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Taiwanese-Japanese Leadership Hopeful’s Candidacy Exposes Japan’s Xenophobia · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

Renho, Democratic Party (Japan) leadership candidate. Screencap from official FCCJ YouTube Channel.
A female Japanese politician is under fire for her Taiwanese roots, and is accused of hating Japan itself. It is all part of a campaign to tie the charismatic former television presenter to the darkest moment in recent Japanese history.
Renho Murata, a popular oppositionist generally known simply as “Renho,” is in the running to head the newly created Democratic Party (民進党, Minshinto, or ‘DP’) Japan's largest opposition party, which will select its leader on September 15 .
Although her father was originally from Taiwan, Renho was born and raised in Tokyo and held dual citizenship between Japan and Taiwan until at least the age of 17.
Renho went on to be a newscaster in the 1990s, sometimes reporting on China.  Elected as a member of Japan's Diet in 2004, she would make the transition to a minister in the ill-fated Democratic Party of Japan (民衆党, Minshuto, known as ‘DPJ’ and now defunct) government that formed in 2010.
As the newly formed Democratic Party (DP) prepares to elect a new leader on September 15, political opponents are trying to link Renho to the much unloved Democratic Party of Japan and accusing her of secretly continuing to hold dual citizenship, something prohibited by Japanese law.
これは2010年8月の、中国国内線機内誌ですが、「蓮舫は日本の未来の首相？」という記事が組まれています。「蓮舫はずっと台湾の『中華民国国籍』を維持していた」と書いてあります。 pic.twitter.com/3pHMlgJPc0
— 月華（ゆえほあ） (@YUEHUA_925) September 7, 2016
This cover of the August, 2010 issue of an in-flight magazine from a Chinese domestic airline. There's an article that asks “Will Renho become the future prime minister of Japan?” The article also says she never gave up her Taiwanese citizenship.
It doesn't help that Renho herself announced she was submitting documentation to the equivalent of the Taiwanese embassy in Tokyo to ensure once and for all she no longer holds dual citizenship.
For Renho's critics, the question about her nationality has provided them with a brilliant opportunity to question her commitment to Japan. Thanks to a recent provocative opinion piece by ultranationalist Abiru Rui published by the conservative-leaning daily Sankei Shimbun, the terms “repudiate” and “hold in contempt” (否定・軽視) trended on Twitter earlier in this week.
【阿比留瑠比の極言御免】「国」を否定・軽視する民進党には、やっぱり民主党ＤＮＡが色濃く流れている https://t.co/jc3orhK2wY pic.twitter.com/0TCJ4MwdPb
— 産経ニュース (@Sankei_news) September 8, 2016
“Frank Talk from Abiru Rui” — By Rejecting and Holding the Concept of ‘Country’ In Contempt, the ‘DNA’ of the old Democratic Party Still Flows Strong.” — Sankei News (@Sankei_news)
Abiru's contentious opinion piece has the cumbersome title “By Rejecting and Holding the Concept of ‘Country’ In Contempt, the ‘DNA’ of the old Democratic Party Still Flows Strong,” (‘国’ を否定・軽視する民進党には、やっぱり民主党ＤＮＡが色濃く流れている).
Abiru argues the newly formed opposition Democratic Party (民進党, Minshinto) essentially will always put Japan's interests last, just as its predecessor Democratic Party of Japan (民衆党, Minshuuto) neglected Japan during its time in office from 2009 to 2012.
In power during the March 2011 “Triple Disaster” before being turfed out in a 2012 general election, the Democratic Party in Japan (DPJ) conjures up images of failure, incompetence, and even treason and the very destruction of Japan itself, due the Fukushima disaster or war with China.
The Democratic Party of Japan never recovered the public's trust following the 2012 election, and was dissolved in March, 2016. The new party, simply called the Democratic Party (DP), was created by merging some factions of the old DPJ with an assortment of fringe parties after that.
There's hope that the telegenic Renho will somehow inject life into the DP, which faired poorly in a recent election at the beginning of the summer.
In his contentious article for Sankei, Abiru characterizes Democratic Party leadership hopeful Renho Murata as “basically saying” she “has no concept of what a country is” (国というものが何だかよく分からない) and that “Japan is not just for Japanese people” (日本列島は日本人だけの所有物じゃない).
Abiru is directly referencing Renho's foreign, Taiwanese heritage. Abiru also links the new Democratic Party (DP) to the older party headed initially by Hatoyama Yukio.
During his short tenure as Japanese prime minister in 2009-10, Hatoyama became infamous for his many gaffes. After leaving office he enraged many in Japan by traveling to China to apologize for Japan's wartime behavior, proof, Abiru says, of Hatoyama's allegiances to a foreign government. Successive DPJ prime ministers were widely perceived to have bungled the response to the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster (known as the ‘Triple Disaster’) that overwhelmed Japan, before triggering a confrontation with China over the Senkaku Islands that continues to this day.
By considering Renho, with her Taiwanese roots, but who was born and raised in Tokyo, as a potential leader, Abiru says, “the Democratic Party can never change its image” (民進党のイメージを思いっきり変えたい). That image, Abiru says, is of a Democratic Party that hates Japan.
Abiru's Sankei article went viral, with many commenting on Abiru's twisted logic. A common complaint was that Abiru had fabricated Renho's quote:
蓮舫は「国を否定する」といった発言はしてないのにこのタイトルはどうなの。DNAとかいって政党史と結びつけるなら自民のほうが売国的な実績がありまくるわけで
>「国」を否定・軽視する民進党には、やっぱり民主党ＤＮＡが色濃く流れている https://t.co/ePCBfc5qHc
— c.a.g.e (@cage_num) September 8, 2016
Renho never said she “repudiated Japan”, so why is that part of the title? And if we're talking about a country with a history of selling out the country, that would be the [ruling] Liberal Democratic Party, wouldn't it?
More than a few commenters complained about Abiru's lazy prose:
殆ど飲み屋のくだ巻きレベルで中身がないけど、こう言うのがおっさん達にウケるんだろうな。そりゃ地元の日本会議の講演に来るだけある。
【阿比留瑠比の極言御免】「国」を否定・軽視する民進党には、やっぱり民主党ＤＮＡが色濃く流れている https://t.co/oeZoDICvXz
— 地方の会計屋【迷走封印中】 (@Meisou_AK) September 8, 2016
(Abiru's column) has little more substance than a drunken rant, but I guess this is what the old farts are talking about these days. Maybe it goes over well out in the boonies with the [ultra-conservative] Nippon Kaigi crowd.
While there were plenty of Twitter commentators who made disparaging remarks about Renho's ethnicity, and her willingess to “sell out Japan”, she still has her supporters.
日本で生まれ育って、日本語が母語で、たまたまお父様が台湾生まれというだけ。この件はこのclarificationで終わりでしょう。 蓮舫さん、がんばってください！ RT 国籍放棄問題の渦中にある蓮舫氏、単独インタビュー　https://t.co/FgGMAZbMho
— 茂木健一郎 (@kenichiromogi) September 8, 2016
Born in Japan, speaks Japanese as her mother tongue, just happens to have a father who was born in Taiwan. This should have been *clarified* in Abiru's article. Don't give up, Renho!
A new leader of the Democratic Party will be chosen on September 15, 2016.


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Timorese Olympic Athletes Didn’t Win a Medal in Rio but Still Inspired Their Country · Global Voices
Dalia

The Timor Leste delegation during the opening ceremonies of the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Photo from Francelina Cabral
Timor Leste didn't win a medal in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro but its athletes still managed to share an inspiring message with their supporters and fellow Timorese.
Timor-Leste participated in female and male athletics, as well as women's cross country mountain bike.
After gaining independence from Indonesia in 2002, Timor Leste, a country of less than 1.5 million people, first joined the Olympics in 2004.
Nelia Martins, an 18-year old athlete, was the youngest delegate of Timor-Leste in Rio de Janeiro.
In 2014 she competed and placed fourth in the women's athletics 5000m Lusophony Games in India. In 2015 Nelia competed in the 2015 Southeast Asian Games in Singapore. This year in Rio de Janeiro, she placed 13th in the Round I Heat III course of Women's Athletics 1500m.
Nelia shared her feelings with Global Voices after the end of the games:
Hau Sente kontente wainhra hau evento boot iha brasil primeira vez tuir olimpiade iha Rio De Janeiro (…) hau nudar atleta hau Sente kontenti wainhra hau representa hw nia Bandeira RDTL representa hau povu TIMOR LESTE no mos hau nia federation hau Sente kontenti wainhra ho idade 18 anos bele represents hau nia Bandeira Timor leste ba mundo tomak. Hau liafuan mk dt. Obrigada Timor!
I feel happy to be here in Brazil for the first time to compete at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro (…) as an athlete I'm also honored to represent my flag RDTL “Republic Democratic of Timor-Leste”, represent the Timorese people and my federation. I really feel happy because even though I'm only 18-years-old, I can represent the country's flag in the Olympics. This is all i have to say. Thank You Timor!
Augusto Soares at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Photo from the Facebook page of Francelina Cabral
Augusto Soares was the most senior athlete from Timor's Olympic delegation.
In 2007 he competed in the 3000m Asian Indoor Games in Macau. In 2009 he joined the marathon competition in the Southeast Asian Games in Vientiane, Laos. In 2010 he was part of the Dili Half Marathon East Timor. And in 2011 he competed in the 5000m Asian Championships in Kobe, Japan. Competing this year in Rio de Janeiro in the Men's Athletics 1500m, Round I Heat II course, Augusto finished in the 12th position.
Augusto also spoke to Global Voices after the games:
Primeiro hw hkrak fo obrigado ba maromk tan buat kmanek tomak mai husi Nia…No Mos ba Familia Treinador nebe uluk hnorin no htudu dalan ida ne mai hau sr Aguida Amaral no mos ba treinador no kolega sra hotu. Ami orgulho tamba ble Lori nasaun no Bandeira RDTL mai participa ih jogos olympico Rio de Janeiro ba dala xxI liu husi evento ne Maske ami la manan buat ruma.
Husu ba maluk joven sira atu hakribi problema husi ita nia an ato fo ita nia an at participa iha mundu Desportivas atu ble desenvolve ita nia an no mos ble fo mos kontribuisaun ba ita nia nasaun hnesan dalan nebe uluk ita asuwain sira htudu nanis ona durante iha sira nia luta…mak ne dt bin Ikus hw la haluhan…VIVA TIMOR LESTE……
First of all I would like to thank God for all the goodness from Him… Also family, and my first coach that guided me in this direction, Mrs. Aguida Amaral and to all the coaches and colleagues. We are proud to represent this nation and our flag RDTL in this Olympics games in Rio de Janeiro. Even though we didn't win anything we gained experience by competing against other athletes outside our country. With this experience we've learned, we will pass it to the youth. We will tell them to focus, to let go of personal problems and focus only on sports to develop ourselves and to contribute to our nation. It is similar to the path shown to us by our heroes in their fight [for independence]. That is all. Finally I won't forget…Long Live Timor-Leste…
Timor Leste's Olympic athletes pose with Rosa Mota, an athlete from Portugal (second from right). Photo from Francelina Cabral
Francelina Cabral, is the first Timorese woman to compete in the cross country mountain bike Olympic sports event. She is a professional woman cyclist who has competed in several circuits in East Timor since 2009.
In an interview with Global Voices, Cabral described the cross country mountain bike competition in the Olympics as more “extreme” than ordinary cycling:
Ema sira nebe tuir kompetisaun iha evetu ne'e laos ema baibain, maibe ema professional, nebe sira nia serviso mak loroloron ne'e, sira, treinu, han, descansa no treino (…) Hau Mos bele hatene katak afinal Cross Country Agora ne'e, iha Mundo Moderno, ema extreme liu tan.
The athletes that competed in the game are professional, this is what they do, they practice, they eat, rest and practice again (…) I've also learned that after all, cross country mountain biking is far more extreme.
Cabral ended the conversation by saying that she feels honoured to represent her country for the first time in the Olympics. Even though she wasn't able to bring home a medal, she offered Timor-Leste a symbolic medal of honor.
Timor-Leste is also be competing in the Paralympics Games. It will be represented by both male and female athletes in the 400m athletic competition.
Image which shows Timor Leste's flag is from the official website of the 2016 Rio Olympics

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Dalia


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Charlatans and Mainstream Media Try to Profit From Earthquake Panic in Skopje · Global Voices
Filip Stojanovski

Skopje residents in front of their homes after the Sunday afternoon earthquake. Photo by F. Stojanovski, CC-BY.
Citizens of Macedonia's capital Skopje were literally and figuratively shaken on Sunday and Monday, September 11 and 12, by a series of earthquakes that did not cause much physical damage.
Two major tremors, first in the morning around 7 am on September 11, and in particular the second in the afternoon around 3 pm, caused panic reactions, leading to the injury of about 100 people as they tried to run from their homes. Many residents stayed outdoors during the afternoon and evening, afraid that the quakes were precursors to a major hit.
A larger earthquake never came, but a lack of clear information from authorities and mainstream media until late in the day Sunday turned social media into a rumor mill that amplified disinformation and reinforced fear.
After the 5.1 degrees earthquake in #Skopje #Macedonia today:
-supermarket shelves
-chimney fall, car destroyed pic.twitter.com/R9BrDY4nbX
— Vladimir Petreski (@VPetreski) September 11, 2016
А blatant attempt to profit from the panic came in the form of a Facebook post by “Ivan the Healer,” who presents himself as a devout Orthodox Christian man close to God and an alternative medicine practitioner with his own call-in show on local TV. Some time after midnight on September 12, hours after the tremors passed and the panic subsided, he posted a Facebook post in which he purported to predict the quakes before they happened. The post with the text “Tomorrow, there will be earthquake in Skopje 15 times” was backdated to appear it was made on September 10.
Social media users quickly pointed out the scam, which if successful would have strengthened Ivan's brand as soothsayer:
Иване далаверо! pic.twitter.com/sSqj2XcGDO
— Fiksi (@FilipFiksi) September 11, 2016
Image: Tomorrow, there will be earthquake in Skopje 15 times
Tweet: Ivan you swindler!
Ivan removed the debunked post by Monday noontime.
Other citizens called out media outlets that were capitalizing on the panic to get more clicks. For instance, Sitel, the most popular TV station with a national broadcasting license (and the recipient of millions of euros of taxpayers money through government advertising or other subsidies), published an article about quake-related fatalities on September 11 about two hours after the first big tremor with the title “5.7 magnitude earthquake: 13 dead and 203 injured.”
The information was true, but the title — the most visible part on social media and news aggregates — omitted the vital fact that the particular quake in question took place in Bukoba, Tanzania, not Skopje, Macedonia. The stressed and shocked reader would find that out only after clicking the link and reading the body of the text.
Кога сме кај ширење параноја #шител се цареви крв им ебам скапана pic.twitter.com/7wAm8eSsFH
— Мада Фака (@h3xman) September 11, 2016
Regarding spreading paranoia, Shit-el are undisputed masters! F**k their rotten blood!
Skopje citizens are particularly nervous about earthquakes already due to a major earthquake in 1963 that leveled the city, killing 1,070 people.
When it was part of the now defunct Yugoslavia, Macedonia had a system in place for training citizens how to deal with emergencies, and the international solidarity effort to rebuild the city after the 1963 quake included introducing and enforcing the highest standards of construction. But much of that system has been dismantled during Macedonia's 25 years of independence as a sort of remnant of communism, and endemic corruption has enabled an “urbanistic mafia” (an illegal collusion between local government and crony developers) to build in areas deemed unsafe by seismologists or without adherence to safety standards.
This has left many residents with only a foggy idea of what to do in case of an emergency.
Before the recent tremors, Skopje citizens were already anxious too because of the inadequate response by authorities and mainstream media to the recent flooding of several suburbs in August, which claimed over 22 lives. It took more almost half a day for some TV stations, including the public broadcasting service, to even report on the flooding that was taking place a few kilometers from their offices.
A second quake. Scary but no damage to buildings around our part of Skopje. https://t.co/kkajuGoahf
— PaulEdwardsFCO (@PaulEdwards11) September 11, 2016
During Sunday evening, in an attempt to soothe the people who still felt claustrophobic indoors, an impromptu activist group organized an open air cinema projection in the city park.
After today's series of earthquakes home doesn't feel safe in #Skopje :/#Macedonia #earthquake #земјотрес #скопје pic.twitter.com/O87vci5E1l
— Lazar Simeonov (@LazSim) September 11, 2016
Several similar quakes also took place on Monday, with similar effect. A bigger tremor with a magnitude of 4.0 hit just before 8 pm, contributing to the psychological weariness resulting from uncertainty.

author: Filip Stojanovski


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Filipinos Find Ingenious Ways to Build Their Own Basketball Hoops · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Photo by Richard Daniels, used with permission
Curious to learn about the popularity of basketball in the Philippines, Richard Daniels has spent the past five years taking photographs of basketball hoops in the country’s rural areas.
Basketball is the most popular sports in the Philippines. Despite the lack of sports facilities in the country, Filipinos have found ingenious ways to build basketball hoops in various odd spaces such as abandoned properties and streets.
Asked what inspired him to start this documentation project, Daniels told Global Voices that he was intrigued by the popularity of basketball in the Philippines, especially in rural areas:
As an Englishman and a football (soccer) fan I was always slightly confused as to why basketball was so popular here as opposed to football, which is massive throughout the rest of the world. My photo essay started off as a way to find out more about Filipino’s love of basketball through literally shooting hoops. I was also more interested in the aesthetic and the culture behind the grassroots courts and hoops of the poorer villages rather than the generic gymnasium courts in the more suburban areas.
Photo by Richard Daniels, used with permission
Daniels said he was amazed to see how basketball is played by almost everybody in rural communities:
I hope that anyone who sees my project will be able to understand just how passionate the country is about basketball and how deeply entrenched the sport is in the local culture. I've seen a lot of hoops over the course of the project but it still amazes me to see these makeshift courts everywhere and anywhere and people of all ages playing – sometimes in only flip flops.
Daniels’ favorite photo was taken while some farmers were clearing out a land for planting:
My favorite image is the basketball court that resembles something out of the Mad Max Movies. The structure looks like it’s made from bones! Also when I took the shot the fields were on fire as the farmers where clearing the land. I think it's called slash and burn farming. That was a pretty epic shot.
Photo by Richard Daniels, used with permission
Daniels hopes to find more interesting photos of basketball hoops in other parts of the country. Meanwhile, below are some of the photos by Daniels that reflect the tenacity and creativity of Filipinos who eagerly want to play basketball.
Photo by Richard Daniels, used with permission
Photo by Richard Daniels, used with permission
Photo by Richard Daniels, used with permission
Photo by Richard Daniels, used with permission
Photo by Richard Daniels, used with permission
Photo by Richard Daniels, used with permission

author: Mong Palatino


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How Fake Stories Reported in Russia’s News Media Regularly Fool Everyone · Global Voices
Alexey Kovalev

“Opening the Box,” David Kynaston. Edited by Kevin Rothrock.
This story was originally written in Russian and published on the website Noodleremover.news. The English translation below was written by RuNet Echo's Kevin Rothrock.
Just last month, something all too typical happened in Russia's news media: a perfect example of where fake news stories originate, how they’re spread, who is responsible, and who believes them.
On August 25, the news agency Interfax reported the following story:
США-ТРАМП-ПАРАЛИМПИАДА-РОССИЯ
25.08.2016 18:50:40 MSK
НОВОСТИ ИНТЕРФАКСА
Трамп осудил решение о недопуске российских паралимпийцев до Игр в Рио — СМИ
Москва. 25 августа. ИНТЕРФАКС — Кандидат в президенты США от Республиканской партии Дональд Трамп подверг критике решения Международного паралимпийского комитета (МПК) по недопуску российских спортсменов на Паралимпиаду-2016 в Рио-де-Жанейро и Спортивного арбитражного суда (CAS), отклонившего апелляцию Паралимпийского комитета России. “Решение о недопуске российских паралимпийцев принимали полные кретины, которые и есть настоящие инвалиды. Как объяснить то, что спортсмены из России, где были скандалы с применением допинга, выступали на Олимпиаде в Рио, а все российские паралимпийцы, с которыми не было допинговых скандалов, выступать не будут? Вымещать свою никчемность на сильных душой и телом людях с ограниченными возможностями из России — это ли не подлость и низость?”, — приводит слова Трампа Би-Би-Си.
USA-TRUMP-PARALYMPICS-RUSSIA
August 25, 2016, 6:50 p.m., Moscow time
Interfax News
Trump condemns the decision to bar Russian Paralympic athletes from Rio Games—reported
Moscow. August 25. INTERFAX. US presidential candidate Donald Trump has criticized the International Paralympic Committee’s decision to bar Russian athletes from the 2016 Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro and the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s rejection of an appeal by Russia’s Paralympic Committee. “The decision to bar Russian Paralympics athletes was made by complete retards. These people are the real cripples. How do you explain the fact that athletes from Russia, where there was a doping scandal, competed in the Rio Olympics, but Russia’s Paralympics athletes (who weren’t involved in any doping scandals) won’t be competing? Venting your own uselessness on people from Russia with strong spirits and disabled bodies—how is this not dirty and underhanded?” the BBC quoted Trump saying.
The story immediately jumped to the top of the Yandex Novosti news-aggregator.
Reports about Trump's fictional remarks spread far and wide in Russia's news media. Image: Yandex Novosti
It would be easier to list the media outlets that didn’t report the story above about Trump defending Russia’s Paralympics athletes. To the credit of my former colleagues, this was RIA Novosti and RT (Russia Today).
But here’s the catch: Donald Trump never said anything like what was reported, and the BBC never quoted him saying anything of the sort. This revelation was made by Danila Galperovich, a correspondent at Voice of America, who called Interfax’s production editor, and soon thereafter Interfax sent out a newswire alert reading:
АННУЛИРОВАНИЕ
Просьба аннулировать сообщение со слаг-лайном США-ТРАМП-ПАРАЛИМПИАДА-РОССИЯ и заголовком “Трамп осудил решение о недопуске российских паралимпийцев до Игр в Рио — СМИ”, вышедшее на ленту в 18:50:40 МСК как выпущенное ошибочно. Приносим извинения подписчикам.
RETRACTION: Please retract the slug USA-TRUMP-PARALYMPICS-RUSSIA with the headline “Trump condemns the decision to bar Russian Paralympic athletes from Rio Games—reports,” which appeared by mistake on Interfax’s newswire at 6:50 p.m. on August 25, 2016. We apologize to our subscribers.
People already know this much about the story. People have written about this error. Now I’ll get to the part that I noticed on my own. The original source of this fake story is a website that I know all too well. The alleged quote by Donald Trump standing up for Russia’s Paralympic athletes first appeared on the website Oppps.ru (“Optimist”)—one of Noodleremover’s longtime favorites.
This is hardly the first time that a fake news story from the website “Optimist” has made its way to a “real” news outlet. I’ve written about this many times before. Every time, the method is exactly the same, and every time, unfortunately, it works: Oppps.ru writes up some “news” with some colorful quote by a famous figure and always cites a well-known media outlet (often a foreign publication). Usually it’s the BBC (sometimes it’s Deutsche Welle), and the author of these fake news stories is usually listed as the real Moscow correspondent for these news agencies, to add extra plausibility.
The pseudo-news story first appears on some backwater or specialized website, and then from there it makes its way to the “big” outlets. What we get is a multi-layered chain of legitimization of fake news: a note published on an unknown website gets picked up by a slightly better-known outlet, and from there it reaches the national media, or—“better” still—it gets picked up by a news wire service. And once a news story appears in the feeds of Interfax, TASS, or RIA, it’s already been made the truth by default. Few people get it in their head to crosscheck the largest news agencies in the country. That is how an obviously fake story becomes the top news on a website like the independent radio station Echo of Moscow. Or even on the independent newspaper Vedomosti.
Then, of course, somebody gets it into their head actually to look at the real website of the foreign media outlet, and they find out that the public figure never said anything like what was reported, and maybe they didn’t even give an interview to the publication in the first place.
At about this point, Oppps.ru deletes the original “news story” from its website, and so the original source is lost. But I happen to know where to look. The handwriting here is all too distinctive. And of course here it is:
Image: Oppps.ru
I specially archived this for the edification of newsroom staff everywhere: http://archive.is/zVkN7 (I apologize for using the website archive.is, which is banned in Russia. Russia’s state censor, Roskomnadzor, can go burn in hell—just open the link in Tor or use an anonymizer.)
After this, someone at the publications that reprinted the fake “news” then either quietly deletes the story, or adds a retraction to the end (and the most honest outlets even apologize to their readers, as did Interfax and Vedomosti). But the least squeamish media outlets don’t even break a sweat: why delete the story, if the news is good and it brings in traffic? Vesti still has the story up to this day, without so much as a correction or even a note to readers. “Man of the Hour” (Vinovnik torzhestva”)—the website of the newspaper “Soviet Sports,” which was apparently the first to republish the news from Oppps.ru—also didn’t even bother to take down the story. Still today, weeks later, the “news” about a fake quote in a nonexistent story by the BBC is still there on the website. This bothers neither Yaroslav Karamov, who wrote the story, nor his managers. Apologizing to their readers for publishing fake news? It’s below them.
Nobody handled this better than Rossiyskaya Gazeta, which of course was one of the first media outlets to republish the fake. Online, they’ve got a story with the headline “Trump’s Criticism of the Paralympic Committee MIGHT Be Fabricated.” Well I’ll be damned! It might be fabricated—and it might not!
At this point, let me share a few insights I can offer from experience in this industry. Behind this one little Interfax story with a headline that now reads “RETRACTED,” there’s a whole professional drama that we don’t see. The issue here is that the story didn’t appear just anywhere, but on the Terminal—a program that grants live newswire service not to readers, but to subscribers (other media outlets that pay the news agency to get their correspondents’ reports first). Later, still other media outlets repackage the agencies’ reports, adding their own photographs, expert commentary, and so on. And there is a fierce competition between the major news agencies to get the most “breaking” news to their subscribers first. Because even if there are 100 different media outlets accredited at some important press conference, afterwards everyone will still be citing the one news agency that’s first to publish on the Terminal. This is why, when I worked at RIA, there was a special assistant who measured how many seconds RIA was ahead of Interfax and TASS, when it came to reporting different news stories. The newsroom granted prizes for the most outstanding efficiency.
It wasn’t all prizes, of course. The most terrible sin for a newsman at a news agency is writing the kind of story that has to be retracted later. A news agency is the main source of information not so much for its readers, but for other publications. So if a fake story finds its way to the Terminal, it’s instantly transmitted across the entire media, and everyone cites your news agency. That’s why, at RIA, the penalty for publishing a story that needed to be retracted was 10,000 rubles (around 150 US dollars). (That and the public shame, of course.) I don’t know how they do it at Interfax, but I suspect that somebody in the newsroom over there had a very bad day, after the Trump story.
В интервью радиостанции «Говорит Москва» сотрудник агентства сообщил, что в «Интерфаксе» сожалеют о сложившейся ситуации.
«”Интерфакс” приносит извинения своим подписчикам», — сказал он.
Собеседник радиостанции также добавил, что опубликовавшего новость ожидает суровое наказание.
«Я поговорил в BBC, они сказали, что у них не было. И мы тут же ликвидировали всё это. Я ещё пока не разбирался. Я разберусь и накажу так, что людям будет плохо», — заключил он.
Interfax apologizes for the fake news story concerning Trump’s remarks about the Paralympics
In an interview with the radio station Govorit Moskva, a representative of the news agency said that Interfax regrets the recent incident. “Interfax apologizes to its subscribers,” he said, adding that a severe punishment awaited the person responsible for publishing story.
“I spoke to the BBC, and they told me that they never had this story [about Trump]. And we immediately retracted the whole thing. I still haven’t sorted everything out, but—once I do—I’ll punish those responsible in ways they won’t soon forget,” he said.
And rightly so. It’s understood that the staff in the operations division of one of Russia’s biggest news agencies should write stories faster than the rest of the country’s journalists, but fact-checking whether Trump actually gave an interview to the BBC would have literally taken just an extra one or two seconds. The same goes for reports that Mikhail Gorbachev died, or that Ksenia Sobchak was ejected from Putin’s press conference in a state of narcotic intoxication. Or that Maria Gaidar is pregnant with Mikhail Saakashvili’s child.
I’m not making this stuff up. These are all “news” stories from Oppps.ru that, in one form or another, have made it to the headlines of “real” news agencies. At first glance, Oppps.ru is a typical content-farm—a garbage website built on WordPress that sucks content from other sites and skims a little traffic for itself from people who randomly visit the site while surfing the Web for the perfect casserole recipe. But one thing separates Oppps.ru from thousands of other websites like it: its owner has what you might call a mission. And its owner has a very good understanding of the modern media’s methods, and the psychology of how news today is consumed. Among hundreds of posts like “The Best Recipe for Meatballs” and “Faina Ranevskaya’s Top Ten Aphorisms,” he plants masterfully crafted phony news, which then makes its way to the real news media—all the way to the national networks.
I found the person who owns Oppps.ru, and I had a curious conversation with him. He tried to convince me that this whole scheme isn’t his invention, and that he is only copying content from other websites.
Алексей: Скажите, а вы сами новости пишете? У вас прямо редакция с сотрудниками?
Меня очень интересует ваша технология написания новостей, которые потом попадают в самые разные издания, вплоть до федеральных.
—: Все новости копипаст. Часть с украинского сегмента, часть с российского. Половина либерального, половина патриотичесткого.
Алексей: Но есть какое-то количество новостей, которые появляются именно у вас.
По одной и той же схеме: берется известный ньюсмейкер, берется западное или российское издание, настоящее имя корреспондента и так далее.
Про Ксению Собчак и Соломина с Эха, например.
—: Есть такое. Тут используется слабость поисковых систем. Дело в том, если делатъ новость по комментариям на каких-либо сайтах, то выводится сайт, при том, что сам комментарий был намного раньше.
Схема в основном украинская придумка. Они так и делают.
Alexey: Tell me, do you write your own news stories? Do you have an actual newsroom with staff? I’m interested in how exactly you write news stories that then make their way to different publications, all the way to the national media.
—: All the stories are copy-pasted. Part is from the Ukrainian Web, and part is from the Russian. Half is from the liberal side, and the other half is from the patriotic side.
Alexey: But there is a certain number of news stories that appear first on your website. They’re written according to the same format: you take a well-known newsmaker, a Western or Russian publication, the real name of a correspondent, and so on. Like with Ksenia Sobchak and Echo of Moscow’s [Alexey] Solomin, for example.
—: There are stories like that. Here we’re exploiting a weakness in the search engines. If you write stories [claiming] comments from certain websites, then those websites display [in the search results], but our story is buried earlier on. This scheme is based on a Ukrainian gimmick. That’s how they do it.
This didn’t surprise me because the chain of all the fake news stories always came to an end at Oppps.ru—meaning that this site is mostly likely writing all these fake stories itself. But why?
—: Мне кажется каждый человек в отдельности должен самостоятельно научится думать и анализировать, а не верить всему тому, что пишут в тырнетах.
Алексей: Тут я с вами на 100% согласен.
Прям вот пожимаю обе руки
—: Поэтому нужно и проверять и читать 2 стороны
И читать посередине
Вообщем так))
Фейковые новости, как нам кажется нужны именно для того, чтобы человек не разучился думать самостоятельно.
Алексей: Я с вами полностью согласен в целях, но не уверен, что разделяю средства.
Информационного мусора сейчас более чем достаточно.
—: Ведущие СМИ мира разделяют.
На свете еще не родилась та газета или журнал, где 100% писали бы правду…
—: I think each individual should learn independently to think and analyze for themselves, and not believe everything they read on the internets [sic].
Alexey: Here I agree with you 100 percent. I’m giving you two thumbs up.
—: That’s why you need to check and read two sides [to every story], and read in-between. That’s basically it. :) :) We think fake news is necessary precisely so that people don’t forget how to think for themselves.
Alexey: I agree completely with you about goals, but I’m not sure I can support the means. All the garbage in today’s information sphere is more than enough.
—: The world’s leading mass media outlets are divisive. Nowhere in the world will you find a newspaper or a magazine where they write the truth 100% of the time.
So the owner of a website that commercially produces fake news is actually an educator promoting media literacy. I can’t say, however, that he’s been terribly effective in meeting his stated goals: time and time again the mass media and its readers have fallen for his fake news stories. Critically assessing sources is that key skill still undeveloped in both editors and readers, as the Interfax case demonstrates. And lots of readers are still raging in comments sections, saying—hey—it turns out Trump actually does support us.
Noodleremover thanks Danila Galperovich and Vasily Gatov for their help writing this text.

author: Alexey Kovalev


text:
How Beijing Manipulates Legislative Elections in Hong Kong · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Wong Kwok Hing, a pro-China Lawmaker lost his seat in the 2016 election. Photo from Wong's Facebook via HKFP.
They say the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and for Beijing authorities at the moment, nothing could be truer.
Voters, who turned out in record numbers for Hong Kong’s recent legislative election, have ruined the mainland’s hope of stripping Hong Kong’s pan-democrats of their important veto power in the Legislative Council.
But there are plenty of other indications that ‘One Country, Two Systems’ understanding that allows Hong Kong significant autonomy from China is under attack.
The election results came as something of a surprise even to pan-democrats themselves, who were pessimistic ahead of the vote. They were up against the Hong Kong mainstream media’s hostile attitude toward political opposition candidates, and the pro-Beijing camp was doing all they could to engineer the election.
But the pan-democrats – a loose coalition of liberal-minded politicians who advocate democracy in Hong Kong over Chinese-style communism – still managed to win a majority 19 of the 35 seats. By all accounts, it was a small miracle.
Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China, which means it has the freedom to run many of its own affairs. In recent years, however, the mainland has made moves to hobble this autonomy and exert more influence there.
Despite the fact that presently 35 of 70 Hong Kong legislators are chosen directly by the people — the other half are selected by special interest groups representing business, religion, etc. — Beijing has found numerous ways to play within the system and influence voting outcomes.
One reason the pan-democrats experienced the success they did has was related to the high turnout – 58%. Thanks to the city’s proportional representation electoral system, if the turnout rate had been just four points lower – the same as the 2012 election turnout rate – Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing camp could have won at least 19 seats.
Hong Kong legislators are elected using the largest remainder method, which means the number of seats that each party wins depends on the number of total votes cast, the number of votes they personally receive, and the number of seats up for grabs.
For example, say 100 votes are cast in an election and there are 10 seats in contest. Party A gets 62 votes, Party B gets 28 and Party C gets 10. To figure out the number of seats each gets, divide each party’s total votes by the number of seats available (10):
From this calculation, it is determined that Party A gets 6 seats, Party B gets 2 seats, and Party C gets 1 seat.
But 6 + 2 + 1 = 9, so who gets the remaining seat?
That’s where the remainder comes in. Whoever has the highest fractional remainder gets the extra seat, which in this case is Party B with 0.8. So in the end, Party A gets 6 seats, Party B gets 3 seats, and Party C gets 1 seat.
The system can favor parties and independent candidates with fewer votes. This is part of why in Hong Kong’s Western New Territories, for example, the pro-China camp managed to gain five seats with 266,351 votes, while the pan-democrats only won four seats with 330,107 votes.
The pan-democrats received more than 55 percent of the vote in this region, but had to share it among nine candidates, whereas the pro-China votes were only split between five candidates.
The China Liaison Office, which represents the mainland in Hong Kong, coordinates the pro-China camp of politicians up for election in Hong Kong, and clearly knows how to maximize the number of winners by distributing candidates throughout the electoral districts.
The Liaison Office divides the pro-China camp candidates into different lists, but keeps the number of lists low in order to avoid internal competition from harming the pro-Beijing cause. The pan-democrats are less united, and thus less effective.
The pro-China camp's strategy is so efficient that in six constituencies, it made off with 60 percent of the seats despite receiving only 45 percent of the vote.
Pro-China candidates who want to run for the Legislative Council also have to get the Liaison Office’s blessing if they want their support in the campaign.
But an affinity for Beijing alone isn’t enough. In an example of how the Office plays chess with the electoral system, Hau Chi-keung was forced to leave his community district in the Western New Territories to compete for a seat in the Eastern New Territories.
And Ken Chow, a candidate supported by the pro-China Liberal Party, was forced to drop his campaign and leave Hong Kong two weeks before election day because members of his family in mainland China were threatened, allegedly by “powerful forces.”
It is commonly believed that Chow was pushed aside to make way for Junius Ho Kwan-yiu, a candidate with the Liaison Office’s full approval. Ho eventually won the last seat in the Western New Territories constituency with only 35,657 votes and publicly thanked the Liaison Office for its support.
Infighting among the pan-democrats plays into Beijing's hand. Radical factions within the pan-democrat camp appear intent on smearing moderates, for instance. These divisions are so visible that more and more people are buying into a conspiracy theory that the extreme elements are actually agents planted by the Liaison Office to disrupt the opposition.
This year, some pan-democrat supporters launched a campaign against suspected instigators on social media. And Benny Tai, who was a leader of the Occupy Central protests in 2014 which called for free and fair elections in Hong Kong, launched an interactive poll called “Votsonar” on messaging service Telegram to coordinate strategic voting among pan-democrat supporters.
Moreover, some candidates from the pan-democratic camp, upon realising that they were not popular enough to win the election, decided to stop their campaign two days before the election in order to transfer their votes to other pro-democracy candidates.
The distribution of pro-China (red) and pan-democrat district council seats in 2015. Via Wikipedia.
The fact that the Liaison Office can more or less evenly distribute votes among its blessed candidates is because it knows in detail how many votes they have and where their votes come from. Exactly how?
First of all, the Liaison Office mobilises votes via district councils. Different from the Legislative Council election, the district council election adopts a single non-transferable vote system.
Hong Kong is divided into 431 geographical districts with the same number of seats. Since the electoral districts are very small, with no more than several thousand voters each, it is very easy to manipulate the election. In the 2015 district council election, the pro-China candidates managed to get 298 seats with 788,389 votes.
Participants of the district council election will get a full voters list with their household addresses. If the party has enough resources, they can organise free festival meals and offer free gifts with party candidates’ stickers on them throughout the year. There is a local term for such bribery called “snake soup, vegan buffet, moon cakes and sticky rice dumping” — all of these are local festival seasonal foods.
Free spring festival sticky rice cake with party's sticker. Image via Cantonese Forum.
Nevertheless, the election turnout rate of the district council is usually lower than the legislative council, and some of their supporters may swing towards democrats. So, the Liaison Office consolidates support and coordinates votes through a network of pro-China civil organisations, including the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, which has 189 affiliates and 62 associated trade union with over 390,000 members in Hong Kong, Kinship Associations, and China-affiliated business sectors.
Reportedly, Chinese state-owned firms handed out instructions to staff detailing who to vote for ahead of the legislative election. Members of pro-China worker unions and kinship associations repeatedly received phone calls with the same instructions.
The Liaison Office did manage to increase the number of votes in support of pro-China candidates in the 2016 legislative elections. As reflected in the voting result of District Council (Second) Functional Constituency, pro-China votes had increased by 78,726, from 723,071 in 2012 to 801,797 in 2016, outnumbering the votes pan-democrats had in 2012 by about 300.
Yet pan-democrats managed to get a lot more votes in 2016. The total number of pan-democrat votes was 801,504 in 2012, while in 2016 it increased by 306,667 — 1,108,171 votes in total.
Though the election results did not change the fact that the pro-China camp is in power, opposition voters are happy that they’ve collectively ruined Beijing’s calculated political plan. The Liaison Office must now face up to the awkward truth that its increased efforts at electoral engineering may actually be boosting turnout that strengthens the pan-democrat cause, even as the pan-democrats themselves are in disarray.
The more the mainland tightens its grip, the greater resistance it encounters from pro-democracy Hong Kongers.

author: Oiwan Lam


text:
Many See Ethnicity-Based Discrimination in Nepali Ministry’s Ban on Using an Imported Holy Scarf · Global Voices
Sanjib Chaudhary

Tibetan ladies chatting while folding a khatag (khada), mother with child, holding incense, a mala, monks, Sakya Lamdre, Tharlam Courtyard, Nepal. Image from Flickr by Wonderlane. CC BY 2.0
While the ‘burkini ban’ in parts of France created a furore around the world, Nepal's tourism ministry caused uproar among the country's indigenous community when it issued a directive banning the use of foreign-made khada, which is a scarf considered to be holy.
Khada is a traditional ceremonial scarf with its origins in Tibet, and it symbolizes purity and compassion. It is used widely in Nepal to honour people at special occasions and ceremonies, but has its roots among the Sherpa community, an indigenous people from the northern part of Nepal.
At the end of August, the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation announced it had banned its subordinate offices from using imported khada. The ministry's secretary, Prem Kumar Rai, said millions of rupees were spent in importing khada and it was causing environment pollution.
However, the ministry has since asked that officers not implement the directive after it led to a huge hue and cry in Nepal.
To understand the uproar, you have to understand Nepal's caste system — the traditional hierarchy of social groups. ‘Bahun’ or Brahmin are at the top, and most of the political parties are led and run by Bahuns. Khas are also high in the hierarchy. The many groups below them, including Sherpa, have historically been discriminated against and marginalised. Through this lens, restrictions ordered by a government led by a Bahun majority on a sacred Sherpa garment was seen as more maltreatment of a caste placed lower in the hierarchy.
Rabin Man Shakya blogged about the khada ban:
Today, Nepal is a secular country. This kind of irrational and not logical demands about ban on Khadas were not brought up even when Nepal was a Hindu Kingdom. The Bahunbadi parties and their stalwarts have forgotten that Nepal is a multi-linguistic, multi-cultural and multi-ethnic country.
If the Bahuns and Khas people are allowed to freely use imported dhotis, janai, Teej sarees and lots of other imported things, why should there be any ban only on the Khada. The intention is very clear.
I totally agree if the ban is imposed on all unnecessary imported goods, but taking a target only on Khada is outrageous and unacceptable.
Dhoti is a white wraparound worn by men; janai is a sacred thread worn by Bahun and Khas people; Teej is a festival celebrated by women from Bahun and Khas communities; and saree or sari is a type of dress worn by women in South Asia.
Twitter user @Tutulke wrote:
हिजो : विदेशी खादा प्रयोगमा रोक लगाउने मन्त्रालयको निर्णय
आज : उक्त निर्णय कार्यान्वयन नगर्न मन्त्रीको आदेश
हाक्क थुक्क सर्कारका मन्त्री !
— टुटुल्के™ (@Tutulke) August 30, 2016
Yesterday: Ministry’s decision to ban the use of foreign khada.
Today: Minister’s order not to implement the decision. Spit on the government’s minister.
Freelance writer Dil Nisani Magar tweeted:
बिदेशबाट दाल, चिनी, चामल, अण्डा, मासु ल्याएर खाँदा केहि नहुने तर बुद्ध धर्मको पवित्र चिज ‘खादा’ ल्याउँदा चाहिँ घाटा भयो रे नश्लबादीहरूलाई ।
— Dil Nisani Magar (@dil_nisani) August 29, 2016
Nothing happens while importing lentils, sugar, rice, eggs and meat for consumption but importing khadas, a sacred material in Buddhism, led to loss for the racists.
आखिरीमा नश्लबादीहरुले खादा लगाउन नि नदिने भए । खादा शेर्पा समुदायको पवित्र चिज हो जस्तो कि, ब्रमाहणको लागी तुलसि ।
— Dil Nisani Magar (@dil_nisani) August 29, 2016
In the end, the racists won’t allow khadas to be worn. Khada is a sacred material for the Sherpa community like basil is for Brahmin.
Another Twitter user wrote:
How would Hindus feel if putting tika on forehead is banned? That's equivalent to banning khada for us. Next on ban list: Momo and Thukpa!!!
— Karsang Sherpa (@KarsangS) August 29, 2016
Momo is a dumpling, and Thukpa is a popular soup in Nepal.
Some opined that people were misunderstanding the scope of the decision:
There is no BAN on import of Khada. Tourism Min ordered its subordinate offices not2use foreign made Khada.@Lhamo_Y pic.twitter.com/QELh82i0Jc
— हामी नेपाली (@NEPALPOLiCY2016) August 31, 2016
While others supported the ministry's directive ordering not to use imported khadas:
१पटक प्रयोगमा पछि पुन प्रयोगमा ल्याउन नमिल्ने र नष्ट गर्दा पनि वातावरण प्रदुषित हुने खादाको प्रयोग रोक्न निर्देशन दिएको छ रे
खुसि लाग्यो
— #RT®™© (@rajuthapa) August 29, 2016
Learned that it has been instructed to stop using khadas that cannot be reused after first use and that pollute the environment while being destroyed. I am happy.
According to writer Aahuti, many didn’t know about khada until a decade ago. After the Maoist Rebellion ended in 2006 and the peace process began in Nepal, the use of khada grew. Khada is easy to carry, cheap, easily available and works as an equivalent of a garland of flowers. Because of this, communities beyond the Sherpa started using it.
But it still remains special for the Sherpa community, and any misuse of the khada isn't taken lightly. Earlier this year, Nepali actress Suvekshya Thapa wore khadas as a bikini and drew the ire of Sherpa community. She was suspended by Nepal Cine Artistes’ Association from being involved in any film related activities for six months for hurting the sentiments of Buddhists.
Handwoven dhaka fabric in Nepal. Image from Flickr by Oxlaey.com . CC BY 2.0
The indigenous communities are indeed hurt by the directive even if it spoke only of the foreign-made khadas. They are also not buying into the government's suggestion of using khadas made of Nepali fabric called dhaka:
नाईटो ढाक्ने पछयौरी र मुख चुटेर हात पुछ्ने गलबन्दीलाई पबित्र “खादा” को उपनाम दिने गल्ती नगरौं । :)
— लोडसेडिङ (@it_sashi) August 31, 2016
Let's not commit the mistake of giving the sacred title of “khada” to a shawl covering the navel and a muffler used for drying hands after washing face.
In Nepal, people in rural areas wear mufflers, often made of dhaka, around their neck to keep warm and might use them as well as to dry their hands after washing them.
Although the minister has ordered not to implement the directive, the debate continues.
“खादा” नेपाली होइन ।
यस्लाई तुरुन्तै हटाउँ ।
त्यस्तै मोमो,आलु,मकै,सयपत्री, जिन्स,कोट,ढाका यिन्लाई पनि बाटो लगाउने काम गरौँ !
— Khanal (@Gckhanal) August 28, 2016
Khada is not Nepali. Dislodge it immediately. Likewise, momo, potato, maize, marigold, jeans, dhaka, get rid of them as well.

author: Sanjib Chaudhary


text:
The Week That Was at Global Voices Podcast: Disturbing the Peace · Global Voices
L. Finch

The Week That Was at Global Voices podcast takes a look at some of the stories that have recently come out of the Global Voices newsroom. This week, we speak to former RuNet Echo co-editor Tanya Lokot and current RuNet Echo co-editor Isaac Webb about the recent flare-up of tensions between Ukraine and Russia and what Ukrainians think about the situation.
We also tell you stories of ordinary people facing injustice in Singapore, India and Brazil. And, returning to Ukraine, we hear a dispatch from Global Voices executive director Ivan Sigal about the uncomfortable peace in one Ukrainian city not far from the front lines of war.
Many thanks to Raphael Tsavkko Garcia, Rezwan, Mong Palatino and all our authors, translators and editors who helped make this episode possible.
In this episode, we featured Creative Commons licensed music from the Free Music Archive, including Please Listen Carefully by Jahzzar (CC BY-SA 4.0); In The Darkness (No Voices) by VYVCH (CC BY-NC 4.0); Your Pulse by Little Glass Men (CC BY 4.0); Long White Cloud by krackatoa (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US); Golden by Little Glass Men (CC BY 4.0); Waking Stars by Kai Engel (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0); and Lovely, Lonely (Instrumental) by YEYEY (CC BY-NC 3.0).
The feature photo in this story is by Alice V/Democratize. Used with permission.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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author: L. Finch


text:
Chinese Police Violently Crack Down on Protests Against an Elected Village Leader’s Imprisonment · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

A political cartoon by Badiucao devoted to Wukan villagers who have been fighting for years to defend their lands.
Police unleashed rubber bullets and tear gas against protesters in Wuhan, a fishing village in the southeast Chinese province of Guangdong, who have been rallying for three months against the arrest and recent sentencing of elected village chief Lin Zuluan.
Lin was arrested on June 18 while he was planning a protest outside Shanwei municipality government against land seizures that had taken place in Wuhan. He was convicted of corruption and sentenced to 37 months in prison on September 8.
Villagers believe Lin was forced into confessing that he took a bribe and have been protesting for three months against his arrest and imprisonment. To stamp out any further mobilization, around 2,000 armed police locked down the village before dawn on September 13 and broke into village leaders’ homes to arrest them. Villagers fought back, and that's when police shot rubber bullets and tear gas at them, resulting in violent clashes.
Dramatic video of standoff in Wukan widely shared on WeChat today. pic.twitter.com/fsDW7IJS9v
— Patrick Boehler 包蟠睿 (@mrbaopanrui) September 13, 2016
A few dozen villagers were injured by the rubber bullets. The police officially arrested 13 villagers, claiming that they were inciting protests. Security camera footage circulated on Twitter by @beidaijin captured how police forced their way into one villager’s home in the dark:
#乌坎 今日～新闻视频（一） pic.twitter.com/nAezEUdWnU
— 贝带劲 (@beidaijin) September 13, 2016
During the raid, women and school children were temporarily detained with their hands bound. Some of them were injured (video via @beidaijin):
#乌坎 村民被綁著手 pic.twitter.com/aHhb9pcaav
— 贝带劲 (@beidaijin) September 13, 2016
The police crackdown wasn't exactly a surprise. Before the local court issued Lin’s sentence, police from Lufeng, the county-level city where Wuhan is located, had notified the villagers to stop all their protests before September 10, otherwise, they would be held legally responsible of their actions.
But the villagers vowed that they would continue protesting against Lin’s jailing. The photos below show some villagers were still confronting police even after they launched their raid. One of the villagers, an old man, sat down in front of a line of armed police officers and placed a gas container besides him as a warning statement:
#wukan #乌坎 pic.twitter.com/A7OC6Eb7AL
— wukan (@wukanwukan11) September 13, 2016
The fishing village is home to 13,000 people and first caught the world’s attention in December 2011 after a series of protests against corruption and land seizures. The villagers seized a government building, and the provincial government stepped in to investigate, later settling the dispute by allowing the villagers to re-elect their village officials. Lin was elected as the village head in March 2012. The peaceful resolution to local conflicts through a democratic process has been dubbed the Wukan Model by local and international media.
But the problem of seizures of village land without prior approval from the village government and villagers remains unsettled since the corruption is coming from upper-level town and county authorities. When a developer backed by the Donghai town government started a 170,000-square-meter property development project on Wuhan farmland without a green-light from the village committee, villagers hoped the provincial authorities would step in again. They hence planned to visit the Shanwei city government with their petition in June. Lin was arrested just two days before the planned protest.
Local authorities have given it their all to prevent the protests from getting too much attention. Area media outlets were instructed not to cover the story; photos and posts about the crackdown were labelled as rumors and quickly deleted from social media platforms quickly; Lufeng police made an official statement on popular microblogging site Weibo that they had restored pubic order in the village; and foreign journalists weren't allowed to enter nearby Lufeng:
#Chinese police stopping all foreign journalists from getting anywhere near #Wukan We were ordered to leave Even nearby Lufeng is no go zone
— Stephen McDonell (@StephenMcDonell) September 13, 2016
With the hope of drawing more international attention to what happened in Wukan, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China has called for a protest outside China’s representative authority in the special administrative region of Hong Kong — the Liaison Office of the Chinese Central Government — against the violent crackdown:
.@HKAA1989 to organize protest on Wednesday demanding release of arrested villagers in #Wukan #乌坎 and #LinZhuluan pic.twitter.com/8524TYeRan
— Cherie Chan 陳卓妍 (@cheriechancy) September 13, 2016


text:
‘El Hombrecito’ Breathes Musical Life Into Literature in the Dominican Republic · Global Voices
Natali Herrera Pacheco

The group El Hombrecito is made up of Frank Báez, Homero Pumarol, Ángel Rosario, Fernando J. Soriano, Wilson López, Vadir González and Jaime Guerra, and combines music, poetry and visual arts in their performances.
This is an edited version of a story originally published in Spanish.
In 1979, Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier used Frenchman François Rabelais’ expression ‘sound-filled islands’ when referring to the Caribbean islands. According to Carpentier:
Todo suena en las Antillas, todo es sonido.
Everything makes a sound in the Antilles; there is noise everywhere.
If everything indeed makes a sound in the Antilles, then what about the silent objects we call books? Caribbean literature might not normally ring out on its own, but one group in the Dominican Republic is giving it a sound.
El Hombrecito (The Little Man) is made up of Frank Báez, Homero Pumarol, Ángel Rosario, Fernando J. Soriano, Wilson López, Vadir González and Jaime Guerra, and combines music, poetry and visual arts in their performances.
In an interview, El Hombrecito member Frank Báez said:
En los encuentros de poetas uno encontraba siempre a los mismos poetas. Nadie se muere por asistir a un recital a poesía pero sí por ir a un concierto. Ese es El Hombrecito, un concierto, poesía, otra experiencia.
In meetings between poets one always came across the same poets. No one is dying to attend a poetry recital in the way they are to attend a concert. That is what El Hombrecito offers: a concert of poetry, a different experience.
El Hombrecito sets the poetry to music such as bachata, rock, or experimental music, and in doing so, aims to bring the literary works of its members to a wider audience.
For example, the group has performed many of the poems published in Báez's 2014 collection, Last Night I Dreamt I Was a DJ / Anoche soñé que era un DJ (Miami, US: Libros Jai-Alai. Bilingual edition). Throughout his series of poems, we find that the writer has made himself into a character, the poet, who is searching for himself everywhere. In one poem, we come across “the Marilyn Monroe from Santo Domingo,” whose drama takes place in both Quisqueya (another name given to the Dominican Republic) and New York.
The pillars of his poems rest on the subtle tension that both unites and separates Dominican culture with global pop culture, the possibility or impossibility of being a writer, and the constant problems between the Caribbean and the United States:
Llamo por teléfono a Miguel y le pregunto
si piensa que me iría mejor de DJ o como poeta
Y Miguel responde que siga como poeta.
Mi novia también dice que como poeta.
El hermano de mi novia dice que como poeta
y una jevita que hacía una fila en el cine
y que recién conocí dice que como DJ.
Frank Báez.
Anoche soñé que era un DJ.
I call Miguel on the telephone and I ask him
if he thinks I would be better as a DJ or a poet
And Miguel says I should continue as a poet.
My girlfriend also says poet.
My girlfriend's brother says poet
And a girl in the queue at the cinema
Who I have just met says DJ.
Frank Báez
Last Night I Dreamt I Was a DJ
Mi primera publicación fue a los dieciocho años
en un suplemento cultural.
Ya no recuerdo de qué iba el poema.
Lo que sí recuerdo es que la publicación fue un fracaso.
Sin leer el poema un puñado de poetas me acusaron de plagio.
Manuel Rueda comentó que debía leer a los clásicos.
Un librero me sugirió los poetas posmodernos.
La que sacaba fotocopias en la facultad
decía que me faltaba sentimiento.
Me prohibieron la entrada en todos los talleres literarios.
Los del suplemento aseguraron que desde que publicaron
mi poema las ventas del periódico bajaron.
Frank Báez.
Suplemento cultural
I was first published when I was eighteen years old
in a cultural supplement.
I do not remember what the poem was about.
What I do remember is that the publication was a failure.
Without reading the poem a group of poets accused me of plagiarism.
Manuel Rueda commented that I should read the classics.
A librarian suggested I read the post-modern poets.
The girl doing the photocopying in the department
said that I lacked all feeling.
I was banned from all the literary workshops.
The owners of the supplement claimed that since they published
my poem the sales of the newspaper had decreased.
Frank Báez
Cultural Supplement
Highlighting some of the characteristics of Latin American and Caribbean literature throughout the years in terms of its use of music, we see that writers on the one hand have referred to traditional European musical styles and genres — so-called high culture or high art, such as symphonies — and on the other to alternative and popular ones.
What music references a writer makes within their text says a lot about who their intended audience is. Puerto Rican writer Frances Aparicio argues that literature from the “boom” era (the influential Latin American literature movement from the 1960s and 1970s) is written for “an ideal bourgeois and intellectual reader, who is already familiar with European, North American and Latin American literature, whereas the “selection of musical texts” in post-boom Caribbean literature “suggests quite the opposite”:
Instead, it represents an openness or democratisation of the ideal Puerto Rican or Caribbean reader, who would recognise the texts using popular music without needing to be a scholar of university or Western culture.
This change shows the ever increasing desire to interact with popular music and with a much wider range of readers.
Music is present in the fictional work of authors such as Puerto Rican Luis Rafael Sánchez, Cubans Guillermo Cabrera Infante and Alejo Carpentier, and Dominicans Marcio Veloz Maggiolo, Pedro Antonio Valdéz or Pedro Vergés, and even in genres such as dub poetry in Jamaica and novela-bolero in Latin America and Spain.
But El Hombrecito is one example of a group taking it a step further, fusing different art forms together to reach a wider audience.
In this way, the writer becomes a performer, and their poetry can live on without the material support of the book: poems can live in the community and in a performance where literature becomes an exhibitionist experience, as Cuban writer Antonio Benítez Rojo would say.
This effort to democratise literature by making references to musical genres like bolero, bachata or guaracha has found an audience on the physical stage and online on YouTube. And the artistic work of El Hombrecito is giving another dimension to the phrase, ‘Everything makes a sound in the Antilles; there is noise everywhere,’ showing us that in the Caribbean, books can also be music.

author: Natali Herrera Pacheco


text:
Macedonia’s Amazing Disappearing Interior Minister · Global Voices
Simona Atanasova

Macedonia's Ministry of Interior's website presents Oliver Andonov's ministerial biography on the day he spent in office. His education and work experience information were left blank. (Screenshot.)
Macedonia may be one of the only countries in history to have an interior minister for just a single day. Oliver Andonov spent a marvelous few hours in office earlier this month—long enough to pose for some photographs in his office and sign a few documents, including his own resignation letter. (Andonov also managed to approve a number of vital ministerial appointments to entrench his political party ahead of snap elections.)
According to the Pržino Agreement, which ended Macedonia's long-standing political and institutional crisis, the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM) had to assign a caretaker minister to ensure that the Interior Ministry couldn't be used again for electoral fraud by ruling Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization – Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (VMRO-DPMNE).
SDSM proposed making Oliver Spasovski the new interior minister, and he was supposed to take over for Mitko Chavkov on September 2. Just before the formation of a new opposition interim government, however, the ruling party still in power instead appointed Oliver Andonov, who happens to be a vocal activist from their proxy group Civic Movement Defense of Macedonia (GDOM).
The ruling VMRO-DPMNE managed to appoint and dismiss a new minister in just two days, in the time between a meeting of leaders from the four biggest parties and the inauguration of the interim government. When it was all done, Andonov had spent less than a day in office.
Дождов ќе трае подолго отколку што траеше мандатот на Оливер Андонов.
— Дамата од Париз (@MZdravkova1) September 5, 2016
This summer shower will last longer than Oliver Andonov's mandate.
A day before the Pržino Agreement was set to take effect, Interior Minister Chavkov resigned, and the government suggested that Andonov take his place on the cabinet for the little time that remained. The parliament scheduled a debate and a vote on the proposal, and Prime Minister Emil Dimitriev welcomed the appointment, even though it was more symbolic than anything. He even praised Andonov, saying he know the activist would give the job his best.
“He is a professor at the Military Academy, and a professor at other institutions of higher education,” Dmitriev said. “From his biography, one can see that his whole professional career is in the field of defense and security. He currently works at the Military Academy. I think that this is a man who, despite not having worked at the Interior Ministry, with his educational credibility and achievements in the field of security, will give his best and professionally carry out his functions as interior minister.”
Lawmakers convened and Andonov was appointed unanimously with 65 votes. (Opposition members did not attend the session.)
The very next day, Andonov signed and submitted his resignation, and in his place came opposition representative Oliver Spasovski, who will remain minister until elections on December 11. During his tenure of a few hours, Andonov only managed to take a few pictures in the ministerial cabinet, which were subsequently published on the ministry's official website.
Oliver Andonov's resignation, submitted less than a day after he become Minister of Interior of Republic of Macedonia.
This tactical maneuver by the VMRO-DPMNE had a single purpose: to ensure that proven party loyalists would get the Interior Ministry's top positions ahead of snap parliamentary elections. Once Andonov became minister, he issued a hastily approved proposal to the government to appoint his predecessor Mitko Chavkov as director the Public Security Bureau (BJB), as well as Vladimir Atanasovski as Director of the Security and Counterintelligence Agency (UBK). Recent legislative changes prevent the new minister from firing them on his own, or appointing new people.
“With today’s changes in the Interior Ministry by the ruling party, they intend to establish and strengthen their positions before the elections within the ministry itself, which they have no intention of giving up. The Ministry of Interior is the most important institution during the elections and the government wants it to remain under the control of the MVRO-VMRO. As for Oliver Spasovski, they want him to be akin to an English Queen, or—to be more specific—they don’t want him to have any real power while he is sitting at the top,” sources told the Meta.mk news agency.
Andonov's whirlwind tour of government inspired a great deal of ridicule on social media, where Internet users marveled at the man who was interior minister for a day.
-јас сум оливер андонов, министер за внат…
*гледа на саат
-бивш министер за внатрешни работи
— НиколаСтрез (@NikolaStrez) September 1, 2016
- I am Oliver Andonov, minister of inter…
(checks his watch)
– The former minister of the interior.
#ОливерАндонов pic.twitter.com/B9pBkwS8M5
— Jofemk (@jofemk) September 2, 2016
Oliver Andonov: “It's a great honor to become a minister, I will perform my duties…
Aaaaand it's gone!
- Докторе, како да ги пијам апчињата?
– 3 пати на Оливер Андонов, пред јадење
— Сплинтер (@sinisa_goliOtok) September 3, 2016
- Doctor, how should I take these pills?
– 3 times per Oliver Andonov, before meals.
Оливер Андонов – Сакам да бидам министер па макар и еден ден.
Владата – Say no more!
— Бони Топ (@bonitopp) September 2, 2016
Oliver Andonov: “I would like to be a government minister, even for a day.”
The Government: “Say no more!”
Another Twitter user refereed to a well known government slogan, claiming they work “24/7.”
Цела влада работи 24/7, а Оливер Андонов само 24.
— Калиси #Протестира (@MajkaNaZmejovi) September 1, 2016
The whole government works 24/7, but Oliver Andonov 24 only.
Aleksandar Dojranliev referred to well-known Latin phrase “Veni, vidi, vici.”
Оливер по стапките на Цезар pic.twitter.com/aGrc7ubI1W
— Dojranliev (@ADojranliev) September 2, 2016
Oliver follows Caesar's footsteps.
“I came; I saw; I conquered”—Julus Caesar
“I came; I made a photo; I departed”—Oliver Andonov

author: Simona Atanasova


text:
The Feud Between Two Indian States Over Water Has Taken a Violent Turn · Global Voices
Subhashish Panigrahi

Map showing the path of river Cauvery (Kaveri) through the states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Image by NaanCoder via Wikimedia commons. CC BY SA 3.0
The fight between the Indian states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over how water from the Kaveri river (known locally as Cauvery) is distributed has been going on since mid-19th century. Recently, however, the situation turned violent in an unprecedented way—so much so that authorities enacted a curfew in Karnataka's capital city Bengaluru.
After a day long strike in Bengaluru on September 9, unexpected destructive protests in many parts of the city ended in two protesters dead. One was killed when police opened fire on him, and the other died after trying to escape from a police baton charge while protesting during the curfew, otherwise known as Section 144 of the Indian constitution.
Others were injured, numerous shops and dozens of vehicles were damaged or set on fire, not to mention 30 to 45 buses of Tamil Nadu registration being torched.
If you set fire to things to protest the scarcity of water, then the protest goes from agitation to irony. #Cauvery pic.twitter.com/9GFqCnnNVi
— $ir $ri Aditya Magal (@jhunjhunwala) September 12, 2016
So far, 350 protesters have been arrested on charges of violence and vandalizing property both public and private. Around 700 riot control police joined the existing 1,700 paramilitary forces by Monday the 13th. Bengaluru being the IT capital of India with almost all the Fortune 500 companies having a presence in the city, the Associated Chambers of Commerce of India has calculated the loss to be about 250 billion rupees (about 3.7 billon US dollars).
The violence arose after the Indian Supreme Court asked Karnataka to release 15,000 cubic feet per second of water from its reservoirs to Tamil Nadu daily for a period of 10 days. This, despite the fact that Karnataka has 36 thousand million cubic feet of water in its four reservoirs against 49 thousand million cubic feet stored in Tamil Nadu’s two. Amid popular protests, the Karnataka government asked the court to reconsider. The court rejected the plea, but did lower the quantity to 12,000 cubic feet per second.
Some have claimed that television and social media ignited the issue even further by spreading rumors, imagery of violence and hate speech. India's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has asked the television channels to restrain from repeated telecast of ‘provocative and inflammatory‘ news.
Such tremendous loss to life, property, business on Cauvery sharing! Will politicians & media be booked for inciting, or this too will pass?
— गीतिका (@ggiittiikkaa) September 13, 2016
Given the history of the long-standing battle between the two states and the way it is affecting so adversely the people of both states, many have attempted to analyze the reasons behind the battle. A Arun Prasath, a user on question and answer site Quora, shared some history:
The debate over sharing Cauvery water predates to the late British era (1890s), wherein the Mysore princely state and the Chennai presidency (which was under the British Raj) had to come into terms with agreeing on a divide. The contention really arose when, in 1910, both states started devising plans for construction of dams. The British arbitrated the issue and defined the respective shares of water, and as to what area of farming lands are to be supported by these. A highly controversial agreement was arrived at, in 1924, and was designed to continue for the following 50 years.
On Indian online portal the Wire, another blogger, Girish Nikam, argued that Karnataka has had an unfair deal since the 10th century:
It certainly seems like a major injustice to Karnataka, no doubt. How did this happen? The answer to this lies in history, which we cannot re-write now. It so happened that rulers like the Cholas, who ruled that part of the country, which is now Tamil Nadu and where the river flows, had the foresight to build reservoirs and check dams in the tenth century and later, to utilise the water for irrigation. On the other hand the rulers of Mysore built their first major reservoir, K.R.Sagar only in 1934.
[…] With the mix of historical advantage blended with foresight as well as what is known as prescriptive right, Tamil Nadu naturally enjoys a greater share. It cannot be anyone’s argument that those who have been enjoying the water all these years should now be denied it. But going by the 1924 agreement, Tamil Nadu’s share, which was over 80%, has now come down to 57% and Karnataka, which was using about 16%, now gets 37%.
Sunil NG offered in a Facebook post some possible solutions to this problem, mainly reducing the dependency on water. He concluded:
Though Kaveri river water problem is a challenge, it can be effectively addressed by existing technology and expertise. However the politicization of the issue posing very high difficulty to bring change in the system.Political parties of both of the states using the issue as trump card to get votes. In-order to effectively address the issue, it is very important to keep away politics in the Kaveri river water problem.
As both the states have hundreds of thousands of farmers and other ordinary people depending heavily on the water, the arguments from both sides are equally important. But the violence has only made the problem more severe and the lives of many people difficult, while leaving less space for the two states to enter into bilateral negotiations.

author: Subhashish Panigrahi


text:
Ukrainian Ministry of Information Policy Thanks Facebook Bots for Their Hard Work · Global Voices
Isaac Webb

Source: Sarah Marshall, Flickr. CC 2.0
On Tuesday, Mikhail Degtyarev, an MP from the far-right Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, sent a letter to Minister of Telecom and Mass Communications Nikolai Nikiforov requesting that action be taken against Ukrainian bots he said are unfairly targeting Russian-language Facebook users. In a tweet responding to the news, an arm of the Ukrainian government's Ministry of Information Policy seemed to thank those responsible for creating the bots.
Degtyarev, who posted his letter to Nikiforov on Live Journal, complained that bots—fake accounts created to spam news and social media websites—are reporting Russian language profiles to Facebook's “abuse team” for their commentary on political developments in Ukraine.
…многие пользователи из нашей страны все чаще подвергаются “бану” – временной или полной блокировке аккаунта. Блокировка формально осуществляется за нарушение “правил Фэйсбука”, но в большинстве случаев либо правила реально не нарушены, либо нарушены – но в записях годичной (и более) давности.
Несмотря на то, что руководство Фэйсбука уверяет, что каждый случай рассматривается персонально экспертами по конфликтам из “Abuse Team”, в реальности блокировка осуществляется по совокупности жалоб на аккаунт. Причем блокируются именно аккаунты тех людей, которые негативно отзываются о событиях на Украине и об украинской “власти”. На эти аккаунты в “Abuse Team” Фэйсбука поступают массовые жалобы от украинских “ботов”…Есть подозрение, что в этой комиссии русскоязычным сектором занимаются украинцы либо русские эмигранты, политически ангажированные определенным образом.
…many users from our country are increasingly being subjected to bans – their accounts are being temporarily or completely blocked. Accounts are formally blocked for violating the “rules of Facebook,” but in the majority of cases either the rules weren't actually broken or they were broken a year ago (or longer). Despite the fact that Facebook's leadership assures us that every case is addressed personally by conflict experts from the “Abuse Team,” in reality the block comes after complaints against the account have been lodged. What's more, people who say negative things about the events in Ukraine and Ukrainian “events” are the ones being blocked. The “Abuse Team” is receiving a large number of complaints about these accounts by Ukrainian “bots”…There is suspicion that the Russian-speaking parts of this group are Ukrainians, or Russian émigrés engaged in politics in one way or another.
In his appeal to Nikiforov, Degtyarev pointed the finger at the Ukrainian government, suggesting that “Ukrbots” are creations of the country's security service intended to stifle Russian-language debates about Ukraine. “As a result,”Degtyarev complained, “serious political discussions about Ukraine on Facebook are practically impossible to have.”
The “Ukrainian Information Forces,” a group created by the much-maligned Ukrainian Ministry of Information Policy, responded to Degtyarev's appeal with a tweet thanking those who report alleged abuse on Facebook. Though the extent of the relationship between the the ministry and the Facebook bots is unclear, Information Forces’ tweet seemed to suggest at the very least a tacit endorsement of those who created the bots.
Щира подяка всім, хто до цього причетний: https://t.co/LHRkm67GUa pic.twitter.com/IbOopzMajT
— ІнфоВійська України (@i_army_org) September 13, 2016
A big thanks to everyone involved in this.
Degtyarev's complaint is the latest in a back-and-forth between the Ukrainian and Russian governments over bot interference on social media. Both Ukrainian and Russian activists have drawn attention to “troll farms” that they say are organized by Kiev and Moscow and intended to push state government propaganda or suppress dissenting opinions. In August 2014, a group of Ukrainian activists wrote to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg complaining about the Kremlin's bot army. Facebook did not take any direct action in response. In May of 2015, President Petro Poroshenko asked that Zuckerberg open an office in Ukraine in order to better address the issue.  Zuckerberg said Facebook might do so in the future, but did not say when.
Russian activists have also complained about Facebook's abuse policies: last summer, Russian bloggers pointed out that Facebook had suspended the accounts of anyone using the word “khokhol”—a derogatory word for Ukrainians—in their status updates. They argued, like Degtyarev, that Facebook's decisions to block accounts are not based on “community standards,” as the company says, but rather on the volume of complaints.
But bots aren't only tools in the information war between Russia and Ukraine; they're also increasingly used to attack domestic enemies: just last week, the Facebook account belonging to Nazar Kholodnitsky, Ukraine's anti-corruption prosecutor, was attacked by bots and blocked. As journalist Ayder Muzhdabayev wrote on Facebook, the attacks seem to have been sponsored by Kholodnitsky's opponents inside Ukraine.
In light of Facebook's reluctance to take action against bots, the question becomes: will Kiev or Moscow take measures to tackle the problem themselves?

author: Isaac Webb


text:
Vladimir Putin and the Fake Brides of Red Square · Global Voices
Kevin Rothrock

Image: Pixabay. Edited by Kevin Rothrock.
Last weekend, Moscow spent more than half a billion rubles (almost $9 million) on a festival for the city's 869th birthday. There were massive fireworks, a parade of heavy municipal equipment (featuring more street-cleaning vehicles than you ever wanted to see), and a thousand other pieces of eye candy laid out by officials. President Vladimir Putin, who attended the main event at Red Square on Saturday, September 10, was both an observer and a part of the show.
Moscow's longevity, however, wasn't the only thing being celebrated: at least part of the spectacle appears to have been arranged to remind Russians that their president is a virile, red-blooded man.
On Saturday, Kremlin press pool journalist Dmitry Smirnov tweeted a short video showing Putin walking through Red Square, passing a large group of women dressed in white as brides. Putin shouts “congratulations!” at the group, and then stops to pose for selfies with the women. “You're all beauties!” he tells them. “When Putin walks by, forget the grooms,” Smirnov wrote above the video.
But there were no grooms, it turns out. Internet users later identified one of the women on Instagram and soon discovered that the “brides” who surrounded the president were in costume.
Evgeniya Konovalova, a woman in the group who secured one of the spots at Putin's side, published several photographs from Red Square last weekend, where she was dressed in a white bridal gown. She also posted one of her selfies with the president. “My wedding with Vladimir Vladimirovich,” she joked in a comment under the photo. Under another picture, Konovalova revealed that she was working at Red Square in costume as part of the holiday festivities.
No comments  #Putin#Путин#president#presidentPutin#деньгорода#москва#москва869
A photo posted by ЕвгенияКоновалова (@evgenia_alex) on
Lyudmila Vasilyanskaya was also in the “bridal group.” Her videos on Instagram suggest that she and Konovalova were part of a large dance performance for the holiday.
Сегодня прошла генеральная репетиция на День города. Завтра 10 сентября смотрите нас с 12-00 до 13-00 в прямом эфире.
A video posted by Людмила Василянская (@lysiena) on
After the celebrations in Moscow, Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev traveled to Novgorod, meeting with local fishermen, whom they promised new federal subsidies. This encounter, too, prompted speculation online that the president had met with actors, after photographs revealed that one of the supposed fishermen appeared to be wearing a wristwatch too expensive for an ordinary angler.
The dual PR stunts have naturally fueled a lot of joking online, with Putin's critics asking if the president himself is even real:
Страна фейк: в Москве были подставные невесты; на Ильмене – подставные рыбаки. Сам Путин хоть настоящий? pic.twitter.com/WhlsXgJ8Au
— Мuд Роисси (@Fake_MIDRF) September 12, 2016
A fake country: there were fake brides in Moscow, and there were fake fishermen in [Novgorod]. Is Putin himself at least real?
Less endearingly, Konovalova's ample bust has inspired some people to conclude that she isn't a model, but a prostitute. Leonid Volkov, a leading figure in the beleaguered democratic opposition, and a vocal critic of Vladimir Putin, was one of these people:
Все так удивились, что на фотографии с Путиным проститутки — как будто на 99% фотографий с ним это не так pic.twitter.com/7n6CdRNI2m
— Leonid Volkov (@leonidvolkov) September 14, 2016
Everyone is so surprised about the photograph of Putin with the prostitutes, as if 99 percent of the photographs with him aren't the same thing.

author: Kevin Rothrock


text:
A Former Street Child in Mumbai Builds a Cafe-Cum-Library for Homeless Youth · Global Voices
Vishal Yashoda Manve

The story of Amin Sheikh, who wanted to change the fate of boys like him who grew up on the streets of Bombay. Photo credit: Humans of Bombay
After selling his autobiography book for nearly three years on Mumbai's busy streets, author Amin Sheikh is seeing the payoff for all of his hard work. He has finally fulfilled his longtime dream of setting up a cafe-cum-library in India's financial capital for impoverished street children.
Sheikh, 36, has had a lot of experiences in his short life. He was born in a slum in the north of Mumbai (at the time, the city was called Bombay) to a poor family. For him, life began at the age of five when he started working in a tea shop. By the time he was 16, he lived on Mumbai's hostile streets as a homeless child and had experience collecting garbage, singing on local trains, begging and ragpicking, working as a factory laborer, as a vendor on a train, as a boot polisher and as a doer of other odd jobs before being rescued by an orphanage in Mumbai named Sneha Sadan. They gave him a new home and changed his life.
Sheikh was sent to work for Eustace Fernandes, a very famous artist, when he was 17. He was his driver, cook and cleaner and learnt English in the process. With Eustace’s help, Sheikh started his own travel company called Sneha Travels in 2002. Eustace even took him to Barcelona once, where he visited a few library cafes from which he found the inspiration.
Workers in Amin Sheikh's cafe, which is staffed by former street children from Sneha Sadan. Photo used with permission
Today, Sheikh's cafe Bombay to Barcelona is painted in various shades of white and orange and is staffed by numerous former street children from Sneha Sadan. The cafe, which opened in the middle of August this year, wants to be inclusive for people from all walks of lives and thus the food items are priced reasonably. For example, a cup of tea costs only 10 rupees (15 US cents), the same as at any roadside tea stall. Sheikh's motto is: “Everyone deserves to go somewhere nice for coffee or tea”.
An estimated 37,059 children live on the streets of Mumbai, according to a census conducted by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and voluntary organization Action Aid India. Two out of five have experienced physical, verbal or sexual abuse or forced starvation at some point in their lives.
Sheikh spoke to Global Voices about how he made this cafe possible, collecting funds by selling his autobiography, and his future plans to help street children.
“I sold books for nearly three years to collect funds to set up this cafe. We will always be open to street children and never reject their entry into the cafe,” he explained.
The cafe provides food and other assortments free of cost to underprivileged children. Photo credit: Bombay to Barcelona FB page. Used with permission.
In his autobiography, ‘Bombay Mumbai: Life is Life: I Am Because of You‘, published in 2013, Sheikh recollects experiences from his childhood days living on Mumbai's streets, singing and begging in the city's famous local trains and the turmoil he faced due to lack of family support.
Now, he uses revenue generated from his book's sale to fund his cafe.
“I ran away from home at the age of five after facing abusive behaviour and threats from my step-father. I begged, slept on train station platforms before being rescued by a shelter house — Sneha Sadan,” Sheikh says.
And he is resolute about providing shelter and support to other street children now. “I don't want these kids to go back to the streets again.”
Photo Credit: Bombay to Barcelona FB page. Used with permission
Sheikh has managed to sell nearly 12,000 copies of his book in various languages including Spanish, Catalan, and Marathi as a way of raising funds for his cafe.
One reader from Spain, Maria Antonia Perez, visited Mumbai recently to help Sheikh set up his cafe after reading his book.
Photo Credit: Bombay to Barcelona FB page. Used with permission
“We have a special table set in the cafe with cakes and other snacks for street children. Their reaction to this place has been extremely positive,” Sheikh concludes.
Photo Credit: Bombay to Barcelona FB page. Used with permission
Here is his story in YouTube uploaded by Ditto TV:
In Mumbai, a group of media students have also made a short film on the book and Sheikh’s life:
People who visited the cafe mostly have nice things to say on social media.
Shivangini Singh wrote on Facebook:
This book costs only 300/-. If you buy it, you are helping Amin Sheikh, a former street kid, build a better life for others who are on the streets.
I just finished reading it. The life story, the journey is deep. Very real, very positive and oh so inspiring!
Bombay to Barcelona cafe is such a warm and nice place. :-) pic.twitter.com/y34kTQ7xAp
— sabari (@_sabari) September 12, 2016
Deanne Moraes wrote a glowing review on Facebook:
Never felt like home at any cafe before, like I did when I visited your cafe…. The ambience, the decor, the snacks… everything is just perfect….. The customer service is something I will never forget… I have always forgotten names of people working in hotels or cafe but at your cafe SAI, I can never forget the hospitality he provided and his name.. All the best…

author: Vishal Yashoda Manve


text:
After Months of Protest, Russian Coal Miners Finally Get Paychecks · Global Voices
Sean Guillory

English miner at Wharncliffe Silkstone Colliery, Barnsley, UK. Source: Paul Reckless, Flickr.
On May 25, twenty miners from Gukovo, a small town in southwestern Russia, held a protest in Rostov-on-Don demanding that their employer, King Coal, pay their salaries—some of which were almost a year overdue. “Give us our money” and “Mr. President, defend the working man!” their signs read.
The miners released a statement outlining their demands:
Мы, участники митинга, требуем принять срочные меры по погашению миллионных задолженностей по заработной плате шахтеров. Нельзя демонстрировать гражданам России бессилие закона и власти перед собственниками угольных шахт. Это коррупция.
We, the rally’s participants, demand urgent action to repay miners millions in unpaid wages. The government and the law must not show Russian citizens its weakness in front of the coal mine owners. It’s corruption.
The miners’ statement jabbed at the underpinnings of the Putin regime's professed “stability”: effective governance, rule of law, order, and assurances that the“people” will be protected from predatory moguls.
The miners were just getting started. Over the next several months, their demands grew louder, eventually culminating in a hunger strike that attracted national media coverage and forced some action on the part of local officials. While their struggle is far from over, the Gukovo miners’ persistence in defending their rights is yet another example of how Russia’s organized “simple people” have been able to force indifferent officials into taking some modicum of action.
The problem of wage arrears is a familiar one in Russia. According to the latest Rosstat figures, total wage arrears for the Russian Federation amount to roughly 3.7 billion rubles ($57 million), effecting around 73,000 people. Manufacturing and construction workers have been the hardest hit, and bankruptcies account for 25 percent of Russia’s unpaid wages.
Wage arrears are also a main source of labor conflict. According to a recent report by the Center for Economic and Political Reform, which monitors social and economic conflict in Russia, there were 171 recorded conflicts related to wage arrears between April and June of this year.
The Rostov region is one of many flashpoints for these conflicts. King Coal owes around 300 million rubles ($4.6 million) to 2,000 employees. The Gukovo miners alone are owed 130 million rubles. Miners say the back pay began piling up gradually in 2013. First it was a week, then a month or two, and by 2015, a half year.
By then King Coal had gone belly up, leaving its employees empty handed. After the company filed for bankruptcy in 2015, its director, Vladimir Pozhidaev, was criminally charged with abuse of authority, failing to pay his workers, and embezzling company money—eventually leaving King Coal 1 billion rubles in debt. King Coal’s creditors and venders filed lawsuits—3,500 in all—in bankruptcy court. Standing at the end of this long line of spurned suiters were the miners.
Wage arrears are a symptom of the widespread deindustrialization of the region. In Soviet times, Rostov boasted 90 mines. Now, only four are in operation. A good monthly salary in Gukovo is 15,000 rubles ($230) for men and 7,000 ($107) for women. Real income has decreased by almost 7 percent. Most residents supplement these meager earnings with credit, which is why Rostov has the 10 most borrowers of any city in Russia.
Zhenya Nesrelyaev, 40, a miner for 22 years, used to earn a decent salary—20,000 rubles ($306) a month. Now, he and his family live off credit from three banks. “I haven’t made a payment in two months. The collectors call five times a day…They say: hock your things. That is, leave my children with nothing.” In total, King Coal owes Zhenya 305,000 rubles in back wages.
Valerii Dyakonov, a retired miner turned protest organizer, told Nezavisimaya gazeta:
На мой взгляд, теперь ситуация значительно хуже. И никому нет дела до того, что горняки в поисках куска хлеба бросают свои дома, потому что почти все в долгах и кредитах. А кто посчитает, сколько за последние годы распалось семей и сколько детей стало наркоманами?
I think the situation is now considerably worse [than the 1990s]. And nobody cares when miners in search of bread are evicted from their homes because almost everyone is in debt. And who thinks about how many families have been broken in the last few years and how many children have become drug addicts?
This is the context that spurred the miners to action. The small picket in May became a daily protest in April They held signs saying “We are not slaves! Give us our money!” and “Russian Donbas Against Thieves and Liars!” Their calls for action from Putin, Rostov’s governor, and Gukovo’s mayor quickly intensified: miners threatened to block the M-4, Rostov’s main highway. A meeting with the mayor ended with empty promises. They formed a group to coordinate their protest efforts, with Valerii Dyakonov taking the lead. Then, in mid-August, the police made a timely visit to Dyakonov’s house, strapped an electronic bracelet on his ankle, and placed him under house arrest for allegedly threatening a local official with an pneumatic gun back in November 2015. A week later, the 200 miners and their families staged a protest. “We are not slaves!” again was their main slogan.
One miner told Novaya gazeta:
Я и Путину не доверяю. И сына в армию я не думаю отправлять. Я тут родился, но это государство недостойно…
I don’t trust Putin. I don’t think I’ll send my son to the army. I was raised here but this government is worthless…
Several days later, on August 23, the miners called a hunger strike. At first there were 60 participants. Then 100. Then 175.
More media attention soon followed, with several state newspapers fixing their gaze on Gukovo. Only then did a few hundred miners start to get paid.
As of now, media are reporting that 1,500 miners have received portions of their pay. But the victory is bittersweet. According to Dmitry Kovalenko, a member of the miners’ initiative group,
Все на месте затормозилось, отдали копейки за май и теперь говорят, что денег нет. Мы не видим просвета, надежды у нас тоже нет. Люди очень недовольны.
Everything is frozen in place. They gave pennies for May and now they’re saying there’s no more money. We do not see a ray of light and we also don’t have hope. People are very dissatisfied.

author: Sean Guillory