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USA: Hemp History Week, Saving Plant and Planet · Global Voices
Bernardo Parrella

The variety of appearances for cannabis. Only C. sativa (left) is suited for industrial hemp, but it also has medicinal varieties.
In tough economic times, why would anyone ban industrial farming of a highly profitable and useful plant that requires almost no pesticides and can be used to make textiles, food, animal fodder, and alternatives to petroleum, cotton, and pulp wood?
When the plant is called “hemp” (Cannabis genus) the reason it is illegal in the United States has all to do with politics. Some strains of the plant can be used to produce marijuana, a mild but mostly illegal drug that most politicians are eager to distance themselves from.
Hemp History  Week from May 17-23, 2010, is an event by the Hemp Industries Association and Vote Hemp to highlight the many benefits of legalizing hemp production in the United States. Growing hemp is legal in many countries, and was also previously legal in the United States.
The whole initiative is taking full advantage of online tools and social media to push to remove barriers to industrial hemp farming in the U.S. through education, legislation and advocacy. Only 16 States have passed pro-hemp farming legislation so far. Hemp History Week is asking supporters to sign and send postcards urging President Obama and Attorney General Holder to change federal policy, and supporters are so far planing to host nearly 200 local events nationwide.
This video from their YouTube channel includes interviews with renowned figures (such as Dr. Andrew Weil) who make the case for a growing market for industrial hemp products:
Here is just one image from the many pictures submitted for the “You + Historical Site” award:
Hemptress Handbags: Earthday 2010.  Submitted by Arlene Nilsson
On Facebook, the Hemp History Week page now has over 1,000 fans, while about 6,500 people “like” the related VoteHemp page. Along with a variety of comments and suggestions, people are sharing useful tips, like:
Looking for lunch? Stop by and sample hemp foods at New  Seasons Market's at Orenco station in honor of Hemp History Week from  10:00 am to 2:00 pm.
Many citizens are blogging and tweeting about the event, also sharing little known facts about hemp local history. Outta the way blog says:
In the state of Pennsylvania, particularly the farming  communities of York and Lancaster counties hemp was very big business.  Due to their proximity to the Susquehanna river these two counties  became the epicenter for hemp growing in Pennsylvania. Every township in  Lancaster grew hemp, particularly Hempfield Township. Between 1720 and  1870 there were more than 100 mills in Lancaster county that processed  hemp fiber. That fiber was used to help cover many Conestoga wagons,  which were built in the small town of Conestoga, Pennsylvania.
In case you didn't know, according to Hemp History Week, “George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Henry Ford and many other notable Americans were actively engaged in, and openly advocated for, the commercial hemp industry”, while Thomas Jefferson grew hemp in his Monticello resort”. If all the buzz is not enough to convince you of the thousands of planet-friendly uses of hemp, there are even plenty of resources and suggestions for taking action online to support hemp-growing worldwide.

author: Bernardo Parrella


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Zimbabwe: Zimbabwe Inclusive Government Watch · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Zimbabwe Inclusive Government Watch from Sokwanene: “The results – from the month of April 2010 – are staggering. Twenty-two articles (27.8% of the total) detailed cases of violence, intimidation, hate speech and abductions, of which Zanu-PF were accountable for 90.9%.”

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Ndesanjo Macha


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Afghanistan: Beckham in Helmand? · Global Voices
Adil Nurmakov

Nasim Fekrat comments on the rumored visit of David Beckham to Afghanistan to cheer up British troops in Helmand.

author: Adil Nurmakov


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Armenia-Azerbaijan: Eurovision pondering · Global Voices
Onnik Krikorian

No stranger to controversy when it comes to Eurovision in light of the still unresolved conflict over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh, popbitch wonders if Armenia and Azerbaijan can settle their differences in the international music competition. Meanwhile, writing on HayFanat, Armanski says that the professionalism behind Azerbaijan's entry by Safura Alizadeh, and especially through the effective use of Facebook and Twitter,  is worthy of praise and an example that Armenia should follow.

author: Onnik Krikorian


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Australia: Bob Geldof Rouses Aussie Rich · Global Voices
Kevin Rennie

Aid celebrity Bob Geldof caused a stir on a visit to Australia this week:
SIR Bob Geldof says Australia is economically stupid for importing labour while Aboriginal talent goes to waste.
Speaking at a breakfast for West Australian mining entrepreneur Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest’s nation-touring GenerationOne movement, which aims to halt indigenous disparity within this generation, Geldof likened indigenous affairs in Australia to situations he’d witnessed in third-world Africa.
Sir Bob Geldof slams Australia's ‘absurd’ treatment of Aborigines
Greg Tingle at Australian Sports Entertainment seemed tickled by Geldof's irreverence to the big end of town:
Geldof urged the “rich bastards” (Mr Packer et al) in attendance at the breaky to contribute wholeheartedly and dig deep re Mr Forrest’s fight to end indigenous disparity. It's a shame ‘Our Richard’ (Branson), Steve Wynn (still winning big), and billionaire ‘Google Guys’ weren't in attendance.
Australian Aboriginals And Casinos Generate Bob Geldof Heat
CairnsBlog voiced the concerns of a local historian:
Dr Timothy Bottoms says, that a foreigner like Sir Bob Geldof has the nerve to identify that ‘Australia has exiled indigenous Australians from the nation’ is not an effrontery, but an insight that we should have recognised ages ago.
“He’s absolutely bloody right!” Dr Bottoms says. “What he does not go into is one of the pivotal reasons for this.”
BOB GELDOLF: Australia's treatment of Aborigines is ‘economically stupid and absurd’
Dr. Bottoms’ explanation of those reasons is quoted in detail in the post.
There were a number of bloggers, including A Western Heart, who attacked Geldof's own wealth and his alleged hypocrisy:
Such hatred of success and wealth bob, maybe you should have the bong back, contrary to what an angry fascist like yourself might think, those who are wealthy have no obligation to part with their money, if they want to they can, if they don't want to then you can't make them. Feel free to give all your money to them though, I'm sure you're not a “rich bastard”, are you bob.
Go home bob
His motives had been canvassed in Bigpond LiveNews:
There are reports that Mr Geldof has been doing the rounds of business conferences and charity events in Australia this month, reportedly receiving very large payments for some of his speaking engagements.
Sir Bob Geldof at Melbourne Fundraiser
Geldof also echoed calls by Oxfam Australia for Australia to increase its overseas aid:
Bob Geldof still thinks Australia is one of the meanest countries on Earth when it comes to its foreign aid program.
The outspoken singer gave an emphatic response when asked if Australia was shouldering its weight of the world's international aid.
Australia's foreign aid ‘pathetic': Bob Geldof
Love him or hate him, Bob just won't go away.

author: Kevin Rennie


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Bhutan: Literary Festival In Bhutan · Global Voices
Rezwan

Dorji Wangchuk writes about the recently concluded literary festival in Bhutan titled ‘Mountain Echoes’ which took place in Thimphu, the capital.

author: Rezwan


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Eritrea: “Eritrean journalist” exposed · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

The Association of Eritrean Journalists in Exile has released a statement concerning a matter of importance an individual called Mr. Yonas Embaye who claims to have worked as a journalist in Eritrea.


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India: Outrage At Mangalore Plane Crash · Global Voices
Ayesha Saldanha

Satellite view of the Mangalore Bajpe airport. Image uploaded by Twitpic user LarkRD
An Air-India Express plane arriving from Dubai has crashed in Mangalore, south India, killing most of the people on board; the plane overshot the runway then burst into flames, and approximately 160 people are believed to have died. It is the first major crash in India for some years, but many bloggers and Twitter users are not surprised at the news.
Air-India Express, a subsidiary of Air India, is a low-cost airline which offers flights mainly to Gulf countries where millions of Indians work. All the passengers on this flight were Indian nationals, many coming back to India for family visits. Mangalore is a coastal city in the southern state of Karnataka; Mangalore International Airport is located on top of a hill, and its runway is known for being “tricky”.
Journalist Smita Prakash (@smitaprakash) tweeted from the crash site:
Too many bystanders at crash site. Area too large to be cordoned off. Its forested so people simply walking in, debris trampled on
Cartoonist Satish Acharya (@satishacharya) was not surprised at the news:
Mangalore air-crash: Everyone saw the disaster coming, the runway is so dangerous!
Twitter user Venkat Ananth (@venkatananth) spoke to a pilot friend:
According to this friend of mine, the runway at Mangalore is an optical illusion. You must be able to land precisely. No margin of error.
Author Aravind Adiga (@aravindadiga), who grew up in Mangalore, tweeted:
When I was at St Aloysius school, Mangalore, we joked abt that airport. But we assumed the grown-ups who built it knew what they were doing.
In Mangalore, Larkins Dsouza (@LarkRD) wrote:
The #Mangalore #Airport is dangerous I have felt it. Blaming on pilot is baseless #mangalore #plane #crash #AirIndiaExpress
Some bloggers have been expressing their anger. At group blog Ultrabrown, Manish Vij says:
Who would’ve guessed that an airline famous for staging a mid-air fistfight, sleeping through a destination and forgetting to drop a heavy’s landing gear would plunge Flight 812 into a smoking grave? The best thing that could happen to Air India, a flag carrier treated as both sinecure and dumping ground by countless babus [corrupt bureaucrats], is to get blacklisted internationally as an unsafe carrier. Because being banned from leaving the country might be the kick in the ass they need.
Blogger Churumuri asks:
For a couple of days, the talking heads will froth at the mouth about safety standards, airport infrastructure, etc, before it is business as usual. Few will talk of the extraordinary role Praful Patel, the civil aviation minister, has played in singularly bringing Air India, Indian, and Indian Airlines to the ground, as the competition soars.
So, what do you think caused the Mangalore air crash that turned the dreams and hopes and prayers of 160-odd people and their families into a pile of ash in minutes? And will things ever change in India?
Twitter user Akhtar Hussain (@akhtar978) says:
don't know when we are going to look within ourselves for the fault. But unless we learn to do that we are not going to improve. #mangalore
Within hours of the crash a Facebook group called R.I.P. Victims of Air India Plane Crash at Mangalore India was started, where people are sharing information and expressing their condolences.
On the flight was a Dubai-based “tweep”, Harshini Poonja, who tweeted as @netizentwo. She was on her way to India to attend a family wedding, and her last tweet said:
Twitter users were sad to hear the news:
@mich1mich Gulf News staff member's daughter was a tweep @netizentwo. May She Rest in Peace.
@meetsamer Be at peace @netizentwo, may you always find the rain you were so looking forward to
@adilkohiar @netizentwo You are Blessed to be with HIM. Keep smiling from above!!
@jassim the last tweet from @netizentwo is touching and reminding us of the things that we are missing out in life #mangalorecrash

author: Ayesha Saldanha


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India: Outsourcing The Womb · Global Voices
Rezwan

AmreekanDesi says that India has taken outsourcing to a new level. The country is now outsourcing the womb to produce little babies for the childless parents across the world.


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Jamaica: Extradition Developments  · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

“There is a terse calm across the island, with Jamaicans watching with great interest, the events that are unfolding before our eyes”: Girl With A Purpose is monitoring the situation involving the extradition of Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, while Barbados Underground notes that “the political career of Prime Minister Bruce Golding is seriously under threat over the matter.”

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


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Japan: The part-time jobs that Japanese never want to do again · Global Voices
Scilla Alecci

Japan Style sums up [en] a discussion on “the part-time job I never want to do again”  that took place on the the Japanese bullettin board 2 channel [en].

author: Scilla Alecci


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Kazakhstan: First Local Computer Game · Global Voices
Adil Nurmakov

KZBlog reviews Astana Racer, the first Kazakhstani virtual racing game.


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Kazakhstan: OSCE Visits Jailed Rights Activist · Global Voices
Adil Nurmakov

KZBlog reports that an OSCE representative went to see Yevgeniy Zhovtis, a human rights leader in Kazakhstan who was imprisoned for vehicular manslaughter. The chair of the OSCE ordered the press office not to publish the report on the visit on the OSCE website.


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Kyrgyzstan: Contemplating a shift to parliamentary republic · Global Voices
Adil Nurmakov

Mirajidin Arynov critically analyzes the prospects of creation of a parliamentary republic in Kyrgyzstan, an idea initiated by country's Interim Government.


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Kyrgyzstan: Phone-tapping scandal reveals counter-revolution plans · Global Voices
Adil Nurmakov

Nurel informs readers on audio-recording of telephone conversations of allegedly Maksim and Janybek Bakievs, the son and brother of Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the second Kyrgyz president in exile. The two men discussed a plan on a new “Bakiyev’s back” revolution in the country.


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Latin America: Internet Day Festivities Across Region · Global Voices
Cati Restrepo

Internet Day is an event that started in Spain in 2005 and has been spreading throughout the world thanks to the United Nations, which designated May 17 as the World Information Society Day. This year, in many countries across Latin American, there were events that were promoted and organized through blogs and Twitter.
In Mexico, there was event held at the National Palace Museum in Monterrey, whose central theme was how to boost the growth of the industry during this time of economic crisis, through workshops about new internet companies and digital marketing for micro, small, and medium-sized businesses (MIPYMES for its initials in Spanish). In addition, the day of reflection also could be followed online through the live coverage at www.diadeinternet.org.mx.
Photo of Internet Day Festivities in Peru by  Juan Arellano and used with permission.
Executive Vice-President of the Mexican Association of Internet, Fernando Solcá spoke about 2 large obstacles that the country must overcome in order to move forward, including the speed of the internet “here 512 KB is considered broadband,” as well as the lack of fibre optic connectivity, “the government will ‘concede’ to us only 2 strands of fibre optic, this stinginess and it is not possible that many years pass by and there is so much bureaucracy in this area, the only thing that is letting the country stall even more.”
In Lima, Peru, the municipality of San Martín de Porres organized an exhibit that included a stand [es] where people could record a video responding to the question about their thoughts about the internet, which was an activity highlighted by Juan Arellano of the blog Globalizado [es]:
En otro stand, o kiosko, estaban motivando a los asistentes a dejar un mensaje respondiendo a la pregunta “¿Qué significa internet para tí?”. Vi varios niños y adolescentes pensando que decir y luego usando las dos lap tops acondicionadas para tal fin.
In Venezuela, the initiative “Todos en Red [es]” (Everyone Online) provided reflections on the day's events, as well as cyberactivism in the country. Information could be found on Twitter under the hashtag #Todosenred.
Finally, the city of Cali, Colombia was one of the cities with showed its presence on the day. The digital magazine Equinoxio [es] wrote about the day's activities that surpassed expectations of all of the attendees and who followed along the official website [es] and Twitter account (@DiaInternetCali). In addition, there was also a YouTube channel [es] where highlights of the events can be seen.

author: Cati Restrepo


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Mongolia: New ethnic music band  · Global Voices
Adil Nurmakov

Bilguun links to the music videos and blog of Jonon, a new Mongolian band to watch out for.


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Nigeria: Islam strongly discourages polygamy · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Following the marriage of a muslim Senator in Nigeria to a 13-year old girl, blogger Akin from Nigeria argues that Islam strongly discourages polygamy.


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Philippine Literature in English · Global Voices
Karlo Mongaya

Shades of thought writes about the relevance of Philippine Literature in English.

author: Karlo Mongaya


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Russia: Folk Humorous Rhymes In English · Global Voices
Alexey Sidorenko

LJ-user laberintica posts English translations of “chastushka,” Russian folk humorous rhymes.

author: Alexey Sidorenko


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Sierra Leone: Reproductive health care in Sierra Leone · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Nasratha explains why birth control is cheaper and better in Sierra Leone.


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Sierra Leone/Liberia: Naomi Campbell boosts Charles Taylor Trial · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

“The people of Sierra Leone should be grateful for Naomi Campbell's eccentrics because she has single-handedly boost the profile of the Taylor trial and now the world's talking.” writes Sweet Sierra Leone following reports that the prosecutor in the trial of Charles Taylor wants to get a subpoena for Naomi Campbell.


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South Africa: What is the big deal with drawing the Prophet? · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

“So What’s the Big Deal With Drawing the Prophet?,” asks South African blogger Muhammad Karim in reference to “Let’s Draw Muhammad” contest.


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Taiwan: Responses to Thailand’s upheaval, if there is any · Global Voices
Portnoy Zheng

Taiwan is no stranger in terms of “Red Shirts” and street protests. In September, 2006, the island had its own anti-corruption campaign which also involved about one million red-shirt protesters demonstrating against the former President Chen Shui-bain (who has been still under custody since Nov.12, 2008). And when the first tide of Red-shirts protest started in Bangkok, 2007, and Yellow-shirts in 2008, many Taiwanese people expressed concern over the situation.
Two years later, for many Taiwanese, memories of fierce protests had become history although Thailand is still the hottest tourist spot and one of the most invested country for Taiwanese people. (400,000 Taiwanese tourists visit Thailand every year, and Taiwan ranks No.3 in terms of foreign investment in Thailand.) People were no longer interested in understanding the cause of the protest, nor its political implication. The most direct reaction was touristic safety.
The consecutive upheavals make many Taiwanese worries about their safety, the twitter queen Carol Lin is one of them:
還好之前一直阻止我弟他們去泰國畢業旅行，曼谷市區連百貨公司都被燒了…….Central World Fire Bangkok May 2010 http://bit.ly/d7oorg
It seems that the whole world is indifferent to the situation in Thailand. Torrent Pien was one of the first commenting on this weird silence:
From@torrentpien
從國際至今仍靜觀泰國政府執行的和諧社會政策，可以看出平常口水噴得一堆的普世價值只是虛偽、看對象的垃圾嘴泡而已
From@torrentpien
真是死有輕於鴻毛、重於泰山，平平都是狙擊暗殺，也都有影片流出，伊朗的Neda就能獲得國際媒體大量煽情報導，泰國Khattiya卻只是一個小插曲，每個人都該自問，為什麼當時會被Neda感動到，對Khattiya卻完全沒感覺
From@torrentpien
要我是泰國政府，會覺得國際媒體真犯賤，之前幾次國際上的鎮壓事件，記者被抓、被關、被殺傷個幾個國際媒體就排山倒海譴責。這次泰國軍方不知道已經有意無意射傷、射殺好幾個記者，國際媒體還是維持「平衡」報導，這個真理部在哪裡啊？泰國政府要感謝都找不到單位
Cobain Yah retweeted Torrent's opinions, and explained why people kept silence:
一堆人等著去泰國瞎拼阿,有誰會去伊朗,當然希望泰國政府越快解決這件事情越好,哪管得著用什麼方式解決…
I also used the twitter account of Global Voices in Chinese@globalvoiceszh to collect conversation related to Thailand:
相信許多人都對泰國的情況很關心，如果你對泰國有話要說，歡迎直接 @globalvoiceszh 給我們，我們會將你的問題、意見整理成文章。
Publisher and blogger @octw asked:
@globalvoiceszh 我想知道泰國政爭的結構性背景。泰國知識份子如何看待這樣的鬥爭？總理、王室、樞密院和國會的組成和相互的權力關係是？
Political talkshow host of PTS(Taiwan Public Television)@achhong suggested a twitter account to follow:
關心泰國鎮壓的網友，可follow此推特帳號得知最新情況 http://twitter.com/georgebkk/
Music commenter and blogger @honeypie said:
關於曼谷情勢，我從鳳凰衛視記者閭丘露薇的微博看來的現場報導，比我看到的所有台灣媒體都更有料、更翔實。 http://t.sina.com.cn/luqiuluwei
So, maybe the last tweet of Rose LuQiu before she left Thailand could be a useful note for Thailand people, for Taiwanese people, and for many:
離開酒店去機場，泰國司機說，終于結束了。其實沒有結束，撇開政黨鬥爭，如果泰國社會沒有一支發展中的力量代表基層來爭取利益，泰國的社會矛盾會更加深刻。
Special thanks to Marta Cooper for language editing

author: Portnoy Zheng


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Tajikistan: President moves to ban cell-phones · Global Voices
Adil Nurmakov

Tajikistan’s President Rahmon is seeking to ban mobile phones from the country. The government claims it’s for reasons of health and taxes, but neweurasia’s Dushanbe is suspicious.


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Technology for Transparency Review, Part VI · Global Voices
David Sasaki

Over the past week we have published a number of posts to present our conclusions and recommendations to the technology for transparency movement by focusing on specific categories of projects: aid transparency, budget monitoring, election monitoring, civic complaints, and parliamentary informatics.
Those five categories encompass the vast majority of projects that we documented throughout our research. However, there are five other categories of technology for transparency projects that are also worth reviewing from a thematic perspective.
A number of websites have cropped up over the past few years in the United States and United Kingdom to add transparency and accessibility to crime reports from municipal police departments. CrimeMapping.com, Oakland Crimespotting, CrimeMapper, LAPD Crime Maps, CrimeReports, SpotCrime, Crimedar, and EveryBlock (which began in 2005 as ChicagoCrime.org) are just a few such examples. Outside of the United States and United Kingdom the majority of crime mapping projects seem to be based in Latin America, which claims 8% of the world's population, 40% of world's homicides, and 66% of kidnappings.
WikiCrimes.org is a collaborative, global, multilingual mapping of crimes around the world that is built with WikiMapps software. It was conceived by Vasco Furtado, Professor at the University of Fortaleza, Brazil where he coordinates a research group in “Knowledge Engineering.” All data can both be imported and exported in the open standard KML format. WikiCrimes currently has 13,117 reports of crime, almost all of which are based in Brazil. Reports can be filtered by category, time, and credibility. Users can sign up for notifications of crime reports based on their customized filters, and there is a beta mobile application available in Portuguese. All crime reports are ranked by their number of views, comments, and confirmations, and are re-distributed via Twitter. Users can confirm crime reports by linking to relevant news items or video and photographic evidence of the actual crime. So far the most commented crime is a homicide that took place on March 29, 2008 at 11 in the evening in Sao Paulo. It has received 22 positive confirmations, one negative confirmation, and four comments.
Delitos Ecuador is a project of Fundapi which uses Ushahidi to collect and aggregate crime reports in Ecuador. Reports can also be submitted via Twitter using the hashtag #delitosEC. The Illegal Drug Trade Map in Argentina combines a blog with a Google map. It was created by the Argentinian Association Against Drugs and enables citizens to learn more about the illegal drug trade in Argentina, and to submit locations where they have seen drug dealing take place. Panamá Transparente uses Ushahidi to aggregate and map reports about crime in Panama. Iluminemos Mexico is a citizen network against violence in Mexico that maps crimes and invites users to discuss and implement solutions to internal security problems. Outside of Latin America, Sithi is a Cambodian human rights portal that aims to crowdsource and curate reports of human rights violations across multiple human rights organizations.
Recommendations:
While most crime mapping websites in the United States visualize official crime data from municipal police departments, which can then be confirmed and commented on by users, all of the crime mapping projects we documented depend on individual citizens to provide the information. This is likely due to the fact that police departments in most of the world still do not publish their crime reports, much less in a structured format that can be automatically mapped and re-purposed. We recommend to crime mapping project coordinators that they work in collaboration with local police departments in order to automate the publishing of official crime data. If a project has successfully convinced a police department to publish its crime reports, we suggest that they publish their experience to help provide like-minded projects with an advocacy strategy.
While mapping crime helps us better understand both where it occurs and how crime spreads over time, it does not necessarily lead toward pro-active solutions. In fact, it can even lead to paranoia and social exclusion if residents react by merely investing in higher walls and more expensive alarm systems. Crime mapping platforms should focus on prevention as much as after-the-fact reporting. We recommend that they integrate their content with social groups that are working in neighborhoods where crime is prevalent and youth are at risk.
We believe that crime mapping platforms should collaborate with local bloggers, journalists, and activists to host monthly discussions about how to deal with a crime problem that has been particularly troublesome over the past four weeks. We suggest that it is useful to think of crime through the lens of epidemiology, with a focus on curing the disease.
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill illustrates and justifies the public's interest in the activities of extractive industries. The Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative aims to bring about greater disclosure of payments from companies to governments, contracts and information on how revenues are spent by the oil, mining, and gas sectors. We believe that the movement for greater extractive industry transparency would benefit from the use of technology to bring about greater awareness of the activities of the extractive industries, but so far we have been able to find few examples of existing projects.
Publish What You Pay is a global civil society coalition that helps citizens of resource-rich developing countries hold their governments accountable for the management of revenues from the oil, gas and mining industries. It has supported a number of capacity building workshops worldwide. Landman Report Card is a project of the ExtrAct group at MIT which aims to provide information and tools to residents whose land is coveted by oil and gas companies. While its focus is almost entirely on the United States, the platform and resources can also be used by residents worldwide.
Nomad Green is a multilingual platform for Mongolian environmental citizen journalists to document environmental threats and climate change in their country. Much of their reporting and documentation has focused on the environmental and social impact of open-pit mining. They use SeeClickFix to map examples of harmful and illegal mining, and to encourage direct action. The Observatory of Mining Conflicts in Latin America has a rudimentary map which links to information about mining-related community conflicts that have taken place throughout Latin America. So far it links to information about 136 different conflicts.
Recommendations:
We recommend that Publish What You Pay, Revenue Watch Institute, and the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative all attend and host barcamps that invite technologists and bloggers to strategically discuss how online tools can be used to bring about more transparency in the extractive industries – both in terms of environmental/social impact and also financial corruption. The World Wildlife Federation's Amazon Map and the Louisiana Bucket Brigade Oil Spill Crisis Map are two models for mapping impact, whereas Sourcemap illustrates a potential platform to map the flow of money related to extractive industries.
In our podcast interview, Fabiano Angelico observed that while most technology for transparency projects focus on federal government transparency, their potential for impact is in fact much stronger at the local level where users are likely to be more invested in policy decisions that directly affect their daily lives. Compared to national level projects we were able to find relatively few technology for transparency projects at the local level, however it is also likely that there is less awareness and available information about those projects.
Local Accountability Portals in Atitlan provides easy-to-use and cheap tools to help local municipalities of four different villages in the department of Sololá to publish all the information required by law on their local government websites. Concejo Visible Bucaramanga is an initiative coordinated by Universidad Industrial de Santander in Colombia to make more transparent the activities of the Bucaramanga Municipal Council Administration. It also opened a collaborative space to share ideas and discuss policies that matter to them. Concejo Visible Bucaramanga is, in fact, one of a number of similar citizen-led transparency initiatives that make up the Colombian Network of Citizen Observers.
Adote um Vereador encourages Brazilian citizens to blog about the work of their local elected officials in order to hold them accountable. Fabiano Angelico, our research reviewer who is also based in Sao Paulo,  suggests   that participating bloggers should pick a monthly topic and try to raise awareness and advocate for more government data related to that one topic. It is worth noting that a similar “adopt a politician” campaign began in Peru in 2008 when the well known journalist Rosa María Palacios asked citizens to mount pressure in order to get information about the operational expenses of national congressmen. Juan Arellano wrote an in-depth review of the project, which is no longer active following the overwhelming resistance by most congressmen.
Recommendations:
We recommend to all developers and coordinators of local technology for transparency projects that they read Georg Neumann's post “Developing Hyper-Local Integrity Systems to fight and prevent corruption“, which encourages such projects to use the National Integrity System Assessment as a holistic framework to analyze both the extent and causes of corruption in a given country.
We also support and encourage the replication of “adopt a politician” projects in all municipalities worldwide to create more awareness and accountability at the local level.
We specifically set out to document projects that aim to increase government transparency and political accountability, but throughout the course of our research it became clear that several private sector transparency projects are explicitly in the public's interest, including those related to consumer rights and the environmental/social impact of corporate behavior.
Quien Paga Manda (“Who Pays is in Charge”) is a Costa Rican blog by former journalist (and Technology for Transparency Network advisor) Hazel Feigenblatt. It serves as an information resource about the responsiveness of businesses to customers who have received poor service. It is also meant to amplify the voices of citizens who otherwise have no recourse to hold private businesses accountable. Issues are categorized by electronics, banks, restaurants, public services, and vehicles. Reclamos.cl is a similar consumers’ rights platform based in Chile, which has a strong focus on working with broadcast media to distribute and amplify stories about companies that are unresponsive to consumer complaints. So far they have managed to facilitate 1,869 mainstream media stories, which are broken down by media outlet on their front page. In addition to filing complaints, users can also list recommendations for positive service experiences. A business directory lists complaints by business, and select complaints are featured on the “emphasized complaints” page. Every complaint lists the number of comments it has received and the number of times it has been read.
Sourcemap is an open source, global platform for researching, optimizing and sharing the supply chains behind a number of everyday products. “We believe that people have the right to know where things come from and what they are made of,” declares the website. Sample sourcemaps include a Giant TCR '04 Bicycle, iPod, Tesla Roadster, and IKEA Sultan Alsarp bed. Sourcemaps are organized by user-submitted tags, and also by “most favorited”, “most commented”, and “most complex”.
CorpWatch is a San Francisco-based aggregator and platform of articles, blog posts, investigative reports, statistics, and multimedia related to the corporate accountability worldwide. It categorizes its content by industry and issue.
Recommendations:
In most developing countries the past two decades have seen the privatization of many industries that were once run by the government. As privatization continues, citizens must develop new tools to hold those new private corporations accountable. Archon Fung rightly points out that the transparency movement should focus on private companies at least as much as government agencies. We recommend to all technology for transparency activists that they invest more of their time on projects that hold corporations accountable.
All of the above-mentioned projects publish content related to multinational corporations. Most of them categorize that content per corporation to create site-wide business directories. But we do not yet have an aggregator of all of this related content across multiple platforms to provide a more comprehensive look at the responsiveness, behavior, and social/environmental impact of major corporations. We recommend that private sector transparency projects convene a conference to agree on semantic standards that can easily be aggregated and re-purposed across their platforms.
As one of the ultimate goals of such projects is to improve the behavior and responsiveness of corporations, we recommend that private sector transparency projects partner with business schools to systematically study what advocacy strategies are most effective in convincing corporations to voluntarily become more accountable. For example, is it possible to organize a competition on Sourcemap where major clothing companies voluntarily submit the supply chains of their products to compete for the lowest carbon footprint?
Admittedly, the most nebulous category of projects on the Technology for Transparency Network is “advocacy.” At worst it can be seen as something of a miscellaneous dumping ground of all projects that don't belong elsewhere. On the other hand, advocacy projects can also be seen as the glue which holds together all of the above-mentioned categories, and tries to fill the gaps in the transparency and accountability ecosystem. Unless awareness is spread in government, the media, and civil society about the need for such projects, they will never scale up to a level where their impact can be measured over time.
More information more Rights [Más Información Más Derechos] promotes public debate on access to public information in Colombia. In addition to its blog, it also promotes discussion and distributes information via Twitter, Facebook, Slideshare, and Scribd. Képmutatás, which means “hypocrisy” in Hungarian, advocates for more transparency in campaign financing in Hungary by estimating the unreleased expenses made by political parties during election campaigns and distributing their findings through traditional and social media.  Kubatana.net has built a network of over 200 civil society organizations in Zimbabwe, an archive of over 15,800 documents, and an SMS subscriber list of over 9,000 individuals. It promotes collective action, such as a campaign to determine how toll booth revenue is being used by the government. Saatsaam, which means ‘clean’ in Khmer, aims to encourage public participation in promoting transparency by raising awareness about the impact of corruption, and making related documents freely available. ProAcceso, founded by Mercedes de Freitas of the Venezuelan chapter of Transparency International, is a coalition of organizations in Venezuela that advocate for timely, relevant government data related to public health, education, politics, law enforcement, the use of public resources, and salaries of public officials.
Recommendations:
Most advocacy projects we documented target either governments or the general public in their efforts to increase awareness about the importance of transparency and accountability, and the role that open data plays in bringing about both. We recognize that each audience is distinct and requires different strategies.
For groups advocating to governments, we recommend that they frame their advocacy in terms of cooperation rather than hostility. Transparency and accountability should be framed as pathways toward political credibility. We specifically recommend that advocacy groups seek out like-minded supporters who work in high government positions and depend on them to help promote and amplify the importance of transparent governance and open data from within.
For groups advocating to the general public, we recommend that they work closely with both mainstream and social media. The World Bank and Transparency International have published a number of guides and white papers on how to design effective anti-corruption campaigns. People, Spaces, Deliberation, a blog of the World Bank's CommGAP initiative, also frequently publishes recommendations and case studies related to advocacy campaigns for transparency and accountability.
As much as possible, avoid acronyms and unnecessarily technical language. Creativity always helps draw attention to your cause. For example, Fifth Pillar, an NGO headquartered in Chennai, India, printed “Zero Ruppees” bills with the image of Ghandi to be given to any official asking for a bribe. The initiative was covered by CNN, the Economist, the Telegraph, Boing Boing, and many other international media outlets. Fifth Pillar received calls from interested groups in Nepal, Argentina, Mexico, France and Germany who wanted to implement their own zero currency projects.
The Zero Rupees initiative was a creative response to spread awareness about the problem of bribery in India. Similar creativity should be applied to initiatives and campaigns that advocate for open government data.
With this post we conclude the first phase of our research into the role of technology in the transparency and accountability movement. Our platform, however, remains open to new submissions of relevant, innovative projects, and we anticipate a second phase of research with a greater focus on evaluation for impact.
One of the most difficult challenges throughout our research was simply developing a taxonomy to categorize and describe the projects we documented. We recognize that technology for transparency projects might choose to describe themselves and their objectives in language that differs from traditional anti-corruption organizations and the donors that fund them. We believe that categories on the website will always be dynamic and will shift as new projects come online and maturing projects evolve their objectives and strategies.
Over the next few days all of our research will be bundled into a single PDF document for the sake of cohesiveness and distribution. However, we emphasize that the distribution of reports is not as significant as the distribution of new ideas that turn into concrete projects and partnerships. As such, the objective of the Technology for Transparency Network will always be to facilitate the sharing and learning of skills and strategies across projects, sectors, and communities. We aim to translate our findings into as many languages as possible. (Already our findings have been translated into Portuguese, French, Chinese, Spanish, and Bahasa.) In the future we hope to host live chats with developers, bloggers, and activists focused on similar works of engagement in order to spread the best ideas and come up with new ones.
We will especially re-distribute our findings, conclusions, and recommendations to all groups and projects that have been mentioned throughout our research. And we will work with like-minded research and mapping projects including ParticipateDB, Participedia, the International Association for Public Participation, the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation, ePractice, MobileActive's mDirectory, and LocalLabs to ensure that our work is cross-linked and cross-verified.
We encourage interaction, new ideas, and challenges to everything we have published. Please do get involved to help push the discourse and the movement forward.

author: David Sasaki


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Trinidad & Tobago: Changing the Mindset · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Barbados-based B.C. Pires says that “nothing good…can emerge in the long run” from Trinidad and Tobago's upcoming elections: “Trinidad's whole problem is that it thinks only in the short term, if it thinks at all; which is exactly why it continually finds itself in the position of having to eject the most recent in a long line of rulers who abuse power and privilege…”


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Trinidad & Tobago: On the Issues  · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Know TnT.com blogs about “four issues arising on the campaign trail this year.”


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Trinidad & Tobago: Right & Wrong  · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

“Clearly something has gone terribly wrong. Who are these people who feel they can just start lecturing us on how to live our lives? We pay THEM. They should be listening to US”: Tattoo vents about the methods being used by the government to jockey for votes in the upcoming elections.


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Uganda: Kids build a radio out of Scraps · Global Voices
Juliana Rincón Parra

Afrigadget brings us a video showing the radio two 12 year olds and one 15 year old in Uganda rigged up in one day using scraps.

author: Juliana Rincón Parra


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Uruguay: Silent March Remembering Disappeared Detainees  · Global Voices
Silvia Viñas

Every May 20 for the last 15 years, Uruguayans gather in Montevideo to participate in a silent march remembering those killed and disappeared during the military dictatorship which began in 1973 and ended in 1985. The march is organized by the group Mujeres y Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos  (Women and Family of the Disappeared Detainees), and this year they made a video [es] where a spokeswoman for the group talks about the origin of the march and explains that their struggle:
persigue los objetivos de verdad, justicia, memoria y nunca mas terrorismo de estado.
Picture taken during a previous March of Silence. Sign reads "We choose memory." Photo uploaded by Flickr user Xanti Revueltas and used under a Creative Commons license
Rosa Zarina Loureiro Malán in her blog Mburucuya [es] writes:
Esta Marcha recuerda los asesinatos enigmáticos ocurridos y se reclaman datos sobre más de 200 personas Desaparecidas – acaecidos en el Uruguay – en tiempos de la Dictadura. Para sanar las heridas de nuestro pueblo, tienen que ser aportadas a la población, las: Informaciones Necesarias, para que tomen conocimiento de ellas todos los uruguayos
Uruguayan bloggers supporting the march wrote posts explaining its significance and alluded to the present situation for the families of the disappeared detainees who are still seeking justice. Last year, a plebiscite in favor of annulling a law which gives impunity to those who committed crimes during the dictatorship failed [es], leaving many Uruguayans frustrated and disillusioned with the judicial system. The current president, José Mujica —who suffered firsthand the atrocities of the dictatorship— has also suggested releasing detained military officials [es] involved in the dictatorship that are now older than 70 years old.
The blog Uruguay Antinatural [es] published several posts related to the march. A post tittled, “Esto Continúa” (This Continues) describes this year’s march and its significance:
Había expectativa. Prometía ser multitudinaria. Y lo fue. Cuadras y cuadras de personas caminando en silencio, para no callar. Pero, sobre todo, fue diferente. Las personas así lo sintieron. Fue la primera Marcha del Silencio después del fracaso del plebiscito por la nulidad de la Ley de Caducidad. Y la primera después de que el presidente José Mujica (que acompañó la caminata durante dos cuadras) hablara de reconciliación. De unidad nacional. De convivencia. Pero sin consultar a las víctimas, se quejaban.
Decían que la multitud era una señal de que no se perdió la batalla. De que todavía se puede anular. Decían que la multitud es la reafirmación de que no hay derrota y una señal de que hay que seguir luchando contra la impunidad. Decían que esa multitud era dolor y que las respuestas para ese sentimiento habrá que construirlas entre todos. Y decían que todavía quedan marchas. Hasta que haya verdad. Hasta haya justicia. Algo que quizás muchísimas personas que ayer marchaban no lleguen a ver. Por el tiempo, por los años de lucha.
There was expectation. It promised to be massive. And it was. Blocks and blocks of people walking in silence, to not be silent. But above all, it was different. That is how people felt it. It was the first March of Silence after the failure of the plebiscite for the annulment of the amnesty law. And the first after President Jose Mujica (who accompanied the walk for two blocks) spoke of reconciliation. Of national unity. Of coexistence. But without consulting the victims, they complained.
They said the crowd was a sign that the battle was not lost. That [the law] can still be overridden. They said the crowd is a reaffirmation that there is no defeat and a sign that we must continue the fight against impunity. They said the crowd showed the pain and that the answers to that feeling will have to be built together. And they said that there are still marches still to come. Until there is truth. Until there is justice. Something that perhaps many people who marched yesterday will not come to see. Because of time, because of the years of struggle.
Image titled "They are somewhere" taken during past Silence March. Photo uploaded by Flickr user Pachakutik and used a Creative Commons license
Ivonne Leites in the blog El Polvorín [es] hopes a march asking for justice will not need to take place next year, because the necessary measures to get rid of the “the impunity law” will be taken:
No olvidamos ni perdonamos a los asesinos de ayer, pero tampoco nos congraciamos con los traidores de hoy. Ojala que el próximo año no sea necesaria la marcha, ojala que el mayo del 2011 nos encuentre con esta ley caduca ya anulada. Pero si llega mayo y nos encuentra igual que hoy, ojala que decidamos quebrar el silencio… que ya va siendo hora.
Twenty-one-year-old Victoria from Uruguay posted the poem Desparecidos [es] (The Disappeared) by Uruguayan writer Mario Benedetti on her blog. A blogger under the name Master of Puppetz [es] commented on Victoria’s post saying,
Ojalá me equivoque, pero tengo tan poca esperanza en que algún día sabremos que pasó con todas estas personas. Ayer participé en mi ciudad junto con mi madre (que tiene un tío desaparecido) de la marcha en cuestión. Solidaridad, dolor en algunas caras, una mezcla de feas sensaciones se veía en las caras de algunas personas, espero se sepa algún día, de corazón, lo dudo.
Eso si, que esto NUNCA MÁS suceda
I hope I'm wrong, but I have so little hope that someday we will know what happened to all these people. Yesterday I participated in the march in my city with my mother (who has an uncle who has disappeared). Solidarity, pain on some faces, an ugly mixture of feelings could be seen on the faces of some people, I hope that someday we will know, in my heart, I doubt it.
One thing is for sure, that this should NEVER happen again.
Uruguay is one of the many Latin American countries still struggling with bringing violators of human rights during military dictatorships to justice. As relatives of the disappeared grow older, many fear that younger generations will not be as active in pursuing justice on the matter; however, the more than 10,000 people of all ages that marched this year –as reported on the national press [es] — and the interest of young bloggers like Victoria signals that the fight for justice in Uruguay will not be over any time soon.

author: Silvia Viñas


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USA: Recessions better for right than left? · Global Voices
Anna Gueye

American journalist Doug Henwood argues that the political right does better than the left in elections during recession periods in his blog Left Business Observer.

author: Anna Gueye


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Africa: UNAIDS: Myth-makers or liars? · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Simon of HIV In Kenya blog argues that UNAIDS publishes a list of recent HIV related publications. However, the list very rarely includes papers that discuss non-sexual HIV transmission, concentrating instead on the many articles that look at sexual risk or what is perceived as sexual risk.


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Armenia-Azerbaijan: Eurovision impressions · Global Voices
Onnik Krikorian

Unzipped: Gay Armenia compares the entries from Armenia and Azerbaijan in this year's Eurovision Song Contest. The blog says that both female singers are beautiful, but their performances need some work before the semi-finals next week.


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Armenia-Azerbaijan: Mafia & Society · Global Voices
Onnik Krikorian

Fatalin's Blog informs its readers about Mafia, a group game where some participants take on the role of the mafiosa and kill those who represent citizens while both sides deceive each other. Invented in Russia, and alluding to societies in both countries,  the blog notes that the game is especially popular in Armenia and Azerbaijan, perhaps because both nations are similar in their temperament and mentality.


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Azerbaijan: Democracy is… · Global Voices
Onnik Krikorian

Flying Carpets and Broken Pipelines comments on the U.S. State Department “Democracy is…” online video challenge and shares some of the entries with its readers.  The blog is especially pleased to see that among the finalists is an entry from Azerbaijan.


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Azerbaijan: Eurovision favorite · Global Voices
Onnik Krikorian

The Manchester Evening News blog comments on the buzz around Safura Alizadeh, Azerbaijan's entry into this year's Eurovision Song Contest and currently the favorite to win the international music competition. The blog features a short interview with the 17-year-old singer.


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Cameroon: Historical Dictional of Cameroon available · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Dibussi reports that the Fourth Edition of Historical Dictionary of Cameroon is now available.


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Caucasus: Eurovision Twitter · Global Voices
Onnik Krikorian

As this year's Eurovision Song Contest approaches, one way to keep up with the entries from the three countries making up the South Caucasus will be via Twitter. Armenia's entry, Eva Rivas, is at @EvaRivas2010 and currently has 110 followers, Azerbaijan's Safura Alizadeh is at @SafuraMusic with 338 followers at time of writing, and Georgia's Sofia Nizharadze is at @SofiaNizharadze with 217.


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Diaspora: Youth and violence · Global Voices
Onnik Krikorian

Ianyan comments on yet another killing in Los Angeles and says that it's about time that Armenians stopped focusing on the past in order to resolve their problems in the here and now.


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East Timor: Portuguese Language in Debate · Global Voices
Sara Moreira

A heated discussion is taking place in the Timorese blogosphere regarding the implications of the adoption of Portuguese as one of the official languages in East Timor, along with Tetum. Kirsty Sword Gusmão, Goodwill Ambassador for Education, and spouse of Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão, reacts showing her concerns about education in the country. [pt]

author: Sara Moreira


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Egypt: A walk along a Mameluke street · Global Voices
Eman AbdElRahman

Maryanne Stroud Gabbani invited her friend Patricia Canfield to write about her tours of Cairo and share the photographs she took. Patricia profoundly wrote about Khan El Khalili, Al Mu’izz Street and other touristic places in the capital city.

author: Eman AbdElRahman


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Egypt: The State Versus the People on Minimum Wages · Global Voices
Marwa Rakha

The current minimum laborer wage, set in the mid-1980s, is LE35. Tabula Gaza reviews the workers strife since the late 90s until today.

author: Marwa Rakha


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Egypt: Workers on Protest Face Security Crackdown · Global Voices
Marwa Rakha

Amonsito textile factory owner Syrian-American Adel Agha fled Egypt in 2007 and responsibility for the factory was assumed by Manpower and Immigration Ministry and Bank Misr. Amonisto workers went on strike and Tabula Gaza blogged how they were kicked out of a parliament session, with six workers “kidnapped” and taken to police stations.  Arabawy shared the story from the beginning with pictures of the workers. (Witness accounts here)


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Russia: Hacking of Women’s Community Raises Gender, Ethical and Privacy Dilemmas · Global Voices
Gregory Asmolov

According to recent research [RUS] by Online Monitor 50.2% of Russian Internet users are women. Women are more active both in using social networks and communicating online. However, beyond these facts, the RuNet has one place that probably can be considered as the major symbol of its feminine side.
It is Livejournal community girls_only [RUS] (also known as GO). This month, the girls_only community turned to be in a center of big scandal that raised a number of ethical, security and legal dilemmas, as well as exposed the gender issue in the Russian virtual reality.
A woman sitting with a laptop on her knees, photo by outcast104
The girls_only community was established in January 2002 at the dawn of the Russian blogosphere. Today it has more than 7200 members. It’s main goal being a platform for discussion of the most intimate women's topics (including health problems, sex issues, and obviously discussing men themselves). The community is primarily a space of mutual help.
Due to the sensitive nature of the content created a high degree of curiosity among the male community, and caused the emergence of a “membership regime” (only female members allowed, 18 rules for membership and community codex, membership on a recommendation basis only) which according to [RUS] Internet analyst Alexander Militskiy is more appropriate for a closed secret military facility than an online community.
In most cases, the membership regime worked well. With a few exceptions the information from the community remained in secret. Together with overwhelming popularity the strict rules created a certain degree of confidence that the community members could talk about everything, despite the fact that more than 7000 people can view the community.
Everything changed in mid-May, 2010. RuNet was shocked when someone published a mirror site [RUS] with all the content of girls_only (more than 35.000 messages and millions of comments) online for all to see. It’s not only that private content suddenly became public. The mirror site offered a system of rating the best posts. Moreover, it included a search engine that made it possible to find any information related to specific blogger.
Screenshot of the mirror of "Girls_only" community:not only for girls anymore.
The exposure of girls_only became the topic of the day for the RuNet. An army of men (and others!) rushed to consume the “forbidden” fruit. One of the major Russian news agencies “Interfax” [RUS] wrote:
Появление в Интернете сайта, который зеркально отразил посты закрытого женского сообщества, в первый момент рассмешило публику. Потом, правда, стало страшно
The community was outraged. The community leader Tatyana Nikonova (aka LJ-user nekbke [RUS]), a member of advisory committee for Livejournal, suggested a retaliation strategy. She offered to publish a lot of spam and porn in the community in order to confuse the creators and consumers of the mirror site.
Some of the community members tried to recall what they had written to evaluate the potential threat to their privacy. However, Nikonova said to Interfax that she doesn’t believe that exposure of community can cause problems, since no one can prove that the mirror site is the precise copy of the original community.
Nikonova also raised the ethical dilemma that was created by the community mirror. She said [RUS]:
Любой приличный человек не должен заходить на этот сайт, так как подсматривать в замочную скважину, расширенную до размеров окна, просто некрасиво.
However, it looks like most of the online male community had no ethical problems in this regard. Moreover, for many of them, reading the community was equal to discovering the dark side of the moon. Many of them shared their new understanding of women-bloggers.
Ems-viking wrote [RUS]:
Зачем, зачем злые хакеры сделали трансляцию ГО наружу? У меня УЖЕ произошли необратимые деформации психики.
Lj-user andrii shared [RUS] his understanding about the opposite sex following girls_only reading:
Сижу, читаю… Оказывается, женщины довольно разумные и рациональные создания, когда им не надо строить из себя. Скажем так, моё циничное восприятие женщин оказывается довольно неплохо совпадает с ихним циничным восприятием самих себя :)
Lj-user lesoto responded [RUS] to andrii:
Я как раз в полном ужасе от прочитанного – был несколько лучшего мнения о женском поле. Именно от всего женского пола – мои ЖЖ-френдихи оказались чуть ли не самыми разумными в том сообществе. Бабы совсем не дуры, просто у них другое восприятие мира, они более аморальны, злее и нетерпимее к окружающим нежели мужчины.
One of the main points raised by the scandal was the difference of online female and male discourse. Lj-user Mr-vally wrote [RUS]:
Зачем я это прочитал, зачем я это узнал?… Неужели все женщины такие?))) Даже и не припомню, чтобы в чисто мужской компании что-нибудь подобное обсуждали.
Someone recalled that there is a Ru_men_only community at Livejournal but it’s totally unpopular and abandoned. Blogger Olegart went futher and claimed [RUS] that both – the members of girls_only community and the hacker who exposed it – violated ethics. He disccussed what is alowed in male community:
На человека, который начнёт в подробностях рассказывать, сколько раз в неделю у них с женой секс и как этот показатель менялся на протяжении пяти лет брака, в небольшой компании знакомых людей будут смотреть странно и быстро предложат сменить пластинку. Человек, который начнёт про это распространяться в большой компании незнакомых людей, довольно быстро получит ярлык «ебанутый мудак». <…>
Lj-user calabazza, a member of girls_only for seven years, defended [RUS] the community from the male’s attacks:
Какой ужас – женщины, оказывается, уже не только не хранят девственность до свадьбы, а еще и смеют обсуждать своих мужчин с другими женщинами, планируют расставания и даже, о Боже, изменяют! <…> Для многих участниц это сообщество было единственным местом, где можно было обсудить вопросы, которые с реальными знакомыми обсуждать чаще всего не хочется, а то и просто не с кем: что делать и куда бежать от бьющего или пьющего мужа; как собрать себя из кусочков, когда у тебя на руках трехмесячный младенец, а муж завел любовницу; как привести себя в порядок, если ты только что перенесла курса химиотерапии и т.д. Да, в идеале эти вопросы надо обсуждать с мамой/сестрой/подругой/психологом, а что делать, если мамы/сестры/подруги нет, а на психолога нет денег? Удавиться? ГО – это коллективная психотерапия, и она очень многим помогла, и я говорю это совершенно серьезно. А теперь все эти посты, комментарии, личные истории вполне реальных людей превратили в балаган и выложили во всеобщий доступ – зачем? Чтобы доказать, что конфиденциальности в интернете не бывает? Кому-то от этого легче жить станет, что ли?  <…>
The case of girls_only community raised a significant dilemma in regard to online privacy and security. A few thousand people shared their very private information. Lj-user sviridenkov reminds readers that restricted posts on Livejournal can be exposed without any difficulty and that the administration of Livejournal fairly warned that the confidentiality of these posts can’t be guaranteed. He made [RUS] a clear conclusion from the whole story:
Вообще, рассчитывать на какую бы то ни было приватность во всемирной паутине, по меньшей мере, недальновидно. И происшедшая история просто в очередной раз это подтверждает… Таким образом, есть два варианта. Либо следить и строго контролировать всё, что делаешь в сети, чтобы потом не было обидно. Либо сразу плюнуть на всю приватность и анонимность.
A week later after the mirror was created the moderators successfully stopped the updates of the mirror, so the girls_only forum continued to work in the restricted mode (however, now probably some of the members will think twice before sharing private information). The identity of the mirror creator hasn’t been announced. The members of the community discussed if it was an act of male aggression or maybe retaliation by one of the former members of community. Feminist community even suggested [RUS] that the attack on the girls_only was a result of an “everyday war” between men and women.
There is still a significant legal problem if exposing information from a restricted blog community can be approached as a violation of law. According to [RUS] Alexander Militskiy information from a restricted community can’t be categorized as secret according to the Russian law. The Russian penal code also has a chapter about violation of secrecy of mail exchange or phone communication (article 138) [RUS] and violation of private life (article 137) [RUS]. However, according to legal expert Alexander Chromichev, in can’t be applied to community with a few thousand people even if the community is closed. Another option is article 272 [RUS] of Russian criminal law that focus on illegal access to computer information, but it usually applied only if illegal access caused any failure in the work of computer system.
It looks like the moderators of the community focus primarily on the point that the mirror violates the copyright rights, since members of community didn’t give a permission to copy their texts. However, Chromichev is skeptical about the ability of moderators to prove that they have the right to represent all the members of the community. However from the legal perspective, this path is probably the most promising.
The scandal around the girls_only community is going to be another page in the history of RuNet. No doubt the community is a unique document about the world of modern Russian women. The self irony and imagination of community members is far reaching and should be approached with a lot of respect. It also shows what challenges women meet in general, and in Russia specifically. It won’t be a surprise if one day, the girls_only community will become a source of inspiration for a Russian version of “Sex and the City”. And who knows, this project might be even more successful than the original version.

author: Gregory Asmolov


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India, Pakistan: Crossing The Border By Bus · Global Voices
Rezwan

The blogger at The life and times of two Indians in Pakistan writes about the painful ordeal of crossing the India-Pakistan border on road.


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Japan: Can Twitter help to prevent suicides? · Global Voices
Scilla Alecci

The National Police Agency has recently released the results of its annual survey on suicide in Japan. According to the official statistics [ja, pdf], 32,845 people committed suicide last year and dramatic is the increase in number of victims in their 20s and 30s; the main reasons  [ja] are said to be 1) health problems, 2) economic and social problems, 3) family problems.
Blue LED lights at Shinjuku St.(Tokyo) By jediduke
Sadly known as one of the developed countries with one of the highest per capita number of suicides [en], Japan has been trying for years to confront the problem, by working to tackle it at all levels of society. The government and other groups constantly launch campaigns to raise awareness and invite people to turn to assistance centers whenever they feel depressed or convinced that the only way to solve their, or often their loved ones, problems is to commit suicide.
Deciding to talk to somebody, reflecting and defining the causes of their desperation, is a very hard step that few people in a state of depression are believed to be able to make. But, although it cannot represent a definitive solution, some believe that the internet might be a tool to help, especially among the tech-savvy, younger generations.
To this regard, Twitter has been recently a subject of debate of those who see in its 140 word format a potential for contact with those who seek help but prefer to remain anonymous and cannot express their suffering in long and well articulated phrases.
Yamabe says that the news [en] that actress Demi Moore reportedly prevented a woman from committing suicide by tweeting a 16-word-long comment recently made him reflect on the question.
考えてみたんだけど、案外自殺予防とツイッターって相性が良いのかもしれない
まず、ツイッターはゆるい関係が主体なので、書き込みがしやすいというのがある
このことは何を意味するかというと、ちょっと人生が嫌になって実際に自殺はしないのだけど
心が折れてしまってこのまま消えてしまいたいそんな気持ちをもツイッターでつぶやきやすいということだ
つまり自殺予防だけではなく、その前の段階（死んでしまいたい気持ち）に至るのをも防ぐことができるということだ
絶望から来る自殺なら、ツイッターでそれをつぶやけば
案外自分は一人ではないと気がつくかもしれない……
Suicide Prevention mirror, in Sapporo. by MJTR (´･ω･)
Many have tried to give insight [en] into  such a complex issue, trying to analyze the sociological implications that the ‘act of suicide’ has in Japan, where traditionally it used to be considered as a brave act at times. Not only in the samurai culture but also in the rural one, where often the older people decided to ‘retire’ themselves in the mountains [en] instead of being a burden to their families.
But the fact that the number of victims is not likely to decrease, can only mean that the causes are difficult to identify, and some bloggers, like Ayasan, are skeptical about the power of Twitter and the Internet in general.
ツイッターやチャット、相手の素性を知らず（こちらの素性も知られず）に、リアルタイムでやり取りをする方法は沢山あります。
勿論、然るべきルートで然るべき方法をとれば、「PCの向こう側の個人」を特定することはできるけど、リアルタイムではほぼ無理。
そういう状況の中で、フリーにアクセスできてしまうツールで、「命」を扱う事、私はとても危うい事だと思います。[…]
過去の記事に、「言葉は人を殺す事ができる」という内容の記事を書いた事があります。
言葉の選び方、漢字の使い方、文のニュアンス…
「あちら側との狭間」に立つ人は、「言い回しひとつ」に過剰に反応し、簡単に決行してしまう。
PCを通して向かい合っている（つもり）の相手が、「善意の人」だと言い切れますか？
インターネットでの繋がり程度で、「死にたい程の孤独」が紛れると本気で考えてるとしたら、相当オメデタイか、想像力が欠如してると思うよ？
確かに、「一時的な気休め」にはなるのかも知れないけれど、最終的な光にはなり得ない
I wrote in a past article that ‘words have the power to kill a person’. The choice of words, the usage of the characters and the nuance of the whole sentence is very important. The person who teeters on that fine dividing line between life and the ‘other’ side is very sensitive and reacts to each phrase, making go/no-go decisions very quickly. Can one say for sure that the person, with whom one is interacting through a PC, is really behaving with good faith?
I would say congratulations to those who actually believe that with the kind of bonds you can build through the Internet, the feeling of a person who is seriously thinking ‘I feel so lonely that I want to die’ can really be distracted. Or perhaps they're lacking in imagination.
Yes, communicating via Internet with an unknown person may provide temporary relief but I do not think it can provide a long-lasting insight or solution.
If preventive measures such as barriers and blue light LEDs on railway station platforms (jumping off the train is a favored method of ‘self ending’) haven't proved effective in suicide prevention, some consider that, in the era of blogs, Twitter and Facebook, the social network services may be a new way to help solve the problem.
Ikeda Hayato believes in the power of social media.
今までのウェブだったら、その声は無視されていたかも知れませんが、ソーシャルグラフ（人間関係／データ関係）が構築された昨今のウェブでは、声を上げることは「つながる」きっかけになり得えます。
Wonder Shakeの鈴木君（@Doubles9124）が、「ソーシャルメディアは人生を変える意思決定を生み出す可能性のある場」という言葉をスカイプで伝えてくれました。自殺を防ぐことができたら、それは究極的な「人生を変える意思決定」です。
ショッキングなことに、20代・30代の自殺率が上がっているそうです。テクノロジーで全て解決できるわけはありませんが、今のウェブは「つながる」力を持っています。ソーシャルウェブを活用することで、一人でも多くの人の人生が変わるのなら、素晴らしいことだと思います。
Suicide prevention campaign. by titincai. The poster reads ‘Are you thinking of dying? Communicate your thoughts.’


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Japan: PacMan, still a hit after 30 years · Global Voices
Chris Salzberg

With his trademark piechart head and onomatopoeic “paku paku” chomp, Pac-Man looms large in the history of the modern video game. No other game character can be said to have captured the world's attention so thoroughly and transformed the game industry so profoundly. Born out of Japan's burgeoning game industry of the early 1980s, Pac-Man has outlived many of its contemporaries and remains popular even today.
In a sign of Pac-Man's longevity, many this weekend celebrated the 30th birthday of the famous game character. The game's creator, Japanese video game company Namco, took the opportunity to announce a brand new twist on the Pac-Man legacy: a new game, referred to as “Pac-Man Reborn”, reportedly be played via Twitter. Released in beta form this weekend in Japan only, the new game has been described as “the largest demolition derby of tiny pie charts ever seen“. (Follow @pacman_reborn in Japanese for more details.)
Pac-Man circa 1980
Google's Pac-Man logo, circa 2010
For most people however, including many in Japan, the reminder of Pac-Man's 30 year birthday came not from its maker but from Google, who commemorated the event by inserting the game into its own logo. Many Japanese were pleasantly surprised to stumble into the character, one of their country's most famous cultural exports, in its new online setting.
On Twitter in Japanese, people tagged comments on Google's java-based game with the hashtag #googlepacman_jp.
@cagesmile writes:
Googleロゴがパックマンだ！生誕30周年だって。しかも実際に今日から２日間遊べる！忠実に再現されている。InsertCoinボタンをもう一度押すと対戦プレイ。懐かしいなぁ。当時もそうだったけど、いつも見ているほう。１面もクリアできない…。 #googlepacman_jp
@fall_meet, who finally managed to clear the first level, pinpoints one of the charms of Pac-Man:
ゲームは苦手なので単純なものしかやらないです。でもパックマンは気軽に遊べていい感じ。 #googlepacman_jp
Blogger ss1200, a more experienced Pac-Man player, recalls:
高校生のころPC-6001MkII のパックマンをやりまくってました。結構うまく移植されてましたですよ。
Blogger and twitterer Yoshio (@yoshio_will), who had trouble getting past the second level of the game, decided to delve deeper to see if he could skip ahead to the rumored 256th level. Describing Google's code for the Pac-Man game, he writes:
なんというか色々とすさまじい。変数名に1文字のを使われると何がなんだか。
しかも全然改行がないので読みにくくてしょうがない。
どうやらCanvasを使って画像を出しているっぽい。音はどうしてんのかと思ったら、音出し専用Flashをスクリプトから呼び出しているらしい。うーむなんとも。
What can I say, it's really  something. Like they only use a single letter for the variable names. And there are absolutely no newlines so it's really hard to read.
They seem to be using [the HTML5 rendering engine] Canvas to create the images. I wondered what they were doing for the sounds, but it seems that it's calling a dedicated Flash script to produce them. Hmm…
A closer look revealed the key:
g.livesが残機数、g.levelが現在のステージなので、とりあえず254面にしてみた。
あとは一時停止を解除してやれば、「内容は1面だけど番号だけは254面」で動き出します。
この状態でとりあえず1面クリア。
すると、次に用意されるステージは255面になります。
g.lives is the number of lives remaining and g.level is the current level. To start I just set the level to 254. When I then released the pause, the game came back with the same first level screen, but the number switched to 254.
So first of all I just cleared the level, while in this state. When I cleared it, the next stage that came up was level 255.
After forging ahead through level 255, thanks to a bit of tinkering to grant extra lives, the blogger got to the 256th level, at which point things became strange.
Level 256 from the Google version of Pac-Man
え・・・。
もしかして無理矢理256面にしたからバグった？
と思ったんですが、どうやらアーケード版のバグの再現らしい。
The bug is in fact a “kill screen” from the original version of the game, meaning that the Google version — with its colorful 256th level — is in fact true to the original after all.
If the novelty of the new Pac-Man game and its mysterious 256th level were not enough to entice you to give it a try, consider that the game can also be played in 2-player mode. Catch it will it lasts!

author: Chris Salzberg


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Kazakhstan: Bloggers condemn the “Leader of the Nation” project  · Global Voices
Adil Nurmakov

The parliament in Kazakhstan came out with the initiative to give a “Leader of the Nation” status to incumbent president Nursultan Nazarbayev.
The former Kazakh Communist party’s secretary, a strongman that rules his country for more than 20 years, is to celebrate his 70th birthday July 6. This day is celebrated in Kazakhstan as the Astana Day, the holiday to praise the capital city – 11 years ago it was moved from Almaty to Akmola (now Astana, which means “capital” in Kazakh) by a sole decision of Nazarbayev, who regards Astana as his personal pet project. In spite of very frequent cases of human rights abuses and overall restrictive political environment, the country was given a post of the OSCE chairman, which it currently occupies.
Interestingly, in addition to the status – pretty nominal, especially taking into account the already in-force Law on the First President, providing guarantees of non-persecution and also the right to influence politics after possible retirement – the MPs decided giving the president and (sic!) his family members full immunity from all criminal or administrative offences he committed during the presidency or afterwards. Another point of the new law is to legislatively give him a supreme authority in political decision-making. Finally, MPs suggested introducing of some sacralization components – they want to make it illegal to defame the president, distort facts of his biography, and even damage or ridicule his images.
Yelikbayev fancies how long his president has been in power:
Last week marked twenty years since Nursultan Nazarbaev became president. My younger brother turned the same age this year. All his life, he has seen his country led by one man. We moved from the village to the city […] but his presence has been constant.
In France, Mitterrand was succeeded by Chirac, and he by Sarkozy. In the States, Clinton took the place of Bush Sr., after whom came Bush Jr. and Obama. Yeltsin moved over to make room for Putin, who let in Medvedev for a short while. And all these years, we had one man report to us annually on the state of affairs.
They removed homosexuality from the WHO’s list of diseases. They tore down the Berlin Wall and blew up the Twin Towers. They executed Andrei Chikatillo and Saddam Hussein. They invented the iPhone and SARS. But they haven’t managed to change the face that appears every year on television to congratulate the citizens of Kazakhstan.
Many in Kazakhstan are bewildered by the proposed status – “Leader of the nation” – and stress that such title was usually given by the thankful descendants to the retired or passed away rulers. Or, as megakhuimyak says, to other people having great deserts before the state [ru]:
In Pakistan lives their leader of the nation, nuclear physicist Abdul Kadyr Khan, who created the Pakistani A-bomb. It secures the existence of Pakistan as a state and serves as the only constraint to the India’s full-scale aggression.
Meanwhile, pycm makes fun of the proposed title's formulation [ru]:
Well, now if we have a Leader of the Nation, logically there should be other institutions – lsay, Dealer of the Nation, Conscience of the Nation, Shame of the Nation, Beauty of the Nation and Horror of the Nation, Dough of the Nation, Vagabond of the Nation… I wonder, will they elect or appoint them?
A-strekoza feels less jokingly [ru]:
Until recently I didn’t believe I live in a totalitarian state. Sure, Kazakhstan is a safer place comparing to the neighbor countries […].
But today I am forced to propose a toast for the Leader of the Nation. The most democratic parliament in the world didn’t even presume any alternative […] Now they should elegantly hold a referendum to demonstrate – it’s not his will, it is the people, who love and worship him.
Aridni is depressed too [ru]:
This is to what exorbitant vanity together with senile marasmus lead. […] The people are just a flock of sheep; we avoid politics, and while there is no war and our fridges are full with a food, nobody will protest and oppose the current government.
But giving him and his family immunity from criminal responsibility is really too much. This is actually a nonsense – if there is something, for what he can be prosecuted, then he cannot bear a title of “Leader of the Nation”. If there is nothing to blame him for, then what’s this fuss about? Such a shame…
Some people still think that president Nazarbayev will veto this law to demonstrate how sane and democratic he is. Such “performances” were already played before the Kazakhstani society – and certainly before the international community – in the past. Alim-atenbek has even more daring hypothesis [ru]:
He may sign the law into force and then say: “People, I am tired. Thank you for such honor, here is my approval, and here is the guy who’ll be instead of me”. This looks like a pretty believable scenario.
One way or another, the law was very quickly passed through both chambers of the Kazakhstani parliament. Now the president must say his word in 30-days period.

author: Adil Nurmakov


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Kenya: Mocality – a mobile business directory · Global Voices
Abdoulaye Bah

Moses writes about Mocality, a mobile-based and crowd-sourced business directory operating in Kenya.

author: Abdoulaye Bah


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Morocco: Discussing a Free Thinker’s Legacy · Global Voices
Hisham Almiraat

The death of Moroccan philosopher and social theorist, Mohammed Abed al-Jabri, has gone with little notice in the media. Yet al-Jabri's contributions over the last decades to the uphill battle between rationality and religious thought has probably never been so relevant as today. There has been an outpouring of tribute to the man and his work over the past weeks, but if the death of one of the most liberal Arab thinkers earlier this month has brought such an overwhelming sympathy, it has also uncovered the underbelly of Arab intelligentsia, one that is deeply divided along the lines of separation between passionate liberalism and firm conservatism. Over at the blogosphere and social networking websites, reactions were divided between those whose Jabri's thinking helped reconcile modernity and tradition, and those who see in the philosopher's work yet another attack against religious authority. Here are some of the reactions.
Medersa by Piero Sierra in Flickr
Abdeslam Ben Abdelali was one of al-Jabri's students. Writing on al-Awan, an online blogging platform dealing with philosophy and current affairs, he shares his thoughts [Ar] about the late philosopher:
Mustafa Lemoueden blogs on SidiSlimane.com. He writes [Ar]:
Reactions poured in from across the region. Mohammad Omar is a Jordanian blogger. He writes [Ar] :
[كنت أعيش في] حلقة مفرغة إذن، حلقة تدور حول نفسها تبحث عن إجابة السؤال “البسيط”، الذي طرح قبل 150 عاما، مع “بداية عصر النهضة العربية”، ويعاد طرحه يوميا منذ “خمسين عاما على هزيمة الثقافة العربية”،، لماذا تخلفنا وتقدم غيرنا؟…
بهذا السؤال بدأ الجابري مشروعه في نقد “العقل العربي”،،، وأسس لمفهوم “العقل المستقيل”،،،
عندما تعرفت على مؤلفات الجابري حينها، اختلفت كل نظرتي، لا بل وطريقة حياتي، فلم اعد ذاك الشاب الذي تكفيه النصوص وحفظها، ولا يكفيه الإعجاب بالجمل الثورية، وبالشخوص،،،
الجابري هو بداية رحلتي من اليقين إلى الشك، هو “لحظة وعي”، اشراقة،،،
When I first discovered al-Jabri's work I completely changed my views and even the way I live. I was no longer that young man who merely read and memorized some texts or who would be satisfied by the mere admiration for revolutionary phrases or personalities.
Al-Jabri is the beginning of my journey from certainty to doubt. He is my moment of awareness; an enlightenment.

author: Hisham Almiraat


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Peru: The Preference for Afro-Peruvians at Funeral Services · Global Voices
Juan Arellano

Peru is a country with such ethnic and cultural diversity that one might think that Peruvians are accustomed to seeing different faces and customs than one's own, and that there is an adequate level of respect and tolerance towards others. However, the reality is quite different and in Peruvian society, there are examples of underlying, as well as overt racism, many of the examples have been covered on Global Voices.
However, there are often strange situations that upon first glance appear to be racism, but upon further investigation, may not necessarily be. A recent debate has emerged as a result of a communique released by the Ministry of Women and Social Development [es] (MIMDES for its initials in Spanish), which as directed towards funeral companies so that they change “their policies of only hiring people of the black race for the jobs of casket carriers, because they are performing a clear act of discrimination [es],” as informed by the newspaper El Comercio [es].
This issue, as any Peruvian who has had to hire these types of services or attended a burial knows, is that it is the clients and not the businesses that prefer that these individuals who provide these services are of the black race. The blog Living in Perú publishes the statements by business owners of this field “Minister Vilchez is wrong. We do not practice racial discrimination.  It's our clients who ask us to provide black pallbearers for their funeral ceremonials” and later states: “We cannot antagonize our clients. If they want either black or white  pallbearers, we do need to meet their requirements.” In fact, funeral agencies in Peru charge higher fees for ceremonials  with black pallbearers.
Why do so many Peruvians prefer Afro-Peruvians as the ones providing this service? Chuto of the blog Choledad Privada [es] may have a theory and presents the following questions:
¿cuál es mensaje que se quiere transmitir a los presentes al  velorio con esa imagen racistoide acompañando el dolor de los “blancos”? ¿Será acaso que se mezcla cariño y paternalismo racial con una  necesidad de que los OTROS sean los que se encarguen de mis pompas  fúnebres (o en un velorio de puro negro también hay negros cargando al  muerto?)? ¿Será que esta costumbre está inspirada en el luto que sigue a la pérdida de cualquier ser querido? Quizás  inconscientemente pero bien intencionalmente nos sentimos aliviados si  no sólo contamos con un perucho de clase/raza considerada inferior  lustrándome los zapatos, sirviéndome el café en el Club Nacional,  abriéndome la puerta en el Casino Atlantic City o con un gran sombrero  de portero en el Hotel Sheraton, sino que además queremos que sean  nuestros carontes de a pie que nos lleven hacia el otro  mundo cargado en hombros?
Regardless of the real reasons, it is a commonly seen practice. So many are left wondering, where is the racism? On the part of the businesses, the clients, or both? Has the Ministry intruded in the affairs of the free market? Some bloggers are asking the same questions. Martín Soto of the blog sNm writes about this issue:
No me parece que este sea un tema de discriminación hacia afroperuanos, y  si un desacierto ministerial (oficiar a privados, pidiendoles  “modificar” el asunto?). … que el MIMDES,  en cabeza de su ministra (nada más, nada menos) oficie a algunas agencias funerarias no  resuelve ni por asomo ningún problema vinculado a la comunidad  afroperuana; que se ocupe sobre el oficio de los  cargadores de ferétros y le reclame modificaciones a la empresas  privadas, sólo escapa a sus funciones y competencias, sino que es un  claro sin sentido, una pérdida de recursos públicos en temas menores.
And finishes the post with a reflection:
qué “clase” o “tipo” de personas deberían ser empleadas en este  oficio?, es el oficio indigno?, es la persona la que hace indigno al  oficio?, de qué hablamos cuando hablamos de discriminación aquí?
Álvaro Zapatel of the blog El Gato del Hortelano [es] provides some notes about racism:
Las funerarias ofrecen un servicio en respuesta a la demanda de los  consumidores. Los consumidores, arguyen los “funerarios”, prefieren por  lo general que los cargadores sean afroperuanos. Se podría hablar de un  acto discriminatorio de los consumidores, mas no de las funerarias  quienes ofrecen un servicio en función de lo que la demanda pide.
queda claro que el afroperuano que entra a trabajar como cargador, está  ejerciendo su libertad para trabajar como tal. Es obvio que en contra de  aquel argumento se hablará de la falta de oportunidades que los  afroperuanos tienen para acceder a un trabajo en nuestro país, y que,  lamentablemente por necesidad y falta de oportunidades en otros rubros  entran a trabajar de cargadores en las funerarias. Entonces, a mi  parecer, el problema ya no compete al MIMDES sino más bien al Ministerio  del Trabajo.
The funeral companies offer a service in response to the demand of the consumers. The consumers argue with the funeral companies, and generally prefer that the pallbearers be Afro-Peruvian. One could talk about the discriminatory act by the consumers, but not of the funeral homes that offer a service based on what demand calls for.
It is clear that the Afro-Peruvians that work as carriers are exercising their freedom to work a such. It is obvious that against that argument, the response will be the lack of opportunities for Afro-Peruvians who want to work in our country, and that, unfortunately out of necessity and a lack of opportunities in other areas, they work as pallbearers in the funeral field. In my view, it is not MIMDES responsibility, but the Ministry of Labor.
It also noteworthy that the job of pallbearer is not the only job “apparently” exclusive for Afro-Peruvians, but the job of hotel bellhop, of which black Peruvians are often found. These individuals often take these part-time jobs while they finish their university education, so speaking about “a lack of opportunities” could be incorrect in these cases. Zapatel continues to provide his opinion:
los empresarios fúnebres sostienen que el servicio funerario llevado a  cabo por afroperuanos es de mayor costo que el ofrecido con peruanos de  otros rasgos étnicos – léase, no afroperuanos. … En este caso, podríamos asumir que se considera un “servicio de lujo” puesto que a  medida que su precio aumenta, la cantidad demandada aumenta también.  Claro que, si nos remitimos al tema de que este incremento en el precio  se deba únicamente a una característica física, esto es totalmente  condenable. Pero ojo, ¿condenable en qué sentido?
¿No estamos frente a un caso de “discriminación inversa”? Si el tema en  cuestión es el racial, ¿por qué el servicio fúnebre ofrecido por  afroperuanos cuesta más que el ofrecido por no afroperuanos? Aquí más  bien podríamos incluso hablar de un sector del mercado  “copado” por afroperuanos y que, en realidad, está discriminando a los  que no son afroperuanos. Si un asiático-peruano entra a trabajar como “cargador” y percibe que su trabajo es considerado “de menor valor” al de aquel que es ejercido por afroperuanos solo por una cuestión étnica, mas no por habilidades, creo que el tema discriminatorio iría no solo  para el afroperuano sino para aquel asiático-peruano.
The funeral companies say that the funeral services carried out by Afro-Peruvian are more expensive than the services carried out by Peruvians of other ethnic features – in other words, those who are not Afro-Peruvian.. I this case, we can assume that it is considered a “luxury service” in that the price increases, the demand also increases. Of course, if we only refer to this issue that the price increases only because of the physical characteristic, then it is totally condemnable. But, condemnable in what sense?
Are we facing a case of “reverse discrimination?” If the issue in question is racial, then why are the funeral services offered by Afro-Peruvians cost more than those services offered by non-Afro-Peruvians? Even more, we could even discuss this market “cornered” by Afro-Peruvians and that in reality, are discriminated against those non-Afro-Peruvians. If an Asian-Peruvian begins to work as a “pallbearer” and perceives that his/her work is considered “less valuable” than the work done by Afro-Peruvians only because of ethnicity and not because of abilities, then the issue of discrimination would not go against the Afro-Pervuian, but against the Asian-Peruvian.
In regards to this issue, Juan Arellano of the blog Globalizado [es] writes:
Acá la suspicacia me gana y me pregunto si no estaremos simplemente frente a una movida de las empresas funerarias deseosas de reducir costos y dejar de pagarles más a sus empleados afrodescendientes. Con lo que al final la supuesta medida en contra de la discriminación terminaría perjudicando a los “discriminados” pues reduciría sus ingresos y limitaría sus opciones laborales… todo un contrasentido!
It is obvious that there may or may not be racism in these commercial practices and it remains a sensitive topic for many Peruvians, regardless if they are of Afro-Peruvian descent. It will continue to be a debate in Peruvian society and whether or not it is the business of the government to stop something that is deeply-rooted in society.

author: Juan Arellano


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Rwanda: Footbal war at Kigali Amahoro Stadium · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Football war in Rwanda?: “Congolese players run amok at Kigali Amahoro Stadium and Rwanda expels team from country.”

author: Ndesanjo Macha