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‘Dolphin’ Marriage Proposal in the Philippines Angers Animal Rights Activists  · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Romantic or cruel? A controversial marriage proposal in the Ocean Adventure park in Subic
A marriage proposal at a theme park became controversial in the Philippines after a dolphin's belly was used to write, “Will you marry me, Rona?” Photos of the proposal from the the Ocean Adventure Subic Bay's Facebook page soon went viral, triggering a maelstrom of reaction. Later, the photos were removed from their page.
The Earth Island Institute was able to take screenshots of the controversial proposal and shared them online. The group is urging a boycott of the theme park and calling for the release of all captive dolphins.
In response, the Ocean Adventure Subic Bay claimed that it used zinc oxide to write the marriage proposal on the belly of the dolphin which the company said is a safe material and used for sun protection:
But Marine Wildlife Watch of the Philippines said this is no excuse to ‘vandalize’ an animal:
Vandalizing an animal has no place in conservation.
Zinc oxide is used to prevent sunburn and skin irritation in stranded cetaceans, meaning it is used as a medical aid to prevent further injury to the animal in distress
Angela Colmenares-Sabino questions the right of the theme park to exist as an education and conservation facility:
It doesn't matter what material was used to write on the dolphin's belly. The very fact that they're diminishing the important ecological role of dolphins into this clearly states that Ocean Adventure, claiming to be a facility for education and conservation, is not for education and conservation at all but a commercial cruel facility.
Patricia Sorongon-Yap thinks the couple should not be blamed:
Some got mad at the couple, and some doesn't understand why WE are against this idea for a proposal. For me, it's actually not the couples fault. A lot of people are unaware of the simple fact that dolphins are NOT fish, let alone that dolphins or any other kind of wildlife animal are not supposed to be written on especially for commercial purposes (regardless of the material used).
The management of Ocean Adventure assured the public that it used a safe material when it wrote the marriage proposal on the dolphin.
Aldwin M. Arcena weighs both sides of the issue:
I mean what's the worse that's gonna happen to the dolphin? Although it could count into more negative sides if that paint is somewhat poisonous or something. It's just a marked dolphin, nothing to get so angry about
Michael Paolo Tiglao urges commenters to show more anger at people who kill dolphins:
…why are you ranting about this stupid paint, you should share and post how certain asian countries kill dolphins so just to get their soup or dumpling or sometn’, why don't we all do something about that, and just so you know thats a park and they care for their animals, that paint will be cleaned after. the dolphin is still alive and no blood is spilled., just my two cents on how negative people can be. have a good day


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PHOTOS: Saigon in the Past 50 Years  · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

The Saigoneer features several photos published by the French Consulate in Saigon, Vietnam that highlight the changes that took place in the city between 1955 and 2005.
Slideshow: How Saigon, #Vietnam Changed from 1955 – 2005 http://t.co/mdfjPyQGgz pic.twitter.com/Z6teefeXLo
— Saigoneer (@Saigoneer) February 12, 2014

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Mong Palatino


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“They Didn’t Drown. They Were Murdered!” Immigrant Deaths in Ceuta, Spain · Global Voices
Elena Arrontes

Image from Fotomovimiento taken at the Barcelona protest. Used under CC License.
Fourteen people from sub-Saharan Africa died, as a group of 200 people tried to enter Spain from Morocco by swimming around the fence in port city Ceuta's waters.
Immigrant and civil society organisations accuse the Guardia Civil (Civil Guard) of negligence. They say the Civil Guard did not assist [es] the stranded immigrants and did not alert the coastguard to rescue them. They also condemn the use of rubber bullets and tear gas against the immigrants which were used to prevent them from crossing the border.
The Guardia Civil has denied the accusations and created confusion by constantly changing their version [es] of the events of Thursday, February 6.
Map of the border zone between Morocco and Spain – Wikipedia
A week after the tragedy, protests were convened in 15 Spanish cities to condemn the death of the immigrants’. At a citizen gathering in Madrid, the most popular slogans [es] were: “They didn't drown, they were murdered”, “Natives or foreigners, we're all the same working class”, “No one is illegal” and “Where are the pro-lifers now?”, the latter in reference to those who support the controversial reform of the Abortion Law that the Spanish conservative government is currently preparing.
The Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz finally acknowledged the use of riot gear by the security forces, although he claimed that it was used “only as a deterrent” to prevent the migrants from crossing the border. While the minister was appearing in the House of Representatives and facing the questions and accusations of the opposition parties, Twitter was transformed into a vehicle for people to express their indignation via the now trending topic #muertesCeuta [#Ceutadeaths]:
Parece q para hacer prospecciones petrolíferas las fronteras son más anchas que para salvar vidas #muertesceuta
— Leire Iglesias (@leireis) febrero 13, 2014
It seems that when prospecting for oil the borders are a lot wider than when for saving lives #muertesceuta
— Leire Iglesias (@leireis) February 13th, 2014
El ministro reconoce que se utilizaron las pelotas de goma pero no sobre las personas… a qué disparaban? a las gaviotas? #muertesCeuta
— Lorena Sainero (@Anerol27) febrero 13, 2014
The minister acknowledges that rubber bullets were fired but not at people… what were they firing at then, the seagulls? #muertesCeuta
— Lorena Sainero (@Anerol27) February 13th, 2014
Hay cosas que no debemos permitir jamás. #muertesCeuta
— Ani ツ (@Vaquesinmas) febrero 13, 2014
There are some things which we should never allow to happen. #muertesCeuta
— Ani ツ (@Vaquesinmas) February 13th, 2014
Disparar al agua cerca de gente que no sabe nadar y está desesperada no es disuadir “por razones humanitarias”, es otra cosa #muertesCeuta
— Juan Luis Sánchez (@juanlusanchez) febrero 13, 2014
Shooting into the water near people who are desperate and can't swim isn't deterring them “for humanitarian reasons”, it's something entirely different #muertesCeuta
— Juan Luis Sánchez (@juanlusanchez) February 13th, 2014
There are still many questions to be answered:
Photo by Dani Gago – DISO Press. ‘More bridges, no walls’
What is the existing protocol for managing the entry of immigrants in Spain? Did the Guardia Civil's actions in Ceuta show respect for the law and the immigrants’ human rights? Were some of the immigrants who did manage to reach Spanish territory returned to Morocco, in spite of the illegality of such an action?
One Twitter user briefly summarises the need for accountability:
¿Por qué el ministro tiene que dar respuestas a las incógnitas que rodean a las #muertesCeuta? Sobre todo, por ellos: http://t.co/TzhPH6zS9M
— Gabriela Sánchez (@Gabriela_Schz) febrero 13, 2014
Why should the minister provide answers to the mysteries surrounding the #Ceutadeaths? Above all, for them: http://t.co/TzhPH6zS9M
— Gabriela Sánchez (@Gabriela_Schz) February 13th, 2014

author: Elena Arrontes


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Protests Erupt Against a TV Show in Iran · Global Voices
Farid

Sarzamine Kohan
Protests against a TV series called Sarzamine Kohan (Ancient Land) erupted this week in several Iranian cities, including Dezful and Ahvaz in the oil-rich Khuzestan province. Demonstrators say the show was insulting to  Bakhtiari people and the role its leaders played in Iran's Constitutional Revolution.
In at least one dialogue of the fictional show, Bakhtyaris are said to be “at the service of English”, meaning they were traitors. Sixty members of parliament wrote a protest letter to state-run Iranian television complaining about this representation.
Bakhtiari people, who primarily live in Chahar Mahaal, Bakhtiari and parts of the Khuzestan, Lorestan and Isfahan provinces, played an important role in Iran's history.
Demonstration in Dezful
Freedom Messenger shared several films from a demonstration in Dezful, on Friday 14, 2014.
Several netizens tweeted about the controversial series.
Tevis tweeted
وقتی امروز بصورت هدفدار و یک جانبه دست به تخریب قوم #بختیاری میزنن مطمئنن فردا هم نوبت بقیه ی اقوام خواهد رسید
— teviz (@mashtiiiiiiiiii) February 12, 2014
Today they destroy Bakhtiari, tomorrow they will do it with other ethnic groups.
The_Sina tweeted
این عکسا امروز واسه مسجدسلیمان ـه اعتراض میکنید درست اعتراض کنید ، بدون زدوخورد #بختیاری pic.twitter.com/eE8QZEKgZQ
— سین الف (@The_Sina) February 14, 2014
Here are the photos of demonstration in Masjed Soleiman on Friday, February 15. If you demonstrate, do it the right way, without violence.
Mehdi Mohseni previously tweeted
شبکه سوم امروز چند بار صدا و سیما آهنگ #بختیاری پخش کرد. این احتمالن در جهت تلطیف فضا و جبران توهینی است که به این… http://t.co/fTWlJnNMxZ
— Mehdi Mohseni (@mehdimohseni) February 9, 2014
Iran's Third Channel (the one broadcast the controversial series) played Bakhtiari music several times today. Probably to soften the present atmosphere.

author: Farid


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Rap Musicians Take on Guinea-Bissau’s Drug Trafficking Problem · Global Voices
Buala - culturas africanas contemporâneas

Rapper NB on the balcony of Rádio Jovem (Youth Radio) during the interactive radio program ‘frees’. Photo shared by Buala (CC BY-NC-SA 2.5)
A longer version of this article, written by Miguel de Barros and Patrícia Godinho Gomes, was originally published on web portal Buala with the title Percepções e contestações: leituras a partir das narrativas sobre o narcotráfico na música Rap da Guiné-Bissau (Perceptions and demands: Readings from narratives on narcotrafficking in the rap music of Guinea-Bissau) on January 24, 2014.
The problem of drug trafficking in Guinea-Bissau has been gaining visibility in the African country, thanks to rap musicians who are waging a war of words against the illicit trade. “Narco-rap”, as it is called, is building resistance to drug trafficking in an innovative way by giving a voice to the people fighting against it.
In the beginning of the new millennium, illegal cocaine trafficking reached global proportions, not only by infiltrating the traditional markets such as the United States and Latin America, but also in Western Europe, Russia and more recently some countries on the West African coast, which have become countries of transit for drug cartels.
Guinea-Bissau is one of the poorest countries in the world and lacks the capacity to control its territory, making the narcotrafficking phenomenon there and the subregion of West Africa not only a matter of lack of development, but also a security problem (see a special mention of Guinea-Bissau in the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime reports from 2007 and 2008 [PDF]).
Song “Relatório” (Report) by MC Mário, Patche di Rima and Dom Pina
Beyond the highly publicized American intervention [en] against drug trafficking in Guinea-Bissau and the subregion, it is important to understand the internal mechanisms of resistance that are being adopted and what effects they are having at the national level.
For example, “non-institutionalized” youth from lower social classes are protagonists in the fight against the trade, denouncing it in rap performances broadcast on the radio and in concert. Narco-rap is an artistic medium through which the rappers give commentary, criticize those in power and challenge prevailing social (dis)order, combining cultural emancipation with the exercise of political and democratic participation.
Take a look at the lyrics of a handful of narco-rap songs written in kriol, or Creole, the lingua franca of Guinea-Bissau, with translations in English.
Drug trafficking, condemned
The lyrics of “Culpadus” (Guilty) by Torres Gémeos (2008) condemn narcotrafficking:
droga tchiga Guiné i djumblintinu senariu/Nhu alferis ku nhu kabu/Tudu pasa sedu bida empresariu (…)
Amadu ki chefi di izersitu/Iooode/I ka fasi nin 2 dia ki tchiga la/Iooode/I mata Djokin i subi la
Ku asasinatu ku aumenta/korupson ganha forsa
I ta troka mindjer suma ropa/I tene kumbu té na Eropa
Nunde ki sai ku es manga di kusas?/no ka sibi!
Drugs arrived in Guinea and shuffled our scenario
Mr. Lieutenant and Mr. Private
All became businessmen
Amadu is the chief of the army/Iooode
It hasn’t even been two days since he got there/Iooode
He killed Joaquim and climbed up there
With the increasing murders
Corruption gained power
He changes women as if changing clothes
He even has money in Europe
Where did he get all that?
We don’t know!
Exploring the narcotrafficking route
The song “Bo obi mas” (Listen again) by Baloberos (2008) travels the geographies of drug trafficking:
Guiné-Bissau nason di trafico? Tráfico
kil ku na bin bai pa Spanha? Tráfico
kil ku ta bin di Colombia? Tráfico
Mira ermanos, la fuerza armada transportando la cocaína en quantidad
haciendo negócios com nuestros ermanos de Colombia
(…) bo obi es sistema di pesa coca: kilograma, decagrama, hectograma, graaama
Guinea-Bissau, nation of trafficking? Trafficking
the one that goes to Spain? Trafficking
the one that usually comes from Colombia? Trafficking
Look brothers, the armed forces carrying a large quantity of cocaine
doing business with our brothers in Colombia
(…) listen to this system of weighing coke: kilogram, decagram, hectogram, graaam [sic]
Calling for protest
In “Kaminhu sukuru” (Dark way) by FBMJ (2008), a call is made to the people of Guinea-Bissau:
Marca di Avion 515 tisi medicamentu pa tudu duentis
i guineensis ka na duensi mas
bardadi n`fia, Guiné i terá nunde ku pekadur ta garandi ora ki misti, di manera ki misti, tudu ta dipindi
bardi n`fia, Guine i tera nunde ku po ta sibi riba di santchu mbes di santchu sibi na po
Ma i ka sigridu ku nha kabesa na ramasa i ni i ka kudadi
i sibidu kuma i ten djintis na Guine ora ku e misti pa tchuba tchubi, tchuba ta tchubi
ora ku é mista pa sol iardi, sol ta ratcha
An airplane branded 515 brought medicine for all the patients
and Guineans will never again become ill (…)
truth I believe, Guinea is a land where people are mature when they want to be, how they want to be, but everything is relative
truth I believe, Guinea is the land where the trees climb monkeys instead of the latter climbing trees!
But it is not a secret that I am throwing up nor that it is worrying
It's known there are people in Guinea that when they want it to rain, it happens
when they want the sun to shine, it happens
Expressing uneasiness
The song “Contra” (Against) by Cientistas Realistas (2007) regrets the state of the “narco-state”:
Poster for Cientistas Realistas
notícia di tera obidu ate na rádios internacionais
fidjus di Guine ta ianda npinadu é ka ta ossa ianda nin alsa rostu
tera i ka purmeru, ma anos pekaduris i restu
na diaspora no ta sta tristi suma kil ku tene disgostu
pais sta desorganizadu, corupson sta generalizadu, aparelho di no stadu aos torna un sistema di corupson
dinheru ku no djunta passa na sbanjadu a toa i grande orgulho, fama(!)
Guine-Bissau i narcotráfico
djintis di stadu na pratica di negócios ilegais
e na fasi crimes organizadu ma faladu na nomi di stadu
es tudu anos i contra
narcostadu puera lanta
tudu mundo misti sai nês coba
news from the land was heard even on international radio
sons of Guinea-Bissau are crestfallen without the guts to raise their faces
the country is not prioritized, people come last
in the diaspora we get used to being sad as if we were heartbroken
the country is disorganized, generalized corruption, the apparatus of state turned into a system of corruption
our money is now being wasted for nothing, great pride, fame!
Guinea-Bissau is a narco-state
people of the state practicing illegal businesses
carrying out organized crime, but let’s say in the name of the state
all this we are against,
narco-state raised dust
everyone wants to leave this hole
Calling for action
The song “Kaminhus” (Paths) by As One (2012) takes on a tone of indignation as well as gives a call to action:
No leis apedrejado
cheio de lacunas
li ki Guine-Bissau pa kin ku ka sibi
li ku traficantes ta dadu privilegio mas di ki pursoris di universidade
juro li te purcu ta pudu gravata i bistidu fatu
katchuris si é mata é ta dadu caru tipo incentivo
tipo se presente pa é continua mata
guineensis i sta na hora di no kunsa nota
no disa pa tras tudu ke ku na tudjinu avança…
Our laws stoned
full of holes
this is Guinea-Bissau for those who don't know
this is where the traffickers are given more privileges than college professors
I swear pigs wear ties and suits here
when they kill the dogs, they receive cars as an incentive
as a gift to keep killing
Guineans, it is time we start to notice
let’s leave behind everything that does not allow us to move forward…
Radios have been (and still are) an extremely important medium in Guinean daily life. Rappers, through their creative narratives, aim to spread the word [fr] in the freest way possible about those who are profiting from trafficking. They use radio as an opportunity to denounce via their music the various aspects of the illicit trade.
This trend proves the need to question the label of “narco-state”, keeping in mind that the living of a large majority of the Guinean population is not based on the drug business.
Young rappers have opened up new pathways for reflection on the position of youth, the dispute over the management of “public affairs” and the emergence of new political actors in the public arena of a country in development.
A longer version of this article, written by Miguel de Barros and Patrícia Godinho Gomes, was originally published on web portal Buala with the title Percepções e contestações: leituras a partir das narrativas sobre o narcotráfico na música Rap da Guiné-Bissau (Perceptions and demands: Readings from narratives on narcotrafficking in the rap music of Guinea-Bissau) on January 24, 2014.


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St. Lucian Chef Nina Compton Still the People’s Champ · Global Voices
Matthew Hunte

Saint Lucian chef Nina Compton, daughter of the late Prime Minister John Compton, was recently the runner-up for the 11th season of the cooking reality show Top Chef. Nicholas Elmi eventually won, but Compton's participation on the show was a major topic of discussion on social media, particularly in the online group Saint Lucians Aiming for Progress.
The group organized a public screening of the Top Chef finale at the Derek Walcott Square in the middle of the island's capital. Many observers were surprised that Compton was not named the winner, but she did manage to clinch the “Fan Favorite” award and the US $10,000 prize that went along with it – an indication of the high level of online support she received.  After the show, Compton was named a “culinary ambassador” by Saint Lucia's Minister of Tourism, Lorne Theophilus.
Compton received massive support over Twitter via the hashtags #TeamNina, #TeamGreenFigAndSaltFish, #Team758 and #NinaNation. Some users of the microblogging service voiced their displeasure with her second place finish, but most were more concerned about congratulating her on her success:
So #topchef choose someone who can cook spam and inconsistent over two ladies who showed them what being brilliant chefs are
— Suzi Saint Lucia (@carnille) February 6, 2014
We eh care wa da judges say Chef Nina all the way!!! #TeamNina #TopChef
— lanzie-melissa_grey❤ (@Lanzie_04) February 6, 2014
One Twitter user sardonically suggested that Compton could have won she had used his suggestion:
#teamgreenfigandsaltfish I tell NINA cook" pehmi and flour porride" 4 desert she go and do her own ting!
— Megabite de Artiste (@MegabiteVictor) February 6, 2014
Trinidadian fashion designer Anya Ayoung-Chee, who won the fashion competition Project Runway in 2011, also tweeted her support for Compton:
Congrats to @nina_compton for winning in the hearts & minds of many! Your island spirit shone bright! #TopChef belongs to you!!

author: Matthew Hunte


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Trinidad and Tobago: The Soca Kings Play Songs of Anti-Love · Global Voices
Georgia Popplewell

According to the advertisements, the headliner at this evening's “Ladies Night Out” Valentine's Day concert in Port of Spain, Trinidad, is soca music star Bunji Garlin, but that may be more a marketing ploy than anything else. Garlin is the current golden boy of Trinidad and Tobago's music scene, in the wake of winning Soul Train and MTV Iggy awards for his 2013 hit song, “Differentology“.
The concert's actual moral centre, if you will, is the American R&B crooner Peabo Bryson, who made a name for himself in the 1980s with ballads like “If Ever You're In My Arms Again”, “Tonight I Celebrate My Love”, and the theme song from Disney's “Beauty and the Beast”. Unlike Bryson, the other performers in the lineup—all soca artists—will have to dig deep into their repertoires to find a song extolling the kind of values Valentine's Day represents. The performer needing to make the least effort might well be Mr. Killa, a singer from Grenada whose song this year is a tribute to plus-size women called “Rolly Polly Girls“.
It could be argued that this is all Valentine's Day's own fault, for falling in the middle of the festival nearest and dearest to the Trinidadian heart. Trinidad and Tobago's Carnival, arguably the world's pre-eminent pre-Lenten festival after the one in Brazil, is a season when conventional morality takes a back seat to spontaneous expressions of the kind of behaviour frowned upon by clerics and other supposed gatekeepers of the human soul.
In the last century, there were only 23 years in which Valentine's Day did not fall within the Carnival season. This year, the two days of Carnival proper are March 3rd and 4th, but since the week after Christmas the country has been swept up in the euphoria of the festival. Against the backdrop of an spiralling crime rate (in this nation of 1.4 million there've been over 60 homicides since the beginning of 2014), people are partying like it’s business as usual. Except for world wars (the festival was put on hold between 1942-45) and epidemics (polio, back in 1972), nothing stops the Carnival.
This evening, many Trinidadians will observe Valentine's Day the way others do throughout the world: flowers and chocolates will be sent and received and restaurants will likely be filled this evening with dining couples. But come February 15, the rules of Carnival will prevail once more. And Carnival rules and Valentine's Day values are about as incompatible as an Aries and a Capricorn.
During the first two or three months of any year, in addition to partying too hard and drinking more than is good for them, Trinidadians will often find themselves dancing in suggestive fashion—or “wining”, as that style of dance is called—with women and men to whom they have no particular, or long-standing, romantic attachment. Or sometimes no attachment at all: as Farmer Nappy sang last year, “Nothing [ain't] wrong with…wining on a stranger.” Not all of these interactions are innocent, but contrary to appearances, and as hard as this is for my close friend's European boyfriend to understand, much of the time it's really just about dancing.
The music form driving these dancefloor antics is soca, the modern-day successor to calypso. During the Carnival season, soca is the soundtrack to the lives of large swaths of the population, blaring from radios and car sound systems and towering stacks of speaker boxes at a never-ending series of parties and spreading the gospel of slackness.
“I come out to live my life/Drink a rum and live my life/I'm the happiest man alive,” sings Machel Montano on “Happiest Man Alive“, an anthem which neatly sums up one aspect of the Carnival ethos. At parties, deejays will often mix Montano's song with Skinny Fabulous’ “Behaving The Worst“, with which it shares a rhythm track. In one of the hits of 2012, singer KI gave voice to a key male fantasy in the ultimate anti-love song, “Single Forever“, which enumerated the virtues of being unattached.
With lyrics like the above, it's obvious that soca and Carnival have the potential to wreak havoc on intimate relationships, especially among those inexperienced in the workings of the culture. During the Carnival season, you cling tightly to the notion—or appearance— of monogamy at your peril. Some savvy couples negotiate a set of ground rules stating roughly that during the carnival season (almost) anything goes, provided life reverts to normal on Ash Wednesday.
For, as everyone knows, the perpetrator of Carnival-induced behaviours isn't him or herself to blame: in the world according to soca human beings are powerless in the face of infectious rhythms, gyrating bodies and rum.
This year there's any number of songs placing the blame on the oppressive power of the bassline, or a woman's gyrating buttocks (known in current soca parlance as the “bumper”), the sight of which instantly drains the average male of free will. “When de riddim hit you you does get on wassy for true,” sings Machel Montano on “Shameless”, “wassy” being a catch-all for a range of slack behaviours. “That bumper is too real,” cries a helpless Kerwin du Bois on “Too Real”. “I wanna wine but it lookin’ dangerous/And I just want to grind on you.”
Soca's closest approximation to a love song this year may well be Cassi's “Man in Yuh House“, in which the persona expresses a desire to be elevated from the status of “horner man” to official lover: “I want to be the man in your house, and not the horner man/I want to take you out/Just like a normal man/Tonight I not hiding/I out in the open/For your man to see.” A lovely sentiment, but it's still not likely to make anyone's Valentine's Day playlist.
Georgia Popplewell (@georgiap) is a writer and media producer from Trinidad and Tobago, and Managing Director of Global Voices.

author: Georgia Popplewell


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Video: Why Young Nigerians Leave Home · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Nigerian netizen Kola Olaosebikan uses YouTube to address, among other topics, the question of why young Nigerians are running from home:
This video addresses moving back to nigeria, why i left nigeria, brain drain in nigeria, and issues impacting youth and progress in nigeria all wrapped up in a nice little bow of love.

author: Ndesanjo Macha


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What Does Civil Society Engagement Really Mean? · Global Voices
Solana Larsen

Is civil society really being heard by inter-governmental organizations (IGOs) such as the United Nations, World Bank, or World Trade Organization? CIVICUS, the world alliance for citizen participation, is polling all civil society organizations (CSOs) who have ever engaged with an IGO to get a clear picture. Eventually they wish to develop a scorecard to assess how well different IGOs and processes are working.

author: Solana Larsen


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What Guinea Needs Now is Peace and Stability · Global Voices
Abdoulaye Bah

Downtown Conakry via wikimedia CC-BY-2.0
Serge Lamah reports on his blog[fr] that Oyé Guilavogui, the communication minister has pointed out the pressing needs for Guinea today :
Vous vous rappelez, en 2011, les avions en direction de Conakry ne désemplissaient pas. Les hôtels étaient pleins à tout moment, aujourd’hui, allez-y, il y a de la place toutes les saisons. Les avions viennent à moitié vides parce qu’il n y a pas eu de calme, on ne s’est pas acceptés. Donc on est obligé de tout remettre à plat pour faire revenir les investisseurs. Pour qu’un investisseur mette son argent dans un pays, le premier critère est qu’il faut qu’il y ait la stabilité, la paix.
You remember in 2011, planes bound for Conakry never emptied. Hotels were always but today, there are always empty rooms all year long. The planes are half empty because there is always uncertainty and we have yet to learn to live with each other again. So we are forced to get back to the drawing board and in order to appeal to investors again. For an investor to invest in a country, the first criterion is that there must be stability and peace.

author: Abdoulaye Bah


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Blood on the Ice, Fury on the Tubes · Global Voices
Andrey Tselikov

Vladimir Putin sees all of your shenanigans. Image mixed by Kevin Rothrock and Andrey Tselikov.
Drama is never far behind when the Russian and the USA national hockey teams meet on the ice. The latest match-up at the Sochi Olympics, where US won 3-2 in a series of shootouts, was no different. While Americans celebrated, Russian fans were incensed by what they view as an unfair loss — late in the game the Russians scored a third goal that was nullified by the referees according to IHF rules, because one of the US goal-posts was slightly dislodged. Arguably it was this call that cost the Russians their victory.
“There was a goal! Even we saw it.” says a Russian cosmonaut. Anonymous image found online.
The goal's position was so slightly out of kilter that most people watching the game did not notice it. Confusion over the reasons for nullification quickly turned to anger and conspiracy theories, fed by the fact that the referee was an American national. The Twitter account of the liberal cable channel Rain-TV tweeted:
Кстати, судья, не засчитавший третий гол в ворота американцев из-за того, что вратарь-американец сам сдвинул ворота, тоже американец
— Телеканал ДОЖДЬ (@tvrain) February 15, 2014
By the way, the referee who didn't count the third puck in the American goal, because the American goalie moved the goal-post, is also American
The implication here being that while the IOC maintains that judges “don't have nationalities,” the American referee somehow chose to overlook the Russian goal to help “his” team. In a way, the outrage has united Russians from opposite sides of the political spectrum like few other things have in the past. Pro-Kremlin MP Maria Kozhevnikova also tweeted [ru] that the American goalie moved the post himself, while opposition MP Dmitry Gudkov couldn't believe that the referee is American, calling the fact “crazy [ru].” Nationalist publication Sputnik & Pogrom noted that in a way, the game reflects Russia's weakness on the international arena [ru] — first the Russians let Americans judge their game, and then they complain about the results, rather than questioning the entire setup.
Some chose to vent their frustration with outgoing US ambassador Michael McFaul, who was cheering the US team on Twitter. After McFaul tweeted “Victory!”, someone replied
@McFaul американский арбитр смошенничал , когда отменил гол. Это нац. черта такая ?
— Сапёр Водичка (@ivanvitjaz) February 15, 2014
@McFaul the American referee cheated, when he nullified the goal. Is this a national trait ?
To which McFaul responded with an exasperated “Come on man!” McFaul's defensiveness showed when he took seriously an obviously jocular tweet that was parodying the conspiracy theorists:
Ive seen it all now! RT@vdzyubenko Вашингтонский обком и @McFaul украли у нас победу ))
— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) February 15, 2014
Ive seen it all now! RT@vdzyubenko The DC bosses and @McFaul stole our victory ))
Russia is still in the running for hockey gold, although the going will get harder now. And in the end, blaming the referee is a time honored tradition in both countries. Let's hope that Vladimir Putin, a hockey fan, doesn't take this loss as seriously as some memes imagine:
Putin over-reacts to Russia's hockey loss.

author: Andrey Tselikov


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Gold Medal Winner’s Touching Gesture with Peruvian Skier at Sochi 2014 · Global Voices
Gabriela García Calderón Orbe

Swiss skier Darío Cologna was awarded the gold medal on the 15-kilometer freestyle cross country ski race in the 2014 Winter Olympics held in Sochi, Russia. But in Peru he made the news due to a moving and exemplary scene: he waited for more than 20 minutes at the finish line for Peruvian Roberto Carcelén to shake his hand and hug him, for he knew Carcelen had competed although he had two broken ribs.
Carcelén broke two ribs during training, and nonetheless he decided to participate in a 15 kilometer race because he had already announced these would be his last Winter Olympics.
On Twitter, the news  didn't go unnoticed:
VIVA el espiritu olimipico!.costilla rota y llego a la meta,Roberto Carcelen de Peru,quien creen lo esperaba en meta? http://t.co/C3B8r3kjGd
— Diego Arcos S. (@DiegoArcos14) febrero 14, 2014
HURRAY for the Olympic spirit! Broken rib and he made it all the way to the finish line, Roberto Carcelén from Peru. Who do you think was waiting for him at the finish line?
Un momento tan dulce que la nieve casi se hace raspadilla. Roberto Carcelén compitió hoy en Sochi – Rusia http://t.co/CzQOJCzjNf
— La Mula (@lamula) febrero 14, 2014
A moment so sweet that the snow almost became snow cones. Roberto Carcelén competed today in Sochi – Russia.

author: Gabriela García Calderón Orbe


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Reflections Amid Protests and Chaos in Venezuela · Global Voices
Laura Vidal

Young man trying to win over police in Caracas on February 12. Photo by Carlos Becerra, copyright Demotix.
[All links lead to Spanish language pages, unless otherwise noted]
Confusion, debate, information exchange, a deluge of photographs and videos—they all overwhelmed the blogosphere and social media in Venezuela following student protests [en] that began in the Andean region and soon spread to other cities throughout the country.
Many videos of police firing on students, interrupting demonstrations and raiding medical centres were published along with photographs of protesters and injured young people.
The response by the government and its supporters has been to indicate their concern over attempts to destabilize the government, and they used Twitter and the hashtag #VzlaUnidaContraElFascismo (“Venezuela united against fascism) to paint demonstrators as agitators trying to thwart Venezuela's revolutionary course.
Many of those who took part in online discussions also pointed out the use of photographs and videos that did not match the dates or events indicated and warned of the danger of Internet rumours running rampant.
In the same way, they accuse opposition leaders of spreading chaos and demand that the forces of law and order be deployed to detain those they consider guilty of provoking clashes in the streets.
Enrique Rojas says:
#VzlaUnidaContraElFascismo ellos siguen en las calles provocando al gobierno, Nosotros Sigamos Trabajando Construyendo esta Patria
— Ramón Enrique Rojas (@Enriquerojas326) February 13, 2014
They continue to provoke the government in the streets, we continue to work building this Nation.
This echoes Caiza Candanga:
El llamado es a los padres de los estudiantes NO PERMITAN QUE SUS HIJ@S SEAN USADOS COMO CARNE DE CAÑÓN #VzlaUnidaContraElFascismo
— Caiza Candanga (@CaizaCandanga) February 13, 2014
The call is for the parents of students to STOP ALLOWING THEIR CHILDREN TO BE USED AS CANON FODDER
As for SClaudia, she questions the motivation of demonstrators:
Venezuela: Protesta o vandalismo? Ataque a la Brigada de Infantería del estado Lara este 12 de febrero por…: http://t.co/BAC4vGyf9T
— claudia (@sclaudia6) February 13, 2014
Venezuela: Protest or vandalism? The State Infantry Brigade in Lara attacked on February 12 by…http://t.co/BAC4vGyf9T
Despite questions from those who support the government, the number of uploaded images only increased during the last several days as protests multiplied in many cities throughout the country.
Miguel Zambrano shares a picture taken by the photojournalist Jorge Silva:
una foto impecable de @jgesilva para una realidad tan sucia pic.twitter.com/4vOQKdnCYC
— Miguel Zambrano (@sinreglaniborra) February 13, 2014
a clear picture by @jgesilva of the harsh reality pic.twitter.com/4vOQKdnCYC
Contradictory information, extreme opinions, and fears expressed by both sides continue to circulate amid hashtags, tweets, and blogs.
From photos to trending topics, it is clear that participation in these new forms of social media is strong. Nevertheless, reading between the lines, it is also apparent that there is a great deal of confusion about the political limitations of the media, unwanted input from criminal elements in the street protests, and the power outages that left some cities in the dark (as reported through the hashtag #sinluz).
To understand how the demonstrations began, the opinion site ProDavinci has published a text dedicated to the origins of the latest clashes:
Durante la última semana del mes de enero fueron denunciados diversos episodios de inseguridad en distintas universidades del país.  […]
El martes 04 de febrero, una estudiante del núcleo de la Universidad de Los Andes en Táchira se encontraba en el Jardín Botánico […] Para este momento, ya se habían presentado varias protestas en otras ciudades de Venezuela, pero la única protesta reprimida fue la de Táchira.
Desde ese martes se registraron distintas protestas en el estado Táchira. Miembros de la Guardia Nacional, la Policía Nacional Bolivariana y la policía regional reprimieron la manifestación apresando a varios estudiantes. […] Horas después, algunos de estos estudiantes dieron declaraciones a medios internacionales para denunciar los sucesos y lo que denominaron un bloqueo informativo de los medios audiovisuales con señal abierta en Venezuela.
1. Students protest lack of security: In the last week of January, students denounced criminal incidents that took place in different universities. [….]
2. Protest in Tachira: On Tuesday, February 4, a student from the University of the Andes at Tachira was the victim of an attempted assault in the Botanical Gardens […] At this point various protests had taken place in other cities in Venezuela, but the only one that was suppressed was on the Tachira campus.
3. Suppression of the protests: Since that Tuesday, several protests were held in the state of Tachira. Members of the National Guard, the Bolivarian State Police [Venezuela's national police force] and the regional police quelled a demonstration and arrested several students. […] Hours later, some of these students gave statements to the international media to denounce the events and what they called an information blackout of broadcast media in Venezuela.
The blog post continues, mentioning both the arrest and transfer of the students to the city of Coro and the addition of other universities to the protest movement.
The author of the blog Cuando era Feliz e Indocumentada comments on the increase in violent rhetoric among the different groups.
La semana pasada fui a un foro académico sobre economía. El chiste en la puerta de entrada, cuando le entregaban un panfleto a todos los asistentes era, “a la salida reclama un fusil”. Me dejó de sonar a broma cuando hubo oportunidad de hacer preguntas a los panelistas y un señor dijo que era necesario hacer una nueva revolución armada. Y en vez de chiflarlo, muchos en el recinto lo aplaudieron.
Last week I attended an academic forum on economics. The joke at the entrances when they handed a flyer to all the participants was to “ask for a rifle at the exit.” It sounded less like a joke during question period when one man said to the panelists that what was needed was a new armed revolution. And instead of booing him, many in the room applauded.
And she continues with a criticism of the limits on access to information:
Al interior de ambos bandos hay divisiones y pareciera que, tanto entre chavistas como entre opositores, las que están haciendo más ruido últimamente son las de los radicales. No hay cómo saber hasta qué punto estas fracturas pueden terminar atentando contra el gobierno. No hay información y no hay como acceder a ella. Intentamos interpretar correctamente las declaraciones, tratamos de buscar otras apreciaciones. Pero cada vez hay menos periodismo, menos reportería, menos datos. Y cada vez hay más propaganda, más opinión, más especulación. Quizás son los ingredientes perfectos para que ahora sí “pase algo”.
There is division within the ranks on both sides, and it would seem that among Chavistas and the opposition alike, those making the most noise recently are the radicals. It is impossible to know just how far these factions can go in their attacks on the government. There is no information and no way to access it. We try to correctly interpret statements, to make objective assessments. But there is less and less journalism, less reporting, fewer facts. Instead there is more propaganda, opinion, and speculation. Maybe these are the right ingredients for “something to happen.”
The protests on February 12 started peacefully. Photo by Carlos Becerra, copyright Demotix.
Writing at Panfleto Negro, John Manuel Silva takes a broad and critical look at the related elements that lie behind the protests, the government's response, and the strategy of opposition groups:
Hablemos claro: el gobierno ha hecho lo que ha querido y lo hubiese hecho independientemente de la actitud opositora. El apropiamiento de PDVSA, las expropiaciones, las leyes que han minado nuestros derechos civiles, la represión, los abusos y la instauración paulatina de una economía socialista ocurrieron porque eran parte del plan del gobierno […]
Hablemos de las calles: si algo quedó claro ayer con esa insólita y despreciable arremetida de los “colectivos” oficialistas, es que la represión de las protestas no se dará por vía tradicional, con la G.N. o la Policía, sino que serán estos grupos paramilitares y parapoliciales quienes harán el trabajo sucio. […]
El gran problema del chavismo no es la forma en que han administrado al Estado; ese es un problema. Pero lo realmente preocupante es como han creado un Para-Estado, tanto a nivel administrativo […] como también a nivel policial y militar
Let's be clear: the government has done what it wanted and it did it without consulting the opposition. The seizing of the PDVSA [state-owned oil and natural gas company], expropriations, laws that undermine our civil liberties, repression, abuse and the gradual establishment of a socialist economy occurred because they were part of the government's plan […]
Let's talk about the streets: if anything was made clear yesterday with this unbelievable and despicable attack by the “official groups” [pro-Maduro], it is that stamping out protests will no longer be done in the traditional way, with the National Guard or the Police, but with those paramilitary and para-police groups doing the dirty work. […]
The big problem with Chavismo is not the way in which it manages the State; that is one problem. But the really worrisome part is how it has created a para-state at the administrative level […] as well as at the police and military level.
In the same way, the author invites opponents of the government to reflect on the political discord:
¿Alguna vez te has preguntado cómo es posible que exista escasez, desempleo, pobreza y una delincuencia desatada y aún así haya gente que apoye al gobierno? ¿Has escuchado la consigna “con hambre y desempleo con Chávez me resteo”? Bueno, si no entiendes ese nivel de indignidad, tal vez debas pensar que negar la existencia de esa otra mitad del país sólo puede llevar a que esas actitudes se extiendan más y más.
Have you ever asked yourself how it can be possible to have such scarcity, unemployment, poverty and unbridled crime and even so there are still people who support the government? Have you heard the slogan, “with hunger and unemployment, what have I got to loose with Chavez?” So, if you don't understand this level of indignity, maybe you should think about how denying the existence of the other half of the country can only contribute to an increase in this kind of attitude.
And finally, regarding those students so opposed to the government that they died violently in the demonstrations, the author concludes:
…los venezolanos no se impactarán por una o dos muertes producto de la represión policial. Más bien hoy, el presidente se encadenará, dirá que los muertos son culpa de la oposición, se victimizará, etc. Y en unos días, todo será olvidado. Los únicos que recordarán siempre a ese estudiante muerto hoy serán sus familiares, mientras que el “miembro del colectivo” también muerto hoy, será exaltado a la condición de héroe y servirá para seguir justificando peores actos de represión.
Venezuelans won't be bothered by a couple of deaths at the hands of the police. Instead today the President will double down, saying the deaths were the fault of the opposition; making himself the victim, etc. And in a few days, all will be forgotten. The only ones who will always remember the student who died today will be his family; meanwhile the member of the “official group,” also dead today, will be hailed as a hero, serving to justify even worse acts of repression.

author: Laura Vidal


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5 Music Blogs about China’s Underground Music Scene · Global Voices
Abby Liu

Despite China’s strict censorship, there’s an emerging group of Chinese musicians working outside government-controlled media channels, striving to form an independent voice through musical expression in China.
Take a look at the top five music blogs to help you understand more about China’s underground music scene.
China Music Radar
Maintained by Beijing and Shanghai-based promotion company Split Works, China Music Radar is a blog about the music scene and related trends in China, from independent musicians to mainstream artists. It’s also a resource for the latest news and updates about China’s music industry. At the conclusion of 2013, Radar said:
In 2013, venues were full to bursting (of shows, not audiences), from big city arenas down to slightly smaller (but still very big) dive bars.  Festivals new and old, continued to take hold across the country, while new streaming services from Baidu, Tencent and the now Alibaba-owned Xiami became viable listening alternatives.
Pangbianr
Literally meaning “aside”, Pangbianr is a bilingual platform for exploring the culture of making music in China with the mission of promoting underground Chinese music and building relationships between musicians and artists within China and abroad. The blog introduces emerging music from Beijing and other parts of China via streaming audio, video, reviews and interviews with independent Chinese musicians.
Logo of the music blog Pangbianr, which means “aside”
Different from other blogs, pangbianr also organizes music performances, film screenings and discussions at various live music venues and art galleries around Beijing. They also work with musicians to distribute CDs, DVDs and books.
Beijingdaze
Beijingdaze is another important resource about underground music in China with updated CD reviews and gig reviews. One of the most important features of the blog is that the blogger translates some of the Chinese lyrics into English.
MOGO
MOGO is an online music video platform focusing on emerging young Chinese musicians and artists. It features video interviews with independent musicians and artists.
Wu Jie
Founded in March 2009, Wu Jie is a comprehensive music network about original music from China and abroad.
With the mission of promoting “the voice being ignored and the less popular and mainstream artists,” the website shares updated music news, CD reviews, videos, podcasts and interviews with independent musicians. It's also a great channel for Chinese youth to understand western musicians and music.

author: Abby Liu


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China Central TV Blames Beijing Government for Air Pollution · Global Voices
Abby Liu

Beijing has reached Red Alert Levels of Smog during the past few days. China's state media CCTV wrote some comments on Sina Weibo on Feb 15, 2014, blaming Beijing government's impotency:
连续几天的沉默，说明了一个问题，严重雾霾天气多了，民众自然就会麻木，社会也会熟视无睹，但央视财经提醒的是，政府不能当瞎子，它必须要肩负起自己的责任，守土要有责，莫无知！无畏！无为！所以，央视财经大声的问一句，这里，还有人管雾霾吗？
Several days of silence indicates one problem: with constant smog, people will become numb, the society will turn a blind eye, but the government cannot be blind, it must shoulder its responsibilities, No excuse for ignorance, fearlessness or inaction! So, CCTV Financial channel is asking, is there anyone who's going to solve the smog problem?
After a few hours, users were unable to comment or repost the post.
According to an “official Chinese report,” rampant air pollution in Beijing has rendered the city as “barely suitable” for living.


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Collaborative Translation Project Promotes Civic Tech in Japan · Global Voices
Keiko Tanaka

Civic tech initiatives, which attempt to take advantage of technology to improve communities, have been springing up in recent years around the world. In Japan, innovators in various cities have held hackathons that have made use of public data and resulted in software/application being developed in short periods of time.
But for many Japanese, the word “civic” and “tech” are still foreign. It's not easy for them to imagine information and communication technology and civil society coming together to solve community issues.
In December 2013, volunteer translators gathered in the Shibuya district of Tokyo to discuss how to introduce a practical example of civic tech to Japanese. They found “Beyond Transparency“, a book by American non-profit Code for America, which compiles essays about community's learning around open data under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-SA-3.0), and decided to launch a collaborative project to translate it into Japanese. Participants ranged from freelancers and university teaching staff to employees at IT companies, and all of them were brimming with enthusiasm to attempt a joint translation.
Hiroyasu Ichikawa, who leads the translation project, speaks about the benefit of collaborative translation on his blog [ja]:
今回日本語化翻訳プロジェクトを始めて思ったことがあります。それは１人では出来ないことも、同じ想いや目的を持った方同志で心地よくコラボレーションが行われた際、「1+1>2」が可能になるかもしれない！ということでした。
There's something I found out after starting the translation project: Even if one person cannot achieve it, when you collaborate with like-minded individuals – people with the same idea or goal – the result gets multiplied and enables “1+1 > 2!”
This project uses Transfex, a platform that allows anyone to participate in translation projects, even if just for a few minutes of their free time. It is also planned that Code for Japan, which promotes civic tech in Japan, will provide editorial supervision. At present, 25 percent of the articles are already online[ja] and available to read in Japanese.
Their goal is to have the project completed by around springtime. Once it's translated, it will help bring more civic tech initiatives to Japan, which will hopefully mean examples for the English-speaking world to look to in the future.

author: Keiko Tanaka


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Japan Slides Further Down in World Press Freedom Index · Global Voices
Keiko Tanaka

Freedom of the press rankings, according to @RSF_RWB #infographic pic.twitter.com/KUG8TRcwji — Agence France-Presse (@AFP) February 12, 2014
Japan has fallen even further on Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index 2014, coming in at 59th of 180. The annual report pointed to the state secrecy law that the Japanese government adopted last year in December:
The “special intelligence protection bill” that the National Diet in Japan (59th, – 5) adopted in late 2013 would reduce government transparency on such key national issues as nuclear power and relations with the United States, now enshrined as taboos. Investigative journalism, public interest and the confidentiality of journalists’ sources are all being sacrificed by legislators bent on ensuring that their country’s image is spared embarrassing revelations.
The index also highlighted discrimination against foreign and freelance reporters when it comes to access to press conferences and information.
In general, Japanese do not consider freedom of the press as a right because most people stick to receiving information passively from mainstream media. However, with the country continuing its slide in World Press Freedom Index rankings (Japan fell from 22nd to 53rd place in the 2013 index) and the at times whitewashed coverage of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, people are now starting to be critical about the condition of press freedom in the Japan.
Independent journalist Ryusaku Tanaka responded to the news on Twitter:
報道の自由度ランキング、日本は59位 ?? ロシアや中国のように自由な報道を国家による暴力で押し込められるわけではない。 日本のマスコミは権力と一体化している。 自らの特権をいくらでも貪る自由があるのだ。 マスコミの自由度はむしろ世界一ではないだろうか。 — 田中龍作 (@tanakaryusaku) February 12, 2014
Japan is ranked 59th in World Press Freedom rankings? It's not that press is violently silenced by the state as it is in China or Russia. The Japanese mainstream media has a lot of power. It has the freedom to clamor, as much as it likes, for its own special privileges. Couldn't it be said, rather, that the degree of freedom possessed by the mass media is the best in the world?
Another user on Twitter, Daisuke Murakami, commented in disappointment:
マスコミ腐蝕は今に始まったことじゃないけど、いよいよ病気と言っていいレベルにきてる。普段自分達が見てる報道がどんなものなのか、知っておいた方がいい。正直、政治家より信じられない。■ 報道の自由、日本後退５９位　福島事故と秘密法響く – http://t.co/Tt9hz1bWUt — ムラカミダイスケ (@yoruhakorekara) February 12, 2014
The decay present in mainstream media is not something that has just begun recently, but it's now approaching a level that could be called “sick”. We'd better know what kind of coverage and reporting we ordinary people are seeing everyday. To put it bluntly, media is even less believable than a politician.
User “soret” pointed out [ja] on social bookmark site hatena that the kisha club, the exclusive press club system of Japan's mainstream media, is contributing to the problem:
元々順位が低いのは記者クラブのせいだろうに。そこに一言も触れず原発事故と特定秘密保護法だけ取り上げるようなことをするから、ますます信用がなくなる
The original low ranking was probably the fault of the existence of the kisha club. And without mentioning a word in that regard, only picking up stories on the nuclear accident and the state secrets law, they lose more and more of their credibility.


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One Nepalese Doctor’s Hunger Strike Wins Action From Officials · Global Voices
Sanjib Chaudhary

After an assurance that Dr. Prakash Sayami would be reinstated as the dean of Institute of Medicine following Dr. Shashi Sharma's dismissal, senior orthopaedic surgeon Dr. Govinda KC is ending his third hunger strike in Kathmandu. Image by Narayan Maharjan. Copyright Demotix (24/1/2014)
Dr. Govinda KC, a senior orthopedic surgeon of Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital in Nepal who has earned the nickname Crusader KC, ended his fourth fast-unto-death [ne] on 15 February 2014. Dr. KC, who was fighting to end political interference in the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in Nepal, has once again proven that victory can be won without resorting to violence.
The doctor had only ended his third hunger strike for the same reasons on 25 January after officials had assured him they would meet his demands, but he resumed the strike in early February, accusing them of dragging their feet.
He had been demanding to appoint a new dean at the Institute of Medicine (IoM) on the basis of seniority, stop granting affiliation to medical colleges in urban areas, autonomy for IoM and action against Tribhuvan University (TU) vice-chancellor, rector and registrar, who according to him were corrupt and influenced by “medical mafia”.
Medical students taking care of Dr KC during the fast offered juice to him to end the latest eight-day strike, online portal Onlinekhabar reports. An agreement was signed among Dr. KC, the education secretary and the newly appointed Dean of the Institute of Medicine (IoM) Dr. Rakesh Prasad Srivastav, according to The Himalayan Times.
Dr. Sudhamshu KC, a liver specialist, researcher and traveler from Kathmandu, tweeted:
डा केसीले अनसन तोड्नु भयो निकै खुशी लाग्यो । तर टि यूको किरा अझै मार्न बाँकी छ रे । नयाँ मन्त्री परिषदले गतिलो किटनासक प्रयोग गरोस् ।
— Sudhamshu K.C. (@Drsudhamshu) February 15, 2014
Very happy to know that Dr. KC ended the fast. But the pest of TU [Tribhuvan University] is still to be killed. May the new council of ministers use effective pesticide.
Dr. KC enjoyed widespread support from the public during all of his four fasts-unto-death in 2010, August 2012, January 2014 and February 2014.
One of his fans, Manohar, a graduate of life science and biotechnology, tweeted:
Found it somewhere! #DrGovindaKC #Save pic.twitter.com/lTBzlritgt
— जिजीविषा (@manohar_pb) January 19, 2014
Hey,
Those who say you will eat when it falls,
Those who say you will eat when it dies,
KC won’t feel tired
KC won’t retire
Your palace of black property will surely burn down
KC’s dreams will never burn down.
Popular Nepali blog Mysansar [ne] wrote about the doctor's heroics quoting an earlier write-up on him by journalist Surendra Paudel of Nagarik Daily, who has covered the KC extensively:
It’s been 17 years, he packs his bags with medicines and sets off for the remote villages in Nepal, at least twice a year. He has been to the mountains, hills and terai, to serve his countrymen, free of charge. He has served the needy of 72 districts out of the 75 districts in Nepal. And his journey is continuing.
He has not only served Nepalis but has been a helping hand to the survivors of major catastrophes in recent times. He was in Bangladesh after the devastating cyclone in 1993, in India’s Gujarat after the major earthquake, in Pakistan after the earthquake in 2005, in Myanmar in 2008 after the cyclone, and in Haiti after the disastrous earthquake in 2010. He spent several weeks in these countries treating the survivors.
While he treats, distributes medicines, he doesn’t charge anything. He does not accept donation from organisations. It’s his own hard-earned money that he spends in cure of the needy.
Screenshot from the Facebook page “Save IOM, Save Dr. Govinda K C”
Dipak Bhattarai discussed on his blog an anecdote shared on his Facebook by Paudel:
Just after resigning from the premiership, the Maoist supremo Prachanda aka Pushpa Kamal Dahal had invited Dr KC for his health check-up. Dr KC rejected the request and said that he has never gone to anybody’s residence for the check-up due to his busy schedule treating the poor and needy at the hospital. The messenger had to give in to Dr KC’s principles. He also had to abide by the rules. Prachanda had to come to the hospital and wait in queue for the check-up. And he had to do away with his entourage of bodyguards, as suggested by Dr KC only three of them came to the hospital.
While many Nepalese were supportive of his strike, some were irritated by his fourth fast.
Jigyasu Mahesh tweeted:
kaam garna nadine #DrKc ko prabriti le rajniti jhana badauxa.. System collapse banaudaixan #DrKc..
— Jigyasu Mahesh (@sarba_sadharan) February 10, 2014
Dr KC’s ways of not letting work amplifies the politics. [They are] collapsing the system.
Ramen Adhikari wrote.
@Sabdachittra I didn't see the support from some intellects in #DrKc campaign.Couldn't see Dr Upendra Devkota in his path?Where is he now?
— Ramen Adhikari (@AdkRamen) February 15, 2014
To which Milan Bagale replied:
@AdkRamen माफियाले हारुन रमेन सर । ह्रदयदेखिको कामना । जय होस् ।
— शब्दचित्र (@Sabdachittra)  February 15, 2014
Hope the mafia loses the battle. From the deepest of my heart. Victory be with us.
With Dr KC’s ending of the fast, the medical fraternity hopes that this will mark the end of the rule of medical mafia and political interference at the IoM in Nepal.

author: Sanjib Chaudhary


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[Photos]: Birds Of Bangladesh · Global Voices
Rezwan

A Cuckoo (Kokil in Bangla) sits on branch of a tree and eats fruit. Dhaka, Bangladesh. Image by Mehedi Hasan. Copyright Demotix (14/2/2014)
For a foreigner it’s hard to identify birds in Bangladesh as local books often have the wrong names in English, and Western books don’t have the Bangla names. The Face of Bangla blog and Jacob and Sanna's blog tried to help by posting popular birds’ pictures with both Bangla and English names.

author: Rezwan


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PHOTOS: Protests Continue Across Venezuela · Global Voices
Adriana Gutiérrez

Demonstration in Valencia, Venezuela, on February 13, 2014. Photo by Luis Turinese, copyright Demotix.
In various Venezuelan cities the demonstrations led and organized mostly by students have not ceased. Protesters are demanding the release of students arrested by Venezuelan security forces. They have received the support of a group of citizens and opposition leaders, who also demand solutions to many socio-economic problems affecting the population.
Since early February the capitals of some Andean states in the country [es] have been the epicenter of student demonstrations which, at the beginning, called for more security in universities. Additionally, national political personalities were promoting street assemblies [es], also known as #LaSalida (the exit), aiming to “promote debate and dialogue to attain a democratic exit to some of the problems affecting our nation”.
By February 12, these political leaders decided to convene a national day of protests, enlisting the support of thousands of students and citizens across the country. The consequences of that day have led to extending the popular demonstrations. Cities across the country are joining the call to protest, even though many of these demonstrations have resulted in violent clashes between protesters and law enforcement.
Social networks, specially Twitter, have been flooded with photos documenting the protests in each region, taking the place of the regular mass media in Venezuela, which is going through a blackout due to the government's threats to fine media who cover the protests.
During Thursday's night, on February 13,  user @yirli4ny_ shared an image of a 180-meter flag being hoisted in an important highway in Puerto Ordaz, in the Guayana region:
CLASE DE FOTO #PZO! pic.twitter.com/TwM1tJD9cG
— YIRLIANY (@yirli4ny_) February 13, 2014
What a picture!
Journalist Mariángela González in Barquisimeto, in the Lara state, captured a demonstration organized by medical students from the Universidad Centroccidental Lisandro Alvarado (UCLA), the main university in this region:
“Pueblo escucha, únete a la lucha” 5:08 pm 13/02 #Lara #Barquisimeto Ucla Medicina #share pic.twitter.com/Pt5ahewkv5
— Mariángela González (@ma_guita) February 13, 2014
“People: listen, join the fight” 5:08 pm 13/02
In Barcelona, Anzoátegui state, Gabriel Bastidas reported student demonstrations blocking some important avenues of the city in the early afternoon on Friday, February, 14:
3:08 pm, Estudiantes #Anzoategui hacen SOS en protesta. Trancada Av. Intercomunal de Barcelona. pic.twitter.com/Btk25ZDshB
— Gabriel Bastidas (@Gbastidas) February 14, 2014
3:08 pm, students demonstrate forming an SOS. The Intercomunal Avenue is blocked.
In Maracay, the capital city of Aragua state, Mare informed about the call that spreads until the night in that city:
A coro: mama, papa acompaña a tu hijo en esta lucha. #Estudiantes  #Maracay 7.07 pm. #Venezuela pic.twitter.com/H0Pip07GKO
— Mare (@Marelight) February 15, 2014
In unison: mom, dad, support your child in this fight. 7.07 pm.
Young Venezuelans have also remained very active in Valencia, Carabobo state, as Angel Morales reported:
Estudiantes En la av Bolivar Marchando hacia la plaza Bolivar de #Valencia #Carabobo pic.twitter.com/iwjosQ6p35
— Angel Morales (@ChenchoUJAP) February 14, 2014
Students in the Bolívar Avenue walking to the Bolivar Square
According to an image published by José Meza (@josegremeza), in Maracaibo students were demanding a dialogue with police officers who arrived at the square where they were protesting:
Policía monta show en #plazadelarepublica muchachos los obligan a conversar 5:00 pm #desplieguepolicial #maracaibo pic.twitter.com/66ky08OSNk
— Jose Meza (@josegremeza) February 14, 2014
Police overreacting in De la República square, young people force them to dialogue. 5:00 pm.
Among the reasons behind these protests are insecurity and violence, which have claimed the lives of thousands of Venezuelans. This is depicted in many banners in Mérida, as documented by Sonia Camacho:
#Merida una pancarta que nos arrugó el corazón! pic.twitter.com/J17QjZScaQ
— ̣̣ Sonia Camacho H. (@mujeresdenegro) February 15, 2014
a touching banner! [Banner reads: “I fight for my niece's future; criminals in Venezuela took her father away from her.”
And in San Cristóbal, capital city of Táchira state, the clash between university students and the Venezuela National Guard forces still continue. Moreover, citizens from this city came out of their homes to support protesting students who were sheltered in the Universidad Nacional Experimental del Táchira (UNET) headquarters. Zuleik Meneses thanks them for this:
Gracias a la sociedad civil x su apoyo en la #Unet pic.twitter.com/pVIKfljELz
— Zuleik Meneses Gómez (@ZuleMG) February 14, 2014
Thanks to the citizens for their support in the UNET
Finally, El Periodista Cívico [es] (The Civic journal) has been curating information about the national demonstrations, highlighting regular updates about protesters who are under arrest in various Venezuelan regions.

author: Adriana Gutiérrez


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Revisiting the Era of Foreign Domination in Cameroon · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Dibussi Tande revisits the era of foreign domination in Cameroon in the context of the Guiness Mount Cameroon Race:
The first three editions of the Guinness Mount Cameroon Race were won by local Bakweri runners. By the time of the 4th edition in 1976, an aura of superstition had already enveloped the race. There was a widely-held belief, even among non-natives, that efas’a moto, the mountain god, would never allow a “stranger” to “conquer” the sacred lair of the Bakweri people who lived at the foot of the mountain. In fact, during the first three races, there were numerous stories of supernatural happenings up the fog-covered mountain which disoriented and frightened non-native runners into submission. This would all change in 1976.


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South Korea: Being Native English Teacher and Reverse Racism · Global Voices
Lee Yoo Eun

Geoffrey Fattig of Jeollamite blog shares his brutally honest opinion on reverse and latent racism in South Korea, urging fellow native English teachers who under-appreciate a fairly good working condition to stop whining. Some of the highlights of his post are:
On the whole, though, Korea is a pretty easy place to teach English, and playing that foreign card has brought far more advantages than not over the seven years I’ve been in the country. I would add though, that being a tall white guy probably has a lot to do with it.

author: Lee Yoo Eun


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Ex-South Korean Skater Viktor Ahn Wins Two Medals at Sochi for Russia · Global Voices
Lee Yoo Eun

Image by Flickr User @CanadianPhotographer (CC BY SA 2.0)
Short-track speed-skating star Viktor Ahn, formerly known as Ahn Hyun-soo, has brought his adopted home Russia two medals, one gold and one bronze in the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
With his winning streak likely to continue, South Korean online forums were overrun with discussions about what had driven this skating genius from his birth-country and the Korean media's sudden focus on Ahn ‘being a Korean’. Criticisms mounted on the deep-rooted clique culture that perpetuates the Korean skating world and Korean society in general.
Ahn made headlines on the international level in the 2002 Olympics with his unfortunate crash into the eight-time medalist skater Ohno. Four years later, Ahn surged back as Ohno's formidable rival by grabbing three gold medals and a bronze.
However, Ahn failed to compete in the following Olympics in 2010. The official reason given was that it was due to his knee injury, but it was an open secret to net users that Ahn had a fallout with the Korea Skating Union and was severely bullied [ko] well before the 2006 Olympics. By 2010 Ahn had been de-facto abandoned and was cast out by the union. He left his country and became a naturalized Russian in 2011.
For playing for the Russian team, Ahn has reportedly been rewarded [ko] with a much higher salary, a private tutor, coaching staff and he has also been promised a stable job after his retirement.
Too late too little
As Ahn won a bronze medal earlier this week, Korean media outlets suddenly gained interest to the unfair treatment he suffered, several years earlier. Even the President made a comment about Ahn that ‘we have to look back on whether it (referring to Ahn switching his nationality) is because of irregularities lying in the sports world, such as factionalism, favoritism and judging corruption’.
Politicians chimed in as well. The ruling Saenuri party posted  an emotional photo with accompanying text [ko]  on their Facebook page that read ‘sorry, but we will always support you’. Net users were not very impressed with this belated response.
Many Koreans were rather happy for this under-appreciated star's newly-found happiness and seemed unmoved, even offended by the Korean media sudden emphasis on his nationality. Here are several tweets about Ahn.
솔직히 안현수 까려면 국가가 안현수한테 전폭적인 지원을 해서 키우고 있는데 배신 때리고 러시아로 넘어간거여야 하는데, 제대로된 지원도 없고 파벌싸움에 폭행에 제대로 된 연습 환경도 마련되지 못했는데 뭐가 잘났다고 안현수를 깝니까?
— 포덕 티나플/白金猫 (@tinyapl_) February 10, 2014
If he had been given full support and provisions from the state, then you can trash-talk Ahn Hyun-soo and claim that he betrayed his country and left us for Russia. But no, that is not the case. There was no adequate support for him, instead perpetual fights between cliques, and he was brutally beaten (for not obeying the union's order) and their was not a conducive environment for practice. There is no justification for trash-talking Ahn.
안현수가 그랬단다, 제가 스케이트를 사랑하는데, 대한민국만큼 사랑하는지는 모르겠지만, 여튼 스케이트가 타고 싶었다고. 그래서 러시아에서 영원히 살거라고. 천재를 못품기는 커녕, 내팽개치는 나라. 금메달, 니가 따라 빅토르 안. 자격없다, 우리는.ㅎ
— 작은 달님 비비안 도로시 ♕ (@drysi) February 13, 2014
I was told that Ahn said that he loves skating, and he is not sure whether he loves it more than he loves his country. One thing for sure is that he wants to continue skating and that he will live in Russia forever. This shows how our country has driven geniuses out instead of embracing their talents. Viktor Ahn, you take that gold medal. We don't deserve you/the medal.
파벌을 견디다 못해 귀화한 선수인데 이래놓고 금메달 땄더니 국적은 러시아지만 심장은 대한민국 건아! 안현수! 이따위 드립 날리면 진짴ㅋㅋㅋ
— 이리 (@furymanura) February 10, 2014
(1st tweet embedded) He became a Russian citizen and even changed his name. But the media insists on calling him Ahn Hyun-soo. (2nd tweet) This player, could not take any more of the clique culture and the power-wielding, so he changed his nationality. But when he wins gold medals, some media outlets pull those ridiculous lines, like ‘His nationality may be Russia(n), but his heart beats for Korea’. LOL.
빅토르 안을 어떻게든 한국을 사랑하는 안현수로 만드려고 하는 인간들이 있다는 얘길 듣고서는 뭐.. 예상가능했다. ‘성공'이라면 국적을 어떻게든 연결해서 ‘우리'로 만들고 싶어하고. ‘실패’ 같아 보이면 ‘남'이라 부르는. 예)조선족
— Craic Dealer (@kingkenny1967) February 11, 2014
After hearing that there are groups of people who try hard to portray Viktor Ahn as ‘Ahn Hyun-soo who so loves his country, South Korea’, I wasn't that surprised. When someone achieves success, they do so desperately try to link that success to the nationality. When it seems like a failure, they try to distance from them. (i.e. against some Korean-Chinese)


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The End of Zimbabwe’s Kubatana Blog · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Kubatana.net, an online community of Zimbabwe's activists, is discontinuing its blog:
Hello everybody and anybody out there!
Just a short note to say that we are discontinuing this blog so you won’t see any new posts on it. This isn’t because we’ve fallen asleep over our keyboards, it’s because we are hopefully going to be launching another platform soon that will keep some elements of this blog as well as adding some spice!
Change starts with us. Right?
Bye for now.


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The Hilarity of Murder Among Russians · Global Voices
Kevin Rothrock

Alexey Navalny (left) and Irina Yarovaya (right). Images from Wikimedia commons.
Where do you draw the line between a joke and a death threat? That question has been on Russians’ minds this week, after a controversial tweet [ru] by famed blogger and opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who described the assassination [ru] of a judge in Ukraine as a “greeting card” to judges in Russia. The murder victim, Aleksandr Lobodenko, was responsible for sentencing several protesters convicted of rioting in Ukraine’s Poltava region, leading police to believe the killing was politically motivated.
Duma deputy Irina Yarovaya quickly branded [ru] Navalny’s tweet “extremist,” interpreting it literally. Navalny’s message, she claimed, “not only mocks a man’s death, but transmits a positive attitude about murder.” Other state officials soon chimed in. Kirill Kabanov, a member of the President’s Council on Human Rights, implied that he believes Navalny was joking, but warned that some of his readers might misunderstand, saying, “Navalny has a pretty big group of fans, who aren’t always evenly balanced, and some of them might see [the tweet] as a call to action.” Georgy Fedorov, a member of Russia’s Civic Chamber, accused [ru] Navalny of being a thug disguised as an activist, calling the tweet “reckless” and “twisted.”
A day after his “greeting card” tweet, Navalny responded [ru] to the backlash, addressing only Yarovaya. Changing the topic entirely, he pummeled Yarovaya for hiding a luxurious Moscow apartment in her daughter’s name. Indeed, Navalny first blogged about the secret accommodations nearly a year ago, in March 2013, when he republished [ru] findings by an opposition-leaning newspaper. At the time, Yarovaya denied the accusation, calling it “a dirty insinuation.” This week, Navalny presented on his blog a copy of a real estate title in the name of Yarovaya’s daughter for a four-bedroom apartment in a posh area of Moscow.
Navalny offered to delete his tweet about the Ukrainian judge’s murder, if Yarovaya could clarify how her daughter, at 18-years-old, managed to buy property worth an estimated three million dollars. Comedically undeterred, Navalny even offered, in the event of an explanation from Yarovaya, to compose a new tweet, “calling on people never to kill on-the-take judges or corrupt deputies.”
Navalny’s sarcasm has always been a major feature of his persona. Particularly before he became one of the political opposition’s most prominent figures, Navalny’s public image was foremost associated with his blogging. Though he rarely responds to comments on LiveJournal these days, and his blog posts now are heavier in information than opinion, Navalny’s voice online is still consistently snide and disparaging. This is not to say he’s meaner than most using the Internet, but Navalny’s manner distinctly remains a blogger’s style.
How else can we explain why Navalny considers it appropriate to issue a mock death threat to judges throughout Russia? In a year that has kicked off to multiple harsh reactions by authorities in response to ‘offensive utterances,’ Navalny is clearly advertising his fearlessness about pushing the bounds of free speech. Others elsewhere in Russia have responded with similar resolve (or stubbornness, depending on your point of view), when accused of speaking irresponsibly. TV Rain may have apologized and canceled a program, after it caught hell for a survey about abandoning Leningrad to the Nazis, but the station’s management refused to fire anyone. Victor Shenderovich, who enraged many by noting uncomfortable similarities between Russian and fascist Olympians, has stuck to his guns and defended himself against critics who say he crossed a line.
Navalny may very well think he’s rallying behind the country’s beleaguered and besieged civil society. His choice of resistance—turning a man’s killing into a jab at Russia’s own admittedly hated judges—may have been in poor taste, but Navalny is far from the only opposition member who’s alluded to prospects for Ukrainian-style unrest in Russia. Making this stand with a joke, however (and then refusing to defend it directly), suggests that Navalny and his generation have room to mature.

author: Kevin Rothrock


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Togolese Skier Petitjean, from Facebook to the 2014 Winter Olympics  · Global Voices
Lova Rakotomalala

Mathilde-Amivi Petitjean is a cross-country skier who competes for Togo at the 2014 Winter Olympics Game. The president of the Togolese Ski federation explained that they reached out to Togolese abroad via Facebook to recruit some athletes.After finishing her first olympian race,  Mathilde-Amivi Petitjean said[fr]:
Mathilde-Amivi Petitjean, Togolese cross-country skier via Africa Top Sports CC-BY-2.0
Merci tout le monde pour tous ces encouragements tout au long du mois qui à précédé les jeux, de la semaine et même de cette journée, ils m’ont tous vraiment touché et je pense même qu’ils m’ont permis de m’accrocher jusqu’au bout de la course.
Thanks everyone for all the encouragement throughout the months prior to the race and especially today, they all touched me and I think they even pushed me to hang on until the end of the race.

author: Lova Rakotomalala


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Tourists Killed in Terrorist Attack in Sinai, Egypt  · Global Voices
Amira Al Hussaini

A bomb blast ripped through a bus carrying 30 tourists in Sinai, Egypt, today, killing at least two South Korean tourists and the Egyptian bus driver. According to reports, the tourists had completed touring St Catherine's Monastery and were on their way to Israel, when the bomb exploded.
Netizens were left scrambling for information.
According to journalist Kristen McTighe:
AFP, Bloomberg reporting 3 killed in Sinai tourist bus attack. #Egypt state TV in contrast says 4 wounded, no casualties
— Kristen McTighe (@KristenMcTighe) February 16, 2014
She adds:
30 tourists of different nationalities were on the bus attacked in Sinai. Confirmed casualties are Korean. #Egypt
— Kristen McTighe (@KristenMcTighe) February 16, 2014
Firas Al-Atraqchi says:
#Egypt conflicting reports about today's #Sinai bus attack. Security official tells Radio Misr three dead, including the driver. 13 injured.
— Firas Al-Atraqchi (@Firas_Atraqchi) February 16, 2014
ABC News Middle East Correspondent Alexander Marquardt has other information:
32 tourists in Taba #Egypt bus explosion were all S. Korean, acc to Interior Min. Bus coming from St. Catherine, dropping off at Hilton.
— Alexander Marquardt (@MarquardtA) February 16, 2014
And Hamdy Kassem concludes [ar]:
لن يعرف شخص غير صحفى سبب تضارب الأرقام والبيانات حول حادث طابا .. أنها معاناة الصحفى للحصول على المعلومة فى دولة تنكر كل المعلومات
— Hamdy Kassem (@hmkssm) February 16, 2014
Those of us who are not journalists will not know what happened in the Taba bus blast because of the contradicting information and casualty figures. It is a struggle for journalists to get information in a country which denies all information
And if this is not enough, The Big Pharaoh claims the Muslim Brotherhood Twitter account is spreading more mis-information:
Brotherhood official Twitter account (Arabic of course): 3 Zionists were killed in the Taba tourist bus explosion. pic.twitter.com/rguXFEXfZo
— The Big Pharaoh (@TheBigPharaoh) February 16, 2014
Soon enough, photographs surfaced online.
Fatima Said shares this photograph of the remains of a charred bus:
Picture of the bus carrying 30 tourists after explosion. Bus was travelling from Israel to Taba. #Sinai #Egypt pic.twitter.com/3lIUxHKBqL
— Fatima Said (@fattysaid) February 16, 2014
Egyptian blogger and journalist Muhamed Sabry remarks on the photograph saying:
The image of the tourist bus reveals that everyone must be injured in a way or another. It looks like the soldiers bus in north #Sinai
— Sinai سيناء (@muhamedsabry) February 16, 2014
And Amro Ali shares the photograph of the Egyptian bus driver, said to be killed in the blast:
The bus driver known as Am (uncle) Sami, died in the bus blast in #Taba, #RIP to him & all victims pic.twitter.com/RLvbsfqRM7 v @O0onaa #Egypt
— Amro Ali (@_amroali) February 16, 2014
Zeinobia, on Egyptian Chronicles, is alarmed tourists are being targeted. She blogs:
We are back to the days of the 1990s where tourists were a main target. Actually we are back to the 2000s where South Sinai had its share from several terrorist attacks.
Now the attacks moved to South where tourism industry began to catch up.
I am concerned that after targeting the tourists in Taba in 2000s , the security forces unleashed hell abusing locals there affecting their relationship with the state till this day in addition to whatever happening in the North now from military campaign against the terrorist groups things will go from bad to worse to worst.
Meanwhile, Egyptian netizens are kissing their tourism industry goodbye.
Nasry Esmat bitterly tweets [ar]:
احنا كشعب ميفرقش عنده كام واحد مات كبشر ..احنا كل اللي يهمنا السياحة لأسباب اقتصادية بحتة
— Nasry Esmat (@nasry) February 16, 2014
We as a nation are not effected with a number of people killed … all we care about is tourism for economic reasons
Mohamed El Dahshan notes:
Tourism agencies abroad barely market #Egypt tours anymore. Some still offer Middle East tours – which go through Taba. Now this is dead too
— Mohamed El Dahshan (@eldahshan) February 16, 2014
Ashraf Khalil adds:
Even during #Egypt's tourism apocalypse, there were still some religious tourists doing the MT Sinai/holy family tours. Now that's gone too
— ashraf khalil (@ashrafkhalil) February 16, 2014
And Mona Eltahawy fumes:
Who is in charge in #Egypt? Serious question?
— Mona Eltahawy (@monaeltahawy) February 16, 2014

author: Amira Al Hussaini


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Film Documents America’s “Invisible” Drone War in Pakistan · Global Voices
Faisal Kapadia

A recently released short film focuses on the physical, moral and political invisibility of the United States drone war in Pakistan.
“Unseen War” is made by “Exposing the Invisible”, an initiative of the international non-profit Tactical Technology Collective which uses information, communications and digital technologies to maximize the impact of their advocacy work through short films.
Their series explores new frontiers of investigation and shares stories of people working to expose hidden layers behind problems in their societies.
From their website:
We speak to journalists, activists and experts inside and outside of Pakistan about the consequences of the strikes in the tribal FATA region, why they are possible, and how we can make the issue more visible using data and visualization tactics.
Apparently the US is at war in Pakistan against terror and has made hundreds of attacks on targets in Northwest Pakistan since 2004 with unmanned aerial vehicles (drones). They have refused to officially acknowledge more than 300 CIA drone strikes carried out in Pakistan and only describe them in off-the-record briefings. The previous Pakistani government openly condemned these attacks but Wiki-leaks exposed that they privately approved the strikes. According to an expose in Washington Post Pakistani military officials, even those who bitterly complained about drone strikes, had secretly been choosing some of the targets.
A leaked Pakistani report reveals that the number of casualties are much higher than those provided by the US administration. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism the estimated casualties in the US drone attacks in Pakistan are:
Pakistan 2004–2013 CIA Drone Strikes
Total strikes: 381
Total killed: 2,537-3,646
Civilians killed: 416-951
Children killed: 168-200
Injured: 1,128-1,557
The reasons for high number of casualties have been contributed to shoddy intelligence gathering standards such as facilitating strikes without knowing whether the individual in possession of a tracked cell phone or SIM card is in fact the intended target of the strike.
Jeremy Scahill, journalist and author of ‘Dirty Wars: The World Is A Battlefield’ explains how the definitions of “imminent threat” and “enemy combatants” are being redefined by US authorities to give legitimacy for drone attacks. For example all military-age males in an area of known terrorist activity are deemed as combatants, assumed to be up to no good and can be condemned to death by drone.
In the movie “Unseen War” you can hear more from the protagonists by reading the full interviews accompanying the film. You can watch the movie on the website or download it. You can also read the stories and engage in discussions.
Screenings for this short film have already taken place in Islamabad and Karachi and those interested in attending future screenings or hosting them can seek information here.
Two other movies on the US drone warfare in Pakistan – Wounds of Waziristan by Madiha Tahir and Dirty Wars by Jeremy Scahill – were also released last year.

author: Faisal Kapadia


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What Happened to Creative Writing in Malawi? · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Steve Sharra discusses the reasons behind the fall of quality of creative writing in Malawi:
Of the many private universities that are mushrooming across the country, very few offer humanities courses where people can study languages and literature, creative writing and literary criticism. The University of Malawi has been operating without a university bookshop for some eighteen years now. Funding problems in the universities mean that even the university libraries are unable to stock new literature.


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Why It’s Hard to Say “I Love You” in Chinese  · Global Voices
Abby Liu

Roseann Lake from ChinaFile explores why it's hard for Chinese to say “I Love You” in their own language from historical and sociological perspectives. The piece has also introduced an experiment about Chinese brain and its relation to love and romance.


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Algerian Cartoonist Faces 18 Months in Jail for Mocking President  · Global Voices
Abdou Semmar

[All links lead to French-language web pages.]
His name is Djamel Ghanem, and he's a young Algerian cartoonist. His job is no fun in a country where censorship and prosecution await those who dare to speak their minds. Ghanem faces 18 months in prison for an unpublished caricature of Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika that was deemed offensive by the authorities.
Djamel Ghanem via Algérie Focus. Used with permission
In fact, President Bouteflika is not represented or even directly mentioned in the unpublished cartoon. The drawing portrays two citizens mocking the fourth term the current president is seeking after ruling Algeria for 15 years. The caricature compares the fourth mandate to baby diapers. With the drawing, Ghanem wanted to convey the idea that Algerians are treated like children.
For that, he was taken to court and threatened with imprisonment. The district attorney of Oran, the second largest city in Algeria, located 400 kilometers northwest of the capital Algiers, wanted the cartoonist to admit that he had the intention of insulting the president. But Ghanem categorically denied that he had such intention.
Neither Bouteflika nor his advisers filed the suit against Ghanem. It was Ghanem's former employer, La Voix de l'Oranie (Voice of Oran), a daily newspaper known for its pro-regime editorial line, who sued him for the cartoon which was never published in the media.
Sued by his own newspaper, Ghanem saw all the doors of Algerian media closing in his face. Interviewed by Algerie-Focus, Ghanem explained that he has had difficulties finding a lawyer to defend his cause along with other challenges:
Le directeur de publication d’un autre quotidien a été menacé si jamais il me recrutait. Je suis devenu persona non grata. A travers moi, ils veulent abattre l’opposition algérienne qui dit non à un quatrième mandat
the director of another newspaper was advised to not hire me. I became persona non-grata. Through me, they want to thwart the opposition who is fighting against a fourth term for the president.
After the case's first hearing, the judges requested an 18-month prison sentence against Ghanem. The final ruling is expected next month on March 4. Meanwhile, netizens are voicing their support for and solidarity with Ghanem. An online petition demands that Ghanem be let go:
Si les médias et l’opinion se taisaient sur cette atteinte à la liberté d’expression et ces violations des droits d’un citoyen dans les bureaux d’un juge, les tribunaux pourraient demain condamner un journaliste pour avoir pensé du mal du président de la république, d’un gradé de l’armée, d’un ministre ou d’un élu. Nous signataires de cet appel exigeons l’arrêt des poursuites judiciaires engagées contre Djamel Ghanem
If the media and the opinion keep quiet on this infringement of freedom of expression and the violation of a citizen's rights, then tomorrow any court can charge a journalist for criticizing the president of the republic, an army official, a minister or a deputy. With this petition, we demand an end to the prosecution against Djamel Ghanem.
By shielding the president against any criticism, the administration is trying to impose a totalitarian ideology upon its citizens. Freedom of expression is at risk in Algeria. Ghanem's case is a typical example of how dire the situation is for cartoonists and other people willing to speak up.

author: Abdou Semmar


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Collecting Data About Possible Web Censorship in Venezuela · Global Voices
Adriana Gutiérrez

Marianne Díaz, lawyer, digital activist and Global Voices Advocacy author, has been making constant appeals from her Twitter account asking users to collaborate on collecting data related to access to some websites and online platforms from Internet service providers in Venezuela, due to growing reports of partial or total blockage of online content and services.
¿Tienes un rato libre? Ayúdame a probar si las páginas web de esta lista están accesibles donde sea que estés. https://t.co/JZ5Okqd9MF
— Marianne Díaz H. (@mariannedh) February 16, 2014
Do you have some free time? Help me test if the websites on this list are accessible where you are located.
Marianne believes that putting together this kind of information is very important in the current climate in Venezuela. After three people died in protests on February 12, demonstrations and clashes between protesters and security forces have continued across the country. Marianne states that “data is evidence, and evidence resists more than opinion.”


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Correction to Chosun Newspaper in South Korea · Global Voices
Solana Larsen

Screen shot of Chosun newspaper website (4 Feb, 2014)
In an article that lists Global Voices as one of several “non-legitimate”, “foreign media websites” who “spread rumors about South Korea” abroad, South Korean pro-government newspaper Chosun falsely describes our Korean editor Yoo Eun Lee as, “a dark-haired Korean-American blogger, who goes by a last name starting with L”.
Lee's identity is not in the least secret – she's a Korean media professional currently living in the United States (and actually she currently has light brown hair). We stand by her coverage of an election manipulation scandal in South Korea, clampdowns on labor groups, and an increasingly hostile environment for Korean journalists.
Chosun further tries to demonstrate our untrustworthiness by saying that Global Voices misrepresents itself as having an affiliation to Harvard Law School, but that their “own investigation” shows we are “just a blog site”.
Apparently there is an outdated description of Global Voices on a major Korean website (with no connection to us) that describes us as a Harvard Law School project. The truth is that Global Voices was founded in 2005 at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, which is indeed housed at Harvard Law School.  But today, Global Voices is an independent non-profit organization incorporated in The Netherlands.


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Could Barbados’ Economic Crisis Spread to Other Islands? · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Abeng News Magazine's Mark Lee says that the latest International Monetary Fund (IMF) Country Report “reads like a good cop bad cop interrogation of the Barbados economy”.  Read the details, here.

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


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Dancing and Rising for Justice in Southeast Asia · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

The ‘One Billion Rising’ campaign was supported by many groups and individuals in the Southeast Asian region. This year, the theme was broadened to include the call for justice aside from the particular demand to end violence against women.
Filipino activists hold a ‘One Billion Rising’ dance protest near the Philippine presidential palace to push for greater subsidy to social services.
In Cambodia, the violence inflicted on striking garment workers was highlighted during the preparation of the event:
…there have been crackdowns and violence on garment factory workers who demonstrated for better working conditions which resulted in many (casualties). Other female land rights activists had also been savagely beaten, arrested and detained without investigation. Reparations have never been made for the victims and until (today) the perpetrators have not been brought to justice
But the biking activity on February 14 was blocked by the police since it was seen as a threat to peace and order.
Cambodia's bike event was blocked by the police
In Indonesia, ‘One Billion Rising’ activities were held in seven cities across the country.
The ‘One Billion Rising’ dance was performed in seven cities in Indonesia
‘Rise for Justice’ in Indonesia
Members of the Women in Hai Hau in Nam Dinh province, Vietnam led a practice session for the ‘One Billion Rising’ dance event. Below is a video of their rehearsal:
In Thailand, students of Chiang Mai University supported the ‘One Billion Rising’ campaign. Below is a video of their practice session:
Another ‘One Billion Rising’ photo in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Image from Facebook page of Lisa Kerry
In the Philippines, the women’s group Gabriela coordinated the ‘One Billion Rising’ campaign and they were able to mobilize thousands of women in various parts of the country. Joms Salvador, secretary general of Gabriela, explained the importance of the campaign to eliminate all forms of violence against women:
Sometimes, because of the impunity of poverty, human rights violations, violence against women and children, people tend to be desensitized. We need to realize that such situations must not be the norm and that these have to change. We need to act collectively and make our call for justice stronger because things could only get worse when we keep silent and just watch idly by.
In the city Davao located in the southern part of the country, the issue of corruption was underscored in the fight for meaningful justice:
With the state of the country marred by corruption especially with the anomalous use of the public funds, then all taxpayers should be with us in dancing to call for justice
‘Justice’ is the theme of this year's ‘One Billion Rising’
‘Rise, Release, Dance’ activity in Davao City, located in the southern island of Mindanao in the Philippines
‘Justice for typhoon Haiyan victims’ is one of the demands of the campaign
Workers called for a wage hike as part of the campaign for social justice

author: Mong Palatino