Photojournalist Liu Jianqiang is one of China’s leading investigative reporters and environmentalists. His stories, with China’s Southern Weekend, have led the Chinese central government to suspend a number of illegally constructed power dams. Photo taken at UC Berkeley’s Jschool courtyard.

Here’s a report from the BBC…
UPDATE: More details in this Al-Jazeera video report…

[Nightwish: Phantom of the Opera]

One of the films I watched back in California, and was very touched by, is one made by a Japanese visiting scholar, Masako Sakata, on the devestating effect of Agent Orange, used widely by the US forces in Vietnam during the war. In the case of Masako, the movie was literally a personal requiem as [...]

Around 250 workers (out of a total force 450) from Efco Food Industries are continuing their sit-in which they started two days, in Suez, demanding:
1-Their annual shares of profits which they haven’t received from 1999, the year the company was founded
2-Food allowance or a meal, as the workers are given neither
3-Health insurance, especially as industrial [...]

Click on the pic below to read Mostafa Bassiouni’s latest article in the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, on the current workers movement and the fight for independent labor unions…

[Mostafa during Socialist Days 2007, Cairo's Press Syndicate. Photo by Hossam el-Hamalawy.]

On Dec 29, we shall finally get the verdict in Judge Mourad’s lawsuit against the govt, demanding the banning of 51 websites and blogs including mine, under the claim that they are harmful to national security and insulting to the president…
The Arabic network for human rights information and Hisham Mubarak Law Center, two human [...]