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The Eccentrics and the Women Who Run for President in Iran · Global Voices
Farid

One of the more eccentric presidential hopefuls says ‘Presidents should be handsome’. Source: Entekhab
Hundreds of hopeful Iranians, including thirty women, have registered as candidates to replace President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the forthcoming election on June 14, 2013 even though they have no chance whatsoever of being elected. The conservative Council of Guardians appoints the shortlist of candidates who will actually run.
Besides political heavy weights such as former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, Ahmadinejad's ally, there are several eccentric candidates that have attracted media attention, momentarily stealing the limelight.
Eccentric Candidates
The elderly man in this television interview says he wants to make his eldest son the Minister of Housing if he is elected because they never had their own house.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=X-RBGeohAWU
Another candidate says, “Presidents should be handsome and make people happy.” [photo above, video below]
Female Candidates
Thirty women have registered to stand as candidates for the forthcoming presidential election. Meanwhile, Mohammad Yazdi, a clerical member of Iran’s Council of Guardians, has declared that Iran's laws “do not allow women to become presidents.”
The blogger Saeedshabani says:
Dear Ladies, why does a regime that does not consider you to have enough brain to stand as a candidate, accept your votes? I ask this question: what is the difference between men and women? I hope women will boycott this election.

author: Farid


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69th Anniversary of Crimean Tatar Deportations: Memory and Politics in Crimea · Global Voices
Veronica Khokhlova

On May 18, some 30,000 people gathered at a rally in Crimea‘s capital Simferopol to honor the memory of the victims of the 1944 Crimean Tatar deportations and to demand the immediate resignation of Anatoly Mogilev, the former Ukrainian Interior Minister who is now the chairman of Crimea's Council of Ministers.
J. Otto Pohl wrote briefly [en] about the deportation that took place 69 years ago:
This Saturday is the 69th anniversary of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars from their peninsular homeland on the Black Sea to the deserts of Uzbekistan and the wet forests of the Urals. The NKVD rounded up almost the entire population and took them to rail stations where they were stuffed like cattle into box cars. In three days over 180,000 people had been expelled from their homes and sent on a long and arduous journey eastward. The official reason for the deportation was the false charges of treason brought against the whole population by the Stalin regime. However, the number of Crimean Tatars that fought with the Germans, about 10,000, was quite small compared to a number of other nationalities that were not subject to wholesale deportation. Upon arriving in Uzbekistan and the Urals the Crimean Tatars were placed under special settlement restrictions. On 26 November 1948, the Soviet government decreed the deportations and special settlement restrictions to be forever. The death of Stalin on 5 March 1953 brought about an eventual end of the special settlement regime and on 28 April 1956 the Soviet government freed the Crimean Tatars from these restrictions. They, however, were not allowed to return to Crimea in any significant numbers until 1987 near the very end of the Soviet regime. Even today they still face obstacles to resettling in their homeland and nearly 100,000 still remain in Uzbekistan.
A Crimean Tatar woman at the May 18 commemoration of the 1944 Crimean Tatar deportations. Photo by Andy Ignatov (used with permission).
On Facebook, Oleksandr Starish also wrote [ru] about the tragic events of 1944:
[…] Despite the fact that the Crimean Tatars were fighting in the ranks of the Red Army and participated in the guerilla movement, the basis for their deportations was an accusation of collaboration with the Third Reich.
Deportations began early in the morning of May 18 and ended on May 20, 1944. Over 32,000 NKVD troops were employed in the operation. […]
Those Crimean Tatars who were fighting in the Red Army units, were also deported upon demobilization: in 1945-46, 8,995 Crimean Tatar war veterans were exiled […].
[…]
Assessments of the numbers of those who died in this period vary: according to the Soviet official data, 15-25 percent died, and according to the activists of the Crimean Tatar movement, who were gathering the information about the victims in the 1960s, the figure is up to 46 percent… […]
Starish ended his post with these words in three languages – Russian, Turkish (which is related to Crimean Tatar) and Ukrainian:
[…] I don't know if one can repent someone else's sins… But every person must bow to the memory of the innocents who were murdered… Regardless of one's ethnicity or religion… […]
Idil P. Izmirli explained the political component of the May 18 rally in this Jamestown Foundation article [en]:
[…] Crimea differs from the rest of Ukraine because it is the only autonomous republic with its own unicameral parliament (with 100 members) and Council of Ministers, thus having a similar institutional structure to that of the Ukrainian state. Under all previous presidents of Ukraine, the planning of this May 18 Crimean Tatar Remembrance Day of Victims of the Deportation event had received considerable support from both the Crimean and the Ukrainian authorities. In fact, during these commemorative gatherings, alongside the Mejlis officials and the mufti (religious authority) of Crimea, a representative of the Ukrainian president, the head of the Crimean parliament, and the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP) participated in the ceremonies. In 2013, however, under Anatoli Mogilev, the chairman of the Council of Ministers in Crimea, the governmental attitude to the Day of Remembrance has changed drastically. Mogilev was appointed by President Viktor Yanukovych in November, 2011. Insisting that he was ill, he opted out of the May 18 gatherings in 2012, marking the first time a Crimean leader did not participate in this event. Even before his appointment, Mogilev was well-known in Crimea for his anti-Tatar sentiments, his brutal order of police units (BERKUT) to attack peacefully protesting Crimean Tatar business owners in the Ai Petri hills in 2007 while he was a police chief, and his subsequent Krymskaya Pravda article (2008) in which he praised the Joseph Stalin–era deportation of the Crimean Tatars (http://www.unpo.org/article/10968).
On February 25, 2013, under Mogilev’s leadership, the Crimean authorities announced that the May 18 event needed to be approved by the Crimean Council of Ministers. Consequently, the Simferopol City Council declared that they were going to ban the annual May 18 gathering that has been organized by the Crimean Tatar Mejlis since the early 1990s. This decision of the Crimean authorities was not received well by [Mustafa Cemilev], the head of the Mejlis, who stated that Crimean Tatars will come to the Central Square in Simferopol as a large collective regardless of the ban, and if they are not allowed to hold their remembrance day, then they will block the roads, paralyze traffic, and take their protests to other regions of Crimea […]. […]
The May 18 commemoration of the 1944 Crimean Tatar deportations. Photo by Andy Ignatov (used with permission).
Simferopol-based journalist Zair Akadyrov wrote [ru]:
Today at the rally in Simferopol, every 100th Crimea resident has pointed Mogilev to the exit. And now imagine if every 100th Ukrainian did the same at Maidan [Independence Square] in [Ukraine's capital] Kyiv, no less… […]
Kyiv was having its own political rallies on May 18, and even though the turnout at the opposition's event was rather high, it could still hardly match the Crimean Tatar one in genuineness and determination. Kyiv-based journalist Victor Tregubov shared a photo of the Simferopol crowd and wrote this [ru]
[…] They say, there were 35-40 thousand people, and, looking at this photo, I tend to believe this. According to various assessments, there are 270 to 340 thousand Crimean Tatars living in Crimea. It means that every 8th [Crimean Tatar] is present at this rally.
When I saw this photo, I stopped worrying about the [Crimean Tatars’] future. What can some gang [the regime] do to a nation whose every 8th representative voluntarily attends a rally devoted to national solidarity and national revival? A nation like this will overcome any kind of trouble.
As for the Ukrainians’ future, I still worry about it.
***
More photos of the Crimean Tatar May 18 rally – by Andy Ignatov, Volodymyr Prytula, and Smail Tantana.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Veronica Khokhlova


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BarCamp Battambang 2013 · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

BarCamp Battambang 2013 in Cambodia
Themed “Empowering Youth through Technology“, BarCamp Battambang 2013 will take place on May 25 at the Build Bright University in Battambang Province of Cambodia

author: Mong Palatino


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Gender Gap Widens in Chinese Cities · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

China Digital Times highlighted some discussion on gender gap in China. Even though the overall percentage of working women is not very low, as a result of urbanization, employment rate for working-age women in urban areas fell to a new low of 60.8 percent in 2010, down from 77.4 percent 20 years earlier.

author: Oiwan Lam


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Ireland’s Top Economic Crisis Blogger Calls it Quits · Global Voices
Stanislas Jourdan

The anonymous blogger behind Namawinelake, a prominent watchdog blog that chronicled Ireland's efforts to deal with its economic crisis, has stopped publishing, triggering a wave of speculation as to the blogger's identity and his or her reason for quitting.
Namawinelake was launched in January 2010 after the financial crisis hit the country and the government was forced to request a bailout plan from the troika, made up of the European Union, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. As its title indicated, Namawinelake's reports were focusing on the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA), a state agency founded in 2009 as part of the government's answer to the financial crisis.
NAMA was filling the role of a “bad bank”, that is to say buying devalued property from banks and selling them afterwards, effectively making losses on behalf of private banks or companies in order to provide them with liquidity. Namawinelake was one of the many critics who charged NAMA with squandering public money for the benefit of the banks.
Screenshot of the NAMA Wine Lake blog homepage as of May 19, 2013
Jagdip Singh, the pseudonym under which Namawinelakes sometimes wrote, announced the decision on May 19, 2013, with a laconic message on the blog:
After 3.5 years and 2,700 blogposts, this is the final NAMA wine lake blogpost. I truly regret that I can’t continue something that has become more than full-time and has stopped me leading anything like a normal life.
Jagdip adds that existing publications will remain available. In addition, the author posted a mysterious message on the website broadsheet :
A panda walks into a bar. The clock reads 29 minutes past three though the second hand is broken and is stuck at 59. The panda sits down at the bar and looks all around. There’s a couple in the corner having a quiet chat, and a man by himself at the other end of the bar. The panda orders a pina colada and as the barman is preparing it, panda taps its paw on the bar and asks for the drink in a tall glass. The couple in the corner looks up, the panda stares meaningfully at them, the couple avert their gaze and stare at the table. The barman comes over to the panda and says “I hear the blog isn’t being continued” and the panda says “I truly regret that I can’t continue something that has become more than full-time and has stopped me leading anything like a normal life” Just at that precise moment, the second hand budges and advances in a single movement to 60.
What is the reason the panda isn’t continuing the blog?
Irish journalist Laura Noonan (@LauraNoonanIRL) summarized the general sentiment among Irish Twitter users when Namawinelake announced the decision to discontinue the blog:
@LauraNoonanIRL: End of an era as @namawinelake blog comes to a close. A must-read for anyone following Irish banks/property, it will be much missed.
A blogger under threat?
The exact reason why the blogger decided to stop writing isn't clear. But some, such as Twitter user “earlofcork” (@urlofcork), suspect that the decision to quit was because of a threat of some kind:
@urlofcork: 2day Namawinelake said he is to stop blogging, following legal threats from NAMA, he shone a lite [sic] on that cesspit and he has been shut down
Two weeks before announcing the shuttering of the blog, Namawinelake author wrote a post that details the context of a letter threatening legal action sent to him by Northern Ireland solicitors, Johnsons. He explains that in a previous post, Nawawinlake incorrectly stated that Neil Adair was the head so-called Maple 10 or Anglo Golden Circle, a group of financiers who have received loans from Anglo Irish Bank in return for buying shares. Despite a quick erratum and an apology, the blog was accused by the solicitors of deliberately and purposely trying to cause damage to Neil Adair's reputation.
On Twitter, professor of economics at University College Dublin Karl Welhan (@WhelanKarl) pointed to the letter as a possible reason for the blogger's departure:
@WhelanKarl: Based on this entry and the tone of today's post, I wouldn't be surprised if the NWL closure relates to this letter. http://namawinelake.wordpress.com/2013/05/05/how-paul-tweeds-johnsons-solicitors-are-trying-to-muzzle-the-namawinelake-blog/ …
Under threat or not, economist and blogger Constantin Grudgiev emphasized the lack of support for independent information publishers in Ireland:
I can attest from my own & others’ experiences that those of us who run anything independent of the officialdom mouthpieces (regardless of political / ideological orientation or even the lack of one) have near-zero support (moral or citations- and links-wise) from our internal (not to be confused with international) media and all businesses.
Those in our society, including the traditional media, who only benefit from the free analysis and the climate of openness and debate the independent analysts help to create prefer to endlessly endorse and support, including via advertising revenues, cross-links, citations and readership, those who offer no alternative but consensus.
In contrast, independent analysts in Ireland operate in the environment of constant, usually indirect, ‘soft’, pressure from the part of the Irish society which is fully aligned with the official elite. This ‘aligned’ sub-section of Ireland often has direct and indirect support (including financial) from major business, political and ideological organisations in this country, and even from European organisations. Because of this, Irish new independent media remains relatively small, under-resourced and often marginalised.
Meanwhile, a few commenters on IrishEconomy.ie congratulated and thanked the author of Namawinelake.
Gavin Kostick wrote:
Congratulations on your extraordinary achievement.
Your initiative and your perseverance has shown how citizens can take matters into their own hands and impact on public life. The time and effort to do the work you have done is mind-boggling.
David O'Donnell concurred:
An exemplar of active citizenship on shedding some light on the opaque world of NAMA_land. Thank you!
Georg R. Baumann added high praise for the author:
I remember your blog from day one, it was inspiration, it was a level of journalism that far exceeded the mainstream spin media and yellow press that makes the Irish media landscape. In a sense, to me it was always the very Irish version of WikiLeaks, it reflected the same spirit to me.
One question remains: Who was the blogger behind Namawinelake? The guessing game has already begun on Twitter:
@brianmlucey: Now of course the speculation will really mount…who was @namawinelake ..Anybody want to start ball rolling? I nominate…Sean Dunne [ed's note: Dunne is an Irish businessman who faces the prospect of bankruptcy after he agreed to court orders directing him to repay more than €185 million to the NAMA]

author: Stanislas Jourdan


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Jamaica: “Good Gay” vs. “Bad Gay”  · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

In this new discourse of the Good versus the Bad Gay, that what is being policed is class as much as sexuality.
Under the Saltire Flag explains.

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


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Laughing at Russia’s Eurovision Shooting Spirit · Global Voices
Kevin Rothrock

In 1945, following a visit by the USSR's Dynamo soccer team, George Orwell wrote that sports are “war minus the shooting.” He also said that “serious” sports have “nothing to do with fair play.” Earlier today, May 21, 2013, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov seemed to echo this spirit, when he commented on his country's fifth place finish in this year's Eurovision Song Contest.
At a joint press conference [ru] with his counterpart from Azerbaijan, Lavrov denounced supposed voting irregularities surrounding Russia's representative, Dina Garipova, whom he believes should have earned another ten points from Azerbaijan's voters. Claiming that the points were “stolen,” Russia's chief diplomat called the anomaly “an outrageous act” and promised Russian retaliation. There is a precedent for such Eurovision reprisals: in 2009, Azerbaijani national security officials responded [ru] to its own lackluster performance by calling in for questioning several citizens who voted “unpatriotically” in the contest. Such uproar has even prompted a statement from this year's Eurovision organizers, who warned that “any form of political pressure on professional juries” would have consequences.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2JdZm2spQU
Dina Garipova performs her song, “What If,” in Eurovision's final round, 18 May 2013.
While Eurovision 2013 is over and Russia's contestant has been defeated, Russian Twitter users continue to find entertainment in Lavrov's bellicose comments. Many juxtaposed the federal government's sensitivity about Eurovision voting to its largely indifferent attitude about election violations in Russia's own, real elections.
Mocking Russia's recently-instituted webcam-monitoring project for polling stations, Oleg Kozyrev tweeted:
В следующем году с целью обеспечения прозрачности голосования на Евровидении Владимир Путин установит в домах всех европейцев веб-камеры
Next year, in order to ensure Eurovision's voting transparency, Putin will place webcams in the homes of every European.
Noting Belorussian President Alexander Lukashenko's similar complaints about Eurovision, activist Ilya Yashin wrote:
ЕС заявлял о фальсификациях на выборах в России и Беларуси. Лавров и Лукашенко заявили о фальсификации на Евровидении. Шах и мат, европейцы.
The European Union declared voting falsifications in Russia and Belarus. Lavrov and Lukashenko declared falsifications in Eurovision. Checkmate, Europeans.
Twitter user VRebyata wrote sarcastically:
В ходе Евровидения оказалось, что Российские власти могут проявлять чрезвычайную принципиальность в подведении итогов голосования
In this year's Eurovision, it turned out that the Russian authorities can indeed display special commitment to vote tabulation.
Oppositionist and anti-corruption blogger Alexey Navalny spun Lavrov's comments into an attack on Russia's leading political party, tweeting facetiously:
Глава МИД Лавров заявил, что в ответ на неправильный подсчет голосов на ‘Евровидении’, ‘ЕдРо’ получит дополнительные 15% голосов на выборах
Foreign Affairs Head Lavrov has announced that, in response to the incorrect counting of votes for Eurovision, United Russia will receive an extra 15% of the votes in [future] elections.
Billionaire and Novaya Gazeta newspaper co-owner Alexander Lebedev teased Lavrov with feigned congratulations:
Молодец Лавров по случаю Евровидения!Это и есть внешняя политика
Well done, Lavrov, on [dealing with] Eurovision! Now that's what I call foreign policy
Twitter user Stanislav Burdelyov joked that Vladimir Putin's longtime domination of Russian elections affected voters’ behavior, writing:
Дина Гарипова не выиграла Евровидение потому, что россияне по привычке проголосовали за Путина.
Dina Garipova didn't win Eurovision because Russians [everywhere] are used to voting [only] for Putin.
Ridiculing Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev's dwindling political clout, Andrey Girich tweeted:
Надо было Медведева на Евровидение отправить
They should have sent Medvedev to Eurovision [instead of Garipova]
Sasha Grey in Vladivostok, Russia, 15 May 2013, screen capture from YouTube.
Twitter user Bernard Galt tied Lavrov's hostile remarks to Russia's two other ongoing entertainment-news imbroglios: a nationwide road-trip by former porn star Sasha Grey, and Gérard Depardieu's latest police-motorcaded visit [ru] to Chechnya. Galt wrote:
Депардье ездит с мигалкой. Саша Грей читает лекции в Екатеринбурге. Лавров возмущается, что на Евровидении украли голоса. Упоротая Россия
Depardieu drives around with a siren. Sasha Grey is giving lectures in Ekaterinburg. Lavrov is is outraged that they stole our votes on Eurovision. This country is stoned.
With over 300 retweets, the best-loved Eurovision-related quip belongs to a Twitter account called Fake_MIDRF (The Fake Foreign Affairs Ministry of the Russian Federation). That anonymous satirist mocked the country's past attempts to retaliate against perceived slights by foreigners, alluding to Russia's ban on U.S. adoptions (known as the “Dima Yakovlev law” inside Russia):
В ответ на кражу голосов на “Евровидении” у России будет принят закон Дины Гариповой о запрете концертов иностранных граждан в РФ.
In response to the theft of our votes at Eurovision, Russia will enact the Dina Garipova law, banning music concerts by foreign citizens in the Russian Federation.

author: Kevin Rothrock


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Mozambique Mining Protest Ends in Arrests · Global Voices
Sara Moreira

Three brickmakers who had been arrested by the Mozambican Police while protesting peacefully with hundreds of people “at the gates of Brazilian mining giant Vale”, in Moatize on May 14, 2013, have been set free and are waiting for the verdict, NGO Justiça Ambiental informs denouncing acts of intimidation. The resettled population has been protesting for greater compensation. The Moatize coalfield is one of the largest unexplored mineral coal reserves in the world.

author: Sara Moreira


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Trinidad & Tobago: It Takes a Village  · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

A generation of Criminals, just like a generation of Professionals, don't simply pop up. They are raised.
Trini World Views challenges everyone “who breathes fire and brimstone at criminals and the policing of criminal activity…to put that same passion into getting involved in the process [of] crime prevention.”


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’14 Million: Life, Family & Liberty’ Movement Sparks Controversy in Ecuador · Global Voices
Daniela Gallardo

The citizen initiative “14 million- Life, family and liberty”” [es], which opposes the free distribution of the day-after pill and other forms of family planning policy, has caused controversy among Ecuadorians.
Those involved in this initiative say that parents’ right to choose education for their children according to their values and principles has been ignored. They also denounce the intention to introduce laws that threaten the definition of marriage between men and women, changing the word “sex” with “gender” in citizen identification cards.
The group names these and other points in a video [es] inviting citizens to participate in a “great gathering for family, life and liberty.” The gathering took place on May 19, 2013 in the cities of Quito, Santo Domingo y Guayaquil. The YouTube channel Fourteen million [es] shared the video:
On May 18, President Rafael Correa rejected the actions of the “14 million” movement. The newspaper El Tiempo [The Times] [es] published some of Correa's declarations:
“No es verdad, como pretenden hacer creer estos señores, que a un niño de doce años se le regalan anticonceptivos. Esa es una mentira monstruosa” y de “mala fe”, enfatizó Correa, un mandatario de izquierda que también se declara “católico practicante”.
Señaló que el grupo “14 millones”, que es la cifra redonda de habitantes en Ecuador, “no tiene personería (validez) jurídica” y dijo sospechar que detrás de ella “están todos los opositores al Gobierno”.
“It is not true, as these people want to make you believe, that a 12-year-old child will be given birth control. It is a monstrous lie” and in “bad faith,” emphasized Correa, a leftist who describes himself as a “practicing Catholic.”
He stated that the “14 million” group, which refers to the the approximate number of people in Ecuador, “does not have an official, valid status” and said he suspected that “those who oppose the government are behind it.”
Isabel Maria Salazar, national director of the “14 million” movement, said in an interview for the Ecuavisa channel  [es] that they are not in favor of or opposed to any political party:
“Nosotros somos una auténtica iniciativa ciudadana donde estamos varones, mujeres, jóvenes. No queremos que esto se vea como una manifestación a favor o en contra de determinadas posiciones políticas, más bien estamos preocupados porque se le ha dejado a la familia de lado en varios proyectos de educación, y también en aquello que corresponde a la salud.”
“We are an authentic citizen initiative in which we are men, women and youth. We do not want to be seen as a manifestation in favor of or against determined political positions, but more so we are worried because family has been left to the side in various education projects and that also relates to health.”
Salazar further showed her rejection of the free distribution of the day-after pill [es] without parental consent, stressing that according to article 29 [es] of the constitution of Ecuador, parents have “the right to choose for their sons and daughters an education in line with their principles, beliefs and teaching methods.”
Days before the gathering, the group released a pamphlet featuring the stamps of the Ecuadorian Episcopal Conference [es], the Archbishop of Quito [es], the the Pro-Life Action Foundation [es] and others.
However a letter signed by Mateo López, deputy secretary general of the Ecuadorian Episcopal Conference, later clarified that “the use of the Ecuadorian Episcopal Conference stamp in '14 million’ movement materials has not been authorized by this conference and appears against its wishes, which were expressly communicated to the organizers.”
Silvia Buendía (@silvidabuendia) [es] shared the image on the “14 million” pamphlet:
@silvitabuendia: Lean todos pic.twitter.com/Um6TmNGYp1 esta es la carta de los 14Millones. Ojo católicos, la firma la Conferencia Episcopal Ecuatoriana
@silvitabuendia [es]: Everyone read pic.twitter.com/Um6TmNGYp1 this letter from 14 million. Look Catholics, the stamp of the Ecuadorian Episcopal Conference
Then she apologized and shared the letter from the Episcopal Conference:
@silvitabuendia: Me disculpo con la Conferencia Episcopal, ayer me escandalicé d q firmaran la carta d los @14Millones pic.twitter.com/9BPOUXF36j era mentira
@silvitabuendia [es]: Forgive me, Episcopal Conference. Yesterday I was scandalized that you had signed the letter from the @14Millones [14 million] pic.twitter.com/9BPOUXF36j It was a lie.
The citizens that support the initiative -@14millones [es] on Twitter- comment with the hashtags #14millones [14 million] and #19mporlafamilia [19 million for family].
Loli Andrade (@loliandradem) [es] stated her support for the May 19 gathering:
@loliandradem: @14millones HOY defiendo la vida mas q nunca con paz, alegria t amor x la vida y la familia! Soy de gquil pero stoy en Quito y aun asi voy!
@loliandradem [es]: @14millones [14 million] TODAY I defend life more than ever with peace, joy, love, life and family! I'm from Guayaquil but I'm in Quito and I still go!
While Jose D'María (@JoseMatamoros_) [es] wrote about the rights of children:
@JoseMatamoros_: Regresando a Cuenca a exigir los derechos de la familia y los niños #19mporlafamilia #14millones @14Millones
@JoseMatamoros_ [es]: Returning to Cuenca to demand the rights of family and children #19mporlafamilia [19 million for the family] #14millones [14 million] @14Millones [14 million]
Rafael Silva (@_RBSILVA) [es] also showed his support of “14 million:”
@_RBSILVA: Para eso hemos sido entrenados, defenderemos la verdad y no se nos arebatara el fuego q en nuestra sangre esta! @14Millones #19Mporlafamila
@_RBSILVA [es]: For that we have been trained, we will defend the truth and not lose the fire in our blood! @14Millones [14 million] #19Mporlafamila [19 million for family]
However, there also exists opposition to the movement, in part because they chose to call themselves “14 million,” the number of people in Ecuador, and many do not feel represented by the ideas of the group.
Under the hashtag #YoNoSoy14Millones [I am not 14 million] various users separate themselves from those that defend the movement. This includes Jaime Tamariz (@JaimeTamariz) [es]:
@JaimeTamariz: Somos 6.676.120.288 de personas distintas/diversas tratando de encontrar la felicidad en nuestra efímera vida #YoNoSoy14Millones
@JaimeTamariz [es]: We are 6,676,120.288 diverse and different people trying to find happiness in our ephemeral lives #YoNoSoy14Millones [I am not 14 million]
Majito Lasso (@majitolasso) [es], for his part, shared his opinion about being “pro-life:”
@majitolasso: Ojalá se escandalizaran de la violación y el femicidio, no de derechos sexuales y reproductivos. Eso sería provida #yonosoy14millones
@majitolasso [es]: I hope that they're scandalized by rape and female infanticide, not sexual and reproductive rights. That would be pro-life #yonosoy14millones [I am not 14 million]
In a similar manner, Mónica Pazmino (@justmonique1981) [es] wrote:
@justmonique1981: Cuando inculcen [sic] amor y tolerancia hablamos amigos fundamentalistas Provida #YoNoSoy14Millones
@justmonique1981 [es]: When they instill love and tolerance we talk, friends, of fundamental pro-life. #YoNoSoy14Millones [I am not 14 million]

author: Daniela Gallardo


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Bahamas: Haitians are our Brothers  · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

One of the most dastardly parts of the Atlantic slave trade was how fellow human beings were treated as as if they less than men and women.  And it seems that many of us feel the same way about illegal Haitians here in The Bahamas.
Weblog Bahamas’ Rick Lowe adds, “I agree they are illegal and we must deal with it, but do we have to pretend these people are not human beings?”


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Cadmium-Laced Rice Found in China · Global Voices
Abby Liu

Rice contaminated with high levels of the toxic heavy metal cadmium, dubbed “cadmium rice,” is the latest food scandal in China to trigger public panic and anger among the country's consumers.
The Guangzhou Food and Drug Administration revealed[zh] on May 16 that eight out of 18 rice samples tested in local markets contained excessive levels of cadmium. Most of the polluted rice comes from the southern province of Hunan, China’s top rice producing province.
“Cadmium in rice usually comes from the soil where it grows, and the soil was polluted by mining and chemical wastes,” Fan Zhihong, a food safety expert at China Agricultural University in Beijing, told the state-run Global Times.
The rice joins a growing list of food scares to hit China in recent years. Earlier this month, it was revealed that rat and fox meat was sold as lamb in the Shanghai and Jiangsu.
Contaminated rice has been a problem in China for decades. According to Global Times, a Nanjing Agricultural University research project in 2011 found that around 10 percent of rice sold across the nation contained excessive amounts of cadmium. According to another report, up to 70% of China’s soil is contaminated with heavy metals and fertilizers.
But officials are usually not forthcoming with information about such pollution. Earlier this year, environmental authorities refused a Beijing lawyer's request to publish the soil pollution data in China, saying it’s a “state secret”.
An insider was quoted by communist party newspaper People’s Daily as saying:
Map of China's rice pollution is widely shared on Weibo. (Image from Weibo)
对于含有镉这类“慢性中毒”的食品，一般情况下不会突然引发大的食品安全事故，有关部门负责人迫于经济发展压力，对食品企业违法行为睁一只眼闭一只眼，自身既不易受法律制裁，也能保住“乌纱帽”。
The food that contains cadmium is “chronically poisoned” food, which under normal circumstances will not lead to major food safety incidents. Under the pressure of economic development, some related departments turned a blind eye to food enterprises that broke the rules. They are unlikely to be punished by the law and they can still keep their posts.
In response to the news, the Chinese government's official mouthpiece Xinhua News Agency ran a piece, titled [zh] “Experts Recommend People Should Not Eat Rice from One Region All the Time,” that suggested people should diversify their rice sources to lower the risk.
The advice sparked lots of criticism online. On popular Chinese microblogging site Sina Weibo, one netizen “Bolin” wrote [zh] sarcastically:
人民日报告诉我们，中国贩运有毒食品是合法的，有毒食品参杂服用，就不只会死于一种有毒食品
People's Daily tells us that it is legal to sell toxic food. By eating all types of toxic food, we won't die from one kind of toxic food.
Shanghai-based writer “Lei Wenke” echoed [zh]:
就是要均衡各种污染么？
Does it mean [we should] maintain a balance of different types of pollution?
Environmentalist Dong Liangjie posed [zh] a rhetorical question:
在市场上不仅有镉大米、还有铅大米砷大米，有的是两个或三个同时超标；产地不仅是湖南，湖北、江西、广西、广东、河南、河北等都有；数量不是万吨，而是上百万吨。这么多产地和数量，如何轮着吃？体制内专家不追根求源、不谈真相，吃着纳税人给的俸禄，转移焦点，职业道德何在？
Not only cadmium rice, but lead rice and arsenic rice are also in the market; some have two or three excessive chemicals at the same time. [The polluted rice is] not only from Hunan, but also from Hubei, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Guangdong, Henan, Hebei, and other provinces. It's not just tens of thousands of tons, but millions of tons. So much polluted rice from so many places, how do you take turns to eat it? Experts within the system don't track the source of the problem or talk about the truth; they use taxpayers’ money and try to shift people's attention. What's happened to professional ethics?
Online personality and social critic “Xue Manzi” suggested [zh] that labels should list the amount of heavy metals that the rice contains:
鉴于最近大米重金属超标曝光后，大米的污染成了全国人民关注的焦点。为了食品安全，建议在大米白面的外包装上注明其重金属含量。我们实在不希望再重演进口洋奶粉的现象。奶粉还可以背，大米白面实在背不动。印上这个，大家可以放心食用了。大伙儿支持吗?
In view of the recent exposure of rice containing excessive levels of cadmium, rice pollution has become the focus of attention for the whole country. For food safety, I recommend that the packaging of rice and flour all have the amounts of heavy metals in them on the package. We really do not want to repeat the scene of importing foreign milk powder. We can carry the milk powder, but rice and flour are really too heavy to carry back [from abroad]. By printing this information on the package, we can feel safe to eat it. Anyone support my idea?
One user “Beiou jixu mengxiang zhilv” complained [zh]:
当空气、水、粮食均被污染后，我们能做的就不是挑选无污染食品，而是跟有污染食品抗争，看我们中国人体内到底能自我排出多少毒了！
When air, water, and food are contaminated, we can not pick pollution-free food, but fight with contaminated food to see how much poison can be self-discharged from the Chinese people's body!
Caijing Commentator Ye Tan called on [zh] the Hunan government to be more transparent about the food safety issues. However, as it shows on the shared map of China's rice pollution, the problem is not only limited to Hunan, but found in China at large.:
湖南方面应该拿出解决的诚意，公开信息。不公开信息，不承认本地的重金属污染，消费者无法确切地分辨湖南所产大米毒与非毒，最简单的做法是对所有的湖南大米敬而远之。如果公开信息，湖南大米可以被区分为被污染的，与安全的，不公开信息，会让湖南大米出现整体的信用危机，占全国13%的稻田成为废墟。
The Hunan government should sincerely work to solve the problem by making the information public. Without transparent information and recognition of the heavy metal pollution in the soil, consumers can not distinguish poisonous rice from non-poisonous rice produced in Hunan. The simplest approach for them is to turn away from all the rice in Hunan. If information is made public, then Hunan rice can be divided into contaminated and safe rice. If the information is not made public, Hunan will face an overall credit crisis. The land, accounting for 13 percent of the country's rice fields, will become ruins.

author: Abby Liu


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‘Dumbass’, Ai Weiwei’s Latest Music Video · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Prominent Chinese Artist Activist Ai Weiwei has released a music video, “Dumbass”, which shows his solitary detention back in April 2011 when Chinese police arrested him for “tax evasion”. Song by Ai Weiwei with music by Zuoxiao Zuzhou. Cinematography by Christopher Doyle. (Explicit Lyrics)


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Egypt: “Are you Happy Morsi?”  · Global Voices
Amira Al Hussaini

Egyptian Ahmad Khalil tweets [ar]:
الكهرباء قطعت من الساعة 9.5 وبالتالى النت قطع ، لعلك سعيد يا ريس مرسى ؟؟ نحن نعيش فى العتمه والقادم اسؤأ
@ahmad_khalil:The electricity has been out since 9.50am and as a result there has been no Internet. Are you happy President Morsi? We are living in darkness and the future looks worse.

author: Amira Al Hussaini


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Guinea-Bissau Youth Calls for Peace · Global Voices
Sara Moreira

The Guinean movement Ação Cidadã (Citizen Action) [pt] released an open letter [pdf] on May 8 “from a youth who wants to have their place in their own land in peace, with the freedom and progress they are entitled.” The document calls for young Guineans to mobilize peacefully for peace, democracy and freedom in Guinea-Bissau and denounces two recent episodes of assaults on young Guineans.
Casa dos Direitos informs [pt].


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How Big Is Alexey Navalny’s Army? · Global Voices
Andrey Tselikov

Blogger and anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny is often considered the unofficial leader of the Russian opposition. While he has generally been coy about officially assuming such a role, he has indeed recently announced that he would be interested in running for President as an opposition candidate [ru]. But how many people would support him in such an endeavor? How large is the core of his followers? As Navalny's show-trial for lumber embezzlement [GV] continues, such questions are perhaps more important than ever. Here are some data-points which could be used to make a rough approximation:
Social network followers. Navalny is an active user of both LiveJournal [ru] and Tweeter [ru], not so much of Facebook or VKontakte (his Facebook page is essentially an RSS feed of his Livejournal account). On LiveJournal, Russia's most popular blogging platform, he has 73,500 “friends” [ru] signed up to follow his account. This number can be misleading in two ways. First, it does not include people who do not have LiveJournal accounts but still read his page. Second, it includes a number of followers who do not necessarily agree with his politics or activism, and would not, therefore, actively support him. Other followers could be “bots”, or fake accounts.
Navalny, in the company of his chin. CC 2.0 by Mitya Aleshkovsky. 26 May 2012. Wikimedia Commons.
The same holds true for Twitter, where the proliferation of fake accounts has lead to services like Twitter Audit, which “audits” 5,000 random Twitter followers of an account and determines the likely percentage of these followers that are fake, or bots. In April, 2013 Twtter Audit approximated that out of @navalny's 344,000 total followers, only 134,000 were “real”. While this number is almost twice as high as the number of Navalny's LiveJournal friends, it is subject to similar caveats — these 134,000 aren't necessarily all “supporters.”
Active support: A better way to judge the number of Navalny's die-hard fans is to look at the number of people willing to do something for his anti-corruption causes. For example, according to the Wikipedia page of the RosPil project [ru], over 15,000 people have donated money to the fund tasked with identifying and exposing corrupt government procurement contracts. The number is small, but likely indicative of wider support — for example, only half of one percent of adult Americans donate more than $200 to political campaigns (although the percentage of total giving is presumably higher, $200 is the smallest amount that can be claimed for tax purposes).
Another of Navalny's anti-corruption-related projects is perhaps a more accurate indicator, since it does not involve contributing money. Last month Navalny sounded a call [ru] for people to sign an online petition [ru] he started on Russia's Public Initiative [GV] website. If the petition, which wants to make it illegal for government officials to buy expensive cars using public funds, reaches 100,000 signatures, the Russian parliament will have to review it. A month later, on May 14, Navalny wrote another post, lamenting the fact that the number of signatures had apparently reached an asymptote at 40,000:
Number of signatures (on the right axis) for Navalny's petition as of May 14, 2013. Screenshot.
Navalny blamed this on the difficulties involved in signing the petition (users have to register with the government run GosUslugi (State Services) website in order to vote. If they are registered, they have to know their registration number.) Of course, for the purposes of this exercise, a relatively low-effort barrier to entry is a good indicator of what one might call “active” support. In fact, Navalny himself seemed to be of a similar opinion [ru]:
В связи с этим, мне кажется, помочь собрать оставшиеся 60 тысяч голосов нам могут только 40 тысяч уже проголосовавших человек. […] Вы зарегистрируете свою жену. Или мужа. Или маму с папой. А лучше жену, маму с папой и бабушку. […] Короче, каждый из проголосовавших должен привести, как минимум, ещё одного человека и провести личную мини-агиткампанию.
In light of this, I think that only the 40 thousand who already voted can help collect the remaining 60 thousand votes. […] You will register your wife. Or your husband. Or your mom and dad. And even better, your wife, mom and dad, and grandma. […] To put it simply, each one of those who voted should bring at a minimum one more person, and hold a personal mini-PR-campaign.
To aid in collecting signatures Navalny's team started a website [ru] which tracks the votes and provides several easy to follow FAQs on what the petition is hoping to achieve, and how to register to vote. A week later, the campaign has added another 8,000 votes, breaking the 50,000 barrier, but appears to be suffering from the same loss of interest as before:
Petition signatures as of May 22, 2013. Screenshot.
It seems safe to say, then, that Alexey Navalny's active supporters number somewhere in the 40 to 50 thousand range. This estimate is particularly convincing when compared to the number of people who voted for him in the Coordinating Council of the Russian Opposition elections last fall. There, participants were also faced with a somewhat daunting, but ultimately painless, registration process. The final tally for Navalny was 43,723 votes [ru].

author: Andrey Tselikov


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How Social Commerce Tightens China’s Grip on the Internet   · Global Voices
Andy Yee

On April 29, 2013, China’s biggest e-commerce firm Alibaba Group announced that it would acquire an 18 percent stake in Sina Weibo for US$ 586 million, a deal that could reshape the country’s Internet landscape. Sina Weibo is China’s most popular Twitter-like microblogging platform with over 500 million user accounts, but it has yet to find a profitable business model.
By connecting the millions of Weibo users to Alibaba, an e-commerce platform that handled more transactions than Amazon and eBay combined last year, the deal is widely heralded as a game changer that could jump-start an era of social commerce, or social media driven e-commerce, in China.
New exclusion in the era of social commerce
Alipay has become the world's biggest third-party online payment platform. By IvanWalsh.com. (CC: BY)
But the deal also marks a subtle trend which will enable the authoritarian state to tighten its grip on the Internet. As the line dividing economics and politics in the Internet space erodes, new possibilities arise for governments to pursue systematic online persecution beyond content control. Google’s Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen spell out this scenario in their new book “The New Digital Age“:
As connectivity spreads, Internet service and mobile devices offer vital outlets for individuals to transcend their current environment, connecting them with information, jobs, resources, entertainment and other people. Excluding oppressed populations from participating in the virtual world would be a very drastic and damaging policy […]. As banking, salaries and payment transactions move increasingly onto online platforms, exclusion from the Internet will severely curtail people’s economic prospects. It would be far more difficult to access one’s money, to pay by credit card or get a loan.
As a country facing the Internet “dictator’s dilemma,” the above scheme presents great potential for China to bring the Internet’s convenience to bear upon curtailing of online freedom. By embracing the Internet, the Chinese government has reaped its benefits for economic and social developments, thereby enhancing its legitimacy. According to McKinsey, a global management consulting firm, China is the second largest e-tailing market in the world, after the United States, with sales totaling US$ 120 billion in 2011. But at the same time, the Internet has become a vibrant public sphere filled with criticisms about government policies and corruption.
The well-known Great Firewall, which blocks “undesirable” foreign websites, and elaborate social media censorship, with forced cooperation from private Internet companies, are the official responses. A recent Economist special report described the Chinese Internet, with its distinct mix of economic freedom and political “unfreedom”, as a flourishing “giant cage” which is constantly watched over.
Chinese regulators are taking steps to make this cage much stronger by clever manipulation of the economic desires and needs of citizens. The Alibaba deal is a foretaste of how this could be done. Bill Bishop, publisher of the Sinocism China Newsletter, highlights its sinister aspect in his New York Times Dealbook column:
The Alibaba deal is about strengthening mobile positioning and spurring social commerce. The government would probably be pleased to see Weibo shift from being a hotbed of social and political commentary and critiques to more of an online shopping arcade that, through integrated online payment functionality, has the voluntary real name registrations of many users.
Sina Weibo, China's biggest microblogging service. By jonrussell CC: BY-SA.
Information totalitarianism
In December 2011, the Beijing Municipal Government issued rules requiring microblogging services to verify the identity of their users. In December 2012, China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress, passed a law requiring users to provide their real names when registering with an Internet service provider. While the rules have thus far not been well implemented, China’s leadership sees this as a top priority. In late March 2013, the State Council released its task list for the next five years, which includes implementation of an Internet real name registration system by June 2014.
But the task list includes something more worrisome, namely, the establishment of a unified credit information platform and a unified social credit coding system based on citizens’ ID numbers. Combined with an online real name system, these systems will give the government an unprecedented ability to gather and act on user data. In the future, it will be easier than ever to electronically isolate outspoken individuals from economic and social opportunities. Beijing-based dissident writer Mo Zhixu calls this a state of “information totalitarianism,” one in which there will be no hiding place left for anyone (via Seeing Red in China):
First of all, once the real-name system is used in website backstage management where one ID card matches one ID number, as Alipay (支付宝) does, those ID numbers culled online will soon become useless for repeated use. Secondly, with regard to activists using ID numbers of relatives and friends, if the conventional deterrence measures don’t work, the government could resort to building control into services by bundling ID card and the correlating social credit code with matters of personal interest. That way, relatives and friends will not want to, nor dare, to lend their ID numbers to anyone else.
Having established “a unified credit information platform with gradual input of information about finance, commercial registration, tax payments, social security contributions, traffic violations and other credit information” and “a unified social credit coding system based on identification number,” personal credit information will necessarily include information about Internet use. Thus, the Internet real-name system will be tied with one’s social credit code, and even with the social welfare system. From there, it’s not unimaginable for the government to use the unified credit code as the exclusive online ID code.
When so much is at stake, the threat of being excluded from the Internet will have a powerful chilling effect. Self-censorship will be heightened to a whole new level for concerns of being excluded from commerce, finance and social security.
Alibaba founder Jack Ma recognizes that Sina Weibo has increased transparency in China, and stresses that Alibaba wants it to be more successful, but not by turning it into a glorified advertising platform. However, with the looming information totalitarianism, freedom will be eroded and manipulated in subtle ways, especially when the economic, political and ideological spaces converge. There is only a fine line between freedom and enslavement. The greatest danger comes when netizens are unaware of how power is being exercised over them, as Global Voices co-founder Rebecca Mackinnon, author of “Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom”, noted in an article for The Atlantic:
In the Internet age, the greatest long-term threat to a genuinely citizen-centric society — a world in which technology and government serve citizens instead of the other way around — looks less like Orwell's 1984, and more like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World: a world in which our desire for security, entertainment, and material comfort is manipulated to the point that we all voluntarily and eagerly submit to subjugation. If we are to avoid this dystopian fate, political innovation will have to catch up with technological innovation.

author: Andy Yee


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Panama President Levels Dirty Accusations Against Journalist on Twitter · Global Voices
Ariel Moreno

Every so often, President Ricardo Martinelli (@rmartinelli) [es] riles up the Panamanian online community by tweeting controversial and confrontational statements, even insults.
The most recent example is a tweet directed at journalist Santiago Cumbrera of La Prensa, a newspaper with which the president has clashed in the past:
@rmartinelli: Para el que no conoce el odio de Santiago cumbrera a mi es pq se le despide de Epasa por. coimero y acosador sexual de mujeres. [Nota: en Panamá se le dice “coima” a las mordidas o sobornos]
@rmartinelli: For anyone who doesn't know why Santiago Cumbrera hates me it's because he was fired from Epasa for being crooked and sexually harassing women.
Throughout his term, which is in its final year, the president has had constant altercations with the media, which he insults, accuses of antagonism, and then apologizes to, promising to change.
The accusation against Cumbrera has a history. EPASA [es] is a daily publisher of three widely distributed newspapers: La Crítica, El Panamá América and El Día a Día. El Panamá América used to maintain a line for investigation and complaints against the government, but the publishing group was bought a few months ago by an organization affiliated with government interests.
The sale precipitated a change in editorial policy across the various papers, and although it is not official policy, it is common knowledge that El Panamá América is the government's mouthpiece.
Given this change, several journalists left EPASA, some voluntarily, like Santiago Cumbrera; others were fired for not following the newspaper's new approach.
Santiago Cumbrera published a letter in La Prensa [es] sharing his reasons for resigning. In the letter, he makes it quite clear that his convictions weren't up for negotiation:
President Ricardo Martinelli, photo by Luis Carlos Díaz on Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)
En esa coyuntura, y otras que me reservo, prefiero renunciar antes de aplaudir las cosas que ayer criticaba. De lo que sí pueden estar seguros los lectores es que no claudicaré a mis convicciones y principios. Tampoco me prestaré para publicar informaciones que ya vienen procesadas por alguien intencionado y que, además, buscan distraer la atención de asuntos de interés nacional. Yo no vendo mis convicciones al mejor postor, como aquellos que dicen ser independientes, pero tienen la libertad de un títere y que buscan fama aunque tengan que mentir y manipular informaciones.
At this juncture, and others that I won't discuss, I would rather resign than applaud that which I previously criticized. What readers can be sure of is that I will not waver in my convictions and principles. Nor will I loan myself out and publish information that comes to me already assembled by someone else, and that furthermore is trying to distract everyone from issues of national importance. I don't sell my convictions to the highest bidder, like some who claim to be independent but who have all the freedom of a puppet, and seek fame even if they have to lie and manipulate the facts.
The president's accusations against Cumbrera stem from an article published in La Prensa on May 20, 2013, “The Hydroelectric Industry: A Business of Power” [es], in which Cumbrera links the president and his cohort to hydroelectric power companies.
Santiago Cumbrera (@santcumb) [es] defended himself against the president's accusations on his Twitter page, clarifying that he was not fired, but rather resigned for reasons that he made clear in his open letter:
@santcumb: Yo renuncie a Epasa días después de que se concretó la venta del diario. Las razones constan en una carta que hice pública.
@santcumb: I resigned from Epasa a few days after it finalized the sale of the paper. My reasons are in a letter that I made public.
Another former EPASA journalist, Eduardo Soto, published a brief post on his blog Hojas Sueltas [es] in which he reflects on his departure from the company and reports that in the new editorial guidelines suggest “concealment, double standards, and deception.” Soto also comments on Santiago Cumbrera's resignation:
Recordemos que hasta antes de que cambiara de manos, Panamá América estuvo semana a semana destapando escándalos y jugadas chuecas del actual equipo de gobierno. El nombre de Santiago Cumbrera coronó la mayoría de esas notas. Santiago no esperó que lo echaran; presentó su renuncia diciéndole a la nueva directiva que eran unos impostores.
Let's recall that until it changed hands, Panamá América was constantly uncovering scandals and crooked moves by the current government. Santiago Cumbrera's name was on the majority of these articles. Santiago didn't wait to be kicked out; he tendered his resignation, telling the new board that they were imposters.
Twitter lit up with reactions to the president's remarks.
Luis Castillo (@Luis03Castillo) [es], for example, reminded the president that Cumbrera resigned and was not fired, and asked him to be serious and act in accordance to his position:
@Luis03Castillo: @rmartinelli yo trabaje con Santiago Cumbrera en EPASA y el renuncio. Me consta. Sea serio y no olvide su investidura.
@Luis03Castillo: @rmartinelli I worked with Santiago Cumbrera at EPASA and he resigned. I'm sure. Be serious and don't forget your inauguration.
Others, however, insisted that the accusations were true. Abel D Pereambro (@AbelDPereambro) [es] said that he had spoken to one of the victims himself:
@AbelDPereambro: @RicardoLombanaG yo hablé con una de las víctimas del acosador sexual Santiago Cumbrera. Pidio favores sexuales y coima. Es un degenerado!
@AbelDPereambro: @RicardoLombanaG I spoke with one of Santiago Cumbrera's sexual harassment victims. He asked for sexual favors and bribes. He's a pervert!
Yodalys Vasquez (@YodalisYodi) [es] says that the president also has the right to freedom of expression:
@YodalisYodi :el presidente TAMBIEN debe tener libertad de expresion!
@YodalisYodi: The president ALSO should have freedom of expression!
Edgardo Vidal (@EVidal1507) [es], though, demanded that the president provide evidence to back up his accusations:
@EVidal1507: Q el Presidente Martinelli presente las pruebas de sus acusaciones al periodista Cumbrera… Que bajo lenguaje para un presidente!
@EVidal1507: President Martinelli must show proof of his accusations against the journalist Cumbrera… What base language for a president!
The Panamanian online community is waiting for clarification from the president, although no one has been surprised when previous situations ended with a brief apology and a charge of wrongheadedness.

author: Ariel Moreno


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Private Plane Trip Rocks Costa Rican Government · Global Voices
Roy Rojas

The news [es] that an oil company provided a private plane for President Laura Chinchilla's trip to Peru has rocked the Costa Rican presidency and its structure of contributors.
Originally the purpose of the trip was to attend the wedding of Vice President Luis Liberman's son. However, to make the most out of the trip, an appointment with Peruvian President Ollanta Humala was set.
As communicated by the Presidency communications manager, the meeting with President Humala was scheduled before the trip to address Costa Rica's chances to join the Pacific Alliance and to talk about a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) ratified last April.
Later it was made public that President Chinchilla had also used that same plane to attend President Hugo Chávez's funeral in Venezuela.
Although many frowned upon the fact that a private company provided a plane for the President's trip to Peru, on May 15 another issue was added to the news: the company that lent the airplane [es] is connected to a businessman questioned for drug trafficking in Colombia. The businessman, Gabriel Morales Fallón, was part of the board of Thorneloe Energy, today known as THX.
According to publications on Semana [es] and El Tiempo [es] in Colombia, Morales has been investigated for his links with a drug dealer known as “Chupeta”.
Francisco Chacón, until then Costa Rican Minister of Communication, noted [es] that they believed that Gabriel Morales’ mother's last name was Olafán and not Fallón, and they alleged being misled. It was later confirmed that the businessman had changed his name.
The President didn't take long to issue a response. During a national broadcast she announced some of the government's corrective measures:
The President mentioned two important points during her televised speech: “The management and acceptance by the Presidency were careless, without all necessary procedures and controls to assure integrity and safety”, and goes on to say: “The omissions were particularly serious regarding national security and protection to the President of the Republic. Furthermore, it could endanger the country's solid international image, that has always fought drug trafficking and organized crime”.
“We shall never forget this lesson, it's a hard one”, said the President at the end of the national television broadcast.
As a result, two government officials resigned from their positions: Communication Minister Francisco Chacon, and the head of the Direction of Intelligence and Safety Mauricio Boraschi.
Cristian Cambronero (@cambronero) [es] said on his Twitter account:
@cambronero Vuelo de la presidenta Laura Chinchilla acaba con la caída de su hombre fuerte.
@cambronero [es] President Laura Chinchilla's flight ends up with the fall of her strongman.
The President's long time personal assistant, Ms. Irene Pacheco, has also left her position.
Laura Chinchilla said that Boraschi and Pacheco didn't do their duty [es] in verifying the origin of the plane.
President Chinchilla (@Laura_Ch) [es] added on her Twitter account:
@Laura_Ch He aceptado renuncia de 2 funcionarios, entre ellos Comisionado Antidrogas quien libró valiente lucha antidrogas pero descuidó mi seguridad.
@Laura_Ch [es]: I've accepted the resignation of two government officials, including the Anti-drugs Commissioner, who fought drugs bravely but neglected my security.
The government has been weakened and the President's circle of trusted officials has been reduced after this episode. Furthermore, the flaws in security have shown the deficiencies in the national security service.
The Republic's General Attorney and the public prosecutor have initiated separate investigations [es] about the trip in the private plane, about the government's relationship with the questioned company, and about the failure to comply with obligations.

author: Roy Rojas


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Promises of Social Justice for India’s Landless · Global Voices
Marie Bohner

As rapid industrialization and development in India requisitions land, and the government grapples with a legal framework to deal with the displaced, activist group Ekta Parishad, whose name means “forum of unity” in Hindi, has campaigned on behalf of the landless and homeless.
The extensive work of Ekta Parishad in the most impoverished rural areas of India was recognized in a meeting with Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh, on 15 April, 2013, affirming an earlier agreement with the government in favor of the landless, and the poor in general. The organization applies the Gandhian principle of non-violent action to help the population to better control the resources which allow them to survive: land, water and forests.
The most impoverished people in India, the Dalits and  Adivasis, especially women, are not only forgotten, but are also the main victims of rampant growth [fr] in recent years, which is centered primarily around industrialization. In February 2013, the National Dalit and Adavasi Women's Congress was cited in a recent blog article by Sujatha Surepally, which also denounces this sad reality:
The hall is echoing with the furious voice of Dayamani Barla, veteran Adivasi activist from Jharkhand. She is trying to unite people against mining in Jharkhand, around 108 mining companies are waiting to destroy Adivasi life in the name of mining, first they come for coal, next they say power houses, it continues, we are pushed out and out further. How do we live without our land? Spectacular speech for an hour, pin drop silence all around, everyone is identifying with her pain and agony. At the end of it, what is she is trying to convey? Humko Jeene Do! Let us live our own life! If this is called development, we care a damn about it!
Marches for Justice
Based upon transfer of important natural resources to industrial investors, both Indian and foreign, this growth has hindered the path of commitments to environmental matters. Local populations, of whom 70 percent still live in rural areas today, and who are dependent on natural resources for their survival, were often displaced by land grabs, made without any compensation.
Given the 60 million people who were displaced without compensation between 1947 and 2004, and the 25 million hectares of land requisitioned, activists from Ekta Parishad organized Janadesh – the “People's Verdict”, in 2007, which was a month-long march of 25,000 people from the city of Gwalior to the national capital, Delhi, to demand rights for the landless. These videos describe Janadesh [fr] and its Indian and international support [fr]:
These grievances were heard, and resulted in laws such as the “Forest Rights Act“. Subrat Kumar Sahu commented in an online article in April 2010 about the law :
The Bill stated: “For the first time in the history of Indian forests, the state formally admits that, for long, rights have been denied to forest-dwelling people, and the new forest law attempts not only to right that ‘historic injustice’ but also give forest communities’ role primacy in future forest management.” Forest-dependent communities that were being pushed deeper and deeper into what remained of the forests were pleasantly surprised by the passage of FRA 2006, although forest-rights activists were cynical about the state’s intentions. Many called the Bill “a paper tiger”, like so many other pieces of legislation in India.
Despite these progressive laws, few achievements have been effectively realized since they were passed. This led Ekta Parishad and more than 2,000 other organizations to organize in October 2012 the Jan Satyagraha, or “The March for Justice”, again from Gwalior to Delhi, which was attended by 50,000 people on its first day.
The video below, subtitled in French, “Act or Die,” summarizes the alternatives for these people:
According to the blog Rexistance Inde [fr]:
Difficile de dénombrer les marcheurs, mais il faut compter presque cinq heures pour voir défiler l'ensemble du cortège. (…) Nous traversons (…) quelques villages où les gens accueillent la Marche avec des colliers et des jets de pétales de fleurs jaunes et orange.
It was difficult to count the number of marchers, but it took almost five hours to watch the passing of the entire procession (…) We passed through (…) some villages where people welcomed the March with necklaces of yellow and orange flowers, and by throwing flower petals.
The Jan Satyagraha march passes over the river Chambal, on 6 October, 2012. Photo credit Goran Basic / Ekta Parishad with permission (sent via email)
Promises to keep
The petitions of 2007, which had focused on landless rural people, were this time expanded to include the homeless, the effective application of laws against poverty, the technical means for such application, and finally, a precise timetable for the fulfillment of these promises. The summation of these demands was written in the 10-point agreement between the marchers and the Indian Government [fr] on 11 October, 2012, and was confirmed by a new meeting between the authorities and the marchers in April 2013.
The blog Rexistance Inde [fr] stated in an article on 31 December, 2012:
Le gouvernement fédéral s'engage à plancher sur une politique de réformes agraires et à faire pression auprès des gouvernements locaux – l'allocation de terres étant leur prérogative – pour permettre aux populations marginalisées de rester sur leurs terres, ou d'en obtenir de nouvelles pour y travailler. Et pour y vivre ! Car l'une des clauses centrales, et nouvelles, de l'engagement consiste à inclure le droit au logement pour chaque famille pauvre et sans terre. […] Mais Ekta Parishad n'est pas naïf. Au contraire, fort de l'expérience de la Janadesh en 2007 dont le peu de promesses obtenues n'avait pas vraiment été tenues, le mouvement reste vigilant, à tel point qu'il lance dans la foulée de la signature de l'accord un appel à soutien international pour signifier au gouvernement que les “invisibles” ne le lâcheront pas d'une semelle, et que l'œil de la conscience citoyenne veille, partout dans le monde.
The federal government is starting a campaign of agrarian political reforms, and to put pressure on local governments – since the allocation of land is their prerogative – to allow marginalized populations to remain on their land, or to find new land where they can work. And where they can live ! Since one of the new, and central, clauses of the agreement consists of the inclusion of a right to housing for each poor and landless family […] But Ekta Parishad is not naive. On the contrary, given the experience from Janadesh in 2007, from which few of the promises obtained have truly been kept, the movement remains vigilant. To the point that, in the wake of the signing of the agreement, it launched an appeal for international support, to signal to the government that the “invisibles” will not retreat an inch, and that the eyes of civic consciousness are watching, throughout the world.
The support initiatives, at the Indian, European and international levels, were also redoubled during recent months, to ensure that the agreement will be respected by the Indian government, as stated in a collective letter sent to Minister Jairam Ramesh, thanking him for his actions since the beginning of the year on behalf of the most impoverished, but also encouraging him not to turn back from such a promising path.
Hope and caution
The agreement reached between Ekta Parishad and the Indian government may well represent the promise of a new paradigm for development and distribution of natural resources within India, and perhaps elsewhere. On the eve of general elections in India, it is time for mobilization and hope, but equally well for caution.
V. Rajagopal, President of Ekta Parishad, confirmed that the movement intends to make its voice heard clearly during the electoral campaign which is now beginning in India, in an online article on Firstpost India, on 12 April, 2013:
2014 is an election year, and all political parties are drafting their manifestos. And our effort is to make land reform figure prominently in their manifestos. We are talking to different political parties. And keeping the next election in mind, we have come up with a slogan – Aage zameen peeche vote, nahi zameen toh nahi vote (first land, then vote; no land, no vote).

author: Marie Bohner


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Free Speech and South Korea’s Child Porn Law · Global Voices
Lee Yoo Eun

A DeviantART website user wrote how South Korea's Children and Youth Protection law, that cracks down on child porn, can greatly undermine freedom of expression. Rough English translation appears in the latter half of the post. (There soon will be a detailed GV post on this issue)

author: Lee Yoo Eun


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14-year-old Citizen Journalist Killed Covering Clashes in Syria · Global Voices
Rami Alhames

Omar Qatifaan, a 14-year-old media activist, was killed 21 May, 2013 while covering clashes between the Syrian Army and the rebel Free Army in the southern Daraa al-Ballad area of Syria near the border with Jordan.
Youth media project Syrian Documents reported on his death, and Syrian news blog YALLA SOURIYA called him the “Spirit of Syria”.
The conflict in Syria, as well as other Arab Spring uprisings, has seen a rise in citizen journalists reporting from the ground on the ongoing war between the country's pro- and anti-government forces. Many have been detained, tortured, and even killed while trying to bring the story of the revolution to the world.
Children have also paid a terrible price during the conflict, with thousands killed during the violence so far.
Media activist Omar Qatifaan was 14-years-old when he was killed while covering a battle in Daraa, Syria. Photo from the Twitter account of @RevolutionSyria
Another media activist recorded video of Qatifaan after he was killed. The footage was posted on YouTube by SyrianDaysOfRage [GRAPHIC VIDEO]:

author: Rami Alhames


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Thailand’s Prime Minister Sues Cartoonist for Insulting Facebook Post · Global Voices
Aim Sinpeng

Thailand's Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra is suing a popular cartoonist for defamation over a comment he posted on Facebook comparing the leader to a prostitute for “selling out her country”.
In a lawsuit filed on May 3, 2013, Yingluck accuses Chai Rachawat of insulting an official during an official event, defaming another person via publicity, and violating the 2007 Computer Crime Act, which prohibits posting defamatory comments against others online.
Chai, who illustrates for best-selling newspaper Thai Rath, was reacting to a controversial speech given by Yingluck when he posted on his Facebook page:
Please understand…the female prostitute is not a bad person. The prostitute is merely selling her body. But that bad woman is selling out her country.
This is the first time in her two-year premiership that Yingluck, who is Thailand's first female prime minister, has sued a citizen for commenting on a social media network.
During the 7th Ministerial Conference on the International Democracies in Mongolia, Yingluck, who is the younger sister of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra who was ousted by a coup in 2006, gave a speech that ruffled many feathers back home. In it she shared her experience as a warning to other leaders about the collapse of democracy in her country and the pain that had put her family through.
Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. Image from Wikipedia
Thaksin later went into self-exile to avoid a jail sentence for alleged corruption.
An excerpt from Yingluck's candid speech delivered April 29, 2013:
We all thought that the new era of democracy finally arrived in Thailand….this was not true. An elected government, which won two elections with majority, was overthrown in 2006. Thailand lost track and the people spent nearly a decade trying to regain democratic freedom…My brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, was a rightful elected leader. Many of you who don't know me say that ‘why complain?’ This is a normal process that government comes and goes. If I and my family were the only one suffering, I might just let it be. But this was not. Thailand suffered…rule of law in the country was destroyed…the people felt their rights and liberties were wrongly taken away…
She even criticized some features of Thailand's Constitution:
It is clear that elements of anti-democratic regime still exist. The new constitution, drafted under the coup leaders led government, put in mechanisms to restrict democracy.
A good example of this is that half of the Thai Senate is elected, but the other half is appointed by a small group of people. In addition, the so called independent agencies have abused the power that should belong to the people, for the benefit of the few rather than to the Thai society at large.
A video of her speech was uploaded on YouTube:
Her words sparked outrage among the opposition, the military, the media and the senate, while prompting lively online discussions. Many took out their frustration on Facebook.
Nearly 60 senators denounced Yingluck's action and demanded she apologize to the Thai people. Senator Nareewan Jintakanon reminded [th] Yingluck that Thaksin was ousted because he abused power:
The prime minister claimed her brother was mistreated. This is not the whole truth. The 2006 coup d'état was launched because Thaksin abused his power; had conflict of interest and lacked any moral ethics to lead a country.
Vasit Dejkunjorn, a retired high-ranking Royal Court Security police officer condemned Yingluck's “stupidity” for telling others that Thailand is unstable when her job is to promote the country to foreign investors.
Chai's comment further set the online world aflame, with many slamming the remark. On popular web board Pantip, a group of netizens established “We hate Chai Ratchawat Group” in response to his Facebook remarks. ban_rach16 wrote that what Chai posted was not satire:
A political cartoonist shouldn't hit this low. This is not political satire, it's making a mess
Another web board, Ban Ratchadamneon, had many anti-Chai Ratchawat posts. Ta Kob Dong commented:
He [Chai] has no morality but was elevated to a high position. Now we all see his true colors
Meanwhile, a group of Red Shirts, the name for supporters of the political group United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship which opposes the 2006 coup that toppled Yingluck's brother, stormed newspaper Thai Rath headquarters demanding Chai's dismissal. A protester held a sign:
Why being a prostitute is so bad? There are many prostitutes who love their country. Unlike some media who sells out and forgets its own ideals.
A new “Thai Spring” website was launched as a venue for Yingluck's opposition to have their say, following outrage from her speech. Inspired by the pro-democracy Arab Spring movements, the site aims to launch a petition against the government. The “petition against the speech in Ulaanbaatar” has over 23,000 signatories as of May 21, 2013.
The saga is far from over as other anti-Yingluck websites mushroomed in the Thai cyberspace, prompting her brother, Thaksin, to give a threatening remark during his recent Skype video conference with thousands of Red Shirt supporters, marking the third anniversary of the deadly military crackdown on the group's protests in 2010.
“The Thai Spring website would never be ‘sprung’,” claimed Thaksin.

author: Aim Sinpeng


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Trinidad & Tobago: “Ordinariology”  · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

The backlash, growing quietly by the second, apparently, against the Differentology video isn't that it's a bad video, it's that it's the wrong class of video entirely for the song.
Mark Lyndersay explains why he thinks the video for the most transformative soca song of the year is simply ordinary.


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Update on Colombia Peace Process · Global Voices
Silvia Viñas

WOLA (Washington Office on Latin America) has published an update on the talks between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The report concludes:
As they pass their six-month anniversary, the talks are proceeding in an atmosphere of increased, though still moderate, optimism. This will grow dramatically if the ninth round makes clear that the agenda has moved beyond the first item, and if the FARC, in its public statements, more explicitly addresses its responsibilities to its victims.

author: Silvia Viñas


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Video: Mapping North Korea  · Global Voices
Lee Yoo Eun

Several months earlier, Google debuted its new crowd-sourced map of one of the most reclusive countries in the world, North Korea. Martyn Williams shared a video on his Youtube channel where Google Maps’ vice president talks about mapping North Korea.


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Bangladesh’s Planned Coal Power Plant Threatens Sundarbans Mangrove Forest · Global Voices
Rezwan

A plan to erect a coal-fired power plant in Bangladesh next to the Sundarbans, the largest mangrove forest in the world which straddles Bangladesh and India, is drawing fire from activists in the country who say it would destroy the world heritage site.
The proposed 1320-megawatt plant, to be built in the area of Rampal in the southern Bagerhat district, was initially put into motion in a bilateral agreement between Bangladesh and India during the Bangladeshi prime minister's tour of India in 2011 before an environmental impact assessment was conducted by Bangladesh's Environment Ministry.
On 20 April, 2013, the Power Development Board of Bangladesh signed [bn] three agreements with India's National Thermal Power Corporation, which made the implementation official. The project, estimated to cost 1.6 billion US dollars, is expected to be completed by 2018.
When the government finally released an environmental impact assessment (download in PDF from here) on the power plant, environmentalists rejected it in a consultative meeting, organized by the Power Division on April 12, arguing that the report did not take into consideration most of the important environmental aspects of the Sundarbans, its ecology, flora, and fauna as well as a large number of local people.
Moreover, the report stated that (page 208) once the proposed site was a part of Sundarbans, but had been evacuated by the settlers later.
Bangladesh's energy infrastructure is known to be quite small, insufficient and poorly managed. Only 40% of the population has access to electricity with a per capita availability of 136 kWh per Annum. So there is a huge pressure on the Government to meet the growing demands of electricity.
The National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports urged citizens of both India and Bangladesh to carry out concentrated efforts to stop the power plant on its website.
Environment experts, social workers, and citizens holding banners form a human chain in the capital Dhaka to demand that the Sundarbans, the world largest remaining mangrove forest, be saved. Image by Firoz Ahmed. Copyright Demotix (21/3/2013)
Abdullah Al Imran [bn] pointed out in a Facebook note that India is violating its own laws meant to protect wildlife with its involvement in this power plant:
১৩২০ মেগাওয়াট ক্ষমতার একটা বিদ্যুতকেন্দ্র গড়ে উঠবে বাগেরহাটের রামপালে যা কিনা সুন্দরবন থেকে মাত্র ১৪ কিলোমিটার দূরে। ভারতের ওয়াইল্ড লাইফ প্রটেকশন এ্যাক্ট ১৯৭২ অনুযায়ী বাঘ-হাতি সংরক্ষণ অঞ্চল,জাতীয় উদ্যান এবং জীব বৈচিত্র্যের জন্য গুরূত্বপূর্ণ বনাঞ্চলের১৫ কিলোমিটার ব্যাসার্ধের মধ্যে কোন বিদ্যুৎকেন্দ্র তৈরী করা যায় না।
An 1320 MW plant would be established in Rampal of Bagerhat which is only 14 kilometres away from the Sundarbans. According to the Indian Wildlife Protection Act 1972, no such power plant should be established within 15 kilometers of a forest which is home to sanctuaries for tigers and elephants and wildlife.
Journalist Kallol Mustafa [bn] summarized on Facebook the environmental impact that the report foresees that the plant will have:
বিদ্যুৎ কেন্দ্র নির্মাণের মালামাল ও যন্ত্রপাতি সুন্দরবনের ভেতর দিয়ে নদী পথে পরিবহন করা হবে। এর ফলে বাড়তি নৌযান চলাচল, তেল নি:সরণ, শব্দদূষণ, আলো, বর্জ্য নি:সরণ ইত্যাদি পরিবেশ আইন অনুসারে নিয়ন্ত্রণ না করা গেলে সুন্দরবনের ইকো সিস্টেম বিশেষ করে রয়েল বেঙ্গল টাইগার, হরিণ, ডলফিন, ম্যানগ্রোভ বন ইত্যাদির উপর ক্ষতিকর প্রভাব ফেলবে বলে ইআইএ রিপোর্টে আশংকা করা হয়েছে।
The building material and equipment for the plant would be transported on the river. So it is stated in the EIA report that the increase in transport of engine ships, oil spillage, noise, light and air pollution, etc. will have an adverse effect on Royal Bengal tigers, deer, dolphins, the mangrove forest and other ecosystems.
Engineer Md. Shahadat Hossain [bn] wrote on the Water Resource Engineers Forum blog:
প্রস্তাবিত রামপাল কয়লা বিদ্যুৎ কেন্দ্রের ইআইএ রিপোর্টের এই সংক্ষিপ্ত পর্যালোচনা থেকে স্পষ্ট যে, [..] সুন্দরবনের পাশে ১৩২০ মেগাওয়াটের এই কয়লা বিদ্যুৎ কেন্দ্রকে জায়েজ করার সর্বোচ্চ চেষ্টা করা স্বত্ত্বেও, এরপরও খোদ ইআইএ রিপোর্টে বিদ্যুৎ কেন্দ্র নির্মাণ, পরিচালানা ও কয়লা পরিবহনের ফলে সুন্দরবনের উপর সম্ভাব্য ক্ষতিকর প্রভাব সম্পর্কে এমন সব তথ্য বেরিয়ে এসেছে যা প্রস্তাবিত কয়লা বিদ্যুৎ প্রকল্পকে পরিবেশগত বিবেচনায় অগ্রহণযোগ্য বিবেচনা করার জন্য যথেষ্ট।
Analysis of the EIA report for the proposed power plant reveals that the building, operation, and coal transport for the 1320 MW coal-based power plant in the Sundarbans would create an adverse effect on the Sundarbans mangrove forest in the coming years, suggesting that it should be scrapped on environmental grounds.
Fishermen prepare to fish before sunset near Karamjal Wildlife Breeding Centre in the East Sundarbans. Image by Firoz Ahmed. Copyright Demotix (26/11/2012)
On community blog Ishtishon, Mahbub Shumon questioned the wisdom of harming the Sundarbans when they protect Bangladesh from natural disasters:
প্রথমত – ঝড় ঝাপটা প্রাকৃতিক দুর্যোগ থেকে থেকে বুক পেতে বাংলাদেশ রক্ষাকারী এই বনের মধ্যে বা কাছা কাছি ক্ষতিকর দূরত্বে এমন কোন প্রকল্প করা উচিৎ কিনা যা জীব – বইচিত্রের আধার এবং প্রাকৃতিক ভারসাম্য রক্ষাকারী, সর্বোপরি দুর্যোগ থেকে রক্ষাকারী এই প্রাকৃতিক দেয়াল ধ্বংস করে দিবে? সচেতন মানুষ মাত্রেই একমত হবেন নাবোধক উত্তরে। এমন বিদ্যুৎ আমাদের দরকার নাই যে বিদ্যুতের জন্য আমাদের দেশটাই ধ্বংস হয়ে যাবে।
দ্বিতীয় জরুরী প্রশ্ন হল- অন্য কোথাও বিদ্যুৎ প্রকল্প করা হলেও আমরা কি কয়লা ভিত্তিক বিদ্যুৎ প্রকল্পের ক্ষতি সামাল দিতে পারব?
First of all, these mangrove forests save Bangladesh from natural disasters. So why would you put a project in the vicinity of this forest that will destroy its wildlife, its flora and fauna? Any concerned person would say no. We don't need such power which will destroy my country's ecosystem.
Secondly, even if the plant is shifted, will we be able to restrict the damaging effects of burning coal for the plant?
Blogger Banglar Hassan [bn] reminded his readers that a similar project had been turned down in Odisha, India as it failed to obtain environmental clearance.
Faisal Caser [bn] asked:
যে বিবেচনায় এনটিপিসি নিজের দেশে বিদ্যুৎ কেন্দ্র নির্মাণ করতে পারেনি সেই একই বিবেচনায় বাংলাদেশে কী তাদের প্রকল্প বাতিল হতে পারে না?
The reason why NTPC could not build a power plant in its own country is not strong enough to stall their similar project in Bangladesh?
Facebook event to save Sundarbans. Image courtesy Omi Hasan.
Facebook events have been created to raise awareness of the planned plant. The dates of offline protests will be announced soon.

author: Rezwan


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‘Discover Somalia’ Photo and Culture Blog  · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Discover Somalia is a cultural and photography blog dedicated to Somalia. The blog aims at promoting a more accurate media image of Somalia and the potential of its people, beauty and natural resources.

author: Ndesanjo Macha


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Twin Suicide Car Bombings in Niger Kill 23 · Global Voices
Lova Rakotomalala

Benjamin Roger for Jeune Afrique reports [fr] that 18 soldiers, one civilian and four terrorists were killed early morning in an suicide car bombing in Agadez, Niger on May 23. He adds that military school students are currently being held hostages by another attacker following the bombing. Simultaneously, another car exploded in an uranium mine exploited by the Areva Group in Arlit, Niger. The militant group MOJWA has claimed responsibility for both terror attacks.

author: Lova Rakotomalala


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PHOTO: Locusts Invade Madagascar After Cyclone  · Global Voices
Lova Rakotomalala

Locust invasion in down town Fianaratsoa, Madagascar
Locust swarmed many regions of Madagascar and even a few of its cities. This disaster comes as a result of the humid conditions[fr] that remained after cyclone Haruna's landing. The FAO states that 60% of rice production will be affected by the invasion.


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Peru: Is Junk Food Synonymous with Freedom? · Global Voices
Juan Arellano

[Links are to Spanish-language pages, except where otherwise noted.]
Peruvian gastronomy [en] is a hot topic both in and outside the country. But lately, the culinary theme on everyone's lips has not been the quality of the dishes or the traditional ingredients—instead it is the recently adopted legislation of President Ollanta Humala, known as the Law for the Promotion of Healthy Eating by Boys, Girls, and Adolescents.
The law, whose wording was published on May 17, states that its objective is to “effectively promote and protect people's right to public health and proper growth and development through education, strengthening and fostering physical activity, establishing healthy food stands and lunchrooms in elementary and secondary educational institutions, as well as monitoring advertising, information, and any other practices related to food and non-alcoholic beverages targeted at children and adolescents.”
Once the law was adopted by Congress on May 2, congressman Luis Galarreta declared that it had a “completely interventionist vision that I think jeopardizes both the media and its financing.” At the same time, the former Minister of Foreign Trade and Tourism, Alfredo Ferrero, argued that the ambiguities of the law could “affect broadcasting of the Brazil World Cup in 2014.”
Photo via Lokendra Nath Roychoudhury, lokenrc on Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Peru's national association of industries (SNI in Spanish) has requested a repeal of the law because, by prohibiting the sale of packaged food in schools, it encourages the consumption of unregulated products to the detriment of the health of school children; and moreover, schools are not in a position to assume the task of feeding children.
On the other hand, Fernando Leanes, a representative from the Pan-American Health Organization (OPS in Spanish) and the World Health Organization (WHO) supports the law and declared that “(we are trying to avoid) silent diseases such as diabetes or hypertension that can contribute to children developing health problems when they are 40 or 50 years old.”
In social networks opinions are equally divided, and the debate is seasoned with pictures of succulent sandwiches and other fare usually labeled junk food. On Twitter Miguel Mellado (@miguelm1504) expressed an opinion apparently shared by many:
@miguelm1504: Ningún publicista o medio de comunicación va estar a favor de la ley sobre la comida chatarra.
@miguelm1504: No advertising professional or media outlet is going to be in favour of a law on junk food.
On Facebook, writer Sonia Luz Carrillo shared her feelings while watching a television interview on the subject:
La publicidad de los productos menos saludables y hasta francamente dañinos a la salud según los especialistas – nutricionistas debidamente acreditados, por ejemplo- es uno de los principales ‘alimentos’ de las empresas de comunicación, especialmente la televisión. Eso explica la campaña en contra de la Ley y cualquier otro dispositivo que coloque la necesidad de conocimiento conveniente para que el público pueda optar por una alimentación saludable.
The marketing of products that are less healthy and frankly almost harmful to our health according to experts—certified nutritionists for example—is one of the main sources of fodder for the communications companies, especially television. This explains the campaign against the law and whatever other measure there is that makes it possible for the public to find out how to make healthier food choices.
The controversy grew when Cardinal and Archbishop of Lima Juan Luis Cipriani [en], declared that it has been a while since he has eaten junk food and believes that much of it is harmful, but at the same time he is against legislating what people can or cannot eat.
In a widely discussed article shared on social networks, the advertising professional Robby Ralston wrote that in his view the law was poorly conceived, which “leaves so many grey areas that can invite criticism”, adding that “this leads inevitably down the road to advertising censorship and corruption”. Finally Ralston mentioned that “what really bothers me is that they are limiting my freedom to advertise and above all the freedom of Peruvians to see and enjoy advertising.”
The journalist Isabel Guerra commented on Facebook, echoing another of Ralston's arguments:
El Tribunal Constitucional ha despenalizado las relaciones sexuales presuntamente consentidas con menores de entre 14 y 17 años. Ahora tenemos una ley que supuestamente prohibirá que a esos mismos menores se les venda “comida chatarra”. Es decir, un adulto se puede llevar a la cama a una nena de 14 años, pero no le puede vender un pan con hot dog… :S #yodigonomás :S
The Constitutional Court has decriminalized presumably consensual sexual relations with minors of 14 to 17 years of age. Now we have a law that supposedly prohibits the sale of “junk food” to these same minors. In other words, an adult can bed a 14-year-old girl, but cannot sell her a hot dog on a bun…:S #yodigonomás (that's all I have to say) :S
The discussion reached a new low when a journalist tweeted a photo of Presidente Humala's daughters and commented that one of them seemed to be overweight. The tweet garnered a battery of criticism.
Given that the Ministry of Health has 60 days to issue the regulations for the Law for the Promotion of Healthy Eating, debate and pressure from various interest groups is expected to continue.

author: Juan Arellano


text:
Peru: New Collectible Coin · Global Voices
Gabriela García Calderón Orbe

Temple of Kotosh, image by Flickr user madiko83 (CC BY 2.0).
The Central Reserve Bank of Peru released on May 22, 2013, the thirteenth collectible coin part of the numismatic series “Wealth and pride of Peru” . The coin has an image of the crossed hands from the Temple of Kotosh, located in the department of Huánuco.

author: Gabriela García Calderón Orbe


text:
Second Segment of Fiber Optic Cable Connects to Cuba  · Global Voices
Elaine Díaz

The fiber optic cable, which is expected to improve Cuba's connectivity to the Internet, is of utmost importance to the country, and every piece of information continues to clarify the current state of this technological infrastructure. In the past days, U.S. company Renesys announced on its blog that during this week they “observed a second non-satellite connection established for the Cuban state telecom, ETECSA [Cuban State Telecommunications Company]”.
In January of this year, Renesys stated that the ALBA-1 submarine cable had begun to bring Internet traffic in the segment that connects Cuba to Venezuela.
According to Doug Madory, a Renesys employee:
esta vez un segmento diferente del cable submarino ALBA-1 se utiliza para conectar Cuba a la isla vecina de Jamaica. A las 15:04 UTC del 13 de mayo de 2013, se observó que ETECSA comenzó a recibir el servicio internacional de Internet a través de Cable & Wireless Jamaica
this time a different segment from the ALBA-1 submarine cable is being used to connect Cuba to its neighboring island, Jamaica. At 15:04 UTC on May 13, 2013, it was observed that ETECSA began receiving international Internet service through Cable & Wireless Jamaica
Madory also confirmed that two weeks ago, during a presentation by LACNIC 19 [es] in Medellín, Colombia, ETECSA representatives confirmed the initial statements from Renesys. According to the employee, “it was a pleasure meeting some of the people involved in this historic activation.”
The description of the project [es] on the Cuba-Venezuela International Telecommunications Systems confirms that the Cuba-Jamaica segment will be used for “the purpose of restoration.” As a result, Renesys believes the activation could “help alleviate some minor connectivity problems recently experienced by ETECSA.”
Image of the connection between Cuba, Venezuela, and Jamaica through the ALBA 1 fiber optic cable. Taken from the Renesys blog.
Following the Cuban State Telecommunications Company's initial statements in January 2013 regarding the operational nature of the fiber optic cable and the start of several tests, a group of resident users on the island took to social networks to discuss computerization and increased Internet access in the country.
According to Daniel Salas [es], professor at the University of Havana:
Para irnos montando en el debate sobre cómo extender Internet en Cuba, podríamos empezar por ir teniendo claro cuál es la situación de la infraestructura nacional de comunicaciones, qué nodos enlaza la fibra óptica nacional, cuál es la saturación de las centrales telefónicas y los pares de cobre, qué tipos de soluciones tecnológicas estarían disponibles y sus costos, y no estaría de más saber un poquito de las cuentas de ETECSA.
In order to continue participating actively in the debate on how to extend Internet in Cuba, we could start by clarifying the current situation of the national communications infrastructure, which nodes the fiber optic cable links, the saturation of central operator exchanges and copper pairs, the types of technological solutions that would be available and their costs, and it would not hurt to know a bit about the ETECSA accounts.
Meanwhile, Cuban professor and researcher Milena Recio considered [es]:
Según la nota de ETECSA, se derivan dos posturas de política: 1) habrá que sacar divisas de algunos servicios para repartir gratuidad en otros. Dice: “aumentar los recursos en divisas, destinados a pagar el tráfico de Internet”. Es decir, se mantiene el esquema gratuidad; 2) se multiplicarán las posibilidades de acceso, aunque no “automáticamente”, pero se multiplicarán. Es decir, no solo mejorarán las actuales. Ahora bien, preguntas posibles ¿conectividad social, implica necesariamente gratuidad? ¿qué parte de la infraestructura interna de telecomunicaciones se priorizará en función de qué objetivos?
According to ETECSA's announcement, there are two political positions: 1) currency will have to be taken from certain services in order to deliver free services in others. It says: “increase foreign exchange resources, intended to pay for internet traffic.” This is to say that it maintains the free-of-charge scheme; 2) Access possibilities will multiply, though not “automatically,” but they will multiply. This is to say that not only will the current ones improve. Now, possible questions – does social connectivity necessarily imply a free-of-charge service? which part of the internal telecommunications infrastructure will be prioritized depending on which objectives?
The Cuban telecommunications company's late statement also motivated a number of criticisms among bloggers. Blog Fanal Cubano reflects it as follows [es]:
El sólo hecho de divulgar cuatro días antes esta propia nota, escueta, pero rotunda, habría despojado a ETECSA de la responsabilidad de darle un sesgo confirmativo al hecho, y nuestra entidad, cubana ciento por ciento, hubiese emergido como fuente portadora de una noticia de alcance mundial por su significado, en tanto victoria de la integración regional sobre la política de cerco económico, comercial y financiero practicada por los Estados Unidos contra Cuba desde hace más de medio siglo.
The mere fact of divulging this very brief yet emphatic announcement four days earlier, ETECSA would have been stripped of the responsibility of giving it a confirmatory bias, and our entity, one hundred percent Cuban, would had emerged as the source for news of global reach because of its significance, as much as it would have been a victory of regional integration over the economic, commercial and financial siege of the United States against Cuba for over half a century.
Cuba currently has a bandwidth of 323 Mbps (megabits per second) via satellite for the entire island. A website can take several minutes to open and even hours to see a video.

author: Elaine Díaz