August 18, 2006
Lovely Oaxacan Family
Last night I visited a gentle sincere Oaxacan family that lives about 20 minutes in the mountains northwest of the city in San Andreas Huayapan. The couple roasts fragrant locally...Read this update
Democracy Now Interview
You can view a video of an interview of Jill Friedberg, who made a documentary video of the teacher's union movement, called Granito De Arena, and several Oaxacenos and other...Read this update
August 16, 2006
Shirin Ebadi
In Bangkok, in April of 2005 at the Thailand Foreign Correspondent's Club I listened to a talk by Shirin Ebadi...a strong brave woman lawyer who won the 2003 Nobel Peace...Read this update
August 15, 2006
The Women
I have been hanging out with Francisco who is from Mexico City but loves Oaxaca and comes often to sell books in Spanish at a cut rate to the teachers....Read this update
A Hidden War
The last few days, just to see what tourists see, I have deliberately not checked in with www.narconews.com, a leftist web site that often posts summaries of actions in the...Read this update
July 28, 2006
A Complicated Business
Did I mention anti-Americanism? I'm not aware of any anti-American feeling toward me here in Oaxaca...and I'm sure I don't "pass" for anything other than American. Of all the thousands...Read this update
July 27, 2006
Who Are The "Porros?"
A well-placed resource gave me this explanation of the porros which is consistent with everything else I have heard: "Porros" is a term used to describe students [sometimes they are...Read this update
July 26, 2006
Unexpected Adventures
At Pachote Organic Market while sampling Mezcal, an alcoholic beverage made in Oaxaca from the agave plant, I met Juanita, a lovely Mexican-American woman, who was here visiting her daughter....Read this update
No One Died On June 14
Good news! The magesterio announced yesterday on Radio Universidad that nobody died in the June 14 attack on striking teachers by the police in Oaxaca City. Immediately after the attack,...Read this update
July 25, 2006
Response To Associated Press Article
On July 21, an outrageously slanted AP article "Protesters Take Over Oaxaca Mexico," appeared all over the U.S. press. Copy & paste this url: http://www.topix.net/content/ap/3571852116376727780802906133932155632365?threadid=V7KHE66NQ1FFIJ1S People who live here, especially...Read this update
July 23, 2006
Radio Universidad Attacked
Government reprisals are escalating. This is a report by Nancy Davies who listened in on an attack on Radio Universidad last night. This was posted by her on Yahoo Groups...Read this update
Teachers Forgotten?
Lois M. Meyer, Ph.D. Associate Professor Language, Literacy & Sociocultural Studies at the University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM gave this report to Nancy Davies of the Oaxaca Study Action...Read this update
July 18, 2006
Guelaguetza "Postponed"
The Asemblea of teachers and social groups succeeded in shutting down the indigenous dance festival, the Guelaguetza, that was scheduled for the 17th & 24th of July. Governor Ruiz announced...Read this update
July 16, 2006
Guelaguetza Tickets
I am still trying to get my tickets. Another goose chase. All week last week the entry to the Tourist Office was blocked by demonstrators. I received a calll from...Read this update
July 15, 2006
Groups Continue Disruption
For the last three days, I have gone to the Tourist Office opposite Parque de Llano to pick up my ticket for the Guelaguetza that I bought on ticketmaster.com only...Read this update
July 12, 2006
Khmer Tribunal Starts
The Seattle Times July 4, 2006 reported that the Khmer tribunal is starting so I went on-line and found the article below by The New Republic Magazine on July 12,...Read this update
July 08, 2006
Update On Teacher's Strike
Oaxaca Initiates Alternative Government Popular Assembly Reclaims Government Palace for the People By Nancy Davies Commentary from Oaxaca July 7, 2006 The Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO,...Read this update
July 05, 2006
Mexican Expatriate Vote
Note: The Mexican expatriate vote required people to register by January. Most of Obrador's PRD votes were in southern California and many of those crossing the border to vote were...Read this update
June 29, 2006
Megamarch Draws 500,000
Photo From "Oaxaca Noticias" The local "Oaxaca Noticias" newspaper estimated 500,000 marchers at the 4th Oaxaca Megamarch...a historic event that included supporters from several neighboring states. Starting with a...Read this update
June 24, 2006
Other Groups Move In
The following information was sent out in an email on Friday, June 23, by a volunteer with one of the indigenous activist groups: The week following the early morning police...Read this update
June 23, 2006
The "Governor's March"
Since he cannot run again the Governor of Oaxaca, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, is intent on installing his "man" from his own PRI party into power during the elections July 2....Read this update
June 22, 2006
Asamblea Popular
In the meantime the teachers have reorganized and two community assemblies have been held which many see as an extremely important development for Oaxaca. According to a recent report by...Read this update
June 18, 2006
My Friend's Trip To Oaxaca
This is an eye-witness narrative written by my friend Patricia Gutierrez from Querataro who, with her luck and mine, visited me the night of the attack on the teachers in...Read this update
June 14, 2006
Police Try To Rout Teachers
Patty Gutierrez, my long-time friend from Oregon, recently married a Mexican national, Jose, from Queretaro, north of Mexico City, and is now living there. They made the 6 hour drive...Read this update
March 08, 2006
Hope For Thailand
Thousands of people have been demonstrating for several days and nights in the streets of Bangkok calling for Prime Minister Thaksin to step down. One hundred university and business leaders...Read this update
January 23, 2006
A Light In The South
Visitors, to the south of Thailand, including foreigners, will soon have an opportunity to experience muslim life in a village in the province of Yala. A "Widower's Village" is being...Read this update
January 19, 2006
Teach The Children What?
On National Children's Day in Thailand, it is a tradition for the Prime Minister to deliver a positive "motto." This year the wealthy PM Thaksin who owns Thai Air and...Read this update
January 12, 2006
Insurgency In The South
Since January 2004, southern Thailand has been gripped by a shadowy insurgency that has killed over 1,000 people and divided local communities along religious and ethnic lines. "Bangkok," ie the...Read this update
January 08, 2006
Thai News
Six days of U.S./Thai trade talks in Chiang Mai has resulted in a stalemate with the help of 10,000 protesters...an alliance of 11 groups who are resisting trade liberalization. They...Read this update
December 17, 2005
Human Rights In China
Yesterday, as Bob and I stepped out the door of the Thai Consolate on E 52nd St. where we were applying for our visas to Thailand, we were met by...Read this update
November 27, 2005
Deep Into Mao & China
It's cold and snowy outside and right now I am deep into the recently published biography of Mao Tse Tung by Jung Chang who also some years ago wrote the...Read this update
July 19, 2005
Terrorists In Thailand
Last year Thaksin's government sent in police militia to quell fundamentalist Islamic violence in a southern Thai province that is populated primarily with muslims. As a result over 60 combatants...Read this update
July 14, 2005
Walking Out On The Ambassador
The Foreign Correspondents Club hosted another panel discussion last night with the Iranian ambassador to Thailand, H.E. Mohsen Pakaein Western observers were confounded by the surprisingly strong victory in Iran’s...Read this update
Enemies of the State?
The Foreign Correspondent's Club hosted another panel as part of it's occasional series on freedom of the press this week. Panel members were Anchalee Paireerak, operator of www.fm9225.com, one of...Read this update
"11 Minutes" Outranks Mao
On my way to my BTS Skytrain station, I stop for lunch at The Emporium, an upscale indoor shopping mall where there is a variety of restaurants on the 5th...Read this update
April 14, 2005
A Talk By Shirin Ebadi
Bob has been in the north for the last week so I joined the Foreign Correspondents Club the other day as a way of meeting other English speaking people in...Read this update
March 31, 2005
The Jakarta Post Headlines
News getting headlines in the Indonesian press, in the English language paper at least: the Arab Summit in Algiers issues mideast peace offer. Malaysia wants end to Myanmar's position as...Read this update
October 20, 2004
Tiananmen Square
I had read that Tiananmen was the biggest square in the world. However, Mao's huge Mausoleum takes up about a third of the square...almost right in the middle...so the...Read this update
October 02, 2004
End of a Disastrous Experiment
I want to emphatically state (and I think Bob would concur) that I have nothing but admiration for this proud and resilient people who have survived 70 years of...Read this update
Lingering Images of Russia
Siberian countryside with endless kilometers of grassland and golden pine and white birch trees... small wooden, weathered, unpainted, picturesque, single story bungalows throughout Sibera with blue painted shutters-the banya...Read this update
September 22, 2004
To Irkutsk With Vladamir
The evening we are to leave Yekaterinburg on the train, Bob loses his change purse containing a credit card getting out of a mini-bus. Olga's son drives us in...Read this update
September 19, 2004
Europe-Asia Dividing Line
Yekaterinburg is most famous, however, as the place where Tsar Nicholas II and his wife and five children were murdered by the Bolsheviks in July 1918. Having seen where...Read this update
Falling Out of Bed in Yekaterinburg
This autumn of 2004, our second time around the world, our train wanders through a rolling fairy-tale landscape in Siberia filled with gentle grassland (steppes) and Birch trees (the...Read this update
September 06, 2004
Beslan...Russia's 9/11
St. Petersburg, Russia September 6, 2004: We had been monitoring the hostage crisis in Beslan, North Ossetia, all through Europe...but was one day late to witness a demonstration in...Read this update
September 04, 2004
Interesting Lithuania
The Baltics...Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Are these in Central Europe or do we call this Eastern Europe...where is the line? We stop a few days in Vilnius Lithuania on the...Read this update
August 31, 2004
An Ancestral Village
We take local electric trains three hours north from Warsaw to Ostroda where we book into the Park Hotel on a lovely lake that caters to German-speaking tourists many...Read this update
August 30, 2004
Who Would Have Thought...?
Who would have thought that Poland in 1995 would have chosen the former communist bureaucrat, Aleksander Kwasniewski, over the former hero Lech Walesa, who, along with the Solidarity movement, led...Read this update
August 26, 2004
Polish Ancestors
I am looking forward to visiting my grandfather's little village in the north. Seven generations of his ancestors were farmers and lived in the same little village of Szczepankowo....Read this update
August 18, 2004
Young Prime Minister
The Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, Stanislav Gross, is 32 years old and looks 20! We are realizing how little information we have gotten in the US in...Read this update
August 06, 2004
Former East Berlin
When I was in Berlin in 1965 it had been 18 years since the end of WWII and Europe was still digging itself out of the ashes. Nearly 40 later, Europe is transformed and on it's way, through the European Union, to providing a balance of power to the United States.Read this update
December 31, 2002
Perspective On China
China is big. The population is staggering with a billion and a half people. It's a matter of getting perspective. Our home state of Oregon only has about 1.5 million...Read this update
December 14, 2002
Conversations In The Gorge
Wednesday Dec 11 In Old Town Lijiang, Bob joined us for breakfast at our hotel at 9am; met Li at her hotel at 10:30 for minibus trip up the...Read this update
November 20, 2002
Secrets I Will Never Know
Major Cities We Visited "The opening up of China is a stirring idea," Lonely Planet says. A foreigner traveling alone today is privileged to see more of China than...Read this update
October 24, 2002
Cambodia Today
Pol Pot, the architect of one of the most brutal and radical revolutions that had its origins in Beijing China, was never brought to international justice. He died in...Read this update
August 28, 2002
Repression & The People
Next door to the restaurant in Taunggyi I struck up a conversation with a young university student who was tending a a small bookstore. “Can everyone speak (out) in...Read this update
August 18, 2002
Poverty, Government Greed and Human Sweetness
August 18, 2002 Rangoon (renamed Yangon) We took Thai Air to Rangoon. Bob left his Lonely Planet Guidebook Burma (renamed Myanmar by the military junta) on the plane and...Read this update
July 18, 2002
Asane's Taxi Tour
In Mumbai, we took a three-hour government sponsored tour in an Indian-made Ambassador car with “Indian A/C” which is a fan that sits on the dashboard. While we were waiting...Read this update
June 05, 2002
Otjiwarongo Cheetah Camp
June 5, 2002 The next morning James drives us back to Outjo, the small predominantly German/Afrikaner town we had stayed in before and we buy apple strudel and real...Read this update
May 27, 2002
Buffalo Fence & Planet Baobab
May 27, 2002 We see the 3000km of 1.5 meter high “Buffalo Fence” along side the road on the way to Okavango Delta in Botswana. It’s actually a series...Read this update
May 24, 2002
Pioneer Camp in Lusaka
We pull into camp outside Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. We listen to CNN...TV for the first time in weeks and hear yet another warning about terrorism in NYC...funny-Josh...Read this update
May 21, 2002
To Lusaka Zambia
Tues May 21-22, 2002 Long Drive to Lusaka the capitol of Zambia Up at 5 am again and on the truck by 6:30. Take the whole day just to...Read this update
May 20, 2002
Yellow Chicken Camp
May 20, 2002 Then to Yellow Chicken Campsite and dinner in the dark. The charming camp, in the middle of a huge 40 year-old German farm, is run by...Read this update
Zambia Border
2002 Rod warns us the roads in Zambia are even worse “shit” than in Malawi-which we found hard to believe but he was right. Most of these roads we...Read this update
On The Road To Zambia
May 20, 2002 Up 5 am and out 6:30. Most of the day is spent traveling to Zambia. A bridge is out on the road south so we have...Read this update
May 15, 2002
Tanzanian News
Picked up a Sunday Observer-local Tanzanian paper in English; lead article: “Reading culture badly lacking” lamented the lack of interest in reading and warning that Tanzania could become isolated...Read this update
May 06, 2002
Terrorism in Kenya
The U.S. embassy in Nairobi was bombed a few years ago. The U.S. was going to rebuild across town, a merchant said, but now the location is being moved again....Read this update
May 05, 2002
Discovering African Issues
One evening we had coffee in the Hilton coffee shop and just hung around watching the people come and go. There was an international UN conference on urban planning so...Read this update
April 30, 2002
Edfu
Israelis Bombed 9/11? While waiting for the others to come out of the temple at Edfu, and when it became apparent that Bob wasn't going to buy anything, Bob...Read this update
Search For Truth In Egypt
Cafes and Food You can have what Bob calls "mystery meat," which in Egypt is called kebab-lamb or chicken sliced from a vertical spit-very good in pita bread. Kofta is...Read this update
A Felluca Ride Up The Nile
In Aswan, a felluca, an ancient sailboat of the Nile, is a common means of transport up and down the Nile River. It has a broad canvas sail and...Read this update
Cultivating Hate In Children
On the same day that Arafat finally condemned the terrorism against Israel, his wife, who lives in Paris, granted an interview with an Arabic-language magazine, Al Majalla, wherein she...Read this update
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US News From Egypt
News in the International Press Subjects we have been reading about lately have often covered the European Union, deregulation of the labor market, global economic trends, immigration problems, agricultural pollicy...Read this update
Posted by laughingnomad at 08:41 AM |
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April 28, 2002
Diplomacy Egyptian Style
As westerners we are not used to the constant demands for "baksheesh" (tipping) that make you want to blow your stack...and then they want you to be happy about it!...Read this update
April 26, 2002
Images of Egypt
All we have to offer regarding Egypt are images.Very little understanding. We were open; wanted to understand, feeling generous and happy. Smiling. Saying hello to everyone. Thinking we were making...Read this update
April 21, 2002
Cairo
On April 21, 2002 while waiting for our flight from Athens to Cairo, we visited briefly with a gentleman sitting next to us who was on his way to...Read this update
March 23, 2002
9/11 & Two Muslims
The next day, we spent the day in Marrakech waiting for our favorite night train back to Tangiers. I spent all afternoon at the Ali Hotel Internet Cafe while Bob...Read this update