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Sina Picks Kai-Fu Lee as China’s Most Influential Micro-blogger · Global Voices
Owen Guo

The former head of Google China Kai-Fu Lee, is the most influential man among all the micro-bloggers, according to Sina Weibo. He topped the popular micro-blogging platform's recently released list [zh] the “100 Most Influential Weibo Celebrities.”
Apart from his day-to-day job as the helmsman of a Beijing-based company that helps fund start-ups, Kai-Fu Lee is also a social media veteran —putting his spin on various hot topics and interacting with his more than 26 million followers every day on Weibo, a Twitter-like microblog service that is three years old. He has even written a book about social media, “Microblog: Changing the World.”
Kai-Fu Lee. By Flickr user Hubert Burda Media CC: BY-NC-SA.
Kaifu Lee’s Number 1 title is anything but accidental. He constantly weighs in on China’s thorny issues that resonate with the general public. He recently had this to say in response to the highly strained online train ticket booking system [zh]:
@李开复：有人说买票软件网民才会用，民工不会用，导致社会不公平，所以违法。若这也算违法，那以后是否：民航局禁止用去哪儿买票、交通部禁止用导航抄捷径，商务部 禁止用淘宝买便宜货、教育部禁止用英语学习软件准备高考、卫生部禁止网上挂号看医生？若要照顾民工，只有铁道部从源头做起，线上线下做分配。
Some people say only netizens know how to use the booking software, migrant workers don’t, which leads to social injustice, therefore ( the booking software) is illegal. If this should be counted illegal, should the Civil Aviation Bureau ban “Qu Naer” to assist ticket buying? Should the Ministry of Communications ban GPS that helps people cut through the road, Should the Ministry of Commerce ban people from buying stuff on Taobao, should the Ministry of Education ban the use of English learning software for students preparing for the entrance exam to universities, should the Ministry of Health ban online registration for seeing doctors? If (we) want to care for migrant workers, we should start from the source, the Ministry of Railways, and achieve a combination of online and offline distribution.
And he never shys away from voicing his own opinions. Earlier, Global Voices published posts of a censorship row involving the liberal-leaning Southern Weekly newspaper. The heavy-handed censorship in which a newspaper editorial was brutally altered enraged netizens and an ensuing newspaper staff strike gained the support of many, including Lee.
@李开复：真相永远只有一个，掩耳盗铃只会使事态恶化、公信透支。权力属于人民，人民需要真相
There is only one truth, to deceive oneself is only going to make things worse and lead to credibility deficit. Rights belong to people and people need to know the truth.
Lee also retweeted several posts showing support for the newspaper as the censorship row continued to reverberate in the cyberspace. Then he was reportedly invited to “have tea” with the police which means some form of interrogation and presumably he would be warned to rein in his comments on the very matter. Later Lee vented his frustration in his micro-blog:
@李开复：好难喝的茶！！
The tea was awful!!
Besides lee, the top ten list is mostly made of entertainers and pop-stars. Coming in 2nd and 3rd are He Jiong and Xie Na, both hosts of a weekly show, Happy Camp aired on China’s flagship entertainment channel, Hunan Satellite TV. Actress Yao Chen and Yang Mi, who rose to fame by starring in popular TV series and movies are among the top 10.
Some prominent Chinese journalists and news personalities also made the top 100 list including, State broadcaster CCTV’s Rui Chenggang, Hongkong-based Phoenix TV’s Luqiu Luwei, self-employed talk show host Yang Lan and the Global Times editor-in-chief, Hu Xijin.
The site also revealed top performers in four categories [zh] which included weibo accounts of media, websites, universities, enterprises and government departments.
Sina Weibo said the rankings were based on activity level, coverage ratio of the posts, and number of retweets. However, many believe that platform has been in cooperation with the Chinese government in promoting opinion leaders.

author: Owen Guo


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Skills of a Chinese Police Porn Examiner  · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Alia from China Beat puts together a picture about the work and requirement of being a police Porn examiner in China:
To be a porn examiner, one has to be an “outstanding, well-behaved and highly politically-sensitive” police officer who “won’t have any problems after watching porn materials.”

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Oiwan Lam


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Tobago’s Election Results Send Message: Hit the Road, Jack! · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Tobago's election results have come in and bloggers don't seem surprised.  The incumbent, Tobago House of Assembly Chief Secretary Orville London, won by a landslide, while the main challenger, Ashworth Jack, representing the Tobago Organisation of the People, which has links to the country's current administration, failed to win even one seat.
The Eternal Pantomime quipped that not much else could be expected, given that the TOP's election campaign resembled “a ghetto fete gone wrong”.  She went on to give examples of its failings:
In an island as devoutly Protestant as Tobago, and suspicious of any practice that is Unorthodox, why on earth would you arrange for the PM who is both Hindu and Spiritual Baptist and rude to read at a pulpit.
Using children to send a rude message to the THA Chief secretary is another No-No. Tobagonians still admire things like manners, class and respectability. Sandbox entertainment has introduced a level of crassness and vulgarity to an election campaign that is normally never this heated or hectic. TOP’s response to Hilton Sandy’s Calcutta Ship has only served to take the race talk up several notches and anger Tobagonians and Trinis alike.
Plain Talk said of the elections results, “On Monday the people of Tobago were given an opportunity to send a message and they took it. And what a message it was…”:
For the Tobago Organization of the People, Monday was a disaster of Biblical proportions, of fire, brimstone and pestilence all rolled into one, a loss so unimaginable even words such as epic and unprecedented strain to convey the sheer magnitude of the humiliation and one wonders, could there even be a TOP after this?
In his estimation, though, the United National Congress (the main political party comprising the country's People's Partnership government) was to blame for the harsh defeat:
It was the United National Congress that killed the TOP and they need to be given all the credit for it, and they need to accept it – The obscene and dehumanizing campaign that tried to paint proud Tobagonians as ‘pipers’ looking for a hit, the nonsensical and sometimes foolish drivel spoken ad nauseam by a Prime Minister well past her ‘campaign by’ date, the obscene and tiring Jack Warner/Anil Roberts double shot of indecency, the ‘bussing’ of marks and the telling of blatant lies all gave Tobagonians a first hand look at what Trinidad was dealing with and they rejected it with an almost prejudiced precision.
The Eternal Pantomime added that the Tobago House of Assembly election results will have a long-term effect:
[It] will have serious impact on how the next 30 months of politics go here. Because in roughly that time both UNC and PNM will face the polls again in a general election. THA will determine the nature of the Local Government Elections….if we actually have one. And the outcome of the LGE will certainly set the tone for the next general Elections.
The post, written the week before the elections, went on to detail the government's failures over the past three months.  As it turned out, those very issues seem to have influenced how people voted.  And in her blog post written after the results were out, The Eternal Pantomime was happy to point out how the Prime Minister “hang she own Jack at this lovely game of Elections All Fours that she just fogged up royally.”  She began by giving some political context, then continued:
This coloumn isn’t about London’s fightback, but rather about Kamla’s defeat.
[The] THA [elections] should have been a referendum of Orville London’s performance as THA Chief Secretary in the last 12 years, instead, through the cleverness of London and the crass vulgarity of Kamla and her minions it became an assessment not of London’s performance in the THA but of Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s performance from May 2010 to last week.
She pointed out some fatal campaign errors of the Prime Minister and the TOP:
Kamla…boasted loudly on the stage at Mid-Centre of how they would win the THA Elections and send Rowley and London in a corner. That was misstep number 1. Yuh campaigning in Tobago and not Trinidad, how yuh go insult and attack two sons of the soil that lift Tobagonians nose so high?
At that same meeting Persad-Bissessar started her own subtle race talk with her ‘We know who the enemy is…get in yuh section’ talk as she referenced the THA campaign to come. While Trinis aint see nothing wrong with that kind of We vs Them talk…Tobagonians know it and understand it only too well and we don’t stick it! That was misstep number 2.
London on the other hand utilised transparency and accountability to their benefit. A full file was uploaded to the world wide web, as well as sent to the Integrity Commission. Answer that! Not a peep could be heard from government for weeks after the upload.
Then came the House That Pumpkin Built [There were questions as to the source of funds for Ashworth Jack's private residence; he claimed it was through sale of produce] and I had to grin each and every time Jack lied or avoided questions. Transparency and accountability was coming to haunt his ass now  Then Jack’s failure to lodge documents with the Integrity Commission. And here was the next misstep. Jack was making Tobago and Tobagonians look corrupt. Jack…really…you from Tobago how long and you don’t know that corruption associated with Trickydadians, not Tobagonians?
The post then got down to the nitty-gritty:
And in all this all Tobagonians wanted was a revised Constitution that gave them their promised autonomy. No music trucks, no food cards, no wild promises. Just a sober Bill that delivered what they wanted.
But Kamla, unable to keep the smallest of promises instead went over with a half-assed Bill that she rushed to Parliament and continued the orgy of money spending…and Tobagonians looked.
In fact, they did one better and donned the yellow T-shirts, mounted the music trucks, accepted the handouts and then…voted PNM.

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


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A Destitute Women And Her Dogs · Global Voices
Rezwan

Jabberwock shares this amazing story about an animal loving old woman living in a small makeshift shanty in Delhi. She has been looking after street dogs for years now, on her meager earnings from collecting and selling reusable garbage.

author: Rezwan


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Argentina: Suggestions for a better life · Global Voices
Gabriela García Calderón Orbe

Hernán Haines, from blog El espacio de Hernán Haines [es], provides his readers with some suggestions for a better life in Argentina due to “the constant enquiries I get about my proposals, following up you'll find a list, an incomplete one, by the way”. He then presents a 45-item list and claims that for them “to be effective, [those measures] must be carried out by appropiate, responsible, honest and discerning people”.

author: Gabriela García Calderón Orbe


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Commuted Sentence for Driver Who Killed Young Man Causes Outcry  · Global Voices
Lourdes Sada

On 1 December 2003, Ramón Jorge Ríos Salgado drove dangerously fast down highway A7 causing a hit and run that left one dead and one in critical condition. He continued to highway AP-7 where he did a U-turn and drove the wrong way down the highway. Vehicles swerved into opposing lanes to avoid collision but one person couldn't. The car's driver, 25-year-old José Alfredo Dolz España, died upon collision and 21-year-old passenger Paula Catalina Sarraqueta Sancho was left seriously injured.
Kamikaze driver Rois Salgado was captured driving the wrong way down AP-7 by highway security cameras. Photo from Facebook page.
On 27 December 2011, after eight years of litigation and appeals, the Supreme Court made its final decision on the case [es], ruling in favor of upholding the Provision Court of Valencia's 13-year prision sentence for “a driving offense that showed blatant disregard for the life of others and proved the perfect storm for a person's death. This a crime of grave injury and hurt.”
Then, on 7 December 2012, the Council of Ministers, at the request of the Minister of Justice, Alberto Ruiz Gallardón, passed Royal Decree 1668/2012 [es], which pardoned the murder and consequently commuted the prison sentence in lieu of a €4380 fee. The decree was passed despite disapproval from victims, judges and attorneys. Ríos Salgado only spent ten months in jail.
The decree, which was made public on Wednesday, left Spanish citizens dumbfounded. Minister Gallardón provided no explanation to justify the act, but received immense criticism from colleagues:
In a press conference the  Vice President acknowledged “we don't always get it right” with these type of decisions and the  the Ministry of the Interior declared the pardon to be “an indication that in the future we will have to be more attentive to such issues.”
The Stop Accidents assocation states on their website:
This is a difficult thing for the families of the vicitims to process, but more than anything it is a scandal and an embarrassment for society as a whole.(…)
We cannot find closure for the death of one person, and the suffering of even more, with one single prison report. What makes it even worse is the ability of one influential law office to lobby for such unjust and convoluted decisions. (…)
What this decision has done with a single pen stroke is erase the executive's credibility in the eyes of citizens regarding its commitment against kamikazes and the real danger they present on the road and to the individual.
Conveniently, the law firm that presented the defense against the homicide charge is the same firm where  José Ruiz-Gallardón Utrera [es], the Minister's son, works. Although he personally did not take the case, Ignacio Astarloa did, who is the brother of a high-up party official who maintains a tight relationship with PP leadership.
Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, Minister of Justice. Image from “Rid Spain of half of its political positions” Facebook page.
Social media users take a clear stance that its government has confused majority consensus for executive power. The general impression is that the government protects its interests at all costs, with complete disregard for what the people say or think.
Jose Antonio Martinez Plaza comments on the «Rid Spain of half of its political positions”» Facebook page:
The government is above the law (the law permits them to be so) and so when justice actually condemns one of their cronies (which is ironic given the reality that they're the ones who appoint the judges and prosecutors), politicians turn to executive power to save them, or in this case to family connections…
Manuel Del Amo Merino writes on Hartos.org Facebook page:
Now that we know who to turn to to make certain we get off. Enemies beware!
On his blog Bokabulario Pedro Fernández Barbadillo posts the article «The juicy pardon!!», where he says:
Loreto Dolz, sister of the victim, shares her family's digust for the pardon. Photo taken from the Ramón García Cope Facebook page.
This is a violation not only to the basic principle of justice but also to the victim's reparation of inflicted pain; it's unjust and an outrageous violation of power. Despite the law and courts sufficiently driving the delegitimization of the Executive, some victims still take justice into their own hands.
According to the blog Jomen42, road safety expert and attorney José Pérez Tirado, spokesman for the Association of Traffic Victims, said:
It's a disgrace. The message that Gallardón has given us is that he does as he pleases, like a Roman Emperor.(…)
We're completely disillusioned. This sends a very negative message. Now it seems that one can get drunk, drive recklessly and kill a person and it's all okay because their sentence will later be pardoned.
Soynadie tweeted:
@wwwformy: Monday's Special: 2×1 pardons for the clients of Gallardón's son.
The general weariness of these types of abuses that existed prior to this pardon laid the foundation for Arantxa Fernandez Valderrama's comment on the Rid Spain of half of its political positions:
What I would love to see is Gallardón hire this guy as his choffer. Then he should test his luck… Who knows, maybe they'd crash.
The opposition party has called for the prosecutor's office to conduct a thorough investigation of the possible abuse of power [es] used to grant this pardon.

author: Lourdes Sada


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Critical Mass: Wheels of Activism Come to Brazil’s Salvador City · Global Voices
Thiana Biondo

The international cycling movement Critical Mass – or Bicicletadas [pt] as it is been known in Brazilian Portuguese – has won the hearts of Brazilians, since cars have reached a saturation point on the country's congested roads.
While visiting the city of Salvador, in Brazil, Global Voices contributor, Thiana Biondo got to know more about the ‘Bicicletada’ Critical Mass [pt]. Below are the first excerpts of an interview with two critical mass activists in Salvador – Roque Junior, an Urbanism student at the University of the State of Bahia and Rosa Ribeiro, Doctor candidate at the Course of Architecture and Urbanism at the Federal University of Bahia.
Global Voices (GV): When did you start cycling around the city of Salvador?
Roque Junior (RJ): I've lived in Salvador for more than 20 years and cycled for 10 years. When I started riding here, I was not aware of issues related to the city; the traffic and all the difficulties I later realized and understood in a very empirical way with a friend.
Photo by Bicicletada Salvador Massa Crítica (with 5,302 likes)
I started cycling with him, but not long journeys. I went to run errands  in town, in nearby neighborhoods, but I didn't go to very busy roads and I was not aware of the use of a bike as a means of transport.
The turning point was, more or less, about 3 years ago, when I started using a bike in my daily commute to work which was 15.5 km long, going from Barra to Imbuí neighborhoods. This journey bothered me, this thing about buses, and I've never really liked cars very much. What happened was: one given day, I said, “I'll try”, “I'll try [to use the bike]  and see how things go.” I did it for the first time. I realized that it was not a problem because the route is not the same for the bus or the cars, in general, because I go by the coastline, and by the coastline I am lucky to have, for a long patch, the cycle lane. I gradually got into physical shape,  which is also important, and after that, I started using the bike daily as a means of transport.
Rosa Ribeiro (RR): I used to cycle in Pituaçu Park [pt], so it already had that scheme that you take the bike by car to Pituaçu or to the coastline. I cycled for leisure, but my turning point (laughs) to copy a little bit the term used by Roque, took place 7 years ago. In 2004, I started to do my graduation work at the Faculty of Architecture. One day, my car broke down in Paralela Road [pt], so I went to seek help and some people managed to get the car out of the road towards the Bairro da Paz [pt] area. Having approached those people, from that experience, I said, hell, I think my graduation project will be here. I started walking by the neighborhood to observe … I stayed in a square looking at people and loads of bikes passing by, which were mostly rode by male adults and children. So, one day I asked someone “hey what about those bikes. Where are they going to? Is there any contest or competition taking place, is there any park around here? ” They said “no, nothing, not that I'm not aware of.” From that strange feeling, I started in fact, to investigate further and then I realized that those people cycled daily, that it was something absolutely normal and that those men there used bikes as a major means of transport.
A bike in the neighborhood of Piatã, Salvador, Bahia. Photo by DavidCampbell_ no Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)
They cycled for very long distances in the city. And what at first was a budget alternative, meaning a way to save transport tickets at the time, to transform that ticket into money, exchangeable for bread or to be used to buy gas or even other things … but there was also another reason that led them to make that, that it is that bicycles are, relatively, a very flexible and much faster vehicle, within the city of Salvador. For example, one of my main interviewees, Emerson, he went up to the Bairro da Paz area from the neighborhood of Sete Portas in 35 minutes. These days, which bus or car that can do a route like that in 35 minutes?…The ones who rode bikes at that time in Salvador, and I think even in most part of Brazilian cities, were a low-income population who are very stigmatized.
GV: I've noticed that you encourage people to use bikes as a means of transportation. How do you mobilize people to become aware of using bicycles as means of transport? Through Facebook? Are there other channels of communication, meetings? How does this ‘bike activism’ work?
RJ: About three years ago, when I started cycling as a means of transport, I became interested about that, and I started looking for sources of information, especially on the internet, blogs and news … It's interesting, you know, when we start to pay attention to something, we are always going to slowly find people who are interested in that. I started finding people to exchange ideas.
“Yesterday, around 14:00, a bus driver, on the road ACM, almost hit me. ” The story of Edward Luedy on his blog, De Velo in Salvador in August 2010.
Soon, I found Eduardo Luedy's blog. One day, he posted a story reporting on something that happened to him on the ACM Road [pt]; he was pushed off his route by a speedy bus. He wrote a blog post and shared it on Facebook. I got very annoyed by the situation, but at the same time happy to see that story in a clear way. I noticed that it had elements to come to people's attention. It was the kind of situation cyclists could go through when on the streets. I shared that post on many channels. So, while I put it on some sites, I made a list of e-mails of some people who were not my friends, but were acquaintances, people who might be interested because they are cyclists. This email unfolded into a series of events and I believe that was an important step towards the ‘Bicicletada Salvador Massa Crítica’.
GV: How many people are participating in that organization
RJ: During one time, it was a group of around 15 people who made the meetings, proposals, posters, banners. But at the moment, the ‘Bicicletada’ here in Salvador, never has more than 90 people taking part in the day of an event.
RR: Maintaining this group of 90 people, that we have had for a few months, maybe over a year, was the result of a very personal effort. The Bicicletada is a social event. I do not know if people are going to it because of activism. I think there is a desire by some people to cycle which they recognize themselves …There is a very large rotation within the group, presently, we have events with around 25 people. The Salvador Bicicletada has taken place in the city since 2010 and a project called Biking City [pt] which is a cycling system of over 200 KM has been promised to the capital of the federal state of Bahia. Whether the project will happen or not, whether it will become a symbol of pride or a national shame (as the metro, which has not started working even though its construction began twelve years ago), this is something to be seen in the coming months. In the second part of the interview Rosa and Roque will talk further about public policies related to urban mobility in the city of Salvador.

author: Thiana Biondo


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Cuba: Internet Change Coming? · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

If you took a poll in our streets about Cubans’ most serious problems, the youngest…would list…lack of access to the Internet. They want to dive into that sea of kilobytes!
Translating Cuba explains that “this situation of disconnect could be about to change…the great World Wide Web may be closer than it appears.”


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Egypt: Why Open Source Software? · Global Voices
Tarek Amr

After introducing to Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS) in the previous article, one might still wonder why corporates and governments need to adoption it or encourage its adoption.
In the book “Access to Knowledge in Egypt“, Nagla Rizk (@naglarzk) and Sherif El-Kassas dedicated a chapter to the software industry in Egypt and the role F/OSS play there. They started by highlighting that just like any other economy, there are the two opposing forces that characterise the growth of the digital economy.
Digital economy is characterised by two concurrently opposing forces: one is the creation and spread of small firms and the other is the growth and expansion of larger structures.
They then clarify how the high cost of producing new knowledge is in favour of monopolies that are built around the production of knowledge and knowledge-embedded goods. Hence, openness versus intellectual property push in one direction or the other.
OSS provides a potential for small players to engage and proliferate. At the same time, intellectual property rights allow for larger conglomerates to grow around proprietary code. This provides interesting nuances in the interplay between intellectual property and competition. Maximalist IP protection will encourage and perpetuate large monopolistic structures built around knowledge creation; flexible IP regimes will enable the creation and spread of smaller firms. Therein lies the universal tension between intellectual property and competition.
Having said that, they argued that governments in developing countries should encourage OSS in order to help small and local entities to grow.
This is highly relevant to the potential impact that OSS can have in developing countries, where a belief in this potential would necessitate attention on the part of governments to protect the infant industry.
And even if some might wonder whether developing country can afford the growing pains of creating knowledge through smaller and younger production structures, the authors compared software production in those countries now to infant industries in the past:
It is also a modified enactment of the “infant industry” argument, where economists since the early nineteenth century have argued for protection through imposing import barriers in order to allow the local infant industry to eventually “grow up,” as it develops economies of scale free from the threat of competition from the advanced imports.
They added:
Effectively, OSS remains the infant domestic industry that needs protection. In this case, protection does not refer to blocking imports by imposing tariff barriers, but rather to shielding OSS firms by freeing them from the threat of market dominance by larger business structures, which is partly due to proprietary IPR protection.
The highlighted the high potential for the software industry in Egypt, compared to any other industries for three reasons:
The software industry has been hailed as a potential engine for Egypt’s economic growth. This is partly attributed to Egypt’s human capital, given a tradition of a free system of university education where engineering schools graduate thousands of young Egyptian men and women every year. Given that the country has a population of more than 75 million people, 60% of whom are less than 25 years old, Egypt is argued, often by the government, to embody a strong potential for human capital in the software industry.
The second reason:
Egypt has historically assumed the role of a cultural leader in the region, and has been considered an especially strong center of potential creativity in the Arab software market. The Middle East market offers a strong potential for Egypt’s software industry, especially with Arabization and the increasing interest in Islamic content.
And the third reason:
From a political perspective, OSS offers another element of comparative advantage over proprietary software, namely national security. In fact, a widely accepted security norm is that openness of systems makes them more trustworthy. This is because openness enables a more thorough review and scrutiny of the inner workings of such systems, which reduces the possibility of errors or trapdoors that might compromise security.
The authors, however, argued that Egypt's main comparative advantage now lies in customising and selling added value services on top of already existing software. They believe this is more suitable to the current level of knowledge in the country now, adding that:
Egypt’s comparative advantage lies in labor-intensive services as opposed to “one-time products”
Away from governments, and how OSS is also argued to encourage innovation there,  corporates should also adopt OSS. Bruce Perens categorised software (or technology in general) into differentiating, and non-differentiating.
Differentiating technology is what makes your business more desirable to your customer than your competitor's business. For example, if you visit the Amazon.com web site and look for a book, Amazon will also tell you about other books that were purchased by people who bought the book you're interested in. And often the books it suggests are interesting enough that you will buy one of those books as well. If you go to the Barnes and Noble site, they don't have that feature, and it's no surprise that Amazon sells more books online. So, for Amazon, the “recommendation” software is a business differentiator. Obviously, it would be a mistake to Open Source your business differentiators, because then your competitor's business might use them to become as desirable to the customer as your own business.
On the other hand there exist non-differentiating technologies:
Perhaps 90% of the software in any business is non-differentiating. Much of it is referred to as infrastructure, the base upon which differentiating technology is built. In the category of infrastructure are such things operating systems, web servers, databases, Java application servers and other middle-ware, graphical user interface desktops, and the general tools used on GUI desktops such as web browsers, email clients, spreadsheets, word processing, and presentation applications. Any software that provides differentiating value to a non-software company is built on top of one or more of those infrastructure components.
Keeping non-differentiating proprietary is like re-inventing the wheel, and corporates should understand how OSS on the other hand will help them reduce their expenses, and also end up having better infrastructure products since they will be collaborating to have better products:
It wouldn't hurt your business for your competitor to understand how every bit of your non-differentiating software works. Indeed, that competitor might be the best collaborator you could have, if the partnership is limited to working on your non-differentiating software, because their needs are most similar to yours. This fact is demonstrated every day in the Open Source world, in which HP and IBM are partners in developing software that helps sell the systems of both vendors, and they remain fierce competitors at higher levels in the software stack where differentiation between them is possible and effective.
More or less, the opinions mentioned here are meant to elaborate how OSS is better to governments and corporates from a practical point of view. However, the moral values of Free Software and people's right to knowledge and freedom to use their software however they want, should not be ignored.
See “Free and Open Source Software” for an introduction to Free Software.

author: Tarek Amr


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Free and Open Source Software · Global Voices
Tarek Amr

We received an email from Richard M. Stallman (RMS), after publishing the article about the Egyptian demonstration calling for the government to adopt Free Software. I can't deny that one of the motives behind writing this article is to show off that someone as important to the history of computers as RMS is reading what we write here. Nevertheless, the main reason for writing this article is the following:
In his email, RMS was more than pleased with such movement taking place in Egypt, but he also highlighted that our post was misleading in some points regarding Free Software. We do agree with that, especially that our main objective then was to spread information about the Egyptian movement, and we didn't pay much attention to elaborate more to our readers about what is Free Software. So, we decided to write this two-part follow-up article, and in it we are going to break one of the main Global Voices Online (GVO) rules. We normally have to quote social media rather than main stream media, however in this case, there are two reasons not to strictly adhere to this rule.
What is Free Software?
Thankfully, in my language, there are two different words for free (gratis) and free (libre). The fact that there is one English word for the two concepts and that people normally don't pay money for most of the free software, makes a lot of people confuse the word “free” in free software, thinking it means the former concept, while the latter is what is really meant there. The authors in GNU's website (we will come to GNU later on), put it this way:
Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer”.
They then elaborated more on what they mean by that kind of software freedom:
“Free software” means software that respects users’ freedom and community. Roughly, the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.
They summarised it in a list of four essential freedoms a software user should have:
Having that said, it is clear that free software developers do have the choice to sell their software if they want to, provided that they adhere to the four freedoms mentioned above. Take NeoOffice as an example here. On the other hand, if some software developers decided to release their software for free, yet they do not respect the Free Software essential freedoms, then their software cannot be called Free Software. Many of those closed-source Shareware and Adware programs, can serve as examples here. In those cases, users cannot access their source code, hence they cannot modify it or study how it works. As long as you don't know how a software works and have access to its code yourself, you cannot blindly trust it, it can track your activities, modify your computer, or do anything that you do not want it to do.
The source-code can be distributed with the software, or as one of Stack Exchange users added:
Making source available does not mean download. IT might be that you must get a written request and you send a photocopy of a listing. You are allowed to charge a “reasonable” handling / copying charge. But you can not escape the obligation to make your own source code available.
Should we call it Free or Open Source Software?
So far, we have been using the terms Free Software and Open Source Software interchangeably. It's true that the two terms are very close to each other, and being Free implies that it should be Open Source, however since 1998, the two terms are sometimes used to refer to two slightly different things.
Eric S. Raymond (ESR), another advocate for Open Source software, noticed that for Free or Open Software to be adopted by the masses, bigger corporations have to get involved. It's hard to convince people to install GNU/Linux on their laptops, if it is not going to identify their wireless card or CD-ROM driver or whatever hardware module of that laptop. And for this to happen, the hardware vendors should release special drivers for GNU/Linux, or else the open source developers will have no other option but to reverse-engineer those drivers, which does not succeed all the time. ERS wrote:
The term “free software” is older, and is reflected in the name of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), an organisation founded in 1985 to protect and promote free software. The term “open source” was coined in 1998 by a group of people — the founders of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) — who also supported the development and distribution of free software, but who disagreed with the FSF about how to promote it, and who felt that software freedom was primarily a practical matter rather than an ideological one.
ESR emphasised that their practical approach makes it possible for people to accept what they call for without being obliged to change their position on whether intellectual property was good or evil. He added that the term Free Software on the other hand results in making a lot of corporate types reluctant to get involved there:
The term makes a lot of corporate types nervous. While this does not intrinsically bother me in the least, we now have a pragmatic interest in converting these people rather than thumbing our noses at them. There's now a chance we can make serious gains in the mainstream business world without compromising our ideals and commitment to technical excellence — so it's time to reposition. We need a new and better label.
The debate between the two continues. ESR elaborated more why he finds RMS's approach not appealing to corporates.
RMS's manifesto attacked closed source code on moral grounds; he asserted a right of computer users to access and modify the code they depend upon, declared a crusade against the ownership of software, and proposed a program of building an entire production-quality environment of ”free software” modeled on the powerful Unix operating system … On the other hand, RMS's general attack on intellectual property and the quasi-Marxist flavor of much of his propaganda turned off many hackers and utterly alienated most software producers and customers outside the hacker culture itself.
Whereas, RMS argued he decided to stick to his approach because he believes that the presence of non-free software is a moral rather than practical issue:
The two terms describe almost the same category of software, but they stand for views based on fundamentally different values. Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement. For the free software movement, free software is an ethical imperative, essential respect for the users’ freedom. By contrast, the philosophy of open source considers issues in terms of how to make software “better”—in a practical sense only. It says that nonfree software is an inferior solution to the practical problem at hand. For the free software movement, however, nonfree software is a social problem, and the solution is to stop using it and move to free software … In practice, open source stands for criteria a little weaker than those of free software.
In the end, as Gabriella Coleman – Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy in the Art History and Communication Studies Department at McGill University – wrote in her book, Coding Freedom, the two often travel on the same path even though their reasons are different. By the way, the book is published under Creative Commons license, which is a license that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge, and is inspired in part by the Free Software Foundation’s GNU General Public License (GNU GPL).
They designate the same alternative licenses and collaborative methodologies, but they differ in their moral orientation: the term free software foremost emphasizes the right to learn and access knowledge, while open source tends to flag practical benefits.
It's more than software
Probably, GNU/Linux is the most famous open source project out there. The GNU project started in 1983/4 with the goal to create a free operating system. Later on, Linus Torvalds built the Linux kernel and the combination of the two with many other open source software resulted in what we have today as a fully functional operating systems competing with the likes of Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. Other than that you may think of many other software such as Mozilla Firefox, Apache Webserver Server, Android, and many others that are sometimes more widely adopted and trusted than their non-free alternatives.
Nevertheless, the movement does not stop at software only:
Software manuals must be free, for the same reasons that software must be free, and because the manuals are in effect part of the software. The same arguments also make sense for other kinds of works of practical use — that is to say, works that embody useful knowledge, such as educational works and reference works. Wikipedia is the best-known example.
Gabriella Coleman wrote:
I argue that F/OSS draws from and also rearticulates elements of the liberal tradition. Rather than designating only a set of explicitly held political, economic, or legal views, I treat liberalism in its cultural registers. Free software hackers culturally concretize a number of liberal themes and sensibilities— for example, through their competitive mutual aid, avid free speech principles, and implementation of meritocracy along with their frequent challenge to intellectual property provisions. Indeed, the ethical philosophy of F/OSS focuses on the importance of knowledge, self- cultivation, and self- expression as the vital locus of freedom.
Watch George Osborne MP – Open Source Politics:
Finally, the ideas of freedom and openness can be seen nowadays everywhere from Wikipedia to projects tracking every government financial transaction across the world, to those promoting sharing educational material and research papers.


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France: NGOs Condemn Privatisation of Public Domain · Global Voices
Filip Stojanovski

Seven European free culture associations issued a statement [fr] protesting against a public-private partnership between the French National Library BNF and Proquest database [fr], whose aim is to digitize a large amount of Public Domain works and privatize them with an exclusivity period of commercialization of ten years. Activist Philippe Aigrain explained [fr] “the genealogy of this disaster” on his blog.

author: Filip Stojanovski


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Guyana: Literary Controversy · Global Voices
Matthew Hunte

Writer Ruel Johnson has expressed concern at what he considers to be possible case of nepotism at Caribbean Press, a publishing company owned by the government of Guyana:
When I saw the recent launch of young Ashley Anthony’s book Mysterious Association and the Virtu Gems [sic] I declined to publicly point out the irony of Minister Frank Anthony’s – Ashley’s father – woeful record of creating the sort of space for other young aspiring Guyanese authors to write and publish their work.
I have nothing against precociously intelligent children – I happen to be the proud father of one.  I intend to use whatever humble resources I possess at my disposal to ensure that he not only gets the best education I can afford, but also that his natural talents find proper outlet; I am sure that Minister has the same outlook with his children.
The Caribbean Press was founded in 2009 after a commitment was made by then President of Guyana Bharrat Jagdeo at Carifesta X, which was hosted by Guyana. The press was intended to create an avenue for writers throughout the Anglo-phone Caribbean to get published. The first big project from the Caribbean Press was the reissuing of a selection of Guyanese classics.
Johnson's problem was with the way the book was published:
Ashley Anthony’s book has the publication label “Caribbean Press” on it.  As far as I know, the Caribbean Press is a publication mechanism established about three years ago, in the wake of the 2008 commitment by former President Jagdeo to give US $100,000 a year to establish a publishing house.  The original intent was clearly to find an outlet for the publication of writers resident in Guyana (and, secondarily, the wider Caribbean); after a couple months of silence, it was announced that the Press would start off by publishing a series of out of print books called the Guyana Classics series.  The publication of contemporary local writers was postponed after the full run of some 36 “classic” titles, upon which new writers would be considered for publication.
He also considered the situation to be indicative of the corruption in other sectors of society:
This is a clear-cut case of nepotism, and one that has been shamefully thrown in the face not of local writers alone, but that of the general public.  In addition, it is a brazen and unapologetic act of corruption: taxpayers dollars go to fund the literary efforts of the daughter of a minister of government, who then profits from that investment from the sale of her books, at thirteen years old.  This in a country where the government was only recently involved in a scandal where it refused to recognize the copyright of authors who’ve produced textbooks that are used in the school curriculum.
Jeremy Poynting, publisher of Peepal Tree Press in the United Kingdom replied to Johnson's note about this issue:
It does reinforce the point I made much earlier that the best model for state support for the arts and publishing was a hands-off one with an independent funding body. Peepal Tree has no voice in or connection with the organisation of the Caribbean Press. We facilitated the Guyanese Classics series by handling the technical side of production and arranging the printing. We thought this a worthwhile exercise to get new editions of Guyanese books into schools and libraries. We also licensed copies of some of our own Caribbean Classics series for non-sale, limited distribution to schools, for which we were paid covering costs, from which authors and estates will be paid royalties.
After a follow-up note  was eventually published in the Stabroek Newspaper, Johnson received a response from the authorities.  Johnson recounted:
A few hours after having sent off my second letter on the Ashley Anthony/Caribbean Press fiasco, I received a telephone call from a Ministry of Culture official inquiring about my home address.  After having given it, a short time after I received another call for more detail about directions to get to the address I had freely given.  Having signed for the envelope, courtesy of Culture Permanent Secretary Alfred King, I opened it to extract, as I had predicted, a lawyer’s letter from Park Avenue, New York firm Cozen O’Connor, threatening legal action under “Section 4 et al” of what I presume to be the Laws of Guyana, and not New York State.  Chapter 6:03 (Defamation Act) Section 4 (Slander affecting official, professional or business reputation), states:
‘In any action for slander in respect of words calculated to disparage the plaintiff in any office, profession, calling, trade or business held or carried on by him at the time of the publication, it shall not be necessary to allege or prove special damage, whether or not the words are spoken of the plaintiff in the way of his office, profession, calling, trade or business.’
The writer and blogger said that he wasn't intimidated and saw the possible legal action against him as a way to hold Minister Anthony accountable:
…should he see it fit to make good his threat of litigation, he should be prepared to have his management of cultural policy in Guyana – from CARIFESTA to the Caribbean Press – held under a microscope, inclusive of his awarding of contracts, emoluments paid to consultants, and the selection of contingents for overseas events in which the Ministry has taken part.
Mr. Anthony should also be ready to provide the date in which the policy governing the Caribbean Press shifted from publications of historical or literary value – as judged by an advisory committee, including Dr. Ian McDonald – to one in which a thirteen year old with little or no history of exemplary writing can have her father [allegedly] pay what I presume to be fair market value for the use of the Press’ brand and whatever other unnamed resources.  I personally have not found any such announcement of a policy shift, including when the Minister handed over more of the ‘Guyana Classics’ series to CARICOM last week, or during the press conference of the book launching in which the mention of the Caribbean Press as publisher was conspicuously absent.
Professor David Dabydeen, a member of the Caribbean Press board, weighed in on the issue in the Stabroek Newspaper, stating that the Caribbean Press is “peer-reviewed press, and primarily concerned with literary quality” and that Minister Anthony had in fact voluntary paid for the printing and shipping of his daughter's book himself.
In a follow-up article, Ruel Johnson replied to Professor Dabydeen's response:
The Minister has made the claim, subsequent to my interrogation, that he paid for the production of the book – David Dabydeen specifies printing and shipping costs. Yet, as your mention of the licensing of copies of some of your titles suggests, there are other intangible costs associated with the production of books. The Caribbean Press’ entire existence (infrastructure, services and branding) having been established entirely and exclusively with taxpayer dollars, how is it that the Minister can claim to have paid for the production of his daughter's work yet only mention printing and shipping costs. If there is a zero dollar value related to the use of the name, Caribbean Press, then I should be able to use the name on my book cover and not be sued for any damages.
In this response to Dabydeen, Johnson summarized a few key points in the comments section of Dabydeen's letter:
* Printing and shipping do no constitute the entire costs of a publication. I may pay to have my sneakers produced by the same sweatshop Nike uses, but I cannot simply put the Nike logo on my footwear without the proper paid licensing by NIke. The government of Guyana may want to build a hotel, but branding it with Marriott involves generous licensing fees.
* The book being published in the first place is premised on David Dabydeen's sole opinion that it is of literary and historical merit – yet he claims that the Press is peer-reviewed. A proper publication process involves an editorial board, not a sole editor who shepherds a selection through to print. I challenge Dabydeen to point any such reputable publicly or privately funded mechanism in the UK, from the Scottish Arts Trust to the Royal Society of Literature (of which he is a fellow) that is as devoid of a system of transparent and accountability as is the Caribbean Press.
* The basis fact of Ms. Anthony's parentage is irrelevant to the literary quality of her work – but Dabydeen offers no evidence that submissions from the children of carpenters, joiners, canecutters, office personnel, or minibus drivers were invited to compare with the work of the Minister's daughter. Would he have us believe that she is the only child with literary ambitions or talent in Guyana?
On Facebook, Stone Blind wrote (in the comments section of Johnson's post) that this situation reminded him of another promise made during Carifesta X:
This whole issue, triggers my memory of an issue in which just before the recent carifesta, the local musicians threatened to boycott Carifesta because of the issue of copyrights. The royal and loyal minister of culture immediately put out a statement in which he ardently promised that the issue of modern and effective copyright legislation would be addressed as soon as Carifesta was over. To date nothing further has issued from the minister's honourable mouth on the issue and it appears that once again the creative and music production community must wait and burn as their rulers fiddle!!

author: Matthew Hunte


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Hungarian Journalist Kidnapped, Then Released in Aleppo · Global Voices
Marietta Le

Bálint Szlankó, a Hungarian foreign correspondent, was kidnapped – and later released – in Aleppo, Syria. He wrote this [en] on his Facebook page on Jan. 23:
Just been through a 12-hour kidnapping ordeal in Aleppo. Yesterday morning me, a Mexican and a Basque journalist were abducted by unknown gunmen near the Ezzaa frontline in eastern Aleppo. We were handcuffed, blindfolded and held in a cell for the rest of the day. Eventually we were stripped of all our possessions and left by the roadside in an abandoned area of the city. We then made our way to the headquarters of the Al Tawheed brigade, one of the main armed opposition groups in Aleppo. We are now well and unharmed and out of Syria. […]

author: Marietta Le


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Hungarian Student Protesters Face Punishment, Keep Fighting · Global Voices
Atlatszo.hu

In December 2012, Hungarian university and high school students united to protest against the significant cutbacks in higher education admission quotas. Their fight for tution-free slots continues. (GV coverage is here, here, and here.)
Atlatszo.hu wrote [hu] that many students were threatened with being expelled if they wanted to protest. Students dared to share their stories with the journalists only anonymously, as they feared being held back from taking their high school final exams.
HVG.hu reported [hu] that in December a principal of a high school in Balatonalmádi summoned students to her office and questioned them about their opinion on the protests, taking notes to prepare a report to the county government office.
Students of a high school in Szombathely attended a demonstration in the after-school hours, but their class attendance was recorded as an “unapproved absence.”
Students of a Budapest high school also wanted to hold a sit-in strike, as many others did in December, but their Facebook event was deleted by a member of the high school student union, who was rather loyal to the school's staff. The Facebook event had almost 300 “attending” people, and, as in the case of Balatonalmádi, the students of János Xántus Secondary School were also questioned by their principal.
According to the students’ account [hu], after the protest held in front of the Hungarian Radio, they were told that they obstructed the education process with their activities, and since they were students they had no right to protest — which was not true, as the grassroots student union HaHa wrote in their legal FAQ [hu] for young protesters.
The rose is a reference to Rózsa Hoffmann, the state secretary for education, and the sign of this student protester says: “I don't have money for a normal banner.” Photo by Peter Nemeth, copyright © Demotix (10/19/2012).
Activists of HaHa also had to face the “adults” at a conference-exhibition on education on January 18, where they wanted to pose questions to Rózsa Hoffmann, the state secretary for education. Her policies are so hated among the students that a protest's title and posters featured puns on her name. On many occasions students took roses with them to the rallies. The demonstration which ended with three students getting arrested in December was titled “Winter Rose Student Revolution” (in Hungarian: Télirózsás Diákforradalom), referring to the state secretary's first name (rózsa = rose) and borrowing the expression from a Hungarian historical event, the Aster Revolution, since the aster flower is called “autumn rose” in Hungarian. On December 19, students threw roses in the Danube River (video at 3:10 [hu]) to reject Rózsa Hoffmann's policies symbolically as well.
And when the activists wanted to talk to her in real life, they weren't allowed to ask questions, so they started shouting their comments to the audience, and some people shouted back that the students should stop criticizing the government's efforts (a video is here [hu]). A woman, allegedly the principal of a Kecskemét city high school, became a meme [hu] with her comments; among other things, she said that the activists should have been attending a class at their college at that moment, and before criticizing anything they should first achieve something.
Magyar Narancs weekly's online edition learned [hu] that another participant of the conference, who told a HaHa activist to go home and slap his father because he hadn't educated him on correct behaviour, was the mayor of the village of Nógrádsáp.
Márton Hó, a Hungarian singer and songwriter, used the words of the “adults” defending the government as the lyrics of his song; his video has over 42,000 views so far. The title of the song is, “Listen, little brother!”:


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Jamaica: Hitting the Paywall · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

I hear Swartz and others who maintain that information can and must be free. But to simply equate academic articles with useful information is misleading…these are issues we need to have  more nuanced discussions about.
Active Voice blogs about the late Aaron Swartz, JSTOR and academic paywalls…


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Mexico: Florence Cassez, Guilty of Kidnapping or Victim of a Staged Process? · Global Voices
Elizabeth Rivera

A great fuss has taken over the cyberspace after the French citizen Florence Cassez was released from a Mexican prision where she stayed seven years charged with kidnapping, illegal gun possession and organized crime. A thorough revision of the due process of her case by the Supreme Court revealed enough doubts of her participation in the crimes that she was accused of and demonstrated that Florence was caught in the middle of a situation where, on one side, there was a police department that needed validation, two ex-presidents with conflicting interests: Calderon (Mexico) y Sarkozi (France), and the people craving for justice.
The author from blog de La_Morsa [es] published last year:
Parte de la dificultad empieza con el montaje que hiciese García Luna, el Secretario de Seguridad Pública del actual gobierno federal, que armó una especie de operativo en donde la banda de secuestradores era sorprendida en una casa de seguridad, logrando rescatar a todas las víctimas sanas y salvas. El asunto es que había periodistas y cámaras presentes y todo fue una farsa. Ya los habían agarrado y no se les ocurrió mejor idea que montar toda esta escenografía para demostrar a los medios la eficiencia de la policía.
Florence Cassez. Photo widely shared over the Internet on several forums.
Part of the mess starts with the staged arrest Garcia Luna, current Secretary of Public Security in the federal government, put together, where he showed a sort of operation where a gang of kidnappers was surprised in a security house and all the victims were rescued safe and sound. The thing is that there were reporters and cameras present and everything turned out to be fake. They were already arrested and they came up with the great idea of setting up a scene to demonstrate the police efficiency to the media.
Opinions among netizens vary from the ones who are outraged by the liberation of the French woman denouncing that the authorities are putting the rights of the accused over the rights of the victims; to the ones who support the decision given the irregularities of the process which lead to reasonable doubts over Florence Cassez's guilt. The case, above all, exposed to the world the shortcomings of the Mexican justice system and media manipulation and has always been full of controversies.
Those who argue in favor of the release quote, among many articles, the publication made by the magazine Proceso on March 13th, 2012 where they summarize 25 reasons to free Florence Cassez [es]. Some of them are:
Porque la escenificación de su arresto, ordenada por Genaro García Luna, violó la presunción de inocencia. Se le convirtió así en presunta culpable.
Porque en la primera declaración de las víctimas Christian Ramírez y Cristina Ríos Valladares no reconocieron a Florence Cassez físicamente ni su voz. Cristina Ríos agregó que los oficiales de la AFI [Agencia Federal de Investigación] le informaron que Florence Cassez había participado en el secuestro.
Porque se obtuvo la primera declaración de Florence Cassez sin que ella hubiera podido comunicarse con algún funcionario consular de su país violando así la Convención de Viena.
Because the staged arrest, ordered by Genaro Garcia Luna, violated the presumption of innocence. She was turned into a presumed guilty.
Because on the first declarations made by the victims Christian Ramirez and Cristina Rios Vallladares, they didn't recognize Florence Cassez physically nor her voice. Cristina Rios added that officers from the AFI [Federal Agency of Investigation] informed her that Florence Cassez had participated in her kidnapping.
Because the first declaration of Florence Cassez was taken before she could contact any officer from her country's consulate, thus it was in violation of the Vienna Convention.
Some netizens questioned the exception made with Cassez considering all other dubious cases out there. Like the organization Iluminemos México [es] (Light up Mexico) (@iluminemos) [es]:
@iluminemos: Los actualmente presos en las cárceles mexicanas tuvieron debidos procesos? O se le dio trato preferencial a #Cassez?
@iluminemos: Do current prisioners in Mexican jails had due processes? Or was #Cassez given preferred treatment?
Journalist and producer Epigmenio Ibarra (@epigmenioibarra) [es] proposed to review the guilt allocation:
@epigmenioibarra: Si #Cassez es liberada entonces el productor de montajes televisivos Genaro Garcia Luna debe ir a la carcel. No creen?
@epigmenioibarra: If #Cassez is set free, then the television stage producer Genaro Garcia Luna should go to jail, don't you think?
On the other hand, Mexican activist Claudia (@ClauVillegasm) stated:
@ClauVillegasm: En este país los perros matan,mutilan y violan y los secuestradores quedan libres. Y los liberan xq no respetaron sus derechos #casocassez
@ClauVillegasm: In this country the dogs kill, mutilate and rape and kidnappers are set free. And they are freed because their rights were not respected. #casocassez [case Cassez]
Meanwhile, Twitter user Rodimiro Trollotzin (@Dios_Tollotzin) [es] asked:
@Dios_Tollotzin: ¿si un mexican@ secuestra y mutila en Francia, lo dejarian libre por solo irregularidades en su proceso? #CasoCassez#cassez
@Dios_Tollotzin: if a Mexican kidnaps and mutilates in France, will he/she be released only because their process had irregularities? #CasoCassez #cassez
Journalist Fernanda Familiar (@qtf) [es] talked about the victims’ point of view on the decision:
@qtf: Liberar a #Cassez… Nadie habla de las víctimas, del trauma, de la huella que dejo en sus vidas, !Eso es criminal! Igual que ella.
@qtf: They free #Cassez… nobody talks about the victims, their trauma, the scars she left on their lives. That is criminal! Like her.
Monica Garza (@monicagarzag) [es], like many Twitter users, was outraged:
@monicagarzag: A mi,imaginar a la secuestradora Florence Cassez comodamente sentada en un avión volando hacia Francia, me llena de indignación y vergüenza.
@monicagarzag: To me, imagining kidnapper Florence Cassez comfortably sitted in a plane flying to France fills me with indignation and shame
Others, like columnist Julio Hernandez L. (@julioastillero) [es] talked about how the justice system changed its mind as the new president took office.
@julioastillero: En un país bananero, en semanas la Corte cambia diametralmente su postura en un caso (Cassez) conforme cambian gobernantes
@julioastillero: In a banana republic, it only takes weeks for the Court to drastically change its stand in a case (Cassez) as rulers change.
And some dare to guess a possible deal between the new governments in France and Mexico, like Diego Ayala (@elcincocuatro) [es]:
@elcincocuatro: #Cassez a todas luces era culpable, sale porque le montaron un show y porque EPN quiere quedar bien con Francia, vive le France
@elcincocuatro: #Cassez is obviously guilty, she was set free because they staged a show and because EPN wants to be in a good standing with France, vive le France
Communcation specialist Alberto Velarde (@alberto_velarde) concluded:
@alberto_velarde: #OpinoEnLaJornada La resolución de la #SCJN no va sobre si #Cassez es culpable o no; va sobre la inmundicia de proceso que hizo la autoridad
@alberto_velarde: #OpinoEnLaJornada (Opinion in La Jornada) The resolution of the #SCJN (Supreme Court) is not about #Cassez culpability or not; it's on the filthy process the authority made

author: Elizabeth Rivera


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Opposition Party Attacks Russian eDemocracy · Global Voices
Andrey Tselikov

Just Russia has always been a conflicted political entity. Nominally, it's a social-justice-oriented opposition party with members in the Russian parliament. In reality, these MPs vote along with the Kremlin's United Russia as often as other “official” opposition parties do (i.e. very often). Nevertheless, during the past year, Just Russia has gained a reputation for rebelliousness, after several of its high profile members began moonlighting as leaders of the unofficial, “non-systemic” opposition.
After the disputed 2011 Duma elections, three Just Russia MPs (Ilya Ponomarev and the father-son duo, Gennady and Dmitry Gudkov) became prominent in organizing protest marches and rallies in Moscow. Their participation imparted a certain legitimacy on the movement, although some argued that speaking out against unfair elections and remaining Duma deputies was hypocritical. (This sentiment is captured by the “Surrender Your Mandate!” (Сдай мандат!) taunt, which hecklers often scream at Ponomarev and the Gudkovs during speeches at demonstrations.)
Later, the Gudkovs—along with Ponomarev and Oleg Shein, a regional party functionary famous for launching a hunger strike in Astrakhan last spring [GV]—entered the online elections for seats on the Coordinating Council of the Opposition. Although Ponomarev withdrew from the eDemocracy initiative just prior to the September election, his Just Russia colleagues were elected to the 45-strong council. Ponomarev himself remained a member of the Left Front, an umbrella organization of radical leftist activists led by Sergei Udaltsov.
Since then, Gudkov-elder has lost his Duma seat, ostensibly because of conflicting business interests. Now it seems that time is up for the others, as well. All four are faced with an ultimatum [ru] from their party's Central Committee:
Бюро Президиума […] решило предложить членам Партии Гудкову Г.В., Гудкову Д.Г., Шеину О.В., входящим в Координационный совет оппозиции и Пономареву И.В., входящему в руководство Левого фронта в месячный срок принять решение о личном выборе своего дальнейшего участия либо в работе органов партии СПРАВЕДЛИВАЯ РОССИЯ, либо в деятельности данных общественных организаций […]
The Presidium Bureau […] has decided to offer Party members Gudkov G.V., Gudkov D.G., Shein O.V., also members of the Coordinating council of the opposition, and Ponomarev I.V., also part of Left front leadership, a month to make a personal choice whether to continue participating in the work of the Just Russia party, or in the work of the above organizations […]
Expulsion from Just Russia would not necessarily cost Ponomarev and Gudkov-junior their parliament seats. Bloggers point [ru] to the example of Alexey Mitrofanov, who was kicked out of Just Russia last year, but has remained a deputy. Nevertheless, the threat appears to be real enough for Oleg Shein and Ilya Ponomarev, who have already announced their compliance. Shein outlined [ru] the main reasons for his leaving the Coordinating Council in his blog:
Программа СР в части трудовых и жилищных прав написана мной. […] Это моя партия. По взглядам. В Астраханской области и особенно в Астрахани сложилась уже целая традиция голосования за Справедливую Россию.
The Just Russia program in the spheres of labor and housing policy was written by me. […] This is my party. In terms of my views. In the Astrakhan region and in Astrakhan specifically, there is already a tradition of voting for Just Russia.
Oleg Shein. October 18, 2009. Astrakhan. CC. Wikimedia Commons.
Although Shein noted that he will likely continue to work with the Coordinating Council on social campaigns, his resignation comes as a blow to an organization where regional politicians are already underrepresented.
Ponomarev's reasoning [ru] in his blog was similar to Shein's:
Я считаю себя обязанным исполнять решение партии. Мне никто не запрещает участвовать в работе Левого Фронта, понятие членства в нем отсутствует, а руководящие органы вполне могут обойтись и без меня.
I feel obliged to go along with the party decision. No one is prohibiting me from working with the Left Front, there is no concept of membership there, and its governing body can survive without me perfectly well.
Ilya Ponomarev. April 22, 2012. CC. Wikimedia Commons.
Ponomarev also addressed the issue of his parliamentary seat, saying that he would rather give it up than live a lie by holding onto a seat without a party. Coordinating Council member and professional opposition leader Ilya Yashin responded on Twitter, somewhat bitterly quipping [ru]:
“Я остаюсь честным человеком”, – прокомментировал Илья Пономарев выход из Левого фронта. “Я остаюсь девственницей”, – добавила Саша Грей.
“I remain an honest man”, – said Ilya Ponomarev about his withdrawal from the Left front. “I remain a virgin”, – added [famous pornography star] Sasha Grey.
Meanwhile, the Gudkovs seem prepared to take advantage of the month before the ultimatum runs out to make their decision. Dmitry Gudkov tweeted [ru]:
Мы остаемся в протестном движении и КС. Будем убеждать партийцев не совершать ошибку!
We will remain in the protest movement and the [Coordinating Council]. We will try to convince our party comrades not to make this mistake!
Whatever the final decision, the ultimatum has already shaped up to be a successful attack on the Coordinating Council. Given its impact, similar assaults are sure to follow.

author: Andrey Tselikov


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Parallels Between Religious and Copyright Wars · Global Voices
Filip Stojanovski

Rick Falkvinge, the founder of Pirate Party, reinterprets the wars of religion that devastated Western Europe in the XVI and XVII centuries in terms of the current struggle to control information through overbearing legislation related to copyright and freedom of expression:
The religious wars were never about religion as such. They were about who held the power of interpretation, about who controlled the knowledge and culture available to the masses. It was a war of gatekeepers of information.


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Spain: An Airport Without Planes? · Global Voices
Lourdes Sada

Airports rarely make for important news stories, aside from some sort of aerial disaster or because personnel strikes turn them into a purgatory for fliers. Spain, however, has an airport with its own star, which has made both print and online headlines since its opening: Castellón airport [es].
This airport was conceived, like so many other absurd public works, in the last decade at the start of the economic crisis, and was opened with fanfare [es] by the then-president of the Council of Castellón, Carlos Fabra, in March 2011, weeks before the municipal elections, despite the fact that facility had no scheduled flights. In fact, they did not even have an air navigation permit. 1500 people attended the event, including Francisco Camps, President at the time of the Generalitat Valenciana, who left office after being charged with bribery [es]. The opening had some borderline grotesque moments that were captured in this fun video from El Intermedio [es], La Sexta's abrasive program.
Adding to the list of nonsense that surrounds this airport is an error in construction [es] that disables
the runway and landing strips and forces them to fix it before it is even debuted, in addition to the construction of a hideously monumental sculpture [es] — an homage to Fabra, according to its artist — in the access roundabout, which has cost 300,000 euros and has not withstood the humidity of the area.
Castellón Airport. From the Blog #La Campana De La Vela.
The airport, although not operational, has considerable annual costs, as this article from elplural.com [es] breaks down:
Oxidized stains on the statue that presides over the entrance to the airport. Photo from blog Hits Book.
Juan García Salas, director general de Aerocas [la sociedad pública que gestiona el aeropuerto], cobró en 2011 88.104 euros, una cantidad bastante superior a los 84.200 euros brutos que ganó en 2010. (…)
Todavía hay más. Los gastos de explotación del aeropuerto de Castellón ascendieron en 2011 a un total de 6.484.935 euros. De ese total, 5.092.596,22 euros se gastaron en el apartado de publicidad, propaganda y relaciones públicas; es decir, más del 78%. Del resto, 918.663 euros fueron a parar a servicios profesionales independientes; 368.865,49 euros a los salarios de sus siete trabajadores; 223.074 euros a trabajos realizados por otras empresas; 129.430 a otros servicios; 23.412 a arrendamientos y cánones y 23.006 a servicios bancarios o similares, entre otros apuntes.
Juan García Salas, General Director of Aerocas [the public society that manages the airport], charged 88,104 euros in 2011, a quantity significantly higher than the 84,200 euros they grossed in 2010. (…)
There's still more. Castellón airport's operating costs amounted to a total of 6,484,935 euros in 2011. Of this total amount, 5,092,596.22 euros were spent on a portion of publicity, propaganda, and public relations; that is to say, more than 78%. Of the remainder, 918,663 euros went to independent professional services: 368,865.49 euros to the salaries of its seven employees; 223,074 euros work done by other companies; 129,430 to other services; 23,412 to leases and royalties and 23,006 to bank services or something similar, among other calculations.
Carlos Fabra [es], the main promoter of this airport and a People's Party politician, belongs to a family with a long political legacy in Castellón. He was council president of this province from 1995 to 2011, a post he left after being charged with crimes of bribery and influence peddling in 2010. He is also the father of Andrea Fabra, the PP deputy that became infamous a few months ago for yelling “Fuck them!” at the Congress while President Rajoy announced new cuts to unemployment benefits.
A few days ago, Fabra himself, now that he presides over Aerocas, announced that a venture capital business group has made an offer to purchase Castellón airport [es] for 200 million euros. The operation, although it is not nearly as beneficial [es] as the Aerocas managers make it out to be, is still good news, given that its maintenance costs. Nevertheless, the news has surprised many people, since apparently the airport is a completely useless infrastructure, and it is worth wondering why anyone would want to take it on.
As such, Twitter created the hashtag #NuevosUsosAeropuertoDeCastellón [es] (#NewUsesCastellónAirport), which became a trending topic on January 10, and netizens began coming up with very innovative ideas.
Eiryah Udhen [es] and Eva [es] opt for sports:
@Eiryah: Recinto de calidad extraordinaria para realizar la Champions League de petanca
@Eiryah: Site of outstanding quality for the Champions League pitch
@evitalunera: A partir del 7 de julio, los encierros de San Fermín
@evitalunera: After July 7, the San Fermín festival
Marina Segovia [es] and David Antonio Tomico [es] are more supportive of art:
@marinuxy_94: una escuela de escultores de figuras de aeropuertos
@marinuxy_94: a school for sculptors of airport figures
@DTomico: Monumento homenaje a la soledad
@DTomico: Monument as an homage to solitude
jose melchor valero [es] and Magnes [es] are in favor of dedicating it to night life:
@josemelchor1: Botellódromo oficial de la Provincia
@josemelchor1: Official Province Speakeasy.
@ValNyx: Fumadero de marihuana. Por lo menos que allí vuele alguien” AAAAJAJJAJAJAJ
@ValNyx: Marijuana den. At least someone will fly there AAAAHAHHAHAHAH
Mars with more air traffic than the Castellón airport. Image from Cuánta Razón.
Javier Etxarri [es], Tanya G [es] and ElNinjaDeLasGalletas [es] opt for wildlife:
@jetxarri: Uno en cada provincia! RT”@quiquepeinado: Zoorrupto, un lugar para criar corruptos en cautividad”
@jetxarri: One in every province! RT”@quiquepeinado: Zoorupto, a place to raise corrupt individuals in captivity”
@TanyGomez: Caracolódromo
@TanyGomez: Snail house
@Chinobi_Ninja: y si a falta de aviones montamos un Angry Birds a escala real? Será por cerdos para atinarles…
@Chinobi_Ninja: what if, in the absence of planes, we mounted full scale Angry Birds? We will aim at them since they are pigs…
Gorka Zumalabe [es] and ManuMillán [es] make a sarcastic point:
@tormentad: Y paralizar la actividad normal del aeropuerto? estáis locos? XD XD
@tormentad: And paralyze the airport's normal activity? Are you insane? XD XD
@Manu_Millan:  cementerio de maletas
@Manu_Millan: Luggage cemetery
DiQuijorna [es] has the most revolutionary idea of them all:
@JordiDiaz71: Se podria usar de aeropuerto que es de lo unico que parece que al final no se va a usar
@JordiDiaz71: We could actually use the airport, which is the one thing that seems will not be used in the end


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Trinidad & Tobago: Proper Procurement Practice  · Global Voices
Matthew Hunte

In part one of a two-part series on governance and integrity in Tobago,  Afra Raymond examines the Tobago House of Assembly project.


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Turkmenistan: Human Rights? What Human Rights? · Global Voices
Anna Fergana

The beginning of 2013 has been rich on news about Turkmenistan, with human rights and media freedoms in the country once more under the international spotlight. On January 4, the country enacted [ru] its first ever media law, which the global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders called a ‘fiction’.
It probably deserves the label, for, as Human Rights Watch reported last year, Turkmenistan's relationship with free media has always been better on paper than in practice:
In August 2011 Berdymukhamedov ordered that cable television replace satellite dishes. If enforced, the order would significantly curtail viewers’ access to information, especially foreign programming, since the government could at any point interfere with cable television broadcasts. Berdymukhamedov’s attempt in 2007 to dismantle satellite dishes failed due to an international outcry.
This view is shared by most netizens in Turkmenistan who believe that media freedoms and human rights in general are nothing but ‘fiction’ in the Caspian state. Commenting under a news report on Chrono-TM.org, reader ‘Zemlyachka’ questions [ru] the very idea of human rights having a place in contemporary Turkmenistan:
Однажды моего знакомого спросили в американском посольстве в Туркменистане: «Как вы относитесь к тому,что в Туркменистане нарушаются права человека?». На что он ответил: «Как можно нарушать то,чего НЕТ»
A friend of mine was once asked in the US Embassy in Turkmenistan: “How do you feel about violations of human rights in Turkmenistan?” To which he responded: “How can you violate something that does not exist?”
Turkmenistan, a country listed among the world's “worst of the worst” human rights abusers by Freedom House, has its own National Institute for Democracy and Human Rights.
Another reader, ‘45% v teni’, laments [ru] the somewhat half-hearted attempts by Western countries to improve the human rights situation in the country:
Не чего они [западные страны] не решат… Курбангулы Президент умный. У него с Америкой, с Западом и с России все ОК, он все их условия выполняет, пока у него с ними все намази никто Туркменистан не в чем не обвинит. Если президент обидет Запад или Америку вод тогда ТОЛК БУДЕТ. А я уверен что он будет им Ж…. лизат как надо.
They [Western countries] will not solve any [human rights issues]… Gurbanguly [Berdymuhammedov] is a smart president. He has good relations with the US, Russia, and the West; he meets all their demands; as long as his relations with [these countries] are good, no one will accuse him of anything. If the presidents offends the West or the US, then something will happen of course. But I am sure that he will continue kissing their ass.
US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama pose for a photo with Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedov, the president of a country that's among the world's “worst of the worst” human rights abusers, according to Freedom House (New York, 2009). The photo is in the public domain.
President Berdimuhamedov with Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev and Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev, 2009. Image by the Russian President's Office, available through Wikipedia (CC BY-3.0).
Turkmen dissident voices also focus on the issue of freedom of religion in the country. They claim that the oppressive state labels any action by religious organizations it does not favor as ‘extremist’. Fuchik recalls [ru] how the state security agents once charged her with membership in a ‘Wahhabi‘ group:
В 2006 году, в конце правления Туркменбаши, на меня наехало МНБ [Министерство национальной безопасности] с обвинениями в…ваххабизме- на основании только того, что я знаю арабский и работаю у арабов… Не уверена, что господа из министерства национальной безопасности вообще понимали, что такое ваххабизм.
In 2006, towards the end of Turkmenbashy‘s [president Saparmurat Niyazov] rule, MND [Ministry of National Security] officers accused me of… wahhabism, simply because I spoke Arabic and worked for the Arabs… I am not sure if the personnel of the ministry even understood what wahhabism was.
But netizens do not always argue for greater freedoms across the board. Such is the power of the government-endorsed mantra that “democracy doesn't happen overnight” – or even in twenty years of sovereign existence – that many have adopted relativist stances on media and other freedoms.
Under a YouTube video about Turkmenistan's latest comprehensive human rights report submitted to UN, several users debate media restrictions in the country. One user, ‘Emir3839′, argues [ru] that the Turkmen government has a ‘sovereign right’ to restrict media on ‘national security’ grounds:
сайты во всех цивилизованных странах мира контролируются и при надобности блокируются. если правительство Т-ана решило, что те или иные сайты могут нести опасность целостности или безопасности Т-ана, то это их суверенное право обезопасить себя и своих граждан.
All civilized nations of the world monitor websites and block access to some of them if needed. If the government of Turkmenistan decides that certain websites pose a threat to the integrity and security of Turkmenistan, it is their sovereign right to protect [the country] and its citizens [by blocking the websites].
With the potential for energy cooperation with Turkmenistan very much on the minds of policymakers in Washington and Brussels, the West is probably nodding sagely in agreement.

author: Anna Fergana


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Uzbekistan’s Useless Latin Script · Global Voices
Alexander Sodiqov

LJ user a_volosevich suggests [ru] that the Latinization reform that has been underway in Uzbekistan over the last two decades is close to failure:
[Over the almost twenty years since Uzbekistan switched to Latin script] it has become clear that the new script in itself does not create the knowledge of foreign languages… Besides, the Russian language has proven to be more in demand [than Latinized Uzbek].
The blogger suggests that this might be a warning call to Kazakhstan, which is also abandoning Cyrillic script in favor of the Latin alphabet.

author: Alexander Sodiqov


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Argentinian Patagonia: Favorite Among Travel Bloggers and Tourists in Argentina · Global Voices
Laura Schneider

(Note: all links are in Spanish, unless otherwise stated)
For this 2013 summer vacation, Argentinan have chosen Argentinian Patagonia [en] as one of their favorite tourist destinations. On its Tourism section, the newspaper Perfil explains that one of the reasons behind that choice has been the relatively fair prices and its diverse range of touristic attractions.
But Patagonia is also a place for those eager to discover it on bycicle, as the bloggers from La Vida de Viaje (Life of Travel), who depict their journey, adventures as well as misfortunes on their blog:
Después de pedalear unas cuántas horas para llegar a Tolhuin, paramos dos días en la casa de la familia quien nos contactó a través de Facebook para conocernos y para que tengamos un lugar donde parar al llegar.
Descubrimos que este pueblo le da un valor especial al cicloturismo. Se organizan pedaleadas autoconvocadas llevadas a cabo por el movimiento Cicloturismo por la vida en memoria del Doctor René Favaloro. En la panadería La Unión, un clásico por sus paredes llenas de fotos de famosos que pasaron por ahí, hay un cuarto especial para que los biciviajeros puedan pasar la noche y un cuaderno donde todos dejan su huella (¡LVDV inauguró el tomo 2!).
After biking for a few hours to reach Tolhuin, we stayed for two days with the Ullua Family who contacted us through Facebook to get to know us and for us to have aplace to stay.
We found out that this village gives great value to bike-tourism. Self-organized bikings by the movement Cicloturismo por la vida [Biketourism for life] are held in memory of doctor René Favaloro. A wall of La Unión bakery is known for being full of photos of celebrities who passed by the place. The same place has a special room where bike riders can stay the night, and a copybook where everybody can leave their signature. (LVDV opened volume 2!).
Other Argentinan bloggers, like Juan and Laura from Acróbatas del Camino (Acrobats of the road), decided to travel by hitchhiking and ended up not only going through Patagonia, but the whole world. In one of their posts, they share their experience in Puerto Madryn and their concern about the environment. Every year at the Península de Valdéz, it is possible to see the whales coming from the Southern Hemisphere, reaching the coasts of Patagonia in order to procreate:
Aún antes de ver la primera ballena, no podía alejar de mi conciencia dos pensamientos. Primero, que mientras que el humano considera a los cetáceos criaturas inteligentes, mamíferos sensibles dotados de un lenguaje indescifrable, las ballenas deben considerar al bípedo un ser chismoso, un merodeador entrometido, un paparazzi de la escala zoológica. El ser humano anda como voyeur festejando especies a cuyo acorralamiento suscribe con el resto de sus hábitos sociales. Hay verdades incómodas, pero cargar el tanque del auto es fomentar el calentamiento global que disminuye la concentración del krill del que se alimentan las ballenas.
Even before seeing the first whale, two thoughts haunted me. First, while the humans consider the cetaceans as intelligent creatures, sensitive mammals gifted with an illegible language, the whales must look at the biped as a busybody, a meddler, a paparazzi of the animal kingdom. The human being is like a voyeur celebrating species whose confinement fits in with the rest of their social habits. There are some inconvenient truths, but fueling up tank of a car results in increasing the global warming which in turn reduces the concentration of the krill the whales feed.
The post goes further:
Por supuesto, todos los turistas llegan en auto, y muchos aceptarían tener uno para cada miembro de la familia si fuera posible. Porque claro, hay que llevar a los chicos a la escuela. Para que les enseñen que hay que cuidar el medio ambiente por ejemplo… Incluso nosotros caemos en parte en esa contradicción, al viajar a dedo y utilizar automóviles, aunque me consuelo pensando que sólo ocupamos un lugar vacío en un automóvil que ya está en movimiento. ¿Y las ballenas? Claro, estaban ahí, mononas, ingenuas, aleteantes, con un géiser montado en el lomo, algunas solas y otras con sus ballenatos. Alguna vez cazadas por balleneros ingleses que procuraban el aceite para iluminar su imperio, hoy sobreprotegidas y finalmente valoradas.
Of course, all tourists arrive by car and many would accept have one vehicle for each family member, if possible. As it is obvious, you would need to drop kids at school. To teach them to take care of environement, for example… Even us, we are kind of contradictory, hitchhiking and using cars, although I do comfort myself by thinking that we are occupying an empty spot in an already moving car. What about the whales? Of course, they are here, pretty, naive, flapping around with a geiser on their back, some of them alone and other ones with their whale calves. Sometimes coupled with English whalers seeking oil to light up their empire, today overprotected and finally valued.
Photo taken by the author of this post.
There are also bloggers, like the ones who contribute in  Magia en el Camino (Magic on the road), who within the framework of the Proyecto Educativo (Educational Project) visit schools, hospitals, suburbs to perform magic tours:
Siempre nos gusta que en los shows haya muchos chicos, pero en el caso de los hospitales es muy diferente: cuanto menos haya mejor. Los chicos no deberían estar ahí, deberían estar jugando en una plaza, por eso es que siempre nos despedimos de los hospitales con la misma frase: “les deseamos de todo corazón que se vayan de acá lo antes posible” y cada vez que decimos eso los padres cierran sus ojos y asienten con la cabeza. Ojalá así sea.
We always like that shows are crowded with children, but in the case of hospitals it's quite different, the less kids there are, the better it is. Children shouldn't be here, they should be playing outdoors. This is why we always use the same expression to say good bye in hospitals: “We wish you from the bottom of our hearts that you may leave this place as soon as possible”. And every time we say this, parents close their eyes and nod full of hope.
Argentinan Patagonia is a region which brings together a wide array of places and unique natural aspects in the world.

author: Laura Schneider


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Bangladesh: Missed Call – A Tool For Protest? · Global Voices
Rezwan

An intentional missed call is a widely used method in developing countries, particularly South Asia, the Philippines and large parts of Africa, to save money or mobile minutes. It is essentially the poor man's text message, a free way to nudge another person. There is even an app available to complete a miss call with one touch.
A report suggests, in any hour, that missed calls can constitute upto 70% of the total network traffic for Grameenphone, Bangladesh's largest telephone network. Cellphone operators in Bangladesh have reduced call rates upto 90% in the past decade to get more customers talking and earn profits by economies of scale. But the price of mobile internet has not come down.
Image by Kahil. CC BY-NC-ND.
Now it seems that there might be other uses of missed calls. In India some have founded business based on it and in Bangladesh it is being proposed as a tool for protest. A Facebook event [bn] titled “Missed call: The tool for our protests” has been created by two Bangladeshi Facebook users, Sedative Hypnotics & Duurzodhon. They have provided the background of the protests in a long post:
২০০৬ সালে যখন বাংলাদেশ যুক্ত হলো এর SEA-ME-WE-4 কেবলে ব্যান্ডউইডথের দামও তখন ছিলো অবিশ্বাস্য রকমের বেশী – প্রতি মেগাবিট ব্যান্ডউইডথের দাম ছিলো ৮০০০০ হাজার টাকা,ইন্টারনেট তখনো তরুনদের হাতে সহজলভ্য হয় নি, গনমানুষের কাছেও না। ২০০৮ সালে তত্ত্বাবধায়ক সরকার প্রতি মেগাবিট ব্যান্ডউইডথের দাম কমিয়ে দেন ২৭০০০ টাকায় । এর পরপরই ‘ডিজিটাল বাংলাদেশের’ প্রতিশ্রুতি দিয়ে ক্ষমতায় আসে বাংলাদেশ আওয়ামী লীগ সরকার। ইন্টারনেট সার্ভিস তৃনমূল পর্যায়ে ছড়িয়ে দেবার প্রত্যাশায় তারা এক এক ধাপে ব্যান্ডউইডথের দাম কমানো শুরু করে। ২৭০০০ টাকা থেকে তারা ২০০৯ সালে প্রতি মেগাবিট ব্যান্ডউইডথের দাম কমিয়ে আনে ১৮০০০ টাকায়, পরবর্তীতে ২০১২ সালে আবারো কমিয়ে আনে ৮০০০ টাকায়। একইসাথে পরবর্তীতে প্রতি মেগাবিট ব্যান্ডউইডথের দাম ৮০০০ থেকে ৫০০০ টাকায় নামিয়ে আনার পরিকল্পনার কথা জানিয়েছে BTRC
In 2006 when Bangladesh was connected to the SEA-ME-WE-4 cable the price of Bandwidth was exorbitant – per Mbit/s bandwidth was BDT 80,000 (approximately USD 1,125). Internet was not available to masses then, especially to the youth. In 2008 the government reduced the price to BDT 27000. After that the Awami League government came to power with its “Digital Bangladesh” slogan. They started reducing the cost of bandwidth in several steps to make it available to the grassroots population. In 2009 per Mbit/s was reduced to BDT 18,000 (approximately USD 250) and in 2012 it was further cut down to BDT 8000 (USD 100). The regulatory body BTRC has plans to bring down the price of 1 Mbit/s to BDT 5000 (USD 60) soon.
They ask whether the consumers are getting the benefit of these price cuts:
আপনাদের মনে থাকার কথা, ২০০৬ সালে EDGE সার্ভিস চালু করা গ্রামীনফোনের ইন্টারনেট খরচ এখনো সেই আগেরমতই আছে । ২০০৯ সালের ১ জিবি ইন্টারনেটের প্যাকেজের দাম এখনো ৩৫০ টাকাই আছে ।এর মাঝে সরকার ঠিকই দুই দফায় দাম কমালেও তারা কমায় নি । একই কথা খাটে বাংলালিংক,এয়ারটেল,রবি সহ অন্যান্য অপারেটরদের ক্ষেত্রেও । [..] আপনারা খেয়াল করুন, প্রতি ১০ মেগাবাইট ইন্টারনেটের প্যাকেজ এয়ারটেলের ক্ষেত্রে বাংলাদেশ ১০ টাকা (ভ্যাট ছাড়া)পড়বে , অথচ একই কোম্পানী ভারতে (টুজি নেটওয়ার্কে) ১০ রুপীতে (বাংলাদেশী ১৪.৮০ পয়সা) ১২৫ মেগাবাইট ইন্টারনেট দিচ্ছে ! [..]এভাবেই সরকার দাম কমিয়ে গেলেও আমজনতা কোনো রেহাই তো পাচ্ছেই না, বরঙ অন্য দেশের তুলনায় আমাদের কাছ থেকে দামও বেশী রাখা হচ্ছে
If you can remember, GrameenPhone introduced their EDGE package in 2006 and the price remained constant Their 1GB volume shared internet package is still BDT 350. The government has reduced price twice in the meantime but their price has not changed a bit. The same complain applies for Banglalink, Rabi, Airtel and other operators. [..] Airtel's per 10MB internet volume package is BDT 10 in Bangladesh. But the same company offers 125 MB in India at INR 10 (BDT 15). [..] In this way the price cuts by the government had no effect on the consumers who are getting overcharged compared to neighboring countries.
So how does this method of protest by missed call work?
A student of Dhaka University before a huge wall painting of Communism talks over mobile phone. Image by Firoz Ahmed. Copyright Demotix (15/5/2012)
নির্দিষ্ট একটি তারিখে নির্দিষ্ট সময়ে আমরা সবাই মোবাইল অপারেটরদের নেটওয়ার্ক ব্যস্ত রাখবো , কিন্তু এক পয়সাও খরচ করবো না ।
আর সেই উপায় হলো মিসড কল । একটি নির্দিষ্ট তারিখে পিক আওয়ারে আমরা সবাই যদি গনহারে পরিচিতজনদের মিসড কল দেয়া শুরু করি , তবে মোবাইল অপারেটরদের বি টি এস ব্যস্ত থাকবে ঠিকই, কিন্তু যেহেতু আমাদের কারও কোনো খরচ করতে হচ্ছে না, তাই আমাদের কোনো ক্ষতি হবে না । যা ক্ষতি হবার হবে কোম্পানীর,কারন সেই সময় আমরা তাদের নেটয়ার্ক ব্যবহার করেছি ঠিকই কিন্তু কোন টাকা দিচ্ছিনা! আমরা অনেক মানুষ যদি একত্রিত হতে পারি,তবে কোম্পানীর ক্ষতিটা নেহায়েত কম না ।
We will keep every mobile network busy at a specific time and date, without spending a penny. And the easiest way is to use “miss call”. If we start to send miss call to our contacts in a specific time, then the BTS of the mobile operators will be busy. As we are not paying anything, we have nothing to lose. The company will lose as we are using their network without any revenue. If a lot of people can do it at once then the impact will be felt by the company.
The Facebook event has gone viral and more than 140,000 people have already been invited and approximately 15000 people said yes. According to an update by Duurjodhon:
শুধু ইন্টারনেটের দাম কমানোই নয় , আমরা বিভিন্ন অপারেটর কর্তৃক সকালে বা গভীর রাতে ইচ্ছেমত পাঠানো স্প্যাম মেসেজের বিরোধিতাও করি ।
Not only reducing the price of mobile internet, we are protesting also the sending of spam sms by operators, even after midnight.
Blogger Robin supports the cause and has more innovation:
আমার সাথে অনেক বন্ধু বান্ধব আছে যাদের মোবাইল ফোন দুই বা ততোধিক… আমার অবশ্য দুইটা ফোনসেট [..]
ভাবতেছি, দুইটাই সাইলেন্ট কইরে একটা থেকে আরেকটায় অটোমেটিক রি-ডায়াল দিয়া থুইয়া দেব… [..]
I have many friends who have two or more mobile phones.. I have two sets by the way.. [..] I am thinking I will keep the sets silent and make both call each other using auto-redial… [..]
Rasel Parvez writes on Facebook:
অহিংস ক্ষতিসাধনের আইডিয়াটা চমৎকার নিঃসন্দেহে, যদিও একই সাথে এইসব অদ্ভুত আন্দোলন ধারণা কৌতুককর অনুভুতি তৈরি করে
বিনোদন বিলাসিতা না কি প্রয়োজনীয় কর্মকান্ড এটা নিয়ে অনেক মাত্রার বিতর্ক হতে পারে, যদি আন্দোলনকারীরা মিস্কল মিসকল না খেলে বরং সরাসরি মোবাইলে ইন্টারনেট বন্ধ করার হুমকি দিতো এবং সেটা ব্যপক পরিসরে ছড়িয়ে দিতো আন্দোলন আরও সফল হওয়ার সম্ভবনা থাকতো।
আমাদের ভোক্তা অধিকারসংরক্ষণের একটি সংগঠন আছে, তারা যদি মোবাইল কোম্পানীর পরিচলন ব্যয় এবং ভোক্তার প্রদত্ত মূল্যের তুলনামূলক আলোচনা করে ভোক্তা অধিকার আইনে একটা রীট দায়ের করতো কিংবা যদি সরকারকে এ ডাকাতি সম্পর্কে অবহিত করতো সেটা আরও ফলদায়ক হতে পারতো
The idea of doing harm without violence is novel, even if these kinds of weird ideas cause laughter.
Using internet in the cellphone is a luxury or a necessity that is much debatable. If the protesters could avoid this miss call game and instead threatened to stop the use of mobile internet and made it a bigger campaign then they could be more successful.
We have a consumer rights organization, they could compare the operating costs of the mobile internet and the price for the end consumers and take legal measures against the operators if necessary. They could even produce evidences of malpractices to the government.
According to the event page:
আপনারা রবিবার সকাল ১০ টা থেকে দুপুর ১ টা পর্যন্ত কোন কল রিসিভ করবেন না। আপনাদের এতটুকু আত্মত্যাগ আমাদের সবার স্বপ্ন পূরন আর দাবি আদায়ের হাতিয়ার হবে। তাই সবাই ৩ ঘন্টা সময় দিন।
এত দিনের অনাচারের বিরুদ্ধে তিন ঘন্টার প্রতিবাদ কি খুব বেশী ?
Please do not receive any call in your mobile between 10AM-1PM next Sunday. Your sacrifice will help us achieve our goal and make our dreams come true. Please give us 3 hours.
Is 3 hours too long to protest against the injustice that is happening for years?


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author: أحمد جدو


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One year after the violent eviction which became known as “Massacre of Pinherinho“, in the city of São José dos Campos, state of São Paulo, Amnesty International Brazil demands [pt] an immediate and permanent solution for the families that were evicted from the Pinheirinho settlement on January 22, 2012.

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