Thanks to a blogger discovering my blog about Haiti’s troubles, I have discovered a cornucopia of information about the world: Global Voices! I’ve added RSS feeds from this organization to the right sidebar because I believe this is a news source that is more than worth your while to follow.

These are the stories you don’t hear because U.S. media is so consolidated. Yet they are the stories we need to hear so we can connect with our brothers and sisters around the world.

Check out this blog post, for instance, entitled Ramadhan, Prayers and Clean Blogging which, frankly, shows us that our Muslim brothers and sisters are more like us than they are different.

Global Voices is very concerned – as we all should be – with freedom of speech. This is not something that we in the West can take for granted. Because once speech is silenced, injustice and poverty grow.

During the Republican National Convention, Amy Goodman – the long standing and respected host of Democracy Now - was arrested, along with dozens of journalists. To quote her:

“They seriously manhandled me and handcuffed my hands behind my back. The top ID [at the convention] is to get on the floor and the Secret Service ripped that off me. I had my Democracy Now! ID too. I was clearly a reporter.”

“One of the police kept shouting at me ‘Shut up, shut up,” she said. “It was extremely threatening.”

Watch this video, put yourself in her place and decide for yourself if there was any reason to arrest her. [Read more →]