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Blogger Law Violations Go Unpunished in Russia · Global Voices
Tanya Lokot

Images mixed by Tetyana Lokot.
Violations of the Russian blogger law are going unpunished as law enforcement seems to care little for imposing fines on those who use swearwords, promote drug use, or offend someone's religious sensibilities while blogging.
Since the infamous ‘blogger law’ came into power in Russia seven months ago, the telecommunications watchdog Roscomnadzor has documented 67 violations in 53 of the blogs added to the new blogger registry. TJournal reports that 40 of them deal with profanity use in the blogs, 17—with “promoting drug use.” Other violations include calls of extremism, propaganda of Nazi symbols, and content offensive to sensibilities of religious persons.
Roscomnadzor's press-secretary Vadim Ampelonsky explained that the watchdog can only record the violations, but cannot dole out the punishment, since the law mandates that various law enforcement agencies are responsible for the repercussions.
Само ведомство этого делать не может, так как «санкции» предусмотрены не законом о блогерах, а другими нормами права: например, ФСКН может заставить отвечать за пропаганду наркотиков, а Генпрокуратура — за экстремизм.
Our institution cannot do this itself, as the “sanctions” are based not on the blogger law per se, but on other legal norms: for instance, Russia's Federal Drug Control Service can hold you responsible for drug use promotion, and the General Prosecutor's Office can enforce [sanctions] for extremism.
An interesting conundrum, according to Roscomnadzor, is that the Russian police doesn't consider the Internet a “public space,” so it sees no need to prosecute users for profanity and swearing in blogs. Ampelonsky said they're currently in discussions with representatives of the police force about whether administrative norms can and should apply to the online spaces.
The blogger law came into force on August 1, 2014 and tasked Roscomnadzor with adding all Russian bloggers with over 3000 unique daily views to a special registry. The bloggers, who were essentially equated with mainstream media, were banned from sharing unverified information, spreading calls to extremism and swearing. The popular bloggers were also obligated to disclose their personal information on their websites. Violations of the law would be punished with administrative fines.
On August 1, when the law gained force, the RuNet staged a symbolic protest, with many users deliberately adding profane hashtags, words and images to their tweets in order to demonstrate the law held no power over them.
On February 12, 2015, a Ukrainian MP proposed a draft law regulating blogger activity that was essentially a carbon copy of the Russian one. After a public outcry from journalists, free speech advocates and the Internet in general, the MP withdrew his proposal, citing peer pressure.

author: Tanya Lokot


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14 Open Source Products Based in Africa · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Despite many problems facing the African continet, African open source innovators are not lagging behing. Here is a list of 14 open source projects coming out of the continent.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Ndesanjo Macha


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A Week in the Life of a Tokyo ‘Salary Man’ · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

Screenshot from “A Week In the Life of a Tokyo Salary Man”
A recent video upload by prolific YouTube vlogger Stu in Tokyo has gone viral, so far reaching more than half a million views.
The topic of video? A week in the life of a Tokyo “salary man,” the common name in Japan for a salaried office worker:
Stu works for a British financial services company in Tokyo, he explains in the video. Typically the months of January, February and March are “crunch time”, requiring long hours.
So, Stu decided to keep a video diary of just how much he works each day, and what he actually has time to do after he gets off work. It doesn't turn out to be much of anything at all.
But that's okay, says Stu. “There are definitely people in Tokyo who do this all year round in order to support their families. I couldn't imagine having to do this if I had those kinds of responsibilities as well.”
There are signs this cornerstone of Japanese working corner is in the process of changing.
Although current Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has floated the idea of eliminating regulations that limit daily working hours entirely, the government has in fact introduced plans to require Japanese salaried workers to take five days of paid vacation every year.
Until now, while many Japanese salaried employees receive paid vacation time as part of their compensation package, very few workers actually make use of it.
Due to workplace culture, Japanese workers are reluctant to book vacation time on their own, leaving coworkers behind to pick up the slack.
Instead, if Japanese workers do take a day off, they typically take one during one of Japan's national holidays.
Japan currently has 16 nationally legislated holidays, the most of any G20 country (the UK has only 8 national holiday, and the United States 10).
The abundance of national holidays in Japan may compensate for long working hours and peer pressure that frowns on taking a day off for personal reasons.
However, when everyone in a nation of 126 million people goes on vacation at the same time on a national holiday, the result can be clogged rail lines, monster traffic jams, and long lines at airports.
The new vacation labour regulations are an attempt at addressing this problem. There is also the hope that mandatory paid leave, combined with the large number of national holidays will spur tourism and in turn encourage consumer demand, stimulating Japan's sluggish economy.

author: Nevin Thompson


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Brazilian University Won’t Enroll Guinea-Bissauan Woman, Even Though She Passed All Requirements · Global Voices
Fernanda Canofre

Students protest in front of a building at the University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) on February 23. The sign reads: “UFRGS xenophobe”. Photo: Barricadas Abrem Caminhos/Facebook
When Domingas Mendes left her home in Guinea-Bissau, she was a nun heading for a mission in southern Brazil. A few years later, religious life no longer seemed like the right choice and she decided to pursue a degree in social services.
For months, her time was divided between work hours and the free course she attended at night to prepare for the tests to enter Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), one of Brazil's top schools, located in the city of Porto Alegre. As many black and poor applicants do, Domingas applied as a “quota candidate”.
The Brazilian quota system for high education, implemented as a law in 2012, reserves 50 percent of public universities’ vacancies for students coming from low-income families and public schools and who are of African or Indigenous descent.
Domingas passed the test and was approved. But then she learned the university wouldn't take her. As she wrote in a Facebook post:
O Edital e a lei de cotas exige que tem que ser preto e pobre. Sou preta, pobre, trabalhadora e comprovei isso! Outro elemento que quero chamar a atenção é a declaração do MEC sobre meu caso, também em entrevista para a rádio gaúcha. Conforme o Ministério da Educação as Universidades tem autonomia na definição do ingresso de seus estudantes em casos como o meu. Portanto, isso mostra que a alegação da UFRGS se trata de discriminação e segregação, pois não está previsto na lei nacional que escola pública precisa ser brasileira! Isso é uma política excludente da UFRGS para uma lei que se pretende o contrário: incluir e garantir cidadania!
The rules and the quota law require that you should be black and poor to apply to the quota vacancies. I am black, poor, a worker and I proved that! Another element that I would like to call attention to is the Ministry of Education's statement on my case, also in an interview to Radio Gaúcha. According to the ministry, the universities have autonomy to define the enrollment of students in cases such as mine. Therefore, this shows that UFRGS’ claim is discrimination and segregation, because it is not foreseen in national law that the public school needs to be a Brazilian one! UFRGS's policy is excluding me from a law that intends the exact opposite: to include and guarantee citizenship!
Domingas during the protest on February 23. Photo: Barricadas Abrem Caminhos/used with permission
Rádio Gaúcha, a radio station from the city of Porto Alegre, had access to the document UFRGS issued confirming Domingas’ rejection. They published it in their website:
Ocorre que a reserva de vagas de que trata a Lei 12711/12 é destinada a estudantes egressos do sistema público de ensino do Brasil. O já mencionado decreto 7824/12, em seu artigo 2º, parágrafo único, determina que, para os fins a que se destina, consideram-se escolas públicas aquelas de que trata o artigo 19, I da Lei 9394/96. Este dispositivo, por sua vez, estabelece que são instituições públicas de ensino aquelas criadas ou incorporadas, mantidas e administradas pelo Poder Público.
What happens is that the reservation of vacancies established by the Law 12711/12 is reserved for students from the Brazilian public school system. The decree 7824/12, in its Article 2, says that for its intended purpose, public schools are considered those defined by article 19 of the Law 9394/96. This provision establishes that public schools are those created or incorporated, maintained and managed by the Public Power.
To date, the university hasn’t spoken publicly about the case.
After Domingas shared her story, hundreds of people started to engage in a campaign to demand the university allow her enrollment. On February 23, a protest organized inside the university’s campus by social services students gathered a hundred people and forced one of the vice deans to receive the Guinea-Bissauan.
But the resulting news wasn't good: as Domingas told Global Voices, the institution maintained its position, telling her to look for an alternative through “legal means”.
Journalist Thales Bouchaton said in his blog:
… em uma bizarra interpretação da Lei de Cotas, entendeu a instituição por não aceitar o ingresso da estudante porque ela não fez o ensino médio em uma escola do Brasil. Porém, fui dar uma olhada na referida lei e ela não fala em nada disso e sim em “escolas geridas pelo Poder Público”, não especificando se essa escola é brasileira ou não.
…in a bizarre interpretation of the quotas law, the institution understood it should not accept the student because she did not attend high school in Brazil. However, from what I've seen in the law, it doesn’t specify any of this, but mentions “schools managed by the Public Power”, not specifying whether or not it needs to be a Brazilian school.
There is another catch to the story. In an interview for TV Negração, published on YouTube, Domingas noted that the university exempted her from paying the entrance test fee, something only allowed for public school students. Also, after eight years living in Brazil, Domingas has a permanent visa. According to the country's laws, except for political rights as the right to vote, the visa gives immigrants the same rights regarding access to public health and education as it does to Brazilian citizens.
Domingas touched on the sensitive issue of African immigration to Brazil in a Facebook post:
Para eu ser trabalhadora para vender minha força de trabalho a preço barato é permitido. Todavia, eu qualificar minha força de trabalho e, assim, poder ter uma vida um pouquinho melhor não pode!
When it comes to being a worker, selling my labor for a cheap price, it's allowed. However, when it comes to getting better qualifications, so I can have a life that's a little better, it's not!
The numbers of African immigrants in Brazil have increased 30 fold in the past decade. Even though most are able to find jobs and send money to their families back home, it is clear that society has a place reserved for them. And, as Domingas’ story shows, this place is rarely a spot in a university.
One of the signs in the protest said: “Down with xenophobia and racism”. Photo: Barricadas Abrem Caminhos/Facebook
Domingas is currently following the institution's counseling and looking for a solution with the help of a public defender. In the video interview, she says she has presented all the requirements that UFRGS demands for quota students to enroll, and adds:
Eu acredito que não estão aceitando minha matrícula por racismo, xenofobia, preconceito e tratando o princípio da lei de forma contraditória mesmo. Porque uma lei que é para incluir, agora está me excluindo.
I believe they are not accepting my enrollment because of racism, xenophobia and prejudice and treating the law principle in a contradictory way. Because a law that is designed to include is now excluding me.
The students who organized the protest endorse this position. But the question of why a Brazilian university won't accept a Guinea-Bissau student remains to be answered.

author: Fernanda Canofre


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Fast-Growing City of El Alto Turns Thirty · Global Voices
Eduardo Avila

El Alto graphic by Tonny Lopez (@tonnylp)
Relatively young by Bolivian city standards, the city of El Alto celebrates its 30th anniversary on March 6th, 2015. What initially started as a small suburb of the city of La Paz, the seat of government located 4,070 meters above sea level, it became its own municipality in 1985. It is now Bolivia's second largest city according to the 2012 Census.
The city's population is comprised primarily of Aymara migrants from the Altiplano that take part in informal and formal commerce and manufacturing. While it counts on a rich cultural tradition, El Alto is also known for its role in the 2003 “Gas War,” that ultimately led to the resignation of then-President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada in the wake of 80 people left dead. The slogan “El Alto on its feet, never on its knees,” has been used since the 1980s, and is still used today to reflect the resilient character of its residents.
To celebrate El Alto's anniversary, the hashtag #ElAlto30 has been making its rounds on social media.

author: Eduardo Avila


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Here Are Kenyan Technology Companies That Were Funded in 2014 · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Do you know Kenyan technology companies that got funded in 2014? Erik Hersmann lists them in this blog post:
Early stage capital
Angani – Public cloud computing provider
BRCK – Rugged, wireless WiFi device
CardPlanet – Mobile money payment system aimed at business and NGOs
iProcure – Software for optimizing rural supply chains
OkHi – Physical addressing system for logistics solutions
Sendy – Motorcycle delivery service
Tumakaro – Diaspora driven education funding
Umati Capital – Factoring for farmer cooperatives, traders and processors
GoFinance – Working capital finance to distributors of FMCGs
BuyMore – Electronic student discount card
TotoHealth – SMS technology for children’s health
BitPesa – Bitcoin for African remittances


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Macedonia’s Massive Illegal Wiretapping Operation Allegedly Monitored Journalists and Diplomats · Global Voices
Danica Radisic

This phone is tapped. Photo by Cory Doctorow, CC-BY-SA 2.0
Leaked tapes revealed by Macedonia’s opposition seem to suggest that the country’s intelligence services have been illegally wiretapping more than 20,000 citizens on the order of conservative Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and members of his family. Opposition leaders claim that among those tapped over a four-year period were government employees, opposition members, journalists, editors, and foreign diplomatic representatives in the country.
Zoran Zaev, the leader of the Social-Democrat Party, brought the tapes to the public’s attention in early February 2015. Zaev, who was allegedly one of the targets of the Counter Intelligence Service’s wiretapping, said his party has filed lawsuits against several intelligence officers, including the Interior Ministry's top intelligence official, Sasho Mijalkov.
The Social Democrat Party claims that tens of thousands of Macedonian citizens unofficially labeled by the current government as “traitors”—including opposition members, journalists, NGO workers, and unaffiliated political activists, as well as some of their own workers and the current Minister of Interior—were under surveillance for several years.
Just one week before the tapes were revealed, Prime Minister Gruevski had charged Zaev and others with conspiring with a foreign intelligence service to topple the government. Zaev has since had his passport confiscated by authorities and cannot leave the country.
The man accused of heading the illegal surveillance operations, Mijalkov, has been a controversial character in Macedonian politics for several years. He was instrumental in implementing financial pressure on a critical Macedonian weekly magazine in a defamation lawsuit in 2014, which ultimately led to the magazine’s shutter and large fines for its editor and journalists.
Later that year, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), together with Macedonian Nova TV and the Czech Center for Investigative Journalism, published an investigative piece about the amassed wealth of Mijalkov, who is a first cousin of the prime minister.
Zaev, leader of the largest opposition party in Macedonia, claims to have evidence of thousands of instances of illegal wiretapping that allegedly went on for at least four years of the eight years that Gruevski has been in power. Opposition members claim to have received the evidence from “patriots working for Macedonia's secret service” who are now allegedly seeking amnesty under a whistleblower protection act. Zaev's party, SDSM, has been boycotting any involvement in Parliament after the April 2014 elections, in a show of protest, claiming that the elections had been rigged.
The Mijalkov-Gruevski political dynasty has held power during much of Macedonia's transition to democracy. Jordan Mijalkov was the first interior minister after the country gained independence, until his death in a car crash. His nephew Nikola Gruevski was finance minister from 1999 to 2002 and prime minister from 2006 till today. The son of late Minister of Interior Jordan Mijalkov, Sasho Mijalkov, who is seen as the grey eminence behind the family “throne”, served in Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito's Honor Guard alongside his brother as a military policeman, and has held high positions in defense and interior ministries of Macedonia since 1998.
This new scandal has sent the Macedonian government into damage control overdrive. Weeks ahead of the announced press conference by Zaev, the government made several arrests of people they suspected to be whistleblowers and publicly labeled some opposition members as “foreign spies”. To pacify any complaints of these activities in the public, the government turned to coverage of what might be deemed as more pressing issues, such as announcing revisions or minor changes to the new education laws and taxes for part time workers, which have been the subjects of several protests in Macedonia over the past year. The official parliament daily agenda for the session of February 11 suddenly included at least five “emergency” legislative amendments.
An announcement was also made by government officials just after the revelation of the alleged wiretapping that 3,000 new people will be employed in the public administration. Macedonia currently has an unemployment rate of almost 30%, and the government has been promising the creation of new jobs for several years. In many southeastern European countries, the promise of more government jobs is often used by politicians as a resource to buy the loyalty of their supporters, with taxpayers’ funds, in particular ahead of elections or in a time of crisis.
Following the revelations, Macedonian students began organizing sit-in protests and occupying universities in late 2014, and part-time workers went on to stage a third big protest on February 13. Many remain unimpressed by the prime minister’s new promises and see it as another attempt to divert from the real issues in the country. The plethora of protests organized in the country over the past year, from those against new tax laws to new education laws and student living conditions at university dorms, have taken place and seen different social and ethnic groups coming together, often crossing long-standing ethnic differences.
People on social networks and citizen media have criticized Macedonian media for lack of coverage of these protests. Blogger Jane Gjorgjioski pointed out in a February 13 blog post:
Coverage of the “occupation,” which includes thousands student participants, by the media—the TV stations with national coverage, and especially by the Public Service Macedonian Television (MTV)—is nonexistent or, mildly said, pitiful. Here’s how the pro-government TV stations, which cover most of the market, informed about the first day of the occupation:
At a press conference on February 27, after further examination of the wire tapping recordings that the opposition claims to have, Zaev stated that numerous journalists and editors in the country were among those monitored during the illegal wiretapping escapade, as well as what Zaev called “the six most influential embassies” in the country. Several international organizations and media have voiced their concern of Macedonia's already fragile democracy taking a turn for the worse as the wiretapping scandal continues to escalate.

author: Danica Radisic


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More than 200 Academics Sign Statement Supporting Anti-Junta Professor in Thailand · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

More than 200 academics from all over the world have signed a statement expressing support to historian and college professor Dr Somsak Jeamteerasakul who was recently fired by Thammasat University. The Thai scholar, who has been teaching for two decades, is critical of the junta government which grabbed power last May 2014.
Somsak Jeamteerasakul. Photo from Prachatai website.
The statement urged Thammasat University and other higher education institutions to uphold academic freedom and free speech:
To think differently is not a crime. If one cannot do so within the walls of the university, spaces of learning and the pursuit of truth, then the space to do so outside those walls will dwindle as well.

author: Mong Palatino


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Nemtsov’s Son Studies at a University Where the Vice Dean Welcomed His Murder · Global Voices
Will Wright

Tens of thousands demonstrate in memory of Boris Nemtsov, Moscow
March 1, 2015, by Zurab Javakhadze. Demotix.
“That makes one less piece of scum.” This is how Vladimir Talismanov, a vice dean at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MFTI), responded to the news of Boris Nemtsov's murder last week.
On his Vkontakte social media page, Talismanov showed no sympathy for Russia's slain former deputy prime minister turned opposition figure, accusing him of being “scum” and a “prostitute” of the United States:
Американцы сами мразь породили, финансировали ее, сами же и убрали. Такова судьба всех проституток. Вчера вечером на одну мразь стало меньше.
The Americans themselves bred this scum, they financed it, and then they disposed of it. Such is the fate of all prostitutes. Last night makes one less piece of scum.
Perhaps most offended by this vicious statement was Boris Nemtsov's son, Anton, who is currently a student at MFTI.
The university leadership publicly condemned Talismanov’s comment as “deeply inappropriate and offensive,” and a group of MFTI students, faculty, and alumni released a signed letter, which read:
Мы, студенты, выпускники и преподаватели МФТИ, привыкли к тому, что Физтех — институт высоких стандартов. Стандартов не только образовательных, но и моральных и нравственных. Мы признаём право Владимира Сергеевича на выражение своего мнения, даже если чувство такта не заставляет его в такой момент держать это мнение при себе. Но мы считаем, что любую смерть можно воспринимать только как трагедию, и никак иначе. Мы приносим Антону свои искренние извинения за тех, кто не смог проявить себя достойно. Нам больно это видеть и слышать.
Антон, мы глубоко соболезнуем тебе в твоей утрате.
We, the students, alumni, and faculty of MFTI, are accustomed to the fact that Fiztech [“Physics and Technology,” the nickname for MFTI] is an Institute of high standards. Not only educational standards, but also moral and ethical ones. We recognize the right of Dr. Talismanov to express his opinion, even if he lacked the tact to keep that opinion to himself at such a moment. But we believe that any death can be perceived only as a tragedy, and nothing else. We offer Anton our sincere apologies for those who are not able to conduct themselves decently. It pains us to see and hear this.
Anton, we offer deep condolences for your loss.
As the story gained media attention, Talismanov deleted his comment from VKontatke, and publicly apologized for his “excessively emotional act,” saying he was “embarrassed.”
On March 2, Talismanov then resigned as vice dean at MFTI, although it appears that the university may continue to employ him in another capacity.
Talking to Echo of Moscow on the day of his resignation, Talismanov elaborated:
Я расцениваю это в принципе изначально как высказывание на своей личной странице. У меня есть там даже пометка – что это исключительно личная страница. Никак это нельзя расценивать как высказывание должностного лица. И никто особо ее не посещал. Я не ожидал такой реакции. Целью была просто какая-то моя реакция. Не было цели обидеть кого-то и уж тем более расколоть общество. Я просто достаточно патриотично настроенный человек. И с некоторым негативом вспоминаю, что у нас было в стране в 90-е годы, ту форму правления, как все это происходило. Как-то со страхом все это вспоминаю. Сейчас патриотические силы – им в общем-то дали возможность высказываться. Говорить о родине, о том, что надо ее любить. Ну, как-то я воспрял духом. Но сказано это было, несомненно, в некорректной форме.
Initally, I regarded this as a statement on my personal page. I even have a note there that this is exclusively a personal page. In no way can my Vkontakte page be regarded as an official platform. And no one in particular visits my page. I did not expect such a reaction. The point was just kind of to express my reaction. The goal was not to offend anyone, much less divide the public. I'm simply a very patriotic person. And it is with negative emotions that I recall how it was for our country in the 1990s, the form of government, [and] how everything happened. Once it was with fear that I remembered all of this. Now, patriotic forces are, in general, given the opportunity to express themselves. To talk about the Motherland, and that we must love her. And well, my spirit was raised. But this was expressed, of course, in an inappropriate way.
That the vice dean of a top Russian university would make such a vitriolic comment in a public, albeit virtual, space symbolizes just how poisonous and polarized Russia's political climate has become recently.
The story also demonstrates yet again how, in today's world, an online post can unexpectedly throw its author into the middle of a public scandal overnight.

author: Will Wright


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Spain and Latin America Celebrate Open Data Day · Global Voices
Patricia Carolina Saucedo Añez

One again, bloggers, hackers, designers, experts, as well as citizens interested in open data and transparency will meet to celebrate International Open Data Day 2015 all over the world to promote the opening of government data. The event is expected to have online meetings but also in-person activities all over the globe, requiring exceptional coordination and organization.
Open Data Day 2015, image from Escuela de Datos. Used by permission
Faeriedevilish, blogging for School of Data, informs us on the Open Data Day festivities to take place on Saturday, February 21st in Spain and various cities in Latin America. Here you'll find information about the organization and event coordination in Buenos Aires, Lima, Medellín, Madrid, Mexico City, Xalapa, Monterrey, San Salvador, Panama City, etc., where many different activities will be held:
Alerta – Nos unimos a Abierto al Público: queremos que #datosabiertos se vuelva trending topic mundial en Twitter el 21 de febrero. Para lograrlo, las organizaciones participantes tuitearemos con este hashtag (y pediremos a lxs participantes que también lo hagan) el sábado 21 a partir de las 10:00 hora México, 11:00 hora Lima, 13:00 hora Buenos Aires, 17:00 hora Madrid. Importante: no usar el hashtag antes de esta hora.
Alert – We're meeting at Abierto al Público: we want #datosabiertos (#opendata) to trend on Twitter on February 21st. To do so, we'll be tweeting participating organizations with this hashtag (and we ask participants to do the same) on Saturday, February 21st starting at 10:00 in Mexico City, 11:00 in Buenos Aires, 17:00 in Madrid. Important: do not use the hashtag before this time.
Click here for more information on the International Open Data Day festivities.
You can follow @faeriedevilish and Escuela de Datos on Twitter.

author: Patricia Carolina Saucedo Añez


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Spanish Actress Anna Allen Photoshops Her Way Into the Oscars · Global Voices
Gabriela García Calderón Orbe

Anna Allen. Image from Wikimedia Commons, with license (Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International).
Tears, laughter, speeches, surprises and disappointments weren't the only things to come out of the most recent Academy Awards. This year's Oscars also served to expose a few lies.
Spanish actress Anna Allen, well known for her role in the popular Spanish TV series “Cuéntame cómo pasó” (Tell Me How It Happened), posted on her now deactivated social media accounts that she had been invited to the 87th annual Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Awards, held on Sunday, February 22, 2015.
The newspaper El Mundo published what the actress said about her alleged experience: “I've been able to dream with the magic of movies. I was surprised by the number of individuals that work at the Oscars. There are hundreds and hundreds of production assistants, press crew… It's all so huge and overwhelming…”
A few days later, however, the same paper revealed that her invitation had been a hoax and that the pictures Allen had posted on social networks supposedly showing her at the ceremony were clumsy Photoshop jobs. Almost immediately, media outlets began to talk about the issue. One was Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia, which summed up the events:
Ella fingía vivir el sueño americano, explicando que iba a los Oscars, y resulta que la única invitación que había recibido era para actualizar el programa Photoshop que utilizaba para hacer creíble su farsa.
[…]
La fotografía que colgó, como descubrió El mundo, era una farsa. No podía ser una instantánea tomada en la alfombra roja de Los Angeles sino producto del Photoshop. Y la red de mentiras de esta actriz nacida en Girona (supuestamente) en 1982 comenzó a destaparse.
She pretended she was living the American dream, explaining she was going to the Oscars, and it turns up that the only invitation she'd gotten was to update the Photoshop program she used to make her hoax believable.
[…]
The photograph she uploaded, as El Mundo revealed, was a fake. It couldn't be a snapshot taken at the red carpet in Los Angeles but the product of Photoshop. And the network of lies spread by this actress, born in Girona (allegedly) in 1982 started to be uncovered.
In another post, La Vanguardia formulated an explanation of what made Allen tell these lies:
Si ella y su representante eran conscientes que mentían con tal de obtener notoriedad y mejorar el perfil profesional, sólo era un negocio. Pero también podría tratarse del trastorno Folie a deux, conocido como el trastorno psicótico compartido: una persona tiene una creencia delirante y una segunda la comparte.
[…]
Claro que Allen, a primera vista, cumple el trastorno narcisista de personalidad cuyos primeros síntomas son un grandioso sentido de autoimportancia, y estar preocupada por unas fantasías de éxito ilimitado.
If she and her manager were aware that they were lying just to get fame and enhance her professional profile, it's just business. But this could also be the Folie a deux disorder, known as the shared psychotic disorder: one individual has the delirious belief and that second one shares it.
[…]
Of course Allen, at first sight, fits the narcissistic disorder, where the first symptoms are a huge sense of self-importance and being caught up in some fantasies of unlimited success.
Anna Allen hasn't faced the public since the her lies were disclosed. In fact, her whereabouts are unknown, and she has deactivated her online accounts with no explanations.
Mockery and jokes on Twitter have been pervasive:
“@telediariomty: #Conoce a #AnnaAllen y su vida de #Hollywood; http://t.co/Y62BjCWrqW pic.twitter.com/sPG450IVYl“// @Andreissima
— Karla Padilla (@karlapadilla_) marzo 5, 2015
Meet Anna Allen and her life in Hollywood.
@annaallenactriz protagonizará 50 Sombras más Oscuras! #AnnaAllen pic.twitter.com/eHWfhbHVik
— Pablo Baldivieso (@pbaldiviesook) marzo 5, 2015
Actress Anna Allen will be have the leading role in 50 Shades Darker!
Anna Allen'in Oscar'lık yalanı ortaya çıktı;http://t.co/FAET9q0JLE #AnnaAllen pic.twitter.com/KMEzXN4dZk
— MustafaKöker (@MustafaKoker) marzo 4, 2015
Anna Allen appeared with lies at the Oscars.
Lo único que me queda claro es que #annaallen es una gran actriz.
— silviataules (@silviataules) marzo 4, 2015
The only thing that is clear to me is that Anna Allen is a great actress.
#AnnaAllen hija de #WoodyAllen ¡ay no! ¡Que con él no tiene ni una foto!
— ℰstℯɾ ૮ℓα℘éઽ (@EsterClaps1) marzo 5, 2015
Anna Allen, daughter of Woody Allen, oh, no! She does not have a single picture with him!
Time will tell if Anna Allen will offer some kind of explanation, or if everything will remain unexplained.

author: Gabriela García Calderón Orbe


text:
China Harasses Women Activists on the Eve of International Women’s Day · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

At least 7 women activists were arrested on the eve of the International Women's Day. A collage of photo from Gender in China's Weibo.
A number of Chinese women activists were detained by police on the eve of International Women's Day.
One of the women subsequently released by police, activist Ai Ke revealed that the police were clamping down on an advocacy campaign slated for March 7, which was targeted against sexual harassment on public transportation. The police ensured that no-one took part in the campaign.
News about the arrest of the feminist activists started circulating on China's Twitter-like Weibo service in the early morning of March 7. The Chinese human rights website, Weiquanwang, collected information from various sources and estimated that at least seven young women activists had been arrested in the Chinese cities of Beijing and Guangzhou. The five arrestees from Beijing had lost contact with their friends at the time of publication. Of the two activists detained by Guangzhou police, only one has been confirmed as released.
A Twitter source, @alicedreamss, revealed that several other feminists were interrogated by police in Yunnan.
As the country that hosted the 1995 United Nations’ Fourth World Women Conference and a signatory state to the Beijing Declaration that came out of that conference, the Chinese government has vowed to protect and promote the human rights of women and girls.
Indeed, that very event nourished a generation of women activists who advocate for gender equity and against sexual violence in mainland China. Every year, around International Women's Day, these women have organised campaigns to raise public awareness about gender equality.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights launched the Beijing + 20 Women Human Rights Defenders Campaign last December to illuminate the work done by women who risk their lives, reputations and families to defend the rights of others.
But instead of upholding the principles of the Beijing Declaration, the Chinese authorities appear to have harassed women advocating against sexual harassment ahead of the most important day in the calendar for gender equality activists.
Li Maizi has been very active in advocating for gender equity. The postcard said: Say no to employment discrimination. Photo from “Gender in China” Weibo.
Gender in China, a feminist group, first released the news via Weibo that Chinese police had arrested three female activists on 6 of March.
Since the web-censor kept deleting their message every five minutes, the group kept re-posting the message again and again throughout March 7.
【妇女节前夕，女权倡导者被北京警方带走】昨晚11点半，长期关注妇女权利的公益人李麦子、徐汀突然在家被警察撬门带走、住处遭搜查，现已失联12小时。另一位倡导者韦婷婷昨日下午被带走后至今失联。据猜测这或与“三八”反性骚扰公益活动有关。难道警察怕的是反性骚扰？呼吁@平安北京 放人！
[On the eve of International Women Day, Beijing police arrested feminist activists] Last night at around 11:30, police broke into the apartment of women's rights defenders Li Maizi and Xu Ting. Their apartment was raided and they were taken away. They have been missing for twelve hours. Another activist Wei Tingting, was taken away [by police] and has been out of touch since yesterday. [The arrest] may be related to the March 8 anti-sexual harassment action. Are the police afraid of advocacy against sexual harassment? Urge @Pingan Beijing [Beijing police's official Weibo account] for their release.
The campaign planned by the activists was simply to post stickers on public transportation in various cities and encourage both victims and passengers to stand up to sexual harassment on March 7. Gender in China displayed the campaign stickers on Weibo:
The stickers encourage victims and passengers to speak out against sexual harassment and urge the police to take prompt action against harassment  on public transport.
It soon became clear that the clampdown on women activists has not limited to the Chinese capital, but had also spread to the metropolises of Yunnan and Guangzhou. Zheng Churan, another women's rights defender, was detained in a hotel.
Weibo user, Liang Xiaomen, who managed to keep in touch with Zheng during her interrogation, posted the details of Zheng's arrest:
【警察怕的是38贴贴贴？！】原定3月7日做倡导公交性骚扰防治机制的活动迎接妇女节，谁知活动参加者之一大兔郑楚然深夜十二点被国宝和片警找，派出所询问两小时后陪同回家，让大兔拿上三八节的防止性骚扰的贴纸后继续带回派出所，据警察说两小时后会放人。贴纸上写的是，制止性骚扰，安全你我她。
[The police are afraid of the March 8 stickers?!] An advocacy action against sexual harassment on public transportation was planned March 7 to celebrate the March 8 Women's Day. One of the participants, Zheng Churan was visited by national security police and local [Guangzhou] police at 12 am on March 7. She was interrogated in the police station for two hours and escorted home. The police asked her to collect all the anti-sexual harassment stickers and bring them back to the police station, then they would release her in two hours. Written on the stickers are slogans: Stop sexual harassment and make sure all of us are safe.
Chinese feminist circles are naturally outraged that activists were repressed so close to International Women's day. Weiquanwang quoted a female netizen:
政府高喊着法制，却没任何手续半夜撬门抓人。面对家暴者、强奸犯倒是能不管就不管。只准我们过女人节女神节女生节这样的消费节，却不让人过维护自身权利的妇女节。
The government keeps propagating ‘rule of law’. But it did not go through any legal procedures when breaking into people's apartment at midnight and having them arrested. When it comes to dealing with crimes related to domestic violence and rape, they are foot-dragging. They only allow us to celebrate women, goddess and girl days that promote consumption. But they don't allow people to celebrate women's day that advocates for women's rights.

author: Oiwan Lam


text:
Does Tajikistan Need Sex Education? · Global Voices
Censored Voice

Robert Blake, then US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs attends the first day of school in Tajikistan. Many Tajiks believe sex education is imported from the West. Wikipedia image.
One of the last acts of Tajikistan's outgoing parliament was to pass a law including sex education lessons into the country's secondary school curriculum. The members of the lower house argued that the lessons will raise awareness among teenagers about sexually transmitted diseases and prevent unwanted pregnancies in the conservative Central Asian country.
The law, passed February 25, 2015, stipulates that Tajik schoolchildren should be taught sex education lessons in high schools or in out-of-class seminars. The Ministry of Health and Social Protection proposed the idea when making additions and ammendments to the Law On Reproductive Health and Reproductive Rights. The ammendments also include the prohibition of abortion at the embryonic stage.
However, the idea of including sex education into secondary school curriculums has generated controversy in the mostly-Muslim country. On Ozodi, RFE/RL's Tajik service, Muslim and conservative commenters moved to condemn the initiative.
Many readers argued that sex education lessons will provoke Tajik teenagers to try out what they learned at school.
Ehsan wrote:
Ин кори дуруст нест. У нишон медиҳад, ки чихел дуруст зино кунед, то ин ки духтар ҳомиладор нашавад. Яъне дар мактаб меомузан, чихел ба духтар бирасед, то ин ки вай ҳомила дор нашавад. О магар мо тоҷикон мусалмон нестем? Магар мо духтари хона намегирем !? Магар мо мехохем, ки ҷавонони мо ба ҳаминкорҳо даст занан!? Ин ҷомеаи моро хароб мекунад. Хонаҳоро вайрон мекунад. Дар ҳамин озоди хонда будам, ки ҷавоне хоҳари худро барои бероҳгарди бо табар зада куштааст. Ва гуфт пушаймон нестам аз кори кардаам. Баъди ин қонуни парлумон, шояд инхел кушторҳо зиёд шаван. Рости гап сахт дилам барои миллатам месузад.
It is not correct… [sex education] will tell you how to fornicate so that the girl does not get pregnant… Are we Tajiks not Muslims? Don't we marry virgin girls!? Do we want our youth to behave like this? It will destroy our society and families. I read on Ozodi that a guy chopped his sister up with an axe for misbehaviour and said he did not regret his deed. After this law, maybe the number of murders will increase. Frankly speaking, I feel sorry for my nation.
A girl's virginity is certainly important to Tajik families. Last year, a group of ‘legal-medical experts’ from one of the country's regions lobbied a law that would make virginity testing of young girls compulsory to save the country from a series of social ills, chiefly marriages that end in divorce. The law did not make parliament.
Many readers of Ozodi contended that sex education is not necessary in Tajik schools as it will deprive people of national values and culture. Some argued that biology lessons cover general information on the human body, and families are responsible for the sexual education of young people.
A reader who called himself Karsak, said:
Дар асл ин боз як кадаме пеш рафтани ноболигон ба ифротгарои мешавад, зеро бештари мавзуъхои ин фанни навтаъсис барои мардуми мусулмонтабори мо шарму нозукона аст. Ин боз идеалогияи мардуми гарбро таргиб намудан аст. То кунун фахмиши хонандагон дар ин масъалаи чинси аз фанни биологияи одам то микдори зарури пайдо мегардад. Агар ба ин фан ба пурра шомил шаванд аз ахлоки чинси бенасиб монда танхо пахлухои манфии чинсиро тахкик менамоянд, ки ин боиси пайдоиши проблемахои навин мегардад.
Actually, it will be another step towards extremism for teenagers, as most of the topics included in this subject are shameful for the Muslim population of our country. It is the advocacy of Western ideologies. Currently, schoolchildren get the basic idea of sex education from Human Biology lessons. If they adopt this subject it will deprive us of our good sexual behavior and it will only address the negative sides of this behaviour, leading to other problems.
Some said they would not allow their daughters to attend the lessons.
Saihuja Abdurahmon wrote:
… ин барой мардуми мусалмон мовофик нест баъд мегуян ки ешоно намемонан духтархояшона ба дарс бираван аз ин пас манхам на мегузорам хохарам ба дарс биравад ин сатри духтаронро мебардорад
..It is not appropriate for Muslim people. Then [the government] will ask why mullahs do not allow their daughters to go to school. I would also not allow my sister go to school. It brings shame on girls.
Then there was a group of readers that claimed the parliament had sold out to foreign powers, taking grants to implement changes to the current law. They argue that MPs should work to generally develop the education sector — the worst in the former Soviet Union — and try to bring labour migrants back to the remittance-dependent country from Russia.
Garib, moreover, believes the government should act like a Western government in other respects if they want to bring Western values to Tajikistan.
He said:
хукумати мо пеш аз он ки халки точикро ба гарбгарои таблиг мекунанд бояд авал худашон мисли давлатхои аврупо президентиро на зийод аз 5 сол кунанд ки ин ба манфиати халку давлат мебошад хандаовар аст ки давлати мо гами халкашро неву бисйортар гами курсиро мехуранд
Before forcing Western values on Tajik people, our government should limit the presidential term limit to five years [currently seven and extended via dubious elections] for the sake of people. It is funny that our government thinks about its own position more than they think about the people.
A minority supported the idea of sex education for secondary school students, with some arguing that girls and boys should be taught the lesson in different classrooms.
But Rakhim Soliev, a Facebook user called on people to accept the lessons.
He reasoned:
На парламенте сидят люди имеющий диплома и голову. Вы слышали что ” Запретный плод сладок” так что молодежь должны знать что это. Это наша природа. Если парень или девушка имеет терпения и совесть то такими вещами заниматься не будут. Вы уже знаете что под полно все этим занимаются. Так что давайте смотреть на таки вещи нормально. Смените розовые очки.
People at the Parliament have diplomas and brains. You have heard that ‘forbidden fruit is sweet’, so young people need to know what it is. This is our nature. If a guy or girl has the patience and conscience, they will not engage in [fornication]. You already know that everybody does it underground. So let's look at these things in a normal way. Be realistic.

author: Censored Voice


text:
Epic Car Chase in Moscow’s Red Square Caught on Video · Global Voices
Darya Vakulenko

Images mixed by Tetyana Lokot.
An unlikely event occurred in Moscow last week, when police chased a towing truck hauling a bright yellow minivan through the Red Square in the heart of the capital.
The car chase drew many spectators, not in the least because no cars, motorbikes, or bicycles are allowed on the Red Square. And where there are spectators with smartphones, there are always photos.
На Красную площадь прорвался эвакуатор с микроавтобусом — фоторепортаж: http://t.co/FSVX2XadQX pic.twitter.com/7fZHBf2RTT
— События дня (@GazetaRu) February 25, 2015
A towing truck with a minivan broke through to the Red Square—photo report:
The story only got weirder from there, as it turned out the towing truck was hijacked by the indignant owner of the very minivan it was attempting to tow. Reportedly, the man attacked the towing truck's driver and them drove off.
Хозяин машины, помещенной на эвакуатор, сам отобрал эвакуатор и выехал на нем на Красную площадь pic.twitter.com/4lMbi9J1Hw
— RIP Новости (@riarip) February 25, 2015
“The owner of the minivan that was on the towing truck hijacked the truck himself and drove into the Red Square.
Some Twitter users noted the color scheme of the two cars was reminiscent of the Ukrainian flag and drew immediate parallels with the ongoing confrontation between Ukraine and Russia.
Эвакуатор цветов украинского флага устроил протестное катание перед носом Путла по Красной площади pic.twitter.com/2MLLcKhRka
— Європейський вибір (@European_choice) February 25, 2015
“A towing truck in Ukrainian colors staged a protest ride under Putlo's [Putin's] nose in the Red Square.”
Police pursued the hijacker, but he led them on quite a merry chase before they managed to stop him. Because the Red Square is one of the most popular tourist locations not only in Moscow, but in all of Russia, the event was also caught on video.
Полиция и эвакуатор устроили погоню на Красной площади: http://t.co/paEuXNA7Z3
— Djigit of the USSR (@Djigit_USSR) February 25, 2015
Police and a towing truck in hot pursuit in the Red Square:
The ban on access to the Red Square for motorized vehicles has been in place since 1963, when it was instituted in order to preserve the pedestrian area for the hordes of tourists admiring the views. Apparently, though, the ban does little to prevent daredevils like the towing truck hijacker from driving right through the heart of downtown Moscow—and going viral on social media while doing so.

author: Darya Vakulenko


text:
How a Crash-Landed Turkish Airlines Plane Cut Nepal’s Ties to the Skies for Days · Global Voices
Sanjib Chaudhary

An Indian Airforce Aircraft brought the aircraft removal kit on Thursday to remove the Turkish Airlines Airbus A330 from the airport runway. Image by Sumit Shrestha. Copyright Demotix (5/3/2015)
A Turkish Airlines Airbus 330 that skidded off the runway on the morning of March 4 at Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) in Kathmandu, created waves of confusion at Nepal’s only international air hub, effectively limiting citizens of the landlocked country to overland travel before a ban on flights was lifted today.
The TK 726 flight that took off from Istanbul was due to land at the TIA at 6:55 AM local time. However, the pilot failed to land the plane in spite of trying twice and at the third attempt the craft missed the runway and skidded across a grassy patch.
By sheer luck, none of the 224 passengers died in the botched landing attempt.
Journalist Kunda Dixit tweeted:
@TurkishAirlines 726 suffered nose-wheel collapse. Tail is up in the air. @flightradar24 @mikaness Kathmandu now open only for helicopters.
— Kunda Dixit (@kundadixit) March 4, 2015
यसरि सुतेको छ टर्किस एअरलाइन्स TIA रनवेमा l pic.twitter.com/zF83Lu60Ai
— Joker (@NplJoker) March 4, 2015
This is how the Turkish Airlines is sleeping on the TIA runway.
Kosh Raj Koirala, another journalist, tweeted:
Passengers evacuated through emergency doors of @TurkishAirlines aircraft that overshot runway at TIA @annapurnapost pic.twitter.com/lKvzjrSJMP
— Kosh R Koirala (@KoshRKoirala) March 4, 2015
As quoted by popular Nepali news portal Onlinekhabar, a passenger on board, Shashi Poudel, blamed the landing gears not working as the main cause of the accident.
A fellow passenger Dikesh Malhotra deemed poor visibility the main evil.
Bigyan Sharma, a blogger and activist, tweeted:
टर्कीस एअरलाइन्स दुर्घटना किन? पाङ्ग्रा नखुलेर? भिजिबिलिटि नभयर? पाइलटले आफै रनवेबाहिर हालेको कि चिप्लेको कि? कुनै समाचारमा स्पष्ट छैन ।
— Bigyan Sharma (@bigsharma) March 4, 2015
Why Turkish Airlines met with an accident? Due to landing gears not working? Due to poor visibility? Did the pilot land away from the runway or did it skid? No news is clear.
As the plane could not be lifted off from the runway on time, the authorities closed the airport and no international flights took off or landed at the TIA for over three days. Thousands of passengers were left sulking at the airport.
Journalist Mallika Aryal tweeted:
All flights cancelled from #TIA after the #TK726 crash. Airport is a sea of confused and angry passengers.
— Mallika Aryal (@mikaness) March 4, 2015
The government sought the help of Indian Air Force’s Hercules aircraft to remove the plane from the crash-landed site.
Annapurna Post tweeted:
दुर्घटनाग्रस्त टर्किस जहाज तान्न हर्कुलस काठमाडौं आइपुग्यो http://t.co/ukAoYlIM3P pic.twitter.com/pUob59udSS
— Annapurna Post (@Annapurna_Post) March 5, 2015
Hercules has arrived in Kathmandu to pull the crashed Turkish plane.
Roshan Sedhai, a journalist known for reporting on labour issues in Nepal, tweeted:
The legendary Hercules himself for the Herculean mess! #TK726 #Kathmandu pic.twitter.com/sgd0lrysOe
— Roshan Sedhai (@sedhairoshan) March 5, 2015
Though the TK 726 averted disaster, Nepal has suffered a poor track record in terms of air safety since planes first started flying in and out of the country in 1949, with more than 70 air crashes killing more than 600 people during that time.
The biggest casualty was a Pakistan Airlines (PIA) plane crash that killed 167 people in September 1992.
Just two months before that incident, an ill-fated Thai Airways International flight crashed amidst heavy rain, killing 113 people.
Nepal is also home to the Tenzing Hillary Airport in Lukla, considered one of the world’s most dangerous airports. According to one online listicle:
The landing and take-off strips here are very short. The airport operates at an altitude of 8,000 feet (2,438 m) and has virtually no modern air traffic control features.
In spite of airports linking the remote areas of Nepal to the rest of the country, Nepalese traditionally rely on roads for internal transportation. And the closure of the airport after the Turkish Airlines fiasco left people reliant on the same method for international travel.
Satish Pandey wrote:
Landlocked #Nepal has literally remained “landlinked” for the past few days. That might change very soon. #turkishairlines
— Satish Pandey (@SatishKTM) March 6, 2015
And so it did. The Tribhuvan International Airport recommenced its operations on the evening of March 7.

author: Sanjib Chaudhary


text:
If It’s Not on YouTube, It Does Not Exist: A Look at Puerto Rican Music Videos in 2015 · Global Voices
Alfredo Richner

Screenshot of the video of “Métele” from the band Buscabulla.
Fifteen years ago, when I wanted to discover new music, I used to leave a blank videotape in the VCR recording MTV from late at night until dawn—a T120 Extended Play that recorded about six hours of video—and go to sleep, keeping my fingers crossed that I catch a good video. Today we live every night knowing that, if Glenn Monroig kisses Fofé (two Puerto Rican artists) again on stage after a spectacular duet, the recording will appear on YouTube within a few hours.
With more than one billion users and 300 hours of video added every minute, YouTube has become an important part of the Internet. The variety of the great visuals that it offers—whether it's videos of cats, old advertisements, or people drenching themselves in buckets of ice—never ends, but among all this content the use of Youtube as a music platform stands out.
Coexisting and in constant competition for millions of views are the videos of Don Omar, Katy Perry, and a million others. We can also easily find any lost recordings of our favorite experimental band from the 1960s, and of course increasingly more local, independent music. “If it is not on Youtube, it does not exist,” one of the members of Los Niños Estelares (767,000 views) told me years ago, who, along with reggaetonero artists like Jamsha (56 million views) from Ponce, Puerto Rico, bet early and fully on the platform as a mechanism to promote their music.
On the other hand, the exposure that emerging bands like Buscabulla, Alegría Rampante, and Los Wálters y Fantasmes enjoy in specialized media inside and outside the country is due largely to the quality of their audiovisuals. The massive scope of YouTube is not just an attractive promotional vehicle for emerging musicians, but in turn it is used as a creative engine to encourage an entire community of artists towards collaboration and experimentation. Directors, writers, actors, performance artists, designers, animators, and musicians work together to highlight their creations in a world of increasingy audiovisual content.
That competition for the attention of a global audience has resulted in a marked increase in the quality of locally produced music videos—both in technique and in content—and from all of this it's very likely that a new generation of Puerto Rican filmmakers will be born, following in the footsteps of other greats from around the world like Spike Jonze, David Fincher, and Michel Gondry.
Below is a selection of some of the most outstanding music videos of the past few months.
Directed by Dan Sickles and Dr. Antonio Santini, Buscabulla‘s third video  is an extension of the excellent documentary Mala Mala that portrays the diversity of Puerto Rico's transgender community. The group performed on Sunday, March 1, as part of the NRMAL Festival in Mexico and will release a vinyl edition of their EP in April.
The fourth collaboration between Alegría Rampante and the audiovisual production team 9A5 Cine Crew has resulted in the most striking and emotive music video of the group to date. Directed by William Rosario Cruz, the video describes the evolution of a “made-in-the-sea” being and its arrival in the ruins of civilization. The artist Angel Flores from Santurce brings to life to this character—el recipiente—through elastic contortions and blank stares, slowly learning to be. The long-awaited debut of Alegría Rampante will reach your ears in the coming months.
Dense, seductive, and scary, at the same time, “They Will” manages to catch the best elements of Fantasmes undiluted—otherwise, it could be their most potent potion. For their visual effects, Fantasmes reached out to photographer and filmmaker Chris Gregory and together they conceptualized and produced the clip. It was recorded on tape using a VHS Magnavox MovieMaker camera manufactured in 1985, thus creating a complementary analog process to the way the group produces its music.
The musical geniuses behind Balún described the sound of “Años Atrás” as dreambow, a mix between dembow playing in Puerto Rico during its formative stage (years ago) and the dream-pop that characterizes the group. The visual effects for this fabulous song, directed by Joel Pérez Irizarry, take the concept as a starting point to present a night out on the island like a dream adventure.
Alta Tensión is one of the most anticipated albums of the year and, for their second promotional video, Los Pepiniyoz got together with Dede Ene, one of the music video directors most active in Puerto Rico and to whom Fofe Abreu of Circo, Fofe y Los Fetiches recently called “the genius of the garage” in a column for La Banda Elástica. His visual effects for the song turn a performance of Los Pepiniyoz at Club 77 in Rio Piedras into an ancient artifact, as if it were an MTV classic recorded in VHS and then suffered the consequences of excessive playback.
The video for “Volverá”—one of the standout tracks of the second album of Los Vigilantes—is intense, addictive, vulgar, and dangerous. The group locked themselves up in Jota Vigilante’s El Dorado studios with a smoke machine, some friends—among them Pequeña Vera from Dada Berlin—and a dog, to translate the energy of the song into a simple video but more than efficient.
The result of a collaboration between René “Residente” Pérez and the young animator Quique Rivera Rivera, who was known a couple of years ago for his spectacular stop-motion animated story El Diario del Pez León. The production lasted about nine months and it took about 7,200 pictures—but at the end it is evident that all the work was worth it.
Produced by David F. McCloskey (Tavú’s drummer) and directed by Luis Freddie Vazquez (Contraseña, 2008), the video for “A System Without Honor” is like the album that contains it—precise and highly technical. Along with cinematographer Carlos Garcia and graphic designer Jorge Castillo, the team managed to move Tavú for a performance into the desolate world mentioned in its lyrics.
The controversial duo announced its dissolution at the end of 2014, making “Satya Yuga” their last video. The song presents the solution to the problems that Los Niños Estelares presented six years ago on their first video for “La dictadura científica acaba de empezar”, which still is the most popular of the group with over 260,000 views. Although the clip keeps the “DIY” aesthetic of the group, it, like the music, reflects greater ambition.
Filmed and edited by Jose Enrique Padilla, the video “Al Final” takes us on a journey through the main streets of Santurce with young Nina Isabel as the protagonist, who after an argument with her boyfriend ends in one of the famous “Karaoke Nights” at El Local. The clip is a preview of what will be the group's first LP, recorded and produced by the group itself in Phoamhouse Studios in Trujillo Alto.

author: Alfredo Richner


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In Pakistan’s Education Crisis, Balochistan War on Cheating is Pointless · Global Voices
Pak Voices

SStudents in Middle school Ghatti Dhor. Photo by Feroz Jan, used with permission.
This story was originally written by Feroz Jan in Urdu for PakVoices. It was edited for context in English by Salman Latif and is published on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.
The provincial government of Pakistan's largest and poorest province Balochistan, has been running an aggressive campaign to curb “cheating” in exams at schools for the last two months. To raise awareness, the southwestern province's department of education has been using the slogan ‘cheating is the death of knowledge, cheating is the death of merit.’
Currently, Pakistan faces an education crisis of unprecedented proportions. According to Alif Ailaan, a campaign for education reform in Pakistan, 47% of children between 5 and 16 years don't go to school. The situation is far worse in Balochistan, where 66% of children are out of school.
Students holding up banners that say: ” Cheating is the death of knowledge.” Photo by Feroz Jan.
I grew up studying in Balochistan's education system and little has changed since my time. To see whether the “cheating campaign” was effective, or even needed, I decided to visit a few schools in Gwadar and its peripheries, where student enrollment is 33%, one of the highest within Balochistan.
A view of class 2 in Middle School Ghatti Dhor. Photo by Feroz Jan, used with permission.
At one school, I asked Ahmad Baloch, a student of class 9, about the campaign. His response was, “Cheating may be the death of education, but in our case, what education? When we haven’t even been taught the entire syllabus of a subject let alone taught well, what is a student to do except cheat, and somehow manage to pass (their exams)?”
When I put the same question to another student Munawwar Ali, he said, “We don’t have a Physics teacher, we have studied only 1.2 exercises in the Math book, and the exams are now just around the corner. There’s no way for us but to cheat and pass the exams.”
The grievances of the students appear fair and valid. When I entered a middle school in Ghatti Dhor, I saw students having their classes outdoors, in the veranda, while sitting on the floor. Only five teachers were present at the school, with many others missing. The school building was in shambles.
Next, I visited the Kapri Muhallah school at Sarbandar, a small town near Gwadar. Locals there said that the school has long been awarded the status of a middle school (meant for classes 6, 7, and 8) but the dilapidated building only has two rooms. They also said that many teachers were missing from the school.
Students of Class 8 in the Kapri Muhallah School, Surbanda. Photo by Feroz Jan, used with permission.
In the view of these findings, I find it hard to see the use of any campaign trying to address cheating in exams. If the students are not being taught in the first place, if the education infrastructure is not there, and if teachers are missing in most schools, what is the use of this campaign? It's simply a waste of resources.
The state of education in Pakistan in general is far from satisfactory. Key problems faced to improve the literacy rate are poor infrastructure, the existence of government ghost schools (buildings with no teachers), lack of training for teachers (most of whom aren't qualified) and importantly, financial insecurity which often stops parents from enrolling their children in schools.

author: Pak Voices


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Mexico’s Most-Wanted Drug Lord Captured  · Global Voices
J. Tadeo

Mexican drug lord, Servando Gomez, alias “La Tuta”, has been detained in Mexico. YouTube screen shot.
Servando Gómez, La Tuta or El Profe (The Teacher), the alleged leader of the Mexican crime organization known as Los Caballeros Templarios (The Knights Templar), was captured on February 27 in the state of Michoacán.
Some consider Gómez to be the country's most-wanted suspect and blame the Caballeros Templarios for the outbreak of violence that has afflicted Michoacán for several months. (Global Voices has reported on this violence in the past.)
Goméz was apprehended almost a year after the February 22, 2014, capture of the most-wanted man in the world, drug lord Joaquín Guzmán, known as El Chapo. These arrests—along with the detention of union leader Elba Esther Gordillo, La Maestra, who is charged with spending illegally obtained funds—are some of the biggest blows to organized crime to come under Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.
One day before La Tuta's capture, journalist Carlos Loret de Mola wrote what proved to be a very inaccurate forecast:
¿Quién es el más buscado de México tras la caída de El Chapo? Algunos podrían pensar que Servando Gómez Martínez La Tuta, líder de la organización criminal de Los Caballeros Templarios. Pero no, esa es quizá la búsqueda más mediática pero no la más relevante. Se sabe por distintas fuentes que La Tuta quedó francamente disminuido, al grado que ya anunció que no mandará más videos… ni siquiera audios con sus comunicados.
Now that El Chapo has fallen, who is the most-wanted man in Mexico? Some may think it is Servando Gómez Martínez, La Tuta, the leader of the criminal organization Los Caballeros Templarios. But it's not. Perhaps it is the most high-profile search, but it is not the most relevant. Several sources are aware that La Tuta has lost significant power, to the point of stating that he would no longer send out videos… not even his announcements have audio.
The “videos” Loret mentions (compromising footage of politicians at illicit meetings, as well as messages to henchmen and the public) were what La Tuta used to leak to the press, when he was more powerful.
Radio program Así Las Cosas reported news of La Tuta‘s capture on Twitter, also confirming what before had only been a rumor: Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam was resigning.
“@ruleiro: Detuvieron a la Tuta. Se va Murillo Karam. Ahí vamos en @WRADIOMexico“
— Así Las Cosas (@asilascosasw) February 27, 2015
La Tuta aprehended. Murillo Karam steps down. Here we go @WRADIOMexico.
Attorney General Murillo Karam had been tangled up in controversy over his role in the investigation regarding the violent events that took place in Ayotzinapa. (Read Global Voices‘ special coverage here.)
Twitter user Madame Déficit seemed to think the wrong people were behind bars, writing that politicians like former Governor Ángel Aguirre, who resigned over the Ayotzinapa case, were still free, while other criminals find themselves in prison.
Han caído el Chapo y #LaTuta pero los políticos delincuentes (Ángel Aguirre, Godoy Toscano y otros) siguen libres #Impunidad
— Madame Déficit (@Alessia_mx) February 27, 2015
El Chapo and La Tuta have fallen; but political offenders (like Ángel Aguirre and Godoy Toscano, among others) continue to walk free #Impunity.
Twitter user Luis Díaz noted the curious timing of La Tuta‘s capture, which comes just a few months before Mexico's elections.
Bueno lo de #LaTuta no sorprende, es año electoral
— Luis Díaz (@LuisDiazLuna) February 27, 2015
Well, La Tuta's arrest doesn't surprise; it's election year.
Within a few hours, the Mexican authorities made an official announcement confirming the apprehension of this notorious drug lord.

author: J. Tadeo


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Outrage as ISIS Destroys Ancient Assyrian City · Global Voices
Elia J. Ayoub

The news that the radical organisation ISIS is destroying the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud has shocked the world, drawing condemnation from governments, UN agencies and NGOs alike.
Nimrud Lamassu [Assyrian Protective Deity] at the North West Palace of Ashurnasirpal (Photo from Wikipedia)
At the time of writing, the extent of the damage can not be independently verified by local authorities, but in a statement published online, Iraq's Tourism and Antiquity Ministry accused ISIS of defying “the will of the world and the feelings of humanity”:
Daesh [Arabic word for ISIS] terrorist gangs continue to defy the will of the world and the feelings of humanity. In a new crime in their series of reckless offences, they assaulted the ancient city of Nimrud and bulldozed it with heavy machinery, appropriating the archaeological attractions dating back 13 centuries BC.
Nimrud, located south of Mosul, was founded around 1250 BC and later became the capital of the Neo-Assyrian empire, the world's dominant empire at the time, which stretched into modern day Egypt, Turkey and Iran.
As National Geographic explained in their coverage of the event:
A city had already taken shape at this location by 1400 B.C., but in the early ninth century B.C. King Ashurnasirpal II made it into his new administrative capital, adding a five-mile-long wall, a monumental stepped tower called a ziggurat, new temples, and a large palace covered in elaborate decorations.
It's those royal decorations that are of greatest concern. They consist of large stone panels of intricately carved reliefs that line the base of the building's mud-brick walls. In boldly delineated detail, the panels show military campaigns, conquered peoples offering tribute to the king, ritual ceremonies undertaken by the king (sometimes alongside an ornamental, sacred tree), and many winged mythical figures known as geniis.
Reuters cites a tribal source claiming that “Islamic State members came to the Nimrud archaeological city and looted the valuables in it and then proceeded to level the site to the ground,” and that “there used to be statues and walls as well as a castle that Islamic State has destroyed completely.”
This comes days after ISIS released a video celebrating the destruction of ancient artifacts at Mosul's Nineveh museum, which was preceded by the burning of countless ancient books and manuscripts when they ransacked the Mosul library. Thankfully, many of the artifacts were previously moved to the Baghdad Museum and to many cities in the West, notably the colossal Winged Bulls (Lamassu) which are now housed in London's British Museum.
It is hard to properly estimate the damage this has done to Iraq's priceless heritage. The Neoassyrian Empire was the most powerful state on Earth for nearly 300 years from 911 BC to 609 BC, which provides the context for these tweets by Lebanese-Iraqi blogger and satirist Karl Sharro:
But seriously ISIS have gone back so far in time, they're actually fighting the Assyrian Empire now.
— Karl Sharro (@KarlreMarks) March 6, 2015
‘Arab Spring protesters destroy statue of tyrant’. King Sargon of Assyria that is. Idiots are a few thousand years late.
— Karl Sharro (@KarlreMarks) March 6, 2015
And this cartoon of his now-famous ‘Abu A and Abu B‘ cartoons mocking Jidahis:
I had to turn it into an Abu A and Abu B #qartoon Thanks @SohaAwwadkhalil for the contribution pic.twitter.com/wOIjAjlT9w
— Karl Sharro (@KarlreMarks) March 6, 2015
The destruction of Iraq's archeological heritage by ISIS has been compared by archeologists to the infamous 2001 destruction of Afghanistan's Bamiyan Buddha rock sculptures by the Taliban. In an official statement, the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, condemned ISIS’ actions as a War Crime.
UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova called on the world to react:
We cannot remain silent. The deliberate destruction of cultural heritage constitutes a war crime. I call on all political and religious leaders in the region to stand up and remind everyone that there is absolutely no political or religious justification for the destruction of humanity’s cultural heritage. I call on all of those who can, especially youth, in Iraq and elsewhere, to do everything possible to protect this heritage, to claim it as their own, and as the heritage of the whole of humanity.
She also called for a response to ISIS’ “criminal chaos that destroys culture with more culture”:
I appeal also to all cultural institutions, museums, journalists, professors, and scientists to share and explain the importance of this heritage and the Mesopotamian civilization. We must respond to this criminal chaos that destroys culture with more culture.
On Twitter, Bahram Salih, the former Prime Minister of Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government, accused ISIS of “slaughtering the present and erasing humanity's heritage”:
#DAESH bulldozes ancient Assyrian city of #Nimrud; Slaughtering the present & erasing humanity's heritage. pic.twitter.com/L4rBD5i1tM
— Barham Salih (@BarhamSalih) March 6, 2015
Amr Wadea tweeted to his more than 3,000 followers, accusing ISIS of trying to erase Iraq's history:
داعش يدمر مدينة#نمرود العراقية التي تضم أقدم وأعرق آثار الحضارة الآشورية، عمرها أكثر من ٣٠٠٠ عام. داعش تمحو التاريخ pic.twitter.com/qYr56uzcaR
— عمرو وديع (@AmrWadea) March 6, 2015
Daesh [ISIS] destroys the Iraqi city of Nimrud which hosted the oldest and most prestigious traces of the Assyrian presence older than 3,000 years. Daesh is erasing history.
Historian and host of History Needs You, Matthew Ward, called ISIS iconoclasts:
#archaeology of the great city of #Nimrud #Iraq is being destroyed in a brutal iconoclasm pic.twitter.com/Rf7R71cWyI
— Matthew Ward (@HistoryNeedsYou) March 6, 2015

author: Elia J. Ayoub


text:
Some Italians Are Demanding Their English-Speaking Leaders ‘Say It in Italian’ · Global Voices
PRI/PRX's The World

The Italian Navy has launched a recruitment campaign not in Italian, but in English. From Marina Militare's Facebook page.
This article and radio report by David Leveille for The World originally appeared on PRI.org on March 2, 2015, and is republished as part of a content-sharing agreement.
Matteo Renzi, Italy's youngest-ever prime minister, is getting some sharp criticism — but not for his “urgently needed” political and economic reforms. Instead, Italians are angry over his liberal use of English terms.
Renzi has introduced a “jobs act,” and uses English words like “benchmark” and “hashtag” in his presentations. He even insists his cabinet ministers speak English, a first for Italian politics. And the trend may be catching on: Italy's navy has launched a new recruitment campaign using English-language slogans “Be Cool and Join the Navy.”
All of this English is going over poorly with a growing number of Italians, who are urging Italian politicians to “say it in Italian.”
“We have a big labor reform underway,” says Beppe Severgnini, a columnist for the daily Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. “In Italian its ‘riforma del lavoro’. Why on Earth do they have to call it a Jobs Act?”
Severgnini says the use of English is like a throwback to the Middle Ages, when politicians spoke Latin if they wanted to hide what was really going on from ordinary people. “English is like saccharine, not sugar, saccharine that you put in the Italian political public coffee,” he argues. “It’s something that so sweetens things that people don’t quite understand what is going on.”
Another example is ongoing discussion around government overspending. “So we want to proceed with the proper spending review, but why don’t you say in Italian, for the Italian voters, ‘la revisione della spesa?'” Severgnini asks. “Simple, clear — but no, they call it ‘a spending review,’ which many Italians, by the way, don’t know how to pronounce.”
“Why on Earth do you do that?” is a question Severgnini has posed to his politician friends. He says they usually reply that it’s a better way to communicate with Europeans, or that most Italians understand simple English words like “jobs” and “act.”
Severgnini's response? “I don’t buy it,” he says. “I love Italian. … What I don't like is mixing languages, and mixing in a way that shows an inferiority complex, sloppiness and laziness. … I say mouse when I use my computer, but everything else, I say we have a great language, so be sensible and use Italian.”

author: PRI/PRX's The World


text:
Gun Attack Kills 5 in Bamako as Mali Tries to Consolidate Peace   · Global Voices
Lova Rakotomalala

Screen capture of police forces in Bamako, Mali after the terrorist attack
A shooting in a restaurant in Bamako, capital city of Mali, claimed the lives of five people on Friday night, March, 6. The attack took place around midnight in a restaurant called La Terrasse in Downtown Bamako and a dozen people are seriously injured. Two suspects are in detention and are being interrogated by security forces. A local officer reports that the two individuals were armed and hooded. One burst into the restaurant and opened fire. Three Malians, one French and one Belgian were killed. A local blogger posted a video of police forces as they come to investigate the crime scene:
Global Voices contributor Marc- André Boisvert wrote on Twitter that such an attack was inevitable, given that Mali is still trying to re-establish peace in the northern region:
We all knew it would happen in #Bamako. We all knew that the rue du #BlaBla would be a target. But we are still shocked #Mali
— Marc-André Boisvert (@boisvertma) March 7, 2015
Philippe Paoletta, a resident of Bamako, agrees with Marc-André:
Everyone always thought this was bound to happen at some point in #bamako. Doesn't make it any less shocking or horrifying. Rip
— Phil Paɔlεtta (@philinthe_) March 7, 2015
All our thoughts are with the victims of the attack.

author: Lova Rakotomalala


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Why the Roof of the World is Covered in S**t  · Global Voices
Saprina Panday

Sunrise at Everest on March 18, 2014
Image by Flickr user Hendrik Terbeck (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
For Nepal, a country roiled by political instability, Mount Everest is a source of national identity and pride. At this moment in time, that pride is at an all-time low.
From pristine to down-right scummy,Everest's landscape has changed a great deal over the last half-century, and climbing the peak is now a greater health hazard than ever before.
Media poop-scoops and indignant tweets offer an explanation as to why:
#MountEverest Deaths Not Only Thing That May Keep Climbers Away – http://t.co/9VmuCAmfto #humanwaste #Nepal pic.twitter.com/txJk0HOuFa
— Inquisitr News (@theinquisitr) March 4, 2015
From henceforth #MountEverest shall be known as Mount Pooperest. http://t.co/bawOH6ll99
— Kristina Proffitt (@KrissyProffitt) March 4, 2015
While rescuing stranded mountaineers was once the main concern in Nepal's high-altitude tourism sector, rescuing the mountain has now become the main focus. According to the BBC, advances in climbing technology and improvements in Nepal's mountain tourism have made it possible for more than 200 people to ascend to peak everest in a day with good weather, over five times the number able to do that thirty years ago. Suddenly, the roof of the world is getting crowded out.
Stop pooping on Mt. Everest, everybody. C'mon. http://t.co/3l9fpGEIj5pic.twitter.com/CWyMxyFAE8
— pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) March 3, 2015
How anyone could litter in such a pristine environment is beyond our comprehension. Global Gypsies Travel Club… http://t.co/B0mEVQTYvF
— Davina van Buren (@davinavanburen) March 4, 2015
In April 2014, an avalanche led to the tragic deaths of 16 Sherpa guides — a name taken from the ethnic group living in the area around the mountain, many of whom are employed by it — and the abandonment of climbing for that year, highlighting precarious safety conditions in Nepal.
This year, with mismanagement that has led to open defecation in snow, combined with the waste left behind by more than 5,000 ascents, there is a real danger of disease-spreading and contamination, which has seen Everest branded a fecal time bomb.
This is not only a problem for climbers but also for sherpas and their families whose main waterways are at risk.
According to the United Nations World Health Organisation (WHO), the improper disposal of fecal material is responsible for 4 percent of all deaths and 5.7 percent of all disability or ill-health in the world.
The situation on the mountain is also likely to cause a big dip in the number of future expeditions, threatening the sustainability of Nepal's tourist industry and the incomes of hundreds of Sherpa families.
In light of projected losses, the Nepali government has sought to attract foreigners back with a mixture of the carrot and stick, by slashing the price of climbing in the first part of 2015 but also targeting tourists with fines if they do not return with their rubbish.
This latter mechanism has been in place since 2010 but not everyone agrees that it is effective:
Leo Schilts, a commentator on an article written by the Guardian commented:
Anyone who has been to Nepal will know that the piles of filth and excrement everywhere are not caused by tourists. […]Fining tourists for the Nepali government's own failure is typical shameless profiteering from one of the most corrupt regimes in the world, 126 out of 175 in decending order on Transparency International's corruption perception index. Don't be fooled into imagining that money actually goes to remedying the problem. In the 60 years since development programs began in Nepal precisely nothing has been achieved except to enrich the corrupt and venal elite and devestate the cultural and natural environment.[…]The failure of governments in the region to provide even basic levels of sanitation, the unchecked pollution and wholesale destruction of natural and built environments which results in the preventable deaths of hundreds of thousands every year from water born diseases, air pollution and food contamination… I find it frustrating that the attention getting the headline here is the only one which finds the angle on the story of how this region wide emergency might slightly inconvenience the leisure activities of a few millionaires with enough money to afford the $70,000 plus cost for an Everest assent. It just seems massively self absorbed to me.
Moreover, many argue these rules are not implemented: despite cleaning expeditions carried out by teams including that of Apa Sherpa, a local man who climbed Mount Everest for the 21st time in May 2011, it is estimated that at least 10 tons of waste remain on the mountain.
Yet, not all hope is lost.
Many, including climbers, have suggested ways to fix the situation, including fewer permits, smaller expeditions and restrictions based on experience.
Moreover, the Head of the Nepal Mountaineering Association has confirmed that from here onwards officials stationed at base camp will be monitoring the garbage on the mountain more strictly than they have in previous years.
The Everest climbing season begins this week and will continue through May. With around 700 climbers expected, the famous mountain's guardians will be under pressure to make good on their promise.

author: Saprina Panday


text:
Denying Japan’s Responsibility for WWII Sex Slaves Only Makes Japan Look Worse · Global Voices
Izumi Mihashi

Chinese and Malayan girls forcibly taken from Penang by the Japanese to work as ‘ianfu’ (military sex slaves) for Japanese troops. Public domain
In World War II, women from more than ten countries were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army. These women were euphemistically called ‘ianfu’ (comfort women) in Japanese, and have long been a source of political controversy.
In an effort to protect Japan's self-esteem, Japanese historical revisionists refuse to admit the misdeeds of the Imperial Japanese army in spite of a mountain of proof that suggest sexual slavery in World War II was organized and methodical.
A recent discussion among Twitter users offers a glimpse of the arguments used to defend the wartime practice.
User @dragoner_jp articulates a common mistake when discussing sexual slavery in World War II:
従軍慰安婦問題で日本の保守は「強制は無かった」事を争点に置きたがるけど、韓国は強制性についてはほとんど議論の対象外で、いくら日本が強制性無いと言っても噛み合わないんよ。この時点で「論破」が虚しい事になっている
— dragoner (@dragoner_JP) Mar 5, 2014
Japanese conservatives often claim “they were never forced” and make individual choice the focus of comfort women discussion.
However, Koreans attach little importance as to whether or not women were forced to work in brothels servicing troops during the war, so it makes no sense for Japan to insist passionately on it.
This makes this debate meaningless.
The treatment of comfort women has long strained ties between Korea and Japan. Japan colonized Korea between 1905 and 1945, and the Japanese occupation of the country could be quite brutal.
During the Second World War Japanese colonial authorities conscripted tens of thousands of women from the Korean Peninsula and other parts of Asia to serve as comfort women.
Perceptions that the Japanese government refuses to acknowledge the issue or even deny the existence of comfort women continues to provoke protests in South Korea.
超簡単に言うと、「従軍慰安婦はいたけど、合意の上で強制は無かったし、政府や軍が関与していないので責任は無い」ってロジックで国際的に主張すると、「スッキリしたのはテメェだろ！」と却って気持ち悪がられるのです。慰安婦問題で日本側が海外で講演すると、逆に反感を持つ人間が増えたとも……
超簡単に言うと、「従軍慰安婦はいたけど、合意の上で強制は無かったし、政府や軍が関与していないので責任は無い」ってロジックで国際的に主張すると、「スッキリしたのはテメェだろ！」と却って気持ち悪がられるのです。慰安婦問題で日本側が海外で講演すると、逆に反感を持つ人間が増えたとも……
— dragoner (@dragoner_JP) Mar 5, 2014
To put it very simply, people in other countries feel even more disgusted when they hear the argument that, in an attempt to defend the Imperial Japanese army, “Yeah, the Japanese army had comfort women for sure, but it was by mutual consent, and nobody was ever forced into it. [As Japanese citizens] we bear no responsibility because our government and army had nothing to do with it.”
The response by other countries is, “Why do you assume we will be convinced [that the Japanese army did nothing wrong] by using that logic?” The sense of disgust towards Japan intensifies every time Japan apologists make this argument!
@boreford agrees and summarizes the discussion:
「売春婦なので問題はない」
「連れてきたのは民間業者なので問題はない」
と声高に言えば言うほどイメージ悪化するよね
— 糸畑要 (@boreford) Mar 5, 2014
The more you argue “No problem, because they were prostitutes. And it was private contractors who brought them, not the Japanese army,” the worse you look.
@raise9393 disagrees, and in the process provides a perfect example of wrong-headed thinking:
@dragoner_JP @tsuyup つまり慰安婦はブラック企業よろしく搾取、つまり｢性奴隷｣にされていたということですか？ 当時は売春が合法でしたし、慰安婦も大金を稼いだり、軍は衛生面などの待遇も気を遣っていました。 ブラック企業の社員のほうがはるかに待遇が悪いです。
— レイズ (@raise9393) March 5, 2014
In other words, you mean comfort women were exploited just like employers of sweatshops and used as “sex slaves?”
Prostitution was legal at the time, and the comfort women made big money. Moreover, the army paid special attention to their treatment such as making sure they worked in sanitary conditions. The treatment of employers of sweatshops are far worse than [the Japanese army ever was].
@dragoner_jp fired back:
趣旨は、『そういう事を主張するから「引かれる」』という事です RT @raise9393 @dragoner_JP @tsuyup 当時は売春が合法でしたし、慰安婦も大金を稼いだり、軍は衛生面などの待遇も気を遣っていました。 ブラック企業の社員のほうがはるかに待遇が悪いです。
— dragoner(@dragoner_JP) Mar 5, 2014
The arguments [you are making in your tweet here] are exactly what I have am talking about, and are exactly the sorts of arguments that make people in other countries disgusted [with Japan]:
RT@raise9393 @dragoner_JP @tsuyup Prostitution was legal at the time, and the comfort women made big money. Moreover, the army paid special attention to their treatment such as making sure they worked in sanitary conditions. The treatment of employers of sweatshops are far worse than [the Japanese army ever was].

author: Izumi Mihashi


text:
Finland’s Eurovision Finalists Sing About Discrimination Against the Intellectually Disabled — From Experience · Global Voices
PRI/PRX's The World

Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät playing at Helsinki Punk Fest Vol 3. 14/1/2011. Photo by Flickr user Tomi Tirkkonen. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
This article and radio report by Rae Ellen Bichell for The World originally appeared on PRI.org on March 3, 2015, and is republished as part of a content-sharing agreement.
Gladiators in leather loincloths, a techno-opera singer dressed like Marie Antoinette en route to a nightclub, blond men in turbans dancing to Bhangra music. These were just some of the acts competing on Saturday to represent Finland in the Eurovision Song Contest.
“It’s a little like Miss Universe only instead of sending a girl, every country sends a song,” says John O’Connor, who has written a few books about the contest, now in its 60th year.
Some 180 million viewers tune in each year to watch the parade of flamboyance that is Eurovision. Last year’s winner was Conchita Wurst, a diva from Austria with a full beard.
Among a field of oddballs in last weekend’s Finland finals, one group managed to stand out: Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät, or “PKN” for short. They’re punk rockers.
While their competitors adjusted togas and fluffed weaves into place, the four middle-aged men in PKN just sat backstage. One fiddled with his jacket while making a hissing sound.
“We’re mentally handicapped,” says Sami Helle, the band's bass player. The members of PKN all have intellectual disabilities, including Down syndrome and Williams syndrome.
Kari Aalto sings and writes lyrics, which are often inspired by frustrations with daily life. Toni Välitalo has trouble talking, but he feels at ease behind the drums. And Pertti Kurikka, a guitarist who started the band, has a knack for riffs.
The group got their start six years ago in a music workshop for adults with learning disabilities. Since then, they’ve been raging about everything from political discrimination to getting their toenails clipped, a weekly group home activity that Aalto utterly despises.
“I don't like … click click click,” Aalto says, making the sound of a toenail clipper.
Their song titles include “I Hate The World,“ “Speech Impediment” and “Policymakers Betray Us.”
The group has toured Europe, and even stopped at South by Southwest in Austin last year to promote an award-winning 2012 documentary about them, “The Punk Syndrome.” Another film is in the works.
“We’re like everybody else,” says Helle. “We just do the music, what we love, and then we just do the job.”
PKN took the stage Saturday in between a pop number populated by smiley dancers and a Spartacus-themed rock song punctuated by columns of fire. When their turn came to perform “Aina Mun Pitää” (I Always Have To), there were no flashy outfits or backup dancers.
“Well, we have fog, so that’s something,” said Helle, who wore his signature leather jacket with the name of his favorite band, Whitesnake, written across the back in black marker. The others wore leather jackets decked out with patches and metal spikes. The lead singer yelled out a minute-and-a-half tirade about having to do everyday chores like cleaning, and things he wants to do but can’t, like eating candy. They barely moved their feet.
The crazy thing is, the group won. The competition's national jury, which included a panel of musicians, taxi drivers and children, favored a boy band with a catchy tune about relationships. But call-in voters, whose collective opinion counts for 90% of the score, tipped the scales.
Some observers picked them as the favorite going into the competition, but their win caught others off-guard.
“I was just horrified,” John O'Connor says. “I thought this is possibly the worst song I have every heard in Eurovision, bar none.”
But, like a lot of the fans who called in to vote for PKN, O’Connor’s opinion changed when he heard more about their story.
“It was only later on, when I was reading all the headlines, that suddenly it all made sense. I could see why this song would have resonated with the audience,” he says, “And I could see why it won.”
PKN’s win isn’t so surprising when you look at Finland’s Eurovision track record, he adds.
“Finland has always sort of gone out on this limb,” says O’Connor. “They were the first country ever to do reggae in the contest, which they did in 1981, and it was by this white, blonde, Rod Stewart look-alike. And it was absolutely dreadful.”
The next year, the country got zero points for a song about nuclear fallout.
In a half century of competing in Eurovision, Finland achieved their one and only victory with Lordi, a hard rock and heavy metal band dressed as armored monsters. “They’ve always done this sort of dark stuff,” notes O’Connor.
Some critics say PKN won with “pity points”. But Jon Ola Sand, executive supervisor of the Eurovision Song Contest, says the group is as legitimate as any of the other performers. They’re honest punk rockers, “not trying to seduce anyone with a fancy melody or sort of fancy dance routine,” he says. “It’s really a hardcore punk song. And, of course, with their background and their situation, it’s something completely different.”
The band accepted their victory on Saturday with tears in their eyes and gold confetti stuck to their black leather jackets. Helle’s voice cracked as he and Aalto belted out “We are the champions.”
Helle says the group won't change a thing for their performance at the Eurovision semifinals in May in Vienna, except that “there could be more smoke.”