents Plane from Landing

Photo: BL1961

Americans, let’s face it: Our previous president wasn’t the sharpest crayon in the box.

He famously insisted that it was Sweden–not Switzerland–that has historically been neutral.

He coined more words than Webster and used many real words in combinations that can only be described as… unique.

And then, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, he came up with a color-coded terror alert system: green for low risk of terrorist attacks; blue for guarded; yellow for elevated; orange for high; and red for–you guessed it!–severe threat of terrorist attacks.

In case you’re wondering, the current “national threat level,” as published by the Department of Homeland Security, is yellow, and for all domestic and international travel the threat level is orange.

But all that may be moot pretty soon. According to an article recently published by Newsweek, President Obama is “expected to create an official committee to consider modifying or even abolishing the widely ridiculed color-coded terrorism alert system introduced by the Bush administration….”

The committee, which will be comprised of local, state, and national officials and safety experts, will have 60 days to make a decision about the color-coded system’s future: modify it or scrap it completely. As one House Representative interviewed in the article said, the system “has become meaningless to the public,” and officials should “retire the fear card.”

Travelers, what do you think? Do you pay attention to the terror threat color scheme while you’re passing through airports? If the color-coded system is done away with, what should replace it? Share your thoughts below.

Community Connection:

Check out this popular post from our archives: Anti-Bush Graffiti: 25 Countries, Six Continents.

Photo via www.bullrunning.com

We hoped we wouldn’t be reporting this type of news during this year’s San Fermin Festival, especially after announcing the launch of www.bullrunning.com, a website launched prior to the 2009 bull run that provides planning and safety tips for runners.

However, the Pamplona newspaper Diario de Navarra, reported on Friday morning that 27 year old Daniel Jimeno Romero was gored in the neck and died from his injuries.

An eyewitness recounts the event in this video:

Jimeno Romero had run in the festival since he was 20.

Capuchino, the bull that killed Jimeno Romero, gored three other runners in one of the wildest runs in recent memory. A total of 11 runners were transferred to a local hospital for wounds sustained by bulls according to the newspaper.

Community Connection:

Pamplona isn’t the only city that has a bull running festival. Mompox, Colombia, home to Matador contributor Richard McColl, also has an annual bull event, which you can read about here.

And what will we do about all the translated editions? Photo: ~Mers

In a story that seems straight from Chuck Shepherd’s News of the Weird, that venerable mainstream media giant, Associated Press, is reporting that President Obama’s books, Dreams of My Father and The Audacity of Hope, have been banned.

The ban was issued by officials at a US federal supermax prison in Colorado and applies specifically to inmate Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, who requested President Obama’s books to help him while away some time during his 30 year sentence. He was convicted for joining al-Qaeda and plotting to assassinate former President George W. Bush.

Prison officials reported they were advised by the FBI not to grant Mr. Ali’s request, citing the claim that providing Mr. Ali with President Obama’s books would constitute a threat to national security.

Meanwhile, anyone with a library card can check out and read either book without potentially threatening the country?

What will the FBI recommend next?

Community Connection:

It’s common practice to redact news and approve (or deny) prisoners’ reading requests, but this one seems a bit extreme.

What do you think?

Hey, kid, need a job? Photo: Tony the Misfit

It was a beautifully sunny day here in New York City, so it came as somewhat of a surprise when I heard the alert that flights were delayed at JFK… until I learned the reason.

Seems like dozens of turtles–diamond black terrapins, to be specific–were feeling randy, and their runway love fest caused delays of up to 1.5 hours. Wonder how pilots notified their passengers about that news.

JFK, which is bounded by a bay on one side, actually seems to be a haven for wildlife. According to the New York Times‘ City Room blog, 78 turtles were ultimately removed from the runway safely and returned to a safe place.

Community Connection:

Want to learn about other places where you can get in touch with New York City’s greener side? Check out our Green Guide to New York City and take a look at our photos from New York’s newest urban park, the High Line.

Photo: Foxtongue

Five years ago, Portugal decided to do something bold about its drug problems: pass a full-on decriminalization act, making the possession and use of even hard-core illicit drugs–including cocaine and heroin–a public health problem rather than a legal/criminal justice issue.

While drug dealing and trafficking still carried criminal penalties, possession and use resulted in diversion to treatment and intervention, rather than imprisonment, in most circumstances.

Decriminalization is a drug policy tactic that has been considered by other governments, but remains deeply divisive in the United States.

Portuguese officials, however, offer evidence that the legalization strategy might just be the best means of addressing at least three social problems–drug use, prison overcrowding, and poor public health– simultaneously.

In this article, published in Scientific American, a US think-tank analyzed Portuguese public health drug-related data since the decriminalization act was passed and reported the following:

“Five years later, the number of deaths from street drug overdoses dropped from around 400 to 290 annually, and the number of new HIV cases caused by using dirty needles to inject heroin, cocaine and other illegal substances plummeted from nearly 1,400 in 2000 to about 400 in 2006….”

Beyond the benefits to public health, a US criminologist also quoted in the article noted that the decriminalization act did not–as some critics expected– cause Lisbon to become a magnet for drug-seeking tourists.

So is decriminalization a viable policy where you live? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Community Connection:

Read about other decriminalization movements in this article, Latin America Changes War on Drugs Strategy: Legalize!

Photo: YamilGonzales

The government of Roberto Micheletti, installed after last weekend’s coup deposed President Zelaya, kept its promise: it would not let Zelaya return without a fight.

As I write this, a Venezuelan plane carrying President Zelaya is circling the airport in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa.

In what appears to be a highly coordinated effort by the Micheletti government, the military, and the air control employees, the plane bearing Zelaya is being prevented from landing. According to this report by CNN, “Civil Aviation Director Alfredo San Martin said in a radio address that the ousted leader’s flight would be barred from landing in Honduras and diverted to El Salvador.” According to the pilot of the plane, interviewed by Spanish language channel Telesur, the airport runway was blocked by strategically parked military vehicles to prevent landing.

A separate plane carrying other South American leaders, including Argentina’s president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, and the head of the Organization of American States had also been diverted, though the original plan was for these leaders to accompany Zelaya. UN General Assembly president, Miguel d’Escoto, was reportedly on the plane with Zelaya.

Though it seems that Zelaya will not be returning to Honduras today as he planned, the world’s governments and political organizations are strengthening sanctions against Honduras. On Saturday, the Organization of American States suspended Honduras–the only country other than Cuba to have its membership suspended or revoked–after Micheletti refused to reinstall Zelaya to the presidency.

Community Connection:

Click here to see photos of protests in the Honduran capital taken the day after the coup.

Photo: freegazaorg

Israel issued a statement saying that the boat had attempted to break the blockade of Gaza and therefore seized it after the crew ignored a radio warning to stay out of Gaza waters. Israel’s purpose was to stop the ship because of “security risks in the area.” It views the group’s campaign as propaganda against Israel.

Israel seized the boat, its cargo, and the crew’s cell phones, then imprisoned the crew in Israel. On board the ship were citizens from many countries, including Britain, Ireland, Bahrain, and the United States. Former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, Irish Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mairead Maguire, a Palestinian-American lawyer, and many journalists were among the crew. In total 21 people are being detained in a prison in Ramla, Israel. Ironically, the crew has been charged with illegally entering Israel when they had no intention of entering Israel.

“They simply kidnapped the passengers,” Free Gaza Movement founding member Greta Berlin told Ynet news, an online publication based in Israel. “I call on the Israeli occupation forces to release our people immediately. It’s funny. What are they going to do? Deport us? The last place we wanted to reach was Israel.”

All detainees were unarmed civilians.

They were carrying food, medicine, olive trees, and children’s toys for people in Gaza.

This was the eighth journey of the Free Gaza Movement and it is not their first encounter with the Israeli Navy. When their ship attempted to deliver medical aid following Israel’s 22-day attack on Gaza this last winter, Israeli gunboats rammed it and wrecked the ship.

Gaza has been subjected to a crippling blockade for two years. The movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza has been severely restricted. Since last winter’s assault by Israel, the people of Gaza face even more severe shortages of medicine, food, and materials that are necessary for rebuilding schools and homes.

During his recent speech in Cairo, President Obama stated that the continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza is unacceptable, that it devastates families and does not serve Israel’s security.

Reuters reported on Thursday that Richard Falk, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, said the seizure of the ship and crew was part of Israel’s “cruel blockade of the entire Palestinian population of Gaza” in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibiting any form of collective punishment against “an occupied people.” Such a pattern of continuing blockade under these conditions amounts to such a serious violation of the Geneva Convention as to constitute a continuing crime against humanity.

This event will perhaps shine a spotlight on the situation in Gaza. It also raises the questions of how other humanitarian missions will be received. As I wrote last month on MatadorChange, the Viva Palestina convoy departs on July 4 for Egypt to bring much needed aid and supplies to the people of Gaza.

We will be closely following the story of the detained crew of Spirit of Humanity and the Viva Palestina convoy throughout July.

Community Connection:

Gay Pride Parade in Bangalore, Photo: Nick Johnson

The court held that if Section 377 was not amended in the case of consenting gay adults, it would directly violate their fundamental rights as stated in Article 21 of the Indian constitution (every Indian citizen has equal opportunity of life and is equal before law). This section, however, will continue to exist for non-consensual same sex cases and instances involving minors.

Section 377 was formed in 1860 and is an archaic remnant of the British Raj. It states that ‘unnatural sex’ is a crime and is punishable by 10 years imprisonment. For years the Indian gay community has been terrorized and marginalized under the guise of this law. But not anymore.

In a 105 page sentence, the judges quoted India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, in pushing for equality and inclusiveness for all Indian citizens. In a landmark judgment that will change and catalyze the LGBT movement in India, the bench further stated:

“In our view Indian Constitutional law does not permit the statutory criminal law to be held captive by the popular misconception of who the LGBTs (lesbian gay bisexual transgender) are…. It cannot be forgotten that discrimination is [the] antithesis of equality and that it is the recognition of equality which will foster dignity of every individual.”

This eight year long battle began in 2001 when the Naz Foundation filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) against section 377. While the petition was dismissed in 2004, it has found a more promising result five years on.

This campaign encountered frequent roadblocks, but its current success is credited to the visible rise in campaigning for gay rights over the last few years. With pride parades taking over the streets of major metros and high profile campaigners, the issue of gay rights has been brought to the forefront of conservative Indian society.

The current judgment will hold until Indian Parliament decides to amend the law, allowing for more concrete reforms. Until such a time, this court order will suffice, putting an end to the decades of persecution, discrimination, blackmail and imprisonment suffered by the gay community, a first in India’s history.

As soon as the decision was announced, celebrations and protests began simultaneously; while rights activists finally have something to celebrate, religious leaders expressed anger at the judgment. And while the government and other bodies (religious and social) are expected to appeal the decision in the Supreme Court of India, this is being considered as a major victory for the Indian gay community.

Community Connection:

So far, 2009 has been a watershed year in gay rights. Read about the passage of a bill allowing same-sex marriage in the US state of Iowa or check out these photos from the Prop 8 protests in San Francisco.

Photo: gromgull

Among the stranger news items we’ve come across this week was this report, which announced that the European Union will be permitting “ugly” fruits and vegetables to return to store produce aisles today after a 20 year ban.

Apparently, EU members have had some pretty stringent standards for the looks of their fruits and vegetables for the past two decades, with bureaucrats declaring that “ugly produce is unworthy of the marketplace.” A total of 36 fruits and vegetables were affected by these discriminating beauty standards.

Diana Henry, a popular food personality in the UK, was quoted in the article as saying EU pols “‘don’t know what to do with their time.’” The same thought crossed my mind, as did this one: What happened to all that perfectly good food that just wasn’t pretty enough for customers’ consumption?

Community Connection:

Want to get your hands dirty? Want to know where your food comes from? Consider volunteering as a WWOOFer (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms). Laurie Pickard’s “A First-Timer’s Guide to WWOOF-ing” tells you everything you’ll need to know.

Graffiti reads: Get out, transnationals.

Grafitti reads: Mel [Zelaya's nickname], the people are with you until the end.”

Community Connection:

To learn more about the coup and events currently unfolding in Honduras, please visit Global Voices Online’s Honduras page.

The yacht tour promises photogenic sunsets… and heavy artillery. Photo: wirralwater

Last month, I talked with an official of the U.S. Navy and asked him about the military’s role in preventing and responding to piracy. “We’re working on it,” he said with obvious frustration. “But it’s not an easy thing; you’re in international waters, there are all sorts of other competing interests….” He trailed off and then changed the subject, clearly annoyed by constraints that prevent direct action.

He might be interested in Russia’s new strategy for responding to piracy: folding anti-piracy actions into its tourism industry.

In a brilliant–if deeply disturbing–stroke of entrepreneurial genius, Russian luxury yachts have begun to advertise adventure cruises where passengers pony up almost $6,000 USD per day to cruise from Djibouti to Mombasa in search of pirates.

The yachts trawl at a deliberately slow speed, hoping to attract pirates. If attacked, the cruise passengers are ready to respond with heavy machinery: machine guns and grenade and rocket launchers. And if they want to tack on an extra $8.00 a day, passengers can hoist their very own AK-47. Ammo, though, costs an extra $11.50.

There’s no word yet on whether any of the passengers have successfully taken out any pirates… or whether there’s a money-back guarantee if a showdown fails to occur.

“They are worse than the pirates,” said Russian yachtsman Vladimir Mironov. “At least the pirates have the decency to take hostages, these people are just paying to commit murder.”

Community Connection:

For more coverage on piracy, check out “To Pay Ransom or Not to Pay Ransom,” one of thousands of articles in the Matador archives.

Photo: rbreve

Early Sunday morning the soldiers of the Honduran army arrested and exiled President Jose Manuel Zelaya.

The context for the arrests is the conflict surrounding a national referendum that was to take place Sunday on the presidential term limit. Following the lead of other leftist leaders in Latin America, Zelaya and his supporters sought the referendum in order to extend his administration for another term. The Honduras Supreme Court earlier ruled the referendum was unconstitutional.

One of the coup leaders is allegedly School of the Americas graduate and head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Romeo Orlando Vasquez Velasquez, whom Zelaya had dismissed after he refused to cooperate with the national referendum. Zelaya was reportedly arrested in his pajamas and then taken to an airbase outside the capital to be flown to Costa Rica.

While events are unfolding, several heads of state and organizations from around the world have already condemned the coup, calling for a restoration of democracy and the return of President Zelaya. Many Latin American countries–including Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Chile, and Ecuador–have issued strongly worded statements.

Ecuador’s foreign ministry said it “will not recognize any government that is not that of President Manuel Zelaya.” Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez has put his military on alert.

Bolivian President Evo Morales has said, “What is currently happening in Honduras is an adventure of a group of the military who have assaulted democracy.”

U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has also weighed in, condemning the coup:

“The action taken against Honduran President Manuel Zelaya violates the precepts of the Inter-American Democratic Charter and thus should be condemned by all. We call on all parties in Honduras to respect the constitutional order and the rule of law, to reaffirm their democratic vocation and to commit themselves to resolve political disputes peacefully and through dialogue.”

Europe has also been watching closely. The French Foreign Ministry said, “France firmly condemns the coup that has just taken place in Honduras. The arrests and expulsions of diplomatic envoys are a grave breach of the Vienna convention. They are unacceptable.”

Honduras is a member of ALBA, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, which is an alliance of leftist countries in Latin America. The alliance’s mission is to build an economic and social alternative to what member nations see as unfair free-trade agreements dominated by the interests of the United States and multinational corporations.

Zelaya is now in Costa Rica, where he calls for peaceful resistance to the military coup. The government of Costa Rica also calls on the international community to condemn the coup.

Community Connection:

To learn about other recent political developments in Latin America, read “El Salvador Leans to the Left.”

Photo: Justo Ruiz

I was 90 minutes north of New York City last night, getting ready to enjoy an outdoor Shakespeare performance, when the news spread across the lawn of picnickers: Michael Jackson was dead.

“Michael Jackson is dead? I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it,” the girl at the concession stand said over and over as she totaled my bill. After she took my money, she started crying.

*
This morning, I logged onto Facebook.

Andy Carvin, National Public Radio’s social media guru, wrote:

“How’s this for irony – powerful, graphic #IranElection protest video, set to Michael Jackson’s ‘They Don’t Care About Us’.”

Friends from South Carolina to New York had taken the “What Michael Jackson Song Are You?” quiz and posted their results.

The BBC reported that a Nigerian DJ broke down on air, unable to complete her show, after she began talking about Jackson.
*
I’m (surprisingly) in agreement with the Reverend Al Sharpton, who wondered aloud why the world that ridiculed and all but abandoned Jackson in recent years suddenly lionized him. But then I thought about some of Jackson’s best songs and collaborative projects, and realized that he used his music to remind us of our shared humanity. Here are three of his best:

“Man in the Mirror”

“Black or White”

“We Are the World”

Community Connection:

How did Michael Jackson’s music impact your life– or not? And where’s the most unusual place you’ve ever heard a Michael Jackson song? Share your memories in the comments.

University of the People’s Class of 2025? Photo: papalars

Perhaps it’s not the world’s most pressing problem, but leading changemakers recognize that bridging the digital divide in the developing world is an important priority in the field of social development.

Many organizations–from the Gates Foundation to One Laptop Per Child–have implemented programs intended to help people in underserved areas get technologically connected. The latest group to join that effort is the United Nations, which has just announced the launch of the first public, online, free university, open to all the world’s citizens.

As the UN’s press release indicated:

“For hundreds of millions of people around the world higher education is no more than a dream…. They are constrained by finances, the lack of institutions in their region, or they are not able to leave home to study at a university for personal reasons.”

The University of the People is intended to make higher education more accessible to the masses through open-source technology, open course materials, e-learning pedagogical strategies, and peer-to-peer teaching. The UN explained that classes will be comprised of 20 students, who will participate in weekly online lectures, peer discussions, and e-tests. Professors are volunteers and post-grad students.

The launch of the university has already attracted considerable interest; more than 200 students from 52 countries have enrolled, despite the fact that the University of the People is not yet accredited. Lacking accreditation, the university cannot confer degrees; however, the University of the People’s website indicates that seeking accreditation is a priority.

The idea of a global, almost-free university (students pay a nominal fee for registration and tests) is certainly an appealing one, but may raise some logistical, pragmatic, and philosophical concerns. At present, for example, the university’s admission guidelines indicate that applicants must possess a high school degree or an equivalent proof of 12 years of schooling, as well as English fluency. These two admissions criteria might well prevent access and enrollment to the very populations the university purports to be attracting.

Still, we’ve got to start somewhere, right? I’ll be interested to see how the program develops.

To learn more about University of the People, visit the university’s website here.

Community Connection:

If you’d like to help improve educational opportunities, browse through Matador’s organizational profiles, which feature dozens of NGOs and non-profits around the world that are dedicated to improving educational opportunities and resources in underserved communities.

Photo via: misterarasmus

By now, she’s a household name.

Neda Agha-Soltan, who was killed by a sniper over the weekend, became a media sensation overnight, thanks, in part, to the circulation of the video which documented her death as it was occurring.

But for all the focus on Agha-Soltan–who was not actually participating in a protest–there are thousands more Iranian women who have taken to the streets, risking social, political, and religious condemnation, as well as their very lives.

Here are images of some of them:

Photo via: misterarasmus

Photo via: .faramarz

Photo via: .faramarz

Photo via: .faramarz

Did you know that 1/3 of Greenland’s population is comprised of indigenous groups? Photo: nick russill

Greenland: it’s one of those places that’s hardly ever in the news.

But this week, amidst the bigger headlines about post-election protests in Iran and French President Sarkozy’s comment about burqas as a symbol of enslavement, Greenland had its own moment on the world stage.

As The New York Times reported, Greenland, which has been ruled by Denmark since 1721, celebrated a step toward independence this weekend in response to a 2008 referendum, in which 76 percent of citizens voted for self-rule.

The article noted:

“Many of the changes are deeply symbolic. Kalaallisut, a traditional Inuit dialect, is now the country’s official language, and Greenlanders are now recognized under international law as a separate people from Danes.

[Also] the Greenlandic government now gets to call itself by its Inuit name, Naalakkersuisut — the first time in history, officials said, that the word has been used in a Danish government document.”

Many more logistics will need to be worked out before Greenland secures full autonomy; however, the symbolic gestures made in this weekend’s ceremony seem to be an important first step.

Community Connection:

Have you been to Greenland? Have you lived there? Matador’s looking for a Greenland expert; click here to see if you qualify.

Photo: greg4all

Back in early January, the North American commercial carrier Continental Airlines conducted a demonstration flight to determine whether biofuel could be a suitable and safe replacement for conventional fuel on commercial flights.

And earlier this week, Continental announced the outcome of the demo flight.

The highlights?

“The biofuel blend performed as well as or better than traditional jet fuel, displaying an approximately 1.1 percent increase in fuel efficiency over traditional jet fuel in different stages of the demonstration flight.”

and

“Overall life cycle greenhouse gas emissions related to using a biofuel of the nature used on the Continental demonstration flight are estimated to be reduced by 60 percent to 80 percent as compared to traditional jet fuel.”

Don’t expect to shift responsibility for your air travel-related carbon emissions onto airlines immediately, though. As Continental’s managing director of global environmental affairs indicated, biofuels must receive certification and then must be produced in sufficient quantity to supply commercial airliners.

Community Connection:

Want to read more about the science behind biofuels for planes? Check out Eva Holland’s article, “Well, Finally! Making Planes Run on Biofuel.”

Feature photo: Hamed Saber; Photo above: .faramarz

Photo: .faramarz

Photo: .faramarz

Photo: .faramarz

Photo: .faramarz

Photo: Hamed Saber

Photo: Hamed Saber

Community Connection:

Want to take action to support Iranian activists? Read 6 Ways the Western World Can Support Iranian Activists on Matador Change.

A protest in support of conscientious objectors, held in Toronto; Photo: picturenarrative

The stories of men who have crossed the US-Canada border as a statement against war are many, and they go back several decades. According to a recent article in Newsweek, about 50,000 men fled to Canada during the Vietnam War era in order to avoid the draft, many adjusting to life in their adopted country and settling there permanently.

Although the draft no longer exists in the United States, many war-weary soldiers who have done enough duty in Afghanistan and Iraq to question America’s motives for being there have returned from their deployments as conscientious objectors, refusing to accept redeployment orders. Many of them have crossed the border to seek asylum in Canada.

Increasingly, however, the Canadian government is taking active measures to deport these individuals back to the United States to face desertion charges. According to Newsweek, while three in five Canadians support the granting of permanent residency to conscientious objectors, the conservative government has been stepping up deportation activity since this time last year.

To learn more about the men and women who have served in the current wars and who now question America’s actions abroad, visit Iraq Veterans Against the War.

Marcelo Ebrard wants YOU to visit his city. Photo: Eneas

Mexico City’s mayor, who’s widely credited with implementing ambitious urban initiatives, has successfully chipped away at some of his city’s most challenging issues, including poverty, quality of life crimes, and over-reliance on cars.

Now, he’s turned his energies toward giving Mexico City’s tourism industry the boost it desperately needs since swine flu prompted him to temporarily shut down non-essential operations in the city and tourism dried up.

This week, Mayor Ebrard announced that foreign visitors to Mexico City will automatically be covered by a special insurance plan upon checking into city hotels. The only thing he requests in return is that the traveler write a review of his or her experiences in the city. Not a writer? Mayor Ebrard would be equally happy to see your photos or videos online.

The insurance coverage, provided by ACE Seguros, will allow you to seek care for minor injuries and illnesses. Should you need it, the insurance even covers emergency heart surgery at approved city hospitals.

You can find details about the program on the city’s tourism web page, which can be found here in English.

Community Connection:

Want to take Mayor Ebrard up on his offer and visit Mexico City? Check out my Green Guide to Mexico City and my top recommendations for nightlife in the Mexican capital. Have more questions? E-mail me at julie@matadornetwork.com.

Attendees at a vigil for Laura Ling and Euna Lee, Photo: keithpr

Last week, North Korea made all sorts of world headlines.

But the news that had most journalists and human rights activists on the edge of their seats was the announcement about the pending trial of US journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who were detained by North Korean officials in March and charged with entering the country illegally and with hostile intent.

The outcome of the trial was made known today: Ling and Lee were sentenced by the court to a sentence of 12 years of hard labor.

The Obama administration condemned the decision and began to explore options for negotiating with the North Korean government for the release of Ling and Lee.

Photo: steakpinball

Last month, Matador reported that Nigerian-born British citizen Samantha Orobator was finally scheduled to appear in a Lao court to respond to charges of drug trafficking after having been detained in August 2008 by Lao officials.

Yesterday, The Guardian provided an update on Orobator’s case, reporting that Orobator was sentenced to a life term by the court. Though it is possible she could remain in a Lao prison, it is most likely that she will return to the UK to serve her sentence, thanks to a prison transfer agreement signed by the two countries.

Orobator, who is pregnant and is due to deliver her baby in September, was also compelled to sign a document saying that she was not raped or otherwise sexually abused while she was in custody. Her signature on the document does little to resolve the public’s curiosity about how, when, and by whom she was impregnated since she was not pregnant at the time she was imprisoned.

Yet Orobator’s pregnancy was also, in a sense, her saving grace. Lao law prohibits the death penalty–which is otherwise statutory in drug cases–for women who are pregnant.

Here’s a video report from ITN News:

Community Connection:

Doing drugs while traveling is just plain dumb. If you’re not convinced that drugs and travel don’t mix, check out these other examples that are as bad–or worse–than Orobator’s fate.

When he’s not testing nukes, naming successors, or trying journalists, Kim (depicted on the right) likes to take in the landscape. Photo: yeowatzup

The world casts a wary eye on most headline-grabbing news from North Korea, as that news is almost never good.

And the news coming out of North Korea this week has been no exception.

Here, in short form, are three top stories you need to know about:

North Korea Tests Nukes

On May 25, North Korea performed the first of at least two nuclear missile tests in recent weeks.

While the rest of the world tries to make nice with each other, North Korea defiantly bucks the trend with these nuclear tests, which, while underground, are no less significant. The tests represent a slap in the face to the international community and foreshadow future troubles.

North Korea to Try Detained North American Journalists

Not unrelated to the nuke news was yesterday’s announcement that North American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee–arrested in North Korea in March–were being put on trial. Ling and Lee were detained and accused of entering the country illegally and with “hostile intent,” reporting for the U.S. based outlet, Current TV.

Political analysts argued that the women have “become bargaining chips in high-stakes negotiations with the United States, which has long sought to end the North’s nuclear ambitions.”

International observers do not expect the trial to be fair or just, and a guilty verdict could result in Ling and Lee being sentenced to serve 10 years hard labor in North Korea.

North Korean Leader Names His Successor

After overseeing nuclear tests and a sham trial, it’s no wonder that the Dear Leader is tired.

Mid-week, it was announced that Kim Jong-il has hand-picked his successor. Not surprisingly, it’s his son, but what is surprising to some outsiders is that Kim picked his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, rather than his two older sons.

There’s lots of speculation outside the country about why the youngest Kim would be chosen, and for all those juicy details, click on over to this article.

Photos: Ed-meister

Thursday, June 4 is the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

During the early summer of 1989, university students gathered in Tiananmen Square to protest and voice their demands for a more democratic government. After seven weeks of protesting, the government had enough, sending in the military. Troops manning tanks arrived in force, killing hundreds of students and wounding thousands more.

In the years since, China has made numerous efforts to insist to the rest of the world that its human rights record has improved. Perhaps the most obvious example was its hosting of last year’s Olympic Games.

But 20 years later, how much has really changed?

Protest and democracy movements are happening not on the street, but online, conveyed and mediated through technology.

And the government is responding just as strongly as it did in 1989. It’s not with tanks this time, but with error messages. In the past few days, Chinese users of popular social media sites like Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and various e-mail services, including Hotmail, have found that all of these sites have been blocked.

Though the government has blocked these forms of communication, it will not effectively be able to silence Chinese bloggers and activists, who aren’t likely to forget about Tiananmen or the conversation about democracy when the rest of the world moves on after commemorating Tiananmen tomorrow. They’ll wait until the tech blackout is over.

And then they’ll get back to work.

Photo: sun dazed

If you’re not afraid to get a little water on your camera, then Wend’s got a proposition for you.

Send in your favorite waterfall shots for their June Friday Photo contest for your chance to win a pair of Teva’s new water shoes.

You can find all the details here.

Community Connection:

Is Matador’s Goods blog among your RSS subscriptions? If not, it should be! We’re giving away lots of gear, books, and generally good stuff all summer! In fact, you’ve got until this Friday to submit your entry for the Sansa slotRadio Player!

Photo: snappybex

The Roads Scholarship is the pet project of Matador member Pat the Digital Vagabond, a long-time traveler who wants to make travel possible for other people. Pat dreamed up the idea of sending one person–a “Roads Scholar”– around North America during the summer of 2009 on an unfixed route of their own choosing, fully funded, ending up at the popular Burning Man Festival in September.

The only catch? That the winner document his or her journey on Matador and other multimedia platforms.

More than 100 aspiring Roads Scholars submitted applications.

Pat found many of the applications so compelling that he couldn’t choose a single winner. Instead, he chose one primary Roads Scholar and three honorary scholars. They are:

Primary Roads Scholar: Kyle Smith

Honorary Roads Scholars: Joanna Haugen, Marina, and Alanna

Visit Digital Vagabonding to learn more about the winners. And be sure to sign up for Matador’s RSS feed so you can keep up with all the digital dispatches we’ll be featuring from this year’s winners.

Congratulations to the winners and thanks to Pat for his generosity and vision!

Photo: Shane Sakata

I’m no trend-chaser–in fact, I tend to be trend-averse–but if you’re a traveler who’s (still) not on Twitter, I’ve gotta say: you’re missing out.

Twitter, a micro-blogging platform that gives users 140 characters to tell their followers what they’re doing– wasn’t designed specifically for travelers. Yet since it launched in 2006, users have found plenty of uses for Twitter that its own founders and developers never imagined.

Twitter is being used by travelers and travel-related businesses in especially innovative ways. Benji Lanyado, travel writer for the Guardian, used Twitter to plan a trip–which he called a TwiTrip– in real time. He’s @bejilanyado on Twitter. Diamond PR, a public relations firm specializing in travel and tourism, has filled last minute spots on press trips by reaching out to travel writers via Twitter. They’re @diamondpr on Twitter.

Another use of Twitter–the tweetchat–is being pioneered this week by travelers. A tweetchat allows users with similar interests to have chats on Twitter during a specific time designated for group conversation. On June 5, expats Honor Dargan and Shane Sakata, who have over 10 years of combined time living in Japan, will be launching a tweetchat called JapanDiscovered.

The purpose of JapanDiscovered is to help travelers make the most of their time in Japan. As Honor and Shane told Matador:

“We really want to share the knowledge that we’ve gained to give other people access to the wide variety of experiences available here. Japan is an amazing country with something for almost everyone. The difficult part of Japan travel planning is knowing where to look. JapanDiscovered! fills that gap with personalized Japan Travel planning recommendations.”

During the JapanDiscovered tweet chat, Honor and Shane will share what they know about Japan and Tokyo with participants so they can plan their travels more easily. “No guidebooks, no internet searches, just real-time answers” is the idea behind the JapanDiscovered tweetchat.

The JapanDiscovered tweetchat will be hosted by Honor and Shane each Friday at noon Japan Standard Time. You can read more about how you can participate here, and be sure to visit the JapanDiscovered website. And if you’re already on Twitter, be sure to add @japandiscovered to your follow list.

If you’ll be joining Twitter for the first time, you can sign up here. Honor and Shane will be giving away a copy of the book, Urawaza, Secret Everyday Tips and Tricks from Japan, to one lucky follower who adds @japandiscovered to their followers and then sends a Japan travel question to @japandiscovered on Twitter. Details about the giveaway are here.

Community Connection:

If you’re planning a trip to Japan, JapanDiscovered is a helpful resource. Be sure to touch base with any one of Matador’s 25 Asia destination experts, who have answers to your questions about everywhere from Taipei to Tibet– and all points in between. And be sure to check out Matador Abroad’s favorite Asia food blogs, too.

Photo: malias

“800 Britons on waiting list for Swiss suicide clinic.”

That’s one of the top headlines of the May 31 online edition of The Guardian.

According to the article by health reporter Denis Campbell, a record number of British citizens have signed themselves up for euthanasia services at the controversial Dignitas Clinic just outside Zurich.

A 2002 article in TIME Magazine explained that Dignitas “rents an apartment in the city where clients self-administer a fatal dose of barbiturates and slowly fade away while listening to their favorite music.” Euthanasia has been legal in Switzerland since 1960, attracting an increasing number of foreigners to the Swiss capital to end their lives in a manner that would be illegal in their home countries.

Of the 800 Brits who have become members of Dignitas, 34–all of whom are terminally ill– have been screened and given the “provisional green light” to schedule their own deaths. That green light is given by a Swiss doctor and Dignitas founder Ludwig Minelli, who review members’ medical records and conduct interviews to determine that those signed up to die are of sound mind when making that decision.

The increasing number of people traveling to Switzerland seeking Dignitas’ services has implications far beyond Switzerland’s own borders and beyond the lives–and deaths–of those who choose to die. At present, for instance, British citizens who travel with a family member seeking euthanasia are subject to a 14 year prison sentence upon their return, a law that will be reviewed by Britain’s high court this week.

While right-to-die advocates praise Dignitas for opening its doors and providing services to citizens whose own countries will not permit them to end their suffering, opponents raise strong arguments against Dignitas becoming an international destination for people with terminal illnesses who want to end their own lives. The organization has become a focal point in the international debate about euthanasia.

Community Connectio:

Is Dignitas offering a brand of medical tourism gone too far? Share your opinion in the comments.

Rather than conservative, pressed, navy-colored uniforms, flight attendants used to wear hot pants. Today, they’re dressed in khaki shorts.

Instead of boring, predictable safety announcements, the crew tends to make the delivery of even the most rote information an opportunity for entertainment.

The company’s New York Stock Exchange ID is LUV.

It has famously settled disputes by arm wrestling.

You get the idea: everything at Southwest is done with a sense of humor.

So it’s hardly a surprise that this year’s shareholder meeting was more than a get-together characterized by a CEO monotoning a series of boring statistics.

Instead, the company did some internal talent searching and came up with a headline act for the meeting: flight attendant and rapper David Holmes, who was invited to rap the company’s general accounting principles to an audience of rhythmically challenged but enthusiastic shareholders.

Holmes had already achieved some national notoriety before the shareholder meeting rap, which has become a YouTube sensation. The Wall Street Journal and CNN had both featured Holmes’ cabin announcement raps:

But after successfully delivering the “GAAP Rap” without missing a beat, Holmes might just find himself with some new job offers: this video has had more than 22,000 views since it was uploaded a week ago:

What other company can brag that videos from its shareholder meeting have mass appeal (not to mention a 5-star rating) on YouTube?

Feature photo: theerin

Malay women take a stroll in Kuala Lumpur. Photo: Vin Crosbie

The latest news comes from Kuwait.

Last weekend, Al-Jazeera reported that of 16 women who had run for national office, Kuwait had elected its first four female members to Parliament. One of the women was also named Kuwait’s first female cabinet minister.

The women share more than their gender in common. All four espouse liberal political views and were educated in the United States. All hold doctoral degrees, ranging from political science and economics to education.

The newly elected Parliament members also stressed their differences, asserting that they represent a wide range of constituents, noting:

“Yes, all of us are educated, but we also have a woman who won who is married to a non-Kuwaiti, one who is divorced, one who is not yet married, one whose mother is Lebanese…. We represent different social strata.”

The achievement of the candidates is particularly significant considering that Kuwaiti women were only granted the right to vote in 2006.

Yet as one observer has noted, the Kuwaiti women’s win is significant for another reason: it provokes Western feminists to finally confront the question:

“[W]hy… have [you] been so slow to get behind those women in the world’s all too numerous tyrannies who have to risk their lives to say anything [?]“

That observer–British writer Clive James– asks a question that’s increasingly pertinent as women in the so-called “developing” world make political strides that Western feminists have talked about within ivory towers for years but have taken little tangible, non-academic action to support outside their own countries. As James wrote for the BBC, these Western feminist pundits are just arguing rhetorically; meanwhile, their sisters abroad are “in the thick of a real battle”… feminist theory in action.

“Why their bravery doesn’t shame more of our feminist pundits I hesitate to say. It certainly shames me,” he concludes.

As a feminist and someone who holds a degree in Women’s Studies, I have to agree.

Community Connection:

What do you think? Are social justice movements in the West increasingly irrelevant because they’re largely theoretical? How do you view the political and social gains women are making, especially in the “developing” world? Share your thoughts below.

The economy has everyone worried. Photo:fab to pix

First came the report that former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun had committed suicide by flinging himself off a cliff while hiking with a security guard. The President asked the guard for a cigarette and then jumped off the cliff; though alive, according to The Korea Times, he died several hours later at the hospital.

Roh Moo-hyun was under investigation for corruption, though his supporters believed the charges to be overblown. The former President had campaigned and been elected on an anti-corruption platform, and was widely considered to be one of the country’s strongest modern leaders. He improved relations with North Korea and was admired for his rags-to-riches personal story: he had grown up in a poor family and managed to become a human rights lawyer.

Then, barely 24 hours later, came the report from China that a citizen disgruntled by a traffic jam caused by a man contemplating a suicidal leap from a bridge decided to resolve the issue entirely by pushing the man off the bridge.

Chen Fuchao climbed onto the bridge’s railing to consider ending his worries about debt. Police cordoned off the bridge, halting all car traffic for several hours. This infuriated passerby Lai Jiansheng, who called Chen’s actions selfish. Lai approached police–shoeless–and offered to help talk Chen down. When police refused his help, Lai plowed through the barricade, shook Chen’s hand, and pushed him off the bridge.

Chen survived the incident, though he sustained spinal and elbow injuries.

Community Connection:

Economic times are hard, and few people are unaffected by the worldwide recession. Our Voices from the Economic Crisis series includes stories from Matador contributors who recount the local impacts of a depressed economy. If you’re feeling depressed, don’t try to handle your feelings on your own. For some solid advice, check out Claire Litton’s article, “How to Manage Clinical Depression on the Road.”

Matt Kepnes, happy about new friend.

We were stoked last week when Matador contributor Matt Kepnes, aka Nomadic Matt, sent us a copy of his first travel ebook.

In Matt’s own words, his ebook “teaches people some basic coding and what to think about when creating a travel site. The real meat of the ebook are the sections on SEO and how to make money with your blog. I go through the whole process and where to find advertisers.”

I read through the book and found the information to be laid out in a very easy to follow, step by step kind of way that draws directly on Matt’s own experience over the last year, as he’s gone from someone without a travel blog to someone able to sustain himself on ad revenue generated via his site NomadicMatt.com.

After reading the ebook I realized that even though I felt like I “knew” Matt, especially after working with him on several of his classic stories on Matador (such as Top 20 Craziest Party Hostels around the World), there were still several basic things about Matt I wanted to know for this article.

Where are you from? What’s your age / background?

Born and raised in Boston, I have a background in teaching and business but abandoned both to follow my dream of endless travel. I’m 27.

How long have you been with Matador?

Since April 2007 (you guys gave me my big break!).

How long since you started your own site?

February 2007.

How many pageviews do you get?

350,000 per month (not bad, huh?).

Where do you work from?

My laptop.

Where are you right now?

Bangkok, Thailand.

Where are you going next?

Scotland for my birthday! (June 12th!).

What’s the ‘big vision’ for the next 3-5 years?

Finish seeing every continent, getting to the World Cup in 2010, and moving to Europe (Paris or Amsterdam).

Anything special you want readers to know about the ebook?

This book is designed to help those with blogs make an even bigger and better blog and make some money off of it. Many people get discouraged that they put so much work in but see such a little return. The book is here to help you put in less work and get bigger returns by avoiding common mistakes.

Community Connection

You can connect with Matt either via his website or friend him up at Matador.

Photo: Stig Nygaard

As New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof wrote a few weeks ago:

“Mention Africa in polite company, and those around you may grimace, shake their heads sadly and profess sympathy. Oh, all those wars! Those diseases! Those dictators!”

But as Kristof went on to say, Africa is a lot more promising and hopeful than most Westerners acknowledge. And Africans themselves are working hard to use available technologies to get good news stories about their continent out to the rest of the world.

Take sisters Chioma and Oluchi Ogwuegbu, for instance. Chioma and Oluchi recently launched a website, Celebrate Africa, where they’re documenting their journey across the continent, a trip they’ve undertaken with the mission of “changing the negative image of Africa and encourag[ing] Africans and the world to begin to see the beauty in the continent, [as well as] promote a sense of identity and unity for Africa’s people.”

Chioma, who holds a law degree, designed and facilitated a leadership program for young women before deciding to undertake the trip around Africa. On the trip, she plans to volunteer at different non-profits, learning about local problems and solutions. Oluchi, who has a degree in economics, plans to videotape as much of their trip as possible, documenting the good news stories the sisters find along the way.

The sisters plan to visit 34 countries; so far, they have been to 14 countries, including Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Senegal, and Sierra Leone. You can follow their trip by reading their blog.

Community Connection:

Planning your own trip around Africa? Be sure to touch base with Matador’s Africa destination experts.

ScottGregoryPhotography

“A record 220 women are running in Malawi’s presidential and parliamentary polls on Tuesday [today!], representing about 20% of all candidates for the 193 seats. Women are also at the top of the ticket for the first time: Loveness Gondwe is Malawi’s first female presidential candidate, [and] incumbent President Bingu wa Mutharika has tapped foreign minister Joyce Banda as his running mate.”

To learn more about the elections, check this site.

Lithuania’s Presidential Palace, Photo: markhillary

Lithuania’s gotten a lot of international press lately.

Once one of the EU’s most overlooked countries, Lithaunia’s star suddenly seems to be rising. In addition to being on all the travel magazines’ 2009 “must visit” lists, it was announced today that Dalia Grybauskaite was elected as the country’s first female president.

Grybauskaite, who has been serving as the EU’s Budget Commissioner, ran as an independent and earned 68% of the electorate’s votes, edging out seven other candidates.

She will be inaugurated on July 12.

m00by

Is it that American students aren’t interested in studying abroad or that they encounter too many obstacles–including financial challenges–that prevent them from doing so?

Whatever the reason, US Congress took a big step toward improving study abroad opportunities for American students yesterday when it introduced the Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act as part of the House Foreign Relations Authorization Act.

The purpose of the act is to establish public-private partnerships that will achieve four broad goals:

1. Increase American students’ participation in quality study abroad programs;
2. Encourage diversity in student participation in study abroad;
3. Diversify study abroad sites, especially in developing countries;
4. Make study abroad an integral part of the American higher education experience.

The bill was actually introduced last year and enjoyed bipartisan support in the House and Senate, but the Congressional session expired before the bill could be passed.

Full information about the bill can be found here.

If you’d like to support the bill, you can join the Movement for Study Abroad on Facebook.

Community Connection:

Do you know about Matador’s study and live abroad blog, Matador Abroad? Whether you live in the US or elsewhere, you can find a rich archive of articles on study abroad subjects there!

Photo: scriptingnews

Even if, like me, you still haven’t seen “Slumdog Millionaire” (I know, I know, what am I waiting for?!), you’ve probably heard of the movie.

You probably could even narrate the basic plot:

While the movie’s leading man, Dev Patel, has gone on to fame, doing the TV talk show circuit and currently filming his next movie, “The Last Airbender,” other young stars from the movie haven’t fared so well.

Like Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail.

National Public Radio reported on Thursday that 10 year old Azharuddin, who played the youngest Salim in the film, was displaced from his home this week when Indian authorities razed illegally built shacks in preparation for monsoon season.

The authorities said they were unaware the child star lived in the slum, and offered promises that the family will be moved to more stable, secure housing.

According to the article, the lives of the film’s youngest stars–who were not professional actors and were recruited directly from slums, as was the case in the Brazilian film, “City of God,”– have not improved significantly since their “big break.” While the film’s producers said they have established a trust fund for the young stars, there have been no tangible changes in the circumstances in which they live since the film won 8 Oscars.

Community Connection:

Headed to India any time soon? Check out Shreya Sanghani’s excellent article, “10 Indian Customs to Know Before Visiting India.”

Photo: 200MoreMontrealStencils

63 year old Aung San Suu Kyi has spent the past 13 years under house arrest for her activist and humanitarian efforts to oppose the military government in Burma/Myanmar, which has ruled the country since 1962.

In just two weeks, Aung San Suu Kyi was scheduled to be released from her term of house arrest, but was removed from her home earlier this week and taken to a prison after an utterly bizarre event, about which she herself appeared to have had no previous knowledge.

According to this report by the New York Times, a 53 year old American citizen swam across a lake to reach the home of the activist, spending a night on the grounds of her house. The man, who described himself as a Mormon and said he was in Burma/Myanmar working on a book about heroes, refused to leave despite Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s request for him to do so.

The terms of her house arrest forbid visitors, even, apparently, uninvited and unwelcome guests.

The news sent me to the library to look up this passage in Paul Monette’s book, Last Watch of the Night. I read Monette’s book about 12 years ago and it’s where I first learned of Aung San Suu Kyi. I kept this quote above my desk for years:

“The winner of last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, a woman named Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, has been under house arrest in Burma for years now. She went back to Burma to take care of her ailing mother. She was a free woman, married to an Oxford don. But her father was the founder of modern Burma, and when the generals took over they told her she wasn’t allowed to stay and care for her mother. They wanted her out, so they could continue the repression and destruction of the society without any witnesses. And she said no, she wouldn’t go.

She’s gravely ill now from a hunger strike, and she’s told the generals that she’ll gladly leave. But she said, ‘I want all the political prisoners released, and I want to walk to the airport.’ It’s twenty miles from her prison house to the airport. And she has so rallied the spirit of her people that the generals rightly fear that the whole country would turn out to cheer her if she took that…walk. So please think about her when you think of the politics of silence.”

Community Connection:

If you’d like to learn more about Burma/Myanmar, Matador’s own writer and editor Tim Patterson, and Matador contributor and photographer Ryan Libre, visited the country last year. You can find a series of articles and photos about their experience here:

The Kachin Struggle For Freedom

Feature photo: MKMK

Photo by publik15

On the eve of his big speech in Cairo – capital of a vibrant Arab democracy where the government never tortures – President Obama is worried that more U.S. detainee torture photos will cause an uproar in the Arab world.

Although Mr. Obama is right to worry about an uproar, he is dead wrong about releasing the photos.

Here’s Why

When the U.S. government tries to cover things up, horrible things happen.  Just look at the Secret War in Laos or the illicit bombing of Cambodia that set the stage for the Khmer Rouge genocide.

Granted, the photos Mr. Obama doesn’t want us to see do not represent normal behavior by the U.S. military.  But the truth is that war is messy, and no government should be able to get away with covering up the ugliness.

Sanitized Warfare?

Moreover, even “good” U.S. military action in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan is often counter-productive and morally disturbing.

There is something cowardly, sanitized and wrong about techie soldiers in Nevada firing missiles from Predator drones at groups of “enemy combatants” in rural Afghanistan.

Likewise, the American practice of ambushing ethnic minority Afghan fighters who oppose the corrupt and flaccid government of Harmid Karzai is deeply misguided and disturbing.

Finally, the fact that Obama is trying to keep the photos secret raises suspicions about how bad they must be.  I mean, are we talking a little nudity, some mild water-boarding or something worse than Abu Ghraib?

Pulling A Cheney

Please don’t pull a Cheney and try to hide the ugly bits, Mr. President.  And think long and hard about how much money and blood you want to spend in The Graveyard of Empires.

Read more:  Obama Tries To Block Release Of Detainee Photos

Feature Photo: Takomabibelot

Photo above: bradleygee / Feature photo: eric.surfdude

Right on the heels of my post about How To Be Good (Better) Drivers and Cyclists, I read this article in the Colorado Springs Gazette.

Governor Bill Ritter just signed a bill, effective August 5, that should offer more protection to cyclists on the road. It will demand that drivers give at least three feet of space when passing a cyclist, and also make the punishment for throwing an object at a cyclist more severe. (I can only assume this is a common occurrence there.)

Under this new bill, if you’re caught throwing something at a cyclist you could get hit with a fine between $250 and $1000, and face a possible jail term of three to 12 months. Not giving the three feet berth will earn you a $110 fine.

The space considerations are nothing new in some European countries, where you will see signs along the road illustrating that you must have 1 meter of space between your car and the cyclist when passing.

North America could stand to learn more lessons from Europe when it comes to this topic.

What do you think? Will this work?

Share your comments below!

Photo: f650biker

I’ve been following the news about the Obama administration’s foreign policy with respect to Cuba closely. My husband’s entire family lives in Cuba and I’ve been traveling there for five years under the radar. Besides looking forward to the day when I can take a direct flight from my home in New York City to Havana’s Jose Marti International Airport, I have dozens of American friends who are dying to go and see the island and its people for themselves.

And if Orbitz–the Internet travel booking service–has its way, that might be sooner rather than later.

Yesterday, Orbitz announced the results of an opinion poll it conducted in conjunction with Ipsos regarding Americans’ attitudes about the freedom to travel to Cuba. The results? A whopping 67% of Americans favor lifting the travel ban, which would allow all American citizens to travel to Cuba freely, and an even larger percentage–72%–feel that American travel would benefit Cubans.

Given the results, Orbitz decided to launch an initiative intended to influence Obama’s policy with respect to the current travel ban, the full details of which can be found at OpenCuba, but which are summarized here:

“OpenCuba.org gives travelers the opportunity to get directly involved in a grassroots effort to convince American legislators and regulators to end the ban on travel to Cuba. As a focus of the campaign, travelers will be asked to sign a petition calling for an end to the travel ban. Orbitz executives will formally present the petition to U.S. officials in Washington, DC, later this year.”

Lest you get all warm and fuzzy thinking that the travel company has gone activist, consider this: every American who signs the petition will receive a $100 travel credit that can be redeemed on Orbitz to book a Cuba trip should the policy change.

It’s a brilliant business strategy–one that might not only influence a 50 year old foreign policy, but which may also make Orbitz the frontrunner in travel-to-Cuba services once the ban is lifted.

Editor’s Note: Thanks to Matador member and regular contributor Theodore Scott for the tip on this news!

Community Connection:

What do you think of Orbitz’s “Open Cuba” initiative? And are you interested in visiting Cuba? Share your opinions below!

Photo: permanentlyscatterbrained

According to the BBC, 35,000 British citizens visit Laos every year. 20 year old, Nigerian-born British citizen Samantha Orobator was one of them.

Last August, Orobator arrived in Laos, presumably on holiday. But her luggage allegedly contained some serious contraband– 1.5 pounds of heroin–and Orobator was arrested before she could ever get out of the airport to see the country.

In Laos, possession of drugs in any quantity over a pound is grounds for a compulsory death sentence. However, due to an extenuating circumstance, Orobator was not summarily executed by firing squad; instead, she has been languishing in a provincial jail while awaiting trial.

In the meantime, the media have been puzzled by contradictory information about Orobator’s case. Orobator does not deny that she was carrying drugs, but says she did so under duress. Yet no details have been made available to publicly confirm or deny the claim. And her mother, who was interviewed extensively by CNN in a 90 minute broadcast, said she had no idea her daughter was even planning to visit Laos; when they’d last spoken, Orobator was in Holland after having visited Thailand.

Then, there’s another troubling issue– that “extenuating circumstance”: Orobator is five months pregnant. While she has denied being raped in prison and has indicated the pregnancy is the result of consensual sex, activist organizations advocating on her behalf have claimed otherwise, further complicating a case that seems to grow more bizarre by the day.

Orobator’s case is scheduled to be tried before a Lao court this week.

Community Connection:

Carrying, trafficking, or doing drugs while you’re traveling is never a smart choice. Check out 5 Ways Travelers Can Avoid Being Caught With Drugs or Tripping Out on the Road: Drugs, Alcohol, and Travel to learn more about this issue.

Photo: Ahmed Zahid

This weekend’s New York Times Magazine included a fascinating article by Nicholas Schmidle about the Maldives, that archipelagic collection of 1,190 islands in the Indian Ocean.

Last year, Schmidle explained, Maldivians elected the charismatic 41 year old Mohamed Nasheed, a journalist and former political prisoner, to the presidency. Nasheed’s victory displaced Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who had ruled the islands for 30 years.

Photo: muha…

Though Gayoom had warned the world that his country’s citizens were likely to become the first environmental refugees if climate change wasn’t arrested or reversed, Nasheed was more bold in his assertions… and even began to talk about a plan to deal with such a scenario.

Shortly before he was inaugurated in November, 2008, Nasheed declared:

“…that because of global warming, he would try to find a new homeland for Maldivians somewhere in the world, on higher ground… [and] proposed moving all 300,000 Maldivians to [either] India, Sri Lanka, [or] Australia…[using] tourism revenues from the present to establish a sovereign wealth fund with which he could buy a new country–or at least part of one–in the future.”

Photo: BadrNaseem

It was a dramatic proposal, to be sure, and one that has elicited mixed reactions from Maldivians. Some people applaud the plan; others think the threat of rising sea levels isn’t likely to come true in their own lifetime.

Though it’s not clear whether Nasheed has actually taken any tangible steps to scout out land abroad, he’s articulated another bold proposal in the meantime, which is intended to serve as a global warming stop-gap measure: the Maldives, he has declared, will become the first carbon-neutral country in the world.

Schmidle’s article is thin on the details about how either of these plans would be achieved, but the seemingly contradictory options of fight or flight proposed by the Maldivian president raise compelling questions about the future of the country. And for travelers, this news provides still more emphasis to visit–and to try to save–places that are literally vanishing.

Community Connection:

The Maldives are just one of 9 sites to visit on our places to experience now before they literally vanish.

Witness the latest campaign from the Barbados tourism authority: The Barbados Perfect Weather Guarantee.

Yup, from May through December, Barbados promises “perfect” weather — defined, specifically, as 78 degrees or higher and less than a quarter inch of rainfall — every day.

If the temperature drops and the skies open up, the tourism authority will cough up a $100 refund for each day of imperfection.

Ingenious move? Marketing gimmick? A bit of both?

Either way, it’s certainly an attention-getting offer.

What do you think? Would a perfect-weather guarantee have you booking a flight? What do you think the tourism industry can do to keep travelers on the road during the recession?

Community Connection:

Recession travel deals, and special offers like this one, are everywhere these days. But there’s more to recession travel than just the chance to save some cash. Be sure to check out Why You Should Travel During the Global Recession.

If you decide to take the Bajans up on their offer, don’t forget to read up on the Best of Barbados.

Photo by jenschapter3 (Creative Commons)

Photo: John O’Hara

Michael Tomasky provided a little background in the Guardian, writing that Savage was a San Franciscan with a Jewish father and Italian mother who hung out with Beat poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg until later claiming to have been turned right-wing by political correctness.

The news of Savage’s exclusion order may have passed without causing a furor, but his announcement that he was going to sue the British government for defamation ensured that it hit all the British headlines. Savage also called Smith a lunatic and derided Britain and British people.

Savage objected to being included on a list alongside Russian skinheads and Islamic terrorists, claiming that he was only giving opinions on his “Savage Nation” radio show in order to court controversy and attract large audiences. Mark Stephens, of the London law firm, Finers, Stephens, Innocent, was quoted on the Times Online website as saying that Savage “would seem to have a very good case. The people on the list who have been banned are supposed to be advocating extreme violence and so to put him into that category is clearly defamatory.”

Savage apparently had no plans to visit the UK, so there are questions about why he was included on the list. He’s hardly a prominent threat to security.

Smith said the list was released to show others what behavior Britain would not tolerate, and she accused Savage of fomenting hatred on his radio show. Savage has verbally attacked just about everybody outside his nationalist conservatism political circle on the show, from charity workers to foreigners, and has even questioned whether the majority of child dyslexia cases are genuine.

This controversy has probably been most welcome to him, and raised his profile no end.

There was speculation in the Guardian comment section that Savage was included in the British ‘least wanted’ list to balance it politically, as several Muslims are included. Some called Savage’s listing as another dent in British freedom on the day that identity cards for UK nationals were introduced into circulation, albeit on a voluntary basis. Others supported the action, and condemned Savage’s views after hearing them for the first time.

Also writing in the Guardian, Michael White considered the banning of Savage worthwhile just to see someone with such vehemently right-wing views get a taste of his own medicine.

An online Guardian poll on the evening of the list’s publication had 44% agreeing with the decision to ban Savage and 56% disagreeing.

Community Connection:

What’s your opinion? Should Savage be on Britain’s “Do Not Enter” list? And should countries even have such lists for people who clearly pose no true security threat? Share your opinions below.

The country’s first national park just opened, part of a US-Afghan joint initiative to kick-start tourism in a country that’s been conflict-ridden for decades. Afghanistan’s tourism minister, Ghulam Farhai, acknowledged that security remains a challenge, but is confident that his country will eventually be “a perfect travel destination.”

He might have a hard time convincing foreign travelers of that if the news from the Kabul Zoo gets any kookier.

Yesterday, Reuters reported that Afghanistan’s sole pig, on display alongside deer and goats at the Kabul Zoo, was quarantined as a precautionary measure against swine flu.

Though zoo officials realize that swine flu is not, in fact, transmitted by pigs, they explained that a special room was built for the sole swine because guests were worried the pig could infect people with the since-renamed H1N1 flu.

Photo: german

It’s not the first bizarre episode in the zoo’s history, nor is it the only strange sight you’re likely to see if you visit.

In the early 90s, Mujahideen fighters commandeered the zoo, eating the deer and rabbits and shooting the zoo’s only elephant for no apparent reason. Their shells volleyed–and then shattered–the zoo’s aquarium. Then, one of the fighters decided to go for a romp with the zoo’s lions. When one of the lions killed him, the fighter’s brother took revenge, throwing a grenade into the lion’s compound, leaving the other lion blind and toothless.

Clearly, Tourism Minister Farhai has his work cut out for him.

Sounds outrageous, doesn’t it?

But it’s a familiar refrain for pet owners across the United States. Unless your pooch fits under the cabin seat, he or she is restricted to cargo.

Photo: Francisco Collazo

When Alysa Binder and Dan Wiesel became frustrated with the complications of planning vacations that included their dog, Zoe, they decided to do something about it. The idea began to take shape in 2005 and Binder and Wiesel recently announced that Pet Airways, the first airline designed for pets only, will begin flights in the United States on July 14, 2009.

Speaking with Binder, it was obvious Pet Airways takes transporting pets very seriously, and the “safety, care, and comfort” of the animals will be top priority. There will be pre- and post-flight potty breaks, as well as stops along the way. Pets will be placed in private, secure carriers in the main cabin of a cleared out Beech 1900 passenger plane.

“Pawsengers” will be monitored during the flight, and there will even be an online flight status notification and pet tracking system so clients can monitor their pets’ journey from home. Pet Airways will start their service by flying cats and dogs, but is in the process of adding exotic animals.

Pet Airways will launch out of airports in New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, Denver, and Los Angeles. Binder and Wiesel anticipate adding 25 cities within the next couple years and are “definitely taking the interest of pet owners in consideration” when deciding which cities will be added.

Their website is already live, and provides more information about the company’s service.

Community Connection:

For more tips on traveling with your pet, check out Julie Schwietert’s article (that’s her in the feature photo, traveling with her pug, Penelope), “Ten Tips for Traveling with Pets.” And if you end up leaving your pet at home, here are four ways to remember it while you’re traveling.

Photo: Will Hale

The incident was the tipping point for O’Mullane, who flipped the bird as he accelerated past the man.

But O’Mullane’s bad day was about to get a lot worse: the other driver was a United Arab Emirates government official, who proceeded to tailgate O’Mullane, followed him to his home, got in a fight with him, and then called police, who hauled O’Mullane off to jail for 24 days.

After his stint in the clink, O’Mullane received a deportation notice, as did his wife, who is also an Australian expat who was working in Dubai.

The incident is a dramatic reminder about how important it is to conform to local customs (like restraining oneself from making gestures that may be considered rude) when traveling or living abroad. If you’re headed abroad and you need an etiquette primer, check out this article: 5 Common American Gestures That Might Insult the Locals.

Photo: jimw

Though the labor movement and the first May Day actually originated in the US in the late 19th century, it’s no longer celebrated on May 1 in the US.

But today, from Cuba to Cambodia, workers have the day off and many will gather publicly to support workers’ rights.

You can read more about the history of the day here.

Photo: Esparta

I’m writing from New York City, where, at last count, the Department of Health reported 44 confirmed swine flu cases.

While New Yorkers are being advised not to panic and to go about their normal routines, two schools where students have been diagnosed with flu have closed temporarily and new flu clusters have been identified. Already, local tourism officials are taking measures to ensure that the swine flu scare doesn’t cause travelers to avoid New York City.

Regardless of whether concern is warranted, though, it’s becoming increasingly clear that swine flu is already having a significant impact on travel and tourism.

Here’s a round up of the latest news about how swine flu is changing travel recommendations and plans:

-Argentina and Cuba announced today that they are temporarily suspending flights to and from Mexico, which is currently the center of the swine flu crisis.Similar measures were taken by Canada’s WestJet and Air Canada airlines.

-Mexico City has banned most public events and has closed schools, public pools, gyms and sports clubs, theaters, nightclubs until further notice as a precautionary measure intended to contain the spread of the virus. In Mexico City? Don’t expect to go out to eat; all restaurants have been told they can serve take-out only.

Photo: playadura

-At present, Mexico City’s massive subway system is still running, though the city government continues to evaluate whether shutting the Metro temporarily will help control the crisis.

-Britain has suspended all consular and visa services at its Mexico City office until further notice.

-The European Union issued travel warnings to its citizens, advising them to postpone non-essential travel to the United States and Mexico.

-Swine flu cases were either identified or being investigated in the following countries as of Tuesday, April 28: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Guatemala, Israel, New Zealand, Peru, South Korea, Spain, the UK, and seven EU states. As the number of cases are determined, voluntary travel restrictions to and from these countries may be put in place.

-The governments of Russia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan announced they would quarantine any visitors to their countries who show symptoms of swine flu.

-On April 27, the World Health Organization indicated that it does NOT support the suspension of travel or the closure of borders by national governments. It does, however, encourage travelers without a non-urgent need to travel to reconsider their plans. The WHO also recommended that anyone feeling ill should not travel, and anyone who becomes ill after traveling should seek immediate medical attention.

-To keep track of developments and recommendations for travel to and within the United States, visit the Centers for Disease Control’s swine flu page here. The CDC also maintains a link to swine flu travel alerts.

-To keep track of developments and recommendations for travel elsewhere in the world, read the World Health Organization’s daily updates here.

Community Connection:

Have you changed your travel plans due to swine flu? Are you currently in Mexico? Share your experiences below.

Sales are down and readers who love the feel of words in their hands worry about the impact the Kindle and other electronic readers may have on traditional books.

Photo: Daniel Zanini H

But there was a flicker of hope last week in the unlikely exchange of a gift between Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and US President Barack Obama.

When the two presidents met at the Summit of the Americas, President Chavez gave President Obama a book, Las Venas Abiertas de America Latina, by Uruguayan writer and scholar, Eduardo Galeano:

Though the book was in Spanish–and Obama’s press secretary was reported as saying that Obama would be unlikely to read it for that reason–Chavez’s gift spurred a book buying surge… English and Spanish readers around the world caused Galeano’s book, which was published almost 40 years ago, to rocket to the top of bestseller lists after spending decades in the relative insularity of academic and activist circles.

According to the Guardian:

As footage of the encounter appeared on news bulletins, the book rocketed up the US paperback sales chart of the online bookseller Amazon, soaring from number 54,295 to sixth place within 24 hours.

At present, the book ranks #1 in three Amazon categories.

Could Chavez save publishing? Should the “Oprah effect” be renamed the “Chavez effect”?

Even if the impact of the gift only served to buoy the publishing industry temporarily, Chavez’s gesture helped to resuscitate a Latin American classic. You can read more about the book and its significance here.

Mia Farrow’s done all that, too. As a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, she has also traveled to different regions of Africa to interview survivors of civil wars:

But now, Farrow is taking her support a step further.

On Monday, April 27, the actress will begin a hunger strike to bring attention to the political, economic, and social crises that have been gripping Darfur, Sudan for years and which have recently worsened. As Farrow wrote on her blog:

“On April 27th I will begin a fast of water only in solidarity with the people of Darfur and as a personal expression of outrage at a world that is somehow able to stand by and watch innocent men, women and children needlessly die of starvation, thirst and disease.”

Farrow has long been concerned about social problems in Africa, and has used her blog and other multimedia tools, such as her Flickr photostream, to raise awareness and call for action from people of privilege in other countries.

Photo: hdptcar

But she seems to feel the hunger strike is the most effective action she can take to draw attention to a worsening crisis the rest of the world is all to eager to ignore. She wrote:

“I undertake this fast in the heartfelt hope that world leaders who know what is just and right will call upon the Government of Sudan to urgently readmit all of the expelled agencies or otherwise insure that the gap is filled, giving aid workers unimpeded access to the populations before they begin to die in numbers that could dwarf the Rwandan genocide. I also call upon President Obama and other leaders with influence to help build a credible peace process that can end the suffering in Darfur.

I hope human rights advocates and citizens of conscience around the world will join me in some form of fasting, even if for one day. And when I can no longer continue, I pray another will take my place, and another– until finally there is justice and peace for Darfur’s people.”

Photo: tuxmemento

From FOX to NPR, the evening news has been awash with reports of blood-splashed streets, out of control crime stats, and a police force so impotent that federal military intervention is required.

It’s frightening stuff, alright, so much so that lots of travelers have changed or canceled their Mexico travel plans. People have even formed organizations calling for travel boycotts.

But outside of the drug-running hotspots of Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, is traveling to Mexico really dangerous?

We talked to some frequent Mexico travelers and looked at some data to answer that question.

Matador contributor Misty Tosh is a regular visitor to Mexico. She hosts annual retreats on Isla de Mujeres and has driven Baja–alone–a dozen times. She recently wrote:

“I cruised down extremely dusty backroads, took precarious routes along the Sierra Madre’s, and swam along lonesome stretches of sandy beaches. Never did I fear for my life. Not once did I think I was gonna catch some trouble cause I was alone. Stay away from Mexico? As if. You’d be crazy if ya did.”

Travel writer Eric Lucas, who has had his passport stamped in Mexico more than 25 times, also travels south feeling at ease. In response to the travel boycott, he had this to say:

“Actually, it’s safer there than here. For example, the murder rate in Mexico is about 11 per 100,000 people a year. In New Orleans, it’s almost seven times worse, 71 per 100,000. Atlanta, Cleveland, St. Louis—all have higher murder rates than Mexico.”

Eric’s correct. As author David Lida–an American expat living in Mexico City for almost 20 years–explained in his excellent book, First Stop in the New World:

“In 2004, there were 710 homicides in Mexico City, as opposed to 218 in Washington, D.C. Yet there are close to twenty million people in Mexico City and only 572,000 in the U.s. capital. Therefore, your likelihood to get murdered in D.C. is far greater than it is here–equally true in many U.S. cities, among them Detroit, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Phoenix, Dallas, and Las Vegas (according to 2004 statistics from the FBI). In 2006, New Orleans…with a population smaller than 1 percent of Mexico City’s–had a murder rate nearly equal to the D.F.”

Lida concludes that the persistent problem with the portrayal of violence in Mexico is one of misinterpretation and lack of contextualization. 710 homicides sounds like a lot… if you’re not considering total population and if you’re comparing that statistic to the statistics of a city with a significantly lower population.

Mexico isn’t crime-free, but neither is the US. Yet if we focus enough on our neighbor to the south, maybe we’ll distract ourselves from our own problems. And perhaps that’s what’s really behind the sudden obsession with Mexico’s crime.

Photo: Gret@Lorenz

So don’t cancel that Mexico trip. Unless you’re planning on Spring Break in Juarez, you’re just as likely to be as safe in Mexico as you are in your own home town.

Photo: Brayan Collazo

There’s been a lot of talk about changing US policy toward Cuba, and since President Obama took office it’s clear the administration has been taking steps to re-establish some formal diplomatic ties with Cuba.

Today, those steps became tangible as the Obama administration announced that it has officially reversed the travel and money remittance policies that were strengthened by the Bush administration.

Cuban Americans can now visit Cuba as often as they’d like and will be allowed to send more than $300 every three months, which was the previous limit.

In addition to these changes, which were expected, President Obama indicated that the US government will provide licenses to American telecommunications companies in order to extend cell phone and Internet service on the island. Cuban Americans will be able to purchase service for their family members on the island once the basic infrastructure has been improved and expanded.

Now that this part of the arcane US foreign policy has been reversed, perhaps it’s just a matter of time before the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act–which proposes permitting all Americans to travel to Cuba–is passed.

Community Connection:

Regular Matador contributor Audrey Scott just published a thoughtful article on why it makes sense to travel to “rogue states” like Cuba over on Brave New Traveler. Check it out and join the conversation!

Some of the strangest entries involve food consumption.

Photo: quami77

There’s Ken Edwards, a London man who holds the record (eight years and running) for eating the most cockroaches–36–in one minute, and Jim Lyngvild, a resident of Copenhagen who set the bar for eating the most Ferrrero Rocher chocolates in one minute–seven (seems pretty weak to me).

Photo: mountainamoeba

This week, a new food record was entered into the Guinness register.

Anandita Dutta Tamuly, a woman from Jorhat, India, put competitors to shame by eating 51 ghost chilis–considered the world’s hottest–in a minute. Famously foul-mouthed celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay looked on as Tamuly set her record, and was left speechless.

Tamuly, for her part, was reportedly pleased to have set a Guinness record, but was disappointed in her performance– she’s eaten as many as 60 of the chilis in a single sitting, so she failed to break her own personal record.

Community Connection:

What’s the strangest food you’ve ever eaten? Matador contributor Nellie Huang introduces readers to 10 of Asia’s most exotic delicacies in this article.

Photo: Dominic DeGrazier

The people of Uruguay tend to be extremely tranquilo – they drink mate and aren’t generally worried about the exact time of day. At the same time, Uruguayos tend to be politically active, especially this year, as they will vote in November for their new president and on various bills.

One of these bills calls for annulling the law called “La Ley de Caducidad (The Law of Expiration).” This is a law passed in 1986 after the 12-year military dictatorship ended (1973-1985). It gives impunity to the dictatorship’s military officials for their human rights violations, among other crimes. No, you did not read this incorrectly.

Due to pressures from the old regime and in order to return to “normalcy,” the new Uruguayan government formed in December 1986 thought it was simply better to squash the horrors of the dictatorship. It was decided that the crimes committed within the previous 13 years were no longer punishable; in effect, the time had expired to take action against the guilty officials.

By April 25, 2009, in order to place the nullification of this law on the ballots of November, 10% of the voting population (251,847) needs to sign for the reform.

As of April 4th, 245,785 signatures had been received.

Photo: Dominic DeGrazier

Occurring barely one generation ago, the Uruguayan dictatorship is still an extremely fresh wound. Its military officers responsible for torturing, kidnapping, murdering, or terrorizing innocent people for 12 years are still walking around free within the country and abroad.

Photo: Dominic DeGrazier

Uruguayans are trying to achieve an important step to make sure justice is finally served. Vamos arriba, Uruguay!

Photo: Alessio 85

As is customary when any country faces a natural disaster, other nations immediately began extending aid offers to Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Russia, and Switzerland were just a few countries offering assistance.

When asked by international media whether the country needed financial or rescue assistance, Prime Minister Berlusconi’s initial response was to politely decline aid, indicating that no tangible international support was needed at the moment. His the Interior Minister elaborated:

“We have the resources needed for reconstruction, including European funds, and we need to move quickly to avoid the problems of wasteful or slow spending that we’ve seen in past interventions.”

Yet rather than view this statement as a sign of the Italian government’s self-sufficiency (why not decline resources politely when so many other places are in need and the world economy is in a shambles?), critics complained that Berlusconi was snubbing his counterparts in a diplomatic faux pas. He has since agreed to accept some assistance for the rebuilding of historic buildings.

What do you think? Should Berlusconi have accepted aid that he believes his country doesn’t need?

Photo: ewen and donabel

A trip to Disney isn’t cheap these days no matter how good your budgeting skills are.

A one day admission ticket for visitors over 10 years of age will ring in at $75.00 USD and any meal at the ABC Commissary (one of 88 dining options at the Orlando Disney) will leave you $14.99 poorer than when you entered the Magic Kingdom. If you plan on staying overnight, even a campground spot will take a $43.00 bite out of your budget.

But even the most generous spender will be hard pressed to figure out just how a Disney visit could total more than $400,000.

All they need to do, though, is talk with Malaysia’s Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Khir Toyo, a businessman and government contractor who spent just that amount at Disney Paris and Disney Orlando, according to an article published in The New Straits Times last week.

Mr. Toyo, whose trip was billed as a “technical visit,” was supposed to be gathering information that might be useful as Malaysia gets ready to build its own theme park. Yet he didn’t meet with any Disney officials; instead, he hired a tour guide to sport himself, his family (wife + 3 kids), and a maid around the parks.

A handful of expense reports turned in by Toyo indicated that he hired a Mercedes Benz, rented out the Presidential Suite, and flew first class from one park to the other. He also paid for a group of traditional dancers–from his own country– to welcome him and his entourage upon their arrival.

The government is now investigating Mr. Toyo’s trip in hearings of the Select Committee on Competence, Accountability and Transparency. So far, Mr. Toyo has not made an appearance at any of the hearings.

Photo: vox_efx

Sounds good so far, both for our hypothetical crew and for theT&C economy, which will benefit a bit from the layovers– there are several of them, 23 to be exact–planned.

But the story gets a bit sinister with this twist: those planes landing at Turks & Caicos’ Providenciales Airport are alleged to be involved in the transportation of terrorism suspects who were ordered to be detained indefinitely at the US base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

According to a March 13, 2009 article in the Turks and Caicos Weekly, more evidence has recently come to light that confirms the Turks and Caicos were used as an R&R layover spot for CIA officials “to relax and kickback after their dark missions” between 2001 and 2005.

Rumors about T&C’s use as a rest and refuel spot started to swirl last summer, when the international NGO Reprieve presented an executive report in which the organization blasted the UK government with a series of allegations about the use of another British holding, the island of Diego Garcia, as a “processing [and service] center” for “high-value detainees.”

The Reprieve report also mentioned the role that the Turks and Caicos may have played–perhaps unbeknownst to local officials–as a fun-in-the-sun stopover for stressed CIA crews:

“Turks and Caicos may have been used as a luxury ‘rest and recovery’ spot and planning hub for agents en route to or from illegal rendition operations or Guantanamo Bay.”

While the Obama administration has alluded to a number of policy and practice changes with respect to detainees, it appears there’s a lot more the general public still has to learn about the scope of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror,” as well as allied nations’ complicity in supporting Bush’s redefinition of “justice.”

Photo: johnsheldon

In a decision passed down this morning, Iowa’s Supreme Court ruled that the definition of marriage should not apply solely to the union of a man and a woman, but could also apply to same-sex couples.

The ruling gives the green-light for gay and lesbian couples to tie the knot as early as April 24.

And the right to marry doesn’t just extend to Iowans: because the state has no residency clause regarding marriage on the books, couples from out of state can come to Iowa to marry legally.

Might Iowa see a sudden surge in its number of annual visitors? Though it’s not exactly known as a tourism magnet, the state may just see its tourism industry boom this year.

Community Connection:

If you’re in a same-sex partnership and thinking about marriage, but Iowa doesn’t appeal to you, check out “The World’s Best Spots for a Same-Sex Wedding.”

Arriving in Buenos Aires on March 31, I happened to find myself in Argentina’s capital during a momentous time. The very night I arrived, Raul Alfonsin, the country’s first democratically-elected president after the “Dirty War,” the country’s 1976-1983 period of military rule, fell gravely ill as a result of lung cancer.

By the next morning, he was dead.

That afternoon, the Plaza del Congreso was blocked off by police as Argentines lined up in front of the Palacio del Congreso to pay their respects.

Banners were unfurled, thanking Alfonsin for his efforts in ushering in an era of democracy and prosecuting former military leaders, a huge risk for which he was eventually forced to step down after six years.

Alfonsin’s presidency gave Argentines hope at a time when many Latin American nations were ruled by military dictatorships. The reverence people still have for him was evident in the crowds that turned out for his funeral procession on April 2, which resulted in the police barricade being knocked over.

April 2 was also a national holiday to commemorate the Falklands War, known locally as the Guerra de las Malvinas. Veterans of the war had set up in the Plaza de Mayo, in front of the Casa Rosada, the office of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.

Like Vietnam Veterans in the United States, the veterans of this conflict have been discriminated against and forgotten for years.

And incidentally, this being a Thursday, the Madres de los Desaparecidos, the Mothers of the Disappeared, made their weekly march in the Plaza, as they have for years.

I was struck by the reverence that the Argentines had for their former president, who gave them the kind of hope that Americans now have for Obama, as well as the dedication of the Madres, who continue their fight in memory of their children.

[All photos courtesy of the author.]

Photo: Brayan Collazo

The U.S. embargo against Cuba–quite possibly the most comprehensive and punitive piece of foreign policy legislation in modern U.S. memory– may be marching toward history.

Just a few weeks ago, a significant change in US foreign policy towards Cuba was made by the US Treasury Department. Negating a decision enacted by the Bush administration five years ago, the Treasury Department, which is charged with the responsibility of overseeing and enforcing a considerable portion of US-Cuba policy, announced that effective immediately, Cuban Americans will be allowed to travel to Cuba to visit family once a year (as opposed to once every three years) and no time restrictions will be imposed on these visits.

Though it received fairly limited press, Matador’s own contributing editor, Christine Garvin, gave the policy change some thoughtful coverage on Brave New Traveler.

Now, there’s evidence that still more of the travel-related laws prohibiting Americans’ travel to Cuba are being chipped away at.

The Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act is a bipartisan bill introduced yesterday. It is co-sponsored by 118 members of the House (House Bill H.R. 874) and 20 Senators (Senate Bill S. 428) from both parties. The bill is intended to extend the right to travel to Cuba to all Americans… for the first time in decades.

The bill is being supported by special interest groups as diverse as the US dairy, wheat, and rice industries, as well the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch.

Though similar bills were proposed with regularity during the Bush administration, they quickly died before being passed.

Sarah Stephens, executive director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, articulated my own feelings, which I expressed in this article, when she said:

“…the constitutional right to travel belongs to all Americans no matter what their ethnic background or national origin might be.

Under George Bush, we had ‘travel for nearly none’; under Barack Obama, we have progressed to ‘travel for some’; and under this legislation we can realize the goal of ‘travel for all’.

All of our goals – for U.S.-Cuba policy, for regional diplomacy, for boosting the U.S. economy, and for advancing our values and remaking our nation’s image-are best served by replacing our policy of isolation with engagement starting with ‘travel for all’.”

Though the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act, if passed and signed into legislation, is not expected to completely dismantle the trade embargo, the continued efforts to revise US foreign policy toward Cuba signal an important–and exciting–new chapter in the complicated history of US-Cuba relations.

As someone married to a Cuban American, and as a traveler who has visited Cuba many times (that’s me in this article’s feature photo, clowning around with my husband and my mother-in-law at her apartment in Centro Habana), I’m interested to see if the bill passes this go round.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION:

If you’re an American interested in traveling to Cuba off-the-radar before any policy changes take effect, check out two of my articles full of first-hand advice here and here. Find out how to prepare for your trip by watching some of my favorite films or reading some of the best books about Cuba; you can find the list here. Wondering what to do once you get there? Check out my nightlife recommendations.

Have you been to Cuba? Share your experiences! Would you love to visit Cuba? Share your thoughts about the Freedom to Travel Act below.

Photo: RichieC

US Vice-President Joe Biden, not one known for circumspect speech, has just returned from a trip to Latin America.

The veep, whose trip was a goodwill move intended to pave the way for President Obama’s participation in the Summit of the Americas later this month, attended the Progressive Governance Conference along with the presidents of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, and the Prime Ministers of Norway and the UK.

Biden brought his administration’s message of hope and change to the region, noting that the Americas need to work together more closely on the economy, education, and health care, among other common issues.

“[T]he good news,” Biden said in his formal remarks, “is that we’re willing to, and want to collaborate.”

Biden delivered the “bad news” in this punchline:

“The bad news is that you don’t have the last administration to use as an excuse.”

The veep’s remarks- delivered in his closing statement- were received with laughter and applause.

Community Connection:

To learn about other foreign policy initiatives in the Americas, check out this article from our archives.

“Obama Signs Wilderness Protection Bill”

Sunrise in Houston, Texas; Photo: Theodore Scott

The Omnibus Land Management Act of 2009–one of the most ambitious environmental protection bills passed in the past 25 years–will protect a total of 2 million acres in nine states: Alaska, California, Colorado, Idaho, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Virginia.

River runners across the United States were thrilled to learn that the 1,200 page bill extended to protect some of the nation’s waterways, too: more than 1,000 miles of rivers were designated as wild and scenic.

The designation of the land and waterways as wilderness areas means that commercial development is restricted, keeping the areas pristine for perpetuity.

Community Connection:

Thinking about heading out into the great wide American open? Check out Matador’s recent articles about Montana’s Big Sky country: 9 Montana Backpacking Trips That Will Blow Your Mind; Boating Big Sky: Montana’s Classic River Trips; and 4 More Reasons to Visit Montana Now.

Can’t travel anytime soon? Check out Matador member and regular contributor Ted Scott’s photos of wild places, both in the U.S. and abroad.

Among the officials named as subjects of the investigation are disgraced former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the frighteningly arrogant John Yoo, former Justice Department lawyer who gave President Bush the green light to forgo upholding the Geneva Conventions.

The Geneva Conventions, posted in Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay, October 2008, Photo by Julie Schwietert

The case, submitted to a prosecutorial office by Judge Baltasar Garzon, may eventually lead to the issuance of arrest warrants for Bush’s cronies, though advocates of the investigatory process note that the wheels of justice are likely to roll slowly in this case.

Notably, Judge Garzon was the official who ordered the arrest of General Augusto Pincohet, the former dictator of Chile. As a result of the order, Pinochet was detained in Britain in 1998 while recovering after surgery at a London hospital, though he never went to trial and died in late 2006.

While some critics view Judge Garzon’s pursuit of Bush administration officials as superfluous and merely symbolic, I’d argue that Garzon’s call for an investigation keeps the important issues of torture and the complete flaunting of the principles of justice on our radar screen– issues we’re all to willing to forget about.

Sign posted in Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay, October 2008, Photo by Julie Schwietert

COMMUNITY CONNECTION:

To learn more about Guantanamo, read this article from our archives, in which I talk about my October 2008 visit to the US base at Guantanamo, or watch some video footage from the visit.

Sad news today. One of our heroes, Shane McConkey, died in a ski-BASE jumping accident in the Italian Dolomites.

He had been working on a new line variation off the Val Scura couloir on Sassongher with JT Holmes and a film crew from Matchstick Productions. Initial reports indicate an equipment malfunction prevented him from deploying his pilot chute.

Shane McConkey was a freeskiing legend and pioneer of ski-BASE jumping. By utilizing BASE- jumping techniques and equipment he was able to access lines that previously existed only in people’s imagination.

Shane’s last blog, describing yesterday’s ski BASE-jump, ends with the stoke of someone who lived doing what he loved. Here’s an excerpt:

By SHANE McCONKEY March 25, 2009 at 12:58

Today was quite cool! We finally nailed that line variation off the Val Scura couloir on Sassongher. This was extremely satisfying getting to ski such a unique line. Conditions in the couloir were still very hard and icy in places so the skiing was slow and careful. Traversing/hiking the ramp out of the couloir did not present much of a problem and it was a very cool feeling knowing what we were heading out to.

We called the MSP film crew on the radio and they fired up the heli and it as time to charge off this sucker! I went first and punched it hard into a big ol front flip with as much speed as I was comfortable taking in those conditions. Everything went great and I had an on heading opening. I flew down completely stoked and landed high up on the hillside so I could watch JT from a good angle. No more than 30 seconds after I landed I see JT flying off the cliff with a lot of speed. He yanked his skis off right away and began to fly immediately. It was a perfectly executed wingsuit ski base. Skis off quick and stable and into forward flight with no potato chipping or instability. I was jealous. Today was a good day!

In 2007 I interviewed Shane’s friend Tal Fletcher for an article about the pioneers of sky sports. I’d sent Tal a draft of the article and he laughed when he read how I’d described Shane McConkey as a “freeskiing legend.”

“Shane would laugh if he read that,” Tal said. “He never thinks of himself that way.”

Shane McConkey, is survived by his wife, Sherry, and their 3½-year-old daughter, Ayla. Our thoughts go out to them and friends around the world.

Wrong.

Behold, several Fox News “comedians” mocking Canadian troops in Afghanistan, within days of four more Canadian soldiers being killed in the field:

The homophobic overtones (”Leslie? That’s an odd name for a man,” the host sneers at one point) are the icing on this tasteless, ignorant cake.

The clip has touched off a firestorm in Canada: it’s one of the lead stories on most every paper today, and the Canadian government has used strong words in its demand for an apology.

Defense Minister Peter MacKay said:

It’s crass, it’s insensitive, it’s in fact disgusting, given the timing. There should be an apology – to the families in particular, and to the Canadian Forces and to Canada generally – given the sacrifice and the commitment that we’ve demonstrated in Afghanistan.

A spokesman for MacKay added that he wanted the apology to come directly from the people in the segment itself:

These are despicable, hurtful and ignorant comments. I think that so-called comedian should stare in the camera at his first opportunity and apologize to all of the families of people he’s hurt with these despicable comments.

Meanwhile, one of the comedians, Doug Benson, has had an upcoming string of gigs at an Edmonton comedy club cancelled. (That’s my own original research, there! I called, outraged, to demand that they can him, and learned they already had.)

Anyone out there holding their breath for an apology from Fox? I wouldn’t bet on it.

“Support our troops,” indeed.

The Dalai Lama has been denied a visa for a major international peace conference to be held in Johannesburg this week.

A spokesman for the President claimed the move was intended to prevent any distractions in the lead-up to the FIFA World Cup, being held on the African continent for the first time next year — but the truth behind the move came out when he added that South Africa has benefited greatly from a strong trading relationship with China.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, famed anti-Apartheid activist and — like the Dalai Lama — a Nobel Prize recipient, has announced that he will boycott the conference in response.

Former President F.W. de Klerk, another Nobel laureate for his role in releasing Nelson Mandela and ending the Apartheid era, joined Tutu in condemning the move and vowing to boycott. From his statement:

The decision to exclude the Dalai Lama is irreconcilable with key principles on which our society is based including the principles of accountability, openness and responsiveness and the rights to freedom of expression and free political activity. South Africa is a sovereign constitutional democracy and should not allow other countries to dictate to it regarding who it should, and should not admit to its territory – regardless of the power and influence of the country.

There’s been no response as of yet from Mandela, yet another Nobel Prize recipient who’d been slated to attend.

I’d be curious to hear his thoughts, though — after all, while he spent decades in prison, many of his fellow leaders in the anti-Apartheid resistance were in exile overseas, trying to raise awareness and stir up support for their cause.

I think I know what he would have said, then, about any country that bowed to the Apartheid state’s demands to deny them visas.

Photo by reurinkjan (Creative Commons)

The spiraling popularity of “daggering” — a “lewd” dance style with accompanying, explicitly-lyric’d dancehall tunes — has led the Jamaican government to take an unprecedented step: an all-out radio and TV ban on songs and videos with blatantly sexual content.

Here’s the background, from MOJO blogger David Katz:

The storm began brewing when a series of “daggering” hits gained widespread airplay… To the uninitiated, “daggering” is a super-lewd “dance” that leaves little to the imagination, in which groin-locked couples enact rapid-speed dry-humping. “Daggering” dancers basically enact simulated sex, since the term is roughly the Caribbean equivalent to “cabin stabbing.”

(Am I the only one who paused at this point to google “cabin stabbing”? And regretted it?)

Grumbles about the craze were already building, and things came to a climax (har har) when the Vybz Kartel and Spice duet, Rampin Shop, hit #1 on the local charts.

Katz again:

Five days later, the Jamaican Broadcasting Commission took the unprecedented step of banning all songs with explicit sexual content from radio and television, as well as songs that glorify gun violence, murder, rape or arson. The ban is absolute, meaning that such songs can no longer be aired as “clean” versions that make use of “bleeping.”

Responses to the ban have been extremely mixed. Some feel the government’s stance is hypocritical: Given that human rights campaigns have fallen on deaf ears for years, why should it take a bit of dry-humping to bring action?

I’m torn on this one.

On the one hand, I’m never a fan of censorship — and this full-on ban seems to be casting a pretty wide net. Who gets to decide what constitutes “explicit sexual content,” after all? If we let them come for our daggering tunes first, will they be after our Marvin Gaye albums next?

But on the other hand, I do worry about the overly sexualized world kids seem to be inhabiting these days. (I bet there are a lot of young’uns that wouldn’t have had to google “cabin stabbing”…) Jamaican reggae singer Horace Andy is quoted in the MOJO blog post: “I don’t think it’s right to play those kind of lyrics on the radio, cause if you beep it out, the kids still know. My daughter is four years old, and she knows every word of ‘Rampin Shop’.”

Check out a few examples and see for yourself.

Here’s Bragga’s “Dagga Dat”:

And Mr. Vegas, “Daggering”:

Finally, a homemade daggering demonstration, to the hit track “Hundred Stab”:

Call me desensitized, but they don’t seem much more objectionable than your average rap video. (But of course, just because we allow tracks like “Candy Shop” to play in prime time doesn’t mean Jamaica necessarily should, too…)

What do you think of the “daggering” craze? Harmless or sinister?

Top photo by sick of goodbyes (Creative Commons)
Bottom photo by Alex Barth (Creative Commons)

Lately it seems everywhere you look — in print or online — you’ll find someone sermonizing about the death of print and the inexorable, irresistible rise of the internets.

The funny thing is, a lot of these articles seem to view the two sides as completely distinct, when the reality is a lot of hard-bitten, old school news reporters are embracing new technology to help them do their jobs.

For instance, in the last week Twitter has helped me re-connect with some of my favorite Canadian foreign correspondents, who I’d largely lost track of when I stopped keeping a Canadian residence (and the newspaper subscription that came with it).

Here they are; if you’re interested in global news, they’re all worth keeping an eye on:

Mark MacKinnon

Mark MacKinnon is the Globe and Mail’s current Beijing chief, former Moscow bureau chief, and former Middle East correspondent. He’s as “serious news reporter” as you get — having won national newspaper awards and filed stories from war zones in Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya, and Lebanon — and yet, here he is on Twitter, writing St. Paddy’s Day haikus and talking hockey.

His blog, Points East, complements his more formal dispatches from across East Asia.

Stephanie Nolen

I know, I know — I never shut up about Stephanie Nolen.

But in her five years as the Globe and Mail’s Africa correspondent, she was a must-read from the continent. Now, as the Globe’s new Delhi-based South Asia correspondent, she’s filing in-depth stories from the world’s rising superpower. Here’s her latest, explaining the cultural nuances behind the seemingly intractable problem of infant malnutrition.

She twitters @snolen. And she’s keeping a blog, too: check out Subcontinental.

Doug Saunders

Okay, so my bias is showing — but yes, Saunders is yet another G&M trooper, the European bureau chief. Apart from being a bright and thoughtful political columnist, he’s also a foodie and culture-watcher — and I’ve blogged about his travel essays more than once, too.

Here’s his latest dispatch, on Britain’s curry crisis, and here he is on Twitter, too.

Who are your favorite reporters worldwide? And where can we find them online?

Photo by Praziquantel (Creative Commons)

“Obama’s Special Olympics joke creates a stir around the nation”

“Much bigger deficits seen in Budget Office forecast”

and even…

“Doggy’s doo contains $400 he ate”

Yet few mainstream media outlets covered this story:

March 20, 2009 marked the sixth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Photo: Army.mil

As the war goes on, seemingly without end, it’s important to continue caring about what’s happening in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If you’re looking for some sources to learn more about the war and its effects, here are a few good places to start:

Killer Blue:

National Public Radio hosts this series of video excerpts from “Killer Blue,” a documentary by two Associated Press photographers who spent four months with an Army platoon that goes by that name. In the segments “Family,” “The Fight,” “My Friend,” and “Move On,” human faces are put on war in a way you won’t soon forget.

Bad Voodoo’s War:

This documentary, which you can watch in full online, is somewhat similar to “Killer Blue” in that it documents the war as it is experienced by soldiers fighting it. This documentary, though, was made by the platoon members themselves.

Life and Death in the War Zone:

Not everyone in uniform is fighting the war. In “Life and Death in the War Zone,” another documentary you can watch in full online, learn about the lives of combat doctors, helping US and allied soldiers, as well as injured and sick Iraqis.

Blog from the Middle East:

For a Middle Eastern perspective on the war, follow Salam Adil’s blog.

Magnum Photos’ Iraq Gallery:

Take a photographic tour through Iraq and let the images tell you stories that words might not be able to convey.

Community Connection:

Be sure to check out “The Costs of War,” a short article published on Matador Change today, to learn about countries’ military expenditures.

Photo: beyondforgetting

While visiting Africa this week, Pope Benedict XVI upheld the Church’s party line on sex, preaching that abstinence and sex within marriage are the only legitimate means of preventing HIV and moral decay.

In an ideal world, perhaps.

But the reality in Africa–and around the world–is that many folks aren’t abstaining from sex or confining their sexuality activity to marriage alone… and the Church’s policies fail to take the divide between the actual and the aspirational into account.

Pope Benedict XVI was, at least, faithful to his own prior remarks. According to the BBC, the pope had the following to say to African bishops in 2005:

“It is of great concern that the fabric of African life, its very source of hope and stability, is threatened by divorce, abortion, prostitution, human trafficking and a contraception mentality.”

Too bad the Church chooses to hang onto outdated ideologies rather than use the Pope’s travels to learn more about communities and their needs… and then craft actionable strategies to help.

Photo: Zarko Drinic

Eva Holland and I have been co-editing Pulse for a while now, turning out an average of two pieces per day about international news. The stories have included quirky quick takes (Obama fingers, anyone?) to concise, thoughtful analyses about world developments overlooked by mainstream media.

As the Matador Network gets a face lift, we’ll continue to bring you news about travel–and we’re not talking about fare deals or new airline routes. Though Eva will be taking a sabbatical at the end of March as she hits the road, you can still count on Pulse to keep you up-to-date with what’s going on in this big world.

Photo: jhull

Now, there’s even more motivation to plan a Kenya trip: the country’s tourism ministry has announced a reduction in visa fees that’s effective now through the end of 2010.

Visas were previously $50 USD.

In addition to cutting the price of visas for adults to $25 USD, the fee for children (16 & under) has been waived completely.

Photo: Revolution or death

NACLA–North American Congress on Latin America–reported the following about the outcome of the country’s presidential election:

“The FMLN’s [Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front Party] Mauricio Funes declared victory at 9:30 [Sunday night]. His challenger from the incumbent, far-right ARENA party conceded defeat a few hours later, bringing an end to 20 years of one-party rule. Funes will become El Salvador’s first leftist head of state in the country’s history.The essence of Funes’ campaign slogan, ‘Hope is born,’ could be felt throughout the country yesterday, with massive voter turnout reported from the metropolis of San Salvador to rural villages in the outlying departments.”

Funes, an investigative journalist, ran for the presidency because he felt that he would only be able to help his country recover from years of conflict and unrest by exerting political authority. “The problems here are so powerful that I can’t continue working as a journalist,” Funes said in an interview with a Nicaraguan publication. “Journalism has allowed me to know the realities of El Salvador– especially the reality of poverty. But journalism doesn’t allow me to change that reality.”

Though the previous US presidential administration had expressed deep concern about the liberalization of Latin America, Funes and his party have articulated a set of 10 goals that seem to warrant hope, not worry:

1. Improve job prospects for the unemployed.
2. Explore and accelerate possibilities for responsible use of natural resources.
3. Combat organized crime.
4. Reduce the digital divide that exists between Salvadorans and the citizens of other countries.
5. Initiate an era of fiscal reform at the federal and regional government levels.
6. Respond to the global economic crisis and minimize effects on the country.
7. Unify divided communities.
8. Reaffirm the principles and values of democracy.
9. Restore legal standards to protect people seeking protection and justice.
10. Explore new opportunities for economic, social, and political alliances in Latin America.

Funes and the FMLN have their work cut out for them, for sure. But let’s hope that El Salvador can begin to enjoy some hope and change of their own.

Photo: ginnerobot

Perhaps you missed the story that was a mere footnote to many newscasts the week of March 6.

During British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s visit to the U.S., President Obama presented the PM with a rather untraditional gift: a set of 25 DVDs representing the best of America’s film culture. The set included “The Wizard of Oz,” “Schindler’s List,” “Citizen Kane,” and “Psycho.”

Typically, Presidents’ gifts to other sitting heads of state are more symbolic, often with historical or cultural value reaffirming the ties between the two countries.

The HotAir blog called Obama a cheapskate; the U.K.’s Daily Mail was a bit more circumspect, observing that even if PM Brown was a known movie buff, the DVD gift set would have been hopelessly gauche compared to the thoughtful gifts Brown presented to the President, including “an ornamental pen holder made from the timbers of the Victorian anti-slave ship HMS Gannet.”

President Obama and his wife were also criticized for the gifts they selected for the Prime Minister’s children: two models of the presidential helicopter. The Browns, meanwhile, presented the President’s daughters with books and outfits.

One British journalist argued that the DVD box set was just one symbol of Obama’s brush-off of Brown, kvetching that Obama failed to hold a traditional joint press conference, as is customary during a British PM’s visit. “Obama really just didn’t like having the Brits in town,” the journalist said.

Community Connection:

What do you think? Was the DVD box set a bad gift? And does it even really matter?

Two weeks ago we blogged about the assassination of Guinea-Bissau’s President, Joao Bernando Vieira, by members of the army.

Details in the media have been scarce, so we asked Kota Tabuchi, a Matador member and Africa Program Director for Mountain Travel Sobek, to shed some light on the killing and its aftermath.

Guinea Bissau has all but vanished from the news since the word that the President had been killed. Any idea of who’s in charge? Is there a Vice-President who’s taken over? Is the Army running the show?

Former Parliamentary Speaker and lawyer, Raimundo Pereira, is currently serving as the Interim President of Guinea Bissau. He’s been urged by the international community to organize a free and fair election to return the country to constitutional democracy; a country that has been historically, and still is, plagued with corruption, famine, disease etc.

Also keep in mind that this wasn’t the first attempt at the President’s life. Back in November 2008 (quite recently), an attempt was made at his life at the Presidential residence.

Government instability is nothing new to Guinea Bissau, it seems. Do you get a sense of how people reacted to the President’s death? Was there shock and fear, or was it closer to “business as usual”?

Without having been on the ground myself, much of what I’m about to report is what I’ve heard from my partners on the ground and a bit of speculation. Coming from the Western world, I think it’s difficult for us to put ourselves in their shoes and see the world through their lens.

This is a country plagued with corruption, poverty, drug trafficking (yes, one of the major drug routes to Europe) with life expectancy below 45.

In addition, much of the population lives outside the city of Bissau in remote areas with no access to news etc. In particular, Bijagos Archipelago, off the western coast, is an area detached from the mainland and makes up a good % of the country’s land mass.

The arms of the government simply don’t have a strong enough grasp on these remote islands (kind of like how some of the remote inhabited islands of the Philippines / Indonesia aren’t affected by mainland politics and poorly managed etc.).

With that said, the situation on the ground is reportedly calm, borders remain open, and nobody is fleeing the country. According to my sources, most citizens are not overly concerned, in shock or living in fear. This incident is a result of a power struggle within the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), not of civil unrest.

However, I wouldn’t go as far to say that this is “business as usual”. I’d speculate, based on my experience in Africa, that incidents such as what happened in Bissau definitely have at least a slight impact on the country and its morale; simply not to the extent of what we’d feel here in the US.

At the end of the day, they’ve got bigger fish to fry like getting food and surviving.

Two weeks on, is there a tangible impact on the streets? Or have people’s lives more or less gone back to normal?

Normal is such a relative term and I hesitate to say that life is ever ‘normal’ in Bissau.

Remember, this is one of the world’s poorest nations and they’ve just gone through a massive cholera outbreak several months ago as well as their key political figures being assassinated.

Hardships like this occur in places like Bissau all too often. They deal, cope and move on.

Are people in Guinea Bissau aware of how little international media attention their country receives, and if so, how do they feel about it?

I don’t think international media is even on their radar. Entirely speculation.

And finally, any sense of what comes next in Guinea-Bissau?

Guinea Bissau is a failed State in every sense of the definition. Massive government corruption, extreme poverty, poor infrastructure, lack of education, disease/sanitation, access to clean water, low life expectancy and so on…

I hope for a fair and honest democratic election of the country’s next President. I fear that reality will be much different. Look at what has happened in Kenya (a ‘model’ for African democracy) last year and more recently in Zimbabwe. Many of these States, unfortunately, are doomed for failure and will take a long and involved process to ever get out of the hole.

Am I optimistic of Bissau’s future? Absolutely not.

With the lack of foreign interest or investment, I don’t think the country is headed in a good direction. For example, how many Americans can locate Guinea Bissau on a map, let alone have heard of it? And after the initial blast in the few news sources, how much more have we heard about Bissau (as you mentioned above, things have gone ‘silent’).

Hard times ahead for the people of Guinea Bissau…

Top photo by Pedronchi (Creative Commons)

Bottom photo by Pedronchi (Creative Commons)

Welcome to a new, occasional feature here at Pulse: “Three Stories from Under the Radar” will showcase global news stories that aren’t necessarily making the front pages.

Ongoing Unrest in Madagascar

A few weeks ago we brought you the news from Madagascar, where a power struggle was dragging the country into chaotic paralysis.

In breaking news this afternoon, the chief of the military police force has announced that he has stopped taking orders from the government. The BBC article also has a good timeline of events leading up to this point.

On Twitter today — which, by the way, has been a key source for people following the crisis — Travelers’ Tales founder James O’Reilly said it all, in 140 characters:

Friend in Madagascar sending wife, daughter away bec of strife. “Anyone who thinks govt is a bad thing should try getting along w/o one.”

Madagascar didn’t even make the front page of the “World” section of the New York Times site today, let alone the front page proper.

Excommunication in Brazil

From Brazil — home to the world’s largest Roman Catholic community — comes a grim story of rape, abortion and excommunication.

A 9-year-old girl became pregnant with twins after being repeatedly raped by her stepfather.

Abortions are permitted in Brazil only in case of rape or serious risk of death to the mother, and — both those boxes being ticked in this instance — a legal abortion was performed.

Now, the Archbishop of Olinda and Recife has excommunicated the girl’s mother, her surgeon, and the entire medical team that was present.

The girl was exempt because she is a minor; the stepfather was also exempted, with the Archbishop declaring that abortion is “a graver act” than rape.

Hideous as the case is, it’s prompted some thoughtful discussion in Brazil about faith, medicine, and the limits of church power in a secular state.

Global Voices has reaction (in Portuguese and English) from around Brazil.

Eco-Disasters Worldwide

Okay… a little shameless self-promotion to wrap this one up!

If you haven’t yet, wander over to Matador Change to read up on 6 Ecological Disasters You’ve Probably Never Heard Of — and add more overlooked toxic hotspots in the comments!

What are some under-the-radar news stories you’ve been following this week?

Madagascar photo by oledoe (Creative Commons)

Photo of Brazilian girl by babasteve (Creative Commons)

In case you missed the original headline, Zaidi threw both of his shoes at President Bush during a press conference in December 2008.

Zaidi called Bush a “dog”; Bush called the incident “amusing.” 62% of Iraqis, meanwhile, called Zaidi a hero.

Zaidi’s legal team will be appealing the three year sentence.

The people of Northern Ireland have been hitting the streets this week to protest the recent murders of two soldiers and a police officer.

The killings come after several years of progress towards stability and peace; the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA, both rebel splinters of the Irish Republican Army that reject the peace process, have claimed responsibility. Harsh condemnation has come quickly from political leaders in London, Dublin and Belfast, and even the Pope has weighed in, describing the murders as “abominable acts of terrorism”.

More than 10,000 people have turned out for marches and silent vigils.

Said a Derry police inspector:

We are massively grateful for the people of Derry who’ve turned out to support the police. They know what service we give them, and when they’ve seen one of our colleagues brutally murdered, the people of Derry are standing here today.

They have come to show solidarity, I believe, with the police and to send a very clear message out to the people who killed Constable Stephen Carroll and the two soldiers that they do not represent them.

British politicians have attempted to frame the attacks as a last-ditch attempt to disrupt the peace process by a fringe refusing to accept that things have changed for the better.

Here’s hoping that they’re right — and that these murders remain a blip on the post-Good Friday timeline, rather than the renewal of violence in Northern Ireland.

Photo by jimmyharris (Creative Commons)

Photo: zzzack

As the effects of the economic crisis begin to be felt not just on the institutional level, but on the personal level, it’s been hard for me to feel empathy for the “pains” of the super rich.

A recent article in the New York Times reported that the city’s upper class was feeling miffed about being compelled to change its consumer and travel habits: instead of taking a private jet, they’ve begun scaling back… to first class.

But amidst all the “Oh, poor me” stories, a press release from someone who could easily put himself in that category but chooses not to helps restore my faith that some folks with deep pockets do remember the little guy.

Bill Marriott, Chairman and CEO of Marriott International–owner, manager, or franchiser of numerous hotel chains, including Marriott, Fairfield Inn, Renaissance, and the Ritz Carlton–released a statement announcing that he has voluntarily reduced his 2009 salary by 2/3.

Now that may not seem like such a loss for the man whose 2007 salary was almost $2 million, but in a corporate landscape that’s become overpopulated with “Take the money and run” executives, Marriott is setting an example some of his peers in the industry should follow.

Is the decade-long conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo “Africa’s invisible war”?

Some fascinating number-crunching from Social Design Notes compares the numbers of fatalities in Darfur and the Congo — roughly 500,000 and 5.5 million, respectively — and then notes the enormous disparity in the media coverage of the two.

In the last 10 years, the New York Times has averaged 13.5 stories on the DRC’s war annually. Darfur, on the other hand, averages 151.6 stories in the pages of the Times each year.

An accompanying graphic starkly illustrated the gap. But what’s behind it? Blogger John writes:

Do the Arab Muslim bad guys in Sudan make a more convenient target for Western Islamophobes? Are China’s competing industrial interests in Sudan easier to finger than US corporate interests in DR Congo?

Are the deserts of Darfur simply more accessible than the forests of Northeastern Congo?

Or is Darfur a simpler story with clearer victims and perpetrators? A story closer to Western ideas of genocide than Congo’s messier regional war?

And in a thoughtful follow-up, a Human Rights Watch rep has the following response:

I fear that the Congo conflict receives less coverage because many outsiders have bought into the preconception that Congo is the ‘heart of darkness’ as characterized by Joseph Conrad’s book by the same title.

The book has often been used to refer to Congo’s plight today, as if the country is somehow predisposed to dark atrocities and violence, and hence there is nothing new to report.

Yet many have misunderstood the real message of Conrad’s book. It is not Congolese barbarism but rather the greed of outsiders that have plagued this country’s history.

Of course, none of this is intended to belittle the suffering in Darfur or to suggest that its ugly conflict should receive less coverage — only to point out the disparity, and wonder why the largest violent loss of life since the Second World War is being so thoroughly ignored?

(Via Scarlett Lion)

Photo by Ana_Cotta (Creative Commons)

To the left, a worldwide consortium of protesters, outraged by a mining project alleged to destroy a big chunk of Chile’s natural resources.

Photo: (A)larmala

To the right, Barrick Gold Corporation, the mining industry’s smooth-talking monolith. Those expecting to watch a fight have been left with a stalemate and not much explanation as to what the future holds for the project.

The initial outcry over Pascua Lama began when Chile’s National Environmental Commission issued final approval for the Pascua Lama Mining Project in June of 2006. The site, located in the Huasco Province of Chile’s Region III and spilling into Argentina, was reported by Barrick to have had 18 million ounces of gold, 731 million ounces of silver, and 662 million pounds of copper.

Photo: Phillie Casablanca

The project was expected to last 20 years and came with over 400 conditions which Barrick had agreed to, many of them addressing environmental issues.

The opposition believed that Barrick was full of donkey dung.

Their message would not have reached further than their front door, had it not been for an incredibly effective chain email. The message, sent in the form of an online petition/manifesto, ripped through inboxes around the world. Among its claims were that two glaciers in the Andes would be destroyed, rivers in Valle de San Felix would be contaminated, and “every last gram of gold would go abroad.”

The email twisted the knife further into Barrick’s gut by pointing out that George Bush, Sr. was a member of their board, all but assuring a pile of free press. This is about as specific as I can get – this is the problem with the original email. It was very unclear and they almost made it easy for Barrick to tear it to shreds.

The problem with the petition was that it seems to have been rife with inaccuracies and spin, the equivalent of throwing sand in the eyes of a bigger, trained opponent. Barrick’s response was calm, cool, and addressed each issue. The company assured the public that the mining area was not under glaciers and provided satellite photos to back up its claim. In short, Barrick tore the chain email apart, even pointing out that Bush had only served as an honorary board member for two years in the mid-90’s.

A political storm has swirled around the project for the past few years, delaying the launch of the mine. Argentina and Chile have been squabbling about profit splits and Huasco valley locals have accused Barrick of swindling them out of land.

The road to the mining project has been blocked several times, with residents arguing that it had been built on private property. Several locals have initiated hunger strikes to call attention to the local plea and last summer, 40 religious leaders marched in protest through Copiapó, capital of the Atacama Region.

Yet, given all of the hoopla, Barrick’s strategy of outlasting the outcry might just win. Chile’s student protests seem to have moved onto new issues. Pascua Lama has become the older brother’s rally cry, as a younger crowd decides which new fights are worth a round of tear gas and rubber bullets.

A number of ‘dedicated’ blogs have been dark for months, including pascualama.blogspot.com (not updated since May of 2006) and noapascualama.com (dormant since June of 2007). Emails to protestbarrick.net and miningwatch.ca went unanswered. Matador staff reached out to a few dozen other sources for comment, including Barrick. All inquiries whistled in the wind.

Could Pascua Lama become a dead issue or will it become a reality? We’d love to hear your thoughts, especially if you have information that we have been unable to glean.

The best place to find information about the movement against Pascua Lama seems to be http://www.noapascualama.org. Barrick Gold Corporation maintains this page of FAQs about the project from its perspective.

Photo by openDemocracy

Grim news from Zimbabwe:

The leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, who recently entered into a power-sharing agreement with despot Robert Mugabe, has been injured in a car accident.

His wife, Susan Tsvangirai was killed in the crash.

This BBC story notes that Zimbabwe has no divided highways and that accidents are common, but considering the dark history of Mugabe opponents turning up dead or wounded, it’s hard — with early reports lacking much detail — to view this as strictly coincidence.

Tensions had been ratcheted up between the two factions of the “unity government” since the arrest of MDC politician Roy Bennett on the same day that the new government was formed.

More to come, stay tuned!

Photo: Mataparda

The auction, set for today at Manhattan’s Antiquorum auction house, is described simply as a collection of “important collectors’ wristwatches, pocket watches, and clocks.”

But lot #364 is REALLY important… and it’s causing quite a bit of interest and competition even outside the rarefied world of auctions.

Collector and peace activist James Otis submitted lot #364 for auction, and here’s what it includes: Mahatma Gandhi’s pocket watch, a pair of leather sandals, a bowl and plate used by Gandhi, Gandhi’s glasses, images of Gandhi, and letters of authenticity from Ghita Mehta, Talatsahid Khan Babi, and Professor Lester Kurtz.

The bids are expected to start between $20,000 and $30,000 US dollars. Otis has publicly said that he’ll use the proceeds to educate people about Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence, especially in developing countries.

But the government of India is none too happy about Otis’s plan.

Upon learning that Otis had submitted this lot of items for auction, India, which considers the items to be part of the country’s cultural patrimony, demanded that they be returned to India immediately.

Otis, however, declined to do so. Instead, he went to the Indian Consulate General in New York, where he collaborated on drafting a compromise with the Indian government.

The terms? I’ll give you back Gandhi’s goods (which Otis acquired legally) if you agree to increase spending on the poor from the current 1% of the GDP to 5%. He also proposed that the Indian government sponsor a world tour of the items to promote knowledge about Gandhi. The Indian government rejected Otis’s proposal.

But Otis–and the world’s poor–may end up getting the best deal of all.

In an article run earlier today by the Associated Press and published in the Chicago Tribune, India’s culture minister, Ambika Soni confirmed that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has given her strict instructions to not allow any bidder at today’s auction outbid her. “[We will] offer whatever it takes,” Soni said, “to make sure these things come back to Gandhi’s motherland.”

The bidding may get fierce at this afternoon’s auction, but one thing seems certain: with India determined to acquire lot #364 at any price, Otis may well be able to bankroll an impressive anti-poverty campaign… thanks to the country that tried to resist just that.

Big news today: Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has been formally charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.

The arrest warrant was issued in relation to the ongoing conflict in Darfur.

According to a court spokeswoman, President Bashir is suspected of “intentionally directing attacks against an important part of the civilian population of Darfur, Sudan, murdering, exterminating, raping, torturing and forcibly transferring large numbers of civilians and pillaging their property.”

Yup, that about sums it up.

So what does this mean for Darfur?

Well, of course I’m thrilled to see one of our picks for the World’s Worst Leaders being officially recognized for what he is, but obviously Sudan is not about to hand over their sitting head of state.

An aide to the Sudanese president has already contemptuously dismissed the charges, saying that the ICC was “created to target Sudan and to be part of the new mechanism of neo-colonialism.”

Writing in the Daily Beast, George Clooney (yes, seriously!) has a thoughtful piece about visiting Darfur’s refugee camps in Chad and struggling to keep the world’s attention on the crisis. His take on the arrest warrant?

How effective these indictments will be is now in the hands of the rest of the world. Will his government turn him over? Not likely. Will the UN go in after him? Doubtful.

Even if he’s caught travelling outside the safety of his country would his government be much better with other equally dangerous leaders like “The Sudanese Six”—Harun, Taha, Kushayb, Hilal, Minawi? If I were a refugee I wouldn’t bet my life on it.

So then why is this such a significant moment? Because it tells the 300,000 brutally killed and 2.5 million displaced and raped and maimed that justice must always prevail. That the rest of the world sees their struggle and stands up and demands justice.

This is the moment. And if the UN can’t use it to insist on tougher sanctions, and the United States can’t use it to pressure China, and China can’t feel the eyes of the world looking to them for leadership in the country that they profit so greatly from, then the court and the rule of international law is lost.

Here’s hoping this indictment is the first step towards real consequences for the architects of the killing in Darfur.

Top photo by wanderingzito (Creative Commons)

Bottom photo by hdptcar (Creative Commons)

Joao Bernardo Vieira, President of the small West African nation of Guinea-Bissau, has been shot and killed by a group of “renegade soldiers,” the BBC reports.

The army chief of staff had died under suspicious circumstances just a few hours earlier — the President’s killing is believed to be an act of revenge by military loyalists. However, the army denies that a coup is under way.

Guinea-Bissau has been rocked by a series of coups since gaining independence from Portugal in 1974 — including one led by President Vieira in 1980. The country is one of the poorest in the world, and is dominated by the traffic of cocaine en route to Europe.

The African Union will hold an emergency meeting today to review the situation.

Are you on the ground in Bissau? Know anyone who is, or who is very familiar with Guinea-Bissau politics?

Let us know! We’d love to hear from anyone closer to the source.

Photo by hdptcar (Creative Commons)

Over the past few years, after decades of tension and on-again off-again violence, the disputed, war-torn Indian territory of Kashmir has been on a slow road to recovery and stability.

And today, the BBC reports on the latest sign that the area is finding a fresh start:

They’re skiing in Kashmir.

From the story:

There is a crowd outside the ski shop in Gulmarg where young girls and boys accompanied by their parents are all dressed for slaloming down the slopes. For the first time, local Kashmiris outnumber foreign adventure tourists here. All are enjoying a welcome respite from the years of bloodshed that have meant recreational activities such as this have not been possible.

The whole story is worth a read — the anecdotes about Kashmiri kids snowplowing for the first time just might make you choke up a little.

And hey, if you wind up powder-hunting in Kashmir, let us know how it goes!

Photo by Prabhu B (Creative Commons)

Photo: diongillard

He who owns the medium controls the message

Liberal and conservative forces in South Korea are jockeying in parliament, on the streets, and inside newsrooms in an impassioned battle that could determine the future face of news in the nation. At stake are controlling positions in the boardrooms of influential broadcasters like MBC and KBS, and perhaps the political freedom of Korean journalism.

In early January, due process in the Seoul National Assembly descended into a melee as opposition lawmakers took a sledgehammer to a locked meeting room door in an attempt to physically block a set of bills that would — among other things — allow newspapers to own stakes in broadcast companies.

The administration of President Lee Myung-bak and his Grand National Party have been avidly pushing such deregulation measures, arguing they would stimulate innovation and create jobs. But the opposition is worried that conservative print heavyweight the Chosun Daily (which favors Lee) and similar papers will take full advantage of the revision to wield enormous power over public opinion.

The bills are still pending, to be dealt with in an ongoing special session this month.

Media outlets in South Korea have already taken an alarming lurch to the right. Last summer Jung Yun-joo, the liberal head of state-funded KBS (think PBS minus the telethons and plus clout), was sacked after an audit led to charges of sloppy management and wasteful spending. Many saw the move as politically motivated, especially after a group of officials in the president’s camp met for dinner with the KBS board chairman just before the naming of Jung’s successor, Lee Byung-soon.

Lee has been cast as decidedly more conservative than Jung, and the public broadcaster was expected to go much easier on South Korea’s unpopular president under his leadership. No one was able to prove there was anything suspicious about his appointment, but protests against the move continue even until now.

Last month, KBS workers, producers and reporters announced they would go on a rotating strike until Lee steps down.

In retrospect, the KBS case was the harbinger of a new trend in media control. Shortly after Jung was axed, President Lee booted the head of 24-hour cable news network YTN– sometimes called Korea’s CNN — to make way for Gu Bon-hong.

Gu worked on the president’s campaign and is the former VP of a Christian broadcaster, and his appointment had YTN’s union up in arms in short order. Newsroom staff went so far as to occupy his new office and held out for more than 90 days. In the months that followed, Gu would get his retribution by firing or otherwise reprimanding those who denounced him most vociferously.

Unexpectedly, the case gathered interest overseas. In December, the general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, Aidan White, headed a mission along with his Asia-Pacific pointman to intervene at YTN. The IFJ called for the Korean government to renew its commitment to media freedom, and after talks Gu proposed holding an internal vote of confidence to determine whether he would stay in power.

Reports indicate the vote never happened, and Gu is still in his seat. In a different company election in January, the candidate who won overwhelming approval to be YTN’s new head news editor was not appointed, leading staff to occupy his office in protest, according to LaborToday.

Things have now steadied at the cable network, but a recent event held to look back at the struggle– which lasted nearly 200 days– reveals the underlying frustration that remains.

The arrest last month of a clairvoyant “netizen” who predicted the country’s economic downfall threw gasoline on already burning suspicions that the government really is trying to wrap its hands around public dialogue here.

Assuming the pen name Minerva, after the Roman goddess of wisdom, Park Sung-dae gained anonymous notoriety by correctly predicting the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in a forum posting. Weeks later, his forecast that the South Korean currency would tank came true, and newspapers and economists started paying attention.

But Minerva’s gloomy outlook and heavy criticism of government economic policies earned him the ire of the Lee administration. His controversial arrest came after he posted in December that the government had ordered financial institutions to stop buying dollars, which wasn’t entirely true — they had simply recommended. Either way, prosecutors figured they had enough to charge Park with spreading false information under the country’s telecommunications law, triggering an outcry.

His case is still being processed.

What will happen in coming months isn’t clear. Opposition lawmakers and activists seem to be able to only resist so much before losing the interest of the public, and as more people are laid off, the magic words “job creation” may be enough to push through any legislation — no matter the true cost.

Photo: anthony goto

Earlier this week, Matador Change published an article by Dominic DeGrazier about a company offering travelers “insider tours” of the favelas–or slums–of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Soon, travelers who book a trip with Favela Tour may notice some unexpected technological developments: high-speed internet access has arrived in the slums of Rio.

In Friday’s issue of the O Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper, journalist Alexandre Rodriguez reported that Rio’s Dona Marta Favela will be the first Rio slum to receive free high speed internet access.

Already, 16 antennas have been installed throughout Dona Marta, an investment in technological infrastructure expected to provide 10,000 residents with internet access.

The provision of wireless internet in the favelas is part of a larger project called Orla Digital, which launched similar services in Copacabana’s marginalized neighborhoods last July.

That launch allowed the project to work out some logistical difficulties–including intense demand placed on the system by eager users– and the spread of the project to Rio is viewed positively by many groups.

As Rodriguez noted:

“In spite of their poverty, the better part of homes in the favelas of Rio do have computers, and young people use them every day.”

Now, they won’t have to rely upon improvised connections to access the internet.

Photo: r0bz

The news might have escaped the notice of the media outside Latin America, but last week’s announcement that three of the region’s past presidents got together to call for marijuana decriminalization was worthy of front page analysis in Mexico.

Ernesto Zedillo, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and Cesar Gaviria, former presidents of Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia, respectively, founded and currently serve as co-presidents of the Latin American Commission of Drugs and Democracy.

The Commission, whose 17 members represent the intellectual creme de la creme of Latin America (including writers Tomas Eloy Martinez of Argentina, Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru, and Paulo Coelho of Brazil), have been studying the drug problem in the Americas, and recently came to the conclusion that the strategy of the War on Drugs itself is the biggest culprit when it comes to the persistence of drug-related ills in the region.

In their report, “Drugs and Democracy: Toward a Paradigm Shift,” the Commission wrote:

“The in-depth revision of current drug policies is even more urgent in Latin America in light of their enormous human and social costs and threats to democratic institutions.”

The former presidents and their fellow commission members don’t deny the problems perpetuated by their own countries, nor do they assign blame to any other country. Instead, the LACDD members challenge the “prejudices, fears, and ideological visions” that serve to “inhibit public debate,” a condition, they say, which only makes our mutual social problems more dangerous.

Photo: aforero

In addition to forwarding some rather radical visions of drug treatment (namely, viewing drug use and its treatment as a public health problem, not a criminal problem), the LACDD calls for studying the feasibility of decriminalizing marijuana, and instituting medical marijuana programs for patients with legitimate health problems that might be alleviated by marijuana use.

Though the report doesn’t say so, the decriminalization of marijuana–if it does indeed occur–may have other positive implications for Latin America, too. Given that marijuana remains difficult to obtain legally throughout most of the United States, Latin American countries that decriminalize marijuana may see a surge in tourism. Que bien!

Photo: mihalorel

We want travelers to blog about their journeys, share their photos and videos, and engage in passionate conversations about your favorite (and least favorite) places and experiences.

We want you to tell us where you are and what you’re doing on Twitter or on Facebook.

But just be sure you’re not giving us too much information.

Our friends over at Wend Magazine blogged earlier this week about an American couple who got caught grilling an iguana (a protected species) and cleaning a less than legal-sized conch in The Bahamas.

It wasn’t because the cops or wildlife protection police happened upon the couple as they fired up the barbie.

No… it was because the couple decided to post photos of their culinary adventure on Facebook. Before you could say “Well done, please,” Bahamian authorities saw the photos and swiftly arrested the couple.

Photo: ZoZ

According to the Bahamian newspaper, The Freeport News, the couple posted bail in the amount of $500 each, and were scheduled to appear in court on February 10. The online version of the newspaper has not yet reported the outcome of the court appearance.

Lesson?

There is such a thing as too much transparency. If you’re doing something stupid on your vacation, think twice before sharing the evidence online.

With a lung capacity that helped him set seven world records in the 2008 Olympics, Michael Phelps had to have been higher than anyone at that party.

Photo: marcopako

Phelps probably sucked the whole bowl down in one hit and held it in for a full minute. Maybe that’s why someone felt compelled to sell the photo: When a multimillionaire burns through half your stash in one bong-load, maybe you feel a bit taken advantage of.

The difference is that Phelps sobered up afterward. But his fellow party-goer must have still been high when he or she sold the photo of the 16 medal winning Olympic champion to The News of the World for what’s rumored to have been $5,000 without demanding syndication rights.

Photo: oh_calamity

To be fair, he or she may not have known that the story would become the sensation that it has. How could smoking pot be such a big deal? In the United States, our last three presidents have admitted to drug use. Time estimates that 42% of Americans have smoked pot. I don’t know who the other 58% are.

It’s no wonder with sites like Celebrity Skin, a site that sells the fecal matter of the stars, reports that the owner of the bong tried to sell it on e-Bay for $100,000. Maybe this is the same person who sold the photo, realizing their folly and trying to make a final effort at fortune.

Now, eight people (the bong owner among them) have been arrested. The talking heads are going nuts, stumbling over each other to seem more scandalized with every bit of “news” they manufacture and release.

Only in America could this happen. Here are six reasons why:

It started in England.

The Brits know a scandal when they see one. The News of the World publishes a couple of paragraphs about Michael Phelps smoking weed and we just run with it.

Banners run on the bottom of the screen on CNN and MSNBC, saying things like, “Sheriff investigates whether Michael Phelps smoked pot,” and “8 people arrested in connection with SC party Michael Phelps attended.”

No wonder no one takes Americans seriously.

Our news outlets cover an incident of marijuana smoking with nearly the same fervor that they do mass murders on college campuses. Don’t believe me? Check out this “Breaking News.”

Those Brits sure know how to sell us back to ourselves. It may be a sort of revenge for overtaking their colonies, but they know us. Now listen as the slot machine pays out heavy to The News of the World for those photo rights.

We prefer fake to real.

Boobs, lips, flavoring, wood paneling, flowers, Viagra, Astroturf, top 40 music, bleach blondes, Christmas trees, fingernails, Velveeta, fur: fake, fake, fake. Better than the real thing– just like our news.

Photo: lewisha1990

Sure, there’s the issue of the economy. Sure, wildfires are raging out of control in Australia. Sure, bombs are killing people in Baghdad and cholera is affecting thousands in Zimbabwe.

But MICHAEL PHELPS SMOKED WEED! AND SOMEONE TRIED TO SELL THE BONG!

We love to tear down the hero.

Nothing’s better than someone we admire screwing up and getting their ass handed to them: Eliot Spitzer, Britney Spears, Michael Jackson, Tonya Harding, Bill Clinton, Mel Gibson, Michael Richards, Larry Craig, Britney Spears again.

Not everyone admired any of these people, but significantly fewer did after the “news” about them broke.

In the United States, there’s nothing better than seeing someone successful screw up. It’s gratifying to people to see that rich, successful people do stupid things. Bring that celeb down to life size and you’re guaranteed to sell advertising time on your network.

We don’t really care about the corporate stranglehold on our culture.

Visa and Kellogg and Speedo and Mazda all get press. Kellogg gets the most because they are willing to condemn Phelps’ dastardly marijuana smoking ways.

Phelps loses one million dollars and Kellogg gets its name on the news several times a day. Free advertising for them and a small loss for Phelps (all things considered).

Now people can debate whether Kellogg is wrong or right and another news item is born. There’s a movement afoot to boycott Kellogg over its unethical treatment of our American treasure.

Meanwhile, Kellogg gets to come out smelling “gr-e-a-at!”.

We pretend to care about drugs being illegal.

If Phelps had been using TGH or some other designer steroid that could make the viewing public feel ripped off for believing in him, perhaps there would be some actual scandal to this “scandal.”

Photo: Arturo Ponciarelli

By all accounts, pot is a performance decreasing drug rather than the reverse. Despite Time’s claim that 48% of Americans have tried pot, it’s really more surprising to meet someone who has never smoked pot.

Why do we pretend to care?

Maybe the only thing stopping every marijuana advocate and midnight toker out there from using this “incident” to claim pot is more beneficial than as a nausea cure is that Phelps could not have been using any drugs at all during his victory sweep. He was regularly tested for all drugs throughout any competitive season.

We like to pretend that we care about illegal drug use.

We don’t really… or we would not have elected our last three presidents.

Profit, baby.

They’re selling it and we’re buying it.

People have the luxury of being morally outraged regardless of what side they’re on in this non-issue. Phelps is just a young guy and deserves to have a little fun. He’s setting a poor example. Whoever sold that picture deserves to be tortured.

We’re celebrity obsessed and when headlines that would once have been relegated to The Enquirer are running on cable news networks, we watch and they profit. For the CNNs of this world, this is great. No foreign correspondent has to be flown to far off lands and risk life and limb to cover real news.

These networks now know they can participate in lazy tabloid style coverage and sell more advertising than they would if they were covering real news that required research or reporting.

Pure profit.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

What do you think about the Phelps “scandal”? Is it uniquely American? Why? Why not? Share your opinions below!

As recently reported, the Korean Supreme Court has ruled in favor of annulling the “restricted screening” rating by the Korean Media Board. It was this rating that kept racier movies from seeing screen time in the country.

The decision was framed around 2006’s controversial film Shortbus, which had been kept in Korea’s bottom drawer due to its inclusion of sex involving man/man, man/woman and nearly every configuration thereof. The film, now greenlit to be distributed in the country, has proven to have longer legs than most would have imagined.

Initially written off as an attention-grab by many critics, ‘Shortbus’ has only grown in popularity over the years, largely due to its release on DVD.

One of the film’s stars, Jay Brannan, offers an explanation:

People everywhere are dying to be free from oppression and repression, to explore what it means to be human and to connect with other humans on all sorts of levels. Somehow ‘Shortbus’ taps into those basic interests, and that is a powerful force that can’t be stopped.

Brannan, who has been asked about his sex scene ad nauseam, has never been shy about defending the film.

I don’t see why people are so afraid of the human body and sexual expression. I’ve never understood why we are taught to be ashamed of those things, or why they are not to be discussed or talked about or even acknowledged.

The ruling in Korea tickled the actor, who applauds “their willingness to bring true reason and common sense to their decision making, rather than being ruled by oppressive, outdated, and ultimately dangerous ways of thinking.”

He adds, “I never thought the film would change the world, but after hearing the news about what happened in Korea, I can’t help but feel that i was wrong.”

Top photo: by MarkHillary (Creative Commons)

Bottom photo: publicity still from ‘Shortbus’

Photo:scazon

The emergence of armed vigilante groups threatening to take public security into their own hands has added a new sense of urgency to Mexico’s war against drug cartels.

One group, financed by businessmen from Ciudad Juárez, is threatening to kill a criminal every 24 hours unless the government takes visible action against rampant crime and corruption. The group, calling itself “Citizens’ Command For Ciudad Juárez” has set a deadline for July 5, stating that if the situation in Ciudad Juárez has not changed by that time it will follow through with its threats.

Ciudad Juárez has been one of the hardest hit by Felipe Calderón’s war on drugs. The city has long been one of Mexico’s most violent and dangerous, known for the unresolved rape, torture and murder cases of hundreds of women, and the violent battles between drug cartels.

Recent statistics reveal just how grave the situation in Ciudad Juárez has become—in 2007, the city reported 318 executions; in 2008, the number jumped to 1,653, and in 2009, the city has reported a record number of six executions daily. (Source: El Universal)

The emergence of paramilitary groups marks a disturbing step towards what some analysts have called the “Colombianization” of Mexico. In Colombia, paramilitary groups whose power spiraled out of control were responsible for some of the country’s most atrocious human rights violations.

And yet, many Mexicans seem willing to at least consider the possibility of entrusting their protection to armed groups of civilians, as drug-related violence and corruption are at an all-time high. Some make allusions to revolutionary heroes Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, who stepped up to fight corrupt governments and defend the rights of the people. Others state that there is simply no reason to confide in the state, and that they are left with no recourse to defend themselves and their families.

President Felipe Calderon, Photo: DANNY OJEDA

The surge of such groups, and the desperation driving people to support them, follow the arrests of corrupt officials at the highest levels of the Calderón administration. Since Calderón vowed to take a hardliner, get tough strategy on drugs following his election in 2006, violence in the country has skyrocketed, with 4,300 people dead in 2008 (a number nearly double that of 2007) and several bloody, high-profile assassinations of police chiefs, federal officials, and most recently, the newly appointed anti-drug czar.

Corruption, meanwhile, has proved not only unrelenting but also dangerously, and many say suspiciously, close to the President himself. In November of last year, Noe Ramirez Mandujano, the former head of Mexico’s top anti-drug unit, was arrested on charges of accepting monthly payments of $450,000 from the Sinaloa drug cartel.

Around the same time, both the former federal police chief, Gerardo Garay, and the head of Mexico’s Interpol operation, Ricardo Gutierrez (also one of the top-ranking officials in Mexico’s FBI, known as the Agencia Federal de Investigacíon), were arrested for taking bribes from and providing information to the Sinaloa cartel.

These are only the most spectacular examples. Corruption is so widespread that in June of 2007, Calderon replaced all of the country’s federal police chiefs in one fell swoop. That, however, did not prevent the need for Operacíon Limpieza (translated as Operation Clean House), initiated in July of 2008, in which the aforementioned high-ranking officials (as well as more than 30 others) were arrested.

Rumors circulate that the government is allied with the Sinaloa cartel, and is protecting the cartel ( link in English) while cracking down on the others.

Factual evidence seems to support this accusation: every high-ranking official arrested in the past several months on corruption charges was associated with the Sinaloa cartel, and while more than 600 members of the Gulf Coast cartel and the leaders of both the Tijuana and Beltran-Leyva cartels have been arrested, the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, is still at large.

Many argue that Calderón’s administration is pursuing a flawed strategy of attacking the cartels and their leaders, instead of working to improve Mexico’s failed and corrupt institutions. And while the Attorney General, Eduardo Medina Mora, recognizes the lack of transparency of these institutions and the need for reform, he relies on citing statistics of seized drugs and weapons to demonstrate the government’s progress.

Photo: tiffa130

Meanwhile, the United States continues to provide a booming market for the cartels, with drug revenues ranging from 20 to 50 million dollars a year. The U.S also provides the vast majority of the weapons used by the cartels to wage war. Estimates put the number of gun shops on the U.S border around 7,000. These shops, and the numerous artillery shows that take place around the U.S/Mexico border, fuel Mexico’s drug lords with a wide variety of weapons, including assault rifles, grenades, and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

“There are 7,600 gun shops within 50 miles of the Mexican border, and they’re selling primarily to drug lords,” former U.S National Security Advisor Robert Pastor told CNN, adding “We are part of this problem and we haven’t been significantly supportive.”

Recent meetings between Felipe Calderón and Barack Obama have seen both parties pledge further cooperation in the war on drugs, yet critics continue to question whether the money, weapons and soldiers being used to fight the war might not be better spent on rebuilding Mexico’s corrupt institutions, re-examining U.S weapons laws, and lessening the demand for drugs North of the border.

Could Iran have a shot at some change we can believe in, too?

High-profile pro-reform politician Mohammed Khatami, who served as President of Iran from 1997 to 2005 — when power passed to the more belligerent Mahmoud Ahmedinejad — has announced that he will run again in the country’s upcoming elections.

(Iran’s presidents are permitted to serve two consecutive four-year terms before stepping down, but they are free to run again in future.)

Khatami’s candidacy leaves Iran’s reformers, and much of the West, eyeing the tantalizing possibility of the country adopting a more conciliatory tone at the very moment that President Obama is doing the same.

The result? Maybe, just maybe, a new era in US-Iran relations.

During his last turn in office, Khatami worked to increase both political and social freedoms — though many of his efforts, including an attempt to loosen press restrictions, were blocked by hardliners. His supporters hope that the last four years of tension have fueled the desire for change.

Said one close ally:

People feel the need for change because of Ahmadinejad’s foreign policy and economic policies. Therefore we think people will vote for Khatami, for change… With Khatami running, the election will be polarized.

Of course, nothing is certain: Ahmadinejad retains a great deal of support, especially among the more hardline clerics and in rural areas, while Khatami’s failure to deliver on past promises led some reformers to give up on him.

The Iranian election is slated for June.

Photo by Please! Don’t Smile. (Creative Commons)

If you believe the copy, the best job in the world is lying on a beach, scuba diving the Great Barrier Reef and blogging about it for a cool AUD $150,000 (US $96,300) over six months.

Sound like your cup of tea? It sounds like hard work to me!

The Queensland Tourism Department has advertised this job as part of a a multi-million dollar campaign to raise awareness of Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef as a tourism destination. Twelve months in the making, it’s the first and largest project of its kind. While future campaigns are sure to come, I doubt any will catch the world’s attention like the Island Reef Job.

The successful applicant will be the face and voice of the islands for six months: there will be constant social media work to be done, blog posts to write, photos to upload, and videos to shoot, edit, and promote.

That said, it’s a highly sought position: with 15 days still to go, over 10,500 video applications have already been made.

Anny Chih from Vancouver, Canada has spent over 50 hours on her application – including creating a website and building a reputation on twitter and other social media tools.

I asked Anny what her perfect day would look like:

I’d probably wake up at six in the morning just being absurdly happy … walk around the island, collect the mail, have a chat with the waitress at a local diner, perhaps do some kayaking (one of my favourite summer activities), practice my rolls in the water, feed the fish, do a little scuba diving, maybe try a new hiking trail, take lots of pictures, blog and twitter like mad to try and keep up with everyone, borrow an Australian cookbook and try to make something with the fire extinguisher handy for dinner (I did once almost burn down my kitchen – luckily the oven kept most of the fire contained), take another stroll along the beach to look for crabs and chat with some locals over a beer, take a hot bath, blog some more and snuggle up to my stuffed animal Sharky at bedtime.

I’m not too sure the Whitsunday’s have diners, but Nicole McNaughton, PR Project Manager for the “Best Job in the World,” thinks the job will live up to Anny’s dream:

“A key part of the role will be exploring the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef to gain a full understanding of what’s on offer – and that includes getting to know the locals and the community. We want the successful applicant to not only report on the great experiences on offer, but also what it is that makes Queensland and its people so quintessentially unique. In short, we want them to get ‘under the skin’ of the destination from more than just a travelogue’s point of view. We want them to meet those who live and work in the region, to make friends with them, to look at issues such as the effects of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef. We want them to be much more than just a travel reporter.”

The best job in the world is an amazing opportunity to spend time amongst some of the 600 islands of the Reef and, unlike most visitors, get paid a hefty sum to do it. It’s also an excellent chance to launch a career in travel writing and gain a social media following for future projects.

Community Connection:

Subscribe to the Matador RSS feed now to stay up to date with more features on the Best Job in the World and the Great Barrier Reef.

If you’re interested in applying, tune in to the Indie Travel Podcast and listen to our podcast interview with Nicole, detailing how you can maximize your chances of success!

The Problem

The Globe and Mail reports that some sweeping changes to Canada’s citizenship laws could have a serious impact on the country’s expats, foreign aid workers, even foreign-based students — basically, anyone living abroad, no matter how temporarily, outside of the military and the diplomatic corps.

The new legislation is aimed at cutting down on the so-called “Canadians of Convenience” — the descendants of immigrants who landed citizenship before returning to their home countries, and passed along the citizenship for multiple generations.

It stipulates that citizens who go abroad may pass their citizenship along to their foreign-born children, as before.

However, if those foreign-born children go on to have foreign-born children in turn, Canadian citizenship will not be granted to them automatically.

The idea is to prevent generation after generation of people, who may never have even set foot in Canada, from claiming citizenship.

(It’s a response, in large part, to a controversy that erupted during the Hezbollah-Israel conflict of 2006, when thousands of Lebanese residents with Canadian passports popped up in Beirut, requesting taxpayer-funded Canadian rescue efforts.)

But the broad sweep of the legislation — there are no exceptions for temporary stays abroad, and no consideration of how long a given citizen has spent in Canada, before reproducing abroad — threatens to catch thousands of expats in its net, too.

“Hundreds of thousands of Canadians will be affected by these rules,” said the head of the Canadian Expat Association. “These people may be working or volunteering abroad temporarily.”

My own children will be affected. They were born abroad, but, of course, live in Canada. As bilingual (English-Japanese) children they hope to work in international trade in the future. Do I honestly need to tell them that if they have kids while working abroad, they will not be Canadian?

Other expat advocates pointed out the potential impact of more restrictive citizenship rules on Canada’s competitiveness in the fluid global economy — by creating a disincentive for workers to go abroad with multinationals.

My Take

Personally, I have trouble even getting worked up about the “Canadians of Convenience” side of things. Complaints on the subject mention our citizenship being “watered down” as a result, but nothing can water down my pride in my citizenship, least of all the idea of my tax dollars going to rescue civilians (Canadian or otherwise) from a war zone.

Beyond that, though, it’s clear this legislation goes too far.

Even if you accept that these “Canadians of Convenience” are a problem worth addressing, this is not the place and time to be punishing Canadians for working abroad, volunteering abroad, studying abroad, and so on. We need to be more engaged with the world, not less.

As people who spend an awful lot of time overseas, Matadorians, what do you think?

If you knew you were risking your children’s citizenship by starting a family while abroad, would you think twice about doing so?

Photo by TheDreamSky (Creative Commons)

In all the discussion about President Obama’s planned closure of Guantanamo Bay and other special prisons, one order has gone largely unnoticed: the one that preserves the practice of extraordinary rendition.

According to the Portland Independent Media Center, Obama opted to sign an order retaining rendition — in which terror suspects are detained without charge and then deported to a third party nation for interrogation, keeping US hands (technically) clean — while simultaneously shutting down the CIA’s secret prisons, restoring the ban on torture, and of course closing Gitmo.

Said one anonymous administration official:

Obviously you need to preserve some tools — you still have to go after the bad guys. The legal advisors working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice.

Since rendition’s best known as a back-door method of allowing suspects to be tortured, it’s hard to see what those parameters might be — or how it squares with the new administration’s stance on torture by American hands.

Interestingly, though, Human Rights Watch is on board with the new order, noting that there’s room for rendition “within limited circumstances.”

Interesting. I do genuinely have faith in President Obama’s scruples on this issue, so I’ll keep an open mind for now — but I’ll be keeping a wide open eye on the news, too.

(Via the HumanRightsNews Twitter feed, which you should most definitely subscribe to if you want to get beyond the MSM on things like Darfur, Gaza, Sri Lanka, and other hotspots.)

Photo by nyghtowl (Creative Commons)

“Se acabo el colonialismo (Colonialism is over),” declared President Evo Morales as his country voted to adopt a controversial new constitution last Sunday. A powerful sentiment, intensely meaningful for many here in South America’s poorest, most indigenous nation.

For Morales, the passage of the constitution marked the long-awaited fulfillment of a campaign promise that aided his election as Bolivia’s first indigenous president three years ago.

That promise was to redefine how the country viewed its native majority, to erase the privilege bequeathed to the descendants of European conquerors, to create a Bolivia where equal rights for all was a legally enshrined doctrine.

Between then and now, the path to Sunday’s vote had, at times, seemed to slip away. Following political clashes over the drafting of the constitutional document and violent confrontations in the streets that claimed dozens of lives, the referendum was postponed on three separate occasions.

Many feared January 25 would bring more of the same.

Not this time. The vote went off smoothly, praised by both international monitoring agencies and neighboring Latin American leaders happy to witness a peaceful display of Bolivian democracy.

In fact, the entire campaign was marked by a peculiar absence of emotion on the ground. Here in the central highland capital of Cochabamba, a few late rallies, a fair amount of graffiti, and the odd loudspeaker truck kept focus on the issue, but there was none of the passionate collective action that characterizes Bolivian political campaigning, particularly in the age of Evo.

Perhaps everyone was ready for a conclusion.

A tremendous calm settled over the city on Sunday—notably enhanced by the ban on vehicle traffic and alcohol sales—as citizens carried out the solemn obligation of casting a ballot. True to predictions, the “si” contingency won the day with roughly 60% of the vote.

But such tranquility is deceiving.

A closer look at the numbers details a nation starkly divided between the indigenous Andean provinces of the west, which backed the referendum by a ratio of 3 to 1, and the wealthier lowland regions to the east that handed Morales a 2 to 1 reprimand.

And what the campaign lacked in grassroots activity was made up for on the airwaves, ablaze with inflammatory and often utterly irrational rhetoric.

Opposition ads claimed, for instance, that the constitution would abolish Christianity, promote abortion and homosexuality, divvy up all current land holdings, and otherwise transform Bolivia into a rabidly pagan, socialist state.

The truth is that many of the articles originally proposed were so watered down over the months of heated negotiation and political maneuvering that they drew equal criticism from left and right. A rundown of major changes actually included in the document can be found here.

It wouldn’t be inaccurate to suggest that the vote was as much a referendum on Morales himself as the adoption of a new constitution… on his beliefs that the country’s indigenous peoples should be given a greater voice, that the government should exercise greater control over natural resources, that the majority of Bolivians have toiled too long under the yoke of oppression.

Yes, the constitution passed.

The sad reality is this means relatively little. Before anything changes in the day-to-day lives of the people here, before Bolivia can be “decolonized,” Congress must undertake the tedious process of crafting new laws to concretize the principles advocated in the document.

And, with the division between rich and poor, European and native, “no” and “si” unmitigated, that task is going to be as difficult as ever.

Photos: Hal Amen