cafebabel.com

Albania: 'Nato yes, PM Berisha no!'

('English language version of cafebabel.com',) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0000

Whilst Tirana celebrated an invitation to join the Nato alliance alongside Croatia on 2 April, the opposition mobilised itself to denounce the government

The future is death metal-inspired art in Kosovo

('Nabeelah Shabbir',) — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 12:00:00 -0000

Contemporary art is just one bright face of the Kosovo prism, from which the works of the likes of 29-year-old visual artist Artan Balaj refract

As drugs and violence rise, Mexico's democratic hopes fall

('John Smith',) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0000

Mexicans are losing confidence in their institutions, justice is absent, women are murdered and narcotics traffickers keep the pressure on an increasingly violent society

Photos: Cuba as Castro retires at 81

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:00:00 -0000

Post-election images from the provincial tourist town of Viñales in the west, to the semi-tropical cacao plantations of Baracoa in the east. The Cuban leader will not run again as president at the National Assembly on 24 February

Putin: a (filmic) kiss for Valentine’s Day

('Nabeelah Shabbir',) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 12:00:00 -0000

Two weeks before his handpicked successor takes over, a Russian film released on DVD on 14 February shows a rather different side to a fictional, unnamed outgoing Russian president

Australia: ‘Sorry’ for the Indigenous

('Nabeelah Shabbir',) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 12:00:00 -0000

13 February. Big screens, daytrips to Canberra, and a historical ‘apology’ by the new Labor government, to the 13, 000 Indigenous children taken from their Aboriginal parents after British colonisation

Minsk: the tidy road to regime perfection

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 12:00:00 -0000

Neat, elegant, so clean that you want to go barefoot – that is how the Lukashenko regime likes to present the capital of Belarus - the one visible to tourists, that is

Jeta Xharra: ‘Kosovo's status is not a solution to everything’

('Nabeelah Shabbir',) — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 12:00:00 -0000

Playwright, journalist and Kosovo's answer to Jeremy Paxman - the ‘pushy, irritating’ TV presenter as she describes herself, 29, exposes local politicians in a society she vouches is 'fed-up'

Cocaine Spain

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 12:00:00 -0000

plus the never-ending story of Kosovo

Estonian, language of the future?

('Nabeelah Shabbir',) — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 12:00:00 -0000

From September 2007, the Russian minority have to officially learn Estonian in secondary schools - Irene Kaosaar, the head of linguistic minorities, on a 'transition' not a 'reform'

Ho Che Anderson: I never actually said 'hey mom, this is my sex book'

('Nabeelah Shabbir',) — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0000

The London-born Canadian graphic novelist, 38, is relaxed and frank as he discusses being chosen as the only black cartoonist to portray Martin Luther King, a series which took him ten long years to complete

Colin Dexter: 'Morse is human, a bit selfish and a snob'

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 12:00:00 -0000

The retired British 'Inspector Morse' novelist, 77, once monitored Russian military morse transmissions from inside eastern Germany. The crime fiction giant has successfully turned Oxford into a European fictional murder capital

Walking the Lal Masjid mile

('Nabeelah Shabbir',) — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 12:00:00 -0000

On 10 and 15 September former prime ministers Sharif and Bhutto plan leaving London for upcoming elections in Pakistan. Military president Musharraf was hit hard by the ten-day ‘Red Mosque’ siege by armed fundamentalists in July

In Turkey islamism is modern

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 12:00:00 -0000

Durão Barroso says Turkey is not yet ready for entry into the EU, and Spanish Secretary of State for the European Union, Alberto Navarro argues that the sphere of influence in Turkey not taken up by the EU will instead be taken up by Russia, China or Iran.

The eastern punk Svieta Songako

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 12:00:00 -0000

Art is politics. The fourth and last chapter of our portraits of artists who are attempting to resist the ‘cultural Chernobyl’ in a Belarus that is in Alexander Lukashenko’s stranglehold

Political choreographers: Alexandre and Natalia Furman

('Andrew Burgess',) — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 12:55:00 -0000

Art is politics: the third part of our series on portraits of artists attempting to resist the 'cultural Chernobyl’, which reigns in Belarus, a country asphyxiated by the authoritarian regime of president Alexander Lukashenko

Belarus rocks

('Andrew Burgess',) — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 12:00:00 -0000

Art is politics: the first part of our series on portraits of artists who attempt to resist the 'cultural Chernobyl' which reigns in Belarus, a country asphyxiated by the authoritarian regime of president Alexander Lukashenko