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John Oliver Survived His Trinidadian TV Debut, But Will Jack Warner Survive the FIFA Scandal? · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Ex-FIFA Vice President and Trinidad and Tobago Government Minister Jack Warner. Photo by BBC World Service, used under a CC BY-NC 2.0 license.
At 9:01 Trinidad and Tobago time last night, most of the country and much of the world were watching comedian John Oliver's well-publicised, five-minute time slot that his show Last Week Tonight had purchased on TV6, one of the twin island republic's most popular television stations. The move came as a response to former FIFA Vice President Jack Warner‘s seven-minute broadcast on TV6 last week, in which he threatened to reveal incriminating evidence.
The eyes of the world have been trained on Warner ever since the announcement of indictments against several FIFA executives by the United States Department of Justice and corresponding arrests in Zurich towards the end of May. The US has issued a formal extradition request for Warner, which he intends to fight.
Trinbagonians, many of whom are concerned about the bad press they believe the country is receiving thanks to the FIFA scandal and Warner's alleged involvement in it, had a vested interest in finding out what exactly Oliver's message to Warner was. Before the piece even aired, there was controversy, with netizens discussing the station's decision to broadcast the Warner piece in the first place, and whether TV6 should have sold rebuttal airtime to Oliver. The popular satirical website Wired 868 summed it up this way:
‘Apparently you can just buy time on TV there to say whatever you like,’ said Oliver, to raucous laughter from his audience.
The funniest part about Oliver’s claim, sadly, is that it is true.
TV6 recently showed the lifeless body of former Security Minister Martin Joseph—wearing only a red shorts—on a loop during its news broadcast, the Trinidad Guardian carried a full page advertisement that compared activist Wayne Kublalsingh to a lizard and the Trinidad Mirror, with a poignant middle finger to media watch groups, published a photograph of a naked yet aroused corpse on its front page.
Now, even foreign media houses are flying in to screw with us.
As it turned out, Oliver's barbs were milder — and less side-splittingly funny — than many thought they would be. The comedian began by taking great pains — and it was painful — to get viewers on his side by “incorporating some Trinidadian slang” into his bit. For some, it fell flat; others found it endearing. Either way, it established that Oliver's issue was with Warner and FIFA and that he was not necessarily painting the country with the same brush. For netizens who were concerned about embarrassment, it helped that Oliver also roasted American FIFA executive-turned-informant Chuck Blazer.
The main point of Oliver's “Mittens of Disapproval” was to lambaste Warner for “blueball[ing] the entire planet” by implying that he might reveal pertinent information as to FIFA “funding” — and then not doing it:
I am begging you. Release everything because, here's my argument: Why the hell not? It's not like you're not already, potentially, in a lot of trouble […]
If you turn on FIFA, do not underestimate how much people might be willing to forgive. And if, one day, you end up in jail and you're staring up at the ceiling, wouldn't you feel better to know that you took down some people with you. […] Please, release the documents, Mr Warner, and you may yet salvage your completely tattered reputation.
Reactions immediately began to pour in on Facebook. Vernon O'Reilly Ramesar thought “it was short, sweet and direct”; about the comedian's attempt at Trini-isms, he noted:
It's no different than if he did a piece in Cockney rhyming slang or in a Texas twang with regional terms. He'd mangle those as well.
Still, some expected Oliver's piece to be funnier. Darren Trinity Cheewah went so far as to post a comment to that effect on Last Week Tonight's Facebook page:
Hey John I think you are really intelligent and I do like the way you bring across your points but I'm a Trini and really, you dumbed it down tonight, I was expecting your cleaver bombshells of comedic wit and instead you gave me White man trying to speak like we, anywho I'm still a fan, that's just my 2 cents
Monique Roffey, who is half-Trinidadian, half-British, felt that Oliver's roasting of Warner “bore more than a hint of old school British racist humour, before the dawn of alternative comedy — when Britain had the black and white minstrels show and white men could say what they like about women and black people, mother-in-laws [sic] etc.”
In that vein, The Late O'Clock News, another Trinidad-based satirical website, went to town on Oliver:
A wave of nostalgia washed over Trinidad and Tobago tonight after the host of HBO’s Last Week Tonight, John Oliver, bought five minutes of airtime on TV6 and proceeded to mock the nation with his use of Trinibagonian slang. In awe of the white British man’s theatrical ability and wisdom, Trinis remembered a time when white British men like John Oliver owned slaves who looked just like them, and they long for the return of those happier times.
‘Boy, I study history in school,’ said Igno Remus of Arima, ‘and I always wished I lived in a time when white British men told us how to live our lives and made fun of our culture. Slaves seemed so happy to not have to think for themselves when decisions were made on their behalf. It not like now where we have to plan for the future and hold leaders accountable. It was easy back then.’
‘If I was a slave, I wish I had a master like John Oliver,’ said Eedie Otte of Diego Martin. ‘He would have had me laughing while he was whipping my wife in front me and her children.’
In a public note on Facebook, Kevin Jared Hosein likened Warner to the part of ourselves we hate:
Jack Warner currently is our fat ass, that particular trait that we dislike, have internally and externally protested, but have ultimately accepted into our society. He is a bastard, but he is our bastard. And unfortunately, right now, he defines Trinidad and Tobago. He is that exposed lump of flesh to the man across the street who will holler and mock him. That man across the street was John Oliver […] I understand the ultimate purpose of it was to get Jack Warner to watch. If he did, what was accomplished except to say, ‘Hey, fat ass!’ […]
The thing is, at the risk of sounding like a true edgelord, we hate ourselves. […]
We may try to separate ourselves from the two hotheads scrapping in front of the bar […] or the school officials that believe Charlie Charlie is actual-real-life-in-this-dimension devil ting […] or the tantie who squats atop a leatherback turtle. We may say, I's not dem! But the truth is that you are. We are. […]
But at the end of each day, we will become one with the bacchanal – the best and the worst of us. We will tolerate and accept it. We will post jokes and make memes and write notes (lol) about it. We will chant over and over again, in true acerbic sarcasm, ‘We reach!’ every time we look bad in the international news. But deep down, it drills through us. No, it sears through us.
Meanwhile, Wired 868's Mr. Live Wire suggested that Oliver “mauled Jack…with kindness”, which is to say that Oliver technically did everything right, but many Trinbagonians were expecting boxing gloves rather than mittens. The post explained:
Over the past decade, nothing has petrified Warner and brought more Trinbagonians to edge of the seat than the insatiable, almost omnipresent British investigative journalist Andrew Jennings.
‘Mister Waaaar-nah…’ Jennings would say. And Warner’s hair would stand on end.
The power of the British accent was diluted tonight after Oliver’s affable chat. Sorry about that, Andrew.
Now you know how us Trinis feel about Warner.
It is fair to say that journalist Lasana Liburd, the smart, fearless powerhouse behind Wired 868, understands the intricacies of Warner and FIFA in a way that John Oliver cannot. Liburd has been writing strong investigate reports about Warner's alleged improprieties for years and grasps not only the significance of Warner's power in the world football governing body, but how he used it to influence and direct the political engines of Trinidad and Tobago.
In that sense, Oliver may have slightly missed the mark when he called on Warner to deliver on his threats because to many Trinbagonians, Warner's evidence had more to do with incriminating members of the governing People's Partnership than it had to do with bringing down anyone in FIFA. While Warner admitted that the documents in question “deal with my knowledge of financial transactions at FIFA, including but not limited to its president Mr. Sepp Blatter”, the majority of his revelation was aimed at the current government of Trinidad and Tobago, of which he used to be a part.
He threatened to reveal “the link between FIFA, its funding and me; the link between FIFA, its funding and the United National Congress and the People’s Partnership Government in (the) general elections 2010; […] the section 34 fiasco; […] and, lastly, other matters involving the nation’s Prime Minister.” This stance should come as no surprise. After all, the current government holds the key to his fate, depending on whether or not it honours the US extradition request — and that could really go either way. Wired 868 noted:
Justice Minister Prakash Ramadhar yesterday claimed that Warner—the PP’s former acting Prime Minister—had ‘really polluted the stream of the politics of this nation’, which is especially funny as his COP party was launched at Warner’s Centre of Excellence.
But, as 21st century philosopher Chris Brown pointed out: ‘these hoes ent loyal.’


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Life Stops For Many Quetta Residents When the Prime Minister of Pakistan Visits · Global Voices
Balochistan Point

A traffic jam at Zarghoon road in Quetta, Pakistan. Photo by PPIimages on 1 August 2011. Copyright Demotix.
The post was written by Adnan Aamir for The Balochistan Point. It is republished on Global Voices under a content-sharing agreement.
Life was put on hold for many residents, students, patients and commuters of Quetta city, when the Prime Minister of Pakistan and his entourage arrived in Balochistan province's capital last week.
According to some estimates, hundreds of thousands are directly and indirectly affected every time road blocks are put up for the security of very important people or VIPs in Quetta, a city home to about 1 million. This is fifth time VIP security restricted traffic into the city this year.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif reached Quetta in the morning to participate in the cross-party political meeting “All Parties Conference“. The meeting was called in the aftermath of the Mastung bus carnage in Balochistan, where militants killed 22 Pashtun passengers in an ethnically motivated attack.
All major roads of Quetta located in the vicinity of Governor House, where the meeting was taking place, were shut down on the pretext of security.The last few years, whenever a important politician or powerful person visits Quetta, all major roads are blocked and closed to normal traffic.
Commuters travelling from the outskirts of the city to the main downtown had to walk two-three kilometres to reach their destination due to the closed roads. Public transport was not allowed to enter the center of the city and passengers were dropped outside the road blocks.
Patients and people heading to one of the city's main hospitals Sandmen Provincial had to go through long agonizing hours of waiting before entering the facility, which is near the Governor House.
“I travelled from my village in Kalat district to Quetta for an urgent errand but due to the closure of roads I will not be able to reach my destination on time,” Murtaza Baloch, told The Balochistan Point. He added, “Now I have to come back to Quetta some other day and this is huge mental stress for me.”
Three major schools in the city St. Francis Grammar School, St. Joseph Convent School and Sacred Heart School were forced to declare a holiday by the city administration. The schools are located along the route used for the prime minister.
“Whenever our Prime Minister visits this city, a school day of my daughters is wasted because their school is closed down for that day,” said Saleem Haider, a Quetta resident.
On the day of the prime minister's visit, Muhammad Siddique, a car owner stuck in a traffic jam said important meetings and VIP movements should be restricted to the high security military cantonment of the city. “If the prime minister and Balochistan government have any concern for Quetta's residents,” Siddique said, “then they should conduct all their meetings in Quetta Cantonment and spare us from unnecessary mental stress.”

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Balochistan Point


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Speculation Flares Online as Huge Fuel Depot Fire Burns Near Kyiv · Global Voices
Tanya Lokot

People watching the fire near Vasylkiv, Ukraine, on June 8, 2015. Image by Maksym Kudymets from Demotix.
A massive fire has been burning at an oil depot near Vasylkiv, a town near Kiev, Ukraine, since Monday night, raising fears of air pollution and generating speculations about the cause of the fire online. According to the latest reports, four persons have died while fighting the blaze and at least 14 people have been injured or poisoned by the fumes.
The facility contains 17 storage tanks, each of them holding approximately 900 cubic meters (32,000 cubic feet) of petrol—with at least four of them now completely burned out. According to the Ukrainian Emergency Services, the fire began Monday evening in one of the storage tanks, and soon spread to neighboring containers. Firefighters, rescue workers, and the National Guard have been on the scene battling the fire.
On Tuesday morning, Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov tweeted that an explosion occurred in the midst of fighting the fire, killing several firefighters.
Взрыв на нефтебазе под Васильковым. Гигантский. Погибли пожарные..  СЧС стягивает все, что есть. По тревоге поднята Нацгвардия. Работаем.
— Arsen Avakov (@AvakovArsen) June 9, 2015
An explosion at the oil depot in Vasylkiv. A giant one. Firefighters dead… Emergency Services bringing in all we have. National Guard is on alert. We're working.
Early videos from the scene of the blaze showed huge clouds of black smoke and intense fire, destroyed storage facilities and equipment.
Citizens document blaze on social media
As soon as news of the fire spread, Internet users from nearby areas started posting vivid photos and videos of the fire and smoke around the facility.
@HromadskeTV @5channel @radiosvoboda pic.twitter.com/az18ZU74Yw
— Oles Kugit (@KugitK97) June 9, 2015
To add context to the reports of the fire threatening a nearby military base and other fuel depots, users created a contextual map of the area. The depot is located in the village of Kryachki, Vasylkiv district, about 25 miles away from the Ukrainian capital.
#VasylkivRed- BRSM petrol depotorange – shooting rangeGreen-army depotBlue-KLO petrol depotvia @inforesistpic.twitter.com/LUOloPVEU7
— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) June 9, 2015
Drones, which are quickly becoming an invaluable part of the reporting arsenal for those covering the conflict in Ukraine, were used to scope out the damage done by the fire.
все, що ви хотіли дізнатися про пожежу у Василькові з висоти пташиного польоту. Дрони — це не лише війна ) http://t.co/RFjePNGLmW
— Gennadiy Kornev (@kaktuse) June 9, 2015
Everything you wanted to know about the fire in Vasylkiv, from a bird's eye view. Drones are not just for war.
Ukrainian Emergency Services also posted scores of photos on Facebook depicting efforts to put out the fire.
Health hazard worries
Rescue workers have been evacuating people from the immediate area within several miles of the fire, although latest official reports suggest the main blaze has been “localized” and is under control. The city council of Vasylkiv, the town closest to the facility, has told local residents to close their windows and avoid going outside, raising fears of toxic particles released by the blaze. Although environmental officials have said the levels of any harmful elements in the air are within the safety norm, netizens have been sharing tips and advice on minimizing possible harm.
Знайомий хімік-нафтовик радить киянам: їсти в'ялені яблука (пектин виводить важкі метали), щодня мити голову, не потрапляти під дощ #пожежа
— Lyubov Bagatska (@LBagatska) June 10, 2015
An acquaintance of mine who is a fuel chemist advises Kyiv residents to eat dried apples (the pectin helps get rid of heavy metals), wash their hair daily and not get drenched by the rain.
What caused the fire?
Government officials have said it's unlikely that a terrorist act caused the fire, but an investigation has been launched to probe the possibility of a technical error or any external intervention. Most speculations so far have revolved around the fuel depot business and its owners.
Burning oil depot reportedly belongs to Yanukovych's ex-Energy Minister, previous attacks not investigated. Smells of oligarchs. #Ukraine
— Maxim Tucker (@MaxRTucker) June 9, 2015
Some sources have suggested the competitors of the owner were the ones responsible for setting the depot on fire. Instead, Kharkiv politician Gennady Korban suspected a case of insurance fraud and claimed Stavitsky (the alleged owner) may have attempted to cover up shady business practices. Investigative journalist Dmytro Gnap quoted his own sources as saying the oil repository was notorious for producing diluted fuel, an a mistake in the production process may have caused the blaze.
These and other conspiracy theories caused frustration among some social media users who ridiculed the sudden influx of armchair analytics—a common occurrence in times of crisis.
Астрологи обьявили неделю специалистов по тушению резервуаров с нефтью. Количество аналитики и зрады повысилось на – 154%.
— taranenko (@taranenko) June 9, 2015
Astrologists have announced a week of experts on oil repository fires and their extinguishing. The amount of analytics and [accusations of] treason has grown by 154%.

author: Tanya Lokot


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The Question Plaguing Post-War Bosnia and Herzegovina: Who Am I? · Global Voices
Balkan Diskurs

Photo by Mirko Pincelli for the PCRC/PINCH media project ‘’Bosnian Roma’’. Used with permission.
Tatjana Milovanović explores national, ethnic, and personal identity in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina in this piece originally published on Balkan Diskurs, which is led by the Sarajevo-based Post-Conflict Research Center, a 2014 Rising Voices grantee. It is republished here as part of a content-sharing agreement.
If you asked my grandparents back in the 1990s what nation they belonged to, they would have told you they were Yugoslavs and Bosnians.
My grandfather would probably start talking nostalgically about the past, remembering how, as a policeman in 1984, he went to Sarajevo to work during the Olympics, or how it was to be in Kosovo during the 1970s. My grandmother would most probably talk about how “Borac”, a clothing producer in the village of Banovići, Bosnia, was the best collective she ever worked for and how they went on the best collective field trips together. And yes, they were Yugoslavs, and they were Bosnians.
When you ask them the same question today, they don't know how to respond and they mostly avoid talking about that time. Grandmother says there is no point in talking anymore, as the good days of her life are long behind her, and what she has today, in this country, is pure survival.
The constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina says that all citizens of the Federation of BiH and Republika Srpska are automatically citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The fact is that all of us, as citizens of BiH (Bosnia and Herzegovina), carry a passport, and other identification documents with a crest of a single country and the marking of one citizenship.
When talking with a high school girl from Kladanj, a small town in Northeast Bosnia, I discovered that even today they can't explain to her grandfather that they are Bosniaks, a South Slavic ethnic group within Bosnia and Herzegovina; he just stubbornly claims he is Bosnian and he does not know of any other national identity.
The generations prior to the war in 1990s had been raised under the motto of “brotherhood and unity” of the former Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia and taught mostly to repress religious and ethnic identity, for the sake of society.
And really, when I think about the country in which I live, taking both its history into consideration, and also the times in which it is currently developing, I cannot help but wonder: “What does it mean to be Bosnian and Herzegovinian in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and does such an identity even exist?”
As someone who grew up after the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, I always faced a dilemma when considering my ethnic and national identity. Growing up in a family that fostered Orthodox tradition, I was immediately seen as a Serb and so there was no dilemma about that; no dilemma for anyone but me, because I always felt that something was missing.
A young man reminisces on better days of the former Yugoslavia while viewing a portrait of Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito. Caricature by Chloé Gaillard for Balkan Diskurs.
Ethnic symbols in Bosnia and Herzegovina have become so important that sometimes I feel like we are living in a time of ancient history and tribal divisions, where tribal colors and insignia are the only guarantee of survival. In a time when politicians, through mainstream media, openly talk about not recognizing the capital city of this country, about strengthening the entities and the creation of independent regions, I wonder if there is a possibility of life and survival outside of ethnicity.
What bothers young people in BiH the most is the impossibility of finding a job and the resultant lack of money. It is because of these problems that a large number of young people, daily, decide to pursue their happiness outside of BiH’s borders. The difficulties of life today outside the boundaries of “your group” is made evident by the many cases of employment to fulfill ethnic quotas, and a tradition of employment on “party lines”. If we take into consideration that 80% of political parties include ethnic symbols in their names, we can see the extent of problem the country is facing.
Sometimes it seems futile to talk about the existence of the country Bosnia and Herzegovina, because the majority of its citizens declare themselves as members of some other group, rather than the citizens of this country. I wonder if there really is a country if even those who carry its passport negate its existence. How come only an old man from Kladanj remembers it? Why can’t we all be stubborn, and prevent being robbed of what our grandparents were? Why do we continuously try to forget where we are from, and inside whose borders we live? We cannot forget our religion and ethnicity because they carry in them the individuality and history of our families and ancestors. But we must also turn to what is maybe an even higher priority, and that is all ethnicities and all religions, living side-by-side inside these state borders. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could talk about belonging to a larger group, and finally talk about each other as proud Bosnians and Herzegovinians?
I believe such ideas of “brotherhood and unity” may seem too idealistic and even impossible today, but if you think they are even a little necessary, and if you consider them logical, not all is lost. Even if it seems crazy sometimes, and even a little naive, I believe all BiH citizens are a little like that old man from Kladanj.
Being Bosnian and Herzegovinian today means being angry and bitter at the political system in the country. It means living in economically unstable communities, fighting for existence every day and struggling for a “better tomorrow”. But also, it means being proud when our athletes win a medal or when Sarajevo wins the competition of the 100 best tourist destinations. Being Bosnian and Herzegovinian means feeling love and belonging, and carrying it always and everywhere.

author: Balkan Diskurs


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Using a Needle and Thread, Women Sew the Darker Side of Dam Construction in Brazil · Global Voices
Fernanda Canofre

Art made by Brazilian cartoonist Vitor for the arpilleras project. (Image: Arpilleras: Bordando a resistência/Facebook)
Back in the days when Pinochet ruled over Chile, there were stories that couldn’t be told. Until one group of Chilean women — mothers and wives of political prisoners — found a way. Using scraps of old clothing and working by candlelight, they started to denounce what was happening in the country through needlework, just as singer and composer Violeta Parra did before them. Years later, the canvas made by las arpilleras has appeared in museums around the world as a document of life, abuse and torture in Chile under dictatorship.
It was at one of those exhibits — at the Latin America Memorial in São Paulo in 2011 — that the Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB) in Brazil discovered the arpilleria technique. The exhibition, created to encourage embroidery as a tool for empowerment and resistance, fit perfectly with the MAB's women's collective. As they told Global Voices in an email, after getting support from the European Union to document and denounce human rights violations in areas affected by dam construction, the groups started to give workshops in 2013 teaching arpilleria throughout the country.
In Brazil, as in many countries, the more benefits that construction companies claim their dams will bring, the more damage they seem to cause. In a statement released by the National Human Rights Council, 16 human rights violations were identified in dams zones in Brazil.
And, as stated by the MAB, “for women, violations are even greater”:
With the arrival of thousands of workers in small towns where hydroelectric construction sites takes places, for example, there is an extension of the cases of sexual harassment, women trafficking, prostitution and rape.
These are some of the stories that a crowdfunded documentary produced by the movement wants to tell. The project has already achieved 20,000 reais of its 25,000 reais goal (approximately 8,000 US dollars) on crowdfunding platform Catarse, with only two days left to get the rest.
The documentary intends to follow the stories of five women from the five regions of Brazil and how their lives were changed with the arrival of energy companies and their giant construction projects. The producers still haven’t defined who the subjects will be, but as they shared with Global Voices, they already know dams tales only change addresses:
Temos escutado todo tipo de histórias. O leque das perdas é muito grande e vai desde o caso da Maria, que foi ameaçada pela empresa caso não aceitasse a carta de crédito; a Fernanda, que perdeu a fonte de renda porque trabalhada fazendo doces para festas; a Damiana, que não conseguiu mais deixar a sua filhinha ao cuidado da vizinha; a Jose, que, com 15 anos, engravidou de um operário, dando à luz a mais um “filho da barragem”, porque aquele operário voltou a casa com a sua família; a Lucenilda, que conseguiu escapar do “boate Xingú” (na barragem de Belo Monte), onde estava presa, em regime de cárcere privado e escravidão, sendo obrigada a se prostituir várias vezes ao dia.
We have been listening to all kinds of stories. The scope of loss is wide and goes from Maria’s case, who was threatened by the company if she didn’t accept the credit letter they offered; to Fernanda’s, who lost her income because she used to work doing party pastries; from Damiana’s, who couldn’t leave her little daughter with her neighbour anymore; to Jose’s, who at age 15 got pregnant from a worker, giving birth to yet another “dam baby” because the worker had to go back to his home and family; and Lucenilda’s, who managed to escape “Boate Xingu” (Xingu’s nightclub) where she was being kept in conditions of a private prison and slavery, being forced to prostitute herself several times a day.
In its 30-year existence, the Movement of People Affected by Dams has noticed a pattern in energy companies’ installation of power plants from north to south. Reparations and resettlements, for instance, are always issued by the companies under men’s names, leaving women out. The numbers on violence point to a gruesome picture:
(…) são inúmeras as evidências de aumentos das ocorrências de assédio sexual, tráfico de mulheres e prostituição nas proximidades dos canteiros de obras das barragens. Porto Velho (RO), município que abriga a hidrelétrica de Santo Antônio e Jirau, registrou um aumento significativo nos índices de violência após o início das obras. Segundo pesquisa da Plataforma Dhecas, entre 2008 e 2010, o número de homicídios dolosos subiu 44%, e o índice de estupros cresceu 208% em três anos após a chegada dos empreendimentos.
[…] there is much evidence of an increase in sexual harassment, women trafficking and prostitution around the dam construction sites. Porto Velho, Rondonia, where the Santo Antonio and Jirau plant is located, registered a significant rise in the violence indices after construction work began. According to research from Plataforma Dhecas, between 2008 and 2010 the number of premeditated homicides went up 44%, and the percentage of rapes grew 208% in three years after project arrived.
Research conducted by a special commission investigating dams zones, 16 human rights violations were identified in several Brazilian regions. (Image: Vitor/Arpilleras: Bordando a resistência/Facebook)
Enter arpilleria. A skill that women from the areas affected by dams are already familiar with — sewing and needlework — has helped create a safe space for them to share their experiences with and opinions on the situation they find themselves in, according to MAB:
As mulheres são as que mais sofrem com a construção de barragens, mas também elas possuem uma força extraordinária para se unir, se empoderar coletivamente e ir para frente na defesa dos seus direitos e os direitos da sua família e comunidade.
Women are the ones who suffer the most with dam construction, but they also possess an extraordinary strength to unite, empower collectively and move forward defending their rights and their family and community rights.
In the two years that the MAB's National Women's Collective has been working with arpilleras throughout Brazil, 100 workshops have taken place in 10 states with 900 women. As Neudicléia de Oliveira, an MAB member, said in an interview with Brasil de Fato newspaper, sewing used to be a way for many of these women to make a living. Now, it's a political weapon.
While there is still very little political willingness to do something for communities violated by giant energy projects in Brazil, for MAB the arpilleras could be the beginning of a revolution:
Violeta Parra definia as arpilleras como “canções que se pintam”. Para as chilenas, foram uma forma de luto e de luta. Arpillera para nós é como um grito escancarado em forma de bordado. Arpillera é transgredir o significado histórico da costura, que apenas corroborava que o lugar da mulher era no ambiente doméstico, privado. Arpillera é a revolução costurada.
Violeta Parra defined the arpilleras as “songs that are painted”. To Chilean women, they were a way to grieve and to fight. Arpillera to us is like wide-mouthed scream in the form of needlework. Arpillera is to offend the historical meaning of sewing, which merely corroborates woman's place as being in the domestic, private sphere. Arpillera is a revolution, sewn.
To support the making of documentary on the Brazilian arpilleras, visit the project's Catarse page here.

author: Fernanda Canofre


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What’s More Dangerous: ‘Probably Carcinogenic’ Herbicide or Argentina’s Government Inefficiency? · Global Voices
Laura Schneider

Genetically modified sunflower fields in the province of Santa Fe, Argentina – Image taken by the author.
With the recent demonstrations against agro-giant Monsanto in Argentina, public perception of the multinational in the country has taken a negative turn. At the center of the controversy is the herbicide glyphosate, the main component of Monsanto's Round-Up widely used for weed control in agriculture. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a World Health Organization sponsored group, recently classified glyphosate as “probably” carcinogenic.
Demonstrations and campaigns on and offline have condemned Monsanto, going beyond glyphosate and advising against the company’s other products such as genetically modified organisms (GMO).
However, Monsanto is not the only company in the country using glyphosate. According to the list of registered products from the National Food Safety and Quality Service (SENASA), many other companies use glyphosate as a component in their products, but their names don’t make it into the debates and protests.
The work of Eduardo Andres Carrasco, a former researcher from the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research, shows that Argentina uses 200 million liters of glyphosate in a populated area of 20 million hectares. The use of Monsanto's products is not limited to this component — Argentina has also adopted the company's farming model, through genetically modified seeds that are glyphosate resistant.
The presence of Monsanto in Argentina is palpable, and recent demonstrations show a growing disapproval. But some wonder, given the health consequences that these and other chemicals have and the lack of response from responsible parties other than Monsanto, if these campaigns could be distracting public opinion from the need to hold government institutions accountable as well.
Argentina has varied and comprehensive legislationconcerning agriculture and pollution. In the province of Córdoba, for example, farmers are prohibited from aerial or land spraying of chemicals within a certain distance of populated areas. However, news coming out of that same region indicate that things are not working as they should.
Argentina's Barrio Ituzaingó in Córdoba is today a tragic example of what happens when the government fails to protect people's health from the dangers of added chemicals, even though the case is not directly connected to glyphosate specifically.
In this region, a group of mothers in 2012 won the first conviction in Argentina of a farmer applying agrochemicals from the air by proving its connection with the multiplication of cancer cases in the district. The story and the testimonies of the affected communities were reported by the Argentine news media El Puercoespín:
Aquella mañana de enero una de ellas contó que a su hijo le habían diagnosticado leucemia, y entonces lo que parecía casualidad pasó a ser sospecha, porque en la zona había muchos casos similares. Y allí mismo esas cuatro mujeres, que luego fueron cinco y llegaron a ser trece Madres de Ituzaingó, se pusieron a hacer cuentas […] Con los datos, las Madres fueron al Ministerio de Salud de la Provincia de Córdoba. El Ministerio guardó los datos en un cajón. […] En marzo, una de las Madres consiguió que un canal de TV se interesara. […] “Como hacía diez días que estábamos sin agua, cuando convocamos a los vecinos la gente salió, y en el programa también denunciamos los casos de leucemia. A partir de ese momento, el Ministro recibió a las chicas y mandó a realizar un análisis del agua del tanque”. […] El estudio –era de esperar- dio como resultado la presencia de agroquímicos y metales pesados en el agua. En tiempo récord conectaron el barrio a la red para intentar, tarde, reparar en algo el desastre.
That January morning, one of them said that her child had been diagnosed with leukemia, and then what appeared chance became suspicious, because in the area there were many similar cases. And right there the four women, who later became five and then thirteen Mothers of Ituzaingó, started to do numbers […] With that data, the mothers went to the province of Cordoba's Ministry of Health. The ministry dismissed the case and put away the data. […] In March, one of the mothers managed to get a TV channel interested. […] “As we were without water for ten days, when we called on the neighbors they attended and on the TV show we denounced the cases of leukemia. From that moment on, the minister welcomed the mothers and asked for an analysis of the water in the tank. ” […] As it was to be expected, the study found evidence of chemicals and heavy metals in the water. In record time, they connected the neighborhood to the water system trying, late, to minimize the disaster.
The article also includes the reflection of one of these mothers about the extent of the problem:
No me gusta dar números, porque no somos cifras y alcanza con un solo afectado por contaminación para que se tomen medidas, pero nosotros nos sorprendimos: imagínate que en casi todas las casas había un afectado.
I do not like giving numbers, because we are not figures and it should be enough that one person was affected by pollution for action to be taken, but we were surprised: in almost every house there was an affected person.
Raul Montenegro, who was awarded the Alternative Nobel Prize in 2004 by the Right Livelihood Award in Stockholm for his work in defense of the environment, seems to agree with the ideas that consider the state one of the many responsible parties in the Ituzaingo case:
Porque en realidad, aún existiendo esos productores o ese agroaplicador, si el Estado hubiera asumido su responsabilidad nunca debió
pasar lo que pasó en Ituzaingó […] Hay que tener en cuenta que hay una ordenanza que prohíbe la aplicación de pesticidas en la franja de 2500 metros y que es una zona declarada en emergencia sanitaria. Por eso, si el Estado hubiera cumplido y actuado, desde el año 2002 en adelante no debió haber un gramo de plaguicida aplicado.
Because in reality, even with this kind of agriculture producers or chemical sprayers, if the state had taken responsibility of protecting people's health, the problem in Ituzaingó would have never happened […] Keep in mind that there is an ordinance that prohibits the use of pesticides within 2,500 meters near populated areas and that the area is declared as a health emergency. Therefore, if the state had fulfilled its duty from 2002 onward, there should not have been one gram of pesticide applied in Ituzaingó.
With this case coming to light, why is Monsanto then the only one at the center of recent protests? JM Mulet, who defends the use of glyphosate in his blog, says that there are other more harmful herbicides. According to him, it's partly because the company invented the chemical and also due to the media's treatment of the story, in which Monsanto ends up being the transnational that everyone loves to hate:
¿De dónde sale esta campaña del glifosato cuándo objetivamente hay pesticidas mucho más problemáticos? Se juntan varios factores, pero los principales es que fue un invento de Monsanto, el malo carismático de la película, y que se utiliza para las plantas OGM. Sin estos dos factores nadie se preocuparía por el glifosato como no se preocupa por el glufosinato, que es de Bayer y cuyas plantas transgénicas resistentes no se comercializan todavía aunque son las que utilizo yo en el laboratorio (les falta carisma para que recojan firmas). Y este miedo interesado se alimenta por el hecho de noticias como ésta [noticia divulgada en El País: Los médicos ligan el cáncer de un pueblo argentino a los agroquímicos] que son publicadas a toda plana, pero en cambio cuando llega el desmentido, no se publica.
Where does this glyphosate campaign come from when objectively, there are pesticides that are much more harmful? Several factors come together to explain it, but the key is that it was invented by Monsanto, the charismatic villain, and because it is used on genetically modified plants. Without these two factors no one would care about glyphosate, as they are not concerned about the glufosinate, which is produced by Bayer, whose resistant transgenic plants are not being sold yet, but they are the ones I use myself in the laboratory (I guess, Bayer lacks charisma to inspire people to collect signatures). And this fear created by interest, is fuelled by news like this one, published in the Spanish newspaper El País: Doctors link cancer in Argentine small town to agrochemicals. They published it full-page, but when denial came, it was not published.

author: Laura Schneider


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Displaced by Fighting in Northern Myanmar, Thousands Continue to Live in Makeshift Camps · Global Voices
Juan Cebu

Many Facebook users from Myanmar adopted this as their profile photo
Four years ago, a clash between government soldiers and rebels from the Kachin Independence Army in northern Myanmar renewed civil war in Kachin State.
The Kachin Independence Organization, formed shortly after Myanmar’s independence from Britain, pursued the path of armed struggle for 33 years from 1961 until 1994, after which they signed a ceasefire agreement with the military-backed government. The ceasefire lasted for 17 years and was dissolved only when fighting erupted again in June 2011.
The June 2011 clashes displaced thousands of people who fled to the Chinese border to escape the fighting. Many of them are still living in makeshift camps near the border four years after the resumption of hostilities between the government and rebel forces.
To commemorate this and to raise awareness, hundreds of youth and civil society groups gathered on June 7, 2015, in the former capital city Yangon to call for an end to hostilities and gather support for internally displaced persons (IDP). The event was called “Concern, Care, and Contribute to the IDPs Now”.
According to UNHCR, over 100,000 people have been displaced as result of this renewed fighting between the government and the ethnic armed forces. International aid organizations have direct access only to the IDP camps in government-controlled areas.
Photo by the Irrawaddy News Agency and shared by Refugee Stories on Facebook
Photo shared on Facebook by Kachin Life Stories. The placard reads “Protect the Lives of War Refugees”
Photo shared by Ah Phu Phu on Facebook. The placard reads: “Raise the Dignity of War Refugees by Supporting Them”.
On Facebook, Khon Ja from Kachin Peace Network remembered the experience of the villagers on the night the conflict started four years ago:
Local villagers ran in the rain overnight for survival without bringing anything for they assumed it might be temporary hiding as the way they experienced before year 1994.
Today is exactly 4 years that they could not return back… just staying at the falling camps and survive 40 cent/day/person..
Burma Partnership, a network of advocacy organizations, released a statement with support from 56 solidarity groups, calling for an immediate stop to all hostilities and unlimited access for humanitarian organizations to aid thousands of IDPs living in the northern border.
Lahpai Seng Raw from Metta Development Foundation gave a speech about the conditions of the people displaced as a result of war. She said:
There are about 120,000 IDPs, living in deplorable conditions in 172 camps across Kachin and northern Shan States. The anxieties and challenges the IDPs face on a day-to-day basis continue unabated. In fact for some, the situation has become much worse.
She also highlighted the loss of education opportunities for the IDP children:
At borderland camps, there are about 15,000 children of school-going age with limited access to schools and other education opportunities. This year they face special difficulties as UNICEF and local aid organizations are no longer able to provide them with text books and other school materials as in previous years.
She said women living in the areas are particularly vulnerable to abuses:
Also, in the course of this four year war, the lives of those who remain behind are as much in danger as those who flee. Egregious rights abuses are being committed against civilians with impunity, and Kachin women in particular, have become increasingly vulnerable as targets of rape and sexual abuse.
In an interview with the Irrawaddy News Agency, Mary Tawn from local relief agency Wunpawng Ninghtoi reflected the feelings of those living in the camps:
Many elderly persons and some others are suffering from mental trauma, they feel hopeless. The number of students who no longer want to continue their education has increased. Whenever I talk to them they ask me the same thing: “When will we go home?” I’m always speechless and, in fact, I have been asking myself the same question.
The Kachin Peace Network is appealing for more support:
With continued fighting and only 17% of basic needs being met, the situation of Myanmar's IDPs is particularly worrying, and they are in desperate need of greater funding and financial support.
Photo of Kachin IDP children studying at a school in the camp. Shared by Kachin Peace Network.
As the war continues, the situation in the camps shows no sign of improvement. Aid from international organizations has dwindled which led to food scarcity in many remote camps.
Myanmar's refugee crisis continues to worsen. Aside from the 100,000 Kachin IDPs near the Chinese border, there are also 140,000 Rohingya refugees in Sittwe township of Rakhine State, and 230,000 IDPs living in southeast region of Myanmar who need immediate humanitarian assistance. Meanwhile, 120,000 refugees living in western Thailand are waiting for their resettlement back to Myanmar.

author: Juan Cebu


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Hong Kong Social Media Activists Under Fire as Key Electoral Policy Vote Approaches · Global Voices
Jennifer Zhang

Hong Kong Central, January 2015. Photo by Ellery Biddle.
The clean look and orderly rhythm of activity in downtown Hong Kong belies the fact that just nine months ago, hundreds of thousands of protesters flooded the city's center, demanding universal voting rights. Despite appearances, political and social tensions remain high today.
Since October, several Hong Kong-based social media activists have been arrested and accused of violating the city-state's cyberlaws. The arrests have led local legal experts to suspect that authorities are exploiting Hong Kong's cybercrime laws in an effort to suppress political speech online.
At least nine activists have been arrested for their online remarks, all charged with the debatable criminal code Section 161 which prohibits “access to a computer with criminal or dishonest intent.” Three have been sentenced to either community service or time in a rehabilitation center.
On 29 May, Tam Tak-chi, leader of the radical democratic coalition People Power, was arrested for posting on Facebook a comment in which he sarcastically suggested planting homemade bombs on the road of a funeral procession for Beijing loyalist Yeung Kowng.
Yeung was a leader of the Hong Kong 1967 leftist riots when the pro-Beijing protesters planted both fake and real bombs in the city and burned a radio host to death after he criticized the rioters in a broadcast. Despite his criminal record, Yeung was later given the Grand Bahunia Medal, which the government issues to a citizen who has made a “highly significant contribution to the well-being of Hong Kong.” Among speakers at Yeung's funeral was Hong Kong Chief Executive CY Leung, who praised him for his dedication to Hong Kong society.
Responding to Chief Executive Leung's speech, Tam wrote:
盒盒寫住『土製菠蘿，同胞勿近』的東西放在它靈車路上，是否很匹配呢？一打開，有嘢爆的，party禮炮……
Boxes with the words “homemade pineapples [euphemism for bombs], stay away, comrades” written on them, put on the road as the hearse passes by. Will that be a good match? [referring to Yeung's bombing tactic during the riot in 1967] When opened, boom! Confetti cannons for the party…
Tam was arrested shortly thereafter, but later released on bail. His allies believe the arrest was intended to warn him not to participate in a vigil held last week commemorating the 4 June 1989 massacre on Tiananmen Square, or any activities surrounding the Legislative Council’s upcoming vote on reforms to the controversial electoral process in Hong Kong, which sparked protests that peaked last September.
Two days prior to Tam's arrest, Barry Ma, chairman of a local pro-independence group known as Orchid Gardening, was arrested for suggesting on Facebook that the entire family of a local news columnist “should be exterminated”. In local parlance, this can also be understood to mean “should go to hell”. The columnist had defended police authorities in a scandal that revealed that police had coerced an autistic man into confessing to manslaughter in a case in which an elderly man was found beaten to death.
Hong Kong Central, September 2014. Photo by Flickr user Pasu Au Yeung. CC BY 2.0
Both groups implicated here are famous for their disruptive tactics and clashes with the authorities. Tam Tak-chi was a leading force protests in the Mong Kok section of Hong Kong and was arrested at the height of the demonstration. Barry Ma's Orchid Gardening is part of a nascent localism movement which has organised street protests against mainland travelers and senior government officials. Both groups strongly oppose the official proposal on electoral reform, which would deeply undermine the intentions of the Occupy Central movement. The Legislative Council will begin deliberations on the policy on 17 June.
Data on these and other arrests is publicly accessible in a database maintained by Hong Kong Transparency Report, an independent research project launched in June 2014 at the University of Hong Kong.
The police stressed in several official statements following these arrests that the Internet environment is not a lawless world, and that the majority of laws in the real world are also applicable online. Critics argue the authorities are exploiting the ambiguity of Hong Kong Crimes Ordinance Section 161 which criminalizes “access to computer with criminal or dishonest intent” in an effort to repress political activists’ speech on the Internet. Section 161 has a lower threshold for prosecution than more substantial offenses such as ‘illegal’ assembly, criminal intimidation, and police assault.
University of Hong Kong legal scholar Eric Cheung was quoted as saying that if the police believe Barry Ma’s case constituted criminal intimidation, then Ma should be charged with criminal intimidation rather than Section 161:
Following the police’s logic, if a person expresses the same opinion as Ma’s orally rather than on the Internet, he probably won’t be arrested. That logic simply doesn’t make sense.
By Cheung's estimation, authorities are serving harsher punishments to individuals who commit crimes of a digital nature. The case of Tam Hiu-fung, a protester arrested by the police for encouraging people to occupy Mong Kok last October on the popular local web forum HK Golden, Tam was charged both with ‘illegal gathering’ and Section 161. Prosecutors dropped the first charge under a one-strike policy in May this year and Tam was eventually sentenced to 100 hours’ community service under Section 161 only.
Looking back at the vital role that social media activism played in last year’s Occupy Central movement, it is no surprise that police have become eager to monitor online interactions. In September and October, protesters used popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter and Instagram to communicate and disseminate real-time information. Joshua Wong, pro-democracy activist and founder of the student activism group Scholarism, emphasized the importance of social media at a recent event:
Without Facebook there would be no Occupy Central, without Facebook there would be no Joshua Wong.
On June 2 at a Legislative Council panel on security, legislators hotly debated whether Section 161 had been abused by the government to target political activists’ speech on social media. While pro-establishment legislators proposed to enhance law enforcement to prevent crimes, pan-democrat lawmakers argued for a thorough review of Section 161 and the protection of citizens’ rights against unreasonable arrests or prosecution.
IT Legislator Charles Mok questioned law enforcement’s evident double standard on criminal speech and Craig Choy, legal adviser to activist group Keyboard Frontline described the use of Section 161 as “unfair”:
Section 161 exposes the unfair approach taken by the police…they've ruined their own integrity and professionalism.
Undersecretary for Security John Lee clarified that Section 161 doesn’t target speech but rather behaviour, a curious notion in the online space where expressive actions are often indistinguishable from other forms of “behavior”. Lee said he believed the court will oversee that Section 161 will not be abused and the panel eventually passed the pro-establishment lawmaker's motion to enhance crackdown on cybercrimes.
Eric Cheung, principal law lecturer of HKU, said on EJInsight that the Security Bureau is trying to expand the scope of Section 161 so that it could hold users liable for comments made online, but not for those made in other media.
Activists’ contentious social media remarks were often deleted immediately following their arrests. The majority of those arrested pleaded guilty at the Magistrates court, the lowest-level court in Hong Kong, according to Hong Kong Transparency Report database. In Tam’s case, the Magistrate said Tam's online comment is “irresponsible” and “may encourage readers to take action and generate the sheep flock effect.”
Yet in another case, a defendant who in 2010 posted a message on HKGolden threatening to bomb the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government was sentenced to 12-month probation for “committing an act outraging public decency,” appealed his case and his conviction was quashed by the Court of Final Appeal in 2014. The judge commented that “the public element of the offence was not satisfied.” Of course, this was a different time for Hong Kong politics.
It is sometimes difficult to draw a line between speech that merits the protection of the law, and speech that is truly an incitement to violence. But these and other cases documented in the database suggest a dangerous trend of criminalizing legitimate, protected speech. Hong Kong law enforcement must conduct an independent review of the ongoing arrests of activists under ambiguous charges simply for what they say on the social media.
Jennifer Zhang is an Internet researcher with Hong Kong Transparency Report, Journalism and Media Studies Centre, the University of Hong Kong.

author: Jennifer Zhang


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In a Music Video, Refugees Say Thanks to Brazil for Welcoming Them · Global Voices
Taisa Sganzerla

Screenshot from YouTube.
A group of refugees who live in São Paulo have composed a song and produced an accompanying music video to thank Brazil for opening its doors to them — and also to raise locals’ awareness of refugee issues.
More than 30 refugees from different nationalities participated in the music video's production, which was funded by the Global Youth Initiative Fund, a program from the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) that supports projects led by young refugees.
While they walk through famous landmarks of São Paulo, the cast — with people from Nigeria, Syria and Bangladesh, among other countries — sings about the reasons why they had to leave their homelands and the prejudices they still face in Brazil. Watch the video with English subtitles below:
The number of refugees currently settled in Brazil has increased 1,200% in the last four years, which has prompted both curiosity and discrimination from the Brazilian population. According to the Brazilian National Committee for Refugees (CONARE), there are 7,700 people from 81 countries with refugee status currently recognized, most of them from Syria, Colombia, Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

author: Taisa Sganzerla


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Nigeria’s Surprising Feat at the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2015 · Global Voices
Nwachukwu Egbunike

Nigerian Super Falcons arriving in Canada for the FIFA World Cup. Image by Izuchukwu Nwoba, used with his permission]
Nigeria's national women's football team, the Super Falcons, blew expectations out of the water on Monday when they tied with Sweden 3-3 at the FIFA 2015 Women's World Cup in Canada.
Aderonke Ogunleye of the Premium Times reported:
Nigeria played a draw with Sweden in a Group D match opener of the FIFA Women’s world cup going on in Canada. […] In the second half, Ngozi Okobi reduced the deficit as she scored Nigeria’s first goal in Canada before Oshoala put Nigeria back on level terms through a fine individual effort after a well-played long ball from Onome Ebi.
The Super Falcons, who are seven-times African champions, are the only African team to have played in the women's FIFA World Cup since 1991.
DidYouKnow? #Nigeria is the only African team to have played in all #FIFA Women’s #WorldCup tournaments since 1991 pic.twitter.com/epS283RY0o
— ZODML: Free Library (@ZODML) October 29, 2014
Prior to the tournament in Canada, the Super Falcons were considered lightweights due to their constant failure in global football, despite being African champions. However, Samuel Ahmadu was hopeful:
Regarded us as outsiders on the world stage over the last two decades, Nigeria re-emerged as African champions last year, reawakening their continental dominance. This achievement could get them fired up to reach the last four after been considered perennial underachievers in recent years. […]
Nigeria get jibes for their often lack of history failing to match their pedigree as Africa's best among top women footballing nations in the World since the inception of the competition. A story they will hope to rewrite at this edition. The emergence of a youthful, energetic, block-blustering Oshoala, even at age 20, may perhaps deepen their run this time.
The Falcons’ ability to hold their Swedish counterparts to a draw was elating but nonetheless surprising. The Falcons were the “underdogs,” according to Tony Manfred:
Nigeria is the last-ranked team in Group D at 33rd in the world. Their other three opponents in the Group of Death — the U.S. (2nd), Sweden (5th), and Australia (10th) — are all ranked in the top 10. Faced with the task of taking down some of the biggest teams and names in world soccer, it's hard to think of a better philosophy than, “I don't need to know your name.” …
Nigeria is good though. They aren't a compelling underdog because they try hard and overachieve, they're a compelling underdog because they think they're good enough to take down the best teams in the world, and they actually might be.
Naturally, Nigerian netizens have been speaking about the match.
Nkem Ifejika, a Twitter user, said:
Get in my daughter! Nigeria is the most badass team at the Women's World Cup http://t.co/VES3Ic6BzT via @BI_Sports
— Nkem Ifejika (@nkemifejika) June 10, 2015
They were praised:
Shout out to the #Nigeria women's soccer team on that BIG game with #Sweden #WomenSoccer #WorldCup in #Canada right now! #GoNaija #Africa
— AfricanMusicWeekTO (@MCBonde1) June 8, 2015
Will Coker wrote:
Nigeria isn't a self sustaining country, but don't worry; they have a team in the women's World Cup.
— Will Coker (@ThatWillCoker) June 8, 2015
Kolo Kenneth lauded the Falcons, although NEPA (the old name for the body responsible for public electricity) did not help:
Dang. NEPA didn't epp my cause. So, SUPER Falcons were indeed super last night? Those girls will go places mehn!
— KoloKK | #SocialGood (@KoloKennethK) June 9, 2015
More praise:
FT: #SWE 3-3 #NGA Stirring performance by #SuperFalcons. Thrice behind, thrice clawed their way back #GreenWhiteAndProud
— Colin NOT Collins (@ColinUdoh) June 8, 2015

author: Nwachukwu Egbunike


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Russia Moves Forward on ‘Right to be Forgotten’ Bill Despite Industry Protests · Global Voices
Tanya Lokot

Imaged edited by Tetyana Lokot.
Russian State Duma is moving fast on adopting new legislation that would require search engines to delete links to information and content based on user requests. The parliamentary committee on information policy has recommended that the first draft of the “right to be forgotten” bill be adopted in parliament on Thursday, June 11, according to an RBC report.
The new bill, introduced by lawmakers on May 29, creates a framework for a “right to be forgotten” in Russia that would require Internet search engines to delete links to data about individuals upon request, including information that is seen as false or erroneous. Links to credible information that is more than three years old could also be deleted. The only exception in this case is being made for criminal cases and proceedings whose term has not expired.
Lawmakers seek to impose fines on search engines that do not comply with the deletion requests: 100,000 rubles ($1,800) for not satisfying a removal request within three days or up to 3 million rubles ($54,700) if the search engine website does not delete links to the content even after a court order has been issued.
One of the bill's authors, Aleksey Kazakov, said search engines would only be obligated to delete links based on a court order, but would also have the option of taking them down voluntarily in accordance with a user's request. Another co-author of the bill, Vadim Dengin, claimed that “a person has the right to be represented online as they wish and to correct the search results if those represent their ‘wrong side.'”
The new legislation has faced criticism from the Russian Internet industry: search giant Yandex told the news website Meduza that such a law would violate constitutional rights to information and saddle search engines with unreasonable and unusual legal burdens. The offending information, Yandex believes, will remain online regardless, disseminated on websites like social networks.
Some commentators have expressed fears that the law could be abused in order to remove undesirable information from search results. Oleg Yashin, the vice-president of Russian Shield, an intellectual-property organization, said search engines might be required to purge or discriminate against search results containing blocked websites or illegal data.
The practice of deleting content from search results has been the subject of debate in many European countries. In May of 2014, the EU Court of Justice issued a landmark ruling in favor of the “right to be forgotten.” The ruling required Google to build a system that allows individuals in the EU to request that the company remove certain results from its searches when these results contain personal information that is either outdated or no longer considered “relevant.” While the Russian draft legislation has somewhat different provisions for types of content and reasons for deletion, it it raises similar concerns about the liability of information intermediaries and the potential opportunity for abuse of laws that regulate the Russian Internet.


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Samsung Allegedly Agrees to Comply with Russia’s Data-Localization Law · Global Voices
Kevin Rothrock

According to the Russian business newspaper Vedomosti, the South-Korean tech company Samsung is currently in the process of transferring the personal data of its Russia-based users to a data server in Moscow, in order to comply with a new data-localization law that takes effect at the end of the summer, requiring websites and certain apps to store all user data on servers located inside Russia.
“Falling into place.” Image edited by Kevin Rothrock.
According to Vedomosti, Samsung is renting storage from a company called DataPro, which is partly owned by the relatives of Sergey Bogdanchikov, the former CEO of Rosneft, Russia's powerful state-controlled oil group.
Samsung has refused to comment on Vedomosti’s claims.
Speculation that Samsung will bow to Russia’s new data-localization demands comes amid rumors that several other prominent tech companies have agreed to move some of their users’ data to servers in Russia.
Earlier this week, the Chinese manufacturer Lenovo announced that it’s begun transferring clients’ personal data to servers in Russia that the company itself owns. So far, relocating this data has cost roughly $50,000, Lenovo’s vice president and general manager in Russia told Vedomosti.
On June 6, Russian officials claimed that Booking.com has also agreed to move some of its users’ personal data to servers located in Russia. Speaking for itself, Booking.com later issued a statement acknowledging the meeting with the Russian government, but implied that the company is still keeping its options open. “This law shouldn’t affect us,” Booking.com’s press service said. “We’re working on a solution that will allow us to comply [in Russia] with the law.”
The general director of Acer’s Russia branch says his company is busy trying to determine if the kind of data it collects falls under Russia’s new localization requirements. If so, he says, Acer is planning either to move the data to Russia, or to purge the information outright.
There are other examples, as well. eBay also says it will send Russian user data to be stored in Russia, and there are unconfirmed reports that the Chinese e-commerce company AliExpress and even Google have agreed to obey the new law and store user data inside Russia. (Google has said reports on this subject are “inaccurate.”)
While Russian officials regularly exaggerate the degree to which foreign Internet resources comply with Russian laws, there does seem to be a surge of several high-profile websites suddenly and unexpectedly conceding to Moscow. Whether this trend represents the Russian government’s growing influence or simply tech companies’ pliability should be clear by September 1, 2015, when Russia’s new data-localization law finally takes effect.

author: Kevin Rothrock


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What Do Global Voices Contributors Think of Turkey’s General Election Results? · Global Voices
Chris Rickleton

Berlin, Germany. 6th June 2015 — Female activists hold a banner with the logo of the pro-Kurdish and left wing HDP during an anti-government demonstration. Photo by Thorsten Strasas. Demotix ID 7791641.
On Sunday night, Turkey's electoral commission announced the results of a stunning election which many are hailing as the beginning of the end for the country's long-dominant conservative AKP (Justice and Development Party).
The results left the AKP with around 41% of the vote and unable to form a single-party government. The pro-Kurdish HDP, with around 13% of the vote, comfortably crossed the 10% threshold required for parliamentary representation for the first time, while the CHP Republican People's Party (25%) and the MHP nationalists (16.3%) also entered the parliament.
The story of the election was HDP's entry into the parliament. This success shattered the AKP majority in the legislature which for many voters was associated with anti-secularism, corruption, a lack of progress on gender and social inequality, and a deteriorating media and internet freedom environment. While some are concerned the small party will shelve its broad-based electoral platform and return to the parochial politics of the ‘Kurdish question’, it nonetheless managed to capture voters tired of AKP and has a perfect opportunity to show it is serious about becoming a national party capable of fighting for change in the country.
Global Voices asked some of its most regular authors and translators what they thought the significance of the June 7 general election was, and where Turkey might go from here.
Erkan Saka:
The most significant consequence is the end of the one party government-regime led by AKP.
In the worst case scenario, no coalition government will be founded and there will be early elections and AKP will win a majority of seats again in the early days of this Fall. However, AKP seems to be in decline and even the nationalist Turkish party, MHP may not help AKP to regain power. Even early elections may not save AKP.
Erdoğan's dream of a more powerful presidency is either crushed or postponed. The former more likely.
If HDP continues its existing policies, the Kurdish movement may essentially be integrated into Turkey's politics and will become a strong, popular secular party of the left.
The Gezi spirit continues to haunt Erdoğan. Most young Gezi activists I observed initially kept their distance from the Kurdish movement because it kept its distance from the Gezi Resistance. But Gezi supporters decided to punish Erdoğan with tactical voting.
Moreover, HDP began to embrace and incorporate social opposition from many circles including Gezi activists. If HDP continues like this, these tactical decisions on the part of voters will probably become long-term commitments…
Arzu Geybullayeva:
As an outsider, this certainly felt like the most important election in Turkey's history. I was surprised to see how lively these elections were, both in terms of voting turnout, and discussion.
I had more hopes than my Turkish friends in this election. I think there are a few reasons for that. One is that to me it looked like HDP was going to make it given how active the party was. And just based on the discussions I had been hearing around, it looked like there was a lot of confidence votes that would go to HDP.
Another reason for my optimism was the overall election atmosphere in the country. Being from an authoritarian regime [neighbouring Azerbaijan] where we have yet to have free and fair elections let alone party campaigns, I felt a sense that things could really change in Turkey.
Ortac Oruc:
I can say that this was one of the most complex elections in Turkey, and maybe for the first time many people voted rationally by thinking about the parliamentary system, literally counting seat numbers and putting aside their own ideologies and social opinions. I don't think this has ever happened before.
HDP carried out a very successful election campaign; they showed us that they know, are aware of and want to change what has been restraining us for the last 10 or more years. There's still a sense of hope for change, just like during the Gezi Protests. And yes we gave our votes to punish Erdoğan, we gave our votes with our own ideas, reflections, and dreams of the future.
From this point on I'll be skeptical. The people we voted for have also had their own dreams of a future, for a very long time. We forget everything we've been through surprisingly easily. We forget but there's a wicked history [referring to Kurdish separatism and violence] at the starting point of what eventually took its name as HDP. AKP knows politics very well, they managed to thoroughly change the view of people of Turkey on almost everything. Now we have voted for [HDP] without regard for its past. This is not a bad thing, it was the only reasonable way. What is sad is that HDP will not necessarily forget its history and its initial purposes. And they will act upon those ideas, rather than making mutual contributions. We tend to believe in change, and so we tend to get stabbed in the back. If only I could be more optimistic about this outcome.
Ahmet Sabanci:
I'm more hopeful and generally more optimistic about HDP. It wants to continue like this — the party has known that just talking about Kurds won't help the solve ‘Kurdish issue’ for a while (since 2006-07 at least). With these election results, they showed this to both radical Kurds and Turks as well, especially the people at Gezi. They knew that most of our problems arise from economic and social injustices and now everyone has started to listen them.
For me, this was the second breaking point for Turkey, after Gezi. And this will charge all activists and opposition groups to work harder here. There will be some hard times ahead — for two years maybe — but after that, we can achieve a lot here.
A couple of notes about AKP's situation. As we saw so far, they want to play aggressive after this result.
Deputy Prime Minister Yalçın Akdoğan said: “HDP can only make movies of the peace process [in Kurdish eastern Turkey] from now on,” suggesting HDP's victory had undermined the real force for peace in the country: AKP.
Burhan Kuzu, another AKP politician wrote on Twitter “People chose chaos, instead of stability.”
Lots of pro-AKP journalists use the same arguments, claiming the results will cause an economic crisis. People worry that AKP may try to seek revenge for these results.
On a personal note, I'm so happy that HDP has the same number of MPs (or maybe +1 after some objections) as the nationalist MHP. Just seeing that gives me joy.
Ece Basay:
When I look at the overall picture — assuming there will not be an early election — I find the outcome very promising for many reasons. The first and main reason is that within this incoming parliament, the quality of representation has significantly increased. Many people, including non-Muslims, Kurds, and women have entered the parliament, which signals the chance for a more respectful, hardworking and equal politics. When it comes to the representation of women, the number has increased from 14.3% to 18%. It is still not enough, but it is a very important step. Especially the presence in the parliament of women who are known for their work on equality such as Filiz Kerestecioğlu (HDP), Meral Danış Beştaş (HDP) Hüda Kaya (HDP) and Leyla Şahin Usta (AKP) increases my hope about the future of women's rights movements and equality in this country. Hopefully, after 13 years, some things might start to get better for women.
The change of power distribution might also affect relationships beyond the parliament. One of the areas that might breathe the most would be the media. Although half of it is still in the hands of Justice and Development Party supporters, at least, with the result of these elections, the rest of the media might find space to express their point of view more easily and confidently. This situation, might help bring back some press freedom and transparency, which is essential for democracy.
Therefore, overall, the outcome is a hopeful one. Now, the rest is up to the political parties.

author: Chris Rickleton


text:
Zambian Musician Charged Over Song Lampooning President Edgar Lungu · Global Voices
Gershom Ndhlovu

Chama Fumba, better known by his stage name, Pilato. Picture used with permission of the Zambian Watchdog.
Controversial musician Chama Fumba, better known by his stage name Pilato, was arrested by the Zambian police on Monday, June 8. He was charged with conduct likely to breach peace. His arrest comes after a cat-and-mouse game that lasted for over a week following the release of his song allegedly lampooning President Edgar Chagwa Lungu for abandoning the ideals of the late President Michael Sata, whom he replaced in an election in January this year.
The song, “ALungu Anabwela” (Lungu has arrived) is a parody of a 1970s song “APhiri Anabwela” by the late Nashil Pitchen Kazembe, which narrates the fate of a man who leaves his village to look for work in urban areas and forgets about his origins. When the time comes for him to go back where he came from, he just returns with an empty suitcase.
Fumba’s song, which has been shared widely on social media and messaging service WhatsApp, talks about President Lungu arriving from Chawama, a constituency within Lusaka where he was a lawmaker, to ascend to the presidency, with a suitcase full of Jameson whisky in apparent reference to the man’s drinking habits. The song says that in the process, he abandons founding members of the ruling Patriotic Front like Guy Scott, who briefly acted as president soon after President Sata died.
Below is a YouTube video of the song:
It's not the first time Fumba, 31, has taken aim at the country's politicians in song. In 2013, he released a number entitled “Bufi” (Lies) which criticised President Sata’s rule
Fumba, who is based in Copperbelt Province, was detained in the capital city Lusaka overnight before appearing in court, where he pleaded not guilty and was bailed ahead of another court appearance on June 24.
It was widely expected that Fumba would be charged with the more serious defamation of the president instead of conduct likely to breach the peace. In such cases, the police have to wait for members of the public to officially complain before they can launch investigations. Before Fumba's arrest, Lusaka Provincial police chief Charity Katanga said:
Currently, we have recorded three statements and I have just been informed that another member of the public is making a similar complaint at Chilenje Police Station.
When it emerged that some ruling party cadres were threatening to harm Fumba and that the police were looking for him, the musician posted a message on his Facebook page which read in part:
[…] To those pushing threats on my life, life is like a blank sheet of paper, it becomes what you write on it. No one buys application letters, you buy blank papers and you turn them into letters. My life is no special and in no way do I plan to run or hide from any of your guns and knives. Better and worthy people have died before and some where even killed by less strong creatures compared to you. If you do not like the opinions in my music and you believe that harming me is the solution, you are welcome. My inspirations are birthed by transpirations so if you don't like what I talk about, change what happens […]
BBC Africa correspondent and blogger Meluse Kapatamoyo interviewed Fumba just a day before he was arrested. She posted the following on her Facebook wall:
Pilato & I had an interesting discussion yesterday. I will say this: His heart is in the right place. Pilato's final words to me were ‘if anything happens to me, tell the world I loved my country.’
Media Institute for Southern Africa (MISA) Zambia chapter president Hellen Mwale spoke out in support of Fumba in a statement distributed to local media:
MISA Zambia has continued to advocate for the repeal or amendment of certain sections of the penal code that impede the enjoyment of freedom of expression.
These include provisions in Section 69 on Defamation of the President, Section 53 on Prohibited Publications, section 60 on Seditious Practices among other laws such as the Public Order Act.
These legal provisions have been used on several occasions by government functionaries to suppress dissenting views and thereby oppress individuals perceived to be opposed to the party in power.
However, not everyone supports Fumba’s song. Commenting on Tumfweko, Observer wrote about the musician's politics, alleging that Fumba supports UPND (United Party for National Development), a liberal opposition party, over the ruling PF (Patriotic Front):
pilato is a well known upnd [sympathizer] therefore is got no rights to malign the pf president who is also the head of state.why should he choose to play to the gallary?when they deal with him some chaps will say freedom of speech, what freedom of speech?insulting the head of state is freedom of speech[?]
Writing on Facebook, Susan Isaac Jere equally had no kind words for the crooner:
I've listened to Pilato's song and broken it down in this way:
First of all its a dull song that doesn't add any value to the cou[n]try, no taste OF art or creativity in it.
Twitter users also had their say on Fumba’s arrest:
Zambian blogger Martha Rose wrote:
The police are only making Pilato stronger in his cause. That's not the type of guy you can silence with threats. He is mentally emancipated
— Martha Rose ♥♥♥ (@DatAfricanGirl) June 8, 2015
Laura Miti, a Zambian activist, told the president:
Edgar a real leader doesn't react to the taunting of the court jester. With #Pilato you show the presidency as too big for you. #FreePilato
— Laura Miti (@LauraMiti) June 8, 2015
At least Zambia is not as bad as North Korea, joked Luciano:
😂😂😂😂 someone just compared our free speech to that of North Korea…we aren’t that bad
— Luciano (@luchi7) June 8, 2015
In the context of the lack of role models for young people in Zambia, David asked:
Clearly there's a very small pool of influential people in Zambia from which a youth can draw inspiration from. #Pilato inspires someone?
— David (@MasterDavidP) June 9, 2015
@imfsportsweekly would like to see protest organised around local issues in Zambia:
In #Zambia, people will loudly, protest all kinds of global issues, but our own e.g Pilato, girls being stripped, lack of electricity etc)
— #FreePilato (@imfsportsweekly) June 8, 2015
Pilato's case is reminiscent of the case of a former Catholic priest-turned-politician, Father Frank Bwalya, who compared the late Sata to a sweet potato that cannot be straightened. He was later acquitted.

author: Gershom Ndhlovu


text:
Australia’s Prime Minister Is No Fan of ‘Ugly, Noisy’ Wind Farms · Global Voices
Kevin Rennie

Victorian wind farm. Courtesy – Flickr user Indigo Skies Photography CC License 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Thanks to his many controversial views, Australia’s Prime Minister is regularly mocked on social media. On 11 June 2015, Tony Abbott's description of wind farms as visually awful and noisy brought both ridicule and outrage.
A blogger using the name Roswell responded quickly on the Australian Independent Media Network:
Are wind farms noisy? Tony Abbott thinks they are. And if Tony Abbott thinks they’re noisy then I imagine that every right-winger in the country will be using Abbott’s opinion as scientific evidence that your eardrums will be blown out if you dare to venture within two postcodes of the ‘awful’ things.
Abbott has been keen to slash Australia's Renewable Energy Target, and his comment about wind farms prompted additional criticism from supporters of renewable energy on Twitter:
Have you ever seen a coal mine @TonyAbbottMHR? That's what I call “visually awful”. #WindFarms don't even come close #coal #renewableenergy
— Ella Belfanti (@EllaBelfanti) June 11, 2015
Humans want more #windfarms Tony Abbott on the other hand…..http://t.co/9b88sBEZOQ
— Nigel Dobson (@Nigel_Dobson) June 11, 2015
On the same day, Mr. Abbott opened a terrorism summit in Sydney. Many people on thee Internet quickly linked the two:
That's funny because ‘submit and die’ is the crux of Abbott's environment, refugee, & social policies. #windfarms pic.twitter.com/gSNHZLIhS4
— Kingslayer (@squig_) June 11, 2015
The turbines are coming. #windfarms pic.twitter.com/9PllUdMMmm
— David Marler (@Qldaah) June 11, 2015
Comparisons with coal-fired power stations were also popular:
@TonyAbbottMHR #windfarms are “visually awful” and “noisy”…compared to a coal fired power plant emitting SO2 CO2 mercury & arsenic #nope
— Geoff Sawyer (@geofsawyer) June 11, 2015
TonyAbbott doesn't like #windfarms visually awful ?😳 Hey but coal is good ? #abbottoutoftouch #auspol pic.twitter.com/0ieF8S1jJU
— amjulie (@amjemmo) June 11, 2015
A Senate Committee is currently looking into wind farms as a renewable source of energy. Gaetan Burgio recommended a piece published at The Conversation, which studies the science of wind farms.
Some explanations there. The real science on #windfarms, noise, infrasound and health @ConversationEDU https://t.co/CuiMCSyApw
— Gaetan Burgio (@GaetanBurgio) June 11, 2015
The Prime Minister has some colourful support. Liberal Democratic Senator David Leyonhjelm has been vocal lately on the issue:
David Leyonhjelm swears at satirical protest group outside windfarm inquiry http://t.co/fKsZQQx2RL brilliant work. He's a senator, folks.
— Reasonable Hank (@reasonable_hank) June 9, 2015
One of the protesters, Liz Conor, responded online at New Matilda:
The Leyonhjelm Offensive: How And Why The Senator Told Me To F**k Off: Dr Liz Conor joined a protest of Tuesda… http://t.co/idlFBmWkwD
— newmatilda (@newmatilda) June 10, 2015
Others are concerned that Australia's head of state is damaging the country's reputation abroad by defying international efforts to promote alternative energy:
Does Abbott realise his #windfarms comments are pretty much saying FU to the international community on Climate Change Action.
— Jo Barnes (@Jo_Barnes) June 11, 2015

author: Kevin Rennie


text:
Bad Luck Injury a Blemish on ‘Nadeshiko Japan’s’ FIFA Women’s World Cup Start · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

Nadeshiko Japan, the Japan women's national soccer team. Screencap from JFA official YouTube Channel.
Update: Japan defeated Cameroon 2-1 on Friday, June 12 (game highlights can be viewed here). Japan now leads Group C at the FIFA Women's World Cup.
Despite winning their first match earlier this week in Canada, an injured star player may spell trouble for Japan's hopes at the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup.
The “Nadeshiko Japan” Japanese women's soccer won the previous Women's World Cup in 2011 in Germany, beating the U.S. women's team 3-1 in a shootout after the teams were tied 2-2 following regulation and overtime.
The powerhouse women's national team is quite popular in Japan, and is best known by its nickname Nadeshiko Japan, and is a selection of the best female players in Japan.
【特集】女子W杯連覇を目指すなでしこジャパン！グループステージ対戦国を紹介！！ なでしこジャパンはグループCでスイス、カメルーン、エクアドルと対戦する http://t.co/0gm5YG62yV #nadeshiko pic.twitter.com/KOrKreJ6Xc
— 超ワールドサッカー (@ultrasoccer) June 5, 2015
Special: Women's World Cup challengers Nadeshiko Japan! They will take on Switzerland, Cameroon and Ecuador in the Group C competition.
The Japan women's team nickname is derived in part from the nadeshiko flower and the concept of the “ideal” Japanese woman.
While the nickname comes from the general respect and adoration the Japanese public has for its World Cup winners, Nadeshiko Japan does in some ways symbolize the status of women in Japan. Travelling to the 2012 Olympics, the Japan women's soccer team was stuck flying in economy class, while the men's team enjoyed more comfortable business class seats.
It took an online petition signed by more than 20,000 supporters in 2012 to persuade Japanese Olympic organizers to upgrade Nadeshiko Japan to business class on the flight home.
Nadeshiko Japan kicked off their 2015 FIFA World Cup campaign by “barely” beating Switzerland 1-0 in their first Group C game on Monday, June 8, 2015, at BC Place Stadium in Vancouver.
#FIFAWWC Day 3! Sweden v Nigeria Cameroon v Ecuador USA v AUS Japan v Swiss Match details – https://t.co/0EbBUX7ciF pic.twitter.com/sqrHnzRsFQ
— Womens Soccer United (@WomensSoccerUtd) June 8, 2015
Responding online to the official FIFA recap of the Japan-Switzerland game, one fan noted:
Japan had a really bad second half. They better hope this was an off day, otherwise they will leave this tourney early. Their midfield became gelatine after Sawa was substituted, and after the first 45 minutes, they were never able to connect more than five passes in a row, and had awful ball control.
The series got off to a troubled start for the Japanese team when leading scorer Kozue Ando fractured her ankle in the first half.
なでしこ安藤が左足骨折で無念の途中離脱 http://t.co/MJ7QnkKI1G 日本サッカー協会(JFA)は10日、女子W杯に出場している日本女子代表(なでしこジャパン)のMF安藤梢が、左足腓骨外果骨折と診断されたと発表した。 pic.twitter.com/YFqhS70U8L
— キング (@webstyleking) June 10, 2015
Bitter disappointment after Nadeshiko Japan's Ando fractures ankle and withdraws from World Cup. Japan Football Association (JFA) announced on June 10th that it was confirmed following a medical examination that midfielder Kozue Ando had broken her left ankle.
While teammate Aya Miyama managed to score on the penalty, Ando will be leaving her tight-knit team in Canada to head home to Japan. Ando's injury was a terrible blow for many fans:
あぁ…安藤梢、左足首骨折…(。´Д⊂)このW杯にかけてたのに…。
— ごりぱん (@goripang) June 9, 2015
Argh… Kazue Ando broke her ankle! (。´Д⊂) And she had made it all the way to this year's World Cup!
Others observed that Nadeshiko Japan may be in serious trouble without Ando:
前線で上手くバランスを取っていた安藤が不幸なケガで離脱した事も痛かった。菅澤は個人力はあるが、システム理解度が高くない。お陰で後半は大儀見のプレーが限定的になって、攻撃力が半減してしまった。
— アシト (@Suruga_Ashito) June 9, 2015
It really hurts that Ando, who always so skillfully works to balance out the offense, could be forced to withdraw from the series because of such an unlucky injury. [Yuika] Sugasawa has plenty of power on her own but doesn't really play strategically. In the second half [Yuki] Ogimi's playing was pretty muted, so the number of [Nadeshiko] attacks were way down.
Japan will tackle Cameroon next at a 7:00 p.m. local time in Vancouver, British Columbia. Considered a long shot in this World Cup series, on June 8 Cameroon thrashed Ecuador 6-0, the largest margin of victory for any African team in a World Cup.
With the Nigeria Super Falcons win against Sweden earlier in the week, and with Cameroon's overwhelming win, there is hope that an African team will finally claim a World Cup crown in 2015.
Coming into the 2015 World Cup, 2011 champion Nadeshiko Japan is regarded as the team to beat, so all eyes will be on Cameroon's Friday night match with Japan on June 12.

author: Nevin Thompson


text:
Celebrating the Zimbabwean Writer Who Was ‘Against Everything’ · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Dambudzo Marechera's image and his poem THE BAR-STOOL EDIBLE WORM. Image posted on his Facebook page.
Dambudzo Marechera‘s Facebook page celebrates the life and times of one of the most eccentric figures in African literature. Marechera was a Zimbabwean writer and poet who died at the age of 35 in 1987 after leading a life that he described as “an attempt to make myself a skeleton in my own cupboard.”
Marechera, whose form of writing has been described by his official biographer as “literary shock treatment,” attended St. Augustine's Secondary School in Zimbabwe, the University of Zimbabwe, and New College, in Oxford. He was expelled from all three.
When he was chased from New College, he wrote the following to his ex-girlfriend:
I think by now you have heard what happened when those hypocrites in administration chased me from their white university giving me an option between being sectioned or expelled. I chose the latter, a decision which shocked them out of their warped wits.
Marechera wrote House of Hunger, Black Sunlight, The Black Insider, Mindblast, and Cemetery of the Mind. The first text won the Guardian First Book Award in 1979.
Celebrated African writer Helon Habila describes the opening line of House of Hunger as the coolest opening line in African fiction:
I got my things and left.
This, the opening line to Dambudzo Marechera’s The House of Hunger, apart from being the coolest opening line in African fiction, is a fair summary of the writer’s life. He was always getting his things and leaving; not that he had many things to get—in his last years, homeless and reduced to sleeping on park benches in Harare, Zimbabwe, all he had were his typewriter and a few books.
On the Facebook page, the administrator and his fans share memorable lines from Marechera's books and interviews, discussing the complexity of his thoughts and writing style.
On the subject of God and Creation, Marechera said:
There's an artist who specialises in portraits. Know what he did to portray the character of his clients? He studies their boots. If he was here right now he'd study your boots to find out everything about you. Like the others study palms, and the others study the shape of your skull. Phrenologists. Others read the tea leaves at the bottom of your cup. And there all those others who study your dreams and the consistency of your shit and the mucus running down your nose and the map of pimples on your face and backside. Life. Like we are all hidden from God and he has to study us like that to discover the nature of the bastards he created. If you create life out of yourself, is that incest? That's what he did, rubbing himself up to ejaculate us into the world.
“I am against everything,” Marechera declared in The Bar-Stool Edible Worm, one of his most popular poems:
I’m against everything
Against war and those against
War. Against whatever diminishes
Th’ individual’s blind impulse.
Marechera in his own handwriting. Posted on his Facebook page.
Marechera didn't hold out much hope for anarchism:
“While I was writing Black Sunlight I was reading books on intellectual anarchism to reinforce my own sense of protest against everything; I was reading Bakunin and Kropotkin. Intellectual anarchism is full of contradictions in the sense that it can never achieve its goals. If it achieves any goal at all, then it is no longer anarchism.
Dambudzo's words tattoed on a fan in the US. Photo by Lori Ambo. Used with permission.
Marechera's version  of children literature:
Blah is being dragged kicking and screaming to school, to church, to the dining table, to the nation's flag, to bed without supper. Blah is how big human beings torture little human beings. If you are a little human being you must report them to the United Nations which has fists bigger than your father's. […]
Television really tortures little humans. It makes them think of BMX bicycles and goodies. It makes them little prototypes of the blah adults they will grow into with time. It makes them enjoy watching (on TV) the destruction of things so that they are too tired to destroy the society that is actually a lunatic asylum. A lunatic is someone who knows there is something wrong somewhere but does not know exactly what. An asylum is where they are going to put me when they catch you reading all this I am writing.
On being tired of saying “black is beautiful”:
“No, I don’t hate being black. I’m just tired of saying it’s beautiful.” The House of Hunger
On Jesus and the Church:
“I closed the huge doors behind me and walked softly towards the altar. I was in the opium of the people. The huge cross dangled from chains fixed to the roof. I stood looking at the crucified Christ. He looked like He needed a stiff drink. He looked as if He had just had a woman from behind. He looked like He had not been to the toilet for two thousand years. He looked like I felt. That was the connection.” Black Sunlight
Marechera's photo and poem from Cemetery of the Mind posted on his Facebook page.
On September 24, 2014, the administrator of the page asked fans to share their favourite quotes from Marechera:
Bekezela Nyoni chose one about black writers and language:
For a black writer the language is very racist; you have to have harrowing fights and hair-rising panga duals with the language before you can make it do all that you want it to do. It is so for feminists. English is very male. Hence feminist writers also adopt the same tactics. This may mean discarding grammar, throwing syntax out, subverting images from within, beating the drum and cymbals of rhythm, developing torture chambers of irony and sarcasm, gas ovens of limitless black resonance.
Moses Mosaic Tshumah Matibhe selected a remark about Marechera not being an African writer:
“If you are a writer for a specific race or a specific nation,then f**k you.”
Marechera questioned anyone who called him an African writer, arguing that literature should not be pigeonholed by race or language or nation.

author: Ndesanjo Macha