The latest tool to challenge homophobia: same-sex hand-holding. This past weekend, a same-sex hand-holding relay was held in London, to coincide with Olympic-related events. It's not just for gay and lesbian couples; sympathetic heterosexuals are encouraged to join in and take a stand, or rather a stroll, for tolerance.
posted by acb on Jul 31, 2009 - 71 comments

Asia's Angry Monk Syndrome. [Via]
posted by homunculus on Jul 10, 2008 - 19 comments

Crackdown: Repression of the 2007 Popular Protests in Burma.
posted by homunculus on Dec 9, 2007 - 32 comments

Wael Abbas is an Egyptian blogger and anti-torture activist who recently won a journalism award for his documenting police brutality in Egypt, which led to the conviction of two police officers. In Egypt, blogging can get you arrested, and Abbas has taken enormous risks. But now YouTube has removed his videos and suspended his account after receiving complaints (possibly from the Egyptian government) about their graphic content, and Yahoo has disabled his email account. Evidently YouTube is not the ally human rights advocates had hoped it would be.
posted by homunculus on Nov 29, 2007 - 16 comments

China Praises Its Progress Toward Olympics. With one year to go before the 2008 Olympics, China still has many challenges ahead, like dealing with Beijing's terrible air pollution. There is still much criticism over China's record on human rights and freedom of the press, and some protests. But perhaps the most embarrassing public relations setback is that one of the official mascots, Yingsel (aka Yingying) the Tibetan Antelope, has defected from China's Olympic team and gone underground to campaign for a free Tibet. [Some links via BB and MoFi.]
posted by homunculus on Aug 9, 2007 - 43 comments

"Guantanamo Unclassified." Adel Hamad, a 48-year-old Sudanese elementary-school teacher, has been held at Guantanamo for five years without charge or evidence of a crime. His lawyers have been unable to convince a federal court to review his case, so they started started Project Hamad and posted a short movie about him online. This is an example of how human rights activists can use YouTube to bring their cases to the public.
posted by homunculus on Mar 29, 2007 - 40 comments

From MIT's Media Lab: "The Corporate Fallout Detector reads barcodes off of consumer products, and makes a noise similar to a gieger counter of varying intensity based on the social or environmental record of the company that produces the product"
posted by sharksandwich on Jul 25, 2003 - 18 comments

The story of Huang Qi, the man who started the first human-rights website in China, is one of the most depressing internet stories I've read. Now that he is jailed for "subverting state power," no US internet firms are sticking for him, as they're too busy trying to market their sites and services in China. I've participated in protests before, but I really wish we could get together and protest bigger things, things that might improve or save others' lives. I hope the proposed data havens like Sealand get online and allow sites such as Qi's to continue.
posted by mathowie on Jul 6, 2000 - 3 comments