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As a Drone Captures Global Voices at 10, a Few Thoughts from Cebu · Global Voices
Ethan Zuckerman

Global Voices community members from 60 countries captured by a drone. Image courtesy @ka_bino and PR Works.
I spent last week in Cebu, the second largest city in The Philippines, with three hundred journalists, activists and media scholars from more than sixty countries. The occasion was the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit, a biennial conference on the state of citizen media, blogging, journalism and activism. This summit coincided with the tenth anniversary of Global Voices, the citizen media website and community Rebecca MacKinnon and I helped to found in late 2004.
We’ve held the conference six times, and it’s always been an excuse to gather core members of the Global Voices community for planning, training and building solidarity. More than 800 staff and volunteers run Global Voices, and since we have no home office, headquarters or physical presence, the conference provides a physicality and presence that’s sorely lacking in most of our interactions. Since the Summit began as an excuse for holding our internal meeting, it’s always a wonderful party and family reunion, but it’s not always been the most thoughtfully programmed event. (I’m allowed to say that because I helped program some of those conferences.)
This year’s incarnation (which I had absolutely nothing to do with planning!) reset expectations about what the Citizen Media Summit could be. It was two packed days of panels, workshops and discussions, tackling some of the most interesting a challenging problems facing online writing and activism: threats to the open internet, social media and protests movements, trolling and online abuse, intermediary censorship. I found myself blogging and tweeting frenetically, trying to capture the conversations I was hearing in panels and the halls, soaking up as much news, information and perspective as I could from friends from around the world.
Global Voices editors and authors will be processing notes from the sessions into articles over the next few days, but I decided to use my flights from tropical Cebu into a northeastern blizzard to reflect on some of the key insights I got from the Global Voices community, the amazing Filipino netizens who hosted us and our guests from around the world.
Global Voices started as a project that rounded up blog posts from around the world, when possible organizing them into themed stories illustrating an aspect of the social media conversation in a country or region. Over time, we began offering citizen media perspectives on breaking news through the eyes of publicly readable citizen media: blogs, tweets, videos and public Facebook posts.
I’m starting to wonder whether we’re going to be able to keep operating this way in the future. Increasingly, citizen media is private, or semi-public, which raises really interesting questions about how we use it in our journalism. For example, in China, many political discussions shifted from Weibo (which is primarily public) when the company began verifying the identities of users. Many of those discussions moved to WeChat, where groups with hundreds or thousands of members feel like listservs or bulletin boards.
Is it ethical and fair to source stories from these semi-public spaces? There’s probably no general answer – it’s likely to be something that needs to be answered on a case-by-base basis. If the answer is that something can only be published if everyone on the list agrees, it’s going to make it very difficult to continue doing this work, and we’re likely to lose some of the ability to report on important conversations that haven’t reached broadcast media. If we don’t handle these questions carefully, we’re going to alienate the people we’re hoping to work with an amplify.
Whether conversations in these spaces are treated as public or private speech will be deeply important for journalism as more conversations move from explicitly public social media spaces into these complex semi-public spaces.
Many of our conversations with activists suggested that the organizational work of activism has shifted from public-facing tools like Twitter and Facebook into mostly private tools like WhatsApp. When revolutionaries start planning social movement on WhatsApp, the architecture and policies of the platform become matters of intense importance. WhatsApp’s designers likely didn’t anticipate their app being used to coordinate revolutions, and once the tool is used that way in repressive environments, it raises questions of whether the platform is sufficiently careful in protecting its users. One answer is for activists to move to more secure platforms, like TextSecure. I’ve long argued, though, that most activism happens on the most accessible platforms, so it’s not easy to talk activists off from WhatsApp. That makes efforts like Moxie Marlinspike’s successful campaign to get WhatsApp to use end to end encryption incredibly important.
Platforms also matter because they control what speech is possible. Rebecca MacKinnon’s “Consent of the Networked” has been the key text for people to understand the problems of intermediary censorship, and in a session she ran on her new project, Ranking Digital Rights, Jillian C. York of the EFF explained that she sees community moderation policies as functionally controlling what sort of speech is possible on Facebook. Jill now worries more about corporate controls on speech than government controls, citing instances where Facebook has taken down pro-Palestinian speech that had been incorrectly flagged as supporting terrorism, while allowing far more inflammatory pro-Israel speech. The simple fact that Facebook took down the “We Are Khaled Said” Facebook group – which it later celebrated for helping organize the Tahrir Square protests – shows that the platform often gets speech issues wrong, with potentially serious consequences.
For some members of the Global Voices community, the failure to remove hate speech from these platforms is as disturbing as the potential of these platforms to be censored. Thant Sin from Myanmar described the ferocious climate of Burmese-language Facebook threads, where violent threats against religious groups, particularly the Muslim Rohingya, are alarmingly common. When he worked with other Myanmarese Facebook users to detect and report these threads, they were unsuccessful, for the basic reason that Facebook’s moderators could not read Burmese.
When I tweeted this, Elissa Shevinsky – CEO of Glimpse, a messaging app startup – asked why Facebook doesn’t simply hire Burmese speakers to address this issue. The answer is simple and unfortunate: the abuse team at any social media company is viewed as a cost center, and is inevitably under-resourced. Facebook and other companies rely on “flagging” by community members to identify content that should be further investigated or removed. (Kate Crawford and Tarleton Gillespie wrote a wonderful paper titled “What is a Flag For?” which explores the limitations of flags as a way of controlling and commenting on online speech – it’s a must-read for people interested in this topic.) When flagged content is in an unfamiliar language, Facebook has two bad alternatives: they can leave it (potentially ignoring hate speech) or block it (potentially censoring political speech.) Perhaps Facebook shouldn’t expand into markets where they cannot adequately monitor their content… but it’s hard to demand that a company develop robust mechanisms for abuse in a language before they have users in that language.
Jillian and colleagues at OnlineCensorship.org are now documenting the content Facebook and others block as a way of mapping the space of allowable speech online. I’m fascinated by this idea, and wonder whether the method Crawford and Gillespie use in their paper – flagging content to see how platforms respond – might work for Jillian. (Perhaps putting more offensive speech into the world to see how platforms respond isn’t a net positive for the world – there may be enough anger and hate online that simply documenting it well is enough.)
I’m a wordy guy, as anyone who’s fought through one of my blogposts knows. But one of my big takeaways from this conference was the power and prominence of images as a form of political speech. Georgia Popplewell organized a massive session titled “The Revolution Will Be Illustrated”, where 13 Global Voices community members introduced us to work by cartoonists, illustrators and designers from their countries.
Many of the artists featured were traditional cartoonists, like Crisis Valero of Spain or Mexican-American cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz. But a few were graphic designers like Filipino activist Pixel Offensive, or Global Voices’s own Kevin Rothrock. Pixel Offensive produces simple, eye-catching graphics using images of Filipino politicians recontextualized, captioned and otherwise remixed. PXO’s work has a distinct color signature – yellow and black – which are the colors of the Aquino government. It’s a visual hijacking of the Presidential brand. PXO’s work isn’t as artistically skillful as that of an artist like Alcaraz, but that may well be part of the message: visual activism should be open to everyone who has something to say.
Kevin Rothrock clearly got that message. Co-editor of RuNet Echo, Global Voices’s opinionated and often controversial section focused on the Russian internet, Rothrock enjoys making trouble online, taunting the trolls who respond to his coverage. His posts for Global Voices are usually accompanied with satirical collages, where Vladimir Putin is remixed into every conceivable internet meme. Not every collage works for me, but some are hilarious, and it’s easy to imagine them spreading virally online.
Image mixed by Kevin Rothrock.
What I most appreciated about Rothrock’s talk was that he encouraged the bloggers and writers in the audience to adopt his simple collage techniques for their own work, offering tricks of the trade. (Logos work well, as they’re designed to work in lots of different contexts, and Vladimir Putin shirtless, on horseback, makes any scene better.) Much as activists have learned to speak in short, tweetable statements to get their message to spread online, it may be time for activists and journalists to learn how to craft fast-spreading visual memes in the hopes of reaching broader audiences.
In the wake of the Occupy movement, Indignados, Gezi and other recent popular protests, it’s reasonable to ask whether protest movements are more powerful for expressing dissent than they are in making fundamental changes to systems of power. Listening to panelists speak about protests in Mexico, Syria, Ukraine and Hong Kong, I thought of Zeynep Tufekçi’s idea that digital tools have made it easier to bring people out into the streets, but may have made the groups assembled with those tools weaker and more brittle. (Because it’s so easy to bring 50,000 people to a protest, Tufekçi argues, organizers have to do a lot less work ahead of time and end up having less influence and social capital with those protesters than they did in earlier years. When the protest ends and it’s time to try and influence governance, those movements have a hard time moving into power.)
One of the major messages from the conference was the idea that protest movements are increasingly focused on their own media representation. Tetyana Bohdanova, a Global Voices author from Ukraine, explained that Euromaidan protesters watched media reactions to their movement with increasing dismay, as credulous journalists adopted simplistic narratives. We tend to think of protesters as developing simple, sharp, propagandistic messages to motivate their followers. Instead, Bohdanova suggests that Euromaidan protesters were often in the odd position of fighting for subtlety and nuance, explaining the concept of “a revolution of dignity” to the press, who wanted to see the protest as a simple battle between Russia and the EU.
My colleague Sasha Costanza-Chock argues that making media is a fundamental part of making protest movements, and stories from the Citizen Media Summit seem to support that contention. From Ukraine to Gaza, activists are tweeting in English to try and influence portrayals of their movements. Understanding social media as a channel for mobilization – the most common narrative about technology and protest – gives us only a partial picture. For activists and protesters, media is at least as important once people are in the streets, to report what’s happened, to document abuses and to represent the movement to the world.
The Philippines is hit by an average of twenty typhoons a year, including massive storms like Typhoon Haiyan, which killed 6300 people. Isolde Amante and other Filipino colleagues explained that citizen media has become a primary source of information in these crises, that newspapers are far more likely to hear about these events via social media than via radio or other broadcast channels.
There have been lots of stories celebrating the power of social media to assist with crisis response – how Ushahidi was used to assist recovery efforts in Port au Prince after the Haitian earthquake, for instance. But these accounts usually describe social media contributions as an epiphenomenon. Conversations in the Philippines suggest that we might expect social media to take a lead role in breaking the news of disasters and, possibly, in coordinating responses.
That phrase comes from Phil Howard’s forthcoming book “Pax Technica”, and it struck me as helpful in processing the conversations we had at Global Voices. We’ve always considered Global Voices to be a journalistic project – we’ve asked our authors to cover conversations taking place in their national online spheres in a way that’s balanced and fair, even if we reject classical notions of journalistic objectivity. But it’s also clear that many of the folks involved with Global Voices are passionate advocates for various causes: for freedom of speech online, for their nation to be represented differently in international media, for political causes.
Increasingly, I feel like Global Voices is a platform for “advocacy journalism” in the best sense of the term: much of it advocates for change in the world and features the people fighting to make those changes. And Phil’s description of social media as being about taking sides seems right to me. Those sides aren’t explicitly political – people using social media for hurricane relief are taking sides against a natural disaster and for the benefit of the victims. But the line between asking for friends and followers to pay attention to you and trying to harness that attention for change is a blurry one, and much of what works in social media presumes a position of advocacy.
For me, Global Voices summits are always a joyful time, a chance to reconnect with old friends and make new ones. This one was also wonderful food for thought, and I can’t wait to continue these conversations with the community over the next two years until we see each other in person again.
This post was originally published on Ethan Z's blog.
Ethan Zuckerman co-founded Global Voices in 2004, while he was a Berkman fellow at Harvard University. He currently directs the Center for Civic Media at MIT, and teach at MIT’s Media Lab. In 2013 Ethan's first book “Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection” was published.

author: Ethan Zuckerman


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Höség: Water and Windproof Solidarity  · Global Voices
Gabriela García Calderón Orbe

Viewpoint of the Andes. Image on Flickr by usser Boris G (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).
Höség is a Hungarian word that means heat, and that's what supportive people are giving children in the highest zones of Peruvian Andes, where temperatures are so low that “it's winter every day after five in the afternoon”.
Warm and functional. Thought on the needs of children who live over 9800 f.a.s.l. Waterproof and windproof. With fiberfill and fleece lining to keep warm but also comfortable. Hood, elastic cuffs and high collar neck to keep the cold out.
Coral color inspired by cochinilla, a natural dye from the Peruvian Andes, making it visible from a distance.
A happy jacket for kids between 0 and 16 years.
A jacket designed with love.
The idea of Hösėg is simple: when you buy a jacket, you give another one to a child in the Peruvian highlands, according to Juan Carlos Sznak, one of the promotors of the iniitiative:
Nuestro mensaje a los niños cuando le entregamos las casacas va más allá del simple hecho de abrigar, es darles calor humano.
Our message to children when we hand them the jackets goes beyond the simple fact of getting them warm, it's to bring them love and affection.
The jackets are personally delivered by Sznak and his brothers, the brains and hearts behind Höség.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Gabriela García Calderón Orbe


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How Putin Secretly Conquered Russia’s Social Media Over the Past 3 Years · Global Voices
Ilya Klishin

Vladimir Putin at a press conference on December 18, 2014. Kremlin press service, public domain.
When I visit the United States, I’m often asked how bad is it to live in Putin's Russia. Knowing that I work at an independent television channel (www.tvrain.ru), the people asking me this question probably expect horror stories about the daily nightmare I endure under the pressure of a totalitarian regime.
Responding can be awkward, because I have to disappoint such expectations, as I’m not able to portray my life in Russia in such simplistic, black-and-white terms.
Many aspects of living in Russia are strangely difficult to explain to someone who’s never experienced life here. There is a huge gap—a canyon of hypocrisy—between what's official and what's real, and you’re supposed to know what you can’t say aloud. (Andrey Zvyagintsev’s film “Leviathan” is largely about this phenomenon.)
For instance, you can’t say Russia has no independent media; I work at an independent TV station, after all. But the Devil is in the details, and, in this case, we’re hopelessly outgunned. What’s happened in Russia would be like Fox News taking over the airwaves in the US, booting MSNBC from cable TV, and reducing liberals to broadcasting online from a small private apartment in Brooklyn.
This farce is the same with elections (where competition is fake), the courts (where justice is a lie), and mass demonstrations (where participation is obligatory).
For many years, the Internet was Russia’s last beacon of honesty. That’s no longer the case. Over the past three years, a social-media army fielded by the Kremlin has stormed what was once a stronghold for people who seek a “Russia without Putin.”
Here’s how it happened.
Before the 2011 parliamentary elections, the phoniness of which sent as many as 100,000 protesters into the streets, the Kremlin couldn’t care less about political significance of social media and the Internet. The government’s puppet master of domestic politics, a man named Vladislav Surkov, was content merely to funnel cash to top bloggers, paying them to publish planted stories on LiveJournal from time to time.
When the winter protests began in December 2011, the new social media, namely Twitter and Facebook, were under the complete control of Putin’s political opponents, who knew it and unsurprisingly built vast networks to organize demonstrations against the fraudulent elections.
After two mass rallies in Moscow against the parliamentary election results, Surkov lost his job in the Kremlin, following his obvious failure to contain the Internet. His replacement is Vyacheslav Volodin, a less cerebral man known for his rough-and-ready management style.
Volodin is said to have only a weak grasp of the digital world, but others with a better understanding are believed to have his ear. In 2012, Volodin promoted some of these Internet-savvy advisers to a special unit inside the Kremlin’s Department of Internal Policy. He put Timur Prokopenko, a young man in his thirties with experience working for pro-Kremlin youth movements, in charge of the outfit.
At first, the Kremlin’s social media team simply copied whatever the Russian opposition did online. If Putin’s rivals criticized him with hashtags, Putin’s people would respond instantly with hashtags targeting Alexey Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition leader. When this method of retaliation proved too obvious and primitive, the Kremlin’s social media team moved on to other tactics.
They tried spamming social media with “bot” accounts, though networks like Twitter were quick to recognize it and intervene. The Kremlin’s team then turned to its activists in the regions, outside Moscow and St. Petersburg, whom they’d largely overlooked in the past. Now they recruited these people to serve as living, breathing bots. Imagine it: young men and women across Russia enlisted to do nothing but promote trending topics on Twitter and troll the liberal media on Facebook.
My contact at Twitter has indicated to me that they’re powerless to intervene against such accounts, as it is indeed real people running them. The workaround to a bot army, the Kremlin has discovered, is a troll army.
Of course, even tapping the regions’ stores of pro-Kremlin activists wasn’t enough. What started with dozens of re-purposed boy scouts grew to hundreds, but there it hit a ceiling. When that happened, Putin’s team approached Russian advertisers. According to my sources, there are currently 10 different advertising agencies working for the Kremlin. These contracts are secret, and the firms are careful to maintain other, non-political clients.
The agencies compete fiercely with one another for contract extensions and bigger deals, making Russia’s online propaganda industry quite lucrative and surprisingly effective. It’s like Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” except the opposite.
Combined, these efforts field a troll army of thousands. In some areas, like on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, the enterprise is so big that there are whole office buildings for these people.
It seems like a joke, but thousands of hired bloggers “go to work” every day, writing online about Vladimir Putin’s greatness and the decay of the West. They’re on Facebook, Twitter, news sites, and anywhere else the Kremlin feels threatened and outnumbered. Fresh instructions arrive every day in emails, specifying what to say and where to post it, all with the aim of bolstering Putin’s presidency amidst war and economic crisis.
Sadly, it’s working. People have trouble believing the scope of the Kremlin’s Internet invasion, thinking it incredulous that the government could be capable of such sophisticated, targeted manipulation. And yet that is exactly what Putin’s social media team has achieved.
Of course, conquering the Internet has been a lot easier, after the dramatic reduction of independent media outlets in Russia—a phenomenon known as the “f#cking chain.” The Kremlin’s social media takeover has at last reached the people who don’t watch state-run television. The circle is now complete.
The system works like this: trolls flood a comments section with scripted complaints against the West or the liberal opposition, and the state-run media then reports these comments as “bloggers’ outrage,” fueling further conversations online, building what becomes an organic/artificial mix. In this way, Putin’s team is able to impose its agenda even on the Russian Internet’s liberal ghetto.
Based on the success of this model in Russia, the Kremlin is now investing heavily in “exporting” it to social media popular in Europe and the United States.
If you live in the West, beware.

author: Ilya Klishin


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Iranian Women’s Rights Advocate Mahdieh Golroo Released From Jail · Global Voices
Mahsa Alimardani

Mahdieh Golroo. Image edited by Kevin Rothrock.
Mahdieh Golroo, an Iranian women's rights activist, was released on a bail of 700 million Toman (about $200,000) on January 27. Golroo spent 93 days in prison, following her arrest in front of the Iranian parliament, where she protested the acid attacks against women in Isfahan. She spent 45 days in solitary confinement in Tehran's notorious Evin prison, known for its detainment and torture of political prisoners.
Iran women activist Mahdieh Golroo detained for protesting serial acid attacks in Isfahan released after 93 days pic.twitter.com/MwB0npEprV
— Sobhan Hassanvand (@Hassanvand) January 27, 2015
Last October, a wave of acid attacks against women in Isfahan created a public uproar in Iran. Authorities claimed there were four attacks, but social media users counted more than twice as many. When police failed to respond, protests and social media campaigns against government inaction swept the nation.
Golroo appeared on a list of jailed media workers and activists published by Global Voices Advocacy earlier this month. Iranian Internet users have stressed the hypocrisy of jailing an activist who merely protested against an incident the government itself has condemned.
Ms Golroo has been kept in solitary confinement for 2 months. Charges against her are unclear http://t.co/NWMkQfoon8 http://t.co/PcAIQjHGod
— Boroumand Foundation (@abfiran) December 23, 2014
Gissou Nia, the deputy director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, explained in a statement to Global Voices the significance of Golroo's arrest, saying her prosecution is part of a broader effort by the authorities to curtail women's presence in the public sphere.
While it is a welcome development that Mahdieh Golrou is currently out on bail, her legal process is far from over and her prosecution is part of a broader plan perpetrated by Iranian officials to silence women’s voices. Despite vigorous denials from Iranian officials that the acid attacks that Golrou was protesting prior to her arrest were anything but the work of a rogue criminal, these attacks did not take place in a vacuum. Rather, these violent acts came in the midst of systematic policies, rhetoric and legislation from Iranian officials aimed at curtailing women’s participation in the public space. Golrou’s arrest and the arrests just last week of other women activists who dared to question these developments are simply an effort by Iranian officials to suppress those who are unafraid to openly challenge this anti-women trend.

author: Mahsa Alimardani


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Kurds of Kobane Declare Victory Over ISIS · Global Voices
Elia J. Ayoub

Poster of Solidarity with the Kurdish Fighters of YPG/YPJ, shared widely online.
After 133 days of war against ISIS, the Kurds of Kobane, a border town in northern Syria close to Turkey, finally heaved a sigh of relief this week, as ISIS fighters fled their territory.
Despite upcoming challenges, including finding and dismantling unexploded devices and the threat of remaining ISIS fighters, Kurds took to the streets (and Twitter) to celebrate what many regard as a heroic victory against a brutal militant organization that has come to occupy large swathes of land across Syria and Iraq.
Kobane – Turkey Border Right Now People are Celebrating Of #Kobane Liberation. Via @mustefaebdi pic.twitter.com/IGs5ITvczW
— Mazloum Mustafa (@mazlloum_m) January 27, 2015
#Kobane and around the city within 1 km is free. Photo: People Of #Kobane Are Celebrating At Suruç – Turkey pic.twitter.com/oGOsOfOHpO
— Mazloum Mustafa (@mazlloum_m) January 25, 2015
The failure of Turkish policy
Turkey's role in the suffering of the Kurds of Kobane did not go unnoticed. Indeed, Turkey is widely accused of siding with ISIS, an anonymous Western official told Al Monitor, due to the ongoing conflict between Ankara and Turkey's own Kurds. While voices across the world called for international support for the Kurds, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reportedly asked Obama not to intervene. Despite having the second largest army in NATO and a fleet of tanks on the Kobane border, Turkey refrained from engaging ISIS, even forbidding its own Kurds from entering Kobane to join the fight.
Our enemies (Turkey&ISIS) thought they would destroy belief on independence in Kobanê. But attacks made us stronger! pic.twitter.com/Xvc8rylEWF
— Middle East 24 (@middleeast_24) January 23, 2015
Turkey's inactivity has aroused intense suspicion. A cartoon by Kaniwar, shared on Twitter by Massimiliano Voza, accuses Turkey of allowing ISIS fighters to enter Kobane, in order to weaken the resistance.
#Erdogan: We will not allow #Kurds to gain status in #Syria. #Kurdistan #ISIS #freeKobanê #Kobanê #Turkey pic.twitter.com/6h5BGvMKaz
— Massimiliano Voza (@maxvoza) January 28, 2015
Turkey's response to Kobane's liberation was also not so friendly:
Turkey puts huge flag on the border with #Kobane after Erdogan said he will not allow free Kurdish state – @AJANSAMED pic.twitter.com/ltSsdHFYGK
— Conflict News (@rConflictNews) January 28, 2015
Kurdish activist Joan Salihi tweeted:
We wont forget #Turkey‘s role during the resistance in #Kobane. #Turkey is accomplice #TurkeyOutofNato #TwitterKurds pic.twitter.com/nHmuv8lDbG
— Joan Salihi (@joansalihi) January 28, 2015
A symbolic victory
It took some time for Kobane's struggle to reach activists around the world. While the global media has focused on the US-led coalition striking ISIS positions, Kurds have waged a war against ISIS on the ground that's gone largely under-reported and often ignored completely.
David Graeber, an anthropology professor at the London School of Economics, an anarchist, and a leading figure in the Occupy Movement, was perhaps the first voice abroad to bring the world's attention to the fight in Kobane. In an October 2014 article, titled “Why Is the World Ignoring the Revolutionary Kurds in Syria?” Graeber described Kobane as a “democratic experiment” that is developing according to anarchist ideals, comparing the revolutionary Kurds to the anarchists who fought in the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War
Online, leftist activists widely shared Graeber's article, which provoked a series of declarations of support by several leftist magazines and websites.
To better understand the comparison to the Spanish Civil War's anarchists, it's necessary to grasp what the inhabitants of Kobane (and Rojava, more broadly) have had to endure. Graeber explains:
The autonomous region of Rojava, as it exists today, is one of few bright spots – albeit a very bright one – to emerge from the tragedy of the Syrian revolution. Having driven out agents of the Assad regime in 2011, and despite the hostility of almost all of its neighbours, Rojava has not only maintained its independence, but is a remarkable democratic experiment. Popular assemblies have been created as the ultimate decision-making bodies, councils selected with careful ethnic balance (in each municipality, for instance, the top three officers have to include one Kurd, one Arab and one Assyrian or Armenian Christian, and at least one of the three has to be a woman), there are women’s and youth councils, and, in a remarkable echo of the armed Mujeres Libres (Free Women) of Spain, a feminist army, the “YJA Star” militia (the “Union of Free Women”, the star here referring to the ancient Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar), that has carried out a large proportion of the combat operations against the forces of Islamic State.
It wasn't military superiority that sustained the Kurds’ resistance against ISIS, many believe, but their dedication. As Kurdish activist Dilar Dirik argued in The Kurdish Question: “The people of Kobane were massively outgunned. But their will to fight kept them going. They are fighting for a fundamentally different future.”
Hopefully, the region's future will remain rooted in the principles of democratic, ecological, and gender-liberated values, which the revolutionaries have so far managed to uphold surprisingly well. It may take some time, however, to overcome the destruction wrought upon this small Kurdish enclave.
Photos from #Kobane. Huge destruction will keep refugees in #Turkey for quite some time pic.twitter.com/Vf7oAE5PFy
— Conflict News (@rConflictNews) January 27, 2015

author: Elia J. Ayoub


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Language Politics Back in the Spotlight in Afghanistan · Global Voices
Abdulfattoh Shafiev

Afghanistan's provinces written in Pashto. Tajiks and other Dari-speaking ethnic minorities fear that the language will dominate theirs as a result of Pashtun political power. Wikipedia image.
Salahuddin Rabbani, Afghanistan's new minister of foreign affairs and son of the country's murdered former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, is facing a barrage of criticism for beginning his pre-approval speech to the Afghan parliament in Pashto. The fiercest criticism is coming from Rabbani's Dari-speaking ethnic kin, who feel betrayed that he chose to speak in a language that is not his native tongue.
Pashto and Dari are the two official languages of Afghanistan according to the constitution. While all but two of Afghanistan's rulers for the last two centuries — Habibullah Kalakani and Burhanuddin Rabbani — were ethnic Pashtuns, Dari, a local name for Farsi, is more widely used in written form than Pashto. Dari is also the preferred language of several of the country's non-Pashtun ethnic groups, including the large Tajik minority Rabbani hails from.*
Shortly after the speech on January 27, Abdullatif Pedram, the leader of the National Congress Party of Afghanistan and an ethnic Tajik, wrote a widely circulated Facebook post criticizing the new coalition government of Afghanistan and calling it “illegal” and “anti-constitutional”. Salahuddin Rabbani had “betrayed [his] native language and Farsi culture,” Pedram added.
Abdullatif Pedram. Photo from his Facebook page
وقتی آقای صلاح الدین نیمه ی اول سخنرانی اش را به زبان پشتو متبرک می سازد،معنایش این است که زبان پشتو زبان اول این سرزمین است. نمایندگان کشورهای خارجی هم بر همین اساس به یقین می رسند. نام این کار خیانت به زبان مادری وفرهنگ غنامند فارسی است در روایات است که امام ابو حنیفه (رح)گفته بود میشود به این زبان نماز خواند.(دکترسروش) نامش تسلیم طلبی و بی همتی است. من به همه ی زبان های وطنم احترام می گذارم و آنهارا دوست میدارم منجمله زبان پشتورا. اما بحث عدالت خواهی چیزدیگری است زبان فارسی اکثریت زبانی است.
When Salahuddin starts the first part of his speech in Pashto, it means that Pashto is the first language in this land. Based on this, representatives of foreign countries will also come to the same conclusion. This is an infidelity to [his] native language and rich Farsi culture… I respect and love all languages in my country, including Pashto. But the issue is one of justice. Farsi is the language of the majority (in Afghanistan).
Many expressed their agreement with him:
ﺟﻨﺎﺏ ﺩاﻛﺘﺮ ﺻﺎﺣﺐ ﺩﻗﻴﻖ ﻓﺮﻣﻮﺩﻳﺪ ﺑﭽﻪ ﻫﺎﻱ ﻛﻪ ﻫﻮﻳﺖ ﺧﻮﺩ ﺭا ﻣﻮﺭﺩ ﻣﻌﺎﻣﻠﻪ ﻗﺮاﺭ ﺩﻫﺪ ﭼﻪ ﺗﻮﻗﻊ اﺯ اﻥ ﺩاﺷﺖ.
Dear Dr. You are right. What else you can expect from those who trade their identity?
Others accused Pedram of nationalism. Ahmad Wali Hakimi chastised:
جناب پدرام حیف تحصیل وعمرگران بهایتان که به این پوچ وبیهوده میگذرانی تو خاین ملی هستی تو شخص مریض هستی خداکند مریضی شما ساری نباشد
Mr. Pedram, it is pity you are spending your education and priceless life (discussing) useless things. You have betrayed the nation, you are sick…
Another discussant, Fazl Azizi, pointed out the dual nationality of the new minister of foreign affairs, a factor that held up his appointment:
باید به زبان انگلیسی صحبت میکرد .تابعیت انگلیس داشت.
He would be better off speaking English as he has British citizenship.
In actual fact Afghan media reported that the country's lower house had approved the cancellation of Rabbani's British citizenship on January 26, paving the way for him to be approved as foreign minister January 27. Afghanistan's parliament has still yet to agree over half of President Ashraf Ghani's ministerial nominees, many of whom are also citizens of two countries.
Both Ghani, who identifies as an ethnic Pashtun, and his erstwhile rivals for the presidency, took steps to build ethnically diverse coalitions in the run up to the vote earlier this year. Ghani, for instance, included Ahmad Zia Massoud, a Tajik and the brother of the legendary Northern Alliance commander Ahmad Shah Massoud in his presidential team. Many ethnic Tajiks criticised Ahmad Zia Massoud for siding with Ghani rather than his presidential rival Abdullah Abdullah, a half-Pashtun-half-Tajik who was one of the Ahmad Shah Massoud's closest friends before the latter's assassination in 2001.
Rabbani, who was Afghanistan's Ambassador to Turkey in 2011, is foreign educated and viewed as technocrat, despite having strong Tajik tribal connections through his late father. By beginning his speech in Pashto, he may have sought to smooth the ethnic and linguistic divides in the country. Instead, he seems to have aggravated them further.

author: Abdulfattoh Shafiev


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Grindr in the Kremlin: Gay and Online in Putin’s Russia · Global Voices
Lewis May

Images mixed by Tetyana Lokot.
Facing a panel of human rights activists last December, Vladimir Putin awkwardly defended Russia’s notorious legal ban on homosexual “propaganda.” While admitting that human rights abuses had occurred, he argued that the law was part of Russia’s “strategic choice” to protect traditional relationships, and that a “balanced approach,” where people neither “bother” nor “exclude” each other, is best for Russia.
As “balanced” as Putin purports the Kremlin’s policy to be, it has set off a wave of anti-LGBT sentiment in Russia. Discrimination and hate towards the LGBT community have skyrocketed following the adoption of the 2013 law, which human rights activists have called out for having intentionally “broad and vague wording” and for “violating right to freedom of expression.” A single web search will show that Russia’s LGBT community has a wide and thriving presence online, but what it won't reveal is that the Internet is quickly  becoming a battleground in the Kremlin and Russian conservative lobby’s assault on the LGBT community.
Origins and Successes
The legalization of homosexuality in 1993 and the advent of the Internet contributed to an explosion of gay dating and social networks in Russia. Gay online websites provided an opportunity for LGBT individuals to be part of a community while being relatively free from pressure to publicly identify themselves and from the threat of homophobic violence.
Today, a large variety of LGBT dating sites exists, with both Russian and foreign websites widely used by the community members. While enclaves within St. Petersburg and Moscow provide safe public spaces, in smaller and/or more socially conservative cities the Internet may be the only connection people have to the broader LGBT community in Russia. Though some Russians have reported that these dating sites are not worth the time and effort, the sites continue to be popular in Russia, with some sites like qguys.ru hosting nearly 300,000 active profiles.
Dating apps like Grindr are also popular, although they often come with privacy issues: in 2014, after a flaw in the Grindr location feature was exposed, a blogger reported locating many Grindr users within Russia, including several active Grindr profiles within the Kremlin itself.
Grindr in the Kremlin, where several active profiles were spotted by a concerned activist. Image from http://americablog.com/.
Even more encouraging has been the grassroots effort to build online support networks for LGBT youth. The most famous of these is Дети-404 (Children 404), with 404 being the error code for an invalid or non-existing URL—a play on the state's attitude towards ‘invisible’ LGBT teenagers. The group posts harrowing and inspirational accounts from gay teens struggling to find their identity in unaccepting environments. Even outside of official groups, certain teens have found support in unrelated cultural interests. The alternative music scene in Russia has been known to be tolerant towards LGBT youths, and other teenagers have found support through a shared interest in anime.
Challenges and Dangers
For all that the RuNet has given rise to communities of support, it has also become a tool for increasingly violent and invasive anti-LGBT crimes. As profiled by the BBC, Human Rights Watch, and Children-404 itself, vigilante groups have begun to use Internet dating sites to lure LGBT individuals, almost always gay men, into dangerous circumstances under the pretense of going on a date. Once isolated, the groups verbally and physically abuse their victims (and in extreme cases murder them), and post videos of these acts to social media sites and anti-LGBT websites. Though some of these groups have been removed or banned, others have as many as 170,000 members, and their videos receive tens of thousands of views.
While violence and harassment of homosexuals in Russia is not exactly new, this new brand of vigilante groups is a direct outgrowth of Russia’s recent anti-homosexual propaganda ban. The law, which purports to ban “the propaganda of non-traditional relationships among minors,” conflates homosexuality and pedophilia to such a degree that most Russian hate groups directly equate the two. The largest of these groups is Occupy Pedophilia, whose members use the words pedophilia and homosexuality interchangeably, and brag of protecting Russia’s youth from pedophiles through their homophobic assaults. In addition, the law’s vague distinction between private and public expression of sexuality has permitted these vigilante groups to exploit the private online lives of Russia’s LGBT community.
Russian law enforcement has only compounded the problem by turning a blind eye to the reports of beatings and abuse. As reported by Human Rights Watch, Russian police consider beatings to be justified if the victims have outwardly expressed homosexual affiliation. If the assailants are even questioned, they can in turn claim that the victim had identified himself as homosexual or had come on to them, which constitutes a legitimate legal defense. As a result, the vast majority of hate crimes towards LGBT youth go unpunished, and it becomes next to impossible to collect reliable statistics on abuses suffered by LGBT groups and individuals.
Despite the hundreds of videos portraying acts of violence committed towards LGBT individuals, some Russian lawmakers remain in denial. Vitaly Milonov, author of the St. Petersburg LGBT legislation that served as a precedent for the national law, stated that he believes the posted videos to be “false information,” and that all gays are pedophilial “rapists” and perpetrators of “much more violence” than heterosexuals in Russia.
Apart from the explicit violence of vigilante groups, the Internet has increasingly become a tool for targeting the livelihoods of LGBT or pro-LGBT individuals teaching and working with children. Anti-LGBT activists typically start by identifying LGBT and LGBT-allied users through online photos or social media profiles. These photos and personal information are then distributed in online smear campaigns, encouraging parents to file threatening complaints to the target’s employer. These tactics have been used by a number of online groups, most notably Parents of Russia. Claiming to protect their children, the group openly aims to remove all LGBT and pro-LGBT teachers working in Russia. So far, their tactics have proven to be effective. Timur Isaev, the leader of Parents of Russia, recently admitted to getting 29 teachers fired through online smear campaigns. For Russian school teachers this means any association with gay rights (no matter if they themselves are gay or if their views are privately expressed online) can be grounds for dismissal.
Not only does the Russian government condone such activities, but it too has targeted LGBT groups online. Most notably, the aforementioned Children 404 support group has been formally charged and sentenced under the gay propaganda law for its support of LGBT youth. Even though medical issues sidelined the group’s attorneys from the trial, judges refused to postpone the trial and now the online group will likely be shut down. In another incident, 75,000 users of a Russian dating app during the Sochi Olympics were blocked by hackers and received notifications that they were in violation of Russian law and at risk of arrest.
The Grim Outlook
Though Putin and the Kremlin may be content to defend their “balanced” approach to homosexuality, the consequences of the implemented legal norms and their crude enforcement are open discrimination and hate. Although the Internet had become a seemingly secure private space for Russia’s LGBT community, the Kremlin has unleashed a wave of hate that has struck deep into the fragile core of the group's private online sphere. Though safe enclaves within major cities may continue to exist in Russia, the continuing homophobia and increasing government control of the Internet pose a growing threat to the web as one of the main lifelines of Russia’s LGBT community and one of the few remaining spaces for free expression.

author: Lewis May


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A Marvelous Display of Yellow in Ecuador · Global Voices
Belén Quezada

Tourists prepare to spend their first night in Mangahurco, Ecuador, among the first blooming Guayacan trees. Photo courtesy of Flickr Amalavida.tv., licensed under Creative Commons.
At the end of January, the Guayacan trees start blooming in parts of Ecuador. It means spring has arrived, and thousands of people gather to watch this spectacularly colorful event unfold.
The province of Loja has more than 40,000 hectares (98,842 acres) of dry forest on the border parishes of Cazederos, Bolaspamba, and Mangahurco in Zapotillo Canton located in southern Ecuador. Here in this vast region you can see the all the magic of the Guayacan trees with their fine, delicate yellow flowers painting the landscape.
The Ministry of Tourism has been sharing online videos of the trees, using the hashtag #GuayacanesEcE and #Mangahurco:
The government's Twitter account, @TurismoEc, has also tweeted impressive statistics about the number of people who tuned in to online video streams in 2014 to see the Guayacan trees:
Cerca de 23.000 personas a escala mundial siguieron la transmisión florecimiento #GuayacanesEc http://t.co/MfJZZMWPMQ #RCConsejoProduccion — Turismo Ecuador (@TurismoEc) marzo 27, 2014
Nearly 23,000 people worldwide tuned in to the blooming #GuayacanesEC
Many people shared photos and comments under the hashtag #GuayacanesEc. User WToledo showed his appreciation for the Guayacan documentary and tweeted the same hashtag.
Muy buen reportaje @TurismoEc #GuayacanesEc @EcuadorTravel Loja-Zapotillo-Mangaurco pic.twitter.com/JKZ3RnHeKh — WToledoQ (@wtoledo2011) marzo 16, 2014
Very nice report @TurismoEc #GuayacanesEC @EcuadorTravel Loja-Zapotillo-Mangaurco
Meanwhile Susana Pazmiño shared a family photo from Mangahurco:
Jorge Enrique y José Salvador en Mangahurco viviendo el Florecimiento de los #GuayacanesEc pic.twitter.com/fgppLAm7Yy — Susana Salas Pazmiño (@susanasalaspaz) marzo 15, 2014
Jorge Enrique and José Salvador in Mangahurco watching the blossoming of the #GuayacanesEc
Twitter user Pipe said his visit was unforgettable:
Nunca olvidaré la experiencia del Florercimiento de los #GuayacanesEc #retodeldia pic.twitter.com/dsY5eeFczQ — (Pipe) (@viperbro) marzo 14, 2014
I'll never forget experiencing the blooming of the #GuayacanesEc #retodeldia
The blooming of the Guayacan trees has no precise beginning or end, though it's expected to last until February 1, this year.
Posts from people on the ground this year are already flooding social media. Carlos Jumbo flooded his own Twitter feed with related hashtags:
#Loja #Zapotillo #Guayacanes #Turismo #Próximos;) (Y) http://t.co/zgN5XM7Wwj
— CARLOS JUMBO L. (@carlosjumboLoja) enero 5, 2015
#Loja #Zapotillo #Guayacanes #Turismo #Próximos;)
The online newspaper Machala Movil invited people to pack their bags and visit southern Ecuador, to see trees in action.
#Loja | Con el inicio del invierno se observa el florecimiento de los #Guayacanes. ¡Aliste sus maletas! #Turismo. pic.twitter.com/naB35rVGln
— Machala Movil (@MachalaMovil) enero 8, 2015
#Loja | With the beginning of winter you can see the blooming of the #Guayacanes. Pack your bags! #Turismo.
Ricardo Medina was able to capture the Guayacanes’ beauty in a photograph he posted online:
“@MaryuryVegaH: #Loja #Guayacanes Deslumbrante matiz colores y belleza natural anuncian primavera #Ecuador #Turismo pic.twitter.com/qWgfffDhji” — Ricardo Medina O. (@ricardomedinao) enero 8, 2015
Dazzling shades of color and natural beauty announce it's spring #Ecuador #Turismo
As part of an organized schedule by residents and officials, there are additional activities available to visitors to explore the local landscape, including guided hikes, biking trails, horseback riding, murals, craft fairs, photo exhibits, and the chance to plant and sponsor your own Guayacan tree.

author: Belén Quezada


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Argentine Investigator’s Mysterious Death Revives Questions About 1994 Bombing · Global Voices
Mary Aviles

Demonstration for the death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman. Quinta de Olivos. Buenos Aires. Photo taken from the account of JMalievi in Flickr under Creative Commons license.
Alberto Nisman was one of Argentina's most famous federal prosecutors. For more than ten years, he was the chief investigator of the 1994 car bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people and injured another 300—the worst terrorist attack in Argentina's history. As with his investigation of the 1994 bombing, Nisman's death on January 18, 2015, left the country with more questions than answers.
The first person to break the news of Nisman's death was journalist Damián Pachter, who made the announcement on Twitter:
Me acaban de informar sobre un incidente en la casa del Fiscal Alberto Nisman.
— Damian Pachter (@damianpachter) January 19, 2015
I have just been informed about an incident at Attorney Alberto Nisman’s home.
Encontraron al fiscal Alberto Nisman en el baño de su casa de Puerto Madero sobre un charco de sangre. No respiraba. Los médicos están allí. — Damian Pachter (@damianpachter) January 19, 2015
They found Prosecutor Alberto Nisman in the bathroom of his home in Puerto Madero in a pool of blood. He was not breathing. Doctors are there.
Patcher left Argentina days later, “fearing for his safety.” He currently resides in Israel. Nisman's unexpected death galvanized people around the world, as shown in the following Twitter map:
The worldwide impact of #MuertedeNisman hashtag was reflected on this visualization developed with the tool CartoDB.
Nisman was found dead at his home in Buenos Aires beside a handgun, just hours before he was due to appear before Congress. Internet users have speculated rampantly about whether it was suicide or homicide. The incident has unsurprisingly become politicized:
.@CFKArgentina: La verdadera operación contra el Gobierno era la muerte del Fiscal después de acusar a la Presidenta http://t.co/4nke9yfyRz
— teleSUR TV (@teleSURtv) January 22, 2015
@CFKArgentina: The prosecutor's death, timed after he accused the President, is really an operation against the government. http://t.co/4nke9yfyRz
Sí, al gobierno lo perjudicaron. Pero ojo que al matarlo en cierto modo también perjudicaron a Nisman. — Malcom Gomez (@malcomgomez) January 26, 2015
Oh sure, it's against the government alright. And killing Nisman didn't harm him at all.
¿Miente Berni, miente @CFKArgentina o mienten ambos? ¿Quién le avisó a CFK? ¿A qué hora llegó el juez? http://t.co/PVYXSlNVQz — Javier Smaldone (@mis2centavos) January 27, 2015
Does Berni lie? Does @CFKArgentina lie or both lie? Who told CFK? What time did the judge arrive? http://t.co/PVYXSlNVQz
According to Argentinian police, Nisman, age 51, committed suicide just a few hours before he was supposed to speak to Congress and present his case against President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, whom Nisman accused of having reached a secret agreement with Iran to protect the alleged perpetrators of the 1994 attack.
On the morning of July 18, 1994, about 300 kilograms (660 pounds) of explosives were detonated in front of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association building. Local and international investigators later determined that Iranian officials with ties to the Lebanese group Hezbollah most likely masterminded of the attack.
The Iranian government rejects the accusations, however, and has refused repeatedly to cooperate with investigators, despite a denunciation from the United Nations.
In 2013, Argentina and Iran signed an agreement called the “Memorandum of Understanding,” which created a “Truth Commission” to clarify the events of 1994. Argentina's Jewish community, the largest in Latin America, did not welcome the agreement, which it said would fail due to Tehran's lack of interest. Indeed, the Iranian parliament would not approve the memorandum, as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never submitted it for review.
Nisman argued that the agreement was signed to “fabricate the Iran's innocence” and facilitate the commercial trade of grains and meat in exchange for energy between the two countries.
The only person ever prosecuted for the bombing was Carlos Telleldín, who sold the truck that carried the suicide bomber to the target. Those behind the attack remain at large.
More more information and details about the case, click here.

author: Mary Aviles


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Australia Beats Determined South Korea 2-1 to Win 2015 Asian Cup  · Global Voices
Kevin Rennie

The Socceroos have claimed the 2015 Asian Cup in a tight, closely contested final against South Korea on 31 January. A goal in extra time gave the home side a 2-1 victory in Sydney.
Asian Cup kick-off – TV screenshot
This Melbourne based Global Voices blogger followed the live TV broadcast and the twitter hashtag #ACfinal, concentrating on the Oz twitterverse.
Stadium Australia was sold out as this photo clearly shows:
How good is this! #AC2015 #AsianCup #ACFinal #Socceroos pic.twitter.com/vtbaKgGY9a
— Adam Santarossa (@adamsantarossa) January 31, 2015
Many Aussie fans felt that their hopes were in the hands of veteran star Tim Cahill:
Tim Cahill was born for these moments. He will deliver #ACFinal
— Troy Riordan (@reardo34) January 31, 2015
The standard of the refereeing was a consistent meme for the night. One-eyed supporters saw what they believed:
There's been more dives in the first 10 minutes of the Asian Cup Final than the 2014 Olympics #AC2015 #ACFinal
— Fergus White (@fergus_white) January 31, 2015
The ref needs a holiday, maybe 4th division in the Siberian league for a month or 2.#ACFinal #AUSvKOR #Socceroos #AsianCup2015 #ACFinal
— Paul Fisher (@fishstar76) January 31, 2015
However, the Socceroos captain and his team also received some criticism early on:
Jedinak needs to get his temper under control! #AUSvKOR #ACFinal #GoSocceroos
— Donna (@DSpiceW) January 31, 2015
Lots of stray passes from @Socceroos. Need to calm their nerves. #AsianCup! #AC2015 #ACFinal
— Alvin Ng (@AlvinNg) January 31, 2015
Their nerves were calmed after the stands erupted for Massimo Luongo’s 44 minute goal:
MASSIMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLUONGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOGOOOOOOOOOAAAAALLLLLLL!!!!!#ACFinal
— Blake (@AussiePhinatic) January 31, 2015
At the break, some fans were switching to the other big events of the night namely the Queensland State election and the Australian Open Tennis Women’s final:
What a night for #live #tv Glad I'm in charge of the remote tonight. #ACFinal #qldvotes #AusOpen
— Bernadette McSherry (@bmcsherr) January 31, 2015
[Your author joined them briefly switching to Poll Bludger‘s live blog]
Meanwhile, some South Koreans were tweeting their frustrations in English:
MT @binnyhendrix Aus, why play so dirty? It's so shameful. This #acfinal would be so much more enjoyable if Aus played w good sportsmanship.
— stella lee née lee (@treeliruli) January 31, 2015
Another meme was this photo of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un:
Kim Jong Un declares this a victory for communism #AUSvKOR #GoSocceroos #AC2015 #ACFinal pic.twitter.com/8oo9aVSVIc
— Ares Mars (@AresMarsFlack) January 31, 2015
When coach Ange Postecoglou subbed injured Tim Cahill, supporters took a deep breath:
Cahill off, wow. Okay… you're the boss, Ange. #ACFinal
— Hendo (@HendoHoops) January 31, 2015
Not everyone was so calm:
My dads losing it at the tv.. #ACFinal #AUSvKOR
— Amanda ن (@AmandaHektic) January 31, 2015
These fears were born out as the end of regular time approached:
Unbelievable! Son Heung-Min with an equaliser in the 91st minute! #ACFinal.
— Tom Webber (@thwebber) January 31, 2015
So many controls were just thrown at the screen #ACFinal
— Marc Pittonet (@MPittonet) January 31, 2015
James Troisi’s goal in the 105th minute proved to be the decider:
So @afcasiancup champions ✔ @TheAFCCL champions ✔Well done @socceroos! Did our nation proud tonight! Proud of all of you#ACFinal
— Sports Banter (@sports_banter) January 31, 2015
Massimo Luongo received the honour of Most Valuable Player for the tournament:
.@MassLuongo gets a #AC2015 Champions selfie!! #ACFinal pic.twitter.com/PF3s6HRIrk
— AFC Asian Cup (@afcasiancup) January 31, 2015
It would not have been football without some controversy. Two days before the final Asian Footaball Confederation president Sheikh Salman Bin Ibrahim Al-Khalifa raised moves to “evict” the Socceroos from Asia. Sportsfan quoted him as saying that “the Arabs are not the only ones who are not convinced that Australia's membership in Asia's football is feasible.” The Socceroos success in the World Cup qualifiers is the major reason apparently.
The Aussie response on twitter was predictable. Before the game Ian Watts captured the local feeling:
West Asia wants Australia out of the Asian football competitions. Sounds like sour grapes to me. #bunchofsorelosers http://t.co/r4VMrn2qXX
— Ian Watts (@ianwattsdesign) January 29, 2015
After Australia became champions, Stephen Fenech underline the importance of the victory:
Australia is definitely a part of Asia now!! Asian Cup champions!!!! #ACFinal pic.twitter.com/oWaI5rgSPK
— Stephen Fenech (@StephenFenech) January 31, 2015
Australia's success may well increase rather than dampen calls for its removal from the Asian Confederation.
[The featured and thumbnail images were taken as screenshots from ABC TV live coverage of the cup.]

author: Kevin Rennie


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Witness Tampering Allegations Against Trinidad & Tobago’s Attorney General Silence the Nation · Global Voices
Flora Thomas

Political banner claiming “Anand is D’ Man”. Photo by Taran Rampersad, CC 2.0.
Apart from the position's obvious governmental role, the Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago is charged with safeguarding the public interest, which makes it even more of a travesty that the country's current AG, Anand Ramlogan, is under police investigation for attempting to interfere with law enforcement officers.
The probe hinges heavily on the testimony of David West, an attorney and anti-money-laundering specialist, who was recently appointed as director of the Police Complaints Authority (PCA). Although the police commissioner's statement concerning the probe did not mention any specific allegations that West made against the AG, it is widely believed that Ramlogan's alleged misbehaviour in public office has to do with the “Section 34″ controversy, a scandal involving financiers of the country's current coalition government escaping corruption and money laundering charges.
West has revealed, however, that Ramlogan allegedly asked him to withdraw a witness statement he had made on behalf of Dr. Keith Rowley, Leader of the Opposition, in a case currently before the High Court, in which Ramlogan is claiming defamation damages. In return, West was supposed to have won the government's support for his appointment as Director of the PCA. The timelines demonstrate that West had already agreed to be a witness in the case five months before he was appointed. This puts Ramlogan in a tenuous position, since he claimed that he could not possibly have asked West to withdraw his statement on October 31, since the statement didn’t exist until December 20, 2014. Court documents prove that information about West's draft statement was brought before the High Court and the Court of Appeal in June and July, 2014, respectively. West was appointed as head of the PCA on November 7, 2014.
It is not the first time Ramlogan's statements have been at odds with the public record. In the Section 34 controversy, which has become known as Emailgate, Ramlogan said Justice Judith Jones had been assigned to the lawsuit case, though court records apparently confirm Jones was never the presiding judge.
In his public statement, West made it clear that the attorney general's alleged behaviour “should be investigated by the proper authorities and not in the media”, but he was careful to distance himself from Ramlogan:
Although the Hon. Attorney General initially refused to make any comment on the matter, he is now on the public record denying categorically that he ever requested me to withdraw my witness statement in his claim against Dr Rowley. I am compelled to say publicly, without more, that my recollection of what transpired is diametrically opposed to the Hon. Attorney General’s denial that he ever approached me.
Even though police investigations are ongoing, many are calling for the AG's resignation, on the grounds that he has brought his office into disrepute. Ramlogan, for his part, maintains that the entire controversy is a case of political mischief, ostensibly by the opposition party. The AG's Twitter feed has mentioned nothing about the police investigation, but just prior to the police probe being made public, he posted two documents confirming that he has been cleared of conspiracy charges levied by the opposition People's National Movement.
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, meanwhile, has said the charges are “serious and very troubling”. Her comments were met with some scepticism by Facebook user Patricia Worrell, who quipped:
‘I will work expeditiously’. But it seems that in the PM's dictionary ‘expeditiously’ means ‘until my back is absolutely to the wall’.
Even more concerning to some netizens are reports that West's security detail has been ramped up, since they interpret the move as a signal that witnesses in cases against government ministers might have something to fear. Also of interest is the likelihood that another minister—as yet unnamed—could be involved. Some social media users have been suggesting that the person in question is Gary Griffith, the country's Minister of National Security, but in a news report broadcast last Friday night, when asked if he would be meeting with the Prime Minister and the AG, Griffith said that whenever the PM meets with Ramlogan and “the other minister”, if she calls for him to be present, he will oblige. At that point, all that had been confirmed about Griffith is that he was “a key witness” in the case, but a newspaper report yesterday confirmed that telephone records show Griffith did indeed contact West on December 19, 2014.
He was allegedly told to ask West whether he had “pulled back a document”, but Griffith claims he was set up, as he did not know the document in question was a witness statement. Just as disturbing are reports that Griffith's Cabinet peers were trying to persuade him to deny that he had ever called West, a development which the country's opposition leader called “worrisome“, saying that if the allegations are true, then Trinidad and Tobago is “not too far from a failed state status”.
The legal developments and their implications for the country's democracy are troublesome enough, but from a citizen media perspective, the overwhelming silence about the entire controversy is just as concerning, leaving many to wonder where Trinidad and Tobago is headed if citizens will not speak up for and defend their own democracy. There has been nothing on Twitter about the situation and discussion on Facebook has been relegated to users’ personal walls. It's almost as if people are thinking twice about exchanging views publicly. Even the Law Association of Trinidad and Tobago (LATT) was quiet on the issue, until yesterday, when it released a press statement calling on the AG to step down. The release was careful to make no judgement on Ramlogan's innocence or guilt until the findings of the police investigation are revealed, but notes:
It is the view of LATT that the police investigation into the conduct of the Attorney General has the ability to adversely affect and undermine the public perception of and confidence in the Office of the Attorney General.
The gravity of the situation was not lost on one Facebook user, Rhoda Bharath, who admonished other netizens for failing to speak up:
Understand how low we have fallen…
The Attorney General and the Minister of National Security implicated in a matter of witness tampering.
The lead legal counsel for the government and the man in charge of all of our security apparati.
And my friends silent…keep posting pics about your cat!
Witness tampering is a criminal offence in Trinidad and Tobago, which carries stiff penalties, including steep fines and up to 20 years in prison. Under pressure to be decisive about the issue, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has announced she will address the nation at 4 p.m. tomorrow, February 2. Citizens who understand the far-reaching ramifications of the country's attorney general being investigated will no doubt be watching and waiting to see what the Prime Minister will do. Some anticipate a Cabinet reshuffle; others are hoping for an announcement of the AG's dismissal, but whatever she chooses, her government has already been severely compromised.

author: Flora Thomas


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The Tajik President’s 82-Year-Old Former Maths Teacher Cannot Pass an Exam to Register as an Opposition Candidate · Global Voices
Abdulfattoh Shafiev

Tajik President Emomali Rahmon meets with elders during a working trip. Wikipedia image.
Ten of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan's candidates recently failed to pass mandatory Tajik language tests to compete in elections to the district council in Danghara, birthplace of the republic's incumbent President Emomali Rahmon and many members of his cabinet.
Given the constant pressure experienced by Tajikistan's largest opposition party — the only faith-based political party in Central Asia — that should not be news. But the fact that 82-year-old Kholmuhammad Kamolov, who taught Rahmon mathematics when he was at middle school, is among the ten, has given Tajikistan's chattering classes plenty to laugh about.
As IRPT's official website informs, almost half of the party's candidates in Danghara did not pass a mandatory test on the state language. The IRPT says Kamolov waited for two hours in the cold corridor of a building where he had to take the test, before failing for having “bad handwriting”.
The IRPT did not mention why Kamolov was so committed to standing for office against his former pupil's party.
The news immediately sparked a wave of mockery on Facebook, where users doubted the political wisdom of making the man that taught Tajikistan's president look like a dunce:
Барои хамин 23 сол шуд ки шогирдуш вая вай кунед вай шавад гуфта гаштаст!
That is why his student has been saying “do that to that to have that” for the last 23 years!
Another user suggested that the teacher's failure to register as a candidate had little to do with language knowledge:
Бечора муаллим хамаи илму хату каламашро ба шогирдонаш додааст то дар тамоми сохторхо сохиби мансабу макоми баланд шаванд, аммо худ аз санчиш нагузаштааст. Муаллима як приёми бачоияш мондааст, ки аз хизби шогирдаш вакил шавад аз имтихони шаш забон хохад гузашт.
Poor teacher gave all his knowledge to his schoolboys, so they came to lead governmental agencies, but could not pass the test himself. The only chance he had was to try and enter his pupil’s party in which case he could have passed six different language tests simultaneously.
So far the People’s Democratic Party of Tajikistan (President Rahmon's party) has not had any problems registering their candidates:
Номзадhои ХХДТ-ро ангуштонашон бошад басанда аст!Барои пахши як тугмаи такдирсуз hусни хату имло чи даркор?..
PDRT’s members have fingers and that is enough for them. No need for nice handwriting — they just need to push the [parliamentary] buttons that ruin everyone's lives.
A local lawyer known for her oppositional views Fayzinisso Vohidova has the same opinion:
Муаллими президенти кишвар аз имтихони забон нагузашт” Аслан намедонам, имтихони забони точики чи зарурат дорад, вакте ки вакилон бахс накунанд, бахсу мубохиса (дебаты) нест, лоихаи конунро нанависанд, кариб ки бо кори эъчоди машгул нестанд. Лоихаи конунхо аз хукумат ворид мешавад. Барои тугмачаро пахш кардан магар забони точики лозим аст?
I do not understand why there is need for a language test, when members of the parliament do not argue, do not debate, do not draft laws, and do almost no creative work. Draft legislation is submitted by the governmental agencies. Why do you need Tajik language to push a button?
Another Facebook user Abdumannon Sheraliev implies sarcastically that having good handwriting might become more and more important in the context of Tajikistan's failing energy system.
Доштани хусни хуби хат барои вакилони оянда вочиб аст, чун бинобар масрафи бехудаи барк компютеру принтерхо аз корбари гирифта мешаванд ва вакилон бояд барои чавоб ба мактубхои мардум аз калам истифода кунанд.
It is mandatory for MPs to have good handwriting, as when computers and printers are taken out of government offices to save energy, parliamentarians should reply to their voters with a pen.
Danghara district  is a small rural backwater in southern Tajikistan, with a population of around 135,000. As well as being celebrated as the homeland of Emomali Rahmon, many other prominent members of government list the district  as their birthplace, including the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Education and Science, the Minister of Health and Social Protection, the Chairman of the State Agency for Financial Control and the Fight Against Corruption and the Head of the National Bank.
Other key ministerial positions tend to belong to people born in districts close to Danghara, while in recent years immediate members of the Rahmon family have been appointed to key positions, including his son (Head of the Customs Committee), daughter (First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs) and son-in-law (First Deputy Minister of Finance).


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Global Voices’ Joey Ayoub: ‘Providing the Context Is Key in Trying to Convey Empathy’ With Gaza · Global Voices
Lova Rakotomalala

Joey Ayoub at 2015 Global Voices Citizen Media Summit in Cebu, Philippines via Jeremy Clarke
Global Voices contributor Joey Ayoub is sitting at a Cebu café, browsing wantonly through the morning news on his smartphone. I ask him if it would be a good time to exchange a few words about covering Palestine, the narratives in mainstream media and his hope for the region. He nods along and stands up slowly, trying to gather enough energy to discuss a topic that he has written at length about for the past few months.
He is visibly tired; the 2015 Global Voices Citizen Media Summit in Cebu, Philippines, has been thrilling but intense. More so that the summit, it seems that the challenge of writing about topic and people he cares deeply about has taken a toll on him.
Joey is from Lebanon but he also covers Palestine and other Middle Eastern and North African countries for Global Voices. He is also the co-creator of blog Hummus for Thought. The war in Gaza broke out on July 8, 2014, as Israel launched a military operation against the Strip called Operation Protective Edge. The continued shelling of the region resulted in over 2,200 deaths, most of them Gazans. Joey was one of the main authors driving Global Voices’ coverage of the conflict; his report on an Israeli army whistleblower was the most read post on Global Voices in 2014.
Here are his thoughts on writing about the conflict in Gaza and its impact on Gazans and himself.
Global Voices (GV): You wrote extensively on the violence between Israel and Gaza. What was the most challenging aspect of covering the situation for you personally?
Joey Ayoub (JA):  It was an emotionally draining task. I wrote an article every two days or so.  I have many friends in Gaza and when you see images of deaths, buildings destroyed and someone you know possibly being among the victims, it becomes a daunting challenge to stick to the facts and not less personal feelings take over. I more or less managed to do that, I believe. But the psychological struggle of observing the conflict was demanding so I had to get some help to deal with it.
GV: During the conflict, how did you manage to stay connected with people on the ground?
JA: That was the other challenging aspect of covering this story: staying on top of the news when connection on the ground was disrupted. But there is a very active online community in Gaza and my friends on the ground were well connected as well so I was able to grow my network with all the media producers, local and foreign, in the region. It allowed me to recoup facts and get the story right.
GV: The complexity of the conflict has been well documented. What would you say is the aspect of the conflict that outside observers have the hardest time understanding?
JA: The conflict in Palestine is, in fact, not that difficult to understand but at the same time, it is a daunting challenge to fully comprehend.
Let me explain: It is not difficult because the fact are usually straightforward, undisputed. The occupying forces are known and the occupied population is also identified. Contrary to common belief worldwide, what we witness here is a relatively new, post-WWII conflict (1948), not some ancient war between rival populations. People in the western world often believe that the animosity is born out of centuries-old clashes of civilization, Fukuyama-style and would look at the conflict through a specific geopolitical lens. People in the region do not have this luxury. They face the impact of the conflict and try to deal with it the best way they can. Gazans would try to get international awareness and solidarity about the struggle they face on a daily basis. They do not really care about the geopolitical framing with which the rest of the world tries to explain the causes of the conflict.
So I think this is the hardest part to understand for the rest of the world: the notion of basic self-defense that the occupied population is entitled to (raising awareness and solidarity for the victims) is lost because we try to find a geopolitical cause to the conflict.
GV: Could you explain a bit more that notion of self-defense?
JA: The fact is, the international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law and the blockade of the Gaza strip by the Israeli military as an act of occupation. The right to express itself and protest (self-defense) is entrenched in international human rights law in any occupied territories because the occupied residents are subjugated to the control of the occupying power without any access to its political power. However, the concept that Palestinians are allowed to protest the occupation is not even discussed in western media. This is what the Palestinian-American writer Edward Said explains in great length in the concept of “permission to narrate“: the current narrative in the media denies Palestinians the power to communicate their own history.
GV: So the narrative of social justice is missing when we focus on the cause of the conflict, religious or not.
JA: Palestinians will tell you that there were no issues of co-existing between communities in Palestine before 1948. Different communities lived together without problems before but now it is more difficult because of the daily social injustice. There are many other factors that feed the conflict but reducing current sources of injustice in the territories will be more effective in reducing the number of future conflicts than any geopolitical solutions proposed to this day.
GV: How can the media better convey that daily struggle on the ground and help convey more empathy with victims of the conflict?
JA: Our primary objective was to always go back to the facts and repeat them over and over in every post so that no ambiguity remains about what was happening on the ground. The idea was to not let the content of our articles be taken out of context by partisan groups on either sides. Providing the context is key in trying to convey empathy.
Another challenge is that there is a media blockade that prevents the Israeli population from being aware of what is happening in the occupied territories. This is why I have a great deal of respect for Jewish activists who are trying to raise awareness for the Palestinian cause despite the effort of Netanyahu administration to silence them. It takes so much more effort to understand the injustice when context is not easily accessible to you. And it takes even more effort to try to fight this system from within.
On the other hand, Lebanese population and other neighboring countries are well aware of the tragedy in Gaza. When you see the images of the devastation, it becomes quite difficult for them to not make general judgment on the Israeli administration and the people it is suppose to represent. That is why I make it a point to emphasize the work that Jewish activists undertake for the Palestinian population. Their situation is very tenuous and if we are to convey more empathy to the victims of the conflicts, Jewish activists are the epitome of how it can be done. We should support them because they are certainly quite isolated in their own country.
GV: You wrote an article on how Palestinian Twitter users were supporting the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, following the shooting death of a black teenager at the hands of a policeman. We have seen many images of Palestinians displaying empathy with other causes while being under duress themselves.
JA: It was one of the more moving displays I had the chance to cover. The two situations are not quite similar though. In Ferguson, the black communities can say that they are citizens of the USA and that they demand the rights to be treated equally. This is not the case in Palestine. But both communities can relate to the lack of opportunities that they have access to. The support for Ferguson from Palestine happened organically. Many Palestinian activists contributed to the civil rights movement as they navigated similar circles and worked on similar issues. The protests in Ferguson happened shortly after the Gaza conflict so the parallel was easy to make. I would say that the situation in West Bank is probably more similar than the one in Gaza because it is the same type of oppression.
GV: Final question: you spent a few months in Madagascar and created the page “Humans of Madagascar” during your stay. What was the reason behind your stay there and what did you learned from it?
JA: I was 20, in my second year at American University of Beirut working on a degree in social and conservation studies. The WWF offered a grant to be a volunteer abroad and I was lucky enough to be accepted. I stayed about two months in a charming little village called Ambohibola in southern Madagascar and it was unforgettable. The thing about Malagasy people is that they are very nice regardless of the situation. I was there one year after the coup d'état (in 2009) so things were very unstable but I always felt safe in the village. I hope to be back there soon.
GV: Thanks, Joey! And safe travels.

author: Lova Rakotomalala


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How Australia Made History in the Asian Football Cup · Global Voices
Manuel Ribeiro

South Korea supporters taking a selfie before the match finals against Australia. Photo by author Manuel Ribeiro.
The Socceroos of Australia became “champions of Asia” after a 2-1 win against The Red Devils of South Korea in the 2015 Asian Football Confederation held in Sydney.
CHAMPIONS OF ASIA! #GoSocceroos @Socceroos #GoAussie #AUSvKOR #ACFinal #AC2015 @FFA @theheraldsun @camcansnap pic.twitter.com/DBplAIwvMi — Heraldsunphoto (@heraldsunphoto) January 31, 2015
Twitter was flooded with supporters from all over commenting on the exciting final that took place in the land of cricket. Selfies were also a trend before and after the match.
Even the players wanted to register this moment with a selfie:
.@MassLuongo gets a #AC2015 Champions selfie!! #ACFinal pic.twitter.com/PF3s6HRIrk
— AFC Asian Cup (@afcasiancup) January 31, 2015
More than 76,000 fans went into a sold out Stadium Australia in Sydney`s Olympic Park. Organisers requested everyone to use public transport, especially trains:
The #ACFinal is a SELL OUT today! Make sure you take advantage of the free transport & get down early! #AC2015 pic.twitter.com/oWlCAAtr0e — AFC Asian Cup (@afcasiancup) January 31, 2015
How both teams got into the finals
Captain Tim Cahill led the Australian squad to this year´s finals after beating UAE by 2-0 in the semi-finals. South Korea, led by its star Son Heung Min, also reached the finals after beating difficult Iraq with a 2-0 victory in Sydney. The Iraqis previously defeated Iran in a dramatic game during the quarter-finals held in Canberra. Koreans were looking to conquer their third AFC Asian cup. However, Australia took the lead in the final match after Massimo Luongo scored the opening goal of the match:
MASSIMO LUONGO! http://t.co/G56vuf6nm5 #ACFinal #AC2015
— Alexander† (@andertyo) January 31, 2015
Massimo is already considered the Socceroos’ new star:
Wow. Great contest. One moment of genius from the new prince of Australian football — Craig Foster (@Craig_Foster) January 31, 2015
The Red Devils lost four Asian Cup finals since their last victory in 1960 (1972 to Iran, 1980 to Kuwait and 1988 to Saudi Arabia) and now against Australia, which took home its first Asian Cup after joining this confederation in 2006. The Socceroos were beaten finalists at Qatar in 2011. They lost 0-1 to Japan after extra-time.
Fans find it hard to believe but Australia is currently leading soccer in this part of the world:
Who would have guessed Australia would be reigning AFC Champions League & Asian Cup (?) holders twelve months ago? #ACFinal #AC2015 #KORvAUS — Javier Queiroz (@StuffedShoulder) January 31, 2015
After 90 minutes into the game when everyone was already convinced victory would go to Australia, South Korea drew the score to 1-1 when the team's star player Son Ming scored a goal, leaving the Aussie fans despairing and taking the match into extra-time:
#Sonaldo https://t.co/PnpfW49aMW #손흥민 #ACFinal #KORvAUS #TIME_for_CHANGE
— Joel Kim (김현중) (@_joelkim) January 31, 2015
During extra-time James Troisi toom the lead, scoring Australia`s second goal after a great play from Juric in the right corner:
YES YES YES ! 1:2 TROISI @Socceroos GOAL! Come on #GoSocceroos !!! #AC2015 #KORAUS https://t.co/JtHUYS3Oon
— AleksandraKalinowska (@Ola_Kalinowska) January 31, 2015
The game became a dangerous one for people with a heart condition. On Twitter, fans desperately say:
If Korea equalise again i'll cry… I'm not even Australian #GoSocceroos #AC2015 #ACFinal — Cara Conboy (@carabonara11) January 31, 2015
After this great win by Australia many believe soccer will become more popular especially among young kids from down under. The highlights of the match were also available on Twitter a few minutes after the awards ceremony:
HIGHLIGHTS | Korea Republic 1 – 2 Australia: http://t.co/g6pmx81FxJ #ACFinal #AC2015
— AFC Asian Cup (@afcasiancup) January 31, 2015

author: Manuel Ribeiro


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Iranian Newspaper Shut Down Over ‘I Am Charlie’ Cover Featuring George Clooney · Global Voices
Mahsa Alimardani

Mardom-e Emrooz cover, “Clooney: I am Charlie too.”
Newspaper coverage of the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris have stirred strong reactions across Iran's newspapers.
Reformist leaning newspaper Mardom-e Emrooz was shut down after running a front page cover on January 13 quoting American actor George Clooney, who ended his Golden Globe acceptance speech by saying “I am Charlie”. A media court rule for its closure, while the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, responsible for the press, revoked the newspapers license.
This was followed by a cover run by the hardline newspaper Vatan-e Emrooz with the title “Death to Charlie” on January 20.
Vatan-e Emrooz runs the cover page “Death to Charlie”
A total of 17 people were killed during an attack on the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and another two days later on a Jewish supermarket. Iranian officials have condemned the violence, while also calling the magazine's cartoons offensive to Muslims.
Shahram Rafizadeh, an Iranian newspaper expert and Radio Farda columnist covering Iranian media, explained in an interview with Global Voices how the conversation surrounding the Paris tragedy evolved in Iran's press:
There are two perspectives on Charlie Hebdo. First, is the attack on the actions of the Charlie Hebdo. Most newspapers and stories gave this considerable space. Conservative [newspaper] Kayhan even published the story of Ahmad Khatami, the Tehran Friday prayer leader condemning the attackers of Charlie Hebdo. This led to the publication of George Clooney in Mardom-e Emrooz saying “I am Charlie Hebdo.” However, immediately after the French magazine went ahead with the publication of their Mohammad caricatures, Iran's hardline conservatives attacked reformists and those close to [Iranian President Hassan] Rouhani for supporting the magazine, accusing them of thinking like Charlie Hebdo, and sending [Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs] Javad Zarif as an envoy to march in solidarity during the Paris commemoration. Kayhan’s first page against Mardom-e Emrooz was then a reaction to this. Thursday Kayhan attacks Mardom, then by Saturday they shut them down entirely.
The hardline newspaper Kayhan, who's management is closely tied to the office of the Supreme Leader, printed a cover page stating, “Welcome to the official dance that writers are blindly dictating,” followed by a cartoon of a Nigerian activist asking the world leaders who marched in Paris to join them for the 2,000 Nigerians massacred by Boko Haram.
Kayhan front page, in reaction to George Clooney cover of Mardom-e Emrooz.


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Local Iranian Humane Society Wants to End Animal Dissection Tournaments · Global Voices
Iran Voices

A campaign was underway by Iran's Humane Society against the Disectomy Contest of Mashhad.
This post first appeared on IranVoices.org and is translated into English and published here as part of a content-sharing agreement.
The Humane Society of Mashhad recently pressed the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at Ferdosi University to put a stop to the tradition of an animal dissection tournament for high school students. The annual event was planned to be held at the end of December at the university.
The Humane Society asked all animal lovers to show their support by their presence in front of the university in order to protest this event. Above is a photo of the campaign poster (in Persian), which was posted on December 17 on the Facebook page for the Society to Defend Animal Rights.
During past tournaments, students have been asked to compete against each other by extracting the internal organs of mice within 20 minutes. Each contestant paid 75,000 tomans (US $30) to participate, a fee that was deposited into the account of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Ferdosi University.
Despite the online and offline protest movement, the tournament was held on December 16. The Society to Defend Animal Rights campaign called the contest immoral and a misuse of laboratory animals, and further insisted that the tournament had no place in scientific research and promotion.
The society's request to put a stop to the event went ignored, however. Animal rights efforts are only just beginning to be noticed by mainstream Iranian news. The campaign received coverage in a small Persian news blog called Iran News Online, but was widely shared on the Facebook page for the Iranian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The campaign generated 245 shares, 821 likes, and an outpouring of comments.

author: Iran Voices


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Rangoon Revealed Facebook Page ‘Tells Burma’s Story, One Soul at a Time’ · Global Voices
Juan Cebu

“I sew rags for a living while my husband earns a living as a trishaw driver. I earn about 2000ks every day, taking old clothes, fixing them up and selling them in the market. We have three kids and are doing our best to support them. See, 2000 kyats is not enough to support a person's daily needs unlike what one of those ignorant politicians said.” Photo courtesy Rangoon Revealed Facebook page.
A group of teenagers from Myanmar has created a Facebook page called “Rangoon Revealed“, which offers an intimate look into the life of ordinary people in Yangon, the former capital of Myanmar.
Myanmar was formerly known as Burma while Yangon was called Rangoon. Initiated by Thaw Htet and Zwe Paing Htet, “Rangoon Revealed” seeks to “tell Burma's story, one soul at a time” by uploading photos of Yangon residents plus a brief description of their lives.
Asked by Global Voices about their inspiration in launching this online project, the two young Yangon residents said they wanted their readers to understand better the lives of ordinary Burmese. They added:
We want to capture the voices of the poor people and those who are struggling in their life.
There may be some foreigners who think that the situation in Myanmar has greatly improved. But what they don’t realize is that sometimes life has become even more difficult now.
Some of the photos has gone viral in Myanmar like the one below which featured a trishaw (three-wheeled vehicle) driver:
Photo courtesy Rangoon Revealed Facebook page.
The photo is accompanied by a quote from its subject:
I have a twin brother who looks like me but is very smart. I failed 9th Grade 3 times you see so I decided to support my siblings by working as a trishaw driver. While I was working hard, my brother was studying as best as he could too. He got 4 distinctions in the 11th grade exam.
Through “Rangoon Revealed”, Thaw Htet hopes to correct the stereotype that rickshaw drivers are lazy when the truth is that many of them work hard to support their families.
Below are some of photos of other Yangon residents whose life stories were shared on the Facebook page:
Photo courtesy Rangoon Revealed Facebook page.
I am divorced and that seems to be a bad thing in this country. Even though I can earn enough money to live by myself, people still criticize me, some times calling me ‘mote-soe-ma’, a derogatory term that means huntress. It is as if people expect a women to not have choices.
Photo courtesy Rangoon Revealed Facebook page.
What is your happiest moment with your son? I don't have a happiest moment. Every moment I get with him is a blessing.
Photo courtesy Rangoon Revealed Facebook page.
I'm happy when I get many customers because my boss scolds me if I do not sell much. I came from a small town in Magwe division to come to Yangon to work. I'm now away from my parents who i support with the money I got from selling these snacks.
Photo courtesy Rangoon Revealed Facebook page.
I've been lifting these ropes for 30 years. I've seen Myanmar change and this is what I have found out. Education is vital. You kids have a chance to learn. Make sure u try hard now so you won't have to suffer in the future. Don't make that fatal mistake.
Photo courtesy Rangoon Revealed Facebook page.
I wash linen and tablecloths from restaurants. I guess the only jobs I can have are the ones that nobody else wants to do.
Photo courtesy Rangoon Revealed Facebook page.
What was the happiest moment in your life?
When my wife first conceived a child.
When was your saddest moment?
When the same child passed away.

author: Juan Cebu


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Russian Opposition to Test Putin’s Popularity Amid Financial Crisis · Global Voices
Will Wright

Images edited by Kevin Rothrock.
The political opposition in Russia has been under siege recently, pushed increasingly to the periphery by a wave of patriotism that has washed over the country.
President Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, is more popular than ever, at least according to polling by the Levada Center. Following his decision to annex Crimea and Sevastopol in March 2014, Putin's approval rating spiked to around 85 percent and has held steady ever since.
The year ahead, however, could prove more challenging for Putin than his astronomical approval ratings suggest.
Falling oil prices and Western sanctions over Ukraine have contributed to a recent downturn in the Russian economy. Earlier this month, the World Bank downgraded Russia’s expected GDP growth in 2015 to negative 2.9 percent. A simmering rebellion in eastern Ukraine, widely associated with the Kremlin, has flared anew in the middle of winter, bringing more death and destruction.
Perhaps in a bid to test the underpinnings of Putin's support in light of these recent developments, part of the Russian opposition has announced plans for an “anti-crisis” march on March 1.
Alexey Navalny and his wife, Yulia. June 12, 2013. Photo by P.L. Bogomolov. CC 3.0.
On January 27, opposition leader Alexey Navalny published a call on his website for Russians to join him at a demonstration “under the Russian flag” on March 1. He says the necessary paperwork will be filed in advance to make the march a sanctioned event in central Moscow for up to 100,000 people.
So far, the march is being sponsored by the following opposition groups: Navalny's own Progress Party, RPR-Parnas (on whose ticket Navalny ran for Moscow mayor in 2013), the December Fifth Party, and Solidarity.
According to Navalny's announcement, the “anti-crisis” march will be held in support of a list of measures that provide “the basis for a positive agenda around which we can all unite… [and] without which Russia will not be able to get out of the crisis.” There are several listed demands:
Требования Антикризисного Марша «Весна» 1-го марта 2015 года
Действующий режим после многих лет проедания нефтяных денег завел страну в тупик и полностью обанкротился. Путин и его правительство не могут вывести страну из кризиса и должны уйти. Мы требуем принятия антикризисных мер, поддерживаемых населением и широким фронтом политических сил.
Политические требования:
Социально-экономические требования:
Мы призываем всех выйти на Антикризисный Марш под государственным флагом России.
Demands of the Anti-Crisis “Spring” March of March 1, 2015
The current regime, after living off oil money for many years, has led the country into a dead end and completely bankrupted it. Putin and his government are unable to extract the country from this crisis and must go. We demand the adoption of anti-crisis measures that are supported by the people and a broad front of political forces.
Political demands:
Social and economic demands:
We call for everyone to join the Anti-Crisis March under the national flag of Russia.
Opposition figures from other groups sponsoring the march have also promoted it online.
Navalny's associate Leonid Volkov created a Facebook page for the event. (It now has almost 6,000 RSVPs.) Vkontakte pages have also sprung up for Moscow (with 320 subscribers) and St. Petersburg (with 256 subscribers). A St. Petersburg Facebook event page for the march (with 215 RSVPs) now exists, as well.
Boris Nemtsov, a Solidarity leader and RPR-Parnas co-chair, wrote on Facebook that Putin's policies are to blame for the economic crisis in Russia, and presented the same list of “anti-crisis” measures, proclaiming that “our demands cannot be brushed aside” if at least 100,000-150,000 people take to the streets. Nemtsov's appeal was also posted on his Echo of Moscow blog.
RPR-Parnas co-chair and former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov posted the list of “anti-crisis” measures to his website and promoted the march on LiveJournal, writing:
Путину больше нечего предложить российскому народу, кроме удовлетворения им же разогретой жажды постсоветского реванша, империи, национальной исключительности и чванства, ненависти к цивилизованному миру.
Путинская система прогнила окончательно, «капитализм для своих» обанкротился. Путин должен уйти вместе с системой, которую он олицетворяет, и которая стала основным препятствием на пути развития страны.
Мой план ясный и простой. Это план конституционного выхода из этой ситуации.
Этот план предполагает ключевую роль в нем Путина. Он и его команда должны понять и принять мысль о том, что они должны уходить, уходить конституционно. Это означает выборы. У нас есть конституционные выборные даты. Это – декабрь 2016-го года, федеральные выборы в Государственную думу, и март 2018-го года – выборы Президента. Это и есть точки перелома, это и есть реальный путь изменения ситуации. И для нынешней власти выстроить стратегию своего ухода, нормального ухода возможно, и сделать это необходимо сейчас в этом в 2015-м году.
Putin no longer has anything to offer the Russian people other than indulgence of the thirst for post-Soviet revanchism, empire, xenophobia and national arrogance, and hatred of the civilized world.
Putin's system has rotted through, “crony capitalism” has bankrupted itself. Putin must go along with the system he represents, which has become the main obstacle to the country's development.
My plan is clear and simple. The plan is a constitutional way out of this situation.
In this plan, Putin would play a key role. He and his team must understand and accept the idea that they should leave—leave constitutionally, that is. This means elections. We have constitutionally-set election dates. December 2016 is the date for federal elections to the State Duma, and March 2018 is the date for the election of the President. This is the turning point—this is the real way to change the situation. And for the current government to draw up an exit strategy, and a normal exit is possible, planning must begin now in 2015.
Kasyanov also calls on the Kremlin to reverse its political crackdown, take steps to empower Russia's civil society, and tone down propagandistic hysteria on television. These measures, Kasyanov says, would prepare the country to choose a new government in the next round of national elections.
Kasyanov admits his plan won't happen by itself, but argues that mass protests can pressure the authorities to follow his plan and are therefore the “key” to realizing peaceful and constitutional change in Russia's government. Kasyanov concludes his blog post by calling for all “sensible and responsible citizens” to join him in the streets on March 1.
The huge numbers that opposition leaders hope to see at the March 1 rally have only materialized once before in Putin's Russia, during the 2011-2012 winter protests, and it is unclear how many participants organizers of the “anti-crisis” march can mobilize in the next month.
The demonstration will, however, be an interesting way to gauge public support for the clearly stated “anti-crisis” measures presented by opposition leaders. Many of the positions represent a stark contrast to current Kremlin policy, and appear formulated to target potential cracks in Putin's popularity in light of recent economic and foreign policy developments.

author: Will Wright