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The Macedonian Nude Twitter Calendar Is Back · Global Voices
Filip Stojanovski

Twitter Calendar for 2016. Photographs by Zvonko Plavevski, published under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
The nude calendar made by Macedonian Twitter users is back.
Using the familiar hashtag #ТвитерКалендар (“Twitter Calendar”) seven of them–five women and two men–have joined seasoned photographer Zvonko Plavevski (@Giotto_mkd) in making an artistic statement for a good cause, at the same time challenging the parochial mentality of patriarchy.
The author published a call in October, and also used the Twitter survey feature to determine how money raised by sales of the calendar would be spent.
The calendar for 2013 raised money for an anti-cancer charity, while the one for 2014 promoted sexual education and gender equality.
The initiative took a break in 2015, but the funds raised by the 2016 edition will be used to help athlete Gorazd Nikoloski in his fight against cancer (#ЗаГого).
The calendar generated a lively discussion, including about whether to use nudity at all.
In his pitch Plavevski explained:
Зашто да се фотографирате за #ТвитерКалендар pic.twitter.com/W68EX7Hakk
— Џото (@Giotto_mkd) October 15, 2015
I don't know why the Twitter Calendar has nudity. But I know that's its tradition, and I would like to continue it. It's up to you how much of your nude body you would show. It's your choice whether to remain anonymous or to reveal your identity. Or if you would like to show your face, also. The calendar will be on sale and the money will be donated. You are welcome if you have the self-confidence and courage.
The calendar was promoted at an event on December 12.
Since then, interested buyers and donors have been able to purchase printed copies from the author.
Моменти од промоцијата на #ТвитерКалендар во #ЈавнаСоба pic.twitter.com/3UebbABUpr
— Јавна Соба (@JavnaSoba) December 14, 2015
Moments from the promotion of the Calendar [captured in photos by the venue Public Room (@JavnaSoba)].
As in the previous edition, all Twitter Calendar photos are published under Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivatives license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

author: Filip Stojanovski


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It’s David v. Goliath, as Citizens of ‘Europe’s Greenest’ Region Take On an Italian Energy Giant · Global Voices
Guest Contributor

“Down with useless and harmful mega-projects,” reads the banner carried by No Elettrodotto protesters. Image from the No Elettrodotto 380 kV Villanova-Gissi Facebook page.
By Andrea Cangialosi
Silvia Ferrante leads a quiet life. Five years ago she moved from Rome back to her father’s house in the countryside. There, with her partner, they dreamed of raising their son, Libero (Italian for “Free”), in close contact with nature.
But on November 29 last year, the 37-year-old Italian mother became the protagonist in a nightmarish David vs. Goliath-style legal battle, when the Italian energy company Terna SpA, part of the Enel group, slapped her with a 16 million-euro lawsuit.
Silvia was among about 50 landowners and “No Elettrodotto 380kV Villanova-Gissi” activists against whom Terna SpA issued civil summons and filed criminal charges. The activist group was created in 2010 to raise awareness and organise opposition to a rather secretive project being undertaken by Terna, Europe’s biggest grid operator and the sixth in the world in terms of electrical grid size. The company accused Silvia of delaying the plans for implementing a transmission line, allegedly by violently opposing land seizures on 24 different occasions. Silvia received 24 separate requests of indemnity from Terna for allegedly interrupting public service operations.
Activist Silvia Ferrante, defendant in the 16 million-euro legal action brought by Terna SpA, at a press conference. Screenshot from a video by Telemax.
The contested transmission line mega-project cuts through the provinces of Chieti and Pescara in Abruzzo, the central Italian region known as “Europe’s greenest”. One third of Abruzzo’s territory is composed of national parks and protected nature reserves.
At a press conference on December 2, Terna’s actions were described by the mayors of the municipalities of Lanciano, Castel Frentano and Paglieta as “an arrogant and intimidatory act to scare off the citizens who opposed a disputed project”, according to Italian news outlet ANSA. The three mayors filed appeals, pending the regional administrative tribunal, against the project’s authorisation.
On the same day, Terna asserted in an official note that their legal actions constituted “due procedure”, claiming their “fundamental” project could not be delayed and that not only the company, but “everyone” was being harmed in the process, as Abruzzo suffers from a “32% energy deficit”.
But Silvia is no saboteuse. In solidarity with the landowners in the area, Silvia Ferrante, from the beginning, was trying to inform the public about the expropriations which Terna started in 2014.
“The contested transmission line mega-project cuts through the provinces of Chieti and Pescara in Abruzzo, the central Italian region known as “Europe’s greenest”. One third of Abruzzo’s territory is composed of national parks and protected nature reserves.”
“My mere presence as a witness: is that violence?” she said in a phone interview. “As a concerned citizen, this rather tastes of intimidation against dissent.”
In the interview Silvia was careful not to employ primitivist rhetoric, while at the same time criticising what she calls “reckless consumerism”. “We should always ask how is energy is produced, distributed and managed,” she added, “and how to minimise impacts and waste.”
Italy is the site of the world’s first geothermal power station, which was built in Tuscany in 1911. In 2014, however, renewable energy sources such as wind (5.4%) and solar (8 %) remain underdeveloped. Italy is a net importer of electricity, mainly from Switzerland and France, and its main power sources are natural gas and hydroelectricity.
After a series of blackouts in 2003, the most serious in 70 years, the measures taken to combat the production deficit were to promote energy importation and create “interconnectors” to enable energy to flow between networks, specifically international connections between electricity and natural gas networks.
Abruzzo is the destination for an inter-connector project being undertaken by Terna Plus, Terna’s international business offshoot. The project will involve a 1 billion euro undersea electrical cable linking the Balkan coastline to a new 380kv, 70km “electrical highway” crossing 16 of Abruzzo’s municipalities and distributed along 19 cables supported by pylons as high as 80 metres, or taller than Pisa’s famous tower. Dubbed “clay-footed giants”, a third of the pylons are projected to be situated in areas of high seismic and hydro-geological risk.
The No Elettrodotto group's Twitter avatar compares the height of Terna's proposed transmission pylons with that of the famous tower of Pisa.
The “No Elettrodotto” committee collected facts and testimonies, and together with other groups produced around three dossiers on the matter. Their complaints have to do with energy and infrastructure issues, legal and technical procedures, environment and health impacts. Referring to the same statistics as Terna, but over a longer time span, the activists claim energy consumption in Abruzzo is declining due to economic crisis, energy saving and efficiency norms, and that power plants in the region should already be able to produce and distribute enough energy.
They criticise Terna as well for investing only 1% in maintaining existing infrastructure, compared to the 1 billion allocated for new transmissions construction, the highest tension of 380kv. In the last snow accidents, many medium and low tension lines were taken down.
Activists point out that 55 out of 151 pylons sites are projected for land that is hydrogeologically unstable, and where, in some cases, there are active landslides. They warn about Poggiofiorito methane storage, 157 Million cbm of capacity, as close as 200 metres, ignored by the administrative environmental assessment. They shed light on bureaucratic and legal irregularities regarding the lack of documentation and discrepancies between what was planned and what was ultimately constructed. Single-shaft pylons, for instance, stand tall in areas where the plans showed the trellis version. And they voice displeasure with the Terna’s failure to commit to citizens’ participation and unfair refund deals.
Many have also voiced health concerns regarding “elettrosmog” and the risk of childhood leukaemia, especially the landowners who were officially prohibited from standing below the lines for more than 4 hours a day.
Terna’s seemingly vexatious litigation against Silvia Ferrante’s family might in fact be a threat linking to a broader struggle. On December 4, environmental organisations as Legambiente and the World Wildlife Fund asked Terna to “resolutely step back” and let “politics intervene and demonstrate once for all that Abruzzo is not a no-man’s-land.” “No Elettrodotto” became a nationwide movement that brings together dissenters from Tuscany, Marche, Veneto, Sicily and Sardinia. Both citizens, governmental and environmental authorities have increasingly protested, appealed and petitioned in the past years.
Throughout Italy many movements and committees have arisen to coordinate, inform and engage for the defence of common goods and territories. During the Paris Climate Conferences (COP21), many criticised the Italian government’s “Sblocca Italia” (Unlock Italy) proposal, dubbing it “Unlock Hydrocarbons”, as its provisions would ease the way for drills and incinerators.
In 2013, 40,000 people marched in Pescara against the “oil drift” of energy politics, topped last year by a crowd of 60,000 in Lanciano.
Although they feel threatened, Silvia’s family does not want to leave. They would rather stay and fight to protect their territory, resources and people against illegitimate or harmful projects. “They are degrading Abruzzo—“Europe’s lungs”— reducing it to a mining district,” Silvia said. “Italy is becoming Europe’s corridor, a hub transporting energy from south to north, [from east] to west.”
“They are degrading Abruzzo, ‘Europe's lungs.'” Photo from the No Elettrodotto 380 kV Villanova-Gissi Facebook page.
Terna had plans in place to activate the transmission line by December 30, 2015, rushing against adverse legal proceedings like elsewhere in Italy, but were later reported to have said they would activate the line progressively, with completion scheduled for the end of January. Two transmission-line projects have been blocked by the State Council: the Udine Ovest–Redipuglia in 2015, and Dolo–Camin in 2013. Will 2016 be the year business triumphs over socio-environmental dissent? Or will it be a turning point in the movement for the protection of common goods?
“It’s not anymore just an environmentalist concern,” Silvia said, “since it involves how we invest and take care of the things that allow us to live, thinking about which economic systems are able to value such resources without depleting them.”
Stories like Silvia’s are increasingly common, and they speak critically to global models of development. What unites such struggles is the appeal for deep participation and attentive human and environmental impact assessments of economic and political decisions, or lack of thereof. It’s not energetic, but rather a deficit of proper governance.
Andrea Cangialosi has a training in IT, philosophy and sociology, and an interest in struggles for emancipation and planetary conditions. He has been published by Jungle World (German), RioOnWatch.org (English and Portuguese). He tweets at @AndreaCangialos.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Guest Contributor


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Mapping the Deaths of Protesters in Ethiopia · Global Voices
Endalkachew Chala

Oromo protesters gather in Addis Ababa. Flickr image uploaded by user Gadaa.com.
Warning: Interactive map contains graphic and disturbing images.
Since the beginning of November 2015, at least 140 peaceful protesters have been killed in Ethiopia according to Human Rights Watch. Photo and video evidence suggests that most of the people were killed by bullets fired at close range.
There are also reports by Oromo rights activists indicating that at least 10 individuals died from torture inflicted while they were in prisons.
University students, women, farmers and school teachers have all been victims of government violence.
Among the dead, more than 70% are male students. Male farmers account for about 20% of the deaths.
The remainder are women. A seven-month pregnant woman along with her sister-in-law were killed while they were running away to escape arrest.
It was reported their bodies were discovered in scrub-land days after their disappearance.
Below is an interactive map created by this author with help from Oromo activist Abiy Atomssa. The map lists 111 people that have died during the protests in recent months.
We ask anyone who has evidence of the deaths or disappearance of protesters to contact us via editor@globalvoicesonline.org.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, the Ethiopian government and pro-government commentators say the number of dead is around five people.
In a radio interview, the head of a pro-government human rights commission, Addisu Gebregziabher said for the sake of security the government was forced to use violent measures against protesters.
The protests began when the government made plans for the expansion of the capital Addis Ababa into land inhabited by the Oromo ethnic group, which accounts for almost a third of Ethiopia's population.
The decision compounded poor relations between the Oromo and the government dominated by members of the northern Tigrayan minority.
The culturally distinct Oromo people complain of a lack of economic opportunity in Ethiopia and regular state violence against Oromo communities.

author: Endalkachew Chala


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The Caribbean Mourns David Bowie · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

“Bowie is watching you” — posters for the David Bowie exhibit at the V&A. Photo by Sarah Stierch, CC 2.0.
The Caribbean, like much of the rest of the world, woke up to the news that musician David Bowie — that temporal creature who morphed seamlessly from androgynous Ziggy Stardust to elder rock statesman — had died after an 18-month battle with cancer, just two days after his 69th birthday.
The overwhelming reaction to his death on social media throughout the Caribbean is testament to the magnitude of Bowie's talent and the ways in which his music — always creative and original — defied geographical and racial lines. Most Caribbean netizens were blindsided by the announcement, since his illness wasn't common knowledge. Trinidad and Tobago-based Internet user Patricia Worrell admitted that “the news really hit me with absolutely no preparation”, while Rhoda Bharath wrote on Facebook:
I can't with this today.
My first musical icon.
Transitioned.
RIP Bowie.
Compatriot Natasha Ramnauth, like many other netizens throughout the region, was stunned:
Noooooooooo. The Thin White Duke has gone to the long sleep, thanks for the music Mr. Bowie.
Trinidadian musician Corey Atheleny Wallace, who is now based in the UK, posted a link to Bowie's new album and wrote:
2 days after his birthday and new album release the legendary David Bowie passes on to the ether. May your soul find peace, rest and music in the next dimension. Thank you for your amazing legacy Sir Bowie. A master till the very last moments in this plane. Big blessed love.
For the Caribbean's music lovers, the loss was made that much more unbearable on the heels of Trinidadian steel pan arranger Jit Samaroo's death late last week. Khafra Rudder, son of legendary calypsonian David Rudder, called it “a sad day in music history”. Trinidad-based rock singer Michael Ross lamented:
Ah boy! !!… like it's the season of the reaping of souls !!! safe trip Ziggy !!!
In a telephone interview, Nigel Thompson said that the outpouring of appreciation for Bowie's music might have something to do with the fact that people felt connected to him and his message, adding, “You don't get the same level of connection with today's artists”. On Facebook, he also praised Bowie's originality:
Before sampling, before drum machines there was simply music….. RIP David Bowie ……
Trinidadian Skye Hernandez said:
Growing up in our era, Bowie was a guiding light — an assurance that you could claim the freedom to express your individuality.
Referring to Bowie as “the coolest dude on several planets”, Twitter user Judy Raymond agreed:
All us teenage weirdos felt that way: He ‘Looked Like Someone from the Same Planet as I Did’ https://t.co/ACsZ9UOBUw via @thedailybeast
— Judy Raymond (@heyjudeTT) January 11, 2016
Rose-Marie Ingrid Lemessy-Forde posted a video of Bowie and Freddie Mercury performing their duet “Under Pressure” and admitted:
I listened to this with awesome sadness. Another of my favourite singers gone. RIP David Bowie. Maybe you and Freddie Mercury will be making music together wherever you are😢
She later added:
His career was so wide and deep and his ability to reinvent himself so many times make him a truly timeless artiste.
In Jamaica, Annie Paul was irritated by the fact that some radio DJs couldn't even get the legendary singer's name right:
Someone please tell radio announcers here that it’s David BO-wie not BOW-ie as in bow wow…
However, most netizens appear to understand not only the pronunciation of his name, but also the fact that Bowie's influence transcended music — he made an impact on film, fashion, and the art world, and enjoyed toying with cultural and social norms. Facebook user Franka Philip said:
Interestingly I spoke about David Bowie last week in the context of Jaden Smith and womenswear. I pointed out that Bowie had been there, done that decades ago.
Many Facebook users, grasping for the words to express their grief, ended up quoting Bowie's lyrics, from both his final album and earlier works.
Jamaica-born writer and 2015 Man Booker Prize winner Marlon James was shattered at Bowie's passing, saying in a public Facebook post:
There was a very dark, disturbing time in my life when I was purging records left, right and center […] But for some reason, and I’m not sure why, I never got rid of Bowie. […] 2005 and I put on ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars,’ which I hadn’t listen to in a while since it wasn't my favourite. At then end of Ziggy is a song called ‘Rock and Roll Suicide.’ I don’t think I have the words to describe hearing it but I’ll say this. Everything I hated about myself at the beginning of that song, became everything I loved about myself at the end of it. Sure it wasn't that instantaneous, but every time Bowie sang ‘you’re wonderful, give me your hand,’ I felt like there was an actual person pulling me from wreckage and not letting go. I wish I could write more, but I can’t stop crying. This man was everything to me. Hot tramp, I love you so.
Caribbean netizens also found solace in retweeting and sharing of posts from outside of the region — it seemed to be a way to bond with other grieving Bowie fans across the globe. Rhoda Bharath shared this photo of a sign on the London Undergound, adding:
A sign at one of London's tube stations. (Widely shared on Facebook.)
Nicely done.
Trinidadian diaspora blogger Patrice Grell Yursik posted a stirring tribute on Facebook:
We went to the David Bowie retrospective on the last day it was open in Chicago. […] It was packed. We shuffled in a tight crowd from exhibit to exhibit, and it was overwhelming but so worth it. To see his brilliance. Those costumes. The influences he drew from. The way he changed music and then segued into film. Brilliant. Nobody else will ever be like David Bowie. I can't believe he's gone.
Thank you for taking risks and showing the world what a risk taker could do.
In an interview with Global Voices, Yursik discussed the strong regional reaction to Bowie's death:
I wasn't surprised at the universal reaction […] but the Caribbean reaction was thrilling and reassuring in a different way. Growing up in Trinidad, it wasn't always easy to discover older music in different genres and I sometimes felt like a teenage misfit listening to The Beatles, Paul Simon and David Bowie. You have to seek it out. I love that so many of us did, and we are all feeling the loss.
She also felt that Bowie translated so well to the Caribbean because “his music was about pushing boundaries and creating new personas”:
I always thought he would love our Carnival, especially the heyday of theatrical mas by Minshall.
Finally, British-born Lara Quentrall-Thomas, who lives in Trinidad, posted a tweet that has been widely shared — although apparently wrongly attributed:
If you're ever sad, just remember the world is 4.543 billion years old and you somehow managed to exist at the same time as David Bowie.
— Dean Podestá (@JeSuisDean) January 10, 2016

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


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Who Protects the Rights of Russian Internet Users? Not These Guys. · Global Voices
Tanya Lokot

Russia's Internet ombudsman and Putin's Internet advisor want nothing to do with user rights. Clipart by Till Teenck for the Noun Project. Images mixed by Tetyana Lokot.
We already knew the Russian government wasn't feeling too charitable toward Internet freedom, what with the far-reaching plans by Russian state censor Roscomnadzor and other state bodies to continue tightening their grip on the RuNet. But while everyone and their mom wants to regulate and restrict online communications in Russia, not many government officials or even quasi-independent Internet experts are rushing to take the side of the users.
Case in point: apparently, neither Russia's Internet ombudsman Dmitry Marinichev nor the newly-appointed Internet advisor to the Russian President German Klimenko believe they are in any way responsible for defending the rights of Internet users in Russia. Instead, they suggest someone else—say, human rights advocates—should stand guard on the issue of user rights.
In a January 10 Echo Moskvy interview Klimenko (profiled by Russian news website Meduza after his recent appointment as Vladimir Putin's Internet advisor) flat out refused to concern himself with free speech or copyright issues online.
Я не омбудсмен. Не надо ко мне приставать с вопросами про «за ретвит два годика дали», это не моя проблема. Не приставай ко мне с авторскими правами, это не моя зона ответственности. Моя зона ответственности всего одна — экономика.
I am not the ombudsman. Don't bother me with questions about “two-year term for a retweet,” it's not my problem. Don't come to me with copyright issues, this is not my sphere of responsibility. I only have one sphere of responsibility, and that's economics.
Earlier, Klimenko made waves on social media after stating in a TV Rain interview that he thought the Telegram messenger would “either cooperate (with the Russian government) or be shut down.” At the start of January 2016 Klimenko chatted with BBC Russian and told journalists he believed Russia would benefit from a digital Iron Curtain. “If we close the virtual borders, all our websites win. Yandex wins. Mail.ru wins,” Klimenko said, accusing Google, Facebook, and other international Internet companies of “gobbling up our advertising market.” Klimenko told the BBC his work as Putin's new advisor would mostly focus on moderating communications between lawmakers and the Internet industry, channeling state spending on software, promoting online payments and e-education.
Curiously, the Russian Internet ombudsman Dmitry Marinichev, whom Klimenko namechecked in his interview, also shrugged off the mantle of responsibility for the rights of Russian Internet users, in a comment to industry website vc.ru:
Я работаю по проблемам бизнеса в интернете и ИТ на основе их обращений. В большинстве случаев это общая для отрасли проблематика, жалобы от бизнеса коллективные. Чаще [всего], связанные с новыми законодательными инициативами.
С гражданами несколько сложнее и проще одновременно. Я думаю, что действия гражданина — это действия гражданина. И неважно, где они происходят — в онлайне или офлайне. Если затронуты его права, то есть у нас омбудсмен по правам человека, правозащитные организации и так далее.
I work with the issues of Internet and IT businesses based on their appeals. In the majority of cases these are issues common to the industry, and the complaints from companies are collective. Most often they're connected to the new legislative initiatives.
With citizens it's at once more complicated and much simpler. I think the actions of a citizen are the actions of a citizen. And it doesn't matter where they take place–online or offline. If a citizen's rights are at issue, we have a human rights ombudsman, human rights organizations, and so on.
The human rights advocates, who both Klimenko and Marinichev point to in their comments, have been sounding the alarm about the growing number of restrictive norms regulating online speech and activity in Russia and condemning the increasingly harsher sentences for violating those norms. Posting images, text, and videos online, accompanied by charges of extremism or hate speech, have already led to real prison terms for users such as activist Darya Polyudova and blogger Vadim Tyumentsev. Those who are fighting for Russian Internet users’ rights fear that these verdicts are only the beginning of a bigger crackdown.

author: Tanya Lokot


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Young Innovator From Somalia’s Puntland Builds Vehicles of Hope · Global Voices
Faaris Adam

Gulled Adan, the 13 year old innovator
Gulled Adan Abdi, 13, was born in Buuhoodle region in Puntland, an autonomous state inside Somalia.
He came from a deprived community. Gulled’s father died when Gulled was still a baby, and as a result he had to care for two of his siblings.
He is now in the third grade.
Despite the hardship Gulled and his family are going through, Gulled assembles toy airplanes, armored cars and fans using spare materials and powered by scrap automotive batteries.
Screenshot of images of toys assembled by Gulled. Photos taken from the information department of the President of Puntland and used with permission.
Gulled comes from a country that was absorbed by civil war for almost two and a half decades.
The president of Somalia’s Puntland government, Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, is among those who have praised Gulled for his extraordinary inventions.
Gulled met with President Ali, Vice President Abdihakin Abdullahi Haji Omar and Parliament Speaker at Puntland State House on Monday, 4 January 2015.
Unlike Somaliland to its west, Puntland does not seek outright independence from Somalia. Having declared its autonomy in 1998, the territory's leadership have repeatedly stated their wishes for a federal Somalia.
Gulled standing with the President of Somalia’s Puntland Government Abdiweli Mohamed and his cabinet. Photos taken from the information department of the President of Puntland and used with permission.
In an exclusive interview with Global Voices Gulled described how he began his hobby:
I am a third grader and none of these things were taught in school, this is something I tried in my free time and I guess it was worth it!
Gulled’s mother, Mrs. Maryam Hassan, was more expansive when asked the same question:
When Gulled’s father passed away I had to step up and provide for my children, I used to leave them by themselves in order to provide their meals and I used to tie Gulled’s legs so that he wouldn't leave the house or get lost because I couldn’t afford a babysitter. To keep him busy I used to give him some plastic items and ask him to assemble them. I guess that’s how all these wonderful inventions began.
In a country the international media mostly refers to only in connection with war, chaos and destruction, Gulled's story is a testimony to the enduring human capacity to innovate, craft and create.

author: Faaris Adam


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Zam Zam Cola, a Symbol of Happier Diplomatic Times Between Iran and Saudi Arabia · Global Voices
Amira Al Hussaini

A bottle of the popular cola soft drink Zam Zam. Image from Wikimedia under creative commons license.
With sectarian tensions ongoing in the Middle East, many people forget the commonalities between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, such as their mutual reverence for the holy sites of Mecca, located in Saudi Arabia. Within Mecca, in the Masjid al-Haram exists the Zam Zam well, a source of water revered by all Muslims, said to have been created by God.
What many might not know is that this name was years ago repurposed as a popular Iranian soft drink, Zam Zam Cola.
While the relationship between the majority Shiite Iran and the predominately Sunni Saudi Arabia is in turmoil in the aftermath of protests against Saudi Arabia's execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al Nimr, it is interesting to note that this Iranian cola drink was once the preferred choice of Saudi Arabia.
#zamzamcola #cola #iran #desert #travel
A photo posted by Marco Pesavento (@marcopesa) on
Created as a subsidiary of Pepsi in 1954 for the Iranian market, Zam Zam Cola became completely nationalized following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. It was created in reference to the famous holy well and is today distributed in nearby countries such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and United Arab Emirates (UAE). All these aforementioned countries have now changed their diplomatic status with Iran — either cutting ties completely or, in the case of the UAE, downgrading diplomatic relations.
What might be surprising to some is that in 2002 Iran's Zam Zam Cola received a boost by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab countries following an effort to boycott American companies such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi and McDonald's following American support of Israel in the midst of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.
A 2002 New York Times article reported that the Iranian company delivered “10 million bottles to sweltering Saudi Arabia after a Saudi boycott of Coke and Pepsi.”
Since the beginning of the recent tensions, Iran has called for a ban on all Saudi products from entering the country as well as a suspension of Iranians performing the Umrah Hajj pilgrimage. Similarly, the Saudi Arabian foreign ministry also announced that it not only was severing diplomatic relations, but that it would cut off all commercial relations with Iran too.
While Iranian social media users have been preoccupied with commenting on Saudi Arabia's human rights record and the attacks on the Saudi embassy and consulates in Iran, Saudi Arabian and Gulf Arab social media users have been expressing their distrust of Iranian products and supporting the calls to boycott Iranian goods.
For example, one user with the Twitter handle @Death_To_iran exclaimed that “Iran would do anything to achieve its devious goals, including poisoning its goods. Beware so that you don't become a victim.”
He further claimed:
اصيب بالسرطان الكثير من مواطني الدول التي تستورد بضائع ايران، فقاطعها قبل ان تكون المصاب القادم #مقاطعة_المنتجات_الإيرانية_مطلب
— معآ لطرد إيران (@Death_To_iran) January 7, 2016
Many people caught cancer from the countries which import goods from Iran. Boycott them before you get infected
Another Twitter user, Diyala Alkhair, tied boycott with religious duty:
مقاطعة ايران واجب شرعي يأثم من يخالفه، لأن حقن الدماء يكون به وحقنها واجب شرعي #خلو_المنتجات_الإيرانية_تعفن #مقاطعة_المنتجات_الإيرانية_مطلب
— ديالى الخير (@DiyalaAlkhair) January 7, 2016
Boycotting Iranian products is a Sharia compliant duty and those who go against it will be committing a sin because it will help stop the spilling of blood and that's a religious duty
Another tweet by the same user double down on the rhetoric:
ايران تبني اقتصادها بدماء الاطفال والضعفاء، فاحذر ان تعينها بشراء سلعها #مقاطعة_المنتجات_الإيرانية_مطلب
— ديالى الصابرة (@DiyalaAlsabira) January 7, 2016
Iran builds its economy on the blood of children and the weak. Be careful not to enable it by buying its products.
And Mogatah-sa from Saudi Arabia took photographs of Iranian products while strolling through a Saudi market, calling for their boycott:
مجموعة من المنتجات والسلع الإيرانية التي تم رصدها في الأسواق والمحلات #قاطعوهم #مقاطعه_المنتجات_الايرانيه_مطلب pic.twitter.com/COu7RJwFmw
— مقاطعة #وعي (@Mogatah_sa) January 7, 2016
This is a selection of Iranian products we found in the markets and shops. Boycott them
The above tweet has been retweeted more than 320 times and liked 60 times. It has also been published in different formats by different users.
Another tweet, also shared widely, urged Saudis to support their government in boycotting Iran:
واجبك الإنضمام ومقاطعة منتجات أعداء الإسلام وقوفا مع قرار حكومتنا الرشيده بقطعها العلاقات التجارية مع إيران pic.twitter.com/HoMWowmPWH
— مقاطعة #وعي (@Mogatah_sa) January 8, 2016
Your duty is to join and boycott the enemies of Islam in line with our government's decision to cut its commercial relations with Iran
It seems that the days of Zam Zam Cola drinkers in Saudi Arabia are numbered. Reversely, the Saudi Arabian stock market has been showing signs of decline in response to the loss of the Iranian market for companies such as the food producing Savola group.

author: Amira Al Hussaini


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Hong Kongers Fear That Their City’s Autonomy From China Might Be Next to Disappear · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Thousands rallied on Sunday demanding the release of the missing five booksellers. Image from PH Yang.
Thousands of protesters rallied on Sunday, 10 January, demanding the release of missing five booksellers who were believed to have been abducted by mainland Chinese authorities because of their publishing work critical of the Chinese Communist Party.
In addition, a number of influential community leaders from the political, legal and art sectors spoke out in a viral video titled “Disappearance of Lee Bo… Disappearance of Hong Kong”, calling for international attention on their disappearance.
The video explains the alleged cross-border abduction of Lee Bo, who disappeared December 30, becoming the fifth person from a bookstore specialising in publishing and selling literature banned in China to disappear in so many months, has violated the “one country, two systems” principle and hence the very safety of people in the city.
Under the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which was signed in 1984, then British colony Hong Kong would continue under a capitalist system and enjoy a high degree of political, legal, economic and cultural autonomy once it was handed back to mainland China. However, with the disappearance of Lee Bo, the city's constitutional protection seems to have also disappeared — evidence indicates that Lee may have been illegally kidnapped to mainland China without travel documents to “assist an investigation”.
Hong Kong police made an inquiry with mainland Chinese law enforcement authorities, but so far there isn't any official explanation for the disappearance and whereabouts of the five missing booksellers.
Instead, a handwritten letter by Lee Bo that was reportedly faxed to one of his colleagues suggests that he entered mainland China voluntarily by himself to assist an investigation. Another letter together with a video, in which Lee urges the public not to make a fuss about his disappearance, were also released via pro-Beijing media outlets.
In response to the perceived threat, thousands of protesters led by over ten pro-democracy legislators rallied in Hong Kong on 10 January.
“He was detained, his freedom [was] lost, fell under the control of the strong authorities, he is now being manipulated like a dough,” Lew Mon-hung, a former member of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, told independent online news Hong Kong Free Press during the rally. Lew said he joined the rally “so that the whole world will know Hong Kong people treasure the civil rights granted by the Basic Law, and the freedom from fear.”
As explained in the “Disappearance of Lee Bo… Disappearance of Hong Kong” video, the incident is not only about Hong Kong, but the safety of those who are living and working in this international city. As Gregory Wong, a local actor said in the video:
I do not know how bad or how worse it can get. In the future, what can we say and what we cannot say in the public, or to a friend, or even in a phone about the Chinese government, about the Hong Kong government, about the leader of Hong Kong Mr. CY Leung or with regards to anything that is remotely or directly related to politics. I mean, maybe one day we will be taken away just because we are not happy about the political system.
At least two of the missing booksellers carry foreign passports. Gui Minhai, the owner of the bookstore, is a Swedish citizen and Lee Bo is a British passport holder.

author: Oiwan Lam


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Is the Level of Vitriol Against Cricketer Chris Gayle Justified? · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Cricketer Chris Gayle. Photo by NAPARAZZI. Used under a CC BY-SA 2.0 license.
The on-camera pass that West Indian cricketer Chris Gayle made at Australian sports reporter Melanie McLaughlin at the beginning of January still has a lot of traction in the Caribbean, sparking online discussions about sexism, sexual harassment and women's rights.
Now Jamaican bloggers are taking a closer look at the behaviour of their home-grown cricketer, with some questioning the level of outrage against Gayle and others framing the issue as being representative of Jamaican culture.
McLaughlin had asked Gayle, who plays for the Melbourne Renegades, about his approach to the innings in a match he had just played against the Hobart Hurricanes, but she got this reply instead:
I mean…I wanted to come and have an interview with you as well…that's the reason why I'm here, so…just to see your eyes for the first time…it's nice, so hopefully we'll win this game and we can have a drink after…don't blush, baby!
RPJS, writing for Raw Politics…Yaadie-style blog, suggested that bad behaviour was the problem:
It is about Gayle announcing his intentions towards the women in question, in what might be considered as an aggressively sexual way, that is neither flattering nor invited. […]
[Gayle] felt that […] this was entirely within the remit of appropriateness and never appeared concerned either about the timing or the place of his remarks. […]
But Annie Paul, who blogs at Active Voice, had a different take on the matter, making the point that the way the clip was edited contributed to the degree of backlash against Gayle:
I thought from viewing the clip that Gayle had countered the reporter’s question with his flirtatious comments, refusing to stick to the subject of the game or even answer questions about it. But why did it start so abruptly I kept wondering. Why did her question seem truncated? […] Shouldn’t we examine what was said immediately before and after the edited clip before deciding Gayle’s behaviour is/was beyond the pale?
So she did, posting a video of the full interview and saying:
When you look at it you find that McLaughlin had already asked a couple of questions about the game, received appropriate answers from Gayle, and that it was towards the tail end of the brief q and a that Gayle slipped in his less than stellar advance to the reporter.
Somehow this casts a different light on the whole matter for me. Gayle’s comments were clearly inappropriate and deserve criticism but the kind of vituperative condemnation and hate that’s been directed at him and the amount of outrage the matter has generated seems like overkill.
Paul went on to call out the “selective outrage” from people like former Australian captain Ian Chappell, who demanded that “a zero-tolerance message” be sent immediately:
Well blow me down under! Is this the same skipper who, with his brother, presided over the blatant racism of Aussie cricket in the 70s with its notorious ‘sledging’ or what has been called ‘the dark art of verbal abuse in sport'? Where was his no tolerance policy then? Actually mate? Your track record doesn’t warrant the high horse you’ve chosen to ride against Gayle.
She also criticised Australian sports columnist Malcolm Knox for a reaction piece he penned in “atrociously articulated” Jamaican Patwa, the English-based creole language spoken in Jamaica, attempting to “racesplain” (explaining racist behaviour in an attempt to justify racism) to Gayle. She pointed to a tweet by screenwriter Peter Mattessi that summed up her feelings on the matter:
Still can't get over that Malcolm Knox piece. The written equivalent of wearing blackface and dancing while singing Island In The Sun.
— Peter Mattessi (@pmattessi) enero 9, 2016
Raw Politics, however, was not letting go of the Gayle issue so easily, instead making the connection between the cricketer's awkward display and the “culture of excess” in which the blogger claims, linking to an Al Jazeera article, that “at least forty percent of underage girls and, in many cases boys, are violently initiated into sex in Jamaica“:
In this culture and society where all kinds of premiums are placed on a certain representation of masculinity, women and girls, especially, are forced to deal with men and their aggressive displays of sexuality at all times and in various ways, regardless of the consequences.
The blogger suggested that this “culture” may be “rooted in a history of subjection on the plantation” and even called Jamaica's dancehall music into question, saying:
Dancehall and other popular expressions of culture in Jamaica are replete with the ideas of uncontrollable, violent and, oddly enough, desirable masculinities. […]
These are routinely paraded as a form of ideal to which boys are to aspire and to which women are expected to acquiesce, without complaint. […]
We may want to rethink this ‘Jamaican culture’ brand that has been tagged to Gayle’s clearly out-of-line and out-of-place remarks and consider, for a moment, how we have blithely ignored various forms of sexual harassment, almost as if it were a standard part of male-female relations, in the public domain.
Annie Paul was not in disagreement over the sexism aspect of the issue, saying:
The problem for us in the Caribbean is not Chris Gayle and his outlook per se. It’s the casual sexism of Caribbean masculinity in general that really needs taking in hand. […]
On the eve of the enactment of a sexual harrassment bill in Jamaica an alarmingly high number of men here, journalists, men on the street, university lecturers and others, have chosen to ignore this view completely and insist on discussing the matter as if men have the right to flirt with women they’re attracted to whenever the urge takes them. This is problematic.
The online discussion as to whether Gayle should be made the whipping boy for the region's all-too-common display of sexism — and its ideas about masculinity — will no doubt continue.


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Japan Celebrates the Spectacular Images of a Volcanic Island Being Born · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

(Caption reads, from left to right) Video: Japan Coast Guard. Breaking: Latest footage of Nishinoshima eruptions. Cinder cone keeps growing, new beach created, too. October 2015. ANN News official YouTube channel.
A volcanic island located in the Pacific Ocean, far to the south of the Japanese main islands, has captured the attention of Japanese social media users for the past two years.
Nishinoshima (西之島) is located in the Ogasawara Islands, nearly 1,000 kilometers south of Tokyo. The island is actually the top of a massive undersea volcano that rises up 3,000 meters from the ocean floor.
Since November 2013, volcanic eruptions have joined the two islands, increasing the overall area by four times to 2.7 km². The eruptions have created a smoking cinder cone 110 meters above sea level.
NASA image of a new island (initially called “Niijima”) in December 2013. Ongoing eruptions would quickly merge Niijima with nearby Nishinoshima. (Map orientation: north is up.)
This tweet from Japan's Coordinating Committee for Earthquake Protection (GSI) shows just how much the island has grown over the past two years.
The white dotted line shows the contours of the original island. The blue line shows where volcanic eruptions created a new island in December 2013. Over time, the two islands have merged.
西之島の計測結果を公開しました 　国土地理院は、平成27年12月9日に西之島周辺の空中写真を撮影し、面積、体積、最高標高を計測してそれらの結果等を公開します。 https://t.co/ggC8QGSNXq pic.twitter.com/nUMhzfP5uH
— 国土地理院地理地殻活動研究センター (@GSI_Research) January 8, 2016
Information about Nishinoshima's change in area have been released. An aerial photo taken by GSI on December 9, 2015 (Heisei 27), shows how the island has grown over the past two years.
The spectacular eruptions combined with the visible, rapid growth of the island has captured the imagination of the Japanese public.
A page devoted to Nishinoshima has generated more than 200,000 views and dozens of pages of updates on the Japanese social networking and meme aggregator site Matome Naver.
The eruptions over the past two years have provided some spectacular images:
NHKの西之島のやつすげー！ pic.twitter.com/YFj2jsUXbU
— ステフ (@iri_kazu3) December 30, 2015
NHK's images of Nishinoshima are amazing!
Back in 2013, when the volcano first started erupting, a brief viral meme was generated comparing the shape of new island to Snoopy.
完全に一致 小笠原の新島、隣の西之島とつながった　上空から確認 – 朝日新聞デジタル (http://t.co/VrLcRhYhoH) http://t.co/SnjvuNNDYY pic.twitter.com/EGFJbOGFyT
— てっけん / Hayato Ikeya (@tekken8810) December 26, 2013
Now that the two islands [Niijima and Nishinoshima] have merged completely to form a new island, you can see the resemblance from the air.
However, the resemblance to Snoopy was short-lived. During July and August 2014, lava flow increased, causing the island to expand rapidly to the east.
From time to time, the media would report on the area's spectacular images of volcanic eruptions.
At one point, part of the coastline collapsed into the ocean, actually reducing the size of the island.
西之島、ちょっとスリムに　火山活動一段落で溶岩減る https://t.co/fHQ94JX4C1 今後は陸と海の生物がどのように増えていくか楽しみですね。
— 海洋環境研究室@鹿児島大学 (@kaiyou_kadai) January 9, 2016
Nishinoshima looks a little slimmer following a landslide after an eruption […]. It's interesting to anticipate what kinds of plant and marine life will colonize the island.
As of December 29, the surface of Nishinoshima consists of lava flows and a striking cinder cone. It's anticipated the island will continue to grow in the years to come, although volcanic activity seems to be paused for the moment.
【西ノ島の火山活動小康状態】 海上保安庁h発表によると、２年もの間噴火し続け，約4億トン以上の溶岩を噴き出していた西之島はその活動を休止している模様だとしています。 12月22日の西之島 11月17日の西ノ島 pic.twitter.com/77pDR1PVnl
— 八坂 類 (@SAREMUNOOKA) December 29, 2015
[Nishinoshima volcanic activity to experience lull] According to the Japan Coast Guard, while the Nishinoshima cinder cones have been ejecting boulders as heavy as four tons, for the time being volcanic activity is expected to cease.

author: Nevin Thompson


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Macedonia’s Highest Court Confirms Fine for Journalists Who Quoted Statements Alleging Corruption · Global Voices
Goran Rizaov

Editor-in-chief of Fokus magazine Jadranka Kostova and journalist Vlado Apostolov coming out from court hearing in May 2013. Video screen grab from A1on.mk.
Even though he’s now a former head of the Macedonian Secret Service, Sasho Mijalkov seems to still wield a big influence on the judicial system in the country, especially when his “honor and reputation” is question.
The Constitutional Court in Macedonia confirmed a fine of 8,300 euros levied against two journalists from independent magazine Fokus, Jadranka Kostova and Vlado Apostolov, for defamation or “violating the honor and reputation of the former head of the secret service” — who is also a cousin of the outgoing Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski.
This was the third time that Macedonian courts have confirmed the sentence for quoting a source who said Mijalkov was involved in corruption. The first degree court set the fine for the journalists at the beginning 2014, the Appellate Court confirmed the ruling in September 2014 and the Constitutional Court refused the journalists’ appeal in November 2015.
Fokus magazine's front page featuring Sasho Mijalkov Photo: Fokus.mk
The Constitutional Court in its decision stated that the lower degree courts correctly found that there were no grounds for excluding the responsibility of Apostolov and Kostova. The court then stated that the published stories did not contain information of public interest but had intention “to spread rumors, which seriously violated someone's honor and reputation”.
The journalists from Fokus magazine, however, claim that the stories were published in order to encourage debate on issues of public interest and that the stories’ content undoubtedly concerned matters of public interest.
Kostova, who is editor-in-chief of the magazine, had to pay 5,000 euros, and journalist Apostolov was fined 1,000 euros. In addition, they both must cover the court expenses of 3,300 euros, which in total adds up to 8,300 euros.
The former head of the secret service, who resigned due to other corruption and misuse of power allegations made by the opposition, sued Fokus in January 2013. Fokus published several stories with statements by Igor Ilievski, Macedonia's former ambassador to the Czech Republic, in which he accuses Mijalkov for corruption.
Although the journalists asked Mijalkov for his reply to the allegations, he refused to participate in an interview and then sued.
In October 2014, the Association of Journalists of Macedonia called on all journalists and citizens to show solidarity with Fokus journalists and help fundraise the amounts set by the courts for the investigative pieces they published.
Other civic organizations like the National Network against Homophobia and Transphobia of Macedonia organized a fundraising event in Skopje Old Town on October 14, 2014, to aid Fokus in covering the defamation fine and cover court costs.
Fokus magazine's front page after the initial fine for the journalists in 2014
The case was highlighted as an instance of media intimidation by UN Rapporteur for Freedom of Speech Frank La Rue in June 2013. Individual journalists, the Association of Journalists of Macedonia, the Journalists’ Trade Union, Reporters without Borders, and other organizations interpreted the rulings as a clear warning to media, and many confirmed the “chilling effect” this has had over Macedonian journalists.
Nikola Mladenov, the publisher and editor of Fokus, was found dead in a car accident on 27 March 2013, under murky circumstances. After the accident, Fokus daily and weekly magazine stopped publishing. The weekly magazine resumed publication in July 2013.
Mladenov’s death was mentioned in the so-called “bombshells” — leaked wiretaps illegally recorded the by Secret Service run by Mijalkov — that the country's political opposition published during 2015. That particular “bomb” revealed conversations among top Macedonian politicians, including former Minister of Interior Gordana Jankuloska, her deputy Ivo Koteski, and Prime Minister Gruevski's chief of cabinet Martin Protuger, indicating that officials interfered in the investigation and organized harassment of journalists mourning Mladenov's death. As a consequence, opposition leader Zoran Zaev and the Association of Journalists of Macedonia issued demands for the investigation to be reopened.

author: Goran Rizaov


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Saudi Arabia Arrests Samar Badawi for Tweeting on Behalf of Her Jailed Husband · Global Voices
Amira Al Hussaini

Human rights defender Samar Badawi has been arrested in Saudi Arabia reportedly for tweeting on behalf of her husband, jailed human rights activist and lawyer Waleed Abulkhair. Photograph shared by her sister in law Ensaf Haidar (@miss9afi) on Twitter
Saudi human rights activist Samar Badawi was arrested on January 12, 2016, allegedly for running the Twitter account of her jailed husband, Waleed Abulkhair, a leading Saudi human rights lawyer and defender.
In July 2014, Abulkhair was sentenced to 15 years in prison and was convicted under a new anti-terrorism law for “insulting general order” and “inflaming public opinion”. His Twitter account, @WaleedAbulkhair, which Badawi is accused of running, has 82.5K followers — and continued to run even after her arrest.
Samar Badawi is the sister of liberal blogger Raif Badawi, who was famously sentenced to 1000 lashes and 10 years in prison in Saudi for “insulting Islam.” The news of Samar Badawi's arrest was reported on Twitter by her sister-in-law, Ensaf Haidar.
Haidar writes:
Urgent: #Samar_Badawi was arrested on the charge of directing @WaleedAbulkhair twitter account. pic.twitter.com/GW1Jjwt6K2
— Ensaf haidar (@miss9afi) January 12, 2016
And adds:
Urgent: #Samar_Badawi was transferred to the Dhahran central prison, where both #Raif_Badawi and #Waleed_Abulkhair are.
— Ensaf haidar (@miss9afi) January 12, 2016
Badawi's arrest was condemned by netizens around the world, including human rights defenders and journalists (link leads to Arabic-language petition) who called on the Saudi authorities to unconditionally release her. UPDATE [posted 1/13/2016 at 15:06 GMT]: Badawi was reportedly released on bail several hours after her arrest, and is currently facing interrogation by police.
Saudi Elham Al Manea describes Badawi's arrest as “unwise,” saying it would push Saudis to revolt using force:
Utterly unwise: With arrest of #Samar_Badawi, current Saudi leadership is shutting the door in the face of those demanding reform peacefully
— Elham Manea (@ElhamManea) January 12, 2016
Blogger Eman Al Najfan writes:
Peaceful activist & winner of 2012 Woman of Courage award @samarbadawi15 arrested today. #SamarBadawi #SaudiArabia pic.twitter.com/rWQbdCa3H9
— Eman AlNafjan (@Saudiwoman) January 12, 2016
And from Canada, JSheehan urges people to read Raif Badawi's book entitled “1,000 Lashes: Because I Say What I Think”:
Samar Badawi fought for Human Rights, as did her brother #RaifBadawi. Pls read his book 1000 lashes on iBooks https://t.co/PJ8dOQJmoN
— JSheehan (@TuesCheek) January 12, 2016
Others, like Maysaa Al Amoudi, shared one of Badawi's recent tweets saying:
Simple words could lead to prison #FreeSamar https://t.co/RgfOaEC5kf
— Maysaa al amoudi (@maysaaX) January 12, 2016
In that tweet, Badawi wrote:
Silence is killing us but we are steadfast
But Badawi's arrest isn't keeping many Saudis silent. This anonymous user tweets:
#اعتقال_سمر_بدوي القمع في تزايد والنهب والسرقات في تزايد والتخبط والتهور في تزايد لاشيء يقل سوى حريتنا وكرامتنا في هذا البلد
— نسيم (@rooo7_7rrh) January 12, 2016
Repression is increasing, corruption and theft is record high and haphazard decisions are on the rise. Nothing is decreasing in this country except for our freedoms and dignity.
Another Twitter user prays for God's wrath on those who committed injustice against Badawi. He tweets:
زوجها سجين وهي الآن سجينة وطفلتهم اليوم وحيدة بلا أب ولا أم !!! اللهم سلط على الظالمين #اعتقال_سمر_بدوي
— مـــســـتـــنـــيــر (@BlueSam2011) January 12, 2016
Her husband is in prison. And now she is in prison. And their daughter is today lonely, without a mother and a father. May God's wrath be on those who commit injustice.
And this netizen is afraid to breathe:
بلد الواحد يخاف فيه يتنفس .. #اعتقال_سمر_بدوي
— ريما (@ReemaWabel) January 12, 2016
We live in a country where we are afraid to breathe.


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How Sharing Porn Became a Felony in Russia · Global Voices
Kevin Rothrock

Image edited by Kevin Rothrock.
In the past few years, Russia has become a place where all kinds of online activities are prohibited and policed—even time-honored Internet conventions like routine pornography. While ordinary Internet users in Russia today still have no problem finding adult content, police have begun cracking down on individuals who share porn on social media and peer-to-peer networks.
According to a report written by Nikita Sologub, published on MediaZona, an independent news site that monitors Russia’s prisons and judicial system, a new trend has emerged. Law enforcement agencies—notably the Interior Ministry’s “Department K,” which fights crimes in the information sphere—are now targeting young men who post pornographic materials on their Vkontakte pages and upload such videos when downloading torrents. MediaZona says the campaign is more about padding police statistics than protecting the public, however. With permission, RuNet Echo translates the report here.
As police officers from Department “K” raise their conviction rates by searching for porn on the social network Vkontakte, Russians are increasingly tried for disseminating adult content, despite the absence of a clear legal definition of pornography.
“Hello! In my video posts on Vkontakte, there are a few pornographic clips (without any child pornography whatsoever). I added the video to my page from a community on Vkontakte with the click of a single button. The video is from an open source, and I haven’t downloaded anything from that site. Three months later, police came to my door with a search warrant, confiscating my laptop, and telling me that I violated Article 242 of the criminal code (which bans the illegal distribution of pornographic materials or objects). Now I’m facing prison time. Do the police have the right to do this?”
Online legal forums in Russia are full of messages like the one above, while technical forums are packed with questions about how to delete pop-ups in Web browsers advertising scam artists’ requests for 1,000-ruble “Qiwi-wallet” payments to make porn-dissemination criminal charges go away. MediaZona looks at why judges are handing down only suspended sentences for this felony, and examines why Article 242 has become so popular among the agents of Department “K.”
Article 242 first appeared in Russia’s criminal code in 1996. Just a single line, it made it possible to send someone to prison for up to two years for “Illegally producing for the purpose of dissemination or advertising,” or simply for distribution, “pornographic materials or objects.” For more than a decade, legislators left the law unchanged.
In 2012, however—on the heels of the state’s campaign against immorality, which eventually resulted in the adoption of a blacklist targeting banned Internet resources—Article 242 was amended to prohibit “the illegal production and circulation of pornographic materials and objects” (emphasis added). This is the wording in force today.
In their amendments, lawmakers also divided Article 242 into three parts. The first part repeated the provisions of the law’s original wording, making it punishable by up to two years in prison to “produce or distribute illegally pornographic materials or objects.” In the second part of the amended law, legislators granted judges the power to imprison individuals for 10 years if they are caught distributing of such content to minors. The third section introduced aggravating circumstances for the “illegal” distribution of pornography by a group of persons acting according to a prior agreement or by an organized group earning more than 50,000 rubles. A third aggravating circumstance applies to the illegal distribution of pornography “using means of mass communication, including the Internet.” Under these circumstances, individuals can be imprisoned for up to six years.
Though the penalties for “illegally” distributing pornography went up, the criminal code’s actual definition of pornography didn’t get any clearer, says attorney Pavel Domkin. “We still don’t have a law, methods, or legal practices to regulate the circulation of pornography. All the criminal cases related to pornography are based on the opinions of certain art critics, who simply declare this or that content to be pornography, based entirely on their own discretion. There aren’t any clear legal criteria for defining what it is. Second, we have no coherent regulations in place on this issue, meaning that it is unclear how one can sell pornography legally, and, if it is even permitted, what the legal conditions are,” Domkin explains.
It is a felony to be convicted under Article 242’s aggravated circumstances. In 2014, Russian courts convicted 148 people of illegally circulating pornography using the Internet. Despite the gravity of such a crime, only five of these individuals went to prison. The rest remained free: 126 were given probation sentences, 14 were fined, one was given correctional labor, and another was amnestied. Only one person was able to win an appeal and have his conviction overturned.
According to the online forum Rospravosudie.com, convictions under Section Three of Article 242 can be separated into two large groups. The first group vulnerable to criminal prosecution consists of Vkontakte users who add pornographic content to the “My Videos” section of their accounts, without restricting the public’s access to their pages. “Intelligence” about such Vkontakte pages “reaches” Department “K” in the Interior Ministry, and then agents gain authorization to conduct “search activities to collect samples for comparative studies.” In other words, they download the videos onto a hard drive. Art experts then examine the materials to decide if they qualify as pornography. If so, police officers write a report to this effect, recording the evidence of a crime committed, and submit it to municipal police, who launch a criminal case. In order to learn the identity of a Vkontakte account’s author, law enforcement officers send a request to Vkontakte, which responds by sharing the telephone number and other user data attached to the account.
In 2013, a man living in a small work settlement in the Volga region created an account on Vkontakte. According to the court that convicted him, “acting intentionally, […] he started to search for pornographic videos uploaded by other users, watching them and making sure that they contained pornographic content.” Then, “aware of his criminal intent,” he added from these unidentified accounts to his own page “more than 30 pornographic audiovisual files, that is, deliberately making it possible to download and play these files.” A judge sentenced him to two years of probation, citing violations of the Russian criminal code and the 1923 Geneva Convention for the Suppression of the Circulation of and Traffic in Obscene Publications.
This 93-year-old treaty also served as the basis for a two-and-a-half-year probation sentence handed down to a man named Ustinov living in the Penza region. According to the court, Ustinov added to the “My Videos” section on his Vkontakte page three clips, knowing they contained “demonstrations of sexual deviance and perversion, […] causing sexual arousal, [thereby] forming a cynical, immoral attitude toward sexuality.” One of Ustinov’s friends, another man named Yurkin, whose Vkontakte account was registered under the name “Denis Batonov,” got two years of probation for posting three videos where viewers’ attention “was directed to the genitals and fondling of the genitals, aiming to arouse viewers sexually without any artistic or educational goals.”
According to Vkontakte’s statistics, the videos in question had been viewed six, nine, and seven times, respectively.
The second type of criminal cases involving Section Three of Article 242 concerns Internet users who obtain pornography using peer-to-peer networks and torrent trackers, who upload bits of that content to other users, as they download it. According to investigators, this qualifies as distributing porn. A man named Borisov living in Murmansk got a two-year probation sentence because he copied five pornographic videos into a folder on his hard drive and forgot to remove the folder from a file-sharing network. From here, the case was fairly cut and dry: an agent from Department “K” was searching file-sharing networks for the keyword “porn,” leading him to the files on Borisov’s computer, which the agent copied onto a police hard drive and transferred to an expert for examination.
Similarly, a man named Perevalov living in the Yakut city of Neryungri got a two-year probation sentence when he absent-mindedly left a file-sharing application open and running, allowing others to download pornography stored on his computer. He was convicted of “deliberately and illegally distributing pornographic materials by allowing mass viewing and reproduction of the materials to the general public by means of the Internet,” before being thwarted by officers in Department “K.”
“Fully aware of the criminal liability for such actions, Perevalov disseminated pornography, putting his own mercantile interests above the interests of society. The court views this circumstance as an offense against the moral principles of an indefinite number of people, including children, which attests to the heightened social danger of the crime committed, leaving no justification for reducing the severity of the criminal charges,” Perevalov’s court ruling states.
In all of these cases, the work of police officers boiled down to a few clicks of a computer mouse, all without the use of any specialized software. Judging by the legal proceedings described on Rospravosudie.com, agents often use the Opera Web browser to view videos and a plug-in called “VKMusic” to download the files. From there, prosecutions under Article 242 depend on investigators and art experts, who—in the absence of a legally enshrined concept of “pornography”—compete to produce more elegant definitions of porn.
For example, one expert in Yakutia wrote in a report: “These materials are pornographic on the following grounds: their content attempts to depict crudely and naturalistically scenes of sexual activity, in order to excite base feelings. Sexual acts are displayed in an obscene form, focusing attention on the genitals, as an end in itself. Additionally, these files contain no literary, artistic, or scientific value, there is no artistic aim, and the storyline is simply about breeding.”
Other art critics are even wordier. One in Khakassia wrote: “[The files] contain vulgar-naturalistic, indecent images of sexual relations between adult people, offending public morality, […] and bearing no artistic, psychological, aesthetic, or thoughtful meaning. They are based on naturalistic depictions of intimate life, the subject of which is demonstrating sexual intercourse, group sex, and the sexual organs. They cynically and repeatedly present, in both normal and perverted forms, sexual acts between people. By design, these videos intend to incite lust (lewd sexual desire). In cynical and obscene forms, they depict sexual behavior.”
To complicate matters further, practically anyone with a college degree in art is able to serve as an expert on pornography, according to attorney Pavel Domkin. “These expert reviews are just people showboating. Every year, there are more and more, and they’re only getting longer. Before, two agencies performed these reviews for the entire country. Today, every region has its own experts. Now there are thousands of them,” Domkin says.
After an expert review confirms that someone’s computer files do in fact contain pornography, investigators wishing to pursue criminal charges and seek a conviction must prove that the individual intended to distribute the materials.
When it comes to pornography discovered on Vkontakte, criminal intent is established automatically, insofar as all users agree to the social network’s terms of service, which prohibit the distribution of pornography. In the eyes of Russia’s legal system, Vkontakte users cannot be unaware that they violate these rules when they share pornography, meaning that they do so intentionally.
There are no uniform rules with torrent trackers or peer-to-peer file-sharing services, but this doesn’t stop investigators, according to Domkin. “In these cases, they establish intent orally, when interrogating a suspect. An investigator will ask a suspect, ‘Did you install a torrent client on your computer?’ The suspect says yes. ‘Can you explain how it works?’ The suspect explains. And that’s all it takes to establish criminal intent. If a person says he knows how torrents work, it means he is aware that he simultaneously shares pornography as he downloads it from other users, thereby verifying his intent to distribute,” Domkin explains.
Domkin says there are two reasons why courts almost always hand down suspended sentences for convictions of illegally distributing porn, despite the crime’s classification as a felony. Neither reason, he says, has anything to do with judges’ common sense or compassion.
“Insofar as we have no clear legal definition of pornography—but police officers keep opening criminal cases, investigators keep accepting them, and the district attorneys just close their eyes to it all—judges are forced to make compromises, so as not to spoil the conviction rates. So that people don’t go to prison, but so they don’t go complaining, either, trying to appeal to the Supreme Court. The solution is a suspended sentence,” Domkin says.
The second reason is that most of the people charged under Article 242 are young and unwilling to stand up to pressure from investigators. “I have observed the interrogations of men between the ages of 16 and 25,” Domkin says. “A young man posts something on his Vkontakte page that resembles pornography, he’s singled out by law enforcement, and they come to his home and conduct a search. It’s all very serious—a real criminal case. Tears start streaming down the guy’s cheeks, and so on. They tell him, ‘Well, alright. We can make it so you don’t do any hard time, but for that you’ll need to confess.’ He admits his guilt, and gets a special court order, where the judge lightheartedly sentences him to probation. This mainly concerns younger people, whereas a man, say, in his forties, won’t put up with that kind of garbage—there’s too great a chance that he’ll want to defend himself, challenging investigators to prove his guilt, if he’s really guilty of anything. Whereas young people simply break psychologically.”
Only two of Domkin’s clients who were accused of illegally distributing pornography ever refused to confess, electing to take the matter to trial. These men, however, were charged with violating Article 242.1 of Russia’s criminal code, which prohibits the production or distribution of child pornography. Domkin says it took about 18 months before the cases, which never went to trial, were dropped by police because of a lack of evidence. “They were tenacious in their defense, contesting the cases at every step, saying to the authorities, ‘You say this is pornography, so prove it, explain it, and indicate precisely what laws were broken. Specify exactly what laws I transgressed when I shared this content with whomever. Explain it.’ But no such law exists, and the investigators just gave up at this point,” Domkin recalls.
Formally speaking, police officers in Department “K” are acting within the law, when they open criminal cases under Article 242 on the basis of simple online searches for Internet users who share pornographic content on social networks and fire-sharing websites. But all this work means they have no time or need to hunt down the real distributors of illegal materials, says Domkin.
“I’m unaware of any cases where police went after either the creators of this content or its true distributors. What about the people who own the porn websites? No, instead they persecute young boys dealing with puberty and all the interests that arouses. I haven’t seen the police haul in one serious person with actual ties to the production or distribution of these materials on an industrial scale—probably because nobody needs troubles like that,” Domkin guesses.
According to him, a large number of sentences handed down under Article 242 don’t actually reflect the number of crimes. The trend, Domkin argues, is merely a convenient way to inflate conviction rates.
Albert Iskhanov, a lawyer in Izhevsk, agrees. “Instead of investigating serious crimes, it’s easier to peek on Vkontakte, draw up a report, and bring in somebody—some kid. This sort of thing takes no time at all. You don’t need any more than a month to close the case. Conducting a search and establishing that content was distributed takes a day, max, or maybe just a couple of hours. The investigators work for a month, and then there’s a special session in court—just a single hearing. So you get a solved felony and a conviction. For the statistics, it doesn’t get any better,” Iskhanov says.

author: Kevin Rothrock


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Indians and Pakistanis Hope to Take Their Countries From Rivals to Friends · Global Voices
Sohini Chatterjee

India and Pakistan have never had an easy time getting along with each other throughout their six decades of living side by side in developing South Asia. Political strife and media spin have rendered palpable commonalities obscure and encouraged people to see their neighbours across the border as their enemy.
Tweet by Vivek Krishna Tiwari (@vivek6749), law student: “The need of the hour is peace, but unfortunately there ar[e] elements trying to deviate us fr[o]m this path #aaghazedosti”
But various groups and individuals have made efforts to promote understanding and friendship to bring about enduring peace, such as the Indo-Pak Peace Calender, which features paintings by students in both countries. The fourth edition was launched at the Islamic Cultural Centre in New Delhi on 10 January 2016.
The event was organized by Aaghaz-e-Dosti (A Start of Friendship), an organization which is working to ease strained ties between India and Pakistan. The group operates through a core team of more than a dozen members together in India and Pakistan.
Indo Pak peace calendar launch today at 4- who's going? https://t.co/fuMSpVySSs #delhi #events #weekend #india pic.twitter.com/p0DWwFBjRa
— LittleBlackBookDelhi (@LBBDelhi) January 10, 2016
India and Pakistan were once one. But in 1947, the British divided the territory into the Dominion of Pakistan (later the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and People's Republic of Bangladesh) and the Union of India (later Republic of India) primarily along religious lines as an answer to tensions between Hindus and Muslims in the then sub-continent. People on both sides of the border were forced to migrate, and the divisions stoked riots and violence.
The peace that was expected to be brought about through partition of the Indian sub-continent, however, remained elusive. Time and time again, the neighbouring countries fell into conflict. Moreover, a border dispute involving Kashmir and attacks by militant groups only served to worsen the mutual suspicion and heighten mistrust.
Peace activists on each side of the border have lived a cycle of renewed optimism, only to see some new diplomatic slight or armed skirmish dash their hopes. Most recently, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi broke his journey from Afghanistan to India for a sudden halt at Lahore, Pakistan, towards the end of 2015 to meet Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, it brought a ray of hope to peace activists. Given that it had been a little over a decade since an Indian prime minister had visited Pakistan, Modi’s visit brought a lot of optimism to the future of peace-building between the states.
But like so many times before, the path to peace came upon an obstacle. On 2 January, a group of heavily armed men attacked the Indian Air Force base at Pathankot. Kashmir-based militants claimed to be responsible for the violence, but that didn't stop some from suspecting the worst of neighbouring Pakistan. Indian Chief Minister of Punjab Parkash Singh Badal, along with Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, issued a statement terming the attack as an attempt by Pakistan to destabilize Punjab threaten India's unity and integrity, although Pakistan itself has condemned the attack.
In times such as this, Twitter witnessed a heartening flood of good will under the hashtag #AaghazeDosti, the same as the organization that coordinated the peace calendar's launch.
Users sent messages emphasizing the need for peace between India and Pakistan against several inflexible odds”
lets all of us put the weapons down and share love ! @aaghazedosti #aaghazedosti @RaufAbdur @AliyaHarir @devikasmittal @iMGrS
— ilma iqbal (@ilma_iqbal) January 8, 2016
#AghazeDosti #aghazedosti Hatred between Pakistan and India has expanded scope of proxy wars and economy of war at the cost of people. — Khadim Hussain (@Khadimhussain4) January 8, 2016
Crush these fences and let's meet with love #AaghazeDosti pic.twitter.com/k6qZgllDTF
— Izharullah (@Izhar2u) January 8, 2016
India and Pakistan are sister nations.. We have so much in common.. A united India-Pakistan will be better for everyone :) #AaghazeDosti — Hayan! (@Hayan_khann) January 8, 2016
Since when has #war been a solution? after war, #dialogue is held so why dont we have that before and the only way? #aaghazedosti #indopak
— Devika Mittal (@devikasmittal) January 9, 2016
Until when our generations will live in wilderness & hatred. We r mockin ourselves in eyes of world if we continued like this. #AaghazeDosti — Asad Shehzad Khan (@asadshehzadkhan) January 8, 2016
If Politicians can't bring peace to the region, the public can do it.. #AaghazeDosti #indopak #IndoPakTalks pic.twitter.com/uLASlQmQ3A
— Anil Nindawat (@anilnindawat) January 8, 2016
India and Pak both allot the maximum money in Defence budget. Both are the worst performing nations in human index. Time for #AaghazeDosti — Abbas Haider (@abbas_haiderr) January 8, 2016
Exchange #love for #hate, #silence for #violence!! #AaghazeDosti
— Aashna (@suriaashna) January 8, 2016
It often takes human connections to forge peace, as Namra Nasir, the coordinator of the Lahore chapter of Aaghaz-e-Dosti, explained while recounting her experience visiting India:
This memorable excursion broke many stereotypes and brought me to a verge of thinking that if compared with the rest of the world, we are very recognizably similar, equally welcoming and extremely loving. […]
Vividly, peace and humanity is the priority on both sides of the border. I earned so much love in India that I forgot that I wasn’t in Pakistan.
The prolonged political unrest between India and Pakistan comes at a cost to both the states, significantly taking a toll on their resources. Hoping against hope that public opinion would influence political decision-making in the future, citizens haven’t shied away from expressing their desire for peace, not only as a matter of political urgency, but also for the sake of centuries of friendship—born out of communal cohabitation—before hostility took over. Will their leaders listen?

author: Sohini Chatterjee


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Matt Damon Was Right. NASA Is Studying Peruvian Potatoes for Possible Farming on Mars · Global Voices
Gabriela García Calderón Orbe

Bitter Potatoes. Paucartambo, Cusco, Peru. Photo by Eric Hunt. CC 2.0.
In last year's Hollywood film The Martian, astronaut Mark Watney, played by Matt Damon, is left for dead by his crew after being caught in a sandstorm on Mars. In order to survive, Watney plants some potatoes that NASA had sent up with his crew. In this case, science fiction isn't far from reality.
America's space agency, NASA, and the Peruvian International Potato Center (CIP), are carrying out joint experiments to test the possibility of growing the Peruvian tuber in Martian soil, according to a new report by BBC World.
Regarding the nutritional qualities of the potato, CIP says:
Hay más de 4,000 variedades comestibles de papa, la mayoría encontradas en los Andes de Sudamérica.
[…]
Aproximadamente 1.4 mil millones de personas alrededor del mundo consumen papa como alimento básico, y la producción total del cultivo sobrepasa los 300 millones de toneladas métricas.
La papa es esencial en términos de seguridad alimentaria frente al crecimiento de la población y al aumento de las tasas globales de hambre. […] La papa, primer alimento moderno de preparación rápida, es rica en energía, nutritiva, fácil de prosperar en parcelas pequeñas, barata para comprar y lista para cocinarse sin costoso procesamiento. El banco de germoplasma del CIP mantiene la colección más grande de papa del mundo, incluyendo más de 7,000 accesiones de variedades nativas, silvestres y mejoradas.
There are over 4,000 edible varieties of potato, mostly found in the Andes of South America.
[…]
About 1.4 billion people around the world eat potatoes as a basic food, and the total production of this crop exceeds the 300 million of metric tons. The potato is key when it comes to food safety in face of the population growth and the global hunger rates. […] Potatoes, the first quick-preparation modern food, are high in energy, nutritious, easy to grow in small plots, cheap, and affordable and ready to cook without costly processing. CIP's germplasm bank keeps the biggest collection of potatoes in the world, including over 7,000 accessions of native, wild, and improved varieties.
In Peru, there are 4,500 varieties of potato, and CIP is tasked with choosing which kind is best suited to the conditions on Mars.
The website Huachos.com briefly reviews the potato's history and its future prospects:
La papa fue domesticada hace unos 3.800 años, a lo largo de la ribera del lago Titicaca, entre Perú y Bolivia, y desde allí, tras la llegada de los europeos a América hace 500 años, llegó al resto del planeta. Ahora, cuando la papa es el cuarto cultivo para la alimentación del mundo, también desde Perú, se ha lanzado un proyecto para llevar el tubérculo al espacio exterior.
The potato was domesticated about 3,800 years ago, all along the banks of Lake Titicaca, between Peru and Bolivia, and from there, after Europeans arrived in America 500 years ago, it traveled all over the planet. Today, when potatoes are the fourth largest crop in the world, Peru is poised again to play a role in the potato's fate, hosting a project to take the tuber to the space.
Scientists have already started to conduct experiments with potatoes, subjecting the tuber to conditions similar to those found on Mars, with soil from the Pampas de la Joya desert in Arequipa, in Southern Peru:
“Son suelos volcánicos no contienen ninguna forma de vida en absoluto, igual que en Marte” indicó Joel Ranck, jefe de comunicaciones del CIP.
En esta primera etapa se tomarán 9 variedades de papa y se harán germinar en el suelo desértico, así como simular en un ambiente controlado la atmósfera marciana para ver cómo afecta en el crecimiento al tubérculo. Esto con el fin de saber que tan viable sería la agricultura en el planeta rojo.
“They are volcanic soils with no life forms at all, just as on Mars,” pointed out Joel Ranck, CIP communications officer.
During the first stage, nine varieties of potato have been chosen and will be grown in the desert soil, and the Martian atmosphere will be simulated in a controlled environment to see how it affects the tuber's growth. This in order to learn how viable farming could be on the Red Planet.
The Arequipan Pampas de La Joya desert is considered key, as presumibly it's similar to Mars. Already in 2009, astronauts from the International Space Station began to develop an experiment to grow seeds of Peruvian potatoes on Mars. The idea was to try to grow five varieties of potato—out of the more than 3,000 found in Peru—to determine “resistance and food versatility,” aiming to demonstrate the possibility of growing food on Mars.
The news also inspired several tweets:
Científicos intentan sembrar papa en el planeta Marte https://t.co/bktA79niOa pic.twitter.com/Su5kQG8trM
— Conecta Perú (@ConectaPeru_) enero 5, 2016
Scientists will try to grow potato in planet Mars.
#Papa peruana será primer alimento en llegar a #Marte https://t.co/Xo7EkwY1XU pic.twitter.com/fK8SuKpzpZ
— Crónica Viva (@cronica_viva) enero 5, 2016
A Peruvian potato will be the first food on Mars.
El Centro Internacional de la Papa y NASA estudian el cultivo de Papa en Marte https://t.co/GyKrJDAuRr pic.twitter.com/BlCmzJaxks — DFNS en Español (@DFNS_es) enero 5, 2016
International Potato Center and NASA study the farming of potatoes on Mars.
Papa peruana será el primer alimento en llegar a Marte https://t.co/6KX9VdiZ8x que hagan una buena salchipapa marciana y vaos en mancha (?) — Eduardo Torres (@luiseduhardo) enero 5, 2016
Peruvian potatoes will be the first food to arrive on Mars. May they prepare a good salchipapa.
(The salchipapa is a popular Peruvian homemade dish, prepared with sausages sliced into rounds, served with fried potatoes.)

author: Gabriela García Calderón Orbe


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Netizen Report: Keeping the Spotlight on Syria’s Independent Media · Global Voices
Netizen Report Team

Naji Jerf and Ahmad Almossa, Syrian citizen media workers killed in 2015. Photos widely circulated on Twitter.
Since 2013 more journalists have been targeted and killed for their work in Syria than anywhere else in the  world, according to CPJ research. As the risk of assassination and kidnapping has increased, major news organizations including Associated Press and Agence-France Presse have stopped sending staff reporters to the country, leaving a critical gap in mainstream media coverage of the war, particularly in English.
In parallel, local journalists and citizen media networks have worked to cover the war since the conflict first began. And as foreign media have pulled back from Syria, these local reporters have become an increasingly critical source of information and documentation of violence. While citizen media groups reporting from Syria face equal if not greater risks than their foreign counterparts, their stories rarely make headlines in Western media.
In December 2015, two citizen media leaders who had dedicated many months of their lives to covering the war at close range were killed in what are widely believed to have been targeted attacks. On December 16, 2015 Ahmad Mohamed Almossa, a member of Syrian citizen journalism collective Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS) was assassinated by masked men in Idlib, in northwestern Syria. Almossa’s death came shortly after RBSS was honored with the Committee to Protect Journalists’ 2015 International Press Freedom Award for its courage in covering news in Syria.
Based in Raqqa, the self-proclaimed capital of militant group ISIS, RBSS offers a close perspective on atrocities committed by all actors in the conflict including ISIS, Syrian government forces and Western coalition forces, whose airstrikes often harm civilians. As one of few independent media networks still active in this part of the country, RBSS is regularly quoted in mainstream media.
Not two weeks after RBSS's Almossa was assassinated, Syrian filmmaker Naji Jerf was shot and killed in broad daylight in Gaziantep, Turkey, close to the Syrian border, on December 27, 2015. It is widely believed that Jerf, 38, was killed in retaliation for uploading a documentary he made documenting ISIS crimes in Syria. The 24-minute video, shared on YouTube, documents ISIS’ crimes in the city of Aleppo. These crimes include the kidnapping and murder of paramedics in 2013 and 2014, which Jerf filmed prior to departing for Turkey. This video was later screened on pan-Arab Al Arabiya satellite television, attracting more than 12 million views and tens of thousands of comments on the station's Facebook page.
It is all but impossible to know precisely how many Syrians have lost their lives for exposing atrocities committed by both ISIS and the Assad regime. This makes the stories of Jerf and Almossa that much more meaningful—while the reports of their murders bear witness to their own efforts to expose the brutality of the war in Syria, coverage of their assassinations can also help to illuminate the stories of others that may never be told.
Saudi human rights activist Samar Badawi was arrested for allegedly running the Twitter account of her husband, human rights lawyer Waleed Abulkhair, who is serving a 15-year sentence for his conviction under an antiterrorism law that includes charges such as “insulting general order” and “inflaming public opinion.” The arrest of Badawi, who is also the sister of jailed blogger Raif Badawi, was widely condemned by human rights defenders and journalists.
A legislative council member in the Ecuadorean city of Loja was sentenced to 30 days in prison and a fine equivalent to 25% of her salary after she published a tweet insinuating that Loja mayor José Bolívar Castillo had stolen public money and lied about it. In an interview with national daily El Comercio, Bolívar said he sought legal action against councillor Jeannine Cruz, who represents the opposition. Bolívar said the legal action was aimed at not only defending his reputation, but also to set a precedent.
Cruz said the ruling set a “terrible precedent in the history of our country.” She plans to appeal her conviction, which is based on a provision in Article 396 of Ecuador’s Penal Code mandating a 15-30 day prison term for an individual “who by any means utters expressions of disrepute or disgrace against another.”
Since the beginning of November 2015, at least 140 people, most of them students, have been killed in Ethiopia while engaging in peaceful protest. Students in Oromia, Ethiopia’s largest regional state, have been demonstrating against the government's developmental “Master Plan” to expand the area of the capital, Addis Ababa, into Oromia. Many believe the move will result in direct persecution of the Oromo ethnic group, which has been systematically marginalized by the government over the last two decades, despite representing Ethiopia's largest ethnic group. Repression of both traditional and online media coverage of the protests has been widespread. To increase visibility of the situation, Global Voices author Endalk Chala, an academic researcher who belongs to the Zone9 blogging collective, worked with Oromo activist Abiy Atomssa to create this interactive map of protester killings by authorities.
According to the country’s open tender website, Bahrain has selected a bid from Canadian web filtering company Netsweeper to provide the Gulf nation with a “National Website Filtering Solution” for USD $1,175,000. Netsweeper has made several highly publicized deals in the past with other governments and groups wishing to restrict content online or in private networks, as thoroughly documented by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab. It is unknown when and how filtering would be implemented, but recent crackdowns on anti-government protesters suggest that it may be part of a larger strategy aimed at bolstering government and royal power.
International panic following the attacks in Paris coupled with rampant misinformation about the attackers’ use of encrypted chat applications has led to a smattering of proposed laws that would restrict or undermine secure communication using encryption. In response, Access Now along with other user privacy and security groups from over 40 countries have signed an open letter to the world’s leaders demanding open access to strong and reliable encryption, without backdoors or other modifications that can leave systems vulnerable. Read the letter here.
Mary Aviles, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Marianne Diaz, Sam Kellogg and Sarah Myers West contributed to this report.

author: Netizen Report Team


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This Group Exposes Social Woes and Promotes Philippine Culture Through Street Art · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

A wall was transformed into a mural echoing the call of human rights groups to stop the militarization of Lumad schools. The Lumad are indigenous peoples in Mindanao, located in the southern part of the Philippines. Photo from the Facebook page of Sim Tolentino
Ang Gerilya (The Guerrilla) is an artist collective established in 2008 by art students from the University of the Philippines. Since its founding, it has produced various artworks exploring socio-political issues and celebrating Philippine history and culture.
It has made a name for itself in the Metro Manila art community for promoting politically relevant street art. In an interview with this author, the group discussed the importance of street art:
Doing street art is our way of bringing “ART” closer to the masses. Street art is special for us because it's where the purest intention of an artist can be seen. And for every art that we do in the street, we consider it a gift to the people.
An example of their work, which was exhibited in a university museum, tackles the campaign for land reform in an estate owned by the family of the incumbent Philippine president:
A socio-political work that also was meaningful to a community was our artwork which was exhibited in the Vargas museum titled LUPA (land). Our group had a chance to visit the Hacienda Luisita and talk to the farmers about their struggle for land reform. We were honored to transform their experiences and wishes into a meaningful artwork.
An artwork depicting the struggle of farmers in Hacienda Luisita, an agricultural estate covered by the land reform law but continues to be owned by the family of the country's president. Image from Ang Gerilya
Below are other examples of the group’s artworks which reflect their goal of “making art as relevant as possible and draw influence from Philippine popular and mass culture.”
When displaced Lumad groups arrived in Manila in 2015, Ang Gerilya was among the artists who showed their support by painting this mural highlighting the call to stop the militarization of ethnic communities in Mindanao. Photo from Manila Today
Ang Gerilya dedicated this artwork in support of the campaign for the passage of the Freedom of Information bill. The proposed measure is still pending in Congress despite the pledge of the president to pass the bill in 2010. Photo from the Facebook page of Ang Gerilya
This is how a public wall in Quezon City looked like before Ang Gerilya transformed it into artwork. Photo from the Facebook page of Ang Gerilya
The wall is transformed into a mural depicting the heroes of the Philippine revolution. The Katipunan (KKK) was a revolutionary group that fought for the country's independence against Spanish colonists in 1896. Image from the Facebook page of Ang Gerilya
Ang Gerilya paints a mural supporting the student campaign for higher state subsidies for education. In recent years, the government has been reducing the funds of public colleges. Image from the Facebook page of Ang Gerilya.
A street inside a university was painted with the faces of two student leaders abducted in 2006 by suspected military agents. The students were campaigning for land reform during that time. An army officer is currently facing trial in connection to the case. The two students are still missing. Image from the Facebook page of Ang Gerilya
A poster made by Ang Gerilya warning the public about voting for ‘animals’ and ‘monsters’ in the senate:
Eleksyon season. #Kahayupan #Stickers #Gerilya
A photo posted by Gerilya (@anggerilya) on

author: Mong Palatino


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Two Arrested and then Released for Taking Selfies with Burning Dubai Hotel in the Background · Global Voices
Amira Al Hussaini

This selfie by a Kuwaiti couple, shared on Instagram, was described as the “most inappropriate selfie” ever. Two other people who posted selfies of themselves were detained and then released
Two men who posted their selfies on social media with Dubai's 63-storey The Address hotel on fire in the background were arrested — and then released, according to WAM, the United Arab Emirates official news agency.
According to WAM:
The Attorney General said that the Public Prosecution in Dubai has decided to release the two young men following a thorough investigation and review of the posted picture and case file and after listening to all witnesses.
The Public Prosecution has closed the case since no evidence of criminal intent has been established against the young men.
The Attorney General called on individuals to exercise caution and discretion when posting any material on social media and refrain from spreading rumours, defaming others or violating other people’s freedom so that they do not breach any laws.
No further news is available about the identity of the two arrested or the photographs they shared.
The fire, on New Year's eve, engulfed the 300m tall (1,000 feet) luxury hotel, located near the world's tallest skyscraper Burj Khalifa. At least 16 people were injured in the fire, with no deaths reported.
On YouTube, Kirill Neiezhmakov shares this time lapse of the fire:
A Kuwaiti couple were also called out on social media for posting their selfie with the burning inferno in the background on Instagram with the following message:
“Happy New Year my dear Dubai. May God bless you and keep you safe. You always surprise us with the biggest fireworks.”
Comments on the post included “most inappropriate selfie ever.”
Despite the fire, a massive fireworks display took place in the nearby Burj Khalifa.