text:
Diplomacy via Twitter? Indian Minister Threatens Amazon Over Indian Flag Doormat · Global Voices
Vishal Yashoda Manve

The use of Flags in wearables or accessories like flip fops or doormats is allowed in many countries. Image form Flickr by Antonangelo De Martini. CC BY-SA 2.0
Indian politicians have a deep affection for historical personalities and symbols of national importance — flags, national anthems, and historical texts. So, when Amazon Canada was found selling Indian flag doormats and Mahatma Gandhi flip-flops, many right-wing Indians took to social media to express their ire.
Then, Indian politicians joined the fray, threatening Amazon with dire consequences, sparking a debate about the wisdom of allowing social media outrage to influence governance.
It started with India's External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, also known for her usage of Twitter  to help stranded Indians abroad or coordinate difficult rescue missions in Yemen and Afghanistan, lost her cool after a Twitter user pointed out Amazon's doormats with Indian flags.
@SushmaSwaraj Madam. Amazon Canada must be censured and warned not to sell India flag doormats. Please take action. pic.twitter.com/td4KXlDUQL
— Atul Bhobe (@atulbhobe) January 11, 2017
In a public tweet she instructed the Indian High Commission in Canada to deal with the issue:
Indian High Commission in Canada : This is unacceptable. Please take this up with Amazon at the highest level. https://t.co/L4yI3gLk3h
— Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) January 11, 2017
She went a step further and asked Amazon Canada to remove the items or face legal consequences including stripping of visas for the company's employees.
Amazon must tender unconditional apology. They must withdraw all products insulting our national flag immediately. /1
— Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) January 11, 2017
If this is not done forthwith, we will not grant Indian Visa to any Amazon official. We will also rescind the Visas issued earlier.
— Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) January 11, 2017
There does exist a law that ensures Indian national symbols are not desecrated:
The Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971 is an Act of the Parliament of India which prohibits desecration of or insult to the country's national symbols, including the National Flag, The Constitution, Indian map and the National Anthem.
But it is, of course, an Indian law, not a Canadian one. The items were being sold by third party vendors, not Amazon itself, but the company nevertheless removed the items and Amazon India Vice President Amit Agarwal wrote to Sushma Swaraj:
Amazon India is committed to respecting Indian laws and customs. To the extent that these items offered by a third-party seller in Canada offended Indian sensibilities, Amazon regrets the same. At no time did we intend or mean to offend Indian sentiments.
Meanwhile, users started to point out that other symbols sensitive to India continued to be for sale on Amazon:
Disgusting after the Tricolour, now father of the nation on flip-flops @ Amazon. #RejectAmazon #AmazonInsultsMahatmahttps://t.co/D0sgN458Nf
— Maulin Shah (@maulinshah9) January 15, 2017
Amazon continues to sell Lord Ganesha's skateboards,bed covers etc despite requests for withdrawals @nilay2992 pic.twitter.com/Fbg9gttwi1
— KUHU (@kuhoopandey) January 17, 2017
Indian economic affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das also sent off some strongly worded tweets to Amazon:
Amazon,better behave. Desist from being flippant about Indian symbols & icons. Indifference will be at your own peril.
— Shaktikanta Das (@DasShaktikanta) January 15, 2017
And then offered some context:
Comment on amazon was as a citizen of India as I felt strongly about it. Nothing more should be read into it.
— Shaktikanta Das (@DasShaktikanta) January 15, 2017
People, however, were disappointed in his response:
@DasShaktikanta disappointed. Even bureaucrats are matching up the politicians
— Asma Rizwan (@asmariz) January 15, 2017
@DasShaktikanta You are a senior bureaucrat, not some street level thug. Behave your designation, if not your age, sir. Shame!
— Vaibhav Vishal (@ofnosurnamefame) January 15, 2017
So @DasShaktikanta it's OK for @Flipkart to sell potentially insulting goods featuring US flag? Should @realDonaldTrump cancel their visas? pic.twitter.com/kWNCjBeZkl
— Mahesh Murthy (@maheshmurthy) January 15, 2017
Flipkart is a homegrown e-commerce service. In mid-2016, Amazon had vowed to invest more than $5 billion in India to compete with Flipkart and Snapdeal, another Indian company, for a bigger share of the country's constantly growing e-commerce market.
On social media, reactions were polarized. Some supported Sushma Swaraj, while others highlighted the nuances of the case:
What's wrong if @SushmaSwaraj forced @amazon to withdraw the offending Indian Flag doormats ? Sorry, I am not liberal enough to understand.
— Yashwant Deshmukh (@YRDeshmukh) January 12, 2017
Incidentally @SushmaSwaraj, in Amazon Canada, Canadian Flag styled Doormats are also sold pic.twitter.com/ZfZDX7frQz
— Joy (@Joydas) January 11, 2017
Indian writer and journalist Sadanand Dhume told online news portal Quartz that there was a danger in politicians acting based on social media outrage:
There’s always the danger that an overenthusiastic official playing to the peanut gallery will end up projecting India in an unflattering and unhelpful way. It’s awfully easy to do stupid things on Twitter.
This case illustrates the perils of playing to the social media gallery in diplomacy. It should have been ignored or handled discreetly.
Shoaib Daniyal wrote in Scroll:
Social media is a great medium to get one’s message across. But social media should not be allowed to become the message itself. Especially for a matter as urgent as governing the world’s second-largest country.
And Sandip Roy wrote in Huffington Post:
The problem is, as the recent Amazon showdown demonstrated, Twitter is becoming a place of governance rather than just a medium of communication.
Swaraj could have easily called the High Commission, she could have instructed them to get in touch with Amazon Canada. But the public performance of a minister getting things done is almost as important as the minister just getting things done.
Perhaps governance via social media wouldn't be such a bad thing, if only politicians spent more time on serious issues plaguing the society rather than threatening conglomerates over a pair a flipflops.

author: Vishal Yashoda Manve


text:
Health of Detained UAE Academic Nasser Bin Ghaith at Risk, Rights Groups Say · Global Voices
Afef Abrougui

The Abu Dhabi branch of the Paris-Sorbonne University, where Nasser Bin Ghaith used to lecture. Photo posted by Panorams on Flickr under a creative commons license
Rights groups have expressed concerns about the deteriorating health of UAE academic and economist Nasser Bin Ghaith, in prison since August 2015, over charges that include the peaceful exercise of his right to free speech.
Among other charges, Bin Ghaith is accused of committing a “hostile act” against a foreign country over tweets critical of Egyptian authorities and their 2013 bloody crackdown on protesters gathering at Rabaa square against the military's removal of elected president Muhammad Morsi. The crackdown resulted in more than 800 civilian casualties, according to Human Rights Watch.
Nasser Bin Ghaith. Screenshot from YouTube video posted by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies.
On Wednesday, the appeal court postponed his trial, already postponed several times before by the supreme court, to 22 February.
Following his arrest in August 2015, UAE authorities held Bin Ghaith incommunicado for nine months. During a first court appearance on 4 April last year, he told the judge that he was beaten and deprived of sleep while in detention.
Abuse against Bin Ghaith continues and rights groups are now raising the alarm about his deteriorating health. In a 15 January statement, the Gulf Center for Human Rights said:
Bin Ghaith is reportedly suffering from serious medical issues that require immediate attention by a specialised doctor, but he is not getting medical treatment while in Al-Sader jail, in the Security Ward. He had faced previous health issues, including tooth pain, which was treated after several weeks. He also was not given his glasses for several weeks. In addition, he has been refused access to winter clothes. Bin Ghaith also suffers from high blood pressure, and is not always given access to his medication. His blood pressure has not been measured for over nine months. He has only been allowed to leave his cell for an hour to walk in the sun, and has been kept in solitary since his arrest in August 2015, except for two weeks.
No phone calls are allowed to his lawyer, and calls to his family are arbitrary, sometimes allowed and sometimes not allowed for weeks.
The non-profit organization Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain said on 17 January:
Dr. bin Ghaith has reportedly also begun to suffer from a serious medical condition that requires prompt treatment from a specialized doctor. Emirati authorities have failed to provide such treatment. In the rare event that Emirati officials have responded to bin Ghaith’s medical needs, they have failed to do so in a timely manner. It took several weeks, for example, for a doctor to examine Dr. bin Ghaith for pain he had experienced in his teeth; authorities have also been inconsistent in their provision of medicine that Dr. bin Ghaith takes to control his blood pressure. Dr. bin Ghaith has alleged that, during his disappearance, security forces tortured him by beating him, depriving him of sleep, and subjecting him to other forms of physical abuse.
In addition, the International Campaign for Freedom in the UAE, the International Centre for Justice and Human Rights, and the Emirates Center for Human Rights have all expressed concerns about Bin Ghaith's health situation.
Bin Ghaith is facing in total five charges, three of them for expressing his thoughts online. Some of the charges fall under Article 29 of the UAE’s 2012 Cybercrime Law which criminalizes publishing content with “sarcastic intent” or to “damage the reputation” of the state or its leaders, a crime punishable by up to 15 years in jail. This accusation is in relation to a tweet “ridiculing the UAE’s decision to allot land to build a Hindu temple”, according to local media reports. The two remaining charges are related to his links with the Ummah and Al-Islah parties listed by Emirati authorities as “terrorist” organizations.
On 18 January, Bin Ghaith appeared for the first time before the Abu Dhabi Federal Appeal Court, after his case was transferred from the Federal Supreme Court in accordance with a new decree (decree-law no. 11/2016) under which the Federal Appeal Court is now responsible for cases related to state security. This modification gives Bin Ghaith the opportunity to appeal his sentence in the future, since sentences issued by the Supreme Court in the UAE are not subject to appeal. However, his lengthy trial is not set to come to an end anytime soon.
Wary of an Arab-Spring like uprising within its borders, the UAE government launched an unprecedented crackdown on critics and activists in 2011. This crackdown has not come to an end, as the government continues to resort to tactics of arrests, enforced disappearances, incommunicado detentions, unfair trials and torture of those in prison.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Afef Abrougui


text:
Mexico Hands Over Drug Lord in Move Viewed as ‘Farewell Gift’ to Obama · Global Voices
J. Tadeo

Photo: Day Donaldson, published under Creative Commons license.
A few hours before Donald J. Trump‘s inauguration as the 45th president of the United States, the Mexican government announced that it will turn over Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as “El Chapo” Guzmán, who's wanted by U.S. law enforcement.
Before being recaptured in 2014, “El Chapo” was considered the most wanted criminal in the world. In June 2015, he escaped for a second time from a supposedly high security complex, exposing remarkable deficiencies in Mexico's prison system, which Global Voices has covered before.
The Mexican website “Animal Político” reported the news this week, explaining what will become of Guzmán:
Fuentes del gobierno federal confirmaron que el Chapo fue trasladado de la cárcel donde estaba recluido en Ciudad Juárez Chihuahua, rumbo a Nueva York, donde será encarcelado en el Metropolitan Detention Center, una prisión federal.
Sources from the federal government confirmed that El Chapo was arrested in the prison where he was in Ciudad Juárez Chihuahua to be sent to New York, where he will be sent to the Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal prison in the United States.
U.S. officials requested Guzman's extradition, in connection with charges related to drug trafficking and other crimes.
Sopitas, another website in Mexico, has recommended several sources of information to learn more about the circumstances surrounding the criminal:
Para tratar de dimensionar al personaje de “El Chapo”, recomendamos ‘Atentamente, El Chapo‘ de Héctor de Mauleón.
Sobre su fuga de 2015 y la tradición muy mexicana de usar a los criminales para criticar al Estado y naturalizar la violencia, recomendamos Los asesinos celebrados, de Pablo Piccato.
Por último, sobre “El Chapo” como empresario, recomendamos Chapo Guzmán, CEO, de David Pérez Esparza.
To try to understand the dimension of the character that is El Chapo, we recommend “Sincerely, El Chapo” by Héctor de Mauleón. About his escape in 2015 and the very Mexican tradition to use criminals to criticize the State and naturalize violence, we recommend Celebrated Killers, by Pablo Piccato. Finally, to see the figure of “El Chapo” as a businessman, we recommend Chapo Guzmán, CEO, by David Pérez Esparza.
After the news of Guzman's transfer to the United States was reported, the story trended on Twitter. Some of the most shared reactions are translated below:
En política nada es coincidencia. ¿Por qué México extradita al Chapo horas antes de la toma de posesión de Trump?
— JORGE RAMOS (@jorgeramosnews) 20 de enero de 2017
In politics, there are no coincidences. Why is Mexico extraditing El Chapo hours before Trump's inauguration?
El Chapo ha sido extraditado a Estados Unidos.
Sí, un día antes de que Trump tome la presidencia ?pic.twitter.com/G77g5CAiWv
— pictoline (@pictoline) January 20, 2017
El Chapo has been extradited to the United States. Yes, a day before Trump takes over the Presidency.
Las últimas imágenes del Chapo Guzmán y de su celda antes de ser extraditado a EU. pic.twitter.com/gtJMe1NHaR
— Jenaro Villamil (@jenarovillamil) January 19, 2017
The last images of El Chapo in its cell before being extradited to the United States.
According to The Washington Post, officials in Mexico have characterized the extradition as a “farewell gift” to Barack Obama, and not a gesture meant to curry favor with President Trump.
Twitter user Shekizu made the following comment:
El Chapo es un delincuente, pero en México es querido, hablando de hacer daño al país son nuestros políticos los que más nos han dañado…
— Shekizu (@Chekizu) January 20, 2017
El Chapo is a criminal, but he's loved in Mexico. Speaking of hurting the country, it is our politicians the ones who have hurt it the most.
Meanwhile, Fernando Ferreira observed:
Junto con el chapo deberían llevarse a todos los que lo admiran y darles pena de muerte.#PorUnMéxicoMejor
— Fernando Ferreira (@Wicho_lfs) January 20, 2017
Together with El Chapo, they should also take all of those who admire him and give them the death penalty #ForABetterMexico.
As the leader of an armed group and an infamous drug lord, “El Chapo” has been a central figure in what's known as Mexico's “War on Drugs,” started by former President Felipe Calderón and continued by the country's current president, Enrique Peña Nieto.

author: J. Tadeo


text:
Netizen Report: Bahrain Orders News Outlet to Stop ‘Using Electronic Media Tools’ · Global Voices
Netizen Report Team

Protests in Bahrain, 2011. Photo by Bahraini activist via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
On January 16, the Bahraini government banned the online edition of independent newspaper Al-Wasat from “using electronic media tools.” The Ministry’s order implies that the paper has been banned from publishing on its website and social media channels alike. The paper has 229K followers on Twitter and more than 354K on Facebook.
The Ministry of Information tweeted that it banned the daily from publishing online, for “repeatedly publishing and broadcasting material that causes a rift in society and a spirit of division that harms national unity and public order.”
It is not clear what material is the Ministry referring to, but activists suspect it may have been in response to the paper’s online coverage of the January 15 execution of three men convicted of murdering three policemen, following what rights groups have described as an unfair trial. Al-Wasat is not new to government harassment. In 2010 it was banned from broadcasting audio reports and interviews on its website. It was forced to close its video section for part of 2016.
In April 2011, the paper’s co-founder Karim Al-Fakhrawi died while in the custody of Bahraini security officials, after he was subjected to torture.
Al-Wasat’s website is still live. After a few days of quiet, Al-Wasat staff appear to have resumed publishing on January 19.
Seven journalists from Kenya, Senegal and Sweden were reportedly denied entry to The Gambia on January 16, where they had planned to cover the historic transfer of power to the west African country’s newly elected president Adama Barrow. Outgoing president Yahya Jammeh, who has been in power since a 1994 military coup, publicly rejected the December election results and imposed a 90-day “state of emergency” citing foreign interventions in the election. Barrow was sworn in on January 19 at the country’s embassy in Senegal, which geographically surrounds The Gambia. The multiple west African governments have vowed to send troops into the country if Jammeh should refuse to relinquish power.
In the final days of his presidency, Barack Obama commuted the sentences of 300 federal prisoners in the United States, including that of Chelsea Manning, the military intelligence analyst convicted in 2010 under the Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for releasing to Wikileaks thousands of classified documents exposing information about diplomatic relations and military activities in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Manning served seven years of a 35-year sentence, which is by far the longest sentence any American citizen has ever received for a leak conviction.
Israel is considering new legislation that would allow Israeli administrative courts to demand that social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter remove online content that Israeli officials see as incitement to violence. Informally known as the “Facebook Bill”, the law was approved by a ministerial committee in late December.
Both Palestinians and Israelis have expressed concerns about the new bill’s implications for free expression, in light of its vague language, and the fact that Facebook already removes content that incites violence. Dozens of Palestinians have been previously arrested by Israeli authorities for “incitement through social media” after voicing their opposition to the occupation.
Global Voices contributor Marwa Fatfata writes: “Many Palestinians have turned to social media as a non-violent means of expressing criticism and anger over human rights violations, and as a way to simply show the everyday realities of occupation. If passed, the bill could be used to silence this type of speech and thus extend the occupation into the online world.”
Kenyans online have started expressing fears of a possible shutdown of social media by the government in the run up to the August 2017 presidential elections,. On Twitter, there have been rumors of a bill that would seek to regulate the use of social media in Kenya. There is precedent for such a shutdown — in mid-December 2016, security personnel shut down telecommunication equipment around Kenya's parliament building as opposition and pro-government MPs clashed over the amendment of the laws regarding the upcoming elections.
Two courts in Oman have suspended the prison sentences of activist Hassan Al-Basham and writer Hammood Al-Shukaily, the Gulf Center for Human Rights reported. Al-Basham was sentenced to jail in June 2016 for “using of the Internet in what might be prejudicial to religious values,” and was also convicted of “insulting the Sultan.” On January 17, the Supreme Court revoked a three-year jail sentence against Al-Basham and referred it back to a primary court on the grounds that his defense team’s request for a medical examination was ignored.
The next day, a court of appeal in the capital Muscat suspended the 3.5-year prison sentence of Hammood Al-Shukaily, who was convicted of “incitement to protest” in connection with a poem that he wrote and posted on Facebook.
A 21-year-old student in Spain could face up to two and a half years in prison over 13 tweets she published that federal prosecutors say derided victims of terrorism. The tweets contained jokes about Luis Carrero Blanco, a prime minister during dictator Francisco Franco’s rule, who was killed in 1973 in a bombing carried out by Basque separatist group ETA.
One of the tweets in question read: “Kissinger gave Carrero Blanco a piece of the moon, ETA paid for him to take a trip there.” Insult or humiliation of victims of terrorism is a crime under Spain’s penal code. Prosecutors are also seeking three years of probation and eight and a half years of what’s known as full disqualification, which would bar the student — an aspiring teacher — from civil service employment, including working in a public school.
The Philippine government started blocking multiple major adult websites, including PornHub and XVIdeos, under laws intended to eliminate child pornography. The restrictions appear to vary by Internet service provider, according to the International Business Times, making it difficult to assess the full extent of the block. The Philippines ranks highest for average time spent on PornHub, according to the site’s Year in Review statistics for 2016.
Afef Abrougui, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Mohamed El-Gohary, L. Finch, Weiping Li and Sarah Myers West contributed to this report.

author: Netizen Report Team


text:
Thousands Worldwide Protest Coal Plant Near the Sundarbans Mangrove Forest · Global Voices
350.org

Demonstration in London. Photo: Facebook.com/SaveSundarbans.SaveBangladesh
This article is based on a piece written by Jenny Zapata López for 350.org, an organisation building a global climate movement, and is republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.
A recent global day of protest united voices from across the world calling for the preservation of the Sundarbans, a region spanning southern Bangladesh and into India that's home to the world’s largest single tract of mangrove forest as well as endangered species like the Royal Bengal tiger and the Irrawaddy dolphin.
Organizers estimate that up to 4,000 people showed their solidarity with the five-year-long popular resistance movement opposing the construction of the Rampal power plant in Bangladesh.
At New York City's Union Square. Photo: Zawaad Abdullah
The Sundarbans is listed as a World Heritage site by UNESCO due to its outstanding biodiversity, and designated a Ramsar wetland because of the global importance of its freshwater ecosystems. Nearby, a 1320 MW coal-fired power plant is planned by the Indian government’s National Thermal Power Company and Bangladesh’s power development board, through a venture called the Bangladesh-India Friendship Power Company Limited (BIFPCL).
According to a Bangladeshi organization, the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports, the plant would not only put the livelihoods of at least 3.5 million people at risk, but also make around 50 million coastal people vulnerable to natural disasters as the Sundarbans represent a natural safeguard against frequent cyclones, storms and other natural disasters in the country.
Supporters from Turkey standing in front of a World Heritage site in Izmir to show their solidarity with the Global Day of Protest. Photo: 350.org Turkey
People took to the streets in Dhaka, The Hague, London, Berlin, Paris, Gwangju, Hordaland, Turku, Kolkata, New York, Melbourne and more in response to the call made last November, during a grand rally that took place in Dhaka, where 15,000 people gathered after days of marching from different parts of the country to the capital.
The proposed Rampal plant will be located 14 kilometers away from the extreme boundary of the Sundarbans and 70 kilometers away from the World Heritage site. Its operation will burn around 4.75 million tonnes of coal annually, in turn releasing an estimated 7.9 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. It will depend on imported coal, transported by boat through narrow waterways, adding the risk of oil and coal spills, as well as noise pollution to the Poshur river. In order to cool down its turbines, the plant will extract 9,150 cubic meters of water per hour from the river and release back 5,150 cubic meters of water, which its critics say will pollute and alter the balance of the water on which the mangroves depend.
Despite opposition to the Rampal plant, a recent recommendation from UNESCO to scrap and relocate the project, and dissent expressed even by Bangladesh government officials, access and commercial infrastructure for the Rampal plant is being developed.
Bangladesh's prime minister, for her part, maintains that the government wouldn't have greenlighted the project if “there is a possibility of any type of damage” to the environment. And a leading Bangladeshi ecologist, Dr. Ansarul Karim, has argued the Sundarbans face much more of a threat from industrial development at Mongla Port, which is physically closer to the forest areas and also connected to them via waterways, than from the proposed plant.
Izmir, Turkey. Photo: 350.org Turkey
Meanwhile, civil society organizations continue to call on the Bangladesh government to cancel the coal-powered Rampal plant and continue developing the country’s leadership in solar energy generation. While Bangladesh faces a challenging energy supply scenario, with currently only 74% of the country's population connected to the national grid, the country also holds the fastest growing solar home system in the world, with 60,000 units being installed per month.
A short video from the demonstration in Dhaka is available on Facebook. More images from the global day of protest are available in this gallery.


text:
With One More Vote, Trinidad and Tobago Could Ban Child Marriage · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Photo: Thinking Development / Flickr / CC 2.0
Child marriage will likely soon be illegal in Trinidad and Tobago. The Miscellaneous Provisions Marriage Bill, which Trinidad and Tobago's attorney general presented in the country's senate nearly ten days ago, has passed — even with four opposition senators (including a woman) and one independent choosing to abstain. All that remains, as the bill proceeds to the House of Representatives, is the support of a simple majority to make it into law.
However, Sat Maharaj, the secretary general of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha, the country's most high-profile Hindu organization, has threatened legal action, should the amendments to the Marriage Act be passed.
The lone woman who abstained from the senate vote, Khadijah Ameen, maintained that religious perspectives that were expressed in parliament “through two temporary appointments in a representative of the Muslim faith and a representative of the Hindu faith” had merit, saying, “Those views have been criticized but they are real, they are part of our multicultural society and we must give an air to those views.”
On Twitter, Tillahwillah, a women's rights advocate who participated in a protest with the Coalition to End Child Marriage group on January 17, 2017, said of Ameen's stance:
Dear #KhadijaAmeen, You are the worst possible cramp in the womb of this country and I wish it had some kinah ibuprofen to deal with you.
— Tillahwillah (@tillahwillah) January 18, 2017
Many netizens feel that the issue is much wider than marriage alone. Facebook user Skye Hernandez mused:
People, don't think it's only those who are still advocating to keep child marriage on the books that have a problem, eh. Walk in town with a 10-year-old girl and notice how big men look at her. It is disgusting and terrifying. The whole ‘after 12 is lunch’ culture is not only upheld by outdated religious ‘laws’ and their advocates. It's everywhere in this society — open season on women and girls.
“After 12 is lunch” is an idiom meaning that once a girl is older than 12, she is no longer off limits sexually.
Everyone seemed to be getting involved in the online discussion of this issue, including former Prime Minister Basdeo Panday, whose Facebook remarks on “all the ole talk swirling around” struck the wrong chord with some netizens:
Screengrab of image of Basdeo Panday's Facebook status update. Widely shared on social media.
Facebook user Rhoda Bharath was quick to answer his question:
Because marriage is a legal contract and only adults can enter into legal contracts. This point has been made by the legislation and by many present at the debate. Bas baffles me here.
#EndChildMarriageNow
Keith Francis added:
Bas letting down the side here badly. Badly.
18 is the age of legal responsibility. A body can't sign a document or exercise suffrage until they attain that age. They shouldn't be able to sign a marriage certificate and enter into a legally binding arrangement that ties them to someone for the rest of their lives if they can't even open a bank account on their own.
Interestingly, the position of The Hindu Women’s Organization of Trinidad and Tobago on this issue is at loggerheads with the stance of some religious leaders. The group “[reiterated] its call for the age of 18 to be established as the legal age of consent to marry with provisions for 16-18 year olds under strict checks and balances,” adding:
In so doing, we seek to correct the misleading statement made by temporary Senator Basdeo Seetahal in the Senate debate of 11 January 2017.
We have not rescinded our position as he claimed.
Our position, articulated since 2012 in the resolution coming out of the Marriage Act Public Discussions held by the organization that year, is that the Marriage Acts should be updated to reflect the age of consent for sexual relations.
In a letter to the editor submitted to the popular website Wired868, Alana Abdool wondered whether “the hyper-sexualized culture of youths” was linked to the furore surrounding child marriage:
Lust, love and sex are all part of a complex dynamic of the fight for power between the sexes. It is unfortunate that marriage is deeply interwoven into this web and usually suffers the fatal blow. […]
The fight for marriage has been age old. The products of the war has seen the creation of a deeply rooted culture of sexism, feminism, misogynism and objectification. […]
The current debate on child marriages has been a morose, crass exchange of rebuttals over the right to grant the child the opportunity to marry or not marry along a subjective morally defined age range—vis a vis a grant of the right to let them know when to lust, love and have sex using foolproof, technically defined, sexualized parameters.
And by the grant of a right to marry, I mean the conditions for a sex license. And by conditions I mean age. And by sex license I mean the Marriage Act. […]
We must be wary that we do not objectify the discussion of the readiness of children for marriage and in so doing, weaken one of the greatest foundation blocks of a society.
There is infinitely more to this debate than the butchering currently being rendered in parliament. There is also infinitely more hypocrisies in what is not being addressed than what is.
The bill is widely expected to pass in the lower house of parliament. If it does, it would then need to be assented to by the country's president in order to become law.

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


text:
A Persecuted Bangladeshi Writer Gets a New Life in the US. But Exile Isn’t Easy. · Global Voices
PRI/PRX's The World

Tuhin Das, exiled from Bangladesh, now lives in Pittsburgh and is the current writer-in-residence with the City of Asylum program. Credit: Ashley Cleek. Used with permission.
This story by Ashley Cleek originally appeared on PRI.org on January 9, 2017. It is republished here as part of a partnership between PRI and Global Voices.
Tuhin Das was just 16, living in Bangladesh, when he started writing poems and editing a magazine — and getting noticed.
His writings called out the persecution of Hindus and atheists, religious minorities in Bangladesh. But they infuriated some fundamentalists who thought Das was anti-Islam. When he was only a teenager, a group of fundamentalists stabbed him in the street. Then, in 2015, Das’ name showed up on a hit-list.
“My name along with five others appeared on Facebook one night,” Das explains in Bengali, through an interpreter. Das speaks English but is more comfortable using his native language. “The post said, ‘These people are considered an enemy of Islam.'”
Das says a group linked to al-Qaeda was behind the threat. Terrified, he went to the police. They told him: “You can be under attack any time, and we will not be able to protect you, if you’re staying here.”
So Das went into hiding.
He wasn't alone. Writers have been targeted and killed in Bangladesh in recent years by Islamist extremists, who label them infidels. Das, who was born into a Hindu family but considers himself an atheist, says he didn’t write against Islam. “I wrote against anything that is extreme,” he explains.
After hiding out for months, Das saw a news story about another Bangladeshi writer who was also in danger, but had found safety abroad. The writer had been granted sanctuary through the International Cities of Refuge Network, an organization involving more than 50 cities worldwide. The Pittsburgh program, called City of Asylum, accepted Das.
He'd never left Bangladesh before, never been on a plane. Nine months ago, Das arrived in Pittsburgh. He shows me around the old row house where he lives now. It’s on a quiet alley. It’s nice, but still he couldn’t sleep at first — nightmares. Slowly, though, he's settled in. “I don’t feel as insecure here as I used to feel back in Bangladesh,” says Das, who is now 32. “I can write freely. I can express my opinions and thoughts freely in my writings.”
The City of Asylum's office is in this house on Sampsonia Way in Pittsburgh. Exiled writer Tuhin Das lives nearby. Credit: Ashley Cleek. Used with permission.
Das is prolific. He’s working on a biography of a famous Bangladeshi poet; a diary of his time in Pittsburgh; a novel; tons of articles. He mails them to Bangladesh for publication. He also keeps up his blog, written in Bengali.
The City of Asylum residency lasts about two years, and Das is the program’s sixth writer. He has housing, health insurance and a stipend that provides enough to live on, so he can write full-time. But being in exile has removed Das from everything else: his friends, his family, his language, his country. The place and culture that are the central subject of his writing are so far away. He spends more time online messaging with his friends back home than anyone else here, he says. It’s lonely.
“I don’t think the feeling of being in exile is a positive one for me. I feel that I am in exile not just physically, my mind is also in exile,” Das explains.
He’s closely tuned into what’s happening back in Bangladesh — watching as fundamentalists divide Bengali culture and attack minority communities. Das says that feeling of persecution, being seen as “separate” simply because of the religion one is born into, doesn’t go away.
“I am a Bengali first. I should be known by the language I speak, the culture I follow, by my literature, my music, my art, my heritage,” Das says. “That is more important to me than the religion.”
As a foreigner and a Bangladeshi in the United States, Das says sometimes he feels people in Pittsburgh looking at him uneasily, even suspiciously. He feels aware of his dark skin and thick accent.
Toward the end of our interview, he offers a comment in English. “Everyone, everything is different. Everyone is different,” Das says of the United States. “When I first came here I thought maybe I was walking on the moon.” But today, Das is walking in a park near his home. He has a favorite spot, a favorite bench. Sitting on it, he says, he finds peace looking up at the sky, knowing it’s the same one over Bangladesh.
Here is one of Das’ poems.
Awake!
By Tuhin Das
Translated by Nandini Mandal
I have something to say.
I have come from the war fields of pen & machete.
I have witnessed the birth of hatred and division in place of love & unity.
How can they say ”kill the nonbelievers”? How can I be silent?
Is my fault that I am a Shia? I am a Hindu? I am a foreigner?
I am gay? Will we Bangladeshis be buried under mass graves
like Iraq, Syria & Afghanistan?
Why are people living in fear of assassination & murder in their own homeland?
My war is against those who divide people
in the name of religion who murder in the name of God thus disturbing the peace.
Why do they shroud humanity in a blanket of blood?
Why would assassins be targeting writers, minorities, and atheists in Bangladesh?
Although we have offered our tears in return after every murder, we are not afraid,
I am not afraid. Even if they want to murder me again I will say:
‘You are afraid, you are scared, and so you wanted to murder me.’

author: PRI/PRX's The World


text:
How the US Marines Spread Fake News About an Afghan ‘Terrorist’ In Okinawa · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

“U.S. Marines carry the Marine Corps colors during a change of command ceremony for 3rd Marine Division on Camp Courtney, Okinawa, Japan, Jan. 20, 2017.” There are reports the US Marines 7th Communications Battalion, based on Okinawa and part of the III Marine Expeditionary Force, spread rumors that an Afghan man living and working on Okinawa is a terrorist. This photo is public domain. Photo By: Lance Cpl. Sean Evans
In December 2016, a long-term Afghan resident of Japan and more recently, Okinawa, was accused of being a terrorist — without any proof — by an American military unit that is stationed in the prefecture. Rumors spread quickly across social media and the local American military community before being debunked by Japanese bloggers, the Okinawa police and the Japanese media. The incident is an illustration of how “fake news” is created and distributed, leaving little ability to hold anyone to account.
According to the Ryuku Shimpo, a Japanese-operated newspaper serving Okinawa Prefecture, sometime in the early evening of December 23, 2016, a number of messages appeared on the Facebook and Twitter accounts belonging to employees of the Okinawa branch of the Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES), a shopping service aimed at American military service personnel.
Of Okinawa's 1.4 million residents, more than 100,000 are Americans — mostly military personnel and their dependents or Department of Defense civilian employees.
English- and Japanese-language social media posts, reported the Ryuku Shimpo, stated that “an Islamic State proponent is hinting at an act of terrorism near American Village, targeting officials of the U.S. Armed Forces.” American Village is a popular tourist attraction on Okinawa, which is located quite close to several American military bases, and regularly holds fireworks and other events over the Christmas and New Year's winter holidays.
The social media posts included photos taken from the Facebook profile of Ahmad Milad, a used-car salesman who has lived in Okinawa for two years, and in Japan for the past seven. After the Twitter posts were retweeted over 800 times on December 23, a friend reportedly notified Milad, who then traveled to a police station to clear his name and enquire about how to seek damages for defamation.
Shortly afterwards, many of the social media posts disappeared, but not before rumors of a potential terrorist attack in Okinawa attracted the attention of local and national media — and there was still the question about where the rumors started in the first place.
The next day, after various social media posts had been removed, the Okinawa bureau of the Asahi Shimbun, a national daily, tweeted on December 24:
「北谷のアメリカンビレッジにテロリスト？」との情報、沖縄県警の捜査関係者に聞いてみたところ、出回っている「米軍内メール」や顔写真は出所不明（ガセ）で、少なくとも米軍内での情報ではないとのことでした。ただ、昨日から情報が拡散しているので、万が一に備えて警戒活動はしているそうです。
— 朝日新聞那覇総局 (@asahi_okinawa) December 24, 2016
We asked Japanese police about reports that there might be [a] ‘terrorist attack at American Village in Chatan-cho’, as well as about unverified (or fake) photos of a suspect possibly being circulated internally by emails from the American military; it's unlikely the rumors originated internally with the military. Although the likelihood of [a] terrorist attack is low, Japanese police appear to be on a heightened alert.
Local anti-base activists quickly replied to the Asahi Shimbun's tweet, pointing to evidence that the rumors of a terrorist attack actually came from an official US military social media account. They were picked up by Japanese social media users, who alerted news organizations:
@asahi_okinawa
こちらをご確認下さい。米海兵隊の第7通信大隊やAAFESが拡散していました。これが「米軍内」でないなら、なんでしょうか？https://t.co/FjurryYPle
— オスプレイ不安クラブ (@ospreyfuanclub) December 24, 2016
@asahi_okinawa, please check out this link: https://www.facebook.com/ospreyfuanclub/posts/628179370704441
The [US Marines] 7th Communication Battalion and the AAFES spread [the rumors]. If this isn't ‘internal American military communications’, then what is?
Almost immediately after rumors of a terrorist attack had circulated across social media, the Osprey Fuan Club, which is devoted to opposing the deployment of the US Marines’ Osprey aircraft in Okinawa Prefecture (the word “fuan” means “anxiety” in Japanese), posted screenshots of the misinformation on the group's blog and Facebook page.
With multiple screenshots of since-deleted social media posts as proof, the Osprey Fuan Club determined that the source of the rumors — including images of Ahmad Milad that were widely shared on social media — originated from the official Facebook page of the US Marines 7th Communication Battalion, which is stationed in Okinawa. There were also screenshots of official emails from local military leadership that warned of a terrorist on the loose.
一般人をテロリストにでっちあげた米軍 – Osprey Fuan Club https://t.co/6Y4XPpSpju
— オスプレイ不安クラブ (@ospreyfuanclub) December 24, 2016
US military fabricates story about civilian being a terrorist.
The Marines’ social media posts included several photos of Ahmad Milad, as well as the message, “Naval Criminal Investigative Service and Okinawa Police warn that this man may attack U.S. military personnel during the holiday season. Please let your family and friends know about this.”
The post and the photos were then widely shared on social media by American service personnel, military contractors and their family members residing in Okinawa.
Twitter user JENI ngựa nai made screenshots of various posts, which she shared with the Osprey Fuan Club (larger images of screenshots can be viewed here; it's unclear who the woman in the montage is, or if she has any connection whatsoever to fake news about terrorist attacks on Okinawa):
@bsotY5e9W86Mfjk 初めまして。 「7th Communication Battalion の投稿に…A氏の顔写真、そして一枚目にはご丁寧に “A terrorist in Okinawa” とキャプションがうたれていた」ってマリーンの方の投稿画像と同じ物でしょうか pic.twitter.com/6RhVxXucCo
— JENI ngựa nai (@JENI_L_) December 25, 2016
Thanks for letting me join the conversation. Posts being shared on social media are captioning [this man's] photo as ‘a terrorist on Okinawa’. It's the same photo that was shared by the Marines.
Soon, a variety of posts were being shared on social media, warning Okinawa residents to look out for a potential terrorist. Some Japanese social media users started sharing Milad's photo as well:
@bsotY5e9W86Mfjk 出所不明ですが、こういうものまで出回ってるようです
（閲覧者注：内容デマと判明） pic.twitter.com/wdS0lueD7C
— JENI ngựa nai (@JENI_L_) December 25, 2016
I'm not sure where these came from but this sort of stuff is being shared on social media.
NOTE: Contents are confirmed to be fake.
The information went viral outside of the Okinawa community. Evil NCO, a Facebook page and 18,000-strong online community devoted to selling military-themed t-shirts and other kitsch to the US military community around the world, also shared the warning about the “ISIS threat on Okinawa”, along with Milad's photograph. Evil NCO has since removed the post, but a screenshot can be viewed here.
After Milad contacted the police on December 23, social media posts identifying him as a terrorist were removed by the following day. Apart from the Ryuku Shimpo, which immediately published an interview with Ahmed Milad, it took longer for the story to make the Japanese news.
On December 27, the Japanese-language Okinawa Times reported the story of Ahmed Milad and an anticipated ISIS attack in Okinawa as “fake news”  (デマ or “dema”), and that story was then picked up by some Japanese blogs and wire services.
On December 27, Japan Update, a local English-language online publication serving the Okinawa military community, also reported the fake news, using the literal translation of “dema” — “false rumors” — in its headline.
Commenting on the Japan Update article, some readers were left unconvinced of Ahmad Milad's innocence, even while acknowledging that the Okinawa-based American military command was the source of the news.
“It wasn't false [information]. The commands briefed all personnel with official info right before Christmas. I don't know where they're getting that it's false,” said one commenter.
“Before posting news like this that discredits or attempts to discredit the information coming from the military side you should, perhaps, get information from an official source to verify information on both sides. Otherwise you're spreading rumors/false news from the other direction,” said another.
Neither the Marines 7th Communication Battalion nor the III Marine Expeditionary Force, which commands the unit, have publicly acknowledged the social media posts that identified Ahmad Milad as a potential terrorist, despite being implicated with spreading the rumors online.
According to a statement published several days after the terrorism accusations had been debunked, Milad explained that military investigators had visited him on December 23 and asked about his relationship with ISIS, and whether he had been at Araha Beach with a knife.
Generally speaking, US military authority extends only within the physical boundaries of Okinawa's many military installations, so the American investigators had no right to question Milad; it is uncertain how Milad responded to investigators’ questions on December 23.
Since being exonerated, Ahmad Milad is reportedly contemplating suing for defamation, although he has not stated who he will bring legal action against.
This article has been updated.

author: Nevin Thompson


text:
Conspiracy Theories in Brazil Spread After Plane Crash Kills Supreme Court Justice Working Explosive Case · Global Voices
Taisa Sganzerla

Justice Teori Zavascki died on a plane crash in Brazil on January 19. Photo: José Cruz/Agência Brasil CC BY 3.0
The Brazilian Supreme Court justice who was presiding over “Operation Carwash,” a massive corruption probe that has helped jail dozens of business executives and politicians, died in a plane crash on Thursday, leaving Brazilians worrying about the future of the operation, as many fear the crash may not have been an accident.
Despite a lack of evidence suggesting any foul play, many Brazilians have promoted elaborate and largely unsubstantiated theories about Justice Teori Zavascki's, 68, untimely death.
The plane carrying Zavascki crashed into the sea at about 1:45 p.m. as it approached the airport of Paraty, a popular tourist destination, 250 kilometers south of Rio de Janeiro. Four other passengers were also killed: a businessman and friend of Zavascki whose company owned the plane, the pilot, a physiotherapist, and her mother.
Many Brazilians are expressing concerns that the death of Justice Zavascki might derail Operation Carwash. Mr. Zavascki had been the official responsible for deciding when to bring charges against sitting politicians, who can only be tried in the Supreme Court under Brazilian law.
Zavascki recently interrupted his vacation to review the plea bargains of 77 executives at Odebrecht, Brazil's largest construction company and one of the main players in a graft scheme that paid millions of dollars in bribes to managers of the state oil firm Petrobrás in exchange for lucrative contracts.
The plea bargains have explosive potential, as they might implicate a whole new slew of high-level politicians, including even the country's president, Michel Temer.
In a possible conflict of interest, the Regiment of the Supreme Court allows President Temer to name Zavascki's successor, who would automatically take over all his cases. Just yesterday, however, President Temer has said he will only appoint a successor after the Court reassigns the proceedings of Operation Carwash to a sitting justice.
The former justice had planned to validate the plea bargains by February, but his death will likely delay this.
O velório de Teori será o maior encontro de políticos aliviados e silenciosamente felizes da história do Brasil
— PatoFiscalDePrivada (@PatoBrechtiano) 21 de enero de 2017
Teori's funeral will be the largest gathering of relieved and silently happy politicians in the history of Brazil.
The high stakes position of Justice Zavascki, along with the timing of his death, raised alarms across social media in both left- and right-wing bubbles, as politicians from the entire political spectrum have been implicated in the operation since it began in early 2014. As a result, there has been an explosion of conspiracy theories outside the mainstream professional news media.
As Vera Rodrigues, a prolific political commentator on social media, said:
Num país dominado por gângsters, não tem essa de “teoria conspiratória” quando o tema é assassinato de políticos e juízes que atrapalham o caminho.
In a country dominated by gangsters, there is no “conspiracy theory” when it's about assassination of politicians and judges that get in the way.
In a Facebook post from May 2016, the deceased justice's eldest son, Francisco Zavascki, noted that his family had been threatened. The post quickly resurfaced this weekend, after the plane crash. In comments to the press, the son confirmed that his family indeed received threats, though he said foul play in the plane crash remains “unlikely.”
On WhatsApp, all sorts of rumors circulated. One theory claimed that Zavascki was carrying sensitive documents that now would be lost forever. Others accused an army general connected to Brazil's former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, of being behind the sabotage. These theories and others appeared on the Facebook group E-farsas, which is dedicated to crowdsourcing the verification of Internet news and social media rumors.
Perhaps the strangest rumor surfaced on the website JetPhotos.net, a website for aviation aficionados that has an extensive database of aircrafts from around the world.
Curiously, a photo of aircraft that crashed last week — a Beechcraft C90GT King Air, prefix PR-SOM — saw a spike in Internet traffic on Jan. 3, with 1,885 clicks. This contrasts sharply with the previous 30 days, when the same photo was viewed only a handful of times. The first observer to notice this was Claudio Tognolli, a reporter with the Brazilian service of Yahoo.
A strange number spike in views of the logbook of jephotos.net has triggered the theory that the plane was being monitored at least two weeks before the crash. Photo: Screenshot / jetphotos.net
Addressing the rumor, Brazilian YouTuber Lito, who runs a popular channel dedicated to aviation, said that there could be a bug in the logbook of Jetphotos, and as evidence shows that the logbook counts no views at all on the day of the accident, Jan. 19, while there were 21,340 and 5,274 views over the next two days, respectively.
These bizarre reports spread fast on obscure websites — especially sites that cater to Brazil's right-wing alternative media. The Monitor of Political Debate, a project that tracks the most shared political news on Facebook, showed that that four out of the six most-shared articles on Facebook over the two days after the attack originated on right-wing alternative blogs famous for spreading questionable, unverified information.
Meanwhile, the mainstream press has downplayed the veracity of such conspiracy theories, refusing to report even the widely circulated rumor about JetPhotos. On Facebook, professor Pablo Ortellado described this lack of engagement from the mainstream press as misguided.
A grande imprensa, por “responsabilidade”, não menciona a hipótese de que o avião possa ter sido sabotado enquanto não surgem evidências concretas. Ela trata do assunto como se a possibilidade não pudesse ser discutida a sério, desprezando a preocupação do país inteiro. Enquanto isso, o acesso à má imprensa dispara, já que só ela está discutindo diretamente aquilo com que todo mundo está preocupado. Essa postura é pura arrogância. A imprensa supõe que (ainda) é a detentora da verdade social e que se ela não deu, a coisa não existe. Mas se isso algum dia já foi verdade, seguramente não é mais. (…) A culpa não é só do algoritmo do Facebook e da polarização. A imprensa precisa atender, sem petulância, a preocupação das pessoas comuns. Está na hora da boa imprensa discutir a possibilidade de sabotagem no avião, mesmo que seja para dizer que é uma hipótese improvável e sem grande apoio em evidências.
The mainstream press, out of “responsibility,” doesn't mention the hypothesis of the plane being sabotaged without concrete evidence. It treats the subject as if the possibility couldn't be discussed seriously, dismissing the preoccupation of the entire country. Meanwhile, access to the bad press spikes, since it's the only one that is discussing what everyone is worrying about. This attitude is purely arrogant. The press supposes it retains the social truth and, if it didn't report on it, it doesn't exist. But if this has ever been true, surely it isn't anymore. […] The fault isn't just of Facebook's algorithm and polarization. The press needs to attend, without arrogance, the preoccupations of common people. It's about time the good press discussed the possibility of sabotage on the plane, even if it's to say that it's an unlikely hypothesis and without much support from evidence.
So far, the only “non-speculative evidence” is the report of one eyewitness to the crash: a boatman from Paraty, who says he saw smoke coming from the wing of the plane as it fell from the sky.
But in a interview in El País, an expert on plane-crash investigations in Brazil said amateur observers are likely to see smoke by mistake in the airflow triggered by a plane as it flies through a raincloud. He also highlighted the lack of infrastructure at Paraty airport, which is virtually limited to a runway, as well as the weather conditions at the time of the attempted landing, concluding that the possibility of sabotage is low, though it shouldn't be dismissed outright.
Brazilian federal police say they will conduct a full investigation of the accident, including an analysis of the plane's black boxes, which were retrieved from the ocean by the Brazilian Air Force.

author: Taisa Sganzerla


text:
India’s Education Minister Says Cow Is the Only Animal to Inhale and Exhale Oxygen · Global Voices
Kisholoy Mukherjee

The cow is, quite possibly, the most talked about animal in India. Image from Flickr by Rod Waddington. CC BY-SA 2.0
The Indian cow is apparently omnipotent, or so it would seem from the latest comment made by the country's education minister, Vasudev Devnani. According to him, the cow is the only animal that can inhale and exhale oxygen. He reportedly went on to claim that anyone who goes near the cow will be cured of diseases like the common cold. This obviously outrageous remark is the latest addition to the long list of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party‘s (BJP) obsessions with the cow.
Social media soon followed with trolls and hilarious tweets:
Cow only animal that inhales, exhales oxygen: Rajasthan Min/ I am convinced Edu Min's are not required to b educated or enlightened
— Dr Arvind Mayaram (@MayaramArvind) January 16, 2017
Air Hostess: In the event of a decompression, an oxygen mask will automatically appear in front…
Bhakt: I need Cow
Air Hostess Fainted. pic.twitter.com/Zdv13tEmEK
— Dr. Sania ?? (@DrSaniaMaan) January 16, 2017
A  t̶r̶e̶e̶ cow giving out oxygen. pic.twitter.com/spixjtNLLE
— kiduva (@kiduva) January 16, 2017
However, The Logical Indian also pointed out the reality of the situation:
There are many who believe this and share the information on WhatsApp and Social Media.
Reddit user Completeturnaround commented:
Technically that is correct. It does breathe in air containing~0.04%co2 and does exhale our air with about 15% o2. Unfortunately so do all mammals.
What sirjee missed was in that conversion process the cow sure does make a mean steak of itself.
The BJP is accused of Hindu majoritarianism and one of its foremost leaders (now the country's prime minister), Narendra Modi, was the chief minister of the state of Gujarat when riots broke out between Hindus and Muslims. The BJP and its close ally, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), along with other allied organizations, have not only been accused of manufacturing those riots, they have been consistently criticized for their intolerance.
Ever since Modi became prime minister, riding on BJP's landslide election victory in 2014, the country has been witness to several hate crimes committed in the name of protecting the cow. Several incidents point towards the politicization of cow slaughter taking a dangerous, communal hue. In September 2015, a Muslim man was killed in the state of Uttar Pradesh by cow protection vigilantes, on the suspicion that he had consumed beef. In July of 2016, some men from the socially marginalized Dalit community were thrashed for skinning a dead cow, which also happened to be their ancestral profession. This incident — a video of which went viral and shocked the nation's conscience — was followed by massive protests by Dalits against the injustices towards their community. These demonstrations were carried out in the city of Una, in Gujarat state.
The prime minister himself was forced to admit that cow-vigilantism was becoming a menace, saying, “I feel really angry at the way some people have opened shops in the name of cow protection. I have seen that some people commit anti-social activities through the night, but act as cow protectors by day.”
While the cow is considered holy by many Hindus, it is also consumed as food by many other Indians, including both Hindus and Muslims. The BJP and its allied Hindutva forces have been accused by secularists for not respecting India's multicultural fabric, which includes diverse communities with differing religious beliefs, cultural practices and ways of living.
The Twitter page “Truth of Gujarat”, which is highly critical of Narendra Modi and the Hindu right wing forces, mocked the education minister's statement with the following post:
Trials have started at Nagpur RSS HQ after Rajasthan Education Minister revealed that cow is the only animal that inhales & exhales oxygen. pic.twitter.com/qAWuCzdfSK
— Truth Of Gujarat (@TruthOfGujarat) January 16, 2017
Prasad Ravindranath commented on Facebook:
When will this nonsense end? Or will it end at all? Each claim appears more ludicrous than the previous one. [..] Already scientific temper is poor in India and such rubbish only makes it worse.

author: Kisholoy Mukherjee


text:
Moscow’s Top Cancer Hospital Under Pressure Amidst Drive for Health Care Privatization · Global Voices
Isaac Webb

Moscow City Oncology Hospital No. 62. Source: http://onco62.ru/history/.
On November 8, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin signed an order into law stripping Moscow City Oncological Hospital No. 62, one of Russia's most well-regarded cancer hospitals, of its status as an autonomous institution. In the technocratic parlance of Moscow city officials, the hospital had been “optimized,” coming under the budgetary purview of the city government, and ostensibly improving the institution's efficiency.
But to many, the reclassification of Hospital No. 62 seemed less like an optimization than a step towards closure—part of a broader movement towards the privatization of the Russian health care system, which is supposed to provide free health services to the country’s 140 million citizens. Indeed, less than three weeks after Sobyanin signed the order, the hospital's chief physician resigned and doctors began wondering about their institution's future. With private hospitals replacing public hospitals around Moscow, and with remaining public hospitals becoming increasingly overburdened and underfunded, many question how long the existing system can hold out.
Doctors at Hospital No. 62 began to question the wisdom of—and the motivation behind—the “optimization” almost immediately. Rather than cutting costs, the reorganization seemed to be increasing them, perhaps most importantly, changing how the hospital is able to procure medicine. As an autonomous institution, Hospital No. 62 could solicit tender offers from pharmaceutical companies and negotiate the price of medicine directly. Now that it has been integrated into the Moscow city budget, however, purchases must be made by Moscow’s Department of Health.
Moscow City Oncology Hospital No. 62. Source: http://onco62.ru/history/.
In December 8 interview entitled “Everything will be fine, except care for the sick,”Anatoly Makhson, the chief physician at Hospital No. 62, said that the reclassification had resulted in an increase in the cost of medicine by several times; the involvement of the Department of Health in the procurement process, Makhson said, had created a kind of “cartel” that could sell medicine far above market value.
After an ugly, public feud with Moscow's vice mayor for social development, Leonid Pechatnikov (who was in charge of the restructuring), Makhson, who had served as chief physician since 1990, resigned from his post on November 23. A month later, he filed appeal directly to Aleksandr Bortnikov, the head Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), asking that he review the Department of Health’s expenditures on medicine. According to Makhson, Hospital No. 62 used to be able to buy a single dose of Novotaks for 2,900 rubles, but the Department of Health now buys the medicine for 25,400 rubles. This extra cost, Makhson says, reduced the number of patients that his hospital could treat.
«Завышение закупочных цен привело к дефициту противоопухолевых препаратов отпускаемых по льготным рецептам в аптечных пунктах города и как следствие приведет к увеличению смертности от онкологических заболеваний»
Price increases have lead to a deficit of antineoplastic drugs being prescribed by pharmacies in Moscow and as a result will lead to an increase in cancer mortality rates.
Shortly after news of Hospital No. 62's optimization was announced, Stalic Khankishiev, a celebrity chef in Russia, wrote in a lengthy post on Live Journal that the hospital had cured his pregnant daughter’s cancer and saved her life, and called for the decision to strip the hospital of its autonomy to be reversed:
Такие больницы не закрывать надо и не оптимизировать, а распространять их опыт…Представляете, на всю Европу есть всего две лаборатории, рейтинг которых выше, чем у лаборатории 62-й больницы. И вот такое надо оптимизировать, да? Неужели эти люди не понимают, что разрушать такую больницу равноценно строительству газовой камеры?!
“These kinds of hospitals do not need to be closed or optimized; rather, their experience needs to be reproduced…Imagine, across all of Europe there are only two laboratories who have higher ratings than the laboratory at Hospital No. 62. Is this what needs to be optimized?…Don’t these people realize that to destroy such a hospital is equivalent to building a gas chamber?
Khankishiev’s post spread quickly on social media; at the time of this writing, the post had been shared more than 26,000 times on Facebook.
Doctors and activists soon joined in Khankishiev’s protest: Ekaterina Ananeva, whose mother was a patient at Hospital No. 62, started a Change.org petition to make the hospital autonomous again. The petition is currently 559 signatures short of its 10,000-signature goal.
As criticism swelled, Pechatnikov accused Hospital No. 62 of having bought expired drugs to keep their costs low—an accusation that Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin joined his deputy in levying. Further, Pechatnikov argued that the rise in the cost of medicine was also the result of a directive from the Ministry of the Economy that had changed purchasing regulations.
Despite Makhson’s complaints and Khankishiev’s advocacy, however, the hospital may be heading towards closure, according to Semen Galperin, a neurologist who used to work at Hospital No. 11, an oncological facility in Moscow that was shut down in 2014. In a January 19 interview with Sobesednik.ru, Galperin argued that the closure of Hospital No. 62 would further diminish the city’s public health care system and create market space for expensive private hospitals, including the European Medical Center (EMC), which is located not far from Hospital No. 62.
…62-я онкобольница – прямой конкурент: кто пойдет лечиться за деньги, если есть возможность получить хорошее лечение бесплатно? К тому же я не уверен, что где-нибудь еще найдутся врачи уровня Даниила Львовича Строяковского (химиотерапевт в 62-й онкобольнице. – Ред.). Ситуация очень похожа на ту, какая была с 63-й больницей. Она тоже соседствовала с ЕМЦ, и ее – под видом «оптимизации» – прикрыли в 2012-м. У нас вся реформа здравоохранения идет к одному: к переводу государственного здравоохранения в частное.
…Hospital No. 62. is a direct competitor of the EMC: who is going to pay for treatment if it's possible to get good care for free? I'm not sure that you'll find doctors of the caliber of Daniil Lvovich Stroyakovsky [a chemotherapist at Hospital No. 62] anywhere else. The situation is very similar to that of Hospital No. 63. It also neighbored the EMC and, in the name of optimization, was closed in 2012. All of our health care reforms are headed in one direction: the privatization of state health care.

author: Isaac Webb


text:
The Long Road of Burundi’s Diplomatic Isolation · Global Voices
Liam Anderson

Burundian troops board AMISOM plane. June 28, 2016. By AMISOM Photo / Ramadan Mohamed.
Over the past several months, Burundi’s ongoing political-security crisis has exacerbated diplomatic tensions and local economic decline.
In mid-2015, the repression of protests against the president’s controversial third term led to a failed coup and armed rebellions, sparking a broad crackdown on armed rebels but also against human rights activists and members of the peaceful opposition and the media. Hundreds of people have been killed, many more detained or tortured, and 328,000 displaced. Pierre-Claver Mbonimpa, a rights activist living in Belgium since an assassination attempt in 2015, described how Burundi's violence shifted in 2016 from public slaughter to less conspicuous forms of authoritarianism, such as disappearances.
In October, after a preliminary examination into rights abuses, Bujumbura unprecedentedly announced the country's withdrawal from the International Criminal Court, followed by South Africa and The Gambia. Burundi's ambassador to The Hague said “the people” demanded it, though diaspora immediately protested the decision to leave the court, where some Burundians have submitted claims.
Pro-government protests have vocally denounced these criticisms. According to “SOS Médias Burundi” — an underground journalist collective founded after independent radio stations were forced off the airwaves in 2015 — some people were pressured to attend protests. With mass displacement and restricted media and political expression, it is difficult to measure popular support for either the government or its opponents.
#Burundi #Sindumuja terrorists succeeded and assassinating officials tried to kill @willynyamitwe. #Brussels and #EU supported them …
— Alex Nahimana (@alexnahimana) 19 décembre 2016
En 2020, la limite de deux mandats présidentiels sautera pour laisser place à une forme de monarchie-républicaine. #Burundi #Mkapa.
— J. Ndorere (@joendorere) 9 décembre 2016
In 2020 [when the next elections are scheduled] the limit of two presidential terms will disappear, leaving a form of republican-monarchy.
The government ended cooperation with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights following a damning UN human rights report, which the state rejected as biased. Burundi's withdrawal also followed a resolution to establish a commission of inquiry, named on Nov. 22. Ministers also requested the replacement of another UN envoy, Jamal Benomar.
Officials said Western criticisms convey neo-colonialism and a hidden agenda to control Burundi’s nickel reserves. In November, the Iwacu newspaper translated, from Kirundi to French, a speech by the ruling party’s secretary-general, who called Belgium “the enemy,” stoking ethnic divisions and EU-Burundi tensions. The speech also accused Belgium of involvement in the failed coup.
Presidential Communications Counsellor Willy Nyamitwe denounced an EU “war of slander and destabilization,” and the president said all cooperation with Rwanda and Belgium could come to a halt. Frictions also arose in December, when European ambassadors missed a government meeting.
L'UE a perdu toute crédibilité pour avoir été derrière la déstabilisation du #Burundi. https://t.co/ruQU7YJ4CY via @RFIAfrique
— Willy Nyamitwe (@willynyamitwe) 5 octobre 2016
The EU has lost all credibility for having been behind the destabilization of Burundi
Internationally-mediated talks, headed by Tanzania’s former President Benjamin Mkapa, have been unproductive, with tepid engagement and officials refusing to meet the CNARED opposition coalition.
In December, Mkapa unexpectedly said opponents should no longer contest President Nkurunziza's third term, insisting that parties accused of committing acts of violence in the country's recent civil conflict must be barred from participating in the peace talks.
This undermined East African Community (EAC) talks, and CNARED leaders then rejected him as mediator. Some members still agreed to meet him, however, revealing possibly deep divisions in the opposition. If talks proceed with the participation of only the “compliant” opposition, core issues are likely to go unaddressed.
We must regret for having wasted our time listening 2 @WMkapa,a man who just called criminals.We learned ou lessons.Goodbye EAC mediation1/2
— MINANI Jérémie (@minanijeremie) 9 décembre 2016
With little progress in any mediation, compromise remains elusive, making reenergized political violence a possibility. Indeed, on Jan. 1, Environment Minister Emmanuel Niyonkuru was assassinated, following a failed attempt weeks earlier on Communications Minister Willy Nyamitwe.
Officials looking for diplomatic support were heartened by African Union (AU) President Idriss Deby declaring the third term legitimate, diverging from the AU Commission. Indeed, Iwacu highlighted that Bujumbura’s isolation is relative, where Russia and China hamper UN Security Council pressure. South Africa and DRC’s presidents Jacob Zuma and Joseph Kabila have seemed sympathetic, although heavy domestic criticism of both leaders could make this uncertain in the longer term.
An armed clash between DRC troops and possibly Burundian troops or insurgents could strain relations.
Bujumbura has been heavily dependent on international aid, particularly supplies from Belgium and the EU. Sanctions have hit government budgets hard, triggering a standoff over payments for participation in Somalia’s AMISOM military mission.
Even diplomatically supportive states have not offered much economic assistance. While this may affect senior officials little, it could test citizens’ patience, if austerity budget shortfalls worsen hardships already exacerbated by the crisis, such as food shortages, high inflation, high unemployment, funding problems with schools and infrastructure, or new taxes. On Dec. 29, for example, Bujumbura city employees protested wage arrears.
Officials and pro-government demonstrators have accused critics of “spreading division” and destabilization. The Senate supported a counter-report to the UN report, and its president asked Belgium to not cooperate with “subversive” activists.
In January last year, leaders called the AU’s proposed peacekeepers an invasion, before the AU backtracked, and in August a communique rejected a UN police force proposed in French-led Security Council Resolution 2303. Burundi cited sovereignty concerns, as well as Belgium and France’s supposed interest in reviving past imperialist goals. Officials also accused Canada of supporting invasion plots.
Bujumbura accuses Rwanda of aiding rebel attacks, often with little evidence, although leaked UN communications did previously implicate the Rwandan state in training insurgents. Relations have collapsed, with many Burundian refugees in Rwanda, trade and travel restrictions, and a reignited territorial dispute.
5. Stark reality: #Rwanda has played a big role in the destabilization of #Burundi. I gave evidences during the Oslo Conference. ? pic.twitter.com/zX9XA0Gl7h
— Willy Nyamitwe (@willynyamitwe) 24 octobre 2016
Analyst Thierry Vircoulon argues that officials are using foreign scapegoats as a distraction from domestic economic problems and political divisions. Government crackdowns and hardline diplomacy are in the name of sovereignty and “the people”, which labels their opponents as opposing the nation.
The government has held its own talks, as an alternative to international mediation. International Crisis Group, however, has described this effort as a “sham” — particularly the regime-friendly report recommending constitutional changes that consolidate CNDD-FDD-Nkurunziza rule, including the removal of the two-term presidential limit and a reduction to the postwar peace agreement Arusha Accords’ importance. The president echoed this, evoking a possible a fourth term, which opponent Jean Minani says could be a play at ruler-for-life status.
Much international attention is elsewhere, and divisions within the UN and AU have led to inertia. The EAC theoretically has economic leverage, but neighboring governments are hesitant and preoccupied with domestic matters.
The “frozen” status quo of low-visibility political violence and economic hardship may continue indefinitely, despite the response efforts. Despite serious economic and budgetary problems, Bujumbura appears prepared to wait out the pressure, and more sanctions, along with the insurgency, may only reinforce this siege mentality.
International efforts for dialogue and compromise have been ineffective, but other options exist. Supporting the country's independent media could help improve access to reliable information. Also, deploying previously accepted rights and police observers could reduce violence and impunity.

author: Liam Anderson


text:
Worried About Its Future, This Former East German City Recruited Syrian Refugees · Global Voices
PRI/PRX's The World

Golzow mayor Frank Schütz, left, leans over to whisper a question to Rasha Haimoud during a holiday concert. She and her husband, Ahmad Haimoud, are refugees who settled in the small former East German town after escaping the war in their native Syria. Credit: Shane McMillan. Used with permission.
This story by Matthew Bell originally appeared on PRI.org on January 10, 2017. It is republished here as part of a partnership between PRI and Global Voices.
Many towns in the former East Germany have told the federal government that they would prefer not to be asked to resettle refugees, who’ve entered Germany by the hundreds of thousands in the last couple of years.
But not Golzow.
The night I visited the village with a population of about 800, five or so miles from Germany’s far eastern border with Poland, the annual Christmas concert was happening. Every seat in the tiny Lutheran church in the town center was filled.
For two members of the audience, this was something very new. Ahmad and Rasha Haimoud are a married couple with four kids. As a Muslim couple, originally from northwestern Syria, it’s unsurprising that they’d never spent any time in a church before.
A member of Golzow's Protestant Church greets Rasha Haimoud following a holiday concert. Haimoud's family is one of three Syrian refugee families that moved to the village in the last year. The town invited the Muslim families to their annual Christmas concert as a sign of welcome to the rural community on the Polish border. Credit: Shane McMillan. Used with permission.
The Haimouds moved to Golzow back in February 2016, so this was their first Christmas in their new hometown. When someone asked, they said they didn’t have a Christmas tree at home. But they were planning to get their children presents. And so were some of their new neighbors.
After the performance, Ahmad and Rasha mingled with some of their neighbors. There was an awkward moment when Rasha realized most of the snacks include pork. They told me they make the two-hour drive to Berlin twice a week to get halal meat and other foods they’re used to putting on the table.
But they said they are settling in well. They are both taking German language classes. Rasha said she hopes to go back to university and Ahmad plans to get work laying tile. They told me, all in all, they feel very lucky.
Ahmad Haimoud speaks with Golzow mayor Frank Schütz following a holiday concert and reception at the village's small Protestant Church. Schütz says he was happy to accept the families into their community as it allowed the city to fill then-empty apartments, avoid converting a nearby sports-facility into a refugee shelter, and help to keep the local school open. Credit: Shane McMillan. Used with permission.
“We are very thankful to Germany,” Ahmad said in Arabic, as Rasha translated into German. “We came here for the future of our kids,” she added.
It turns out that Golzow is thankful too.
The Haimouds are one of three Syrian families who relocated to this village in the past year or so. They all have lots of kids. And together, the refugees are helping to save the one place that makes this small German village somewhat famous.
If you mention Golzow, people all over Germany will know about the elementary school there. That’s because of a TV show.
From 1961 until 2007, the filmmaker Winfried Junge created a series of documentaries called “The Children of Golzow,” in which 18 residents of Golzow were filmed at regular intervals from childhood into adulthood. The school, which last year was in danger of not having enough students in some grades to hold classes, played a big role in the series. Credit: Shane McMillan. Used with permission.
In 1961 an East German film crew started following a class of first graders. The documentary film project aired on German television for decades, right up until 2007. It followed the same group of kids into adulthood, starting at Golzow elementary.
But all that notoriety could not save the school from a harsh reality. Much of the former East Germany has been in economic decline. And the population of Golzow had dwindled to the point where it looked like it wouldn’t be able to sustain its only elementary school.
“The problem goes back to the days after the [Berlin] wall came down,” said Gaby Thomas, the director of the elementary school, where she also teaches English.
“The big agricultural commune here closed. People lost their jobs. Younger folks started moving to the cities, and suddenly there were empty houses,” Thomas said.
Last year, there were barely enough kids for a full first-grade class.
Thomas said that she and the town mayor, Frank Schütz, decided it was clear what they needed to do: go find some refugee families with school-aged kids to move to Golzow.
Students work on an assignment at the elementary school in Golzow. Credit: Shane McMillan. Used with permission.
Just ahead of the holiday break, I stopped by Thomas’s fourth-grade English class. It was a lively — and full — classroom. And that’s thanks in part to two girls from Syria.
Thomas said her two Syrian students are doing very well in school. They’ve been here less than a year and they’re speaking German with ease.
Gabriela Thomas, director of the elementary school in Golzow gives a student a hug between classes in the main hallway. Thomas says that the children of the refugee families are already fitting into her school very well. Credit: Shane McMillan. Used with permission.
A total of eight Syrian kids helped fill enough seats to keep up enrollment and maintain class sizes. This was especially important after state authorities raised the prospect of closing the school.
The Syrian families are living in houses that were empty not long ago, and they don’t have to pay rent for now. Mayor Schütz said, at first, some of the locals were against the idea of letting Muslim refugees move in.
But he said they’ve come around.
“We have given the refugees a new home,” Schütz said. “But they saved our school. And they brought the laughter of children to our village. So really, they have given us more than we have given them.”
Frank Hessenland contributed to this report.


text:
American Traveler Unearths Decades-Old Photos of Hiroshima and Japan From the 1970s · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

An informal settlement, or slum, located just across the Aioi Bridge to the north of the so-called “Atomic Bomb Dome” in Hiroshima, circa 1972. Photo by Larry Rosensweig. Used with permission.
After rediscovering a treasure trove of photographs taken more than 40 years ago, one American man has created a blog that provides a unique insight into life during the “Japanese miracle,” when the country reconstructed itself after World War II.
The blog “Larry in Japan 40 Years Ago” features Larry Rosensweig's photos and journal entries from his time in Japan in the late 1960s and early 1970s:
In 1968-69 I lived in Sendai, Japan, as a Rotary Exchange Student at Ikuei Gakuen High School. In 1973-74 I lived in Hiroshima and worked for a company, then called Mazda Unyu, which transported Mazda vehicles and auto parts. I kept a journal both times, recently rediscovered along with some black-and-white negatives that had been stored away in a box for decades.
Larry Rosensweig is the founding director of the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in Delray Beach, Florida. Since his days as exchange student more than forty years ago, Rosensweig has been decorated with Japan's Order of the Rising Sun and Gold Rays with Rosette for his contributions to the understanding of Japanese culture among Americans.
Some of Larry's most striking images were taken during his time in Hiroshima in the early 1970s. In one blog post, Larry shares a series a photos from an informal settlement, or slum, that existed in the heart of the city after the atomic bombing and the end of the war:
Mr. Toda [in whose house I was living] explained that the area had been government land into which people moved after the war. At the time no one could have begrudged anybody's converting unused land into badly-needed shelter. However, once established there it became impossible to evict people from their shacks and they remain to this day.
Caption: “What I saw was an incredible maze of tightly packed, decaying hovels peppered with piles of uncollected trash, drying laundry, assorted bicycles, tricycles and beat-up cars.” Photo by Larry Rosenweig. Used with permission.
You can view more photos of the Hiroshima neighborhood, along with commentary, here.
Larry also posts some fascinating photos of office life in Japan when he worked for a transport company that specialized in shipping newly-manufactured automobiles around the world. He got the job through a family connection:
Eizo Toda, the father of an exchange student (Sekio Toda) who had lived for several months with my parents offered me a low-level, part-time job with his company, then called Mazda Unyu Hiroshima, whose primary business was transporting Mazda cars, trucks and parts both domestically and internationally.
On his blog, Rosensweig includes excerpts from the journal he kept during his time in Japan during the early 1970s. In a blog post titled “My Days on the Job in Hiroshima,” he describes what it was like to work in a Japanese office in the days before computers:
Caption: “Inoue sorting cards.” Photo by Larry Rosenweig. Used with permission.
The Gyomuka’s main job involved organizing the actual shipments of vehicles and parts. In a time just before computers took over this kind of work, it required a fair amount of labor to ensure that a specific vehicle moved efficiently from Toyo Kogyo’s Mazda assembly line to a ship headed for the port in the United States or elsewhere that would get it to the consumer or dealer who had ordered it. Every day Inoue-san mesmerized me as he shuffled and sorted cards representing vehicles.
Larry also took pictures of his travels around Japan in 1972 and 1973, when he journeyed widely throughout Japan's four main islands: Kyushu, Honshu, Shikoku, and Hokkaido.
You can see all these photos here. Below, you'll find an image Rosensweig recorded of a seaside village near the famous Shiroyone Senmaida terraced rice fields, on the northwest coast of the Noto Peninsula:
Caption: “As I made my way south and west along the Japan Sea Coast, I spent a day hiking by myself on the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture where I came upon this isolated hamlet, gorgeous rocky coastline, and seaside rice field.”  Photo by Larry Rosenweig. Used with permission.
Larry's blog features a variety of posts from his time in Japan, including the day he earned his black belt in judo, and what he witnessed of childhood in Hiroshima.


text:
China Officially Outlaws Unauthorised VPNs · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

The Great Firewall of China. Image from Digital Trends.
China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology says it will ban “illegal services” that carry out cross-border operations, including virtual private networks (VPNs), until March 2018.
A 17 January announcement on the Ministry's website reads:
各基础电信企业应加强线路资源管理，严格审核租用方资质和用途，不得向无相应电信业务经营许可的企业和个人提供用于经营 IDC、ISP、CDN 等业务的网络基础设施和 IP 地址、带宽等网络接入资源。
All Internet Service Providers [will be required] to review and censor their clients’ usage of server resources and they should stop providing service to companies and individuals who do not have license to operate Internet Data Center (IDC), Internet Service Provider (ISP) and content distribution network (CDN) and run services that provide resources for internet services, IP addresses and connections.
未经电信主管部门批准，不得自行建立或租用专线（含虚拟专用网络 VPN）等其他信道开展跨境经营活动。
Without [the Ministry's] approval, no one shall set up or rent special lines (including VPNs) to carry out cross-border operations.
The new regulation implies that all VPN providers have to register and report to the authorities. If they fail to do this, they'll be viewed as illegal and subject to punishment.
Shanghai-based IT expert Li Yi explained that the move is intended to further “purify” the domestic network. He told state-affiliated media outlet Global Times:
Some multinational companies in China such as Microsoft Corp have a reasonable need to communicate with their headquarters overseas via VPNs, but sometimes these corporations or individual [employees] will browse overseas Internet pages out of illegal motivations. In this regard, the new rules are extremely important.
“Illegal motivations” include getting access to overseas websites which are blocked in mainland China and hosting servers for websites with domain names registered outside China.
According to the revised Internet Domain Name Management Rules, all websites hosted in China must register their domain names with authorized domestic domain name service providers in order to gain access to the Chinese network. Companies that fail to do this are simply not connected to China's domestic network.
The Chinese government has been blocking some VPN services in China since 2015, but the current policy has officially made unregistered VPN and web-hosting services illegal.
According to the Global Web Index (2016 Q4):
over 90 million online adults in China have used one to access restricted social platforms.
Major social media platforms including Twitter and Facebook are blocked in China. But sources from Twitter have stated that the platform has 10 million active users in China, the majority of whom rely on VPNs to access Twitter's website. The figures also imply that the number of critical minds in China is expanding despite the government’s determination to create a highly censored domestic network.
Last week at the World Economic Forum, Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed that China would defend globalization. As Twitterer @chowhf noted free information flow has nothing to do with globalization in China:
So ironic. Globalisation doesn't need vpn,tool of subverting China's government. https://t.co/H5RcWj9XEQ
— chowhf (@chowhf) January 23, 2017
In China's tech community, many expressed the worries that China is closing its door to the world:
Is such regulation even constitutional?
Shutting the door to the world, China is becoming north Korea.
This is not about management. They are worried that Chinese people see the real China.
Of course, the regulation only applies to “illegal VPNs” — the technology will not be eliminated entirely. For example, China's civilization army will still be able to use VPNs to spread political propaganda outside the Great Fire Wall.
As Twitter user wentommy pointed out:
工信部要严管VPN，我们D吧搞活动会受影响么？去年1月20日几千万青少年参与翻墙，大型群体爱国事件啊。不过有了组织支持，应该就可以放心大胆了。 若问底气的源头打哪儿来？对不起！我们的总后台是……毛主席！❤ pic.twitter.com/3CC783azIb
— 文涛 (@wentommy) January 22, 2017
MIIT has stepped in to control VPN services, what will be the impact to online groups? Last year on January 20 [after Tsai Ing-wen won the Taiwan president election], millions of youths climbed over the wall to perform patriotism. With the support of party organizations, they can act boldly. Who is behind us? our leader is… Chairman Mao!

author: Oiwan Lam


text:
Filipino Farmers and Activists March for Justice and ‘La La Land Reform’ · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Hundreds of farmers and their supporters marched near the presidential palace to demand justice and land reform. One of the leaders in front of the rally is the government's incumbent land reform minister. Photo from the Facebook page of Agrarian Reform Secretary Rafael Mariano
In 1987, 13 protesting farmers were killed near the Philippine presidential palace. Dubbed as the ‘Mendiola Massacre’, it became a symbol of state brutality and landlord dominance in the country’s politics.
Thirty years later, hundreds of farmers and activists returned to the scene of the massacre to call for justice and to press for the implementation of a ‘genuine’ land reform program.
Farmers have lambasted the government's land reform program as bogus and pro-landlord. They wanted it replaced with a new program which would allow the free distribution of lands to small farmers. In particular, they are targeting the large plantations owned by foreign corporations and powerful political clans.
One of those who joined the commemorative march on January 20 is the current government’s land reform minister. Some say it is poetic justice because he was one of the farmers who survived the Mendiola Massacre in 1987.
Peasant groups also raised several issues during the activity such as the slave-like conditions in big plantations, the use of private armies by some landlords to displace farmers, the killing of activists and other leaders supportive of the campaign for land reform, and the backward state of Philippine agriculture.
Philippine agriculture remains backward while farmers belong to the poorest sector in society. Photo from the Facebook page of the National Federation of Sugar Workers in Negros.
The groups also noted that clashes between farmers and landlords have intensified in recent years as the latter continue to evade the law mandating the distribution of vast landholdings to small farmers.
“Intruders will be shot, survivors will be shot again.” A plantation owner posted this sign to drive away tenants despite a government order awarding the land to small farmers. Photo from Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura.
Some activists expressed support to the campaign of farmers by organizing a music event called ‘La La Land Reform Now!’ whose poster is inspired by the Hollywood movie ‘La La Land':
La La Land Reform Now: A concert for farmers, with proceeds going to @kmp_phl and @AnakpawisPL. pic.twitter.com/OeMu40JggO
— Tonyo Cruz (@tonyocruz) January 19, 2017
Below are some photos of the January 20 march:
Women farmers joined the march near the presidential palace. They hold placards demanding the implementation of land reform and the cessation of violence in rural communities. Photo from the Facebook page of the Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura
A mural depicting the struggle of Filipino farmers for land and justice. Photo from the Facebook page of Carl Philip Ong Leyson
Activists commemorated the 30th anniversary of the ‘Mendiola Massacre’ by calling for the passage of a ‘genuine agrarian reform bill’. Photo from the Facebook page of Carl Philip Ong Leyson
‘Stop killing peasants who feed the nation.’ Farmers decry the killing of an activist leader in Negros Island. Photo emailed by Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura

author: Mong Palatino


text:
Hardliners Pressuring Iran’s President Rouhani to Ban Popular Telegram App, This Time for 2017 Election · Global Voices
Center for Human Rights in Iran

The Iranian government has announced plans to regulate social media channels with more than 5000 followers. As the largest social network application in Iran, this is thought to directly effect Telegram.
A version of this post originally appeared on iranhumanrights.org.
A source close to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (ICHRI) in Iran says that Tehran Prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi has called on President Hassan Rouhani to block access to Telegram, Iran’s most widely used mobile messaging application, ahead of the presidential election scheduled for May 19, 2017.
Rouhani has yet to respond to the request, an informed source told the Campaign, but his administration refused to comply with similar pressure from hardliners to block popular apps, including Telegram—which has more than 20 million users in Iran—ahead of the country’s February 2016 elections for Parliament and the Assembly of Experts.
ICHRI has also learned that since 2014, the Office of the Supreme Leader, the Judiciary, the Qom Theological Seminary and the police have called on the Rouhani government to limit or ban access to Telegram inside Iran because it allows users to share content deemed by hardliners as anti-revolutionary, immoral and anti-religious. In other words, they want Telegram banned because they believe it enables domestic political dissent.
“Military institutions as well as radical seminaries in [the city of] Qom have put the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology under a lot of pressure to block access to Telegram,” an informed source told the Campaign in June 2016. “But despite these pressures, President Hassan Rouhani’s moderate administration has been able to ward off criticism about allowing Iranians to have uncensored access to Telegram and other messaging apps.”
Since mid-2016, judicial officials have announced the forced closure of thousands of Iranian-owned Telegram channels and summoned dozens of people to police stations or court for posting allegedly objectionable material, including photos and news items.
The app enables users to create membership-based online content channels and groups.
On January 18, 2017, judicial officials in Iran’s Hormozgan Province said they had shut down nearly 80 channels on Telegram and arrested 32 people for managing those channels to allegedly “spread lies, disturb public order, create fear and promote immoral and anti-cultural material.”
A reference to “immoral” content by Iranian officials is usually an indirect way of saying pornography, but in this case the Islamic Republic’s censorship campaigns are not limited to sexual content.
Posting photos of women without the hair-concealing hijab or of “Western” fashion, publicly criticizing the supreme leader, or peacefully campaigning against the death penalty—all easily achievable through the use of social media apps—are just a few of the activities that can land people in Iran in prison.
In December 2016, the country’s Cyber Police (FATA) officially required all Iranian-owned Telegram channels with more than 5,000 followers to seek permits before February 25, 2017 or face prosecution. The online registration system was created to assist state agencies in monitoring the activities of Telegram channel owners and their followers by producing a detailed map of users and their affiliations.
“In the last meeting of the Supreme Cyberspace Council, it was decided that those who own news channels on social media with a certain number of followers should get a permit,” said the Rouhani-appointed telecommunications minister, Mahmoud Vaezi, on December 5, 2016.
The following day, Prosecutor General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri slammed the Council and other officials for not doing enough to control the unfettered exchange of information on the internet.
“Death to freedom for all the destruction it brings,” he said on December 6. “This (the internet) isn’t freedom. It’s the worst kind of bondage. Polluted anti-religious networks are functioning in this country because the organizations in charge are not doing their jobs.”
The Internet and social media apps are heavily restricted and censored in Iran, with hardliners in the government viewing any form of internet freedom as a threat to the sanctity of the Islamic Republic. It remains to be seen whether Rouhani, who will soon begin campaigning for a second term as president, will again resist pressure by hardliners to limit or ban access to social media in Iran ahead of the election in May.

author: Center for Human Rights in Iran