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Hungary: The Story of an Investigative Journalist · Global Voices
Marietta Le

The Hungarian media are still covering the developing story of the real estate issue concerning the village of Páty, close to the capital Budapest. An investigative journalist, Tamás Bodoky—who got a Pulitzer Memorial Prize in March 2010—has been writing reports for the Hungarian news site index.hu (HUN), and also worked on the story of real estate investments at Páty. His article (HUN) about the case was published on the website, but later it was re-edited by the editor-in-chief. One paragraph was deleted from the text without any notification to the author. The internal debate among Bodoky and the deputy editor-in-chief appeared on the journalist's blog (HUN). Tamás Bodoky resigned from his job, but his story received special media coverage and generated public conversation on how important the role of investigative journalism is in Hungary, at a time when stories like the Páty case have to be investigated and reported.
Treuga Mei of Reágáló summarized (HUN) briefly the Páty case:
[…] So what is the Páty case about? A group of companies—the same which failed at Sávoly [with building a motor race course] because of its untenable financial constructions—would theoretically start to build a golf course, but in the meantime the plan is turning to a subdivision land. A settlement of some thousand would have the same amount of other residents jammed into one area, next to the neighboring settlement—called Telki—pieced together with a road for heavy traffic. […]
An article (HUN) covering the relations between investors and politicians was published on index.hu, telling that some people working against the investments were threatened (Bodoky himself, too) or defamed. The last paragraph of the article was subsequently deleted from the text. This paragraph contains names of Hungarian entrepreneurs who may be involved in the strange real estate issue if one takes a closer look at their networks and the investing groups at Páty, the relations are implied in the text. The paragraph also implies a closer relation among them and Viktor Orbán, who is now the Hungarian prime minister. When the article was published, Hungary was between two rounds of the parliamentary elections; however, after the first round, Fidesz, the party of Orbán, already won almost two thirds of the seats in parliament. Then he was the PM candidate, so mentioning him was also a sensitive point.
Bodoky, who uses his blog (HUN) to get feedback from the readers, wrote a comment (HUN) about this paragraph to the post (HUN) concerning the mentioned article:
We have a big fight on the last paragraph: what does it contain that the editor-in-chief and the managing editor want to remove it by any means?
According to reports of Origo [origo.hu news site (HUN)], in the VIP box of the Sóstó Stadium in Székesfehérvár, Viktor Orbán [now prime minister] is regularly watching [football] games together with Bence János Kovács; Sándor Csányi, the president of OTP and Zsolt Hernádi, the president of Mol. The financing of the football academy in Felcsút, founded by Fidesz's PM candidate [at that time V. Orbán], is also supported by Mol, and [Trigránit], which is alleged to Sándor Demján, not so long ago Demján bought Milton Bank founded by Wallis.
Imre Tevan, the deputy editor-in-chief of index.hu, after arguing about how these statements could be read, commented under the name of erminavet on Bodoky's blog:
@bomi: What is not true in my arguing?
There was no censorship. That's not censorship when the editor-in-chief edits something out.
Maid's answer (HUN) to erminavet:
@erminavet: you are not being serious when you say that, according to you, censorship only occurs “WHEN AN EXTERIOR INSTITUTION, ORGANISATION, THE STATE EDITS OUT” something from an article?
In this case censorship nowadays couldn't even happen because it's hardly possible that a commercial media enterprise would handle media content to any exterior institution, organisation, the state (of course it wouldn't?). So in the past 20 years when we felt like there was censorship, that was only a delusion, nothing else :)
The problem is that it really is censorship when someone, e.g. the editor-in-chief, is changing the content of an article which is already out in the market. Even if it's not the state or the institution which is editing but the editor-in-chief, we are still talking about the same thing, at the most, the question is if the exterior pressure finds the journalist personally or through the editor-in-chief. Really, it is hard to believe that a totally petty paragraph (which has significance only because of the names that it mentions) could fall under such a different judgment between a journalist and an editor (it passed through you, so how strange, you are standing on the same side) and the editor-in-chief. […]
A later comment from erminavet to the post that has more than 900 comments:
[…] You really do think that a newspaper can do what it wants to do? If the editor-in-chief is afraid of something, then it's only because he is a coward? A fictitiously accused big entrepreneur has many means to harm the paper, it's enough to think about the legal ones. The removed sentences are an excellent base to a libel lawsuit. We could never prove that the mentioned three men are involved in the case. And it's not enough that another paper [origo.hu] wrote this. After a lost lawsuit one can file a suit for compensation, the court would surely think that the business honor to a big entrepreneur is worth very much.
Tamás Bodoky shared his official resignation letter with his readers in a comment (HUN). Later he had an interview (HUN) on a website dealing with investigative journalism:
[…] JS: In addition to this, you are the only investigative journalist in the country who has a Facebook fan page.
BT: Yes, I receive a lot of feedback and information this way. I am happy with this because it's the first time I feel that investigative journalism genre has notability in this country, that it really can work as a means of control. Until now the practice was that someone wrote something but it had no consequences. Now I realize that the public is paying attention and it's not possible to simply hush things up. There is interest and there is feedback. It's good. […]

author: Marietta Le


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India: The Curious Story Of The Hamilton Bridge · Global Voices
Rezwan

Maddy writes about the curious story of the Hamilton (Barbers) Bridge in Chennai, India.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Rezwan


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Iran: Head of a leading blog provider service arrested · Global Voices
Fred Petrossian

Alireza Shirazi, a blogger and head of a leading blog provider service,blogfa, was arrested in Iran. According to blogfa, he was arrested because somebody complained against one of the blogs hosting by blogfa.

author: Fred Petrossian


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Jamaica: 10 Things about Calabash · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Tallawah blogs about “10 random things about the Calabash [International Literary Festival] experience” that he looks forward to each year.

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


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Jamaica, U.S.A.: When Will It End?  · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Jamaican diaspora blogger Labrish is trying to reconcile the recent Gulf oil spill, but maintains: “In this latest Big-Oil-Screw-Up, we have no idea how long this hemorrhaging is going to last.”


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Japan: A fashionable prime minister · Global Voices
Scilla Alecci

Sarah Noorbakhsh at JSRC wrote a post [en] about Japanese prime minister`s fashion. Check out the pictures of Mr. Hatoyama and his playful shirts.

author: Scilla Alecci


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Korea: Let`s Bible · Global Voices
Scilla Alecci

Steve Levenstein at Inventorspot [en] briefly reviews the Korean comics, or manhwa, Let`s Bible, a unique re-interpretation of the Old Testament.


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Madagascar Leader Rajoelina Drops from Presidential Running · Global Voices
Lova Rakotomalala

Madagascar transitional president Andry Rajoelina announced in a statement on national radio that he will not be a candidate for the presidential elections scheduled on November 26th, 2010 (fr).  Achille in Madagascar  hopes that this decision will help the international community decide to financially support democratic elections (fr).

author: Lova Rakotomalala


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Mexico: The Popularity of Local Wines · Global Voices
Eduardo Avila

Lesley Téllez of the Mija Chronicles blogs about the increasing popularity of Mexican wine with more and more producers entering this market.

author: Eduardo Avila


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Pakistan: What Keeps The Terrorists Going? · Global Voices
Rezwan

Ethsam Waheed  at Teeth Maestro analyzes the violence & conflicts in Pakistan and wonders what keeps the terrorists going.


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Quick Overview of Russian Blogosphere in 2009-2010 · Global Voices
Alexey Sidorenko

This review was originally written as a part of a presentation on Russian Internet during the recent GV Citizen Media Summit 2010.
Alexey Sidorenko presenting at the Global Voices Summit in Santiago, photo by Gregory Asmolov
Basic facts
Internet penetration in Russia reached 38 % (almost 40 mln. users [RUS]) in 2009. The most popular blogging platform in the country is Livejournal.com, however blogs.mail.ru and liveinternet.ru are also important [RUS] and influential. Internet access prices in Russia vary from city to city (from $10 to $50 for the same service [EN]). The usage of blogs is highly centralized: 50% of Internet users are from Moscow and Saint-Petersburg, 67% of top-bloggers are from Moscow [RUS]. Demographics are close to global: the majority of bloggers are from 15 to 30 year old, female users being more present than males.
Main tendencies in 2009-2010
Russian blogosphere’s Wins
In extreme situations bloggers are the first to spread the word, aggregate information, keep the information pressure. The role of blogs and new media was crucial in coverage of Moscow bombings [EN], „Nevsky Express” crash [EN], Perm fire [EN] and other disasters. Sometimes, blog campaigns sometimes lead to real-life changes (“Live barrier” case [EN], saving of the tourist in Indonesia [EN], Oleg Kozlovsky's foreign passport issue [EN] and others). However, the situation is far from ideal – list of Russian blogosphere's failures to provide change is longer than a list of it's wins.
Russian Blogosphere and Society
Government's influence in the blogosphere
Forms of government influence on RuNet are becoming more prevalent. Below are some of them:
Negative forms of involvement:
Positive forms of involvement:
As a conclusion, Russian Internet is becoming more politicised and more regulated place. Together with more trust and number of readers, bloggers gain more attention from the authorities. At the same time, the structure of the blogosphere tends to reproduce the offline social structure with its biases and hierarchy.

author: Alexey Sidorenko


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Russia: Coalmine Disaster · Global Voices
Veronica Khokhlova

Vadim Nikitin writes about the May 9 coalmine disaster in Russia's Kemerovo region.

author: Veronica Khokhlova


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Russia: Hosting Providers Sued for Refusal to Block Web Sites · Global Voices
Alexey Sidorenko

Three regional hosting providers “VyatKTV,” Kirov branch of “VolgaTelecom” and “Er-Telecom” are being sued by a regional prosecutor's office for refusing to block extremist Web sites with xenophobic content, Sova-center reported.


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Russia: Opposition Blogger Missing · Global Voices
Alexey Sidorenko

Alauddin Dudko, Moscow-based author and editor of  ingushetia.org (and LJ mirror ingushetia_ru) was accused of possessing explosives and arrested on May 1. His wife said that for 12 days she didn't hear from him and did not know where he was. Dudko wrote for various Russian blogs and was connected with Ingushetia opposition.


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Russia: Re-Orientation of Foreign Policy? · Global Voices
Veronica Khokhlova

RFE/RL's The Power Vertical writes about Russia's plans “to reorient its foreign policy in a more pragmatic and pro-Western direction.” Robert Amsterdam writes about the cooperation between Russia and Turkey.


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Russia: Reaction on New Military Draft Initiatives · Global Voices
Alexey Sidorenko

LJ user calabaxa ironically reflects on the new conscription initiatives that extend the draft age to 30 years: “…Actors will come [to the conscription offices – GV], artists, musicians, writers, which labour isn't bought by anyone… Everyone will come. They'll take the weapons and will end with this order forever.”


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Russia: The Somali Pirates Controversy · Global Voices
Veronica Khokhlova

Robert Amsterdam, Streetwise Professor, and Steve LeVine write about the recent controversy involving the Somali pirates, Russian oil tanker Moscow University and the Russian Navy.


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South Africa: Finding Common Ground Amidst “Race War” · Global Voices
Prisha Bhoola

South Africans are definitely not colour blind. Forty-odd years of apartheid has ensured that the concept of race is entrenched in the hearts and minds of many citizens of Mzansi (as the country is known locally). The dawn of democracy in 1994 gave birth to hopes of an equal society, free from the prejudices of the discriminatory laws that kept South Africans apart for so long. However, sixteen years on, it is becoming increasingly evident that race and its associated stigmas, is a hurdle that South Africans are struggling to overcome.
Together as one! Source:myweku.com
Judging from the blogosphere, it seems that South Africans are weary of being labeled and truly long to find common ground. Ryland Fisher  articulates these feelings:
In fact, I have been amazed when I travel overseas and we are all just considered to be South Africans, because that is where we come from. However, as soon as we return home, we again attach our various identities. So then we become African or African black or black African, coloured or so-called coloured, Indian, Chinese (or black), white or in the minds of some people who would like to perpetuate apartheid, European.
We disintegrate into Xhosas and Zulus, Tswanas and Pedis, Vendas or Sothos. We become Tamils or Hindus, Muslims or Christians or Jews. I am not saying that there is something wrong with all these multiple identities but when we use our identities as a weapon against others, as we tend to do in South Africa, then I think there is a problem.
Using “identities as a weapon,” as Ryland has stated, is something that South Africans are all too familiar with. It is sometimes termed as “flashing a race card”. It seems that race is often used to try to win over an argument or make a certain point. In fact, the term race card became so popular that enterprising young South Africans actually produced tangible cards and marketed them as can be found here.
Be that as it may, wading further through the matrix of the web, one gets a palpable sense that change is in the air. It seems that South Africans from all walks of life are transforming, irrespective of the divisions that are so widely reported about in mainstream media.
David Gemmell’s words are truly optimistic about the state of race relations in South Africa:
A few years ago, when my daughter was at junior school, we arranged for me to collect her and a friend, to go to movies. When confirming our plans I asked which friend she would be bringing.
“Mel,” she said. “Remind me, who is Mel?” I asked in typically vague father style. “She's the slightly plump girl with glasses that came to my party – you've met her.”
When I picked them up, the most striking thing about Mel was that she was black. My 14-year-old daughter didn't seem to think the colour of someone's skin was useful to describe people. All my friends have similar stories.
One-Eye-Only  has a similar experience:
Yup, the white folks and the black folks and the coloured folks and old folks and young folks and gay folks and breeder folks all danced together. If Nelson Mandela had seen it he would have orgasmed. South African folks, dancing together, to classic South African music. Really, this divisive shit we like to espouse all day gets over-ridden by what happens when we all get together with a few drinks…
The upcoming FIFA World Cup has also contributed towards the surge in South African pride and togetherness. Many South Africans have displayed the pride and confidence that they have in the nation by displaying South African flags on their cars, as African Crisis explains:
The interesting thing is that it is not only black motorists who are flying the flags. A surprising number of white drivers have flags on their cars
Perhaps Dogs of War  delivers the current sentiment the best,
South Africa belongs to all of us. A guaranteed way to for all to succeed is for South Africa to succeed. Take my word, South Africa will succeed.

author: Prisha Bhoola


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Spain: 73 years of the Bombing of Gernika · Global Voices
Raphael Tsavkko Garcia

Prof. César Arrondo writes [es] on the symbolism surrounding the 73rd anniversary of the Bombing of  Gernika in April 26th and the idea of a Basque homeland in Izarro News blog [es].

author: Raphael Tsavkko Garcia


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Tahiti: Gauguin and The Myths of Tahiti   · Global Voices
Lova Rakotomalala

Paul Gauguin's paintings  in Tahiti will be exposed at the Tate Modern in London in September 2010.  Mercury at Philosophy of Science Portal wonders whether his paintings were a true reflection of life in Tahiti.


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Trinidad & Tobago: Hurry Curry!  · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

“Roti. Four little letters that have the power to put any Trini into a smile-infused stupor”: TriniGourmet.com blogs about the seemingly infinite variations on this popular dish.


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Trinidad & Tobago: Rock the Vote · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

“Saying that the songs are catchy is one thing, but saying that they influence your red finger decisions are another”: Underground Trini Artiste blogs about “voting songs”.


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Ukraine: Criminal Case Against Tymoshenko · Global Voices
Veronica Khokhlova

What's Up, Ukraine? writes about the re-launch of an old criminal case against ex-PM Yulia Tymoshenko.


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Zambia: Zambians tired of ruling party · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Zambians are saying to the ruling party, “It's enough”: “For most of Zambians, MMD government has become unfit and clueless to govern. Majority of Zambians strongly believe that MMD government policies are wrong in formula and disastrous in practice. RB’s government can not even admit that hospitals are lacking medicines despite overwhelming empty storages.”

author: Ndesanjo Macha


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Zimbabwe: Gender and homosexuality cloud constitution making process · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

On the constitution making process in Zimbabwe: “According to Arkmore Kori, a Kubatana subscriber, our Constitution making awareness programme is focusing on unimportant issues. He suggests that issues such as homosexuality and gender are clouding more major concerns relating to governance and leadership.”


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Zimbabwe: State appeals against Roy Bennet’s acquittal · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Zimbabwean Attorney General appeals against Senator Roy Bennett. Bennet, who had been on trial since last October on charges of insurgency, banditry, terrorism and sabotage, was acquitted on Monday after Justice Bhunu ruled that the State’s prosecution team had failed to establish a prima facie case against him.


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Bermuda: Media Council  · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

“I believe the Media Council bill is badly written, steeped in political motive, and an affront to freedom of the speech in Bermuda”: Vexed Bermoothes thinks the  implementation of the proposed bill “is flawed for many reasons.”


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China: Is there a place in education for high culture? · Global Voices
Andy Yee

Is there a place for liberal education in today’s modern society, where competition for jobs is fierce, and occupations are increasingly specialized and technical?
An April issue of the Southern Metropolitan Weekend published a letter written by a Year 3 university student from Tianjin, a major metropolis in Northeast China:
我不知道国粹是什么
我们学校有许多日本留学生。一次偶然的机会,看到他们的课表,课程有书法、京剧、太极…… 我好羡慕他们,因为我从小到大都没有机会接触这些———小学没有条件,初中没有精力,高中没有心思———到大学什么都有了,但学校把机会都给了留学生。万一有天跟日本友人谈论京剧,也许他懂得比我还多呢!
I don’t know what the essence of Chinese culture is.
In my school, there are many Japanese overseas students. By a random chance, I glanced at their curriculum, which included Calligraphy, Peking Opera, Tai Chi…… I envy them. I envy them because from childhood till now, I don’t have a single chance to study these things – I cannot afford it at primary school; I don’t have the energy for it at lower secondary school; I don’t have the mood for it at upper secondary school. Now, everything is ready at university, but the school gives those opportunities to overseas students. One day, if I talk with a Japanese about Peking Opera, perhaps he will know more than I do!
Peking Opera
Xiong Bingqi, responding to this letter in his blog, takes a deeper look at the reasons why local Chinese students lack opportunities to learn about Chinese culture:
是大学的责任？也许看完这封短信，大家的第一反应是大学有些崇洋媚外，不给学生开书法、京剧和太极。实际情况并非如此。据我所知，一些大学早几年就开设了这样的选修课，以及相关的社团，可是选择这些课的学生相当之少——少得不能正常开班；社团活动也苦苦支撑——每次活动的“票友”极少，连举办者也灰心丧气。
Is it the responsibility of the university? After reading this short letter, perhaps your first reaction is that the university is biased towards overseas students such that it does not arrange classes on Calligraphy, Peking Opera and Tai Chi for local students. But it is far from the truth. In fact, some universities have started such classes and associations for students to choose from. However, very few local students take them. Cultural activities also attract little audiences, which is frustrating for organizers.
在今天的大学，在就业的压力下，无论是学校还是学生，都更关注技能教育，通识教育已被冷落——从功利、职业角度看，教育确有双重功能，一方面是功利的、职业化的、技能化的教育，此即技能教育；另一方面则是非功利的、非职业化的、非技能化的教育，此即通识教育。技能教育可以帮助受教育者掌握职业所需知识和技能，而通识教育却能提高一个人的素质以及发展潜能。一般而言，作为大学，应该重在培养学生的基本能力与素质，作为高职高专，则强调学生的就业技能培养。
In today’s environment, students and schools alike focus on technical education due to employment pressures. Liberal education seems to be outdated. Education does serve two purposes. From a utilitarian point of view, it is pragmatic, technical and occupational. From a non-utilitarian point of view, it is exactly the opposite, and this is what we call liberal education. A technical education can help the student to master technical skills needed for a job, while liberal education can raise the quality and potential of the student. In general, a university should focus on improving students’ potential and quality, while a vocational school should emphasize on nurturing occupational skills.
从学校看，在就业率指标的逼迫下，几乎所有大学，[…] 都以就业为导向办学，通识课程被大幅缩减，增加的是技能课程、实践课程和实习环节，而这种调整，还被认为是“教育创新”。[…] 这就不难理解为何在大学中，给留学生的国粹课开得轰轰烈烈，而国内学生却无缘了。对于留学生，大学没有安排其就业的压力，所有安排课程尽可能针对留学生的需求；而留学生到中国留学，了解中国文化是一个重要目的。
Almost all universities are under pressure to achieve employment targets for graduates. As a result, education is predominantly focussed on technical training. Liberal education is substituted for practical skills training. Sadly, this adjustment is portrayed as an ‘innovation.’ […] It is therefore not hard to understand why lessons on high cultures are common among overseas students, but not for local ones. Universities do not have pressures to guarantee employments for overseas students. They can therefore expose them to Chinese high cultures, which is the aim of studying overseas.
But this intellectual deterioration in higher culture is not new, and is not limited to China. Christopher Lasch, American social critic and historian, ascribes the decline of western culture to modern-day capitalism. Commenting on the decline of literacy in America, he writes in The Culture of Narcissism in 1979:
Standards are deteriorating even at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, which can hardly be described as institutions of mass education. A faculty committee at Harvard reports, ‘The Harvard faculty does not care about teaching.’ According to a study of general education at Columbia, teachers have lost ‘their common sense of what kind of ignorance is unacceptable.’ As a result, ‘Students reading Rabelais’s description of civil disturbances ascribe them to the French Revolution. A class of twenty-five had never heard of the Oedipus complex – or of Oedipus. Only one student in a class of fifteen could date the Russian Revolution within a decade.
As we read on, we find a strikingly similar reasoning which is equally applicable to the current situation in China:
In any case, the decline of literacy cannot be attributed solely to the failure of the educational system. Schools in modern society serve largely to train people for work, but most of the available jobs, even in the higher economic range, no longer require a high level of technical or intellectual competence. Indeed most jobs consist so largely of routine, and depend so little on enterprise and resourcefulness, that anyone who successfully completes a given course of study soon finds himself ‘overqualified’ for most of the positions available. The deterioration of the educational system thus reflects the waning social demand for initiative, enterprise, and the compulsion to achieve.
Here, of course, ‘initiative, enterprise, and the compulsion to achieve’ concern high culture ends. But modern industrial society has no demand for this kind of literacy. It is then natural for us to see the increasingly marginalized status of culture, philosophy, history and other humanities subjects in higher education. As we continue the race to the bottom, is there a way out? Is there a place for high culture in today’s society?

author: Andy Yee


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China reconnects Xinjiang · Global Voices
Don Weinland

After more than 10 months of near to complete online darkness, internet service resumed Friday in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, according to a notice from the Xinjiang Government News Office,.
The notice was first posted at Tianshan Net, then quickly distributed to other online news services across the country.  Several blogs have posted the notice as well.
The brief notice gives a quick explanation for resuming service in the country's westernmost region:
根据自治区维稳形势、社会经济发展的需要以及各族群众的需求，经自治区党委、人民政府研究决定，自2010年5月14日起，全面恢复互联网业务。
Based on the autonomous region’s stability situation, socioeconomic development and the needs of all populations, the autonomous region’s party committee and People’s Government have decided to resume full internet service as of May 14, 2010.
Far West China, a blog maintained by an American living in Xinjiang, confirms the reconnection.
The regional government cut the internet connection July 6 after ethnic conflict in the provincial capital of Urumqi resulted in the death of nearly 200 Han Chinese a day earlier.
A piecemeal reconnection of Xinjiang’s internet began in January.  The disconnection adversely affected business in the autonomous region, which is already one of the world’s most remote locations.

author: Don Weinland


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Colombia: Indigenous Communities of Cauca Caught in Middle of Clashes · Global Voices
Eduardo Avila

In Colombia, the indigenous communities of Cauca have been caught in the middle of clashes between guerrilla forces and the army, but has not received much media attention writes Albeiro Rodas of the blog Colombian Passport.


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Cuba: Remembering Zapata · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Uncommon Sense pays tribute to the late political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who would have turned 43 tomorrow, while El Cafe Cubano reports that his tomb has been desecrated.


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Haiti: Help or Hindrance?  · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

The Haitian Blogger asks: “Why does a country with one of the lowest crime rates in the Western Hemisphere need 9,000+ UN troops, US troops and 4.4 million dollars for prisons?”


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Liberia: Founder and blog manage meet for first time · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Ceasefire Liberia blog has its most exciting moment recently: “The most exciting moment in the history of Ceasefire Liberia took place as the founder of the Project, Ruthie Ackerman, and the Liberian blog manager, Nat Bayjay met for the first time ever at the Global Voices Summit in the Chilean capital of Santiago May 6, 2010.”


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Macedonia: Bloggers Celebrate 1945 Victory Over Fascism · Global Voices
Filip Stojanovski

Several Macedonian bloggers joined the celebration of victory over fascism in World War II.
Before Macedonia gained independence in 1991, the Victory Day over Fascism was celebrated on May 9 as a working holiday together with May 15 – the Day of Final Victory in Yugoslavia, because some fascists continued to fight after the official capitulation. In the subsequent years, this tradition has been quietly abandoned, especially by right-wing governments eager to deny the credit for national liberation to the “communists.”
During the last decade, many were happy to take part in the celebrations of Europe Day, perceiving the EU integration as a continuation of the struggle for free and prosperous Macedonia. The blog of “Blagoj Kirkov” Primary School documented [MKD] such an event in Veles.
However, possibly due to further resurgence of anti-democratic tendencies, including attempts to rewrite history in favor of fascist collaborators, some bloggers used this year's celebration of the 65th anniversary of Victory Day in Moscow to draw public attention to this important event.
Andrej posted [MKD] a scan of the front page of London Daily Mail newspaper from May 9, 1945, and wrote:
History will repeat itself if its lessons are not learned.
May [fascism] never rise again.
Gratitude to all who gave their lives for freedom.
Zoriv found it remarkable [MKD] that alongside ten thousand Russian soldiers who demonstrated the military strength of their country…
…for the first time the U.S. Army marched on Red Square. Besides the American battalion, the procession also included soldiers from Great Britain, France, and Poland, as part of the winning Allied Coalition from World War II.
Some Facebook users expressed frustration because Macedonian Army did not take part in the Moscow parade. The worst form of such behavior included belittling the role of France, parroting the American nationalist pundits around the initiation of the Iraq War.
On the other hand, in a comment to the post [MKD] on the blog Darvel, which presented a photo in which the Macedonian president stood aside from the other leaders in Moscow, Hemicharot wrote:
…the publicity about such international events was suddenly extinguished, there is not much information about the activity of our commander-in-chief. The e-editions of the mainstream media only show a general photo from the parade and an old portrait of [the president]. Did he have to go all by himself?
VBB, who at the time of the parade was in Moscow, produced an original report [MKD] from the Victory Day parade:
The entrance to Red Square, the traditional starting point of the parade, was allowed to ticket-holders: World War II veterans, diplomats, journalists, etc. Therefore, I watched the parade on Tverskaya street, alongside other ordinary mortals. After the parade ended, the Square was open to all, and celebrations included impressive fireworks that evening at 10 pm. After the fireworks, thousands of people spontaneously marched along the streets shouting, singing and waving flags. The traditional concert of military songs sung by music stars ended with the 1970s evergreen “Den Pobedy” (Victory Day) by Lev Leshchenko.
VBB supplemented his report with photographs focused on the activities of ordinary people, who, for instance, enjoyed buying Soviet military “pilot” hats adorned with the red star.

author: Filip Stojanovski


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Mexico: High Temperatures in the Capital · Global Voices
Eduardo Avila

Mexico City has been experiencing high temperatures, writes Daniel Hernández of Intersections, with some reports of 50 C temperatures inside some Metro stations.


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Netherlands: Twitter campaign against violation of privacy · Global Voices
Percy Balemans

Dutch internet users have started a campaign on Twitter (@telegraafboycot) to boycott the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf [nl] after it violated the privacy of the sole survivor of the plane crash in Tripoli by interviewing the little boy by phone. The hashtag is #telegraafboycot.

author: Percy Balemans


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Niger: Saving lives with text messages · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Niger is currently experiencing food crisis that threatens more than half of the country's 14 million people. The United Nations has called for urgent humanitarian action.  One blogger for Concern US blogs, Amanda McClelland, reports about a program using text messages to distribute emergency cash to the most vulnerable women in 160 villages in the country.
A bit of background information:
Niger is on the brink of what will be a major catastrophe if the world does not act now. As part of Concern’s Emergency Response Team, I am no stranger to crises: that is why I was sent to Niger on January 10, just two days before the Haiti earthquake.
Millet is the crop that keeps most people alive here. The majority of the country’s population of 15.2 million live by farming or herding livestock—without rain, they do not earn enough income to get by or grow enough food to eat.
The rains last year were erratic, when they came at all. That caused widespread, massive crop failures and 60 percent of the country’s population is now facing hunger. Unless immediate action is taken, close to 378,000 children are at risk of severe malnutrition.
The mobile cash transfer program involves a code, which is delivered via text message to each recipient, which they can redeem for cash at mobile dispensing agents operated by telecommunications service provider ZAIN. This is the first time this type of mobile cash transfer  has been used in a French-speaking African country:
Concern has already launched a response, including an innovative program using mobile phone technology and text messages to distribute emergency cash to the most vulnerable women in 160 villages. Concern is also doing “manual” cash transfers as part of pioneering, side-by-side research to document the effectiveness of each method.
This is groundbreaking—the first time such mobile emergency cash transfers have ever been used in Niger, and the first time they have ever been used in a French-speaking African country. A code is delivered via text message to each recipient, which they can redeem for cash at mobile dispensing agents operated by telecommunications service provider ZAIN and their newly introduced cash transfer technology, ZAP.
The program involves developing an identification cards for each of the women for verification purposes:
Today, we distributed special identification cards for each of the 13,000 women who will benefit from our cash transfer program—they have no other form of official ID. (I will save the story of how we took 13 000 photos in remote villages for my next blog!). Each woman also received 20 000 cfa (approximately $42), which is enough for an average-size family to buy food for a month.
The women accepted the money and ID cards with smiles and thank you’s –but they seemed subdued, which worried me. This was supposed to be the difference between eating and not eating for the next month. My mind was racing: maybe the money was not enough, maybe we targeted the wrong people, maybe all the planning and days at that desk we got it wrong?
Here you can see the Niger's food crisis in pictures and an analysis from IRIN, a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, of the term “famine” and whether the food crisis in Niger is a famine. And if you are wondering why Niger is not making headlines despite the crisis, read our post titled, “The Republic of Niger ain't sexy enough for headlines.”


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Puerto Rico: 99 Years  · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Repeating Islands posts that “Juan Martínez Matos pleaded guilty yesterday in a Puerto Rican court to last year’s murder of Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado” and was sentenced to 99 years in prison.


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Puerto Rico: Tensions arise at the student strike · Global Voices
Firuzeh Shokooh Valle

It has been over 20 days since the students of the largest campus (in Río Piedras) of the state-run University of Puerto Rico (UPR) paralyzed the academic operations in order to protest against a $100  million budget cut and the proposed elimination of certain registration  and fee waivers [EN]. Ten of the 11 campuses of the UPR in the Island have already joined the Río Piedras students. The Students Negotiating Committee initiated a dialogue with members of the Board of Trustees, but the agreements were not approved in the general assembly celebrated yesterday [EN].  An overwhelming majority of the students (over 2,500 students attended, which is the quorum for the approximately 20,000 students at the Río Piedras campus) ratified an indefinite strike.
Students offer flowers to police officers. Photo by Ricardo Alcaraz of Diálogo. Republished under a CC License.
Today, one day after the student assembly, special police forces have surrounded the Río Piedras campus. Students who are inside the campus have been locked in, and students at the gates that surround the campus are waiting to see what is going to happen. This morning, the father of a student was beaten and arrested by police officers when he brought food to his son [ES]. Later during the day, the district court of San Juan did not rule in favor of the petition of permitting the delivery of food and water to students inside the campus.
Other acts of police violence have been registered during the day, such as the beating of the student José Pérez.  Also today, the President of the UPR's Board of Trustees, Ygrí Rivera, announced that the the Río Piedras campus would close until July 31.  In the meantime, artists, activists, and professors have joined and supported the students who are protesting in Río Piedras. As the situation reaches larger proportions, leaders of various trade unions have announced that they plan to organize a national strike next Tuesday, May 18 [ES].
Heated moment at the Río Piedras Campus. Photo by Ricardo Alcaraz of Diálogo. Republished under a CC License.
Professor and blogger Mario Nuñez Molina (@digizen) has prepared a list of citizen media in Puerto Rico covering the student strike [ES]. Some of them are: the Río Piedras students blog Desde adentro [ES] and  live radio and streaming of students reporting from Río Piedras through Radio Huelga [ES].  UPR es un país [ES] is aggregating the digital citizen and alternative media resources.  The hashtags #paroUPR,  #huelgaUPR, and  #radiohuelga are being used to discuss and follow the student protests on Twitter.  Students of the Mayagüez (on the west coast of the Island) campus are  using @luchasrum and the blog Luchas en el RUM [ES] to inform  about their events. UPR Río Piedras Law professor Erika Fontánez is blogging daily about the situation. The UPR's monthly newspaper Diálogo is also covering the student strike. The alternative weekly Claridad is live-streaming the student strike (you have to register first in order to have access). Mainstream media in Puerto  Rico, such as Primera Hora and El  Nuevo Día,  are publishing minute by minute accounts of the  events related to the UPR's situation.
Please see more Global Voices’ coverage of the student strike here.

author: Firuzeh Shokooh Valle


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Trinidad & Tobago: Election Possibilities · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

KnowTnT.com wonders whether Trinidad and Tobago is “ready to be led by an unelected Prime Minister.”


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Ukraine: Village Life · Global Voices
Veronica Khokhlova

The Pickle Project posts a photo report from a village not far from Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine.


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Uzbekistan: Andijan Massacre, 5 years after · Global Voices
Kathy Pidginson

Yesterday, May 13, marked five years since Uzbek security troops killed hundreds of anti-government protesters in the city of Andijan. People were protesting against harsh socio-economic environment and repressive politics in the region. The government decided to take strong measures at the very early stage of the protests. That day in 2005 has come to be known as the “Andijan Massacre.”
On that day, government troops shot and killed civilian protesters on the orders of President Islam Karimov. According to the official data, the death toll was 187. However, witnesses and experts say much more people, including women and children, were killed there and the estimated number ranges from several hundreds to nearly 1,000.
From the very beginning Uzbekistan authorities made it clear that it is their internal issue and the coverage of the massacre in Western and local media was not welcomed. As a result, Karimov’s  regime booted foreign broadcasters out of the country and purged the remnants of the local independent press by jailing and intimidating reporters.
Even after 5 years of the massacre almost no one in Uzbekistan is talking about it, local bloggers and journalists living in fear of Uzbek regime are silent, only those staying abroad are brave enough to remember that brutality. Analyzing the civil activity during the past five years Sarah Kendzior writes on Registan.net:
“There has not been a large-scale protest in Uzbekistan since 2005 — not because people in Uzbekistan are content with their government, but because they are terrified to speak out against it. The Andijon events saw the Uzbek people’s worst suspicions confirmed and President Karimov’s most horrific promises kept: “Such people must be shot in the head,” he warned in a 1998 speech about Islamic extremists, with the unstated caveat that in Uzbekistan, anyone can be labeled an Islamic extremist. In Andijon, Uzbeks finally learned how far their government was willing to go.”
Although in public both the government and citizens have seemingly forgotten the Andijan events, Shakhisa Yakub writes [ru]:
Refugees keep saying that their relatives living in Uzbekistan are still threatened by the police and that the security authorities force them to convince refugees from their families to return to Uzbekistan [in order to prosecute them].
This is confirmed by the story of refugee Dilorom Abdukadirova who came back to Uzbekistan and was detained by the Uzbek police despite their previous promises not to arrest her. The online advocacy campaign had very little success. Following Abdukarimova’s arrest on March 12, the Andijan City Court accused her of illegally crossing the Uzbek border, attempting to overthrow the constitutional order and participation in riots, and sentenced her to 10 years in jail.
The Karimov’s regime is harsh even with the president's relatives attempting to speak up. The Uzbek president’s nephew, journalist Dzhamshid Karimov has been locked in a psychiatric ward because of his critical reports. There was no even any court hearing or decision for this case.
When commemorating the World Press Freedom Day on May 3, U.S. President Barrack Obama included Uzbekistan into the list of countries that jail journalists for their work.
But Muzaffar Suleymanov from the In CPJ Blog believes that this is not enough and should be the first step on the way to improve the situation:
“World leaders have a moral obligation to demand justice for Dilorom Abdukadirova and all others who are jailed on trumped-up charges, tortured, and intimidated by the Uzbek police, or continue to live in fear of the Uzbek regime.
[…] The Uzbek regime has proven to be immune to condemning statements or symbolic actions, like sanctions imposed by the European Union in 2005, which did not stop the regime from jailing its critics.
Maybe it’s time to publicly engage Uzbek envoys, like Ambassador to Spain Gulnora Karimova and Ambassador to UNESCO Lola Karimova — both daughters of the Uzbek president — and demand that they explain the detention of their cousin? After five years, is it not time for justice?”

author: Kathy Pidginson


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Africa: Africa Gathering event · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Bill writes about Africa Gathering event in Washington DC” “I wrapped up a month of travel last week, including a visit to Washington DC to attend Africa Gathering, a conference highlighting innovation and entrepreneurship focused on the continent…”


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Armenia: Banned TV station online · Global Voices
Onnik Krikorian

Following its removal from the airwaves by the authorities in April 2002 despite international outcry, and after already experimenting with short broadcasts via mobile, The Armenian Observer reports that A1 Plus has begun testing broadcasting online via Livestream.

author: Onnik Krikorian


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Azerbaijan: Revisiting Flower Day · Global Voices
Onnik Krikorian

Flying Carpets and Broken Pipelines marks Flower Day in Baku, Azerbaijan, by looking back at the event last year when dozens of youth activists were detained. This year the blog follows the event online via Facebook and Twitter.


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Caucasus: Google Translate in Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian · Global Voices
Onnik Krikorian

The Google Translate Blog announces the addition of five new alpha languages for its online translation service, including Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian. Likely to be considered in the same way in Azerbaijan and Georgia, The Armenian Observer applauds the move even at such an early stage and says the service is especially valuable.


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ICT for Development News in Japanese · Global Voices
Tomomi Sasaki

“ICT for Development.JP” provides regular and comprehensive coverage of ICT4D news and project updates from around the world in Japanese. It is run by Maki and Tomonari, who started this blog as a response to the lack of centralized resources for this topic in Japanese.

author: Tomomi Sasaki


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Japan: Sanja Festival · Global Voices
Scilla Alecci

Powerful images of the traditional Sanja Festival  [en] (Tokyo), by Zuco.


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Reactions to the Greek Financial Crisis and the IMF from the Africansphere · Global Voices
Lova Rakotomalala

The challenges facing the Greek economy and the ensuing intervention from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help withstand further damages from the  fall-out look familiar to many African bloggers. During previous crisis, the IMF was involved in proposing  structural adjustments  to struggling African economies, with various outcomes.
Reactions from African bloggers range from cautionary tales from past experiences to lessons that ought to be learned for their own regions.
Le petit nègre notices that Europe was reluctant to ask the IMF to step in during the Greek crisis. He is wondering  why asking the IMF for help was such a hard decision for a European country when it seemed to be rather common event  not so long ago in Africa. Here is why he thinks European countries are  worried about an IMF prescription for Greece (fr):
Le twist dans le cas grec et que, comme on ne peux pas dévaluer l’Euro comme on a jadis dévalué le Franc CFA,  les dirigeants européens se retrouvent contraints et forcés d’aider d’une manière ou d’une autre la Grèce
Similarly,  Lambert Mbela also argues that given the level of the budget deficits in many European countries beside Greece, substantial devaluation should be considered for the Euro (fr):
Admettons quand même que les situations sont similaires : déficit budgétaire, endettement public, taux de chômage élevé, balance commerciale déficitaire, mauvaise gestion des finances publiques, avec comme cerise sur le gâteau,  fricotage des données publiques !!!
Sérieux, si c’avait été le Mexique, l’Argentine ou le Burkina-Faso qui présentait de tels manquements, Monseigneur  FMI préconiserait déjà une dévaluation « compétitive » et des programmes d’ajustement structurel afin de rétablir les finances publiques.
Éric Toussaint  explains  that the seemingly odd  provision of IMF interventions according to regions might be a direct consequence of the fact that southern countries do not have much of a say in the decision process at the IMF (fr):
l’Afrique subsaharienne occupe une place égale à la France alors qu’elle compte 10 fois plus d’habitants. L’Afrique au Sud du Sahara ne dispose que de deux membres au sein du Conseil d’administration du FMI et ces deux membres doivent exprimer le point de vue de 48 pays [..] Vous imaginez la difficulté des 48 pays africains à se faire entendre si seuls 2 administrateurs les représentent.
Map of Vote at IMF by territory in 2006 by World Mapper CC-license
Musengeshi Katata at Forum Realisance investigates further into the reasons why the Greek crisis has gone unnoticed for so long (fr). Although the IMF recently published an optimistic report on the state of the ssAfrican region (fr), many are still skeptical because the emphasis was put on economic growth, leaving many issues still unspoken (fr).
Finally, Paul Bara at AfriqueRedaction is pessimistic about a sustainable solution to the global crisis(fr):
Notre modèle de croissance basé, sur la séquence : crédit – consommation – dette, est obsolète. En second lieu parce que les systèmes politiques et les gouvernements semblent incapables de jeter les bases d’un nouveau modèle de développement [..]  Un Krach parait donc inévitable en 2010 puisque comme l’explique Kenneth Rogoff, la défaillance d’un état (ou de plusieurs) paraît inévitable : se posera alors de manière aiguë le problème d’un modèle de croissance totalement inadapté (crise systémique).


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Russia: Blogger Follows “Privileged” Car to Find Its Destination · Global Voices
Vadim Isakov

LJ user teh-nomad posted a short video/photo report on a car with government license plates that ignored all rules of the road and turned on flashes pretending to be on an official business. As it turned out, the car was rushing to pick up a woman from a shopping mall.

author: Vadim Isakov


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Russia: First Cyrillic Domains Go Online · Global Voices
Alexey Sidorenko

The first four Cyrillic domains went online by May 13: “президент.рф” (Russian president's Web site), “правительство.рф” (Government Web site), “кц.рф” (Coordination center of domain registration – Russian branch of ICANN) and “ник.рф” (National Center of Domain Registration). The event that Russian officials and bloggers were waiting for finally happened! Russia became the fourth country to introduce non-latin domains (after Saudi Arabia, Egypt and United Arab Emirates whose domains were introduced a week earlier [EN]).
The long-awaited initiative (GV has written about in November 2009 [EN]) caused enthusiasm and skepticism, as well as revealed browser problems. The most enthusiastic comments (sometimes too enthusiastic) were from the pro-government patriotic segment of RuNet. A press-release of “Molodaya Gvardia” youth organization proclaimed [RUS]:
Свершилось! 13 мая 2010 года (запомните этот день!) впервые в истории заработали сайты в кириллическом домене РФ. Два ресурса в новой зоне открыли президент и правительство. Россия первой в мире получила национальный государственный домен.
Aside from the ultra-patriotic comments, the interface for a Russian speaker and writer is interesting – writing the address feels way easier and user-friendly. At the same time, for most of the domains, a site structure remained intact (e.g. the post slugs were latin, which looks a little inconsequential):
Example of hybrid cyrillic-latin domain, screenshot from президент.рф
Blogger Stassia tweeted [RUS]:
класс! домен кириллический, а линки вглубь по-прежнему латиницей: президент.рф/news
tapka-fai added his comment on “http://” part of URL:
а http почему не по-русски? непорядок
User Co0L suggested [RUS] that the first cyrillic domain was the test domain http://пример.испытание/ (“example.test”).
Kryloshanin not only mocked the cyrillic domain initiative, but also analysed official statements on the topic [RUS]. Some of those looked quite surprising (and at the same time quite insightful). As the head of the Coordination Center put it [RUS]:
Теперь можно набирать их названия в любой поисковой системе, используя сразу русский язык, а не латиницу, как это было до сих пор”
Kryloshanin commented:
Вероятно, мы с директором Координационного центра национального домена в сети Интернет до настоящего времени по-разному пользовались поисковиками?
The sarcasm was supported with the printscreen of the “creative” browsing:
"Creative" browsing, printscreen by LJ-user Kryloshanin
Kryloshanin also discussed the other controversial thing that the Russian minister Shegolev stated [RUS] earlier. He said that search engines couldn't properly index cyrillic domains, which isn't quite true – Google shows index results for “кц.рф” [RUS]. At the same time, as antonblog.ru observes [RUS], Yandex.ru (Popular Russian search-engine) still was unable to index three cyrillic domains.
Rustex was sceptical [RUS] but did not show any sarcasm:
Ну что же – первый шаг к разъединению интернета сделан…
Очень жаль. Вообщем-то, второе падение Вавилонской башни.
Roem.ru reported [RUS] problems with showing the right address in Mozilla Firefox and Safari (the domain is represented in the following form: http://xn--j1ay.xn--p1ai/), Chrome and Internet Explorer showed the address intact.
May 2010 starts a new period in the development of the World Wide Web. It took 19 years to evolutionize to the system that is now emerging. The consequences of the non-latin domain names are still hard to forecast. It's understandable that they're might be both negative (destruction of the standardized information space, numerous technical problems, “ghettoization” or “nationalization” of the Web and following net restrictions/regulations of the national Internet spaces) and positive (emancipation of non-latin alphabet systems, user-friendlyness, possible implications for elimination of digital divide). However,  the real question remains open: how influential this change is? Will multi-alphabetical web revolutionalize the world or be used just for national self-consciousness?


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Russia: Yet Another “Little Blue Buckets” Action · Global Voices
Alexey Sidorenko

A peaceful street gathering of the representatives of the “Little Blue Buckets” (citizen organization against law nihilism on the roads – GVO was writing about it here and here) had been suppressed by the police. Photos and videos can be found here, here, here and here.


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Thailand: Protest blockade ends in violence · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

The attempt of the Thailand military to blockade the Red Shirt protest camp in Bangkok ended in violence with 16 people dead and hundreds injured. Liveblog reports are available through Jotman, GJBKK Blog, Bangkok Pundit, Political Prisoners in Thailand. Journalists like Dan Rivers, Andrew Marshall, and Terry Fredrickson are also providing situation updates in Bangkok through twitter.
The Thai Report has provided a timeline of what happened in Bangkok in the past 24 hours
08:45 – Seh Daeng (Red Shirt general) still alive, in critical condition…
08:50 – Taxis block Wittiyu intersection…
09:30 – Homemade rockets fired at helicopter…
12:00 – Red shirts descend on Ubon in Northeast province…
12:15 – Teargas used on protesters…
12:30 – Large numbers of troops moving in…
12:30 – Clashes intensify, bus burns…
13:10 – Gunfire around Lumpini…
15:00 – Thaksin (former Prime Minister) calls for ceasefire…
15:00 – Troops clash with protesters using live bullets…
15:30 – Foreign journalist shot…
16:15 – Volleys of gunfire…
17:00 – Explosions and heavy gunfire…
18:00 – Car with gas canister bomb explodes…
18:45 – M79 grenades at BTS Saladaeng…
18:45 – Protester shot dead on Rama IV…
19:30 – Sniper attack on red shirt stage…
20:45 – Government defends itself on national TV…
20:45 – Operations will continue until protesters gone…
21:30 – “I can confirm that the army was the only one firing gunshots”…
21:30 – More gunshots and explosion…
00:00 – Molotovs light up Bangkok night…
00:45 – Teenager shot for entering restricted road…
07:30 – UN Chief calls for end to violence…
08:15 – Violence escalating at Saladaeng…
08:30 – Gunfire begins again…
08:30 – 4 dead bodies disappear…
09:00 – Grenade explosion at Lumpini…
09:15 – First casualty this morning…
10:00 – Red leaders call for reinforcements…
Government spokespersons conducted a press conference to defend the actions of the military. Via Bangkok Pundit, the government claimed that…
Protests are illegal so authorities are able to act. Govt has tried to negotiate, but reds refused to continue. The reconciliation has failed because of Thaksin's interference.
As there are some protesters using weapons, the situation has resulted in people dying, injuries, and damage. We have blockaded protest. We have not yet entered the protest area. The troops do not intend to move in for crackdown, but just to increase pressure so rally will end. However, the protesters have used weapons. Troops have to protect themselves. Troops did not use weapons initially, but after coming under attack, they have had to. Rules on use of weapons have been set Rules of engagement we have set are clear, only in air, at terrorists and in self-defense. Operations will continue.
The Red Shirts have been protesting in the streets for the two months already. They are demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva whom they accuse of being illegitimate and undemocratic. They also want the Prime Minister to dissolve the parliament and call for new elections. There were negotiations to settle the protest peacefully but they bogged down a few days ago.
Giles Ji Ungpakorn, a Red Shirt supporter, reports that clashes are also occurring in the provinces
Sporadic clashes are occurring in Bangkok and the provinces. The Government is desperately trying to cling to power by murdering pro-democracy demonstrators. Splits are appearing in the security forces with reports of some police or army units returning fire with the advancing troops. This is indeed a civil war situation and the Government cannot hope to control the situation.
Red Shirts are determined to stand firm. Millions of people are extremely angry with the Government, the military and the Monarchy.
New Mandala writes about the prospect of the Red Shirt protest
It occurs to us that one issue which is probably crucial to the immediate outcome of this dangerous new phase is the capacity and willingness of the Reds to reinforce their numbers at the main encampment or to spread protests to other strategic sites in Bangkok, or throughout the country. Of course, they may not get such a chance.  Word coming from central Bangkok right now is that more shooting and explosions can be heard.
Twitter comments about the fresh wave of violence which erupted in Bangkok
thai101 The army's ‘containment’ operation has spread the fighting all over central Bangkok now. Mind bogglin
jonrussell RT @terryfrd: Jatuporn: Thanks heroes who are risking lives coming to help them. Very close to civil war now. Doesn't know how it end.
newley At just before 8 a.m. here in Bangkok, I'm not hearing any explosions or sirens. But I heard ambulances as late as 3 a.m. #Thailand
ohohcita RT @itzco: Rights 2 protest ends in other ppl right to live & work, army is the society tool 2 restore order. blame only urselves #redshirts
WizardofWindsor 2.the #redshirts have fought only with their bare hands and helmets, the govt is the one using M79s
thesongdej RT @bkkbase: In a normal country isn't this when the leader appears on TV and appeals for calm and reconcilliation? #redshirts
Justin_Dupre More fighting, more traffic, more deaths in BKK. Unfortunate it had to come to this, but we all saw it coming, didn't we? #redshirts
For more background about the Red Shirt protest, read also
Thailand: Citizen videos of violent clash
Thailand: Bloggers document violent clashes
Thailand: “Bloody” Tuesday?

author: Mong Palatino


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The Aid Transparency Movement · Global Voices
David Sasaki

Let's say, hypothetically speaking, that you're the newly elected leader of one of the least developed countries in the world and you are trying to prioritize your government's spending on development projects and social issues. In fact, let's say that you are the incoming president of Guinea-Bissau, a West African country just south of Senegal with a population of 1.6 million and an estimated GDP per capita of somewhere between $500 – $1000. Your entire country's GDP is just $1.72 billion and, as of 2002, an estimated 40% of that money comes directly from foreign aid agencies. The United Nations has given US$ 18.3 million to supplement government salaries, Portugal has pledged 42 million euros in aid over the next three years. Japan has granted US$9.6 million in financial aid to help achieve a literacy program. And that's all small change compared to the substantial funding that comes from USAID, DFID, the European Commission, and the World Bank.
As the incoming president you are aware of the issues facing your country. The agricultural sector needs to be industrialized to boost productivity. Greater security must be put into place for infrastructural projects to continue unimpeded. Technical and scientific education must improve to raise a generation of engineers who can exploit the country's offshore oil reserves. The country's health system must improve to raise life expectancy above 50 years, and to contribute to a more productive work force. What you are not aware of – what, in fact, there is no way for you to track – is exactly how much money is pouring into your country from donors, where it goes, and how effective its impact has been. This information is unavailable because donors are notoriously opaque about their funding even while they push for greater transparency in the countries where they work.
In an excellent three-page policy briefing titled “Greater aid transparency: crucial for aid effectiveness,” Sam Moon and Tim Williamson show how a lack of aid transparency can reduce the ability of taxpayers to hold their governments accountable because it is unclear which projects are government-funded and which are donor-funded. A lack of aid transparency also leads to a lack of government budget transparency, the authors argue. “Without transparency, discrepancies between aid received and aid spent is hard to measure, and corruption is harder to track and eliminate.” It was this basic fact that led Peter Eigen to leave his position as the director of the World Bank Office for East Africa and found Transparency International:
A lack of aid transparency also impedes collaboration among grantee projects. In our mapping of “technology for transparency” case studies we came across several projects that were funded by the same donor, but were unaware of the existence of each other until we made the introduction. A simple list of grantee projects by region and topic would go a long way toward encouraging collaboration and preventing duplication.
Lastly, there is a moral argument behind the idea that funders aiming to promote more accountability through transparency should also encourage greater accountability of their own work by publishing more information about their spending and activities.
The inability of national governments to take stock of the incoming flow of aid money into their countries is just one of the negative consequences that arise from the lack of aid transparency; it also leads to misinformation about the amount and effectiveness of philanthropy and aid development. According to a survey by the Borgen Project, Americans guess, on average, that 24% of our federal budget goes to development assistance. In fact, it is less than one percent. That is about 25 cents per day for each American. Furthermore, less than half of aid from the United States goes to the poorest countries; the largest recipients are strategic allies such as Egypt, Israel, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Such misinformation about how – and how much – development assistance is used has contributed to a popular backlash, led in the mainstream media by Dambisa Moyo and Bill Easterly. At the first – and regrettably only – TED Africa conference in 2007, the “Cheetah Generation” of young African leaders called for “trade not aid” to increase Africa's development. Popular rhetoric says that billions of dollars in development assistance have not accomplished a thing, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. But such hyperbole depends on the fact that we simply don't know where aid money goes, how it is spent, and what the results are. Such information tends to stay in the filing cabinets of each individual funder. We simply can't measure aid effectiveness without aid transparency.
The good news: we have reached the point where there is clear agreement that we need to work toward greater aid transparency. The challenge and disagreement now lie in how. For example, what is the ideal level of granularity for financial information regarding grants? Does publishing the salaries of individual employees violate their privacy? How timely should information be made available? What format should it be published in? How is information across various funders easily accessed, aggregated, and understood? What are the most efficient processes to integrate the publication of information with accounting from the funder's side and budgeting from the recipient country's side? Should future budget information be made available in addition to past investments and current spending?
These are difficult questions and their difficulty probably lies more in how each institution manages their record keeping than ideological differences related to privacy and power. Fortunately, a number of new initiatives are underway to help develop standards around aid transparency. Foremost among them is the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), a “temporary coalition of donor governments, governments of developing countries and NGOs” that was formed at the 2008 Accra Agenda for Action, which grew out of the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. According to its website, “IATI’s role is to develop consistent and coherent international standards for the way donors report information about aid spending.” They publish a bi-monthly newsletter, which unfortunately is only available in the proprietary Microsoft Word format. Hopefully this does not reflect their thinking on how aid-related information should be published.
In November 2008 the steering committee of the International Aid Transparency Initiative began what was meant to be an 18-month process to define:
According to their latest newsletter, they now aim to reach an agreement on what data should be published by July, with implementation and the agreed-upon code of conduct beginning in December.
Publish What You Fund aims to spread awareness about the importance of aid transparency, and to put pressure on the United States, the European Union, and the World Bank to meet specific transparency targets.
If all goes well the internet should be flooded with information from donors about their spending and activities by early next year. But how to manage the torrent of information? How to make sense of it? How to create mechanisms so that greater aid transparency actually leads to more accountability of grantee projects, government recipients, and the funders themselves?
Some innovative projects have already been developed to help visualize development assistance. The Ujima Project takes data from USAspending.gov, the United States Department of Justice,  the US Department of State, the Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, and UK's Department for International Development to visualize aid flows, weapon sales, and lobbying expenses at the country level throughout Africa. It is managed by the Great Lakes Media Institute in Rwanda and the website was developed by Appfrica, a Uganda-based web development firm.
New York Times journalist Ron Nixon describing the birth and objectives of the Ujima Project at TEDx Kampala.
Aidinfo.org is a project of Development Initiatives to research the current supply of and demand for information related to aid. A recent blog post admits that several of the team's assumptions at the outset of the project have been challenged during their subsequent research, “most notably the idea that if more aid information is made available, people will use it.” They have also found that “donors publish a lot more information than some of us thought, it’s just not in a format that’s useful for most users. In particular it’s often not timely or comparable.” Most importantly, they stress that information related to “aid and other resources flowing from donor countries” needs to be linked to “the wider accountability movement in recipient countries where most stakeholders are interested in transparency of the whole budget.” In other words, from the perspective of an accountability activist in Kenya, the aid-related statistics from the Ujima Project are just one piece of a much larger puzzle. Other pieces include oversight of the Constituency Development Fund, extractive industries , and an audit of the Ministry of Finance.
Programmers working together at the Aid Information Challenge in London
That doesn't make aid transparency any less important, only more complicated. Fortunately, a burgeoning community of researchers, programmers, and activists are working together online – and offline at informal barcamps – to develop tools and techniques to overcome the many obstacles standing in the way of effective aid transparency. March and April were especially busy months for the aid transparency community. It all began on March 8 when students from the College of William & Mary, Georgetown University and George Washington University were given a preview of the AidData Portal, which launched publicly later that month. A week later the first Aid Information Challenge brought programmers and aid agencies together to think strategically about how to use open data to make aid more effective. They have linked to related projects that are already in development, and listed a set of recommendations. On March 22nd the Aid Transparency and Development Finance conference got started in Oxford, bringing together academics, think tanks, and development agencies to discuss aid transparency with a focus on data. The final day included the public launch of the AidData.org portal, the most comprehensive of its kind, and a hands-on workshop on how to use it. Two weeks later and the first UK-based Aid Information Challenge took place at the Guardian newspaper offices in London. They have listed a number of project ideas and prototypes. The Aid Information Challenge website promises future events in other countries. Last month the United Arab Emirates’ Office for the Coordination of Foreign Aid held its own training workshop on aid transparency and accountability. Around the same time the World Bank announced that it had made publicly available all of its global development and finance indicators. Other initiatives aiming to bring transparency to philanthropy and development assistance include the Latin America Donor Index, Glasspockets, and Grantsfire.
The momentum of the aid transparency movement is palpable, but without greater coordination and aggregation, so much transparency will lead to more confusion than clarity. Raw data must be presented in ways that are easy to understand, and that tie directly to accountability initiatives at the local and national level in each country. Before we overwhelm the internet with information we need to facilitate the lines of communication to make use of it.

author: David Sasaki


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Zambia: Meet the founder of Media 365 · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Emeka writes about Mary Tembo of Media 365: “Mary and her sisters founded Youth Media that published the TrendSetters a magazine that won numerous international awards for encouraging honest discussion on matters lifestyle and health among the youth.”


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Bangkok clashes: Pictures, Videos and Twitter reports · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

From the twitpic page of wassayos
Thailand Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva will not back down as he ordered the military to continue the operations against Red Shirt protesters in Bangkok. Abhisit insists the violent dispersal of protesters is justified to bring back stability in the capital. He also accused a minority of Red Shirt “terrorists” of trying to instigate more violence in the country.
The Red Shirts have been protesting in the streets for the two months already. They are demanding the resignation of the Prime Minister whom they accuse of being illegitimate and undemocratic. They also want the Prime Minister to dissolve the parliament and call for new elections. There were negotiations to settle the protest peacefully but they bogged down a few days ago.
The initial members of the Red Shirt movement were supporters of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra but today the Red Shirt is also composed of groups and individuals who want democratic reforms in Thai society.
What happened in Bangkok in the past 24 hours? Here is a timeline of events provided by the The Thai Report
11:00 – Red leader: Conflict has come too far to negotiate…
11:45 – Civilians hit by sniper fire…
12:00 – “People grabbing food like crazy” in Bangkok Tops…
12:15 – Assassination rumors…
12:15 – Army snatches another body…
12:15 – Heavy sniper fire in Lumpini Park…
12:30 – Bodies disappearing…
12:45 – Injured for 30 minutes before died…
14:00 – Flash cameras draw gunfire…
14:15 – Protesters buildup defenses…
14:30 – Reporters being banned from conflict zone…
15:15 – Protesters advance towards troops on Rama IV…
15:15 – Japanese embassy staff trapped…
15:45 – 7 lifeless bodies spotted outside hotel…
16:20 – Lots of gunfire around Rajprasong…
16:30 – Australian tourists trapped in hotel…
16:30 – U.S. embassy offers to evacuate families of staff…
16:35 – Huge explosions rock Bon Kai…
17:00 – CRES complains about “distorted international media”…
17:05 – Shot in the head while rescuing injured…
17:10 – 1,000 peaceful reds will walk to Rama IV…
18:45 – Government: Don’t blame us…
18:45 – Red shirts demand ceasefire…
18:50 – “Military isn’t going to take its toys and go home”…
23:00 – Death toll at 22…
23:15 – The fury outside my window…
23:45 – New weapon, mortar shells…
23:50 – Media asked to leave Silom, military action expected…
00:10 – Report of police fighting soldiers…
00:50 – Monks pray for peace at Victory Monument…
01:00 – Deployment of more soldiers…
01:40 – Sniper fire still heard…
02:05 – Policeman says military ready to make an offensive…
03:00 – 24 dead, 180 injured and the vast majority are civilians…
03:45 – PM Abhisit “No turning back”…
From the twitpic page of DeanOut
Burning tires and grenade blasts have rocked the Red Shirt protest zone. Here is a citizen video footage
Eyewitness accounts have been uploaded on the web. For example, Nick Nostitz was inside the “killing zone”. Vaitor and Riding out the Economy also posted their observations of the clashes. A Facebook user posted this entry, “What should I feel when I wake up one day with the dead bodies of Thais in front of my house?” But netizens are questioning the authenticity of this expose. Are they fake dead bodies?
Tweetphoto from aleithead
Kishen, writing for New Mandala, is worried about the social, political and economic impact of the ongoing clashes
But everyone is fighting it out without considering the enormous economic and political ramification to Thailand as a whole. Thailand’s economic growth for the year will be badly hampered if matters prolong. As it is this year’s drought will have a telling impact on country’s exports of agri-produce.
As such, the wounds inflicted on Thailand’s psyche and image in the next few days could have a lasting impact on Thailand future growth as a nation. That’s a greater wound that all the grenades, .308 bullets and armoured personal carriers can inflict on the Thai people
Another citizen video of the clashes between soldiers and protesters
News in Bangkok speculates that journalists were deliberately targeted by snipers
I suspected that the shooting of the reporters seemed intentional. I suspected that the intentional targeting of reporters were to prevent them from filming the carnage. I now feel more confident that I am right.
Jon, via Greg to Differ, writes about the role of social media in monitoring the Bangkok clashes
Social media has played a major role in reporting the details of the Bangkok protests across the world. Powerful images, compelling video footage, personal accounts and opinion have been amplified by Twitter, Facebook and blogs to the point where social media is a valuable accompaniment to media reports.
Tweetphoto by naelkung
A street scene in Bangkok showing Red Shirt protesters in action
Twitter reactions about the raging urban battles in Bangkok
ellymedan: Please don't believe what you see on CNN about #Thailand. Very pro the #redshirt who has taken #Bangkok hostage
sutatip_b: RT @BangkokBill: In light of everything last night I think it is now fair to say that there is a #redshirt protest and a redshirt insurgency
seacorro: Has anyone actually seen with their own eyes a #redshirt with a gun or more to the point firing one? Ive seen makeshift weapons onl
tulpin: i guess the #redshirt leaders will hold people hostage like this and try to find a way to flee the scene when they have the opportunity
Tweetphoto by aleithead


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Bangladesh: Fashion Show By Acid Attack Survivors · Global Voices
Rezwan

Photoblogger Monirul Alam highlights a fashion show by acid attack survivors in Bangladesh which aims to fight the stigma against them.

author: Rezwan


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Bangladesh: The Zamindars · Global Voices
Rezwan

Bangladesh Unlocked shares the history of the Zamindars in the Indian Sub-continent, who were officials employed by the Mughals and the British colonial rulers to collect taxes from peasants.


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Egypt: Journalists Protest at Qatar Embassy · Global Voices
Katharine Ganly

Mohamed Hashem, journalist of Islamonline, reports on the protest held at the Qatar Embassy, Cairo, on May 9. The protest comprised 150 journalists and writers, and addressed the issue of the sacking of 250 Islamonline employees in March.

author: Katharine Ganly


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Egypt: Reflections from the Global Voices Summit  · Global Voices
Amira Al Hussaini

Egyptian Tarek Amr writes about the people he met at the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit, held in Chile last week.

author: Amira Al Hussaini


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Lebanon: Support the Water Taxi Project · Global Voices
Katharine Ganly

The Beirut Water Taxi Project is a new idea to help reduce congestion on Beirut's busy roads. It is currently being studied by the Lebanese government. Show your support for the idea by joining the Facebook group.


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Maldives: Forgetting The Other Maldivians · Global Voices
Rezwan

Rehendhi notes that after one and a half year of the new democratic government's rule, the other Maldivians (women) are still being left behind.


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Mexico: Revelations of Crimes by Father Maciel · Global Voices
Issa Villarreal

Recent investigations have brought about controversy regarding the crimes of Mexican priest Father Marcial Maciel, founder of the Roman Catholic Order the Legion of Christ, who received multiple accusations for child abuse from the mid 1990s up until his death in 2008. Despite the crimes, the priest was known to have been protected by important religious leaders close to Pope John Paul II and figures of the Mexican economy and politics, according to a series of articles of The New York Times.
Photo by midiman. Used following a Creative Commons License. Taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/midiman/90232391/
Although Maciel died in 2008, his victims have continued to search for public acknowledgment of the crimes and for justice. Without the protection of Pope John Paul II, new details of Maciel's crimes have reached mainstream media and have helped make up a comprehensive panorama of the depth of the damage caused by the priest. In March of 2010, two supposed sons of Maciel talked to a journalist [es] about how they were abused as children by his father for 8 years, with explicit details.
When the news broke, it was already reported that Maciel had a daughter and that he had at least 9 accusations of sexual abuse from former seminarians of the Legion. In March, the lawyer of Maciel’s sons assured [es] that the Mexican priest had passports, bank accounts, and credit cards under three different names, and that he utilized the the millionaire fundraising activity of the Legion [es] to “buy” Vatican leaders and friendships. These facts complemented the investigations of the past year that documented the connections between the religious leader and the drugtrafficking groups [es] and even Maciel's plagiarism of the primary book of the Legion [es] El salterio de mis días (The psalmbook of my days).
It was not until May of 2010 when the “double life” of Father Maciel was publicly acknowledged by the Vatican [es] and was labeled as “immoral”.
The crimes of the Mexican priest have been discussed thoroughly in citizen media for the last years. In the blog Atrio a discussion from 2006 can be found after Maciel was condemned by Pope Benedict XVI because of the child abuse. User Emilio commented on the post [es] regarding the safety of the children that are in the seminars:
quisiera recordar a los que somos familiares de Legionarios. Tenemos el derecho y queremos que la Iglesia nos garantice que no enviamos a un hijo, hermano… al seminario para ser violado por sinverguenzas. Si la investigación se cierra en falso, la perjudicada será la Iglesia misma, y la Legión misma. ¿Quién querrá ser sacerdote?
In a more recent post, blogger immorfo noted the poor response [es] from the religious organizations when it comes to the victims of abuse:
Si a los esquemas de retribución para las víctimas agregáramos también la disolución de aquellas organizaciones que, de forma comprobada, sirven de soporte para la ejecución de delitos que parten del abuso de la confianza de los líderes entonces estaríamos hablando de verdadera justicia y no sólo de cuensuelos efectistas.
On the same line, Twitter user Jose Pablo (@pouch15) used sarcasm to criticize the choice of words [es] reserved for religious leaders who are not treated as criminals:
Me encanta q los violadores son animales, degenerados, pero M Maciel y los curas pederastas son solo pecadores
Catholic blogger Fray Nelson wrote about how time extends Maciel’s crime [es] to include the secrecy of authorities and blind following:
Por supuesto, ningún Papa tiene super-poderes, a la manera de la visión de rayos X de Supermán, y por eso los engaños pueden suceder en cuanto a las opiniones de comportamientos morales, buenos o malos, de personas específicas. Y sin embargo, ya vemos cómo el tiempo es juez de mirada más profunda.
On the other side of the story, in the blog Mera Defensa de la Fe, written by Eleuterio Fernández Guzmán, a discussion unfolded whether the organization Legionaries of Christ, which Maciel founded in 1941, should also be held accountable for the crimes. The author replied a comment distinguishing [es] Maciel’s actions from the ones of the organization:
Los legionarios de Cristo no son Marcial Macial. Eso, simplemente, no puede ser. De ser así, seguramente nada se salvaría de las instituciones creadas por el ser humano.
However, the Legion has been subject of investigations due to its relationship with businesses, education, and even politics: the order extends to more than 20 countries and has 70,000 members, as Mexican journalist Raymundo Riva Palacio mentioned in a column for Eje Central [es].
In the same column, the journalist detailed an investigation of Maciel made for television in the late 1990s that important businessmen and even politicians like the staff of then-Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo tried to impede its release through a series of threats of canceling advertisement on the transmitting station. Moreover on the subject, a recent NYTimes follow-up article exposed the strong connections of the Legion of Christ order with large Mexican corporations and business leaders, like Telcel (businessman and millionaire Carlos Slim used to appear publicly with Maciel), Coparmex, Grupo Alfa, among others organizations that helped actively to cover-up the crimes of the priest.
User Ivonne commented Riva Palacios’s column [es] with her experience as reporter ten years ago:
Recuerdo mis días de reportera en REFORMA, donde (…) tocar el caso Maciel era como clavarles un dardo en el corszón. (…) Era, por desgracia, un acto ideológico revestido de ceguera fe católica. (…) Diez años después de aquel agravio personal (…), me doy por bien servida al atestiguar que han perdido todas sus batallas de pretendido dominio ideológico.

author: Issa Villarreal


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Pakistan: Reactions To The Time Square Bomber · Global Voices
Sana Saleem

Time Square at New York City by Flickr user redeye, used under a Creative Commons licence
Earlier this month an attempted Bomb attack at the Time Square in New York City raised security alerts across USA. Following the attack the Police detained Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American, from JFK airport in connection to the bombing. According to the reports, Shahzad's car was found in the heart of Times Square loaded with gasoline, propane, fireworks and fertilizer.
His arrest has been been followed by frequent raids, more arrests and further investigations which raised much speculations and triggered a debate on US-Pakistan relations. While the media and authorities continue to question the possibilities of more terrorist attempts, many in Pakistan feel targeted. Blogger Ammar Yasir relates the incident to US visa policies and the effect of terrorist attacks on US-Pakistan relations:
The Pakistani tragedy is that we all are scrutinized for the crimes we never committed. Statically speaking more Pakistanis are the victim of terrorism than any American for that matter. Our army has been more effective against the Taliban than US and NATO forces combine in Afghanistan. US Govt. has more power to enforce their will on the Pakistani than the voters who elected the Govt. American drones fly in Pakistani air space, bomb down Pakistani houses and land safely on Pakistani bases. Still, our seriousness is questioned, our loyalty to the cause is inquired and our fate is decided on the basis of some Hollywood movie.
Kalsoom Lakhani at CHUP gives possible solutions:
Faisal Shahzad may be a Pakistani-American, but he was not only “Made in Pakistan.” Yes, Pakistan is plagued with a vast number of issues. We have an undeniable terror problem. But the right solution in this case is to have both countries – the U.S. and Pakistan – look inward at their own societies and take responsibility for the issues at hand.
A blogpost titled “Who is Faisal Shahzad” by Adil Najam on All Things Pakistan, takes a look at Shahzad's life demanding to view and understand the situation beyond stereotypes:
Let us not shy away from the tough questions that we need to ask ourselves. But let us also not be more tough on ourselves than we need to be. Let us work very hard to understand how someone from amongst us could even contemplate such a horrible act. But let us not let the horribleness of this contemplation lead to the condemnation of an entire community. Let us understand him for what he is accused of being: a criminal; let us condemn him for what is charged with having done: criminality; but let us not allow his alleged criminality with our own identity.
Shahzad's arrest and the aftermath has raised fears amongst Pakistani's living abroad and in Pakistan. News reports regarding his possible connections to groups in Pakistan is not comforting. Needless to say, the incident has raised tensions and has put Pakistan in the spotlight once again. Perhaps, as Lakhani puts it, its about time the two countries sat together and took responsibility in order to find a sustainable solution and device a strategy to combat terrorism.

author: Sana Saleem


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Philippines: Broadcaster survives assassination attempt · Global Voices
Karlo Mongaya

Fellow journalists condemn the attempted assassination of Jerome Tabanganay, a broadcaster from the northern Philippine province of Kalinga known for his regular criticism of government corruption.

author: Karlo Mongaya


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Philippines: The jejemon craze · Global Voices
Karlo Mongaya

As millions of Filipinos closely followed the Philippine election campaign, conduct, and results, another phenomenon by the name “jejemon” is stealing the spotlight for other Filipinos, especially online where jejemon enthusiasts and haters compete for attention.
But what is jejemon in the first place? Posts defining the term are proliferating all over the Philippine blogosphere. The sum of these efforts is the assignment of attributes that constitutes jejemon as an identity/subclass/subculture. Now Showing, for example, indicates 3 signs to identify a jejemon.
1.JEJETYPING. 2. Wearing a jeje-hat 3. People start to talk about you and share your jeje-photos online.
The primary source of these definitions comes from the Urban Dictionary website which features mostly its negative qualities:
- a person WhO tyPeZ lYKeS tH1s pfOuh..
whether you are RICH, MIDDLE CLASS or POOR ifpK eU tYpE L1K3 tHiS pfOuh..eU are CONSIDERED AS JEJEMON.
– (noun or adj.)—a person who is very expert in typing..
– a person that nevr (sic) gets tired of typing consonants in all of his comments…
– people with very LOW IQ
– a person that destroys the morale of language in any typing media like internet, cellphones…etc…
– a person you want to fuck off and kill
– an emo/gangster who owns all the possible negative qualities of a person.
Artuji finds the discrimination against jejemon ironic.
It’s interesting that Jejemons are typically being discriminated in Philippine culture and yet, an earlier and original form of language – Leet is actually a globally accepted form of writing, specially in the intellectual geek community. And even Google has it’s own Leet Page.
Our Very Existence rails against jejemon haters.
Other than their hideous attempt of styling their sentences, what else gives you the rush to make you want to kill them? I’ve seen a lot of people reply to this mindless fan profiles some stuff that say “kill all jejemons” and some other sentences with the more or less the same message. One question: What did Jejemons do to you?
The Marocharim Experiment analyzes jejemon fashion.
The average Jejemon… combines aspects of hip-hop, rock, emo-core, metal, and original Pilipino music in one ensemble.  The fashion statement, as with many others, exists within one coherent syntagm:
Example 1: Imitation Havaianas, hip-hop shorts, Saosin shirt, eyeliner/mascara, trucker cap.
Example 2: Imitation Converse, skinny jeans, Three-Stars-and-a-Sun shirt, bandanna, sunglasses, trucker cap.
Example 3: Imitation Crocs, striped knit stockings, fishnet stockings, denim cut-offs, tube top, eyeliner/mascara, Fly shades/Shutter shades, dyed hair in cornrows.
The colored trucker-cap, however, manifests a desire for uniqueness, even at the expense of inconvenience.  It speaks of “imba,” a gaming term which refers to “imbalanced” characters, which can also refer to the kind of walking required to both show off and keep the cap in position.  It therefore necessitates a certain gait while walking, similar to hip-hop recording artists…
Based on the examples above, however, Jejemon fashion is not strictly or completely the imitation of foreign culture or popular trends.  Instead, it attempts to make the wearer stand out even in situations that are already fashionable.
Nick wonders why the jejemon craze seems to be getting even more interests than the elections.
Why in the world has the elections taken such a back seat, and interest in Jejemons spiked up? Actually, over at plurk, someone shared that among search terms in The Philippines, the elections doesn’t even come in the top 10. That’s pretty surprising and a bit worrisome. Although, I know that it seems that more people are more engaged in this election, I don’t really have the numbers to justify that assertion.
The Views credits the coining of the term jejemon for its popularity.
Two to three years ago, my friends and I used the term “jologs” in naming these people who type in sTiCkY cApS mixed with txtspk…  No, it did not reach media status since the term jologs didn’t bring much impact as contrasted to the word “jejemon.”
Hits and Mrs. thinks it's just a fad.
Truth to tell, I think that this is just a fad, something that will cease to exist in the years to come. I think so primarily because of the fact that most people considered Jejemons today are the young ones, those who are still discovering their true identities. Recall that once in your younger days you also were into fads, whatever your social or educational status may be, and people in their late 20s and early 30s were looking at you condescendingly. It’s just that now you’re in the other side of the fence, so to speak.
But for University of the Philippines Dean of Mass Communication Rolando Tolentino, the jejemon phenomenon is situated in a bigger context of social marginalization.
Ang paglikha ng kaantasan ay hindi lamang simpleng paghihiwalay sa may K (karapatan) at sa wala. Ito ay paglikha rin ng epistemiko at maging literal na karahasan (sa kaso nga ng jejemon sa Urban Dictionary na may tasitong panghihimok ng annihilation). Inetsapwera na nga sila ng estado, ineetsapwera pa sila ng mismong mamamayan nito.
Samakatuwid, ito ang tagumpay ng mismong estado. Hindi nito kailangan gumawa ng batas para ietsapwera ang peligrosong mamamayan. Epekto na lamang ang pagkaetsapwera ng lantarang polisiyang ekonomiko at politika nakapabor sa naghaharing uri ng bansa. At ang isang direktang epekto nga ng paglikha ng hegemoniya ng naghaharing uri—na pati ang pinaghaharian ay umaastang kabahagi ng ideolohiya ng naghahari—na muling nag-eetsapwera sa mamamayan.
Ergo, this is the victory of the state. It does not need to legislate laws to marginalize “dangerous” citizens. The marginalization caused by economic and political policies that favor the country's ruling classes have become mere effects. And one direct effect is the creation of the hegemony of the ruling classes – where even the ruled are posturing to partake in the dominant ideology – who are again marginalizing the people.
The Construct adds,
I would say this is also hegemonic. It boils down to the aesthetic appeal of standard language. Many Facebook users have decided to discriminate against these jejemons particularly because they situate themselves as part of the elite. Their access to better education and greater exposure to “beautiful” use of language have minimized their tolerance for those who express themselves differently.
One must not overlook the “mon” in the blend “jejemon.” It may seem so innocent but we must be reminded that “mon” in Pokemon means “monster.” Isn’t this a way of demonizing this social group? That they are of a lower species? That people need to “catch them all” and tame and train them to do one’s bidding? Language as a repressive state apparatus.
In the same vein, Zineulat answers a few questions about jejemon.
1. How did “Jejemon” came out?
It is interesting to note that the term “Jejemon” as the name of the subcultural group now known as “Jejemon” did not originate from themselves. It is the public, the middle class and the upper classes that most probably labeled such subcultural group as jejemons, based upon their observation that these individuals text or communicate digitally and electronically using a distinct form of language…
4. Is “Jejemon” a social construct?
Yes. But the social construction was negatively done by the upper classes. More particularly, the negation of the jejemons is an elitist stand against the lower classes. This means that while the lower classes are able to accommodate and use the democratized technology of the capitalists, the elitist rulers continue the “othering” by ensuring that the jejemons would not be able to fully enter their circle. It is of course different in cases where and when the jejemons are “legitimized” by mainstream media and other capitalist corporations because basically they are able to reek in superprofit out of the othered subculture of jejemons.
Meanwhile, According to Matthew places the jejemon craze with the rise of new social media.
If there’s one thing that is really phenomenal with the Jejemons and the subsequent rise of Jejebusters, it’s the active integration of media, the Internet, television, and print, in dealing with a societal issue. Such phenomenon has proven again that interrelations within the members of the society nowadays has been relying heavily in media.