Dan Morrison's Blog, page 9

Sudan: A Rare Fix That Wasn't

In a rare spot of good news to come out of Sudan's elections, it appears the former rebels of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement have won the governorship of Blue Nile state. That is to say, the southern rebels, competing in a rigged election, were victorious in a northern state .
It's the SPLM that's made [...:]

Sudan: The Carter Center's Preliminary Statement

Here's a link to the Carter Center's  21-page preliminary statement on Sudan's elections. I breezed through the bullets, and the center's key points seem to be:
1) It wasn't a fair election.
2) Still, the exercise was a necessary one to fulfill provisions of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, thereby making it legal to hold next [...:]

A Travesty, a Logistical Nightmare, Irrelevant, Democracy

Four ways of looking at Sudan's  national elections
Sudan's first multiparty elections in 24 years started yesterday in an atmosphere of anger, hope and confusion. The last election, in 1986, followed a people's uprising that removed a military dictator. How times change. Today another military dictator – Field Marshal Omar Hassan al-Bashir, an indicted war criminal [...:]

Avast!

Recent articles on book piracy.

In Peru, from Granta.
On the Internet, from The Millions.
And in India and Bangladesh.  Plenty of piracy in Pakistan too. And why wouldn't there be? Pakistan has a poor selection of books and they're pretty expensive by local standards.  Same in Bangladesh.
Can't publishers in Latin America and South Asia produce swift and [...:]

Kevin Sites on The Black Nile

"Part On the Road, part Fear and Loathing in Africa, Dan Morrison takes us with him on his journey down the Nile — teaching us, by example, to be explorers of both the world and ourselves." –Kevin Sites, author of In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars.

Listen closely and you can hear your brain sizzle.

From GQ magazine: "The only honest way to think of our cell phones is that they are tiny, low-power microwave ovens, without walls, that we hold against the sides of our heads."
Think of your brain as a frozen burrito – unevenly heated, but bubbling just the same – every time you update [...:]

Early Praise for The Black Nile

Dan Morrison takes the reader on an incredible journey in The Black Nile. Weaving together intense travel writing and history, he has produced a supremely entertaining work, and also an important one. –David Grann, author of The Lost City of Z and The Devil and Sherlock Holmes

A Case of Exploding Nanos

The world's cheapest car makes an impressive bonfire.
These things happen. If i-pods and laptops can burst into flames, why not the Tata Nano, which, at $2500, runs about even with a 17-inch MacBook Pro?
Mumbai insurance agent Satish Sawant was taking his new Nano home from the showroom on March 21 – celebratory garlands still swinging [...:]

What do Jimmy Carter & the rebels of Darfur have in common?

Both former president Carter and Sudan's leading Islamist rebel group believe next month's elections should be postponed.
OK, it's not that simple. The Justice and Equality Movement, whose forces came thisclose to Khartoum in a daring raid two years ago, is demanding a freeze on Sudan's elections and a new national census as a precondition to  [...:]

No Good Deed

Foreign long-timers bent out of shape by India's tough new visa rules can at least take solace in this: If they go down, Lindsay Lohan's going down with them. She went to save lives. To save the children. To save her image. And now this.