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Boy Bands, Ballet and Battles over Masculinity in Central Asia · Global Voices
Akhal-Tech Collective

Members of the Kazakh K-pop boy band Ninety One. Official photo taken from group website.
In Aktobe, an economically depressed provincial town in Kazakhstan's oil-rich west, boy bands and their assorted earrings, makeup and hair dye are not welcome.
That is according to an unnamed representative of the “creative intelligentsia of Aktobe” quoted in a recent report on Kazakhstan's Tengri News website:
Мы представители творческой интеллигенции Актобе, от имени молодежи хотим высказать свое мнение о группе Ninety One. Потому что скоро в нашем городе намечаются гастроли этой группы. Они носят гордое название 91 – это год принятия независимости нашей страны. Мы против этого. Нам не нужна эта группа, где вокалисты красят волосы, носят серьги в ушах. Мы против их выступлений на площадке нашего города, мы не считаем их народной группой. Никогда такого не было в истории и традициях казахского народа. Молодежь говорит, что не пустят их к выступлениям. Мы не хотим волнений. Поэтому хотелось бы заранее предупредить о возможном исходе данного мероприятия.
Сейчас идет активная реализация билетов на концерт среди учащихся средних школ, колледжей и так далее. Мы прошлись по учреждениям, как могли объяснили. Мы категорически против их приезда, пусть к нам не приезжают. Мы за народные традиции, где мужчина остается мужчиной, а женщина – женщиной. Мужчина в нашем понятии не может красить волосы, одевать серьги. Мы чтим и уважаем традиции народа, мы все против их гастролей, нам и нашему городу это не нужно.
We, representatives of the creative intelligentsia in Aktobe, on behalf of the young people [in Aktobe] want to express our opinion about Ninety One group, because very soon this group plans to visit our city. They wear the proud name 91 – the year of the adoption of our country's independence. We are against this. We do not need this band, in which vocalists dye their hair and wear earrings.
We are opposed to them performing in our city, and we do not consider them a national group. Such things have never happened before in the history and traditions of the Kazakh people. Young people said they will not allow them to perform. We do not want riots. Therefore, I would like to warn in advance about the possible outcome of this event.
Currently tickets are being sold in middle schools, colleges and so on. We walked through these institutions and tried as far as we could to explain. We are categorically against [the band's] arrival. They shouldn't come here. We are for national traditions, wherein a man is a man, and a woman is a woman. A man in our conception cannot dye his hair or wear earrings. We honour and respect the traditions of the people.
Ninety One is a boy band hailing from Kazakhstan's largest, most cosmopolitan city Almaty, that is currently taking the country by storm. The collective's style is loosely modelled on K-Pop, or Korean pop, but the singers sing and rap in the state language, Kazakh. Kazakh has a particularly sacred status for Kazakh nationalists given the fact that in Kazakhstan — more than anywhere else in Central Asia — Russian has retained its position as a lingua franca.
As noted by the speaker at the September 29 meeting held to protest the band's arrival in Aktobe (there is no date for the show on the group's website) their metrosexual look is unusual for Kazakhstan. Their popularity — especially among girls and women — challenges traditional notions of gender in Kazakhstan that have roots in the country's pre-Soviet Islamic and nomadic heritage, as well as over seven decades of state-enforced communism.
If their show in Aktobe witnesses a ruckus, it would not be a regional first. In 2014 a nationalist vigilante group broke up a performance by the popular Ukrainian boy band Kazaky in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan's capital Bishkek on the basis that they viewed the group's dance moves as ‘glorifying homosexuality’.
Kyrgyz media portal Kloop.kg published on October 5 an impressive video and text portrait of male ballet dancers in Kyrgyzstan.
Ballet's continuing popularity in the country is explained by the years the country spent under Russian imperialism and the Soviet yoke, but the pastime has survived independence and the ballet artists interviewed in Kloop's report are ethnic Kyrgyz, not Russians.
Today, however, male ballet artists in Kyrgyzstan face miserly wages, poor conditions and the stereotype that the discipline is one for women and homosexuals.
One of the ballet dancers interviewed even felt compelled to resort to homophobic remarks in order to address this stereotype:
В детстве, когда мне предложили балет, я отказался. Сказал: «Я не гей, в колготках танцевать». Но потом все же потянуло в балет. На самом деле, мы обычные парни, иногда ходим в спортивных костюмах, курим и обсуждаем девчонок. Нет у нас в театре ни одного гея, мы мужики-мужиками.
In childhood, when [my family] offered me ballet classes I refused. I said: “I am not some gay that dances in tights.” But I was drawn to ballet. Really we are ordinary guys. Sometimes you will find us in sports clothes, smoking and discussing girls. There is not one gay amongst us in the theatre. We are men's men.


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He’s Only 6 Years Old, but India’s Chef Kicha Has Fans All Over the World · Global Voices
Rezwan

Little Chef Kicha on his YouTube show. Screenshot from video.
“Anyone can cook” was the motto of famous French Chef Gusteau in the Disney animated movie “Ratatouille“. If you look at the YouTube videos of the 6-year-old Chef Nihal Raj or Kicha (his nickname) from a suburb of the coastal Indian city of Kochi, you will understand what he meant. All you need is passion and a little bit of guidance, and you'll have a lot of fun.
Kicha is a first standard student of Choice School in Thripunithura, Kochi, in the Indian state of Kerala. Kicha started his ‘Kichatube‘ channel in January 2015, and has since become an YouTube sensation. The first recipe to be shared by him on YouTube was of ice popsicles and expanded to jam cookies, orange jelly, coconut pudding, Oreo truffles and tandoori baby potatoes, to name a few. He now has 31 videos with hundreds of thousands of views.
The focus of his channel is introducing new recipes and gadgets for kids. His mother Ruby Rajagopal encourages him, providing him with kid-friendly recipes — that means no cutting, chopping or cooking over fire. According to Kicha's father Rajagopal V. Krishnan, he started cooking when he was 4 years old after watching and helping his mother baking in the kitchen. Kicha loves to have people watching him cook, so his father started filming him on his mobile phone and shared the footage on Facebook, which got appreciation from friends and families. He later opened the YouTube channel and started uploading videos. Kicha is encouraged by all the attention he gets and likes to reply to messages on the Facebook page for the show.
In May 2016, Facebook acquired non-exclusive rights to one of his videos for 2,000 US dollars to use for its new campaign “Space for Everyone”, making him the youngest artist to sell rights to Facebook.
Here is the much discussed Mickey Mouse Mango Ice-Cream video by Little Chef Kicha picked up by Facebook:
Last month, he even went to United States to appear on the popular daytime Ellen DeGeneres talk show, the youngest Indian to do so. While there, he cooked a traditional Kerala breakfast snack called Puttu.
Kerala breakfast on Ellen in the most adorable way 😍😍! “6-Year-Old Chef Kicha Cooks with Ellen https://t.co/8VijnWsaDa via @ellentube“
— Rachana Ramesh (@Vida_Esme29) September 24, 2016
Kicha the lil chef from kochi in Ellen's show making Puttu…Impressive and he's one smarty pants!!! Way to go! https://t.co/ORsYmMRrlz
— Cooking with Thas (@thasneen) September 23, 2016
The video of his appearance has almost 1.5 million views so far:
Kicha gets a lot of love from his viewers. For example, Rachel Verghese commented in Facebook:
Kicha, you were adorable on the show. For a young six year old to be on Ellen's show was awesome and you did a great job. What an accomplishment. We are all proud of you.
Kicha has over 12,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel. You can catch up on the latest about him on Twitter.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Rezwan


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Many Names, One Sweet Latin American Confection · Global Voices
Gabriela García Calderón Orbe

No matter what you call it, it is an essential ingredient for alfajores. Image on Flickr by user Kim Love (CC BY-SA 2.0).
In Spanish it's known as dulce de leche, manjarblanco, manjar, arequipe and cajeta. All of those names refer to the same traditional ingredient — a type of caramelized milk that's indispensable in homemade and industrial Latin American confectionery.
Every year on October 11, the sweet is celebrated on World Dulce de Leche Day (using the name it is most widely known as). There are many versions of its origin story, and the most popular one places it in Argentina:
[…] el 11 de octubre [de 1829], [el militar y político argentino] Juan Manuel de Rosas y su oponente político, [el militar y político argentino] Juan Lavalle, se reunían para firmar un acuerdo de paz en la estancia “La Caledonia” en Cañuelas.
[…] una criada estaba en la estancia preparando la lechada (leche caliente con azúcar) con la que Rosas tomaba su tradicional mate. […] llegó el General Lavalle tan cansado que se tiró a dormir una siesta en la hamaca que pertenecía al dueño de casa. Frente a ese panorama, la criada salió desesperada a buscar a la guardia y olvidó la mezcla cocinándose en la olla. Cuando regresó a su puesto, ya se había convertido en una pasta espesa y de color marrón.
Con miedo, le confesó a Rosas lo que había pasado con su lechada [quien] lejos de enojarse, probó lo que había en el recipiente y, tanto le gustó, que se lo convidó a Lavalle.
[…] on October 11 [1829], [Argentinian politician and army officer] Juan Manuel de Rosas and his political rival, [Argentinian politician and army officer] Juan Lavalle, got together to sign a peace agreement in La Caledonia farm in Cañuelas.
[…] a maid was at the farm preparing lechada (hot milk with sugar) that Rosas used to drink his traditional mate with. […] General Lavalle was so tired when he arrived that he fell asleep on the hammock that belonged to the farm's owner. When the maid saw this, she ran in shock to tell the guards and completely forgot the mixture that she was preparing. When she got back, it was already a thick, brown paste.
Scared, she confessed to Rosas what had happened with his lechada [and] instead of getting mad, he tried what was in the pot and liked it so much that he shared it with Lavalle.
Other stories date the confection to an earlier time:
Otras leyendas aseguran que en Chile el Libertador General San Martín lo degustaba en su estadía tras su gesta Libertadora y que pronto se trasladó a Mendoza y luego a Buenos Aires.
En Francia dicen que el hallazgo (accidental) ocurrió en la campaña Napoleónica, los veteranos enrolados con el corso, recibían a diario una ración de leche azucarada caliente, un cocinero que estaba preparando la misma, a quien asistió el fragor de la batalla, abandono la olla, con la leche y el azúcar en la hornalla encendida.
Al hervir se transformo en Confiture de Lait (Dulce de Leche), y el cocinero entró en la historia francesa, como su inventor en el año 1815.
Other legends say that in Chile, the Liberator General San Martín used to savor it during his stay after the war for freedom, and [it] soon was taken to Mendoza and then to Buenos Aires.
In France, the story says that the (accidental) finding happened during Napoleon's campaigns, when recruited veterans used to get a daily share of hot sugary milk and one day a cook left the pot unattended with the milk and sugar on the hot burner.
After boiling, it became confiture de lait (dulce de leche), and the cook went down into French history as its inventor in 1815.
In any case, each October 11 on World Dulce de Leche Day, this delicacy is honored with different candy and dessert fairs, where the public can taste and buy all kind of sweets. Cooks also share their secrets with the public.
Leading up to the occasion, people have been talking about the milk caramel on Twitter, using all the different names this sweet ingredient is known by:
Arequipe, dulce de leche, majar blanco, mira su origen y receta original ¿Qué tanto te gusta el #ManjarBlanco ? https://t.co/g8qbaXolth pic.twitter.com/Hk4tpk3RtY
— Bésame FM (@BesameFM) 27 de septiembre de 2016
Arequipe, dulce de leche, manjar blanco, take a look at its origin and original recipe. How much do you like it?
Yo que creía que Guadalajara de Buga, en el Valle del Cauca…
Manjar, arequipe… ¡Manjarblanco! https://t.co/SsLSn8yLsT
— Ⓜarino Giraldo (@MarinoGiraldo) 26 de septiembre de 2016
I used to think that Guadalajara de Bugue, in Cauca Valley… Manjar, arequipe… manjarblanco!
Me recibí de GORDO. Le entré al pote de dulce de leche
— Thomas Gelmi (@ThoGelmi) 27 de septiembre de 2016
I graduated as a FAT MAN. I had a jar of dulce de leche.
Mi amor por los churros con arequipe es demasiado puro y sincero.
— Nanny (@Nannyvelasquez) 27 de septiembre de 2016
My love for churros with arequipe is so pure and sincere.
In the end, it doesn't matter what you call it or where it comes from. What matters is that traditional desserts and candy would be unimaginable without this sweet ingredient.

author: Gabriela García Calderón Orbe


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Netizen Report: Open Source Developers Endure Long Prison Sentences, And Worse · Global Voices
Netizen Report Team

Bassel Khartabil. Photo by Joi Ito via Wikimedia (CC BY 2.0)
It has been one year since Syrian-Palestinian open technology leader Bassel Khartabil disappeared from his prison cell in Syria.
Bassel served as the public affiliate for Creative Commons Syria and contributed to Mozilla Firefox, Wikipedia, and other open communities online. He also was the CTO of Al-Aous, a publishing and research institution dedicated to archaeological sciences and arts in Syria. In November 2012, Foreign Policy named Bassel one of the world's 100 top global thinkers.
Bassel is credited with opening up the Syrian Internet and extending online access to the public before and during the 2011-12 uprisings. According to the European Parliament, his detention was part of Syrian government efforts to restrict access to online communities and stifle freedom of expression in the country.
While he has been in the custody of Syrian government authorities since March 2012, he has been unaccounted for since October 2015, when he was taken from Adra prison to an undisclosed location. A month later, his wife, Noura Ghazi, received a phone call from an unidentified source telling her that her husband had been sentenced to death. She has received no information about him since. This past week, Ghazi wrote in a public post on Facebook that she is beginning to lose hope that her husband is still alive.
My life stopped with Bassel. Bassel isn’t coming back and every day the hope that he will ever come back fades away…
[…]
Holding on to hope is something beautiful and powerful. But hanging onto an illusion is a very dangerous illness. I should probably accept that my future will not have Bassel in it. Maybe it’s time for me to face that reality in a way that won’t hurt me even more. I know that this is difficult and ugly. But unfortunately this is the Syrian situation that me and Bassel are a part of…
Among other recent anniversaries that no one wants to celebrate, October 4 marked the eighth anniversary of Iranian technologist and open source developer Saeed Malekpour’s arrest.
Malekpour was living in Canada as a permanent resident before he embarked on what was supposed to be a short trip to Iran in October 2008, to visit his father. Authorities took the opportunity to target Malekpour for his open source software program, a simple tool that helps upload images to the Internet. Others had used Malkepour’s code to upload pornographic images to the Internet.
In a trial that reportedly lasted 15 minutes, Malekpour testified that he did not know how his program and code had been used and developed by others, as it was distributed on GitHub, an open source code repository. Malekpour was sentenced to death as a “corrupter of the earth.” In December of 2012, Malekpour's death sentence was commuted from death to life in prison, where he remains today.
Global Voices publicly condemns these unjust prison sentences and joins supporters around the world in demanding information on Bassel Khartabil’s status. We urge readers to visit support websites for Saeed and Bassel.
Nigerian authorities have detained at least 11 journalists, bloggers and media support staff last week, according to reports from the Committee to Protect Journalists. Ten of the journalists worked for the independent news website Watchdog Media News, and were in the southern Nigerian state of Edo to cover gubernatorial elections. They were reportedly beaten with barbed wire by the State Security Service at the time of their arrest. Another journalist, Jamil Mabai, was arrested in the neighboring state of Katsina after criticizing the governor on social media.
Ethiopian blogger Seyoum Teshome was arrested on October 1, and is being held on unknown charges. Teshome is frequently quoted in international media commenting on affairs in Ethiopia, including in a recent New York Times article on the symbolic protest at the Rio Olympics by Ethiopian marathon runner Feyisa Lilesa. Teshome’s arrest comes at a volatile moment in Ethiopia: the day after his arrest 52 people were killed during a protest in Oromia after police fired tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowd, causing a stampede.
The protesters are fighting against the marginalization of Ethiopia’s Oromo ethnic group, which could be displaced under a planned expansion of the Ethiopian capital into the region. Since November 2015, human rights groups have documented nearly 600 killings of protesters.
Five Tanzanian citizens were charged with insulting President John Magafuli on social media. Several of the five citizens are accused of allegedly posting messages on social networks and in private WhatsApp groups critical of the president, an indication that expressing political opinions online in Tanzania is under increasing scrutiny by the government.
Amid all the gloom and doom of this week's edition, there is some light ahead. The encrypted mobile messaging app Signal received its first federal grand jury subpoena for a customer’s data this year, but only shared limited information with the FBI. Open Whisper Systems, the company that makes Signal, told the government it does not gather or keep the metadata that it sought under the subpoena – only the date and time an account is created and the date of the user’s last connection to Signal’s servers. The subpoena was accompanied by a gag order demanding Open Whisper Systems not publicly release any information about the subpoena. The subpoena was disclosed following a legal challenge by Open Whisper Systems and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Meanwhile, Facebook has built a new layer of security into Facebook Messenger, that will allow users to more securely send messages between one another by selecting the “Secret” option when writing a new message. These messages will automatically vanish after a day (or less, if you choose).
Mahsa Alimardani, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Weiping Li and Sarah Myers West contributed to this report.

author: Netizen Report Team


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‘No’ to Peace in Colombia: Into the Deep Podcast · Global Voices
L. Finch

Into the Deep is a new Global Voices podcast that digs deep into one issue that isn’t getting the media coverage it deserves.
In this week's episode, we hear from Global Voices contributors Robert Valencia and Andrés Lombana-Bermudez as well as peace advocate Diego Osorio about why Colombians voted “No” in a referendum to confirm a peace agreement between Colombia's government and the militant group FARC that would have finally put an end to more than 50 years of war.
In this episode, we featured Creative Commons-licensed music from the Free Music Archive, including songs by Blue Dot Sessions called Ray Gun – FasterFasterBrighter (CC BY-NC 4.0) and Denzel Sprak (CC BY-NC 4.0), and We Are; by A Ninja Slob Drew Me (CC BY-NC 4.0).
The feature photo in this story is by Manuel Chacón/Agencia Prensa Rural and is published under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license. The graffiti reads, “People. How many more deaths?”
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | RSS

author: L. Finch


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Trinidad & Tobago’s Prime Minister Tells Citizens ‘You Better Begin to Be Weaned Off the Government’ · Global Voices
Flora Thomas

Trinidad and Tobago's Prime Minister, Dr. Keith Rowley. Photo by Jacqueline Morris, used under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license.
On Saturday 1 October, Trinidad and Tobago's prime minister, Dr. Keith Rowley, spoke at the launch of the Ministry of Education's School Improvement Programme. The part of Dr. Rowley's speech that snagged the headlines, however, wasn't his “great expectations” for the programme, but his critique of Trinidad and Tobago citizens’ alleged dependence on government handouts.
Halfway through the speech the prime minister referenced the comments of a local business leader who had criticised the Rowley administration's 2017 national budget, which was presented on September 30. According to the business leader, who was not named in the speech, the 2017 budget lacked a stimulus package.
Rowley defended his administration's fiscal approach, saying that they aimed to develop a participatory approach to solving the country's fiscal challenges. “We are going to have to do things differently,” he said:
….Every road to be built in this country has been built by the government…every school, every health centre, every this, every that. Because in this country, for the last generation or two, we've grown up on the government. Well, you better begin to be weaned off the government because the government's shoulder cannot carry the burden anymore.
Social media reacted immediately, with many people expressing resentment at the implications of Rowley's statement. In a public post, Facebook user Giselle Walker said:
I completely agree with Dr Rowley that there are those that need to be weaned off of the dependence of the government, but its not the hardworking tax payers […] maybe what he meant to say is that it is time to trim the excess fat off of those who have grown accustomed to living off of it.
Income Taxes are paid to the government in order that they deliver roads […] hospitals, healthcare, police protection to name a few.
That's your job and if you don't know that by now then we definitely have a problem. […]
Denith McNicolls quipped:
When is Rowley going to be weaned off the government?
Facebook user Urv Butch added:
Oh the irony from man who increasingly dependent on the citizens’ taxes to run said government….
The public backlash was so strong that Rowley's office subsequently issued a clarification of what he meant:
To make it clear, Dr. Rowley was referencing the merits of the Public/Private Partnership Model as a means of dealing with the economic challenges facing Trinidad and Tobago.
This is a conversation that seeks to identify the role of the Government working alongside and in harmony with citizens who are being encouraged to take more responsibility for their circumstances.
Trinidad and Tobago has long been criticised for being an “eat ah food”, quick fix society, in which long-term strategies are often sacrificed at the altar of instant gratification. Several governments have been accused of creating a dependency syndrome among the population.
Facebook user Kim Lemo, therefore, was not convinced:
I am a hard working, tax paying citizen of this wonderful country. You blatantly disrespected me by saying that I am dependant on the government for health care, education and roads (all basic necessities) and I need to be weaned of the government.
Then you are now trying to convince the public, via a statement from your office, that we have misinterpreted your statement.
Dr. Keith Rowley you know full well what you meant and you don't care. […]
You and your ministers can continue to wine and dine, buy the best high end vehicles and own many houses, look the best and open many businesses, squander tax payers dollars and the countries resources. […]
Wired868 republished a letter to the editor which called Rowley's stance “insulting”:
Apparently the PM is of the view that successive governments, for at least the last two generations, have been doing the people of this land a great disservice by providing roads, schools and health centres along with ‘every this and every that’. The various regimes have been busily moulding and shaping our entitlement mentality to which we have become so used that we now need to be ‘weaned off’.
Unfortunately, the goodly Doctor said nothing of the career political parasites who became fabulously wealthy simply by occupying the corridors of power—some for more than an entire generation—while their respective constituencies have been, and continue to be, systematically and intentionally neglected.
There were also netizens on the opposite side of the divide. Providing several examples, Rhoda Bharath made this argument:
When the govt pay for your breakfast and lunch in school and yuh throw it away.
And they pay for your text books and laptop and you mash them up.
And they give you free bus tickets and your throw that in the bin…
Is it ok to say come off the national tot tots or it offensive?
#TotTotsIsLife
#DeViceCyahDone
Abeo Jackson agreed, saying that people were “offended by tone rather than understand[ing] context”.
Even as economist Indera Sagewan-Alli maintained that the country's money belongs to the citizenry and that the government acts on their behalf, Facebook user Jimmy Deon Toussaint had some words of advice for the prime minister:
Let's start by looking at the great wastage, continuing social decay and proliferation of criminal activities that is synonymous with work programs such as CEPEP [an environmental protection company], URP [Unemployment Relief Programme] etc. The idea behind these programs and their earlier incarnations […] were in my view, pretty good. That is, they were started to assist in eradicating poverty […] Some of the naysayers would say that if these programs were not around, then TnT would have seen a greater poverty level than what is being observed today. I beg to differ. They may have assisted but they have also led to generations after generations of citizens whose main focus from young is to ‘get a CECEP wuk’. I believe that these programs should continue, however in a different direction – a direction that will show tangible financial benefits for the country, because the government's shoulders cannot carry the dead weight of these CEPEP and URP programs anymore. […] It is time that we build civic pride into these programs, by altering their directions away from the negative connotations associated with their present structure.

author: Flora Thomas


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Why Is Indigenous Singer Delfín Quishpe Such a Polarizing Figure in Latin America? · Global Voices
Daniela Gallardo

Delfín Quishpe. Screenshot from one of his songs shared on YouTube.
Many in Latin America have heard of this singer, or at least have seen his videos on the Internet. From the beginning of his music career, Delfín Quishpe has been a rebel in his fashion and music choices. The song that went viral and made him famous both within and outside of Ecuador was Torres Gemelas, or “Twin Towers” in English. In this song, Delfín tells the story of his sweetheart, who had traveled to the United States and then died in the attacks of September 11, 2001. “Who knows the truth? Who did it, and why did they do it?” Delfín asks himself at a certain point in the song's music video. Those questions were what millions of people had contemplated since the violence occurred, but the song nevertheless earned him a flood of mocking.
There is a reason for this. His music aside, Delfín has faced a challenge since the beginning of his career: being indigenous while asserting his own style.
A total of 7% of Ecuador's population is indigenous, and Delfín, who is Quechua from El Chimborazo area, is probably one of the greatest champions of the country's indigenous groups within the music world. Torres Gemelas, according to Delfín's own account on the news portal Vice, was not given airtime on radio or television due to the author being “small and brown”. He invested $1,500 into producing his music video and a friend suggested that he try the free platform YouTube. Today, Torres Gemelas has 14,571,988 views — and that's not even the official version, but one uploaded by a YouTube user named Donmaco. In 2011, he was nominated as the “Web Celebrity of the Year” by the TV channel MTV Latin America, and in 2012 he participated in the second broadcast of YouFest, celebrated in Madrid.
Delfín recently created a buzz within the Latin American community once again with his reinterpretation of the song Cuando Pase el Temblor (“When the Trembling Stops”), by the legendary Argentinian band Soda Stereo. Delfín, now known as the creator of “Andean Techno-Folklore,” performed his cover on an Ecuadorian television program a week after the second anniversary of the death of Soda Stereo's Argentinian singer and leader Gustavo Cerati.
As expected, he received comments for and against his performance, and for several days his performance intensified the debate over what is good or bad in the realm of music. This is similar to what happened a few years ago with Wendy Sulca, a Peruvian singer of Andean music, and her version of Like a Virgin (one of the biggest hits of US singer Madonna).
What is Delfín like, beyond the YouTube videos? How does he receive criticism? After a week of trying to find him and sending him several messages via social networks, Global Voices was able to get in contact with the singer. From his native city Guamote (an Ecuadorian canton of the Chimborazo Province), he answered some questions.
GV: When did you start with your music?
Delfín Quishpe (DQ): Yo canto desde niño, pero a nivel profesional lo hago desde el 2000. En ese año grabé mi primer álbum, pero en mi tercer disco nació el éxito de las Torres Gemelas; pocos saben que la melodía de esta canción ya estaba lista antes de 2001 y se llamaba “Cuando me voy a Guayaquil”.
Delfín Quishpe (DQ): I have been singing since I was a little boy, but at a professional level I have been singing since 2000. In that year, I recorded my first album, but it was on my third record that the success of Torres Gemelas was born; few people know that the melody for this song was already prepared before 2001 and was called Cuando me voy a Guayaquil [“When I go to Guayaquil”].
GV: Your latest work, the cover of Cuando Pase el Temblor by Soda Stereo, has got many people talking and received quite a lot of media coverage. Many are wondering if you had known of this rock band, one of the most important in Latin America, for a while.
DQ: Yo siempre fui fan de Soda Stereo y también de quien en vida fue Gustavo Cerati, y a raíz de eso nacen mis apreciaciones musicales por los artistas internacionales. También admiro al compositor guatemalteco Ricardo Arjona, e incluso grabé la canción “El mojado”. Puedes buscarlo en Youtube.
DQ: I was always a fan of Soda Stereo and also of who Gustavo Cerati was in life, and from this my musical appreciation for international artists was born. I also admire the Guatemalan composer Ricardo Arjona, and have even recorded the song El Mojado [“The Wetback” — a pejorative term for migrants in the US]. You can find it on YouTube.
GV: What do you think of the criticisms you are receiving because of your latest work?
DQ: Yo creo en la libre expresión. Cualquiera puede hablar piedras, lo que sea, lo que le salga de las tripas y a mí no me resiente ni me anima. Yo soy una persona bien centrada en lo que hago y me divierto haciendo lo que me gusta.
DQ: I believe in free expression. Anyone can talk out of the back of their heads, whatever, it comes from their gut and I don't resent it nor get excited about it. I am a very focused person in what I do and I enjoy doing what I like.
GV: The “Twin Towers” video is still getting comments on YouTube, despite having been published 10 years ago. However, not all the comments are good. How do you feel regarding the reception of indigenous artists in Latin America? Do you notice any racism against what you do, or against singers like Wendy Sulca and the Tigresa del Oriente (another YouTube artist from Peru who also went viral in the region)?
DQ: A mí no me importa de donde vengo y quien soy, porque tengo mi identidad, mi nacionalidad y mi cultura bien definida. Soy un cantante ecuatoriano, un indígena de Chimborazo. ¿Por qué debo preocuparme por lo que dice la gente? Cada quien tiene su cultura. Eso quiero que entiendan, si es que quieren. Si no, tampoco me interesa. Yo tengo una posición firme y por eso no me preocupan las críticas. Las personas que son racistas no conocen el país. Si hablamos del continente americano, hay miles de culturas, tradiciones e idiomas. Nosotros respetamos y queremos que respeten a cualquiera que quieran cuestionar. Juzgan porque no saben.
DQ: It doesn't matter to me where I come from and who I am, because I have my identity, my nationality, and my culture well defined. I am an Ecuadorian singer, a native of Chimborazo. Why should I worry about what people say? Everyone has their culture. That is what I want them to understand, if that is what they want. If not, that doesn't concern me, either. I have a firm stance and that's why the criticisms don't bother me. The people who are racist don't know the country. If we talk about the American continent, there are thousands of cultures, traditions, and languages. We respect each other and want to respect anyone who wants to question that. They judge because they do not know.
Guayaquilian reporter Ivonne Lago, who works for Diario Extra, also spoke with Global Voices and gave his point of view regarding the phenomenon that is Delfín Quishpe:
Aunque las opiniones están divididas, todas llevan al racismo. Tal vez, porque aún se cree que los indígenas solo tienen que hacer música andina donde sobran las quenas, flautas y rondadores. Paradójicamente algunos de estos instrumentos se pueden escuchar en la versión original de “Cuando pase el temblor”, grabada en Cuzco, tierra del Imperio Inca. Y otros porque ven a Cerati como un ídolo, una leyenda, cuyas letras no pueden ser mancilladas, peor ser objeto de burla. Aunque esa puede que no haya sido la intención de Delfín, el hecho de que un indígena se haya atrevido a hacer un cover, desató críticas y mofas. En mi opinión Delfín no lo hizo mal. Estuvo muy afinado y los arreglos fueron bien realizados.
Although opinions are divided, all of them stem from racism. Perhaps because it is still believed that the indigenous should only make Andean music by using an excess of quenas [indigenous flutes], flutes, and rondadores [Ecuadorian panpipes]. Paradoxically, some of these instruments can be heard on the original version of Cuando Pase el Temblor, recorded in Cuzco, land of the Inca Empire. And others [have such opinions] because they see Cerati as an idol, a legend, whose lyrics can't be tarnished, or worse, be an object of ridicule. Even though that might not have been Delfín's intention, the fact that an indigenous person dared to cover the song sparked the criticism and mockery. In my opinion, Delfín didn't do a bad job. It was very polished and the arrangements were well done.
The Internet acts like a big window for analyzing how the public receives content. On YouTube, one can find comments like “Delfín you should not be Ecuadorian,” “I didn't know the indigenous could sing,” or “God help us, don't let Delfín come back to sing.”
The fact is, beyond the stereotypes, beyond what is considered good or bad music, Delfín is good at unsettling people. It reflects how the feelings of superiority and inferiority are much stronger when we talk about ethnic classifications, even these days.
#GraciasTotalespic.twitter.com/eyrc9Znzdu
— Delfin Quishpe (@delfin_quishpe) 18 de septiembre de 2016
Image reads: “Thanks to all”

author: Daniela Gallardo


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Will Lebanon Meet Its Renewable Energy Pledge by 2020? · Global Voices
Melissa Hamoush

Beirut River Solar Snake. Source: Solar Lebanon on Twitter.
Lebanon pledged to increase its renewable energy share to 12 percent by 2020 at the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit. The goal of the summit, like so many more summits since, was to address climate change and to work on limiting the global average temperature increase to no more than two degrees Celsius.
Beyond the pledge, renewable energy is all the more important given Lebanon's recent garbage crisis. Last year, the country came to a near complete standstill as protesters, adopting the name ‘You Stink!’ (طلعت ريحتكم), took to the streets to protest against government corruption and their failure to collect garbage. To this day, the waste crisis is taking a severe toll on some of Lebanon's most vulnerable groups. AFP even published a photoessay entitled ‘drowning in garbage‘ on Lebanon.
Lebanese author and activist Sara El-Yafi recently took part in an online conversation entitled “everyday garbage can be transformed into renewable energy“, linking Lebanon's waste crisis to its energy crisis.
Everyday garbage can be transformed into useable energy for #Lebanon. #RenewableEnergy @SaraYafi https://t.co/HTZLTeRQNc
— Fair Observer (@myfairobserver) 16 September 2016
With four years to the deadline, we tried to assess whether Lebanon was on its way to meeting the pledge.
Up until 2014, statistics cast doubt over the government's commitment to shift to renewable energy. In the 2014 report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), there was still a near-total reliance on coal and oil products.
IEA Report from 2014. Source: IEA Website.
But a recently released survey entitled “Solar PV Status Report for Lebanon 2015″ suggests that “solar energy is en route to add an exponentially increasing percentage of the power needed to meet Lebanon's electricity needs, and assist in the shortfall of the state-owned (EdL) system.”
According to the Lebanese Center for Energy Conservation (LCEC), which was created through an agreement between the Lebanese Ministry of Energy and Water and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Lebanon is still committed to this pledge. The LCEC is among the many organizations in Lebanon working towards shifting Lebanon's reliance on non-renewable energy sources, oil notably, into more renewable and sustainable means.
Speaking to Global Voices, Pierre El Khoury, the General Director and President of the Board at LCEC, explained that, among the many tasks assigned to the LCEC, they are “responsible for the development and implementation of the National Energy Efficiency Action Plan (NEEAP) in cooperation with more than 40 public entities.”
According to El Khoury, the awareness campaigns, trainings and workshops conducted by the LCEC were helpful in improving Lebanon’s renewable energy share, as well as implementing the National Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Action (NEEREA) financing mechanisms scheme, which is a green financing mechanism that provides long term loans at low interest rates, manifestly to help the private sector implement renewable energy measures and projects. They have also been involved in the Beirut River Solar Snake (BRSS) project among others.
On its website, we learn that:
LCEC is also involved in the update and development of the legal and administrative framework needed for the greening of the energy sector. Until date, LCEC has implemented numerous energy efficiency and renewable energy projects and initiatives that have resulted in many positive changes within the Lebanese society and economy.
Among the many issues slowing energy advances, convincing the private sector to shift towards green technologies when diesel fuel prices have been in decrease is a significant one. This is according to Ali Ezzeddine, a young entrepreneur and founder of GP Stellar SARL, a renewable energy consultation and contracting company in Beirut, which works with the LCEC and the Ministry of Energy and Water through the NEEREA.
GP Stellar has been involved in several projects across Lebanon in both the Industrial Sector and the Non-Governmental Organization and Educational Sector with developments such as installing unique solar panels for the Imam Sadr Foundation in Tyre, southern Lebanon and the Solar Lighting Project at the Bar Elias Syrian Refugee Camp.
The GP Stellar team at the Bar Elias Refugee Camp. Source: GP Stellar Facebook Page.
GP Stellar's activities are proof of an active civil society in Lebanon that is pushing for sustainable solutions, for both the trash crisis and the energy crisis.
Whether Lebanon will solve these issues on time is hard to tell. As Lebanese journalist Nadine Mazloum recently reminded us on ‘Newsroom Nomad’, Lebanon dropped from the 30th to the 52nd in health according to the most recent Global Competitiveness Report of 2016.
Lebanon continues to struggle with seemingly endless crises, presidential and waste management included, leading to a significant drop from the 30th position in 2014 to the 52nd in 2015 in both health and primary education according to the most recent Global Competitiveness Report of 2016.
This means that we're likely to see renewed protests as the waste crisis continues. Or maybe, the government will be able to meet its renewable energy pledge while tackling the trash crisis?

author: Melissa Hamoush


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A Long List of Criminal Allegations Is Catching Up to Mexican Governor Javier Duarte · Global Voices
J. Tadeo

“Duarte the murderer.” Image: Flickr / Eneas de Troya / Creative Commons
The curtain is starting to close on Javier Duarte de Ochoa, who serves as governor of the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz. During his administration, Duarte has been the subject of innumerable accusations of every nature, most prominently corruption and attacks on journalists.
Duarte rose to power thanks to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the powerful political party that ruled Mexico for 70 years, briefly lost control of the national government, and then retook the presidency in 2012 with Enrique Peña Nieto. On September 26, 2016, the PRI announced that it had suspended Javier Duarte's party privileges due to criminal investigations against him, citing (among other things) allegations of embezzlement and illicit enrichment.
In May 2016, the website “Animal Político” published an investigation suggesting that the Duarte administration “disappeared” millions in public funds through the use of fake companies.
Funcionarios cercanos al gobernador de Veracruz, Javier Duarte, entregaron contratos a una red de empresas fantasma para la compra de productos que debían destinarse a población vulnerable, pero que nunca llegaron a su destino.
Officials close to the governor of Veracruz, Javier Duarte, awarded contracts to a network of fake companies for the purchase of products that should have gone to needy members of society but that never arrived at their destinations.
Eighteen journalists have lost their lives during Duarte's term in office, including Anabel Flores and Gregorio Jiménez, as Global Voices has reported previously. Duarte is implicated in each of these crimes, sometimes as a negligent civil servant, and other times as an indirect accomplice in the killings themselves.
Duarte debe responder ante la justicia por los ataques a periodistas cometidos durante su gestión. Son ataques a la #LibertadDeExpresión
— E Páramo (@Param0_) 29 de septiembre de 2016
Duarte should face justice for the attacks on journalists committed during his rule. They're attacks on #LibertadDeExpresión [The freedom of expression]
According to the organization Reporters without Borders, the most dangerous country in Latin America for journalists is Mexico, where reporters face threats similar to those found in war-torn areas like Syria and Iraq.
Critics hope that the suspension of Duarte's party privileges in the PRI will be followed by his expulsion, or that he will request leave from his position before his term ends on November 20, in order to face the accusations against him. What happens in the legal system, however, is anybody's guess.

author: J. Tadeo


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Atomweight MMA Fighting Comes to Chechnya, and the Local Ruler’s Children Are Already Title-Holders · Global Voices
Christopher Moldes

Photo: Instagram
As you can glean from a peek at his Instagram profile, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov structures his life around sports and exercise.
Kadyrov's feed is full of posts like this one on September 24, where he boasts about always finding time in his busy schedule to maintain his physique. With such an integral focus on fitness, it comes as no surprise that the long-time head of Russia's Chechen Republic has also instilled these virtues in his children, Eli, Adam, and Akhmad; he sometimes posts about their workout regimens and preparations for competitions.
Despite this regular publicity on social media, Kadyrov still managed to shock people throughout Russia, when his three young sons appeared as participants in a recent mixed martial arts (MMA) tournament hosted in Grozny. The spectacle was arranged to celebrate Kadyrov's latest inauguration, which coincided with his 40th birthday.
Videos posted on Instagram show his ten-year-old son Akhmad delivering a knockout blow to his opponent, another child from Sochi. His other sons also reportedly achieved victory over their respective opponents in similar matches.
A video posted by Ramzan Kadyrov (@kadyrov_95) on
Almost immediately, lines were drawn in the sand as many in Russia weighed in on whether or not such young children should participate in fights. Russia’s new children’s rights commissioner, Anna Kuznetsova, entrusted her Chechen counterpart to investigate the circumstances of the tournament. Fedor Emelianenko, the president of the Russian MMA Union and a world-champion fighter himself, condemned the tournament, claiming that the fights could cause children irreversible physical and psychological damage. Former world-boxing champ and current Duma deputy Nikolai Valuev agreed with Emelianenko's assessment:
Каждый спорт хорош для определенного возраста. Федор абсолютно справедливо заметил, что для детей они (бои) были рановаты, и можно поверить словам человека, который в этом реально разбирается. Бои по правилам ММА заключают в себе возможность добивания соперника в партере, для маленьких детей это недопустимо. Я ничего не имею против ММА: если в нем задействованы дети, для них должны быть определенные ограничения”.
All sports are good for a specific age group. Fedor was absolutely right when he said that it’s too early for children to be involved in these fights, and you can trust the word of a person who really knows what he’s talking about. MMA rules allow for ground-and-pound [fighting on the ground], and this is inexcusable for children. I have nothing against MMA; if children are involved, there should be some specific limits for them.
In fact, MMA rules stipulate that children can participate in fights once they have reached the age of 12, and only with suitable equipment. None of Kadyrov’s children are older than 10, and it would seem that the necessary equipment was not used in the October 4 tournament.
In his subsequent investigation, Chechen Children’s Rights Commissioner Khamzat Khirakhmatov concluded that the children fighters had not suffered either physically or psychologically, despite the absence of the necessary safety equipment. Citing the fact that none of the children's parent complained, Khirakhmatov argues that the children's rights were not violated.
The referee at the match later declared that this had been a demonstration, and not a real match. He suggested that it was so well orchestrated that many simply misinterpreted the “performance” for reality. The referee discussed safety equipment, too, saying the children would have been decked out in protective gear, if the “fights” had been anything but staged.
Abuzaid Vismuradov, the head of the fighting club that organized the MMA tournament, accuses Emelianenko of lashing out at Kadyrov because Emelianenko wasn't invited to the event.
Kadyrov’s cousin, former Chechen Deputy Prime Minister and current Duma deputy Adam Delimkhanov, has also stepped up to defend his nephews’ participation in the fights, promising to make Emelianenko “answer” for every word he's said about them. Delimkhanov rebuffed Emelianenko’s statements about the effects fighting has on children, claiming that Emelianenko has no moral right to talk about how to raise children, considering his own brother beat and raped a woman in 2014.
Emelianenko, who originally published his criticism of the fight on Instagram, subsequently deleted his comments and later reuploaded the same text, albeit with a different photo.
In the early morning hours of Thursday, October 6, Kadyrov responded directly to Emelianenko with a new Instagram post, shaming the president of the Russian MMA Union for “posting a photo of other people's children” and attaching “unflattering comments.” Referring to Russian equivalent of the Western European knight-errant, Kadyrov wrote, “Fedor, you're out of line! Russian bogatyrs don't act this way!”
Kadyrov also included a snazzy video montage of children abusing drugs and alcohol, followed by footage of his sons wailing on opponents at the MMA tournament, ending with shots of the boys playing video games and carrying their trophies. The final frame features a simple question: “Drug addition or a healthy lifestyle?
A video posted by Ramzan Kadyrov (@kadyrov_95) on
Kadyrov is no stranger to controversy, both on Instagram and in the public sphere. His style of rule has unnerved many who have later decried what they see as “Chechen exceptionalism” within the Russian Federation, whereby the Chechen republic operates outside the bounds of the federation’s laws.
As a the newspaper Novaya Gazeta wrote in a special report about Kadyrov’s special “contract” with Moscow:
Конституция закрепляет принцип разделения властей в качестве одной из основ государственного строя России. Но Рамзан Кадыров, что называется, «на пальцах» продемонстрировал федералам: на его территории Конституция РФ не действует.
The Constitution guarantees the rules of the separation of power as one of the foundations of Russia’s system of government. But Ramzan Kadyrov has shown the federal government, as the saying goes, in layman’s terms: the Constitution of the Russian Federation has no power on his territory.
With focus on Kaydrov’s disproportionate influence and power in Russian politics renewed as the case against Boris Nemtsov’s alleged murderers goes to trial, for some, this episode serves as a reminder that there seem to be two sets of rules in the Russian Federation: one for Chechnya, and another for the rest of the country. Dmitriy Peskov, the Kremlin’s official spokesman, has also added his two cents, criticizing the television broadcast of the tournament but stressing that there weren’t many people who saw what actually took place. Thus continues the Kremlin’s cautionary politics towards Kadyrov and Chechnya as a whole.

author: Christopher Moldes


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Bangladesh Introduces ‘Smart’ National Identity Cards · Global Voices
Zara Rahman

A women taking part to make voter ID cards and national ID cards. With their ID cards in hand for the first time, women cast their votes in the 2008 parliamentary election. Image from Flickr by Jashim Salam Via UN Women. CC BY-NC-ND
On October 2, the Bangladeshi government inaugurated Smart National ID cards (NID) as part of their Digital Bangladesh initiative, aiming to distribute the cards to 100 million people in Bangladesh.
The NID cards replace existing laminated cards used by the Election Commission, but they have many other functions. Banking, passport details, driving licenses, trade licenses, tax payments, and share trading are among the 22 other services that can be accessed through the cards, with more to follow. The cards will also be associated with an individual’s mobile phone SIM card. Once issued, they will be valid for 10 years.
Govt launched new #NID Cards with built in chip. #Bangladesh is the only country using retinal scans to verify citizens identity. pic.twitter.com/Yn2fvoM7v0
— Nurunnaby Hasive (@nhasive) October 4, 2016
The cards hold biometric details of the cardholder: impressions of all ten fingers, as well as pictures of the iris. In total, 32 types of unique citizen data will be “embedded within its microchip,” according to Election Commission officials quoted in The Daily Star.
The first recipients of the cards were the President, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, and members of the national cricket team, including the team's captain, Mashrafe bin Mortaza, who tweeted:
Receiving Smart National ID Card from Honourable Prime minister
#SheikhHasina
Go Ahead #Bangladesh . pic.twitter.com/jQvnEr4bcg
— MASHRAFE BIN MORTAZA (@mashrafebd) October 2, 2016
The government has explained that the cards are intended to curb forgery: previously, laminated cards used for voting were relatively easy to copy and forge. The Election Commission says the machine-readable cards include “25 features” designed to prevent forgery. In 2014, law enforcement discovered a set of more than 50,000 fake IDs generated for fraud or other intents in the country. EC Secretary Sirazul Islam also said that “forging the smart NID cards would be almost impossible.”
But with this much personal information being collected on every single citizen, especially personal data that cannot be changed if it is ever leaked or compromised (ie. the fingerprints of an individual), there are major concerns regarding the security of this data. A breach or leak could put individuals privacy rights seriously at risk.
Protecting these databases may prove difficult. EC officials say citizens’ data are safe from unauthorised access as the database servers are “fully protected”, but there have been no explicit mentions of how the data is stored, and whether or not it is encrypted.
Leaks and hacks of important data in the country have had serious consequences in the past. In April 2016, $81 million was stolen from the Bangladesh central bank, the majority of which remains missing. In other areas of the world, huge leaks of personal data are not uncommon – earlier this year, personal data of 50 million Turkish citizens was put online.
And there are reportedly already technical glitches. On the first day of card distribution, bdnews24.com reported that many citizens had to leave without the smart ID cards after providing their biometric samples, due to a “software malfunction.” Others complained of more human errors, such as being unable to locate the proper distribution centres.
…difficulties are being faced in cases where the fingers are scarred, or the lines on fingers have become unclear owing to heavy manual labour.
Biometric data collection en masse has also generated unexpected problems, specifically fingerprints: a technical staffer of the Election Commission was quoted saying “difficulties are being faced in cases where the fingers are scarred, or the lines on fingers have become unclear owing to heavy manual labour.” This is likely to be a recurring problem given the large percentage of the population in Bangladesh employed in manual labour, or who have been in the past. This brings with it questions of sustainability: If a person gives their fingerprints now, and then engages in manual labour for 10 years, will they still be recognisable by the system?
Linking so much personal data together in one card and one database also brings with it key privacy concerns.
Many lessons can be learned from neighbouring India where the Aadhaar card has been in development much longer. Indian lawyer Bhairav Acharya has analysed many shared concerns considering the biometric data gathered by the Aadhaar project, considering who the data might be shared with, and any what recourse can be sought against misuse of the data. Another similarity between the two systems that raises concern for Acharya is that once collected, an individual’s biometric information remains in the government’s possession for an indefinite amount of time.
Writing in the Indian Express, Pratap Bhanu Mehta raises concerns around the database structure, and how the data will be shared. In Bangladesh’s case, given the multiple functions of the NID, data from the cards will likely travel between government agencies. Granting this type of access to multiple governmental bodies will thus introduce multiple potential points of vulnerability to malfunctions, and to breaches or attacks by malicious actors.
If having the card is required to participate in public life (for example, to pay taxes, to vote), and personal biometric data is needed for the card, it by definition violates key prerequisites for voluntary consent of individuals. NID cards are also associated with an individual’s SIM card, if they have one – which means the government could potentially connect data around an individual’s telecommunications habits together with all the other data points associated explicitly with the card.
The creation of this database opens up thorny issues around government surveillance, too. As the database is built up, who will gain access to it?
Though issues of national security have not yet been mentioned, building such a comprehensive database of individuals in the country brings with it possibilities of using that database to identify people for criminal activity. In India, there were moves earlier this year to pass new provisions on national security regarding the use of the database. Changing the purpose of the data collected in such a dramatic way again violates the purpose of the initial collection. But withdrawing consent or an individual’s data does not seem to be an option.
While the Aadhaar project has been the subject of much discussion in India precisely because of the privacy risks it brings with it, there appears to be less concern in Bangladesh.
#FEeditorial: a welcome beginning that needs early completion https://t.co/5vJa1GWGSO #Bangladesh #smartnationalidentity #GoB #NID #FEphoto pic.twitter.com/PgzDqcxhTI
— MasudKarimমাক (@urumurum) October 4, 2016
Early recipients of the card seem to be excited by the possibilities that this brings, despite again mentioning the technical glitches that have happened so far.
Writing on Facebook, one citizen said:
This is one of the grand success of this Awami League Govt to prepare and distribute the Machine-readable Smart National ID Cards among the almost 10-crore citizens.
Others expressed gratitude to the Prime Minister for “building up a digitised country so quickly.”

author: Zara Rahman


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For Lebanon’s Elderly, the Ongoing Garbage Crisis Is a Tight Noose · Global Voices
Nadine Mazloum

Adib Nouwar, a resident of Dekwaneh, Matn District, manages a smile from behind an oxygen mask, which has become his constant companion. Source: NewsroomNomad/WassimNouwar
This article originally appeared on NewsroomNomad.com on September 28, 2016. It is republished here as part of a content-sharing agreement.
For 86-year-old Adib Nouwar, Lebanon’s garbage crisis is a matter of life and death. Any irritation induced by the slightest of elements, even the smell of fried food and dust, can be enough to trigger a respiratory fit as his lungs struggle from years of pollution and stress. Under the weight of thick smoke that too often invades his home in Dekwaneh, a suburb north of Beirut, Adib suffers as he is moved from room to room while his family rushes to shut all windows and doors. He manages a frail smile for a photo from behind an oxygen mask, which has become his constant companion.
Wassim, Adib’s son, is both livid and hopeless. He feels let down by the local municipality, the government, and the Lebanese people who he says are complacent and indifferent. Lebanon’s garbage crisis has entered its second chapter with trash making headlines once again after a brief hiatus. And for families like the Nouwar family, it’s an unwelcome sequel.
Dekwaneh, like other lower- and middle-income suburbs around Beirut and Mount Lebanon that include Dora, Bourj Hammoud, and Jdeideh, has bore the brunt of the garbage crisis. It began in 2015 when the country's main landfill was closed and authorities failed to provide an alternative. Streets filled with trash, and protests erupted.
Finally, authorities offered up a “fix” earlier this year which stipulates the opening of two landfills in Bourj Hammoud and Costa Brava in Choueifat, southeast of Beirut. Minister of Agriculture Akram Chehayeb has repeatedly said this approved plan is the only way forward.
The move to open the Bourj Hammoud landfill was controversial from the start. A local party, the Kataeb, or the Lebanese Phalanges Party in English, together with civil society groups protested against its opening due to it being an “expensive environmental disaster.” The brief standoff caused the temporary closure of the Bourj Hammoud. Environmental groups have long been advocating for better alternatives to the country's waste disposal, “namely through the decentralization of the waste sector and the construction of recycling and waste sorting plants.”
Following negotiations, the protests were lifted, but the garbage remained. The Bourj Hammoud municipality and the Tashnag party, Lebanon's largest Armenian political party which has its headquarters in Bourj Hammoud, announced that no rotting trash would be allowed into said landfill, leaving it up to municipalities to discard of the waste.
According to Minister of Agriculture Chehayeb, no municipality is exempted from environmental laws that ban trash burning and those who breach regulation could face charges. But trash accumulated, and having no other means to resolve the issue, many resorted to open incineration and temporary stacking on bridges and highways.
Activists march to protest against Bourj Hammoud landfill on August 25, 2016. The Arabic and Armenian on the sign reads ‘No to the landfill of death’. Photo Source: LBC
A widely shared image of a ‘trash bridge’ in Jdaideh, approximately three kilometers form Bourj Hammoud, shows the material consequences of the trash crisis.
Trash piled up on a discontinued bridge next to a mall in Beirut. 3KM from where I lived. Glad not anymore. #Lebanon pic.twitter.com/AP1XLWopmB
— Rafael (@Arm_nuke) 19 September 2016
The result of the growing mistrust between local representatives and the government is simply more trash on the streets. While filming mounds of trash being burned around the Dora area on September 25, 2016, a friend and I almost had an accident as a waste container was left in the middle of the highway. Here's the video.
While filming mounds of trash being burned around the Dora area last Sunday, we almost had an accident as a waste container was left in the middle of the highway. In Lebanon, the road to hell is paved with garbage cans. #NewsroomNomad #GarbageCrisisTheSequel #Lebanon
Une vidéo publiée par NewsroomNomad (@newsroomnomad) le
“On some mornings it’s a challenge to make it from my home into my car,” Wassim says. “The toxic fumes makes it difficult and sometimes we even see hordes of invasive insects –flies and ticks—in our neighborhood as the trash remains.”
On the onset of Lebanon’s trash crisis, which began in July 2015, and after rounds of governmental deals on the issue, many thought the situation was under control. But that was simply not the case as garbage reemerged during the hottest months of summer 2016, August and September, adding strain to struggle.
Wassim expressed his lack of trust towards his municipality:
I haven’t filed any complaints simply because I do not trust my municipality; they run the place like gangsters and eliminate dissent mafia style. They shoot stray dogs and at one point even launched a crusade against homosexuals, beating them openly. This is why many suffer in silence.
Doctors in Lebanon say they are seeing a spike in severe respiratory diseases tied to the ongoing trash disaster. The crisis has already taken its toll on many, especially children, the elderly and those with respiratory illnesses and a weak immunity. In July 56-year-old Bourj Hammoud mother of four Rozine Moughalian and her family were forced to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars through crowdfunding for a liver transplant, which doctors linked to exposure to toxins in the area. Countless other cases have also been reported.
Many continue to suffer, and for people like Adib, retirement and rest in his own home have become a luxury he cannot afford. Wassim emphasized the toll this is taking on his father:
My father should be able to at least breathe normal city air and not to be surrounded by smoke from open waste incineration … This morning I woke up before my alarm set off because of the smell. I rushed into his room and it was filled, like the entire house, with fumes. It’s unbearable! If the smell of fried food can kill him, what chance does he have against this? We moved him around and closed all doors and windows to prevent as much smoke as we can from entering.
Open incineration continues in and around Beirut. Here a photo of Mkalles, a town in the Matn district. Photo by NewsroomNomad/WassimNouwar
How much can we really expect from a government whose sole concern throughout the entire crisis has appeared to be one over profit division and money making, especially since no one seems to be able to identify the culprits? A question that seems to have no answer.
As Wassim told Newsroom Nomad:
I returned home late one night around 3 am only to find a huge fire in a nearby makeshift factory dumpsite. In an attempt to identify the culprits I drove to the location of the blaze only to find municipality police vehicles all over the place. I don’t know why but they were just there; some parked, while others were roaming. So, I thought it wasn’t a good idea for me to be noticed while taking pictures.

author: Nadine Mazloum


text:
Russia Remembers Slain Journalist Anna Politkovskaya, Ten Years On · Global Voices
Isaac Webb

Anna Politkovskaya. Source: Amnesty Finland, Flickr. CC 2.0
Ten years ago today, Anna Politkovskaya, one of Russia's leading investigative journalists, was shot to death in the elevator of her apartment building in Moscow. Her murder and the state's inability—or reluctance—to prosecute those responsible have become symbolic of the the danger of working as a journalist in Russia. Despite the conviction of five men on murder charges in 2014, it remains unclear to this day who ordered Politkovskaya's killing.
Politkovskaya is remembered for her fearless investigations of human rights violations—most famously in the North Caucasus, where she covered the Second Chechen War. On Friday, Novaya Gazeta, Politkovskaya's newspaper, invited people to gather at the entrance to its office building, where a plaque commemorates her life and work. Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe captured the scene earlier today.
Novaya Gazeta also published a video titled “The Ringleader is Still Missing,” a powerful indictment of the authorities’ failure to find—or, perhaps, to disclose—who ordered Politkovskaya's murder. RuNet Echo translated the placards that the members of Novaya Gazeta's staff are holding up in the video below.
Anna Politkovskaya, killed on October 7, 2006, in the entryway of her apartment. In the elevator. Five shots. A contract killing, for $150,000. By whom? The ringleader is still missing. August, 2007: the suspected organizers and killers in Politkovskaya’s murder are apprehended, 11 people in all. The ringleader is still missing. August 29, 2007, General Prosecutor Yury Chaika announces that Politkovskaya’s murder has been solved. The ringleader is still missing.
September 21, 2009: the the former head of a district in Chechnya, Shamil Buraev is accused. He doesn't show up in court. The ringleader is still missing. November 25, 2009: the first murder trial begins. The ringleader is still missing. February 19, 2009: the jury acquits all of the suspects. The ringleader is still missing. June 26, 2009: The Supreme Court overturns the verdict. The case is returned for a retrial.
May 31, 2011: Rustam Maxmudov is arrested. The ringleader is still missing. August 22, 2011: a witness in the case, Police Lieutenant Colonel Pavliuchenkov is arrested as the organizer of the murder. He confesses. But he doesn’t say who ordered the killing. According to the terms of his plea bargain, Pavliuchenkov is supposed to say who did. He doesn’t. Anna’s children demand that the plea bargain be voided and he be judged without leniency. The court does refuses their demands. The ringleader is still missing.
December 14, 2012: Dmitry Pavliuchenkov is sentenced to 11 years in a penal colony for killing Anna Politkovskaya. The ringleader is still missing.
June 3, 2013: a second trial begins. The ringleader is still missing.
May 20, 2014: the jury finds all the accused guilty in the killing of Anna Politkovskaya. The ringleader is still missing. The organizer, accomplices, and the killer get prison sentences. The ringleader is still missing. The ringleader's case is made into a separate proceeding, but no investigation is opened. Garabyan, the investigator, retires. The new investigator, Stepanov, does nothing. The ringleader is still missing. The investigation has practically been suspended. The ringleader still missing. Politkovskaya’s children appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, citing the investigators’ inaction. The Investigative Committee announces that Politkovskaya’s case has been solved. But the ringleader is still missing.
About ten years have passed since the day of Politkovskaya’s murder. The case hasn't been solved. The ringleader is still missing. [Politkovskaya’s Son]: I demand that the ringleader in my mother’s murder be found.
Arkady Babchenko, a war correspondent and ex-soldier who served in the First Chechen War, tweeted a picture of Politkovskaya in Grozny, Chechnya, in 2005.
Анна Политковская, Станислав Маркелов, Наталья Эстемирова.
Грозный, 2005 год, здание суда.
Убили всех.
Фото Алесандра Черкасова pic.twitter.com/ELNQGLNTxK
— Старшина Запаса (@StarshinaZapasa) October 7, 2016
Anna Politkovskaya, Stanislav Larkelov, Natalya Estemirova, Grozny, 2005, courthouse. All killed. Photo by Aleksander Cherkasov.
Many shared their favorite memories of Politkovskaya, often interviews highlighting her dogged pursuit of the truth—here calling attention to the special services’ role in the 2002 terrorist attack on Dubrovka theater, which resulted in a hostage crisis.
советуем всем посмотреть:
Анна Политковская рассказывает.@VRSoloviev о причастности спецслужб к теракту на Дубровке https://t.co/lIEdwiHyil
— недруги за бугром (@Lndcalling) October 7, 2016
I advise everyone to watch this. Anna Politkovskaya tells Vladimir Soloviev (Russian journalist) about the implication of special services in the terrorist attack on Dubrovka.
News website and TV station Novoe Vremya (a joint project of RFE/RL and Voice of America) remembered Politkovskaya's last interview.
В своем последнем интервью Анна Политковская говорила о Кадырове: через 2 дня ее застрелили в подъезде дома в Москве pic.twitter.com/47Gvp3QNRc
— Настоящее Время (@CurrentTimeTv) October 7, 2016
In her last interview, Anna Politkovskaya spoke about Kadyrov: two days later she was shot at her home in Moscow.
Others called attention to the fact that Politkovskaya was killed on Putin's birthday—a coincidence that resonates because of allegations of official involvement in her murder and coverup.
10 лет назад, 7 октября была убита Анна Политковская. Заказчик до сих пор не назван. Путин в этот день празднует свой день рождения pic.twitter.com/1t17gdgDyQ
— Виталий С. – фх100 (@vits2014) October 6, 2016
Ten years ago, on October 7, Anna Politkovskaya was killed. The ringleader is still missing. Putin celebrates his birthday on this date.

author: Isaac Webb


text:
The Story of an Argentine Torturer’s Son · Global Voices
Erin Gallagher

Luis Quijano. Photo: Nicolás Bravo. Used with permission.
This is an adapted version of an interview with Luis Quijano by Alejo Gómez that originally appeared on August 23, 2016 in Día a Día. It was translated and published here with permission.
When he was 15 years old, Luis Alberto Quijano’s father forced him to witness the horrors of La Perla, a clandestine detention center in the city of Córdoba, Argentina. Now an adult, Luis testified against his father in the La Perla-Ribera mega trial in the province of Córdoba for crimes committed during the dictatorship. Forty-three oppressors were charged with crimes against humanity in the trial, which concluded on August 24, 2016.
Luis Alberto Quijano didn’t choose his life. From the burden of having the same name as his father, to being exposed to brutal military operations in La Perla when he was 15, he had suffered long enough. He kept the family secret for 34 years.
En el contexto de esa época yo creía que estaba bien. Me sentía un agente secreto. Pero a los 15 años, un hijo no puede darse cuenta de que es manipulado por su padre. Yo no estaba preparado todavía para darme cuenta de que mi padre era un ladrón, un torturador y un asesino.
At the time, in that context I thought it was okay. I felt like a secret agent. But at the age of 15, a child doesn’t realize that he’s being manipulated by his father. I was not prepared yet to understand that my father was a thief, a torturer and a murderer.
Luis had no choice: his father was Gendarmerie Officer Luis Alberto Quijano, second in command of the Intelligence Detachment 141 at La Perla from 1976 to 1978, during the Argentine military dictatorship, a period of state terrorism in Argentina from roughly 1974 to 1983.
Luis Alberto Quijano. Archive photo.
This isn’t the story of Luis Quijano the oppressor, accused of 158 kidnappings, torture, almost 100 homicides and the abduction of a 10-year-old child. It is the story of Luis Quijano’s son, a man who over the years learned the magnitude of the terror he had lived as boy and ultimately testified against his own father in federal court.
It is a story that reflects the immense power that a parent has over a child, and how that child can choose a path of redemption.
When my father started taking me to the Detachment, I had been going to the provincial gym and became friends with a boy who did martial arts. They called him “Kent.” I told my father and a few days later he showed me a black-and-white photo card and asked me to identify my friend.
He said:
Me dijo “sos un pelotudo, ¡te hiciste amigo de un tipo del ERP! Mirá si después te ‘chupan’ a vos y me tengo que entregar para salvarte.
You’re an asshole, you made friends with an ERP! Watch, later they’ll kidnap you and I’ll have to save you.
The ERP stands for the People's Revolutionary Army, which was the military branch of the communist Workers’ Revolutionary Party in Argentina.
So he forbid me to go back to the gym, and a few days later he took me to the Detachment to work. He told me I was going to be a secret agent. I was 15, and in that context I believed it was okay because it was what my father had taught me.
At the Detachment, they made me destroy documentation that belonged to the prisoners. Documents of all kinds: university degrees, handwritten notes, literature, certificates, propaganda, books, everything.
Photo: Comisión Provincial de la Memoria
My father took me to La Perla four times, all in 1976. The first and fourth visits, he left me waiting in the car at the entrance.
The second time he made me get out and he took me to a shed where there were cars, furniture, televisions, refrigerators, anything you could imagine. All of it stolen. He gave me a package wrapped in a blanket and told me to take it to his car, and when I opened it, I saw it was a giant lump of silver.
That day I went to the other side of the shed where they dropped off the stolen things and I started chatting with a gendarme who was standing guard. At one point he gestured to an open room and told me:
ahí es donde les dan ‘matraca’ a los secuestrados.
Over there is where they torture the prisoners.
I peeked in and saw a bed where they tortured people. It was like a military cot with metal springs. Later I learned that they hooked up a stripped negative cable to the metal and used another positive cable to touch the body of whomever was tied down. They would handcuff a person on the cot, drench them with water and apply 220 volts to their genitals.
Photo: Comisión Provincial de la Memoria
There was such an appalling odor in there… like a dirty diaper. Years later, when my father was being held under house arrest, the same smell emanated from his room. I made the connection and realized that it’s the smell of a body in distress. I could never forget that smell. And I wondered, how is it possible someone could do so much damage to another human being?
The third time my father brought me along to his work, he took me to the entrance of La Cuadra (the area where prisoners were handcuffed and blindfolded). He was talking to “Chubi” Lopez  (Jose López, a civilian prosecuted in the trial) and I took advantage of the opportunity and looked inside La Cuadra.
In the back I saw a row of mattresses with naked people lying face down, all were tied at the hands and feet. Closer to the entrance, there were other people sitting silently squatting on mattresses. My father saw that I was looking at the prisoners and said: “What you looking at, asshole?” And I said, “Well, why did you bring me here?”
I had full knowledge that they killed those people. They threw them in a pit and military personnel shot them and buried them. I know because my father talked about it at home.
Next to La Cuadra there were some rooms they called offices. I know that “Palito” Romero beat someone badly there and killed him. (According to survivors, civilian Jorge Romero, who was indicted in the La Perla-Ribera trial, beat student Raúl Mateo Molina to death).
In the video below, Emilio Fessia, director of the Space for the Memory at La Perla, gives a tour of the former torture site.
El camino por el cual ustedes vienieron y la ruta, era el camino por el cual entraban las personas secuestradas. Y más o menos, si ven el plano, hacían este recorrido y aquí los bajaban para su primera sesión de tortura. […] Era donde se les cambiaba el nombre a las personas y se les ponía un número en este proceso de deshumanización. […] Y si sobrevivían las sesiones de tortura, venían las personas detenidas desaparecidas y eran tiradas en la cuadra hasta que venía la orden de los superiores para trasladarlas. Que es la mentira, el eufemismo que utilizaban para fusilarlas y desaparecerlas en la gran mayoría de los casos.
The road in which you came in and the route was the one in which the kidnapped people entered. If you look at the map, more or less they took this path and were taken to their first torture session. […] Here's where their names were changed and a number was assigned as part of the dehumanization process. […] If they survived the torture sessions, the disappeared detainees were thrown in the cuadra until an order came from the higher officers that they should be moved. This was the lie, the euphemism they used for shooting and disappearing their bodies in most cases.
My father brought home all kinds of stolen goods. But, at that age, I had no idea what was meant by “spoils of war,” as they called it. But later when I was in the military (I was in the gendarmerie), I realized spoils of war would be a bayonet or maybe a military patch that you took from some enemy you had fought.
Luis Alberto Quijano and son. Archive photo
But if you walk into a house and steal the refrigerator, the record-player, clothing, paintings, money…those aren’t spoils of war, it’s vandalism. That is theft.
I always wondered how my father, the chief officer of a security force, could participate in such vandalism. I don’t understand it. I was also an officer in the gendarmerie and it never occurred to me to enter a house and steal everything.
I do not understand how my father did that. Once he told me that I was a criminal, and I replied: And you, who steals cars off the street? You’re not a criminal? He exploded in a fit of rage, hit me and yelled:
¡el día que te cruces de vereda, ese día te voy a buscar y te voy a matar yo. No hará falta que te mate otro!
The day you cross that line, on that day I’ll find you and I’ll kill you myself. No need for someone else to do it!
That was my father. I have no good memories of him.
When I testified in the trial, I showed a photograph from back then where I was wearing a jacket and a wool turtleneck my father had taken from La Perla. We were not poor, but he brought home clothes just the same. At the time, the defense accused me of being a co-conspirator in those crimes, and I said no problem, they could accuse me of whatever they wanted.
I was there to testify anyway.
Now that I’m older I feel remorseful. I have children; once you have children you realize the value of a life. You evolve and understand that killing is wrong. I even went so far as to say:
Incluso llego al extremo de decir ‘bueno, suponé que fusilabas durante la dictadura”, pero ¿por qué desaparecías los cadáveres? ¿Por qué robabas niños?
Fine, suppose you executed people during the dictatorship, but why disappear the bodies? Why did you steal children?
My father had once brought home a girl whose mother they killed. It was like a pet: almost like a dog, only it was a little girl. Those thoughts kept going through my head: They were tortured, but why were they killed? They could have just put them in jail. I guess they decided to kill them, but why disappear the bodies? Didn’t those people have families to claim their remains? To disappear the body is the final odious act to do to a human being.
My father told me that when democracy returned they brought in machines to remove the remains, they ground them up and dumped them, I don’t know where. “They’re never going to find anything,” my father said. But of course something always remains.
Just to clarify, I have nothing against the armed forces. In fact, I was a member of the gendarmerie. All I did was tell the truth about 20 criminals, including my father.
The complaint against my father developed while talking to him when he was under house arrest. I reproached him for making me live through such atrocities. At one point he said: “I don’t know, I didn’t kill anyone.”
I felt repulsed inside, I wondered what all that jingoism and all that “Western and Christian sentiment” that they claimed to be defending was for.
Then I shouted:
Entonces le grité “¿cómo me vas a decir eso a mí? ¡Si yo te he visto matar gente! Cometiste delitos muy graves y me hiciste participar en esos delitos siendo yo un niño.
How can you say that to me? I’ve seen you kill people! You committed very serious crimes, you made me participate in those crimes as a child.
And he said, “Well, go denounce me then.“
And so I did. In 2010 I filed the first complaint. I finally realized he was a criminal.
No one can tell me I’m biased, I testified against my own father.
Luis Alberto Quijano died in May 2015 while under house arrest before the trial concluded.
He was charged with 416 offenses: 158 counts of aggravated unlawful deprivation of liberty, 154 counts of torture, 98 counts aggravated homicide, five counts of torture resulting in death and the abduction of a child under 10 years of age.
Photo: Luis Alberto Quijano. Archive photo
The word “megacausa” in Spanish refers to the scope of this judgement. After four years of hearings including over 581 witnesses, the historic La Perla-Ribera mega trial for crimes committed against 716 victims between March 1975 and December 1978 finally came to an end in August.
Forty-three oppressors were found guilty of crimes against humanity, and the court handed down 28 life sentences, nine sentences of between two and 14 years, and six acquittals. Eleven of the original 54 people charged died during the trial.
#SentenciaLaPerla: asesinatos, tormentos y violaciones cometidos por funcionarios públicos.#FueTerrorismoDeEstadopic.twitter.com/onmD7cEuJb
— Abuelas Plaza Mayo (@abuelasdifusion) August 25, 2016
#LaPerlaSentence: murders, torture and rapes committed by public officials. #ItWasStateTerrorism
All were members of the armed forces during the dictatorship, including ex-military, ex-police and some civilian personnel.
Piero De Monti, who was kidnapped along with his pregnant wife in June 1976, both were taken to La Perla. He spoke to the silent chamber:
La Perla fue una fábrica de muerte concebida por una mente antihumana
La Perla was a death factory conceived by an inhuman mind.
The ruling marks a historic milestone for the human rights organizations who worked for years to get justice for the victims. Claudio Orosz, attorney for H.I.J.O.S., an Argentine organization founded in 1995 to represent the children of persons who had been murdered or disappeared by the dictatorship, said:
Fueron más de tres años de juicio pero 39 años de investigación
The trial was more than three years, but 39 years of research.
In March 2007, the national government turned over the land on which La Perla was located in order to establish a memorial, which is now managed by human rights organizations.

author: Erin Gallagher


text:
Tunisian Teen Risks Suspension for Denouncing Poor School Conditions on Facebook · Global Voices
Afef Abrougui

Garbage accumulates outside of a secondary school in Bizerte, Tunisia. Photo by Hamza Batti via Facebook.
A Tunisian high school student could be suspended for three days for denouncing on Facebook the filthy state of his school in Bizerte, northern Tunisia. On 30 September, Hamza Batti posted four photos showing unfinished construction work at his school's basketball field and piles of trash accumulating outside the school entrance.
Along with the photos, he posted the following comment:
This is what is called a “pioneer” school in Bizerte, which is supposed to be a school where the conditions for studying are convenient, and the most basic elements for succeeding with excellence are available.
[…]
…that pile of garbage is there everyday outside the secondary door which gives our “pioneer” school a more than wonderful image…The garbage is available in other forms inside, like the dust which is everywhere, the restrooms (I won't even describe them), broken windows and doors, and the walls that only get painted once every four years or on special occasions
[…]
Anyway, all this and more you find it everyday at the pioneer school, the face of Bizerte, Tunisia and North Africa
Batti told the privately-owned radio station MosaiqueFM that he was interrogated by his school administration on 5 October, which accused him of engaging in a “smear and distortion campaign” against it. Speaking to the radio station, he clarified his intention:
I was only expressing myself freely, and I have the right to post pictures with the aim of improving the situation. That was my intention.

author: Afef Abrougui


text:
Why Japanese Bathrooms Are the Best, and Other Videos · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

Screencap from Life Where I'm From YouTube channel.
Have you ever wondered how other people live their daily lives around the world? What's an apartment like? What do people eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner?
If you have, there's a YouTube channel for you. Life Where I'm From features dozens of high-quality video blogs about life in Japan, and sometimes from other countries.
The vlogs are usually hosted by Aiko, a girl who lives with her family in Japan. Greg, her father, a Canadian transplanted to Tokyo, shoots, edits and uploads the videos.
The video blogs now have millions of views from around the world, including this one that explains “why Japanese bathrooms are the best”:
There are videos that describe just about every aspect of life in Japan from a child's perspective, including what owning a ramen restaurant is like, or how Halloween is celebrated in Japan.
The YouTube channel has an accompanying website, Life Where I'm From. According to Greg:
We've made a few videos about what life is like for us in Japan, but we have always wanted to know what life is like where you're from.
[…]
The whole point of the project was to have kids from around the world see what life is like for other kids around the world. If we're lucky enough to have you share your stories, we'd love to feature some of them in our videos.
The website itself hosts the videos on a blog, which has become host to a vibrant discussion about daily life in just about every part of the world.
The team at Life Where I'm From also encourages its audience to help determine the format of future videos.
Screencap from Life Where I'm From website.
The father Greg also has yet another popular video blog, Life Where I'm From X.  According to Greg, this vlog provides an “adult perspective on what life is like in Japan.”
On this vlog, Greg talks about issues such as homelessness in Japan, as well as what it's like to travel with a disability in Japan.
Besides the YouTube channels and the website, you can follow the Life Where I'm From team on Twitter at @lifewhereimfrom.

author: Nevin Thompson


text:
“With a Nobel, but Without Peace” · Global Voices
Elizabeth Rivera

Image: Netflix poster art for “The White Helmets” / modified by Kevin Rothrock
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on October 7, 2016 for his efforts to put an end to more than five decades of conflict between his government and the country's oldest insurgent group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
The win came as a surprise to many.
In a referendum held earlier this week, Colombians rejected Santos’ peace deal. If the deal had passed the vote, it would have indeed marked an end to a war that has claimed more than 220,000 lives since 1958.
Dice mi papá: “Con Nobel y sin paz”.
— Sinar Alvarado (@sinaralvarado) October 7, 2016
My dad says: with Nobel, but without peace
Thousands of kilometers away, Syria's Civil Defense volunteers, widely known as the ‘White Helmets‘ because of their white helmets worn during rescue missions, were seen as the choice of many. They are seen as heroes in a war that has claimed more than 470,000 lives in five years.
Several high-profile publications  endorsed the White Helmets for the Nobel Peace Prize, including The Guardian and Time magazine. Many had hoped that giving the White Helmets the Nobel Peace Prize would not only give Syrians hope, but it might have given the White Helmets protections against airstrikes of the Assad regime and the Russian government.
As soon as the Nobel Peace Prize was announced, the White Helmets congratulated the president and people of Colombia.
Congratulations to the President of Colombia for the @NobelPrize and we wish the people of Colombia peace
— The White Helmets (@SyriaCivilDef) 7 October 2016
The award for Santos excluded FARC commander Rodrigo Londondo, alias “Timochenko”, also a signatory of the failed accord. The Nobel Peace Prize committee emphasized that this prize also pays tribute to the people of Colombia.
You can hear the phone call between the Norwegian Nobel Committee committee and President Santos below:
Twitter was quick to question the award given to Santos for trying to bring peace to his country:
Man, the Nobel committee seems to be giving out a lot of Gold Peace Stars for Participation recently. https://t.co/3FId1eC9Jj
— Julian Sanchez (@normative) October 7, 2016
The recognition to peace that is yet to come is unbelievable, to some. Angelica Casallas, from Colombia, compared the win to Macondo, a fictional town in One Hundred Years of Solitude. The novel was written by Colombia's most famous writer Gabriel García Márquez.
Gabo ganó el Nobel por Macondo, Santos por gobernarlo.
— Angélica Casallas ☮ (@AngelicAzulita) October 7, 2016
Gabo (Gabriel García Márquez) won the Nobel for Macondo, Santos for governing it.
On Facebook, Robert Valencia, Colombian Global Voices author commented:
This is proof that Colombia is the cradle of Magical Realism. While the country is on the brink of (possibly) going to war again after the failed referendum, the President wins the Nobel Peace Prize.
Others used the famous meme that circulated after Miss Colombia was incorrectly called the winner of the Miss Universe pageant, earlier this year, to illustrate the controversy that could rise between the “No” supporters and the recently awarded president:
Cuando ganas el plebiscito / Cuando le dan el Nobel a Santos. pic.twitter.com/RHMqORjuuy
— Carolina (@Caromunozb) October 7, 2016
When you win the referendum / When they give the Nobel to Santos.
Some Twitter users, like Erik del Búfalo, showed relief that the award wasn't handed to the FARC as well:
Al menos no se lo dieron también a Timochenko. En esta época de la humanidad se podrían esperar este tipo de cosas.
— Erik Del Bufalo (@ekbufalo) October 7, 2016
At least they didn't give it to Timochenko too. In this time in humanity, one could expect this kind of stuff.
Meanwhile, Ivan Marquez, chief negotiator for the FARC, congratulated the president, saying:
Esperamos que el Nobel de paz le de al Presidente Santos fuerza para darle vida al Acuerdo Final y dignidad a todos los colombianos
— Iván Márquez (@IvanMarquezFARC) 7 October 2016
We hope that the Nobel peace prize gives President Santos strength to give life to the final agreement and dignity for all Colombians.
There were those who were optimistic that the prize could boost the peace process:
Nobel really helped Oscar Arias in 1987, when Reagan admin was bitterly opposing his Central Am peace effort. Dynamic could be similar now.
— Adam Isacson (@adam_wola) October 7, 2016
Countless people took to Twitter to express their love to the White Helmets, saying that they won the ‘hearts of the world’ even though they didn't win the Nobel Peace Prize. All of the following tweets, by Syrians and others, were retweeted by the White Helmets themselves.
Syrian response to @SyriaCivilDef not winning the @NobelPrize: “their prize is in heaven, not in this world. Their mission is saving souls.”
— Adham (@adhamsahloul) 7 October 2016
Well deserved, despite the disappointing referendum result. Sad that the @SyriaCivilDef didn't get it, they need the support even more now. https://t.co/22eVo241Qg
— Luc Dockendorf (@LucDockendorf) 7 October 2016
They faced bullets, bombs, torture & genocide. We are lucky that we had heroes living among us who decided to save lives. @SyriaCivilDef
— Lina Sergie Attar (@AmalHanano) 7 October 2016
Head of @SyriaCivilDef Raed Saleh tells @AFP the best prize his group could receive is what they do every day — saving a life. #Nobel pic.twitter.com/JSp5zIqZ8G
— Maya Gebeily (@GebeilyM) 7 October 2016
What a class act! The White Helmets congratulating the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. @SyriaCivilDef you are heroes. https://t.co/PjYclAz6hD
— Nargis Walker (@NargisWalker) 7 October 2016
Congrats for the Syrian @SyriaCivilDef heroes for winning our hearts and losing a stone prize. You are our #NobelPeacePrize heroes
— Mahmoud Al Basha (@Mahmoud_Bashaa) 7 October 2016
Palestinian-Syrian caricaturist Hani Abbas drew the following in honor of the White Helmets:
The White Helmets and the Nobel Peace Prize. Cartoon by Hani Abbas. Photo Source: Twitter.
Many had hope the prize would put the organization in a protective spotlight. UK-based activist and editor at Pulse Media Idrees Ahmad tweeted:
It is also an abdication of responsibility since a @NobelPrize would have made it harder for Russia to actively target @SyriaCivilDef
— Idrees Ahmad (@im_PULSE) 7 October 2016
And indeed, the White Helmets’ center in Hama, in West-central Syria, was targeted today.
At the time of the @NobelPrize announcement, @SyriaCivilDef center targeted in Hama. Back to work. pic.twitter.com/DsOE0WRbs3
— The White Helmets (@SyriaCivilDef) 7 October 2016
They also lost another volunteer in Daraa, southwestern Syria.
Mahmoud Al Muhammad killed today in Daraa after responding to bombing of civilians leaving Friday prayers. pic.twitter.com/TE686D9Ujt
— The White Helmets (@SyriaCivilDef) 7 October 2016

author: Elizabeth Rivera