Our reporters travel the globe. This is where they share their observations and experiences that don’t make it to the broadcast.
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Lynsey’s Armor
The New York Times, quoting ABC News, reports that the son of Libyan leader Colonel Muammar el-Gadaffi, Seif Islam el-Gadaffi, has said that the four NYT journalists missing in Libya since Tuesday are in state custody and will be released in Tripoli Friday [...]
Hiroshima, Nagasaki and self-censorship
As Japan faces its biggest crisis since World War Two, here are two takes on self-censorship from those war years. A child survivor of Hiroshima explains why she kept quiet about her experiences for so long, through the pain and guilt of survival. And a Japanese examination of the self-censorship of American newspaper reporters and editors in the weeks after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.[...]
The vocoder, the linguistic robot and the Dead Rabbit
In this week’s World in Words, writer Dave Tompkins on how the sound-distorting vocoder morphed from a wartime security device into one of Hip Hop’s favorite toys. Also, English teachers in South Korea don’t come cheap. One Korean school is trying an alternative: a robot. Plus, new limits for foreign reporters in China, and the man who brought Jägermeister out of the forests of Saxony onto campus parties everywhere [...]
Nations look so pretty from afar
Berber activists in Morocco see in the country’s current political upheaval a chance to press for their own demands: the use of the Berber language in more public schools; official recognition of the Berbers in the Moroccan constitution; and the repatriation of the remains of one of their heroes, Abd El-Krim. Abd El-Krim expelled the Spanish from Northern Morocco in 1921, then presided over his “Rif Republic” for five years – the time it took Europe to drive that gadfly into exile in Egypt, where he died and still rests [...]
Saudi Arabia’s Day of Rage?
Finally, after dark, it came. A thunderous rage descended over the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh last night, an unstoppable force marching across the city. Yet it was not the “rage” some online protestors had been predicting on Facebook pages and Twitter [...]
The Kingdom waits
The young men sitting on a plaza outside a café in Riyadh represented two important sides to the story that is unfolding in Saudi Arabia. As they sipped coffee and scanned a laptop computer, they derided those who are calling Saudis to take to the streets tomorrow [...]
Revolutionary spirit
This was a demonstration we came across in downtown Cairo in front of a state insurance company. Managers and employees were on strike, demanding back pay from executives who they say had basically raided the company cash register [...]
Revolutionary catharsis in Cairo
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Here’s some of my interview with 27 year-old Hicham Abou-Chabana, who was with demonstrators when they broke into a state security building over the weekend outside Cairo. Abou-Chabana said he was never arrested by state security agents himself, but it was surreal nonetheless to be there inside police headquarters with people, mostly members of the Muslim Brotherhood, who had been detained and tortured in that very facility [...]
What is Egyptian “state security” anyway?
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That’s something I asked Amir Salem yesterday in Cairo. He’s an Egyptian human rights lawyer and longtime political activist who has lots of experience with state security. Salem told me secret police started arresting him when he was a teenager for political activities. Here’s a couple of minutes of my interview with him, where he explains what exactly “amn al-Dawla” is for the non-initiated [...]
Egyleaks
Egyptians with Internet access today are able to view piles of documents taken from state security offices in the last day. Lots of scandalous stories expected in tomorrow’s papers.
I Am Very Great to Meet You Again
I don’t speak Arabic, and Mustafa speaks only a little French. Along with eight words of English.
“I am very great to meet you again,” he says, smiling, as we shake hands outside my hotel in downtown Rabat.
“I am very great as well,” I say [...]
From Blogger to Hero … to Political Leader?
On a recent evening at a busy downtown Rabat café, a long-haired, bearded young man carrying a black briefcase comes waltzing in through the front door. He has the look of someone looking for someone else. His energy is contagious. His dark eyes scan the sea of tables. They stop on me. I nod. He nods back. “Sorry I’m late,” he says, in French, sliding into the booth next to me [...]
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