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‘Hands Off Our Privacy’: Polish Citizens Speak Out Against Surveillance Law · Global Voices
Kasia Odrozek

A small group of citizens protested against the surveillance law on January 13. Picture used with permission.
Despite widespread condemnation from NGOs, experts and opposition politicians, Poland's parliament passed a new surveillance law on January 15, 2016. The “Bill Changing the Bill about Police and Several Other Laws” — this is its official name — gives secret services and police authorities fast access to citizens’ Internet and telecommunication usage data without prior review or approval from a judge.
Poland's new government has wasted no time in this endeavor. Since winning parliamentary elections in October 2015, the ruling right-wing Law and Justice party has passed one controversial law after another, gaining unprecedented attention both domestically and on the international scene.
It appears that the Law and Justicfe party took a draft bill prepared by the Civic Platform party (previously in power) – considered almost equally bad by experts – and added online data to its scope. According to many critics, including leading Polish digital rights NGO Panoptykon, this made the situation even worse.
Poland's current legislation governing communications surveillance allows for uncontrolled access to telecommunication data (e.g. “billings” of phone connections, geolocation) by authorities.
In 2014, it was declared incompatible with the constitution by the Constitutional Court. But the party previously in power, known as Civic Platform, failed to implement changes to the law recommended by the Court before the end of its term.
The Law and Justice party appears to have rushed the bill so that the authorities wouldn’t lose these powers after a February 6 implementation deadline set by the Court.
The combination of political and time constraints prompted online newspaper Dziennik Internautów to describe the law as “a surveillance bomb planted by PO that will be detonated by PIS.”
The opposition criticized the bill, likening it to laws reforming public media and re-organising Poland's constitutional court, both moves that have expanded government control over the originally independent institutions and encroached on democratic norms.
With this latest bill the government is stepping into the field of the Internet and users’ right to privacy — one with a strong, if brief, history of heavy citizen engagement. And many are looking back at anti-ACTA demonstrations from 2012 and asking if the new law might result in a similar response.
The Polish Ombudsman, National Council of Judiciary, Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, Polish Bar Council, as well as leading technology blogs, such as Antyweb each published statements harshly criticising the new bill for its unconstitutionality. Ten NGOs appealed in a joint statement to the parliament, urging them not to pass the bill in this form.
The new law introduces several changes to the processes through which secret services and police access telecommunication data and applies them to online data as well.
For one, it expands the scope of cases where access to data is allowed, from supporting ongoing investigations to prevention and detection of crimes. This means that one doesn't have to be an official suspect to be surveilled. Theoretically, anyone who could commit a crime can be subject to monitoring.
The law also changes the format in which authorities submit data requests. The bill allows for fast data retrieval via telecommunication networks (secure links) between authorised entities and Internet service providers, thus eliminating paper forms. The costs of such access will be borne by the companies. The person under surveillance will not be informed of said monitoring, which can be sustained for up to 18 months.
These changes might sound worrisome. But according to Panoptykon, the most critical aspect is actually not the fast access or the scope but the lack of effective court control over such access, something the Constitutional Court demanded to be genuinely fixed.
The bill imposes post-factum control: authorized entities are obliged to report the total number and type of citizen data queries they make every 6 months and the court might then perform random checks. This means that the police won’t need any court warrant before accessing the data. While it may be hard to believe that policemen would spend entire days analysing Internet data of a random citizens, the law technically allows them to do this.
And we know the secret service has a healthy appetite for data. According to technology blog Spidersweb, government agencies including the secret services broke a record in 2014 by sending over 2 million data requests to mobile telecommunications providers.
The law also reflects a broader trend of dismantling key institutions of accountability. In November 2015 the Law and Justice party removed the head of the country’s anti-corruption agency and limited the opposition’s oversight over secret services.
In response to concerns surrounding the vague definition of “online data” in an earlier draft of the bill, the content of Internet conversations was removed from the scope of the online data that can be retrieved without prior court approval.
But the metadata of sent and received messages, logins, contacts, Internet profiles, visited websites, and personal settings are all within the scope of the bill. And citizens are keenly aware of just how much this information can reveal about a user.
Security blogger niebezpiecznik.pl used the below slide of the Electronic Frontier Foundation to give some real-life examples:
Screenshot from niebezpiecznik.pl
Journalist JNizinkiewicz doubted the effectiveness and objectivity of the control in the context of recent changes:
Czyli jakiś sędzia, po zmianach w sądownictwie, klepnie i służby czytają korespondencje Polaków. #inwigilacja https://t.co/tTQuERzO01
— Jacek Nizinkiewicz (@JNizinkiewicz) 13. Januar 2016
So some judge, after changes in the judiciary, will sign the warrant and the secret service can read the correspondence of Poles.
Tomasz Piątek, a Polish writer and journalist and co-initiator of the anti-surveillance Stop Inwigilacji initiative, commented on the alleged bill relaxation on Facebook:
“Relaxed” in a cosmetic way. There still will be no obstacles for police and secret services getting the data without court and prosecutor's permission. The court will evaluate their actions – but randomly once in 6 months based on the report of the police or services themselves (!). There is no technical barrier for an officer who would like to read our e-mails. Nobody will catch his hand. The bill allows him to have a “window” at the internet provider through which he will be able to spy on everything. “
The Polish Minister of Interior Mariusz Blaszczak tried to diffuse citizens’ concerns, arguing that the bill is actually limiting the rights of secret services instead of enlarging them. In an interview for the Polish Radio he said that the bill is needed as Poland is “facing important events in 2016 such as World Youth Days or NATO summit so the authorities have to have instruments to guarantee safety”.
Bogdan Rzonca, a deputy of the Law and Justice party told the press that privacy is not the highest value in the times of terror:
Internet has to be controlled. Life is the most important thing. We want to protect ourselves from crimes. Societies struggling with crime acts and terror accept Internet surveillance. Please remember that representatives of ISIS stay in contact via Internet.
Once the bill was passed, organisations, security portals and experts began publishing practical guides on how to protect oneself from surveillance by using encryption, VPNs or Tor.
Photo: Ryan Forsythe, Kitten with laptop – 278017185, CC BY-SA 2.0
Panoptykon published an infographic, Professor for Management and founder of New Research on Digital Societies in Academy of Leon Koźmiński Dariusz Jemielniak wrote a short set of instructions (which was republished by one of the biggest newsmagazines, Polityka), and Spidersweb published an article. The Stop Inwigilacji initiative which also organised a small protest in front of the parliament's building on January 13 and posted a respective guide on their website.
But the fight is far from over.
More than 31.000 people signed the online petition titled “The Authorities Want to X-ray Our Lives and Computers” started and submitted to the parliament by the leaders of Stop Inwigilacji. A similar online petition titled “Hands Off from Privacy” was launched by the civic organisation KOD (Committee for the Defence of Democracy) and has garnered more than 10.000 signatures so far. The organisations have planned big street protest for January 23 in many Polish cities.
Protests for freedom protection and against surveillance are planned in many cities in Poland and abroad. Source: screenshot from the facebook group of “Komitet Obrony Demokracji”
Traditionally, social media became a platform for heated debates about the political situation in Poland and sparkle with black humour. Under the hashtag #inwigiliacja Poles are discussing the newest law and producing memes on Twitter.
#PiS #Inwigilacja pic.twitter.com/UOK0pH7T10
— Aleksandra Zawisza (@AleksZawisza) 15. Januar 2016
Although the parliament has passed the bill, the demonstrations are not hopeless. The new law is not effective yet as it still needs to go through the upper house of the Polish parliament – Senat – and has to be signed by the President. However, the recent history doesn't leave much illusions as to whether to expect any abbreviations from the government's political line.
Moreover, trying to keep up with the threats of today's world, the Law and Justice party is planning to create a new agency in the coming years focusing on cybersecurity and Internet communication surveillance, just like the NSA does in the US. While this might be considered a modern move by some, as many countries have these kind of institutions already, the interesting question remains the one of control over such agencies. Unfortunately, it is hard to see the described bill as best Polish practice in the field.

author: Kasia Odrozek


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In Photos: Farmers Harvest Buckets of Glimmering Sea Salt in Myanmar · Global Voices
The Irrawaddy

Photo: Hein Htet / The Irrawaddy
This article by Hein Htet is from The Irrawaddy, an independent news website in Myanmar, and is republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.
Occupying more than 1,000 acres of land beside a road in Thanbyuzayat Township, the salt farms of Panga reflect a shimmering white under the tropical sun in Mon State. They are among the less conventional of various types of farms scattered along Myanmar’s coastline, wherein the harvest is gathered from seawater.
About a two-hour drive outside the state capital Moulmein, “salt farmers” manning the evaporation ponds come into view. They only work from December to May, when there is sufficient sunlight to evaporate the accumulated seawater, leaving behind its salt.
The ponds, stretching out to the horizon, were previously manned by locals, but as much of Mon State’s indigenous population has migrated to neighboring Thailand for more lucrative work, most of the sea salt farmers in Panga these days are from Myanmar's Irrawaddy Delta.
Photo: Hein Htet / The Irrawaddy
Photo: Hein Htet / The Irrawaddy
Photo: Hein Htet / The Irrawaddy
Photo: Hein Htet / The Irrawaddy
Photo: Hein Htet / The Irrawaddy
Photo: Hein Htet / The Irrawaddy
Photo: Hein Htet / The Irrawaddy
Photo: Hein Htet / The Irrawaddy
Photo: Hein Htet / The Irrawaddy

source: news-globalvoices

license: Creative Commons - Attribution - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

author: The Irrawaddy


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Internet Censorship in Pakistan is Not Just About YouTube · Global Voices
Sana Saleem

“Access is My Right” campaign poster by Bytes4All. Artwork by Anny Zafar.
This essay was originally published on The News. It is reproduced here with permission.
“The day after Zia died was the day I managed to get a landline for the first time in five years. Before that I would struggle to stay in touch with my colleagues and it made my reporting much more difficult,” late veteran activist and journalist Najma Saddeque reminisced as I sat in her office to talk about the Women’s Action Forum.
“This was the best way to make a reporter’s work more difficult; no need to censor it directly. Just make it difficult for them to do their work,” said Saddeque.
This was the time of mysterious blank boxes appearing in place of stories that were chunked out, declared unfit for public consumption, a time where every news story was closely monitored and “vetted out”.
Decades later, have things changed for the better? Seemingly so, but we are not far from reverting back to telling half-truths, a watered-down, heavily scrutinised version of reality. Take for instance, the crackdown on freedom of information online that has consistently gotten worse. As with traditional media, the state maintains that this is done to “protect” the public and our national integrity.
When rights groups and citizens took the state to court over the blocking of YouTube, the presiding judge, Justice Mansoor Ali Shah, shared their anguish over the state’s ambiguity. The right to information cannot be crippled in the garb of national security, morality or religion. And if it must be done, the restrictions imposed must be “reasonable”.
Is there a way to block objectionable content and make the rest of the website available? What protections are there for a foreign company, like Google, facing this situation? What would it take for a company to comply with Pakistani laws?
YouTube was blocked as a result of a blasphemous video posted on the platform. There was no way to make the rest of the website available while blocking just that video. This would have required a bifurcation of the secure HTTPS layer of the Internet – a step even the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority was strictly against. And no, Pakistan does not have intermediary liability protection nor does it have sufficient laws governing how Internet content is regulated. If at all, Internet regulation in Pakistan has been based on ad-hoc decisions that are made in the absence of transparency and accountability.
When the question of unblocking YouTube was discussed at length, Justice Mansoor Ali Shah reached out to Google to ask what it would take to establish a localised version of YouTube in Pakistan. The answer: a clearly-defined content take-down procedure, a legal framework and strong business interest for Google.
So now we have it: Pakistan has a “localised” version of YouTube. Now, should the company receive and approve a court order requesting that certain content will be blocked, it appears that it will comply.
Nevertheless, three years after the initial blocking, nothing has actually changed on the legal front, except that the Interministerial Committee for Evaluation of Websites – an Orwellian authority that was supposedly responsible for taking down online content – has been disbanded by the orders of the prime minister. On top of this, the Ministry of IT has been pushing to pass one of the worst cybercrime laws in the region.
The Supreme Court, on the other hand, is currently considering the futility of the ban and the state’s ad hocism in implementing it. This case alone could change everything for free speech in Pakistan by strongly scrutinising state-sanctioned censorship done under the garb of regulation.
But will it? Not if the government continues to muddy the narrative by putting up a big show and getting a big corporation to cave in. Not when Google itself would consider launching in Pakistan, despite its earlier commitment to transparent and accountable legal frameworks.
The PTA has informed the Supreme Court that the government should quickly move to lift the ban on YouTube because the offensive video will no longer be available on the .pk version of the site. That the only reason the ban was in place was because of the presence of the video itself.
But this is about much more than just the YouTube ban being lifted. Three years of struggle and demand for self-regulation over state-sanctioned blocks have swiftly been brought to a halt. There is at the moment a space for a debate on the merits of censorship in Pakistan, and the ridiculousness and futility of Internet filters. This debate is taking place in the highest court of law. This is our opportunity to have these discussions out in the open, to test laws and push back against crackdowns. It is an opportunity to reclaim space and deny hurdles that limit our access to information.
There are even more questions, what happens if the cybercrime law is passed? Will Google be asked to provide user information? Will criminal action be taken against political dissenters? Will people be charged and put in jail for up to seven years because of a flawed law? Who will hold the companies responsible for localisation in a country where the Ministry of IT is bringing in a law that would work towards criminalising citizens rather than protecting them?
There are some who celebrate the decision, possibly because the site may now be accessible to those who were not tech savvy enough to use proxies. But for a lot of us, this was never about YouTube alone. It was – and is – about the state’s control over our morality, religiosity and national identity.
With or without YouTube, it is up to each of us to determine whether we would like to think critically and claim our right to unhindered access to information, or embrace a state-crafted version of it.

author: Sana Saleem


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Two Separate Acts of Kindness Demonstrate the Best of Humanity in Peru · Global Voices
Gabriela García Calderón Orbe

Wallet. Image on Flickr by user smalljude (CC BY-NC 2.0).
A boy's honesty and a neighborhood's gratitude are two pieces of good news freshening up summer in Lima, where things are heating up not only because of the weather phenomenon El Niño, but also because of the country's ongoing presidential campaign.
On January 14, a Facebook user shared what happened at Cerro Azul beach, located 120 kilometers south of the Peruvian capital:
[…] yendo hacia la playa se me cayó la billetera, con efectivo documentos y tarjetas.
Yo no tenía ni idea que se me había caído hasta que Brando llegó corriendo a decirme: “toma se te cayó”.
Él es Brando uno de los tantos niños que cuida carros en la playa de Cerro Azul.
- Les quiero pedir un favor enorme, cada vez que vengan búsquenlo para que sea el el que les cuide el carro, que sepa que cuando uno obra bien, la vida te gratifica.
Y si está en sus posibilidades, un almuercito estoy seguro que le caería muy bien! Jaja
Gracias Brando, porque sin saberlo no solo me devolvías una billetera…me devolvías la ilusión!!!
[…] going to the beach, I dropped my wallet full of cash, documents and [credit] cards.
I hadn't the slightest idea that my wallet had dropped until Brando came running and told me, “Here, you dropped this”.
Brando is one of many children that take care of cars at Cerro Azul beach.
- I want to ask you a huge favor, every time you come, look for him, so he might be the one who takes care of your car, so he may know that when you do good deeds, life rewards you.
And if you can afford it, I'm sure he'd love a lunch! Haha
Thanks, Brando, because without knowing you not only returned my wallet to me… you returned my hope!!!
The story of Brando's good deed made its way to other websites, which praised his honesty and urged other people to share the tale to “promote good values”.
¡Ejemplo! Niño peruano que cuida carros es tendencia en redes por su noble gesto https://t.co/xM9aVz7XGG pic.twitter.com/HUL2781QTI
— Capital (@Capital967) enero 15, 2016
Example! Peruvian boy who takes cares of cars is trending on social media due to his good deed.
One hashtag, #oBrandobien, made a play on words of Brando's name and the phrase obrar bien, meaning “to do good”:
#oBrandobien PRESIDENTE! https://t.co/94lYQKYM6f
— Mario Baca Romero (@MarioBacaRomero) enero 15, 2016
#oBrandobien [Brando doing good] Brando for PRESIDENT!
Gracias Brando, porque sin saberlo no solo me devolvías una billetera… devolvías la ilusión al Pais!!! HAY que… https://t.co/vKnA3SVX4d
— Juan Rodas Sandoval (@JuanRodas_09) enero 15, 2016
Thanks, Brando, because without knowing you weren't just returning a wallet… you were returning hope to the country!!
Mis respetos para BRANDON el adolescente que devolvio billetera con dinero y tarjetas en Cerro AZul ejemplo a imitar por politicos hoy.
— fermin velasquez baz (@FerminBaz) enero 18, 2016
I pay my respect to BRANDON [sic], the boy who returned a wallet full of money and cards in Cerro Azul. An example politicians should follow today.
On January 16 in Puente Piedra, on the other side of Lima, a fire destroyed a cardboard warehouse. For hours, more than 40 firefighters units fought the flames until they were able to contain them and put them out. Their hard work lasted from mid-afternoon until well into the night.
Once the fire was under control, 15 families that live in the affected area decided to show their gratitude to the almost 200 firefighters who responded to the emergency, preparing food for everybody.
¡Qué buena noticia! Ellos se lo merecen =) Vía Diario El Comercio (Perú). https://t.co/iDC3Rioops
— ¡Alértame! Perú (@alertame_peru) enero 18, 2016
Great news! They deserved it =)
Puente Piedra: así agradecieron a bomberos tras incendio https://t.co/PgkZAd6wrA via @elcomercio
— Luis Miguel Bravo (@lmbravo) enero 18, 2016
Puente Piedra: This is how firefighters were thanked after the fire.
Un ejemplo a imitar -Puente Piedra:vecinos agradecieron así a #Bomberos tras incendio https://t.co/Wa8ooORs9S
— C Rubio (@christian_rubio) enero 18, 2016
An example to be followed – Puente Piedra: This is how neighbors thanked the firefighters after the blaze.
Incendio consume depósito de reciclaje de papel en Puente Piedra https://t.co/Zrk6RyDGg3 pic.twitter.com/q29Phfl5TA
— La Mula (@lamula) enero 17, 2016
Fire consumes recycled paper warehouse in Puente Piedra.
Firefighters are especially appreciated in Peru, as they are all volunteers:
Los llamados hombres de rojo previenen, controlan y extinguen incendios, realizan acciones de atención en accidentes vehiculares y emergencias, rescatan vidas expuestas a peligro de manera voluntaria, es decir, sus servicios no son remunerados.
The so called “men in red” prevent, control and put out fires, assist with car accidents and emergencies, and rescue those in danger, all on a voluntarily basis, meaning they don't receive any payment for their services.

author: Gabriela García Calderón Orbe


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Venezuela’s Indigenous Pemón Community Waits for the Day Germany Returns Their Grandmother Kueka · Global Voices
Fernando Carias

Pemon indigenous member Alejandro Díaz (Kachipiú), student at the National Experimental Indigenous University of Tauca, in Venezuela, with Grandmother Kueka in Berlin, 2015. Image used with permission.
The recent outrage about French fashion designer Isabel Marant, who faced accusations of plagiarism after using typical embroidery from Oaxaca, Mexico, in one of her collections, provoked an overwhelming and unexpected flood of discussion about collective intellectual property of indigenous communities in Latin America and the world.
Digital media, social networks and even a short film covered the controversy. All the buzz is a bit unusual, considering that this kind of thing has, unfortunately, been common throughout indigenous history.
Section of Grandmother Kueka. Berlin. Used with permission.
An equally important event, although less reported, happened in Venezuela in 1998. A jasper stone, weighing almost 30 tons, known by the Pemón community as Grandmother Kueka, was removed from its natural context and taken to be exhibited at the Tiergarten metropolitan park in Berlin, Germany. The gigantic piece was meant to be part of a project known as Global Stone, promoted by German plastic artist Wolfang von Schwarzenfeld.
The Pemón people are an ethnic group that lives in southeast Venezuela. Their settlements can be commonly seen in the Great Savanna, beautiful millenary flatlands with rocky tableaus called tepuyes.
Almost 20 years later, the subject is particularly sensitive for Pemón communities that live in the Canaima national park in southern Venezuela. Grandmother Kueka belongs to the cosmogony of this ethnic group and its departure left an irreparable void from a cultural point of view.
Pemon professor Ana Figueroa. Image used with permission.
Ana Figueroa, a college professor specialized in bilingual intercultural education, lives in the San Antonio de Roscio community and is one of its authorities. As a Pemón member, she shares:
La historia de la abuela Kueka sería muy larga de explicar. Forma parte de los cuentos con los que nos criaron nuestros abuelos. Tal vez lo más importante sería decir que forma parte de nuestro origen. Es la génesis, la primera madre. De ella nace nuestra cultura pemón. De ella venimos. Que no esté ha sido para nuestro pueblo muy doloroso. Todavía hoy seguimos esperando su retorno a pesar de la lucha que por mucho tiempo hemos librado.
It would take a long time to explain the history of Grandmother Kueka. It belongs to the stories that our grandparents raised us with. Maybe the most important thing to say would be that it is part of our origins. It's the genesis, the first mother. In her, our Pemón culture originates. That's where we come from. Her absence has been very painful for our people. Even now we still wait for her return, in spite of the struggle we've been engaged with for so long.
After all these years, through its Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the country's Cultural Heritage Institute, the Venezuelan government has issued a formal petition to the German government for the return of Grandmother Kueka. But there have been delays, mainly due to the legal procedures typically involved in these actions, and the logistical requirements necessary for taking the stone back to the South American nation.
Although there are various opinions related to Venezuela's request, the petition for Grandmother Kueka's return is based mainly on two arguments: that its removal and delivery was an illegal act by the Venezuelan and German authorities, and the Pemón community has a legitimate demand for the restitution of an object with spiritual and holy meaning for its culture.
On Twitter, many users have expressed their desire for Grandmother Kueka to be returned:
Por el rescate de nuestra Abuela Kueka http://t.co/5iOMprSjN1 y todavía llaman “ARTISTA” al imbecil que se la llevó http://t.co/h1Ze4mCety
— Kaya Guerrillera (@DyannaSt) septiembre 26, 2015
Pursuing the rescue of our Grandmother Kueka http://t.co/5iOMprSjN1. And they even call the moron who took her an “ARTIST”.
Nuestra Abuela Kueka pronto estará con nosotros!! Aleluya!! http://t.co/odNFpYEK6b
— Frank Araujo (@franClip) agosto 27, 2015
Our Grandmother Kueka will soon be with us!! Hallelujah!!
#Venezuela celebra el Día Internac.de los Pueblos Indígenas! Entonces a exigir que #Alemania devuelva la Abuela Kueka pic.twitter.com/COU81ks664
— Napile (@walentina1013) agosto 9, 2015
Venezuela celebrates the International Day of the Indigenous Peope! So, we demand that Germany give back Grandmother Kueka.
Today, the huge jasper stone lies motionless, resting on someone else's land. For now, its children remember her and want her back home. Meanwhile, Grandmother Kueka waits and so does the Pemón community.

author: Fernando Carias


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Vintage Postcards Show Life in Vietnam in the Early 20th Century · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Ha Long Bay is now a famous tourism destination and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Photo from The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1900 – 1909.
On January 6, 2016, the New York Public Library announced that more than 180,000 digitized items are now part of its public domain collection. This means online readers can access and download a treasure trove of rare, archived materials for free. Aside from this, the library is encouraging the public to explore the digital collection and remix the materials in order to create and share new content.
Part of the digital archive are old postcards from the Asia-Pacific region of the world showing how people lived in the then-colonized countries. Some of these postcards featured Vietnam during the French colonial rule in the early 1900s. The postcards provide a rare glimpse of Vietnamese landscapes, indigenous traditions, commerce, and life in colonial city centers. Take a look.
Hanoi Théâtre, Rue Paul-Bert. Photo from The New York Public Library Digital Collections
Tiger caught and killed in a trap. Photo from The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1909
A wagon in a Saigon road. Photo from The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1908
A Cantilever bridge in Hanoi. Photo from The New York Public Library Digital Collections
Saigon Opera House. Photo from The New York Public Library Digital Collections, 1910
The silver chariot of the Chetties. A religious procession in Vietnam. Photo from The New York Public Library Digital Collections
A houseboat in a river in Nam Dinh province. Photo from The New York Public Library Digital Collections
Vietnamese children in Saigon. Photo from The New York Public Library Digital Collections
Nam-Dinh Pier. Photo from The New York Public Library Digital Collections, 1911
Log rafts in Tuyen-Quang province. Photo from The New York Public Library Digital Collections, 1900 – 1909.

author: Mong Palatino


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You Don’t Know Noise, If You Don’t Know Trinidad and Tobago · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

“Carnival Saturday—driving behind a music truck on the Diego Martin highway—and almost getting blasted out of the stratosphere.” Photo by Georgia Popplewell. CC 2.0.
Trinidad and Tobago may very well be one of the loudest countries in the world, especially at this time of the year. From just before Christmas until after the country's annual Carnival celebrations, citizens face an auditory assault generated by the illegal use of fireworks and loud music blaring from parties—not to mention the elevated decibel levels associated with the music trucks that accompany masqueraders during their two days of street revelry on Carnival Monday and Tuesday.
One netizen has decided that she has had enough and is doing something about it. Josephine Aché wrote a “letter to the editor” and sent it to the country's mainstream media outlets, as well as the popular website Wired868, which prides itself on smart and often satirical commentary about sports and politics. The site posted the letter, referring to it as “a call to arms”:
This is an Open Letter to […] the Environmental Management Authority, who are a complete waste of time.
They do nothing to protect our citizenry from these inconsiderate, lawless, money-making, noise polluters who yearly get away with decibel crime!
Aché recounted her experience with a fete promoter who promised to “take [her] concerns into consideration,” but, when the party began, “the decibel levels just kept rising as the DJs amped up the volume”:
Please understand that I love and celebrate Carnival just as much as the average Trini. However, I do not understand why residents who aren’t ticket paying feters must be subjected to speakers facing the road and a baseline that vibrates one’s house until 4.00 am.
Added to this, the DJ(s) scream constantly imploring people to jump and wine and wave a rag or whatever. One could be forgiven for thinking a super aerobic-thon was in progress. […]
Just when you think your sleepless night cannot get any worse—POW! KAPOW!! Fireworks at 3.19 am!
Aché's main concern is finding a way to get existing laws enforced:
Fete promoters—not the paying feters—need to take responsible actions regarding the wellbeing of the elderly, the very young, pets, birdlife and the list goes on…
Speak up, Environmental Management Authority (EMA). We can’t hear you over the deafening roar of the music and yelling.
Where are you? Wining [Trinidad and Tobago's famous hip swivelling dance] in compliance?
Who is going to protect the rights of the non-partygoers? Whose job it is to have their people at these type of events, so as to ensure these situations do not become a reality?
Where is the new testing equipment they spoke of so openly in the media, just a few short months ago?
But Aché did not stop at the letter: she also launched a Facebook group to help agitate for change. Trini's AGAINST Noise Disturbance is a civic group focused on eliminating noise pollution. Buoyed by the success of an online petition addressed to the country's prime minister (which she started after a particularly disruptive Christmas season thanks to the illegal and widespread use of fireworks in residential areas), the Facebook group hopes to be a real agent of change.
So far, the government actually seems to be listening, hinting at upcoming legislation intended to tackle the illegal fireworks issue (especially on the heels of the country's first two murder victims this year: a six-year-old boy and an elderly woman, who were killed in what police have called “happy gunfire” during celebratory fireworks on New Year's Eve).
Those two deaths occurred in Beetham Gardens, one of the country's most economically depressed areas, but netizens in other areas of the country reported similar incidents. Facebook user Schemmel Fakoory wrote about his experience on the group page:
On NYE a stray bullet entered the through the ceiling in the dining room of my Inlaws’ home in Victoria Gardens. Just a few hours earlier our family gathered to have dinner. The noise of fireworks masked the sounds of gunshots in the area. There should be prescribed dates, times, places and conditions, under which fireworks should be set off in Trinidad & Tobago that laws are followed and enforced
In a guest post for Wired868, attorney and newspaper columnist Martin Daly weighed in on the legal aspects of the issue, referring to it as “a lack of objective justice in our country”:
If a consumer chooses to have a spicy meal or a hot Latin dance and gets sick there is a voluntary element in contracting the sickness. The discomfort is not spread large and loud, like fireworks through whole neighbourhoods, regardless whether the neighbourhood wishes to pursue that activity. […] There is little ambiguity in the law about where fireworks may be discharged.
You can read about the fireworks regulations here and the laws about noise pollution here.
If necessary, Aché is prepared to take her protest into the offline world. Earlier this month, she wrote on the Facebook group's page that she's discussed with the Commissioner of Police's Office the possibility of holding a peaceful demonstration in the capital:
I was given a long list of requirements that needed to go into the application for permission.
Before I get into those, he reminded me that we are just 3 weeks shy of Carnival 2016 and there are a number of Events happening in and around POS so timing had to be chosen carefully, I might suggest if we want to go that way that we perhaps wait until Carnival is over.
She listed a few criteria necessary to gain police permission for a march (including an estimated number of participants), saying:
ONLY until we are SERIOUS about doing this and I know EXACTLY how many are willing to attend can we even begin to think of a proposed date and do application.
So, I'm throwing it out to all of you, whatever you decide I will be ok with.
Even with the distraction of Carnival, netizens are taking notice, however. One contributor to the Trini's AGAINST Noise Disturbance page shared a poem, summing up aptly the feelings many now share about the constant barrage of noise in Trinidad and Tobago:
Everybody know we's fetters
Dey call we Trini to de Bone,
So all who cyar deal wid de noise
Take a side an’ leave we alone.
[…]
Babies, the Sick and Elderly
May have a problem wid de noise,
But de DJs an’ Fetters deaf
From playing wid Decibel's Toys.
Some people want to legislate
Bout noisy fetes and Fireworks,
But tell me Who go Prosecute
De t'ousands of Lawless Folks.
Big Business an’ Fete Promoters
Full ah Money an’ have Court Clothes,
So dey could always Flout de Law
While Protestors could only Pose.
Which one ah you Carnivalists
Prepared to boycott any Fete
To support de Anti Noise Group ?
Not many, I willing to bet.
Plenty who sign de petition
Just jump on Bandwagon to Talk
But if you put dem to de Test
How many are willing to Walk?
When it comes to this final question, Josephine Aché and like-minded netizens might soon force an answer.

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


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Can Our Children Be Safe? Pakistanis Ask After University Attack · Global Voices
Veengas

Members of civil society protesting in Karachi, Pakistan, against the attack on Bacha Khan University of Charsadda. Image by ppiimages. Copyright Demotix (21/1/2016)
Heavily armed militants stormed Bacha Khan University in Charsadda on 20 January, 2016, and opened fire on students and staff members, killing 21 people and many more injured. The Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack, in which the four attackers were killed by security forces.
Charsadda, is about 50 kilometres from Peshawar, where in December 2014 Taliban gunmen killed 141 people, including 132 schoolchildren, at a branch of the Army Public School (APS).
The sheer scale and brutal violence in that attack spun the government to close all schools across Pakistan for a month, and the provincial government made it mandatory for all educational institutions to go through a security audit, train and arm their watchmen, install metal detectors, and increase their boundary walls to eight-feet, topping them with two-feet high razor wire. Bacha Khan University fell under this audit too and had 54 security guards on campus when the attack took place. More than 3,000 students are enrolled at Bacha Khan University.
Even though there hasn't been a fatal attack targeting an educational institute in Pakistan since the 2014 violence at APS, the wounds of that bloodshed are still raw.
Element of surprise is what would have resulted in maximum casualties & fatalities. No Institute can respond to such an attack w/out losses
— norbalm (@norbalm) January 20, 2016
‘Stop using adjectives such as resilient,brave,heroes & courageous.They were students. (The Nation) #BachaKhanUniv pic.twitter.com/X6TE4iLzSK
— Abdul Majeed Khan (@koolkopper) January 21, 2016
The teachers and students at Bacha Khan University were attending a poetic symposium in the school to commemorate the 28th death anniversary of renowned Pakhtoon leader and proponent of non-violence Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, popularly known as ‘Bacha Khan’. Khan opposed the partition of India and Pakistan after independence in 1947, and he toured India in an effort to quell inter-communal violence. Bacha Khan University was built by his own party, Awami National Party, in 2012 at Charsadda, his birth place.
#BachaKhan‘s ideology still pricks peoples’ conscience.An apprehension among radicals-resulted #BachaKhanUniAttack. pic.twitter.com/PwptWhx0PL
— Pirah Mangi (@pirahmangi) January 20, 2016
The Bacha Khan University has come under attack by terrorists on the day when his death anniversary is being observed. Such is the irony.
— Iftikhar Firdous (@IftikharFirdous) January 20, 2016
Pakistanis were not only outraged at the perpetrators of the attack, but also directed their displeasure at authorities. A year ago, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced a comprehensive roadmap to counter the threat of these armed groups in his National Action Plan, the effectiveness of which has been much criticised.
This is going to be a test.. a harsh one.. comparisons will be drawn.. you can't have winners when children have been snatched from parents
— norbalm (@norbalm) January 20, 2016
Under the plan, the government quickly passed a constitutional amendment relinquishing justice to “speedy military courts” to sentence “hardcore terrorists”, and arrested dozens of suspected “hate preachers”, launched more than 28,000 “terrorist” sweep operations across the country, arresting more than 100,000 people and lifted a seven-year-old moratorium of the death penalty executing more than 300 people, who were on death row, in 2015.
In a biting editorial, Dawn, Pakistan's oldest English-language daily says:
The death penalty does not deter terrorism. In fact, it can act as a propaganda tool for the militants as a contested claim of the responsibility for the Charsadda attack attests. Finally, the Bacha Khan University and the day of the attack do not appear to have been selected randomly.
The tolerant, compassionate, inclusive politics of Abdul Ghaffar Khan is what Pakistan ought to embody, and what the militant extremists are seeking to destroy. They must not win. Essential as it is to physically eliminate militancy, the very idea of the Taliban needs to be defeated too by making Pakistan a peaceful, democratic and constitutional land.
Writer Umer Ali also doubted the efficacy of the National Action Plan in an oped at The Nation:
Whatever the military demanded, civilian government gave – from military courts to foreign policy, everything has been under control of Army. But what are the results beyond photo-ops and extensive PR gains?
Members of Civil Society are protesting against the attack on Bacha Khan University of Charsadda. Image by piiimages. Copyright Demotix (21/01/2016)
According to a report released in 2014 by the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA), about 30 schoolchildren and 20 teachers lost their lives, in attacks on education institutions in Pakistan between 2009 and 2012. Perhaps one of the most famous victims of this violence targeting education is Nobel prize-winner Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the face and neck on her school bus for “promoting secular and anti-Taliban values” by campaigning for girls’ schooling.
According to one timeline, 229 people were killed in attacks of all kinds in 2015 in Pakistan. In 2014, 280 died, and 429 lost their lives in 2013. A day before the horror at Bacha Khan University, 10 people were killed in suicide attack targeting security forces vehicle in the Khyber region of Peshawar, for which Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility.
And rumors of security threats to educational institutions forced closure of several educational institutions in the same region earlier in the week. A recent video message the Taliban faction behind the Bacha Khan University massacre in Charsadda vowed to target schools throughout the country, calling them “nurseries” for people who challenge the group's interpretation of holy law.
Columnist and activist Ali Salman Alvi argued in an oped in NDTV.com that even though the National Action Plan “looked good on paper, the situation on the ground remains disturbingly awful and unchanged”:
While it is obvious that it'll take significant amount of time to eliminate terror from Pakistan, the more worrying part is that the state of Pakistan has shown no clear intent or political will to counter the mindset that has been a major hurdle in developing a counter-terrorism narrative in the country.
The question is whether Pakistan will be able to stem the flow of expanding militancy in the country. An editorial in The News asks “How many children are we to sacrifice before history and politics teach us which way salvation lies?”

author: Veengas


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Climate Change Continued to Rear Its Ugly Head in 2015 · Global Voices
350.org

November 11, 2015. Ethiopia is experiencing a severe drought due to two consecutive poor rainy seasons, which means that millions of people are now in need of assistance. Photo by European Union/ECHO/Melaku Asefa. CC BY-ND 2.0
This article is based on a piece written by Thelma Young for 350.org, an organisation building a global climate movement, and is republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.
2015 was the hottest year on record. That’s a big headline and kind of hard to process. Behind that headline are millions of stories and statistics.
2015 was a year that we started to clearly see the fingerprints of climate change on extreme weather events the world over. 2015 has been called a tipping point on climate change; the first year where global temperatures stayed at more than 1°C above preindustrial levels.
Before we dive into the difficult details, something we’ve definitely seen time and time again this year is that people have a huge ability to help each other. Whether it’s a massive cyclone or horrible floods — we have seen people going above and beyond to help those around them. One of our favorite examples after Typhoon Soudelor was a group of citizens in Saipan who provided.access to water and other essential necessities to those affected by the storm.
There were many serious heatwaves that happened in 2015, but few as intense as in the Middle East in July and August. The Iranian city of Bandar Mahshahr documented a heat index of 73°C (164°F).  For many of the regions millions of refugees, the heat wave brought additional layers of stress.
India also faced extreme heat waves that claimed over 2,300 lives. The seasonal monsoons came late and temperatures continued to climb for too long. These images caught the world's attention:
Many parts of the world tackled extensive forest fires this year. In Canada, 6,000 forest fires burned an area the size of Sicily. The US had one of the most devastating forest fire seasons since 1960, with more than 11 million acres burned (that’s the size of Denmark). Thousands of people were displaced from their homes.
This is what it's like to drive through a gigantic #wildfire #RockyFire #Calfire #drought #fireseason #fire #firefighters
A video posted by Jeff Frost (@frostjeff) on
In the Northern Hemisphere, there were a record breaking number of strong cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons — 22 category 4 or 5 super storms in total. The old record was 18. See the full list here.
For example, Hurricane Patricia intensified rapidly and became the strongest storm ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere.
This is how the strongest hurricane ever recorded sounds like. Images from Melaque, Jalisco @UniNoticias #Patricia pic.twitter.com/Zw4p29gqxT — Enrique Acevedo (@Enrique_Acevedo) October 24, 2015
A total of 90-95% of the heat from climate change has gone into the world’s oceans and that has helped make the 2015-2016 El Niño phenomenon to be worse than ever. Michel Jarraud, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, said, “This El Niño is playing out in uncharted territory. Our planet has altered dramatically because of climate change.”
This has already lead to intense droughts in Papua New Guinea and East Africa, as well as severe flooding around the world – in Paraguay, Bolivia and Chennai, India. Learn more about the impacts here.
One city and five countries have already declared a state of emergency due to the current El Niño, while the United Nations has deployed emergency resources to a further 10 countries. Map: 350.org
2015 wasn’t just hot by a bit, it was hot by a long margin. NASA reported, “Globally averaged temperatures in 2015 shattered the previous mark set in 2014 by 0.23 degrees Fahrenheit (0.13 Celsius). Only once before, in 1998, has the new record been greater than the old record by this much.”
15 of the 16 warmest years on record have now occurred since 2001. © Scientific Visualization Studio/Goddard Space Flight Center


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Photos of a Misty Morning Sun Rising Over Myanmar’s Last Royal Capital · Global Voices
The Irrawaddy

Photo by Zaw Zaw / The Irrawaddy
This article by Zaw Zaw is from The Irrawaddy, an independent news website in Myanmar, and is republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.
Located to the northeast of the moat that surrounds the Mandalay Palace, this eponymous hill is a famous viewpoint for tourists and photographers hoping to capture daybreak over Myanmar’s last royal capital.
The Irrawaddy’s photographer Zaw Zaw got to the top of Mandalay Hill early on January 12, 2016, to await the rising sun. At a cool 12° Celsius, weather and location were perfect to capture the moment as the sun’s rays broke through Mandalay’s morning mist.
But sightseers be warned: You’ll have to get to the top before 6 am if you want to take in the full breadth of these misty memories.
Photo by Zaw Zaw / The Irrawaddy
Photo by Zaw Zaw / The Irrawaddy
Photo by Zaw Zaw / The Irrawaddy
Photo by Zaw Zaw / The Irrawaddy


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Russian LGBT Activist Fined for ‘Propaganda of Homosexuality’ Online · Global Voices
Tanya Lokot

A rainbow flag, a common LGBT symbol. Image from Flickr, CC BY 2.0.
A Murmansk magistrate court has found activist Sergey Alekseenko guilty of distributing “propaganda of homosexuality among minors” on the Internet. He must now pay a fine of 100,000 rubles (approximately USD $1,260).
In December 2015 Alekseenko, the former head of the LGBT friendly non-profit organization Maximum in the north western province of Murmansk, was charged with violating Russia's law against propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships among minors. The charges against Alekseenko were based on a post on the organization's VKontakte page. The Russian LGBT Network reports that the plaintiffs in the case against Alekseenko were parents of minors who had allegedly visited the VKontakte page and were exposed to the post.
The offending sentence in the VKontakte post read: “Being gay means being a brave and confident person who has dignity and self-esteem.”
The offending sentence read: “Being gay means being a brave and confident person who has dignity and self-esteem.”
Interestingly, this so-called “propaganda” came from a report by Roscomnadzor, Russia's state media regulator, on Elena Klimova, the founder of “Children-404″ LGBT youth support group. Klimova faced the same charges as Alekseenko, and under similar circumstances.
In the report on Klimova's case, Roscomnadzor asserted that the materials shared by the group “may lead children to believe that being gay means being brave, strong, confident, determined, having self-esteem and self-worth…”
Since the verdict was issued, Alekseenko has criticized the decision, saying authorities violated procedural rules during the court case, since neither the minors nor their parents had been questioned.
Alekseenko also pointed out that the initial administrative charges were filed against him as the head of an organization which no longer exists. In October 2015, after being labeled as a “foreign agent” by Russia’s justice ministry, Maximum ceased its activities as an organization. Additionally, Maximum’s page on VKontakte is marked “18+” which means visitors to the page must confirm they are over 18 years old before they can view its content.
Russia's law banning “distribution of propaganda that promotes non-traditional sexual relationships to minors” was adopted in June 2013. The Federal law arrived soon after several Russian regions had adopted local administrative sanctions against the promotion of homosexuality.
In September 2015, Roscomnadzor added five LGBT-related VKontakte communities to Russia's banned websites registry for allegedly promoting non-traditional sexual relationships—with the “Children-404″ group among them.
In November 2015, two Russian Duma deputies from the Communist Party proposed an amendment to the Code of Administrative Offenses, which would place a ban on “public expression of non-traditional sexual relationships” such as holding hands or kissing—the most overt legislative attack on homosexuality in Russia to date. A number of Duma deputies spoke out against the bill, and on January 18, 2016 the Duma's committee on constitutional legislation ruled to drop the bill in first reading.

author: Tanya Lokot


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The Air Pollution in Macedonia Is Bringing People Into the Streets, And There’s an App for That · Global Voices
Adrijana Selmani

Gorjan Jovanovski attends protest in front of Macedonia's government building in Skopje. December 28, 2015. Photo by Vanco Dzambaski (CC-BY-NC-SA).
Thousands of people protested in front of Macedonia's government building on December 28, 2015, demanding new measures to alleviate the country's suffocating air pollution. The first speaker to address the crowd was Gorjan Jovanovski, a developer of the Web-based and Android application “Moj Vozduh” (My Air), which uses open data to display levels of air pollution throughout Macedonia.
High pollution levels have been plaguing Macedonia for years, especially the cities of Skopje and Tetovo, which are among Europe's most polluted areas. In 2012, Global Voices reported on activists’ efforts to make the results of air-quality monitoring more visible, following a decision by the nation's authorities to stop publishing the data online.
In December 2015, Macedonia's government continued to ignore demands to take new measures against air pollution, leading to protests by environmental associations and their supporters. After a mass demonstraton in Tetovo, citizens organized under the motto “We can’t breathe,” later holding a mass protest in Skopje, as well.
Restrictions on the movement of vehicles in downtown Skopje, the introduction of a traffic regime on days when there are high levels of pollution, the banning of vehicles that use fuels below the “Euro 4″ standard diesel, and lowering the cost of tickets for public transport are just some of the measures demonstrators and environmental organizations from Skopje, Tetovo, Bitola, Kocani, and Kicevo are demanding from authorities. Demonstrators insist they won’t stop until the concentration of carcinogenic particles PM10 and PM2.5 are brought under the maximum limit.
Environmental organizations and other associations have sent an ultimatum to the authorities, demanding action, faced with the threat of mass protests by demonstrators who would block all polluted cities.
Citizens on the mass protest agains air pollution held in front of the Macedonian government in Skopje (28.12.2015) Photo by: Vanco Dzambaski (CC-BY-NC-SA).
After the protests, the “My Air” open data app suffered a major blow. The author Gorjan Jovanovski explained:
“MojVozduh” recently celebrated its one year birthday! It was launched in January of 2015, but development started in December of 2014. So far, it has over 30.000 daily users which check the application for the air quality in their hometown. It is becoming a household name, with almost everyone with a smartphone knowing what “MojVozduh” is. Android and the web were a first choice of platform, but soon there will be an iOS application, as well as one for Windows Phone!
In late December of 2015, I attended and gave a speech at a protest about the government’s inactivity over the high pollution levels that would sometimes reach as far as 10 times over the set EU limits. Unfortunately, someone didn’t like the existence and awareness that “Moj Vozduh” created, and early in January of 2016, hit the application with a Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDoS), where from the normal 200.000 requests made to the server daily, that day we had well over 38 million (27 million of which our provider cached and helped me by not charging for them, but 9 million were billed to my account). Luckily I managed to save the data, transfer it to more stable servers and put an extra layer of security on top of that. The call for donations which was made gained a lot of attention, and in just 48 hours funds were raised that covered all the expenses that had occurred so far since the launch of “Moj Vozduh” and even during the attack.
Recently, “Moj Vozduh” has been accused by the Minister of Environment that the data stated there is wrong, which concerns me, since the data is pulled automatically from their own servers, and no changes to it are being made from my end.
I really hope that this will be the last year that pollution of this magnitude is measured in Macedonia, but unless we all take immediate action, a clean future will remain just a grim hope for us all.
Macedonia has some of the highest air pollution in Europe, creating severe health risks. Residents, especially those living in big cities, battle air pollution on a daily basis. The data provided by the application “Moj Vozduh” reveals that Tetovo—one of the most polluted cities in Macedonia in 2015—was, formally speaking, polluted 350 days of the year.
Protests against air pollution in 2015 and 2014 took place in the bigger cities of Macedonia: Skopje, Tetovo, and Bitola. In 2014, hundreds of residents in northwestern Macedonia protested against the government's decision to extend yet another deadline for the Jugohrom steel factory to install anti-pollution filters at its seven furnaces in Tetovo, the country's most polluted city.
Citizens on the mass protest agains air pollution held in front of the Macedonian government in Skopje. December 28, 2015. Photo by Vanco Dzambaski, used with permission.
The “My Air” application aggregates and stores data provided by measuring stations run by the Ministry of Environment and Physical Planning, converting it into 5-star open data. It then presents the information so it's understandable to the public. The app operates in Macedonian, Albanian, and English. While most people only react to pollution when they can “see and taste the air,” it's worth noting that fog does not equal smog (smoke plus fog), and actual pollution can only be determined by the appropriate measuring.
Using “My Air” app on a sunny day in Skopje. Photo by Dona Dzambaska, CC 2.0.

author: Adrijana Selmani


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The Ever-Blurring Line Between Entertainment and Politics in China and Taiwan · Global Voices
New Bloom

16-year-old K-pop performer Chou Tzuyu reading her apology. Screen capture from YouTube.
The original post, titled “The Chou Tzuyu Incident and Entertainment as a Site of Conflict About National Identity” was written by Brian Hioe and originally published on New Bloom on January 19. The following edited version is republished on Global Voices in accordance with a content partnership agreement.
A video of 16-year-old Taiwanese K-pop performer Chou Tzuyu unexpectedly went viral in Taiwan the day before the island nation's 2016 presidential elections. In the video, Chou apologized for a previous online video in which she held the flag of the Republic of China—the name by which Taiwan is internationally known.
The act was interpreted by mainland Chinese netizens as pro-Taiwanese independence, hence not welcome in mainland China. China has considered Taiwan as a breakaway territory ever since the Chinese civil war in the late 1940s, when the losing Kuomintang forces retreated to the island. In the past, Beijing has threatened force to retake Taiwan if it were to formalize its defacto independence.
As a response to the accusation, Chou apologized in the video, stressing that she was Chinese and that China is a singular unity. The video was released on January 15, the day before Taiwanese went to the polls to elect their next president..
The first person to accuse Chou of supporting Taiwanese independence was infamous entertainer Huang An. Huang, like Chou, is a performer and hails from Taiwan. However, he has since become a naturalized Chinese citizen and currently lives in China.
Internet meme comparing Chou to an ISIS hostage. Text at top: “Forced to apologize, forced to become Chinese. Today is Tzuyu, tomorrow is you.” Photo from Facebook user Nagee.
Though Chou's apology initially encountered some online backlash by individuals who accused her of renouncing her Taiwanese identity, a wave of support for her and criticism of Huang An has since ensued.
The teenage performer is seen as a victim forced to apologize, with one online meme comparing Chou to ISIS hostages forced to speak in front of a camera at gunpoint. The video of Chou has also been compared to the video of missing Hong Kong bookseller Gui Minhai recently broadcast on mainland Chinese state-run television claiming that he had turned himself over to authorities for a hit-and-run incident in which he killed someone. Gui vanished from Thailand a few months ago and a large number of overseas Chinese believe that he was kidnapped by mainland Chinese police for publishing books critical of the Chinese Communist Party.
In past years, there have been a number of Taiwanese entertainers who pledge a Chinese identity in public in order to enter the Chinese market. The socioeconomic incentive of doing so for performers is clear, given that the Chinese market is much larger than the Taiwanese one.
Indeed, the Chinese market is a large consumer of K-pop. Reportedly, Chou was forced to apologize by her Korean managers who were afraid that Chou and her K-pop idol group, Twice, would be banned from entering the Chinese market.
After all, supporting Taiwanese independence not only runs the risk of backlash or public boycott, the Chinese state can ban individuals who are too critical of the government from reentering China. Taiwanese pop singer A-Mei was banned from entering China for singing at the inauguration of pro-independence Taiwanese President Chen Shui-Bian. Likewise, Freddy Lim, frontman of the heavy metal band Chthonic and a newly minted legislator in Taiwan's latest elections, is banned in China because of having openly expressed support for Taiwanese independence through song.
Actually, in the case of Chou, waving the Republic of China flag in Taiwan would not normally be perceived as advocating Taiwanese independence. Taiwanese independence advocates typically do not identify with that flag, seeing the Republic of China as a colonial regime imported by the Kuomintang after they were defeated by the Chinese Communist Party in 1949.
The video of Chou Tzuyu’s apology, released a day before the presidential elections, attracted much public discussion. In fact, all three major presidential candidates in Taiwan would eventually weigh in on the incident and express disapproval of the treatment of Chou. Even the pro-unification Kuomintang presidential candidate Eric Chu expressed sympathy for Chou and called for her to return home to Taiwan.
Many viewed the Chou Tzuyu matter as swaying public sentiment against the Kuomintang and a contributing factor to the party’s substantial loss in not only the presidential elections, but legislative elections too.
Some even suggested that the incident may have prompted more people to go home and vote and speculated that people voted for the opposition Democratic Progressive Party as a gesture to affirm their Taiwanese national identity.
The incident has further politicized the cross-strait entertainment business. While Taiwanese singers and actors who want to enter China are forced to spell out their “one China” belief in public, they face backlash at home. For example, Taiwanese netizens erupted in anger at another pop-star, Show Luo, who recently claimed at an awards ceremony in Beijing that “We are all Chinese.”  Some even urged him to become a naturalized Chinese citizen in the same manner as Huang An.
In the future, we can expect more entertainment news appearing in the political news section as the industry continues to be yet another arena of contestation in the struggle to preserve Taiwanese national identify.

author: New Bloom


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Chinese Netizens Climb Over the Great Firewall to Go After Advocates of Taiwanese Independence · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

One common profile picture and emoji shared by the mainland Chinese users. Screen capture image.
The video apology of Taiwanese K-pop performer Chou Tzuyu over a previous online video in which she held the flag of the Republic of China (the name by which Taiwan is internationally known) has taken an unexpected turn. It has morphed into a spontaneously organized movement by mainland Chinese netizens, via Facebook, intended to “destroy pro-independence elements in Taiwan through civilized methods”.
As Taiwanese netizens had prepared for their visits, the crusade ended up becoming an entertaining war of emoji and a lesson in the ways of the open Internet for those Chinese who participated.
While Taiwanese consider the teenage performer to be a victim of mainland Chinese netizens’ bullying, the trolls claim that pro-independent forces have made use of the incident to create cross-strait conflict. China doesn't recognize Taiwan's de facto independence, which stretches back to the late 1940s, when the defeated Kuomintang forces retreated to the island at the end of the Chinese civil war.
Feeling frustrated, the administrator of a popular forum within the umbrella of Web giant Baidu, Emperor Ba, decided to mobilize its community members on an expedition to three Facebook targets — the pages of Sanlih E-Television, Taiwan Apple Daily News and the newly elected President Tsai Ling-Wen.
According to the record in Baidu, Emperor Ba has around 20.5 million members; the population in Taiwan is 23.4 million. Though the movement was self-organized and participants had to climb over the Great Firewall in order to visit blocked sites themselves, it's likely that their action wouldn't have taken place without a nod from mainland Chinese authorities.
The action was set for 7 p.m. on January 20. According to one participant who did an interview with website Pingwest, the coordination team urged the virtual soldiers to adopt a “fun” strategy:
尽量发吃的玩的，只骂“ 台独 ”不骂 “ 台湾同胞 ”，和外国人好好交流，不要带脏话，不要骂人。“我们是劝出走的兄弟回来的，不是赶别人分家的”。
Post interesting messages like food or tourist sites, only curse at the independence advocates, not Taiwanese fellows. Talk reasonably to foreigners. ‘We are to persuade brothers to come home, not to split up the family.’
Since the movement was meant to “persuade the brothers to come home”, some of the standardized emoji are foods and tourist sites, with Emperor Ba's stamp on the right hand top:
The touristic photos are meant to deliver the idea of “Welcome to China”.
The participants were divided into six sub-teams: Front Team, Enemy Research Team, Recruitment Team, Weapon Team (standardized comments and emoji), Translation Team, Report and Support Team (filing Facebook reports against enemies and giving ‘Likes’ to comrades).
More detailed instructions included the following (via Initium Media's Facebook):
參戰須知：1不要罵人 2表情上的「中華人民共和國專用」改為「打台獨專用」 3避免用習大大做表情包，以免對方改圖 4評論不要速度太快。避免封號。如果號掛了某寶有賣 5 開vpn時候不要登陸自己重要賬號，不安全 6 帝吧出征，寸草不生，腦殘不死，聖戰不止。
Instructions for the battle: 1. Don't curse; 2. Don't use ‘Republic of China’ in emoji, Use ‘defeat the Taiwan independence advocates”‘; 3. Avoid using “Uncle Xi” [referring to Chinese President Xi Jinping] in the emoji, they may photoshop the image; 4. Don't post your comment too quickly, the account will be suspended; 5. If your account is suspended, you can buy another account at Txxbxx; 6. When you open your virtual private network (VPN), don't use your principal email, it is not secure; 6. Emperor Ba expedition, all grass will be burned, the holy war won't end until all the brain-damaged are dead.
Major messages to be delivered outside the Great Firewall were translated into different languages. Below is one of the translated posts (via Pingwest):
It's ok to wave Taiwanese flag. It's ok that she said she isn't a Chinese but a Taiwanese. It's even ok that they think Taiwan is an independent county. (But don't say that in China's land, for on the cover of their passport are the words ‘Republic of China’. If Taiwan were an independent country, please show us its national flag in the UN. In both the mainland and Taiwan, we are receiving different educations. Therefore, differences existing between people in Taiwan and the mainland can be understood and accepted well. But anyone who wants to make money in the mainland of China must respect the nation. She can choose to stay in Taiwan, doing whatever and saying whatever she likes, which has nothing to do with us. What's more, as far as we are concerned, she's just a teenager and it's shameless of her company to have forced her to make an apology. Neither the Chinese government nor the Chinese media forced her to do that or forced her out.
As the organizers of this effort adopted a “soft” and “communicative” approach, mainland netizens who did not participate referred to them as “little pink” as opposed to fully “red” nationalists. Here is one example of the type of commentary which the incident fostered:
对这次小粉红事件，俺只有一句话：太监出宫。突然跑到猪圈外不停地告诉别人阉了有多好，然后扭头又回到圈内，继续做他们的帝都梦。
I have one comment on this little pink incident: the eunuchs are stepping out of the Imperial Palace. They suddenly step out from the pig's farm to persuade others to get castrated. Then they return and continue their Imperial dream.
As the news about the movement had travelled to Taiwan one day before it was launched, the Taiwanese were well prepared to make fun of the mainland Chinese trolls.
Sanlih E-Television welcomed them with a long list of banned words, including: Falungong, June 4 Tiananmen, China democracy party, Xi Jin-ping stupid ass, Taiwan Independence, Tibet Independence, 1989, Dalai Lama, Xinjiang Independence, single party dictatorship, and nine commentaries on the Chinese Communist Party, just to name a few.
The page administrator also posted photos of people waving the Republic of China's national flags, as well as news that would agitate their visitors, such as the petition to urge the UK government to recognize Taiwan as a country.
Some Taiwanese typed in simplified Chinese characters and suggested that pro-unification Taiwanese politician, Tsai Cheng-Yuan, was Tsai Ing-Wen's brother, in order to mislead mainland Chinese trolls into hurling profanities at his Facebook page.
Some posted hyperlinks to pornography sites and banned news, claiming that they linked to Taiwan independence advocates’ Facebook accounts.
Both mainland Chinese and Taiwanese claimed victory in this Facebook war of emoji. Win or lose, at least both sides enjoyed the fight and had fun.
Perhaps the biggest ripple effect of the entire campaign was that more mainland Chinese netizens learned how to use virtual private networks, or VPNs, to climb over the Great Firewall — and apart from just visiting Facebook, they went beyond, following dissenting voices on Twitter. @wentommy gained 490 new followers in just one day:
GFW被帝吧圣战爱国者击穿后，今天我的推特账号 @wentommy 接待了络绎不绝的大陆同胞，粉丝猛涨，拦都拦不住，这种他乡遇故知的感觉，真好。❤ pic.twitter.com/SBSjGgVPqq
— 文涛 (@wentommy) January 20, 2016
The propaganda department is also aware of these repercussions — a notice concerning the action was passed along to major media outlets and circulated on social media:
【真理部】“帝吧出征”事件情况复杂化，地方媒体对此事要适度降温，不要进行话题推荐，特别要注意对借此事攻击国家制度、两岸关系等网友负面评论的删除，同时也要留意并制止“翻墙”等有害技术信息的传播。
— 墙外楼 (@letscorp) January 23, 2016
‘Emperor Ba Holy War’. The incident has become complicated. Local media has to cool down, don't recommend this as a hot topic. Be aware of and delete negative comments making use of the incident to attack the country's system, cross-strait relations. Furthermore, stop harmful information about ‘climbing over the wall’ from being distributed.

author: Oiwan Lam


text:
Get a Glimpse of Life in ‘Fair Japan’ · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

The Asakusa Park Tokyo (1922). Image source: Digital Public Library of America, public domain.
At the start of January, the New York Public Library (NYPL) released more than 180,000 digitized materials into the public domain. The images are for anyone to use, and include photos of just about any place on earth over the past century or so.
For Japanophiles, the NYPL's public domain collection is a treasure trove of thousands of images.
Sometimes the collection reproduces entire books. For example, the digital collection features the photobook “Sights and Scenes in Fair Japan”. Produced around 1910 for Japan's Imperial Government Railways, the book features hand-colored images taken by Japanese photography pioneer Ogawa Kazumasa.
The photobook was likely intended to introduce the then-relatively newly opened country to various travelers from other countries who were either passing through or working in Japan at the time.
General Map of the Government Railways in Japan. Image source: Digital Public Library of America, public domain.
Ogawa's photos can adopt the typically exotic tone that was used to capture life in Japan in the late-Victorian and Edwardian eras.
Enjoying the Cool of a Summer Evening on the Kamogawa in Kyôto. Image source: Digital Public Library of America, public domain.
However, many of the photographs published in “Sights and Scenes in Fair Japan” provide an objective and fascinating glimpse into life in Japan at the start of the 20th Century.
Interior of a Modern Departnent Store in Tokyo. Image source: Digital Public Library of America, public domain.
In some ways, the Japan of 1910 is still preserved more than one hundred years later. The beach resort area of Enoshima, for instance, which lies just to the south of Tokyo and Yokohama, is still recognizable in 2016.
Enoshima, a Popular Island Excursion Resort near Tokyo. Image source: Digital Public Library of America, public domain.
Here's the same scene looking southwest toward Mount Fuji:
“七里ガ浜から見た江ノ島と富士山” (Mount Fuji and Enoshima view from Shirigahama). Image source: Flickr user Kazuhiro Tsugita, CC BY-SA 2.
The New York Public Library's public domain digital archives feature historical images of Japan from other sources as well — here is a colored postcard from an unknown photographer (at least thus far) of Tokyo's Nihonbashi area, taken around 1922.
Nihonbashi dori Tokyo. Image source: Digital Public Library of America, public domain.
A year later, this area and much of the rest of urban Tokyo and Yokohama would be leveled and burned to the ground by the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923.
However, the stone bridge at the center of the colored postcard still remains in use, although mostly obscured by an overhead expressway.
Nihonbashi Bridge, with the Shuto Expressway pictured overhead, 2007. Image from Wikipedia, public domain.
Photographer Ogawa Kazumasa traveled the length and breadth of Japan for his series of photos for Japan's Imperial Government Railways — here is a panorama of the town of Onomichi, located on Japan's Inland Sea just outside of Hiroshima.
A Peep of the Inland Sea, near Onomichi. Image source: Digital Public Library of America, public domain.
This is a similar view of the city as it appeared in 2015.
尾道 おのみち (Onomichi, Hiroshima). Image source: Flickr user Toomore Chiang. Image used under CC BY 2.0.
Another photographer traveled to Nagasaki in Japan's far western reaches to take photographs of the heart of the Meiji Industrial Revolution.
This is an image of the Mitsubishi Shipyard in Nagasaki from early in the 20th century.
Mitsubishi shipyard, Nagasaki Harbor. Source: Digital Public Library of America, public domain.
The iconic hammerhead crane still stands today, although it has been moved from its original location.
Mitsubishi Nagasaki Hammerhead Crane. Image source: Wikipedia user Marine-Blue.
These images, as captivating as they are, only scratch the surface of the NYPL's digital image archive. If you make any discoveries, please leave a note in the comments!
Japan, population, showing the relative amount of population (circa 1880) from light, lowest, to dark, highest. Source: Digital Public Library of America, public domain.

author: Nevin Thompson


text:
Once a Refugee in Syria, This Palestinian Woman Is a Refugee Once Again · Global Voices
PRI/PRX's The World

Nadera Aboud and her family were refugees in Syria. Now they're refugees once more — in Europe. Credit: Rebecca Collard. Used with PRI's permission
This article by Rebecca Collard for The World originally appeared on PRI.org on January 4, 2015, and is republished here as part of a content-sharing agreement.
When Nadera Aboud left her home in Nazareth, she took just a small a bag with a few key things.
“I had a homework assignment to do so I brought my books,” she says
It was 1948 and the newly declared state of Israel was at war with its neighbors. Aboud’s father thought it was better to head north for a few days and wait for the fighting to blow over. She was 9.
The family crossed into Syria and waited.
“We were sure we were going back,” Aboud says. “My mom told me that I would be returning to my school soon.”
They were so sure, Aboud’s parents didn’t enroll her in school in Syria. She’d be back home soon and could return to class.
But years passed.
Her family found shelter in the Yarmouk refugee camp on the outskirts of Damascus. Aboud put her schoolbooks in a box. They built a concrete home, but the family kept the key to their house in Nazareth.
“It was a big house,” Aboud says, remembering the family home in Nazareth, “made of stone, two floors.”
By time she married in the 1960s, Yarmouk had grown into a busy neighborhood housing thousands of Palestinian refugees.
Then Syria’s civil war came to their neigborhood. In December of 2012, rockets hit near their home. Aboud’s husband was wounded in the head by shrapnel, so she took him to the hospital in Damascus. But when they tried to return to Yarmouk, they found the road closed.
“We had nothing at all,” Aboud says. “No money, nothing.”
They headed to the Syrian city of El Hami. “But wherever we’d go, the bombing would follow us,” she says.
They finally made it to Istanbul, where her husband died in a hospital. The family waited in Turkey, but there was no future for them.
In September, they decided to join the tens of thousands of refugees heading toward Western Europe.
“We had no official papers, no residence, no future, nothing,” says Aboud’s daughter Mona. “If we go to a European country, we’ll get official papers and even citizenship.”
When I met Nadera Aboud and her family on the Serbian-Hungarian border, they were on a crowded bus heading from another camp, joining the nearly one million refugees and migrants who have made their way to Europe this year.
Aboud had already crossed the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece and travelled by foot, wheelchair and taxi up through the Balkans.
Nadera Aboud, with her daughter Mona (l). Credit: Rebecca Collard. Used with PRI's permission
She held the travel document issued to her by the Syrian government — the closest thing she’s ever had to a passport or citizenship.
“We have no house, no nation, where should we go? Wherever we go, war follows us,” Aboud says. “We heard good things about Germany.”
A week later I got a voice message. She’d made it to Germany. She said once again she’s in a camp, but I should come to visit.
When I called Aboud back a little while later, she told me the family was now sharing a room near Warstein, Germany. And soon they hope to move to an apartment with more space. Aboud says she’s happy, but that she still often thinks about Nazareth and their big, two-story, stone house.
They are safe and the war is far away, but for Aboud and her family, Germany means more than just safety. She has been a refugee for almost 70 years and her children were born refugees. Germany represents their first chance to be something other than refugees — to become full citizens of a state.

author: PRI/PRX's The World


text:
The Only Hero in Russia Who Isn’t Named Putin · Global Voices
Kevin Rothrock

It’s hard to say anything new about Ramzan Kadyrov, who rules the Chechen Republic, which is still at least nominally part of the Russian Federation. Kadyrov used to be known as the republic’s “president,” until he decided in 2010 that he didn’t want to be called that anymore. “In Russia, only one state official has the right to be called president,” he told the Chechen parliament, in a love note to Vladimir Putin, and two weeks later Kadyrov got his wish—as he often does—and his title became what it is today: “head of the republic.”
Photo: Ramzan Kadyrov / Instagram
While Ramzan Kadyrov isn’t Russia’s president, he is far more than a mere regional figure in the nation’s politics, and the past few weeks have offered only the latest evidence of his talent for grabbing attention and polarizing people. On January 12, Kadyrov told the press that representatives of Russia's protest movement—the so-called “non-systemic opposition”—should be treated as “enemies of the people” and “traitors.” Since then, he’s only escalated his rhetoric, threatening protest-movement leaders with vicious dogs and saying he’s ready to throw oppositionists in psychiatric wards.
In addition to threatening his critics, Kadyrov is also fond of humiliating them. These punishments are especially harsh when meted out to his own subjects inside Chechnya, where Kadyrov seems to have a blank check to do as he likes, so long as it spares Moscow a third war against insurgents.
Last month, in December 2015, before his current offensive against the nation’s “traitors,” Kadyrov was busy cleaning house in his own backyard, reminding subjects that any kind of public criticism—even if it’s an errant post online, or an audio recording shared on a chat app—is more than his regime will tolerate.
In early December, Kadyrov posted on Instagram a video of himself at the gym. He does this a lot, but in this particular clip he also wore a t-shirt featuring a giant photo of Vladimir Putin in sunglasses, above the words “Russia’s Army.” The video’s soundtrack is a song that repeats, over and over, the words, “My best friend is President Putin.” Internet user Adam Dikayev, a young man living in Chechnya, thought the video was an embarrassment, not least because Kadyrov posted it on the anniversary of the beginning of the Russian-Chechen War. “This event took place 15 years ago,” Dikayev wrote online. “Not 150, not 350, but just 15! And the tsar is jogging on a treadmill to the song ‘My best friend is President Putin.’ No one forgets and nothing is forgotten!”
Nine days later, a new video surfaced online (not on Kadyrov’s Instagram account, but clearly inspired by his workout clip) showing Dikayev on a treadmill. The song “My best friend is President Putin” plays, and Dikayev is missing his pants. He speaks to the camera, walking on the treadmill in his underpants, recanting his criticism of Chechnya’s leader and insulting himself:
Я Адам Дикаев из села Автуры. Думая, что меня не найдут, я написал в Instagram то, что не нужно было писать. Меня нашли, сняли с меня штаны. Я понял, что я никто. С этих пор Путин – мой отец, дед и царь.
I am Adam Dikayev from the village of Avtura. Thinking they wouldn’t find me, I wrote on Instagram something that didn’t need to be written. They found me, and they took my pants. I understand now that I’m a nobody. From now on, Putin is my father, my grandfather, and my tsar.
That same week, the Chechen regime squashed another detractor when it brought Aishat Inaeva onto a talk show, where Kadyrov himself scolded her—almost without interruption—for 30 minutes, using words like “extremism” and “Wahhabism.” The show’s host treated her no better.
What was Inaeva’s crime? She circulated an audio clip on the messaging application WhatsApp, where she complained that the state was holding back too much of her income as prepayments for housing and utilities costs. (She said specifically that 3,000 rubles—about $36 by today’s exchange rate—was withdrawn from her salary.) Not stopping there, she lashed out at Kadyrov directly, saying, “You don’t even let us take our wages home,” and asking, “Only you’re allowed to eat?” Inaeva’s criticism spread virally on WhatsApp and then other social media networks, before making it into the news.
Inaeva appeared on television beside her husband, though neither of them said much at all, spending most of the broadcast sitting silently, staring at the floor in shame. Her husband apologized for her, blaming himself for “allowing his own wife to speak so many lies,” while Kadyrov promised that he “wouldn’t punish her,” though he insisted that she tell the public why she decided to slander his administration. Inaeva could not produce an explanation.
Fast forward to mid-January, when Kadyrov turns his attention to troublemakers based largely outside Chechnya. There’s no obvious catalyst that prompts Kadyrov’s condemnation of “the non-systemic opposition” (the activists and social leaders who refuse to collaborate with the Kremlin), but condemn them is precisely what he does. Perhaps he had hoped to generate a national controversy with Dikayev or Inaeva, but failed, and was now trying again. Or maybe he was making a move in the multidimensional chess game that is Russia’s national politics.
Whatever the reason, Kadyrov’s remarks provoked Krasnoyarsk city councilman Konstantin Senchenko to respond in a Facebook post, where he recalled the glory days of war against Chechen rebels (Kadyrov included), and called Kadyrov a “national disgrace.” The text had something for everyone: nationalists could enjoy the bellicosity aimed at the enclave they’d like to expel from the federation, liberals embraced the moral outrage, and Kadyrov’s people—not just in Chechnya, but throughout the Russian establishment—finally got their opportunity to bring the axe down on those pesky subversives in the opposition.
The next morning, on January 15, Senchenko wrote again on Facebook, but this time he apologized for having offended the Chechen people by insulting their “respected” leader. (In a radio interview, however, he admitted to having received death threats, demanding that he recant his criticisms of Kadyrov.) Hours after the apology on Facebook, Kadyrov uploaded to Instagram a video of Senchenko’s apology, gloating in an attached comment.
In the week since these events, Russian social media users have responded with waves of both condemnation and support for Chechnya’s ruler. Borrowing Senchenko’s line about Kadyrov being a “national disgrace,” critics have tweeted, Instagrammed, and otherwise repeated the phrase in hashtags and angry social media posts. Some of the activity has even spread offline to small acts of vandalism. Supporters, meanwhile, have answered in kind, spreading the hashtagified slogan “Kadyrov is a patriot of Russia,” or “#KadyrovPatriotOfRussia.”
Because the flash mobs surrounding Kadyrov have involved people holding up paper signs (which are easily photoshopped), there are plenty of doctored photos going around, too. And sometimes it’s not even clear if the phonies are meant to mock Kadyrov’s supporters, celebrate them, or merely lampoon the entire concept of hashtag activism.
Звезды, военные и иностранцы во флешмобе #КадыровпатриотРоссии и #КадыровгордостьРоссии: https://t.co/tHAYGS81Kr pic.twitter.com/PrzgmsdJld
— KP.RU – Ставрополь (@StavKP) January 21, 2016
Stars, soldiers, and foreigners join the flash mobs #KadyrovPatriotOfRussia and #KadyrovPrideOfRussia
On Friday, January 22, Grozny hosted a mass rally for Kadyrov’s supporters, who also came carrying signs and banners denouncing the liberal opposition. Officials claim a million people showed up, though reports on the ground say the crowd was but a tenth that size.
Before the demonstration even began, however, Chechnya’s leader got all the support he needed when Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov implied that anyone alarmed by Kadyrov’s remarks simply needs to calm down. “These are the people who operate outside the law and are prepared to break the law, even if it hurts the nation,” Peskov said of Russia’s protest movement, offering “context” to help alarmists understand why tough talk is necessary.
And if talking fails, you can always take their pants or berate them on television. Just ask Ramzan Kadyrov.

author: Kevin Rothrock


text:
Viewers in Trinidad and Tobago Ready the Toilet Paper for This Year’s Soca Music Competition · Global Voices
Atiba Rogers

YouTube video of Pternsky's performance of ‘Non Stop’ at the International Soca Monarch Semi Final, 2016
The semi-final round of the  2016 International Soca Monarch music competition took place at the Grand Stand of the Queen’s Park Savannah in the capital of Trinidad and Tobago, on January 17, 2016. To the surprise of many viewers, many of the performances were uninspiring and lacking the usual gusto. The technical ineptitude of the coverage was partly to blame, too.
In the follow-up to the semi-finals, contestants get the chance to compete for a crown or title in the annual dual-contest International Soca Monarch, also called the Power Soca Monarch, (performing upbeat songs) and International Groovy Soca Monarch (for slower-paced tunes). The final is held at the Hasely Crawford Stadium on Carnival Friday, which has come to be known as Fantastic Friday. This year, it falls on February 5.
Leave it to social media users to express their impressions about this year's performers, some of whom had difficulty keeping it together on stage. A choppy, low definition live stream of the soca music event aired on CNC3 TV, and was discussed using the trending hashtag #IsmChubble (a hybrid formed by melding the names of the music event and the popular entertainment page, Wa Chubble Is Dis? [What Trouble is This?]).
Twitter user Kejan Haynes poked fun at the quality of the live stream:
Exclusive Footage of the man in charge of audio at CNC3 #IsmChubble #ismsemis pic.twitter.com/8zyTlWxAWZ
— Kejan Haynes (@KejanHaynes) January 18, 2016
He wasn't the only one:
#IsmChubble yes cnc3 even the tv say to stop suffering the performers!!! pic.twitter.com/ho6n2BuliA
— DEZii (@DEZiiMusic) January 18, 2016
Singling out Princess Adana's rendition of the song ‘Hit Meh’, Facebook user Lichelle Hills felt that the poor audio quality had an adverse effect on competitors’ performances:
I sorry adanna but @CNC3TV have rel poor quality rn so I couldn't hear whether or not you performed well #IsmChubble
Denzel Chronixx Tidd added:
I feel absolutely sorry for the musicians who backing the contestants of ISM this year… #IsmChubble
Between the lacklustre performances and the sub-par coverage, Twitter users were having a field day:
Reports coming in that the glare from 5 start Akil's suit caused an interference with cameras and nearby satellites,stay tuned. #ISMChubble
— Wa Chubble Is Dis (@WaChubbleIsDis) January 17, 2016
One Facebook user thought the event was bad enough to warrant the use of toilet paper (Carnival show audiences have been known to throw wet toilet paper at artistes to vent their dissatisfaction at the standard of their performance):
Toilet paper time please start firing #ismchubble
Soca Queen Patrice Roberts, the only female to make it to the finals, didn't escape unscathed, either. Feedback on her performance of ‘Money Done’ was unpleasant, to say the least:
Facebook user Janine Charles-Farray commented:
I can't fathom why Ms. Roberts thought that this song would be appropriate in a freshly announced recession. So fiscally irresponsible. *snobface* She giving us some serious church-growl on that “ALL” as well. Ouch on the vocal chords. #ISMChubble P.S. CNC3, that interview camera needs refocusing, level blur!
While the number of negative comments was overwhelming, Twitter user Sophie Wight was quite pleased with the new artist, Voice (Aaron St Louis), who also made it to the finals:
Voice move[d] the crowd. He got them to sound out. Gave [the] cameramen their first close ups of wining couples. #IsmChubble
— Sophie Wight (@SophieKMW) January 18, 2016
Soca music veteran The Mighty Sparrow, who has been facing some health challenges, did not put on an A1 show and was ridiculed for it in Nigel Tyrell P. Reid's Facebook status—but Isoke Efia Edwards came to Sparrow's defence:
‘To mock your elders is to wreck the house where you have to stay tonight.’ Better than that Nigel. Shadow is one of our Kings…our elders remain the Voice of God. Everything is not a laughing matter.
Facebook user Abeo Jackson thought the competition should be taken more seriously, and she offered some advice for the future:
Dear ISM and all other Carnival Calypso and Soca competitions:
Here is an idea. For free. Consider it a gift.
All carnival competitions that have a performance element should be real incubators for developing artists and their craft. You claim to be such, but let's face it, no you are not.
These mega competitions should be having workshops year round facilitated by professionals and teachers in the field. I.e. Let's start with:
1. Acting workshops to deal with understanding self, understanding the stage, basic blocking, character and script analysis (your lyrics are your script, your script is your Bible), being exposed to different styles of performance
2. Dance/movement workshops i.e. Basic intermediate and advanced body and spacial awareness, body conditioning to help develop stamina and understanding and surmounting personal limitations,
3. Costume concept and design workshops,
4. Performance and Carnival history workshops.
All these workshops should be facilitated by these competitions hand in hand with the Ministry. Only then will the ting start to make sense.
Out of 70 soca artists, only 18 made it to the finals, including Olatunji, who will be defending his 2015 International Groovy Soca Monarch title.
Maybe everything will run smoothly next month after the organisers prepare for the defining moment of the competition, but the Facebook event page The New Renaissance Movement isn't confident:
Soca is alive and well, but soca monarch is dead. #ismchubble

author: Atiba Rogers


text:
Defiant, Disappointed, and Mourning—Burkina Faso Remembers Victims of the January Attacks · Global Voices
Rakotomalala

Splendid Hotel in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso). May 25, 2008. Photo by Zenman. CC 3.0.
Burkina Faso is in mourning. Earlier this month, on January 15, armed adolescents attacked three businesses in downtown Ouagadougou, the country's capital. Gunmen hit the Bush Taxi bar, Cappuccino café, and Splendid Hotel, killing 30 people and injuring 56. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, has claimed responsibility for the attacks. AQIM says French military action four years ago in Sahel (the zone between the Sahara Desert and the Sudanian Savanna) spurred the attacks.
#Burkina hotel assault .. “WORLD” still waitng for the number of dead white people before declaring #WeAreAllBurkina pic.twitter.com/UTUeErlMUR
— Barmou Salifou (@BarmouSalif) January 16, 2016
Burkina Faso Anti-Terrorism Commander Evrard Somda told Reuters that it became apparent as soon as police arrived at the scene of the attacks that this wasn't the usual hostage situation:
They wanted to kill the maximum number of people and for them it wasn't a problem to die. […] We couldn't just do what we wanted. We were obliged to take account of the life of the clients inside the hotel and avoid opening fire on them.
Survivor Yannick Sawadogo told journalists from AFP:
It was horrible… there was blood everywhere. They were firing at people at close range.
In an interview aired on the television network Burkina 24, another survivor said the attack came without warning, and there wasn't even enough time to run for cover. She simply hoped the bullets wouldn't reach her, she said.
Across the world, Twitter and Facebook users have shared in the grief of the country. The hashtag #jesuisOuaga (#IamOuaga) surfaced on social networks after the attacks, modeled on the “Je suis Charlie” solidarity campaign in January 2015.
Some of the local Burkinabés killed in the attack on Ouagadougou include:
Pascal Kinda (70), the former president of the Burkinabè Olympic National Committee and Sports:
Photo Pascal Kinda, ancien Président du Comité national olympique des sport du #Burkina tué à Splendid Hôtel #lwili pic.twitter.com/bVym4rm3mG
— Boukari Ouédraogo (@BoukariOued) January 17, 2016
Ahmed Kere (33), a translator. One of his friends wrote the following on Twitter, after learning about his passing:
Such a very sad day. A beautiful man, a friend, killed in a terrorist attack in #BurkinaFaso. He spoke of love, never hate. RIP Ahmed Kere
— Katie Witherspoon (@katiespoon) January 17, 2016
Simplice Armel Kinane (32), a firefighter. His friend, Eric Kabre, paid his respects on Facebook:
Repose en paix frère. Tu resteras gravé dans nos mémoires.
Rest in peace, brother. You will forever remain etched in our memories.
Jacqueline Lankoande (40), an electrical engineer.
Her friends describe Jacqueline as likable and shy. “She wouldn't hurt a fly”, they said.
Other known victims of the attacks are listed here.
After the attacks, Burkina Faso observed three days of national mourning to pay tribute to the victims:
#BurkinaFaso #Ouagadougou : le deuil national fixé du 17 au 19 janvier https://t.co/mhc13OYMU5 pic.twitter.com/AOxETXThVf
— Moëz BHAR (@moezbhar) January 17, 2016
National mourning from 17 to 19 of January
72 heures de deuil national. On fait rien avec ces cons. Ils peuvent rien contre l'unité nationale. #Burkina #Lwili pic.twitter.com/L1Ys7BmTAw
— Burkinabè avant tout (@BF_avant_tout) January 17, 2016
72 hours of mourning. The idiots who did this are helpless. They cannot undo the unity of the nation. We are Burkinabé first and foremost.
Burkinabé Internet users have been disappointed in the world's response to the attacks in Ouagadougou compared to the recent Internet response to similar attacks in Paris:
Le Burkina est en deuil je ne vois nul part #PrayForBurkina souffrance ne doit pas être sélective 1 forte pensée pour le Burkina 🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾
— #SONSOFAFRICA (@Mokobe113) January 16, 2016
Burkina mourns, but I see nowhere on Twitter #PrayForBurkina. Empathy for suffering should not be selective. Here is one prayer for Burkina.
Burkinabés are making a vow to resist, now and always, all forms of extremism and violence. The following poster widely shared on social network shows in the outpouring of support from local netizens:
La réponse des #Burkina-bé aux terroristes et leurs soutiens. #lwili – vu sur FB pic.twitter.com/D1O5DPBe9I
— ocomar (@ocomar) January 17, 2016
[Sign reads, ”Every Morning, We Will Be Drinking Cappuccino in Splendid Burkina”] The response of Burkinabe to the terrorists and those who helped them. #lwili

author: Rakotomalala