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Will Kyrgyzstan’s Winter Be a Blackout Again? · Global Voices
Dasha Kondrateva

One block of appartments finds itself the wrong side of a Bishkek blackout. Photo by Kloop.kg.
Kyrgyz Internet users have called it their “Annual Groundhog Day”, a seeming time loop consisting of things a person does in the dark chill of a winter electricity shutoff.
In fact, in recent years, the country's failing energy grid has just about held up. But with national power supply depending on the water in a remote reservoir, and with those water levels being accutely low this year, there is plenty of reason to think a lucky run has come to its end.
The first time the country was plunged in the darkness was in 2008, when similarly low water levels in the Toktogul reservoir feeding the eponymous Hydro Electric Power (HEP) station caused rolling shutoffs across the country. Back then, many accused then President Kurmanbek Bakiyev of artificially causing the deficit by exporting electricity abroad. The following winter his regime added fuel to a spreading fire of social discontent by announcing massive price hikes for electricity bills. By spring the Bakiyevs had been violently ejected from power.
As Jocelyn Murphy, an independent energy consultant contracted by USAID, explained, the energy system remains vulnerable to collapse.
Too much electricity was exported from Kyrgyzstan 2002-2007. As a result, in 2008, Kyrgyzstan came to a “dead” level in the Toktogul reservoir of 5.5 billion cubic meters. The most desirable course of action is to impose a limit on electricity use for the population. If the local authorities cannot do this, equipment at Toktogul HEP station might stop working.
Kyrgyzstan's energy deficit has been on the front pages of local news since July. Photo by Chris Rickleton.
Can the grid keep up with the government's promises?
During an August conference on preparations for the autumn-winter period, Prime Minister Joomart Otorbaev demanded limits on electricity consumption for each region of the country. According to Otorbaev, if a region goes beyond its limit, it will be disconnected from the grid.
Such tough talk went down badly with readers of the Vecherny Bishkek website:
За всё оплачено, а за газ даже вперед. на тепло на порядок больше платим и дерут с тех кто платит и ещё хотят содрать п.ч. платим за них и для них.как строились так строятся элитки, спрашивается какой они энергией питаются? кизяком? во многих нет ТЦ и газа, всё на ээ. кто давал согласование?
We have paid for all the facilities we use. We also pay ahead of time for the gas to keep our houses warm in winter. Why do we have to suffer for these new elite apartments that are being built all over the city, many of which are using electricity for everything because they are not connected to the central heating station and gas stations. Who allowed them to do that?
Minister of Energy, Osmonbek Artykbaev,  later promised that scheduled electricity outages can be avoided this year, despite a power deficit of roughly 1.6 billion Killowatt hours.
In a pointed reference to a failed project to brand Kyrgyzstan as a Central European-style democracy in Central Asia back in the 1990s, Kloop.kg reader Akmatbek Jumabaev noted:
Швейцарию тоже обещали.
They promised we would become Switzerland as well.
The hydroelectric dam fed by Toqtogul Reservoir. Photo from Wikipedia.
While another netizen commented:
день сурка будет повторятся каждый год пока не будут достроены ГЭСы, пока не будет доведена работа по возведению подстанций и ЛЭП.
We’re going to have Groundhog Day every year until the new HEPs are built and work on the transmission lines is finished.
But the construction of the most significant of those HEPs, Russia-financed Kambarata-1, has been slow-moving. If the 275 metrehigh  dam is ever built, it could allow Kyrgyzstan to export electricity deep into China and South Asia.
Finding solutions
Energy shortages have turned many Kyrgyzstanis into energy experts over the years. Nurmat Nadyrbekov sent a letter to Vecherny Bishkek newspaper’s editorial, arguing for the need to build mini HEP stations throughout the republic:
Я думаю, нужно развивать энергетику нашей страны. В нашей стране очень много маленьких рек и каналов. Нужно их использовать правильно. Каждому району (селу, пригороду) построить свою мини-ГЭС, которая будет обеспечивать несколько тысяч домов электроэнергией.
Так мы сможем обеспечить энергией каждую область, каждый район, каждое село, каждый дом. Плюс ко всему сохраним нынешние ГЭС от перегрузок. А значит не будет веерных отключений и низкого качества электроэнергии.
I think we need to develop the energy sector in our country. There are many small rivers and canals in Kyrgyzstan, and we need to use them in the right way. Each area (village, suburb) needs to construct their own mini-hydroelectric station, which can provide electricity to a few thousand homes. In this way we can provide energy to every region, district, village, and  home. Additionally, we can prevent the large HEPs from suffering overload. After that there will be no more blackouts.
Well-known lawyer and human rights defender, Nurbek Toktakunov, posted another off-grid solution — mobile houses and offices — on his company's blog September 8.
Панические настроения в Правительстве КР по энергетическим проблемам, веерные отключения электроэнергии, повышение тарифов на свет и тепло подвигли команду Партнерской группы «Прецедент» на поиски энергетической независимости и в результате мы пришли к идее мобильного офиса и жилья, не привязанного к инфраструктуре. Мы приобрели просторную палатку, солнечную батарею, спальные мешки, накопители энергии, модем, котел и чайник, выехали в в село Тосор Иссык-Кульской области и два дня работали прямо на пляже, поддерживая связь со своим стационарным столичным офисом.
The mood of panic in the Kyrgyz government concerning energy problems, electricity shutoffs and increases in utility tariffs for lighting and heating moved the Precedent partnership group to search for energy independence. As a result, we came to the idea of mobile offices and residences, not tied up in infrastructure. We purchased a large tent, a solar panel, sleeping bags, an  energy storage device, a modem, and a teapot and set up camp in Torsor village, on the shores of Lake Issyk-Kul . We worked on the beach for two days and maintained contact with our office in the capital.
But overall, patience is wearing thin on the energy front. Said one user of a popular forum, Diesel:
Грузия, Армения, Молдова, Казахстан, да практически все бывшие республики СССР смогли это сделать. И теперь у них у всех со светом все нормально. Чем мы хуже? Мы что самые тупые? Ладно страны Европы или там азиатские тигры. Наши бывшие сограждане с таким же менталитетом и таким же прошлым как у нас смогли привести свои энергосистемы в порядок. Нам нужно просто тупо скопировать.
Georgia, Armenia, Moldova, Kazakhstan, and almost all other former Soviet republics have been able to solve this problem. And now everything is ok with the electricity there. Why are we worse than them? Are we that silly? I am not talking about the EU countries or the “Asian Tigers” here. Our former fellow citizens, with the same mentality and the same past we have, have been able to bring their power systems to order. We just need to slavishly copy what they have done.

author: Dasha Kondrateva


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‘You Will Do Anything for Ratings’: More Outrage over the Wife Killer ‘Star’ of Turkish Daytime TV · Global Voices
Ezgi Irmak Yücel

Çalınak's appearance on The Luck of the Drawer went viral and was followed by another TV appearance.
Two months ago, during a popular matchmaking show on Turkish daytime TV, a contestant confessed to an audience of millions of viewers that he had killed his previous two wives. Last week,  Seda Sayan, one of Turkey's best-known talking heads, hosted the murderer on her morning show, triggering public uproar. The phone lines of the channel were jammed for hours as people mobilized via social media. Feminist organizations have accused Seda Sayan of glorifiying homicide.
During his initial appearance on the show The Luck of the Draw, the wife killer, Sefer Çalınak, explained calmly that he “accidentally” killed his first wife when they were both minors. The host, apparently shocked by the news, asked him questions about the murder, which turns out to have been committed in a jealous rage.  It then emerged that after spending fourteen years in jail, Sefer Çalınak killed another lover with an ax. To begin with, he explained, she tried to kill him in order to obtain his property. Then, in a moment of high drama that suggested the host, Hülya Bozkaya, knew what was coming next, Bozkaya yelled: “Did you kill her too, uncle Sefer?”
Bozkaya subsequently asks him to leave the show, stating that she could never allow herself to match up a murderer with another contestant. (Çalınak has reportedly had five wives in total, the first of whom was also his cousin, but is now a bachelor. ‘Amca’, or ‘uncle’ is a common form of address for an elder Turkish male).
A burning issue
Acts of homicide against women are on the rise in Turkey. Last month alone, twenty-four women were killed in the country. According to data from the Ministry of Justice, the rate of murders of women increased 1400% between 2002 until 2009, with further increases since. Against that background Seda Sayan enraged many members of the Turkish public by seeming to trivialize Sefer Çalınak's crimes when she invited him onto her show as a guest. Throughout the softball interview Sayan came out with lines such as “Have you seen this cheerful murderer before?” and “Why do you think a man kills his wife?”
While the show was still on air, the son of Sefer Çalınak's second victim called in and demanded Sayan dismiss him from the set. Sayan told the bereaved son that it is up to her whom she hosts on the show.
In the meantime, tweeps and other social media users expressed their anger at the program and the TV channel, Show TV:
Düşüncelerimiz şöyle: katilsiniz, yüzsüzsünüz. Para ve reyting için yapmayacağınız şey yok katil seviciler. @SedaSayanShowTv
— éléphant noir (@bazensadecefil) September 2, 2014
Here's what we think: you are murderers, impudents. There is nothing you won't do for money and ratings, murderer lovers.
On September 4 a protest was organized by feminist organizations — including the We Will Stop Murderers of Women group — in front of the the channel's studio:
Seda Sayan Show Stüdyosu önündeyiz! Cinsiyetçi Medya İstemiyoruz! pic.twitter.com/3RLu0lKkz2 — Filmmor (@Filmmor_) September 4, 2014
We are in front of Seda Sayan Show Studio! We don't want sexist media!
Political fallout
Controversy over Uncle Sefer's television experiences did not stop there. Aylin Nazlıaka, an opposition MP, criticized Seda Sayan heavily in a speech in parliament and stated that she would file a formal complaint against the presenter to Turkey's Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK).
Seda Sayan ve Show TV hakkında ceza uygulanması için RTÜK'e dilekçe verdim. pic.twitter.com/JcFl8tk8RI
— Aylin Nazlıaka (@AylinNazliaka) September 3, 2014
I filed a petition to RTÜK (The Supreme Board of Radio and Television) about the criminal actions of Seda Sayan and Show TV.
This lead to a quarrel between Nazlıaka and Sayan, which is still continuing on social media. Seda Sayan responded to Nazlıaka's allegations of misogyny, by saying that she pays MPs’ salaries and that her own mother had been a victim of male violence. Sayan argued that her main aim was to warn women of the dangers of getting involved with men like Sefer Çalınak.
Seda Sayan justifies her decision to host a wife murderer. Uploaded by the Seda Sayan Show's official YouTube channel.
The Ministry of Family and Social Politics also submitted a petition against the show to RTÜK declaring that they are against any action showing empathy towards violence. According to the newspaper Today's Zaman, the financial sponsors of the Seda Sayan Show have withdrawn their support for the show.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Ezgi Irmak Yücel


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A Uruguayan Politician Is Performing Feats of Strength in the Race for Presidency · Global Voices
Guillermo Vidal

Presidential candidate Luis Lacalle Pou. Image from Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).
A photo of National Party presidential candidate Luis Lacalle Pou performing the acrobatic movement known as the human flag in Cardona city, Soriano has sparked controversy in Uruguay ahead of elections at the end of October.
The nationalist candidate, who is looking to unseat the ruling left-wing Broad Front party, spontaneously posed for photographer Maria Inés Hiriart from El País Journal, telling her that he performs the show of strength in every city he goes to. With the photo, 41-year-old Lacalle Pou intended to challenge the Broad Front candidate Tabaré Vázquez to imitate him, in a clear reference to his opponent's age (74).
El truco de Lacalle Pou para hacer “la bandera” http://t.co/U4GJQCtbLT pic.twitter.com/bDCSrzVeeC
— Subrayado (@Subrayado) agosto 22, 2014
The Lacalle’s trick to perform the flag movement.
This immediately triggered reactions. The head of private consultancyCifra and political expert Luis E González asserted that the photo would work against Lacalle Pou's candidacy. “He should not have done that,” he said.
Minister of National Defense Eleuterio Fernández Huidobro (and also a member of Broad Front) told reporters that Lacalle Pou's political campaign seemed comical:
Ahora la estoy viendo cómica (la campaña), porque al candidato del Partido Nacional lo izan, es una bandera. Incluso el otro día estaba a media asta y a media asta solo puede ser por decreto del Poder Ejecutivo, en caso de catástrofe, fallecimiento de alguien.
Now I see it as a funny thing (the campaign) because the candidate that the National Party has raised is a flag. Just the other day he was at half mast and according to a decree from the Executive Power, a flag can only be at half mast in the case of a disaster or somebody’s death.
The challenged candidate, Tabaré Vázquez, replied by criticizing at the government of the former President Luis Alberto Lacalle de Herrera. Lacalle Pou is the son of the current Congressman Luis Alberto Lacalle de Herrera, who was Uruguay's president from 1990 to 1995 and the main representative of the national party over the last three decades.
Topo Yiyo blog took advantage of the Lacalle Pou challenge:
Lacalle Pou dividió el país en 2 con su bandera y nos dio el pie para comenzar una nueva sección y página de Facebook llamada “Preguntados Uy”(entren a la puta página y denlen un puto Me Gusta) con todas las preguntas bizarras de humor e imagenes graciosas como esta desde y para Uruguay.
Lacalle did not only divide our country in two with his flag, but also inspired us to start a new section and a Facebook website called “Ask Yourself Uy” (go to the fucking page and click the fucking like button), with all weird and funny questions and funny images like this one from Uruguay, dedicated to all Uruguayan people.
On Twitter, the Lacalle Pou flag prompted all kinds of humorous comments, just like this one from journalist Gonzalo Camarota:
Para la próxima publicidad de Lacalle Pou: hace la bandera mientras diferentes niños le hacen preguntas sobre el futuro del país. La tiro
— gonzalo cammarota (@Elcammarota) julio 31, 2014
For Lacalle Pou's next campaign: he performs the flag while children ask questions about the future of the country. Throwing the idea out there.
Fede Ricagni Z, a member of the National Party, referred to the importance that the left-wing party has given to this picture:
podemos hablar de “La Bandra” o de ANCAP. Creo que el oficialismo ya escogió
— Fede Ricagni Z ✌✌ (@fede_ricagni) agosto 11, 2014
We can talk about “The Flag” or about the ANCAP. I think the left has already decided.
The state-run National Administration of Fuel, Alcohol and Portland, known as ANCAP, is one of the biggest firms in the country and has been operating with a monopoly for almost every product. In the last years, it has been working at a loss, so it has received strong criticism from the opposition.
Diego S commented:
El error de Lacalle Pou FUE no encajarle a la bandera el nombre “Bandera uruguaya Challenge”. Ahí Daba La Vuelta al Mundo.
- Diego S. (notiren) agosto 21, 2014
Lacalle Pou made a mistake by not calling his flag the Uruguayan Challenge. Otherwise, his flag would have been famous all around the world.
TararirasForExport expressed his sarcastic point of view with a photoshopped image:
LACALLE POU AL BAILANDO 2015 pic.twitter.com/GknTxFc59n
- TararirasForExport® (elFerDias) 31 de Julio de 2014
LACALLE POU DANCING 2015.
Presidential elections in Uruguay will be held on October 26, 2014.

author: Guillermo Vidal


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A Bomb Rocks the Santiago Subway, Inflaming Chilean Twitter · Global Voices
Elizabeth Rivera

Wave of bomb threats disrupt daily life in Chile -Santiago, 10 September 2014 by Ibar Silva, Demotix.
An explosion rocked Chile's capital on Monday, September 8, causing a flood of comments on Twitter. The bomb hit a commercial center adjacent to the busy Escuela Militar station in Santiago.
Many Twitter users’ first thoughts were about what effect the attack might have on future security measures:
ahora con el #BOMBAZO subira el metro unos $50 pera costear medidas de segurirad y la gente feliz pagara
— Stalin (@Guille_XX) September 9, 2014
Now, with the bombing, subway prices will rise $50 to pay for security measures, and people will happily pay.
Others have criticized the mainstream media's coverage of the bombing:
Basta ya, de generar miedo y morbo los medios de comunicación, fue grave el #bombazo pero no para tanto revuelo, dándole vueltas a lo mismo.
— Marco Torres Saldías (@mtorressaldias) September 9, 2014
Enough already, of the fear and morbidness generated by the media. The bombing was serious, but not enough for such a fuss, repeating the same thing over and over.
Siembra odio y cosecha caos…. Los canales de TV y sus “reportajes” politico divisionistas tienen mucha responsabilidad en esto #bombazo
— Mr. Edu VIP (@EduContreras) September 8, 2014
Sow hate and you'll reap chaos…. TV stations and their divisive political “reporting” carry a lot of responsibility in this bombing.
Some Twitter users turned on each other, shaming people who were using the event to crack jokes and spread memes:
Igual me parece de pendejos tirar la talla con estos temas, mas aun si hay heridos de por medio. Nos puede tocar a cualquiera #BOMBAZO
— P. Alberti (@PCh2012) September 8, 2014
I think people are jerks to make jokes about these issues, even more so when there are injuries involved. This could have happened to anyone.
Many Internet users drew connections to other episodes of violence in Chile and elsewhere around the world:
Preocupante lo del #bombazo, pensar que las personas en la araucanía sienten la misma inseguridad y al gobierno le da lo mismo.
— José Francisco Lagos (@Josefcolagos) September 8, 2014
The bombing is worrisome. Think of it! People in Araucania feel the same insecurity and the government could care less.
imagínense, si con este #bombazo quedaron locos, piensen como se sienten los palestinos con los bombardeos día y noche
— Rodrigo Baratheon (@rodrimg) September 8, 2014
Imagine! If everyone went so crazy with this bombing, think of how the Palestinians must feel with bombings day-and-night.
Perhaps the online conversation's biggest controversy has been the squabbling among Chile's various political groups, who are eager to assign or avoid blame wherever possible:
No sé que es más horroroso, los inadaptados que ponen las bombas o los fachos que salen a figurar. #bombazo
— Salem Saberhagen (@alfonsopatrick) September 9, 2014
I don’t know which is more horrifying: the misfits placing the bombs, or the fascists trying to figure it out.
Ningún Anarquista verdadero provocaría #BOMBAZO contra la clase trabajadora. #Terrorismo
— Hija del Jardinero (@elyglezm) September 8, 2014
No true anarchist would cause a bombing against the working class.
Me carga!! Pq la gente de izquierda se tapa los ojos y no acepta que su presi lo hace pésimo? Justifican lo injustificable. #bombazo
— Pili Varela (@PilarAnrrea) September 9, 2014
This burns me up! Because the leftists cover their eyes and don’t accept that their prez is lousy? They justify the unjustifiable.
Some, like Marcela Rios, are concerned that the bombing could aggravate Chile's already polarized society:
Leer comentarios sobre explosión #EscuelaMilitar es para estar verdaderamente asustados…. delirio y agresividad
— Marcela Rios (@mriost) September 8, 2014
Reading comments about the explosion is truly frightening… delirium and aggressiveness.
The writer Jorge Baradit shared this reflection on Facebook:
No me importa quiénes pusieron la bomba en el metro Escuela Militar. Quienes hayan sido dejaron la agenda a favor de la derecha de este país.
Si fueron de extrema derecha, felicitaciones y no me extrañaría, tienen historia matando a su propio pueblo. Si fueron de extrema izquierda, me faltan palabras para decirles lo imbéciles que fueron. Manga de pelotudos, tratando de derribar el sistema destruyendo un puesto de completos.
Hay una trabajadora municipal, una señora, con sus dedos amputados. ¿Atacar a la clase obrera era el objetivo? Pregúntenle a cualquier trabajador de este país si en los ‘80 le tenían miedo al FPMR, si alguna vez pensaron que podrían atacar a los trabajadores, incluso a civiles cualquiera durante la dictadura.
Hay una diferencia entre luchadores sociales y putos terroristas que dañan a los trabajadores que dicen defender.
It doesn’t matter to me who placed the bomb in the Escuela Militar subway. Whoever it was tipped the scales in favor of the right in this country.
If they were from the extreme right, congratulations and I wouldn’t be surprised — they have a history of killing their own people. If they were from the extreme left, words fail in telling them what imbeciles they were. A bunch of assholes, trying to bring down the system by destroying a hot dog stand.
There’s a city worker, a woman, who had to have her fingers amputated. Was attacking the working class the objective? Ask any worker in this country if they were afraid of the FPMR in the 80s, if at any time they thought the FPMR would attack the workers, or any civilians, during the dictatorship.
There is a difference between social activists and fucking terrorists who harm the workers they claim to defend.
Baradit also wrote on Twitter:
Entiendo que Chile está enojado, al borde de un ataque de nervios, pero de qué sirve dispararnos entre nosotros, wn.
— baradit (@baradit) September 8, 2014
I understand that Chile is angry, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but what good does it do to shoot at each other.
Baradit's words haven't won over everyone, however. Consider reactions like Emilio Burgos':
Mientras le echas la culpa del #bombazo al “bando” que no te gusta, nace y crece un Odio profundo al que no le importan tus ideologías
— Emilio Araya Burgos (@emilioarayab) September 8, 2014
While you blame the bombing on the “side” that you don’t like? A deep hatred is being born and bred in those who don’t care about your ideologies.
To follow the conversation, Global Voices suggests the hashtags #BOMBAZO and #EscuelaMilitar.

author: Elizabeth Rivera


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Lebanon Blocks Six Porn Sites, Sparks Fears of Further Censorship · Global Voices
Nada

“We will censor it” by Clouds Master via deviantART, licensed for reuse.
Mohamad Najem contributed research to this post.
Lebanon's Minister of Telecommunications has ordered Internet service providers to block six pornographic websites, according to a post by blogger Ralph Aoun who shared a leaked copy of the communiqué on his blog on Sept. 1, 2014. There is limited precedent for this type of web filtering in Lebanon, apart from the blocking of a local online gambling site last January.
The order was issued to Ogero, Lebanon's state-run telecommunications service provider, which then conveyed the order to other, smaller providers around the country.
Writing at Blog of The Boss, Ralph Aoun warned that this could lead the government down a slippery slope to greater censorship:
(…) we cast a skeptical eye at such decisions as what started as blocking gambling sites [has] already led to filtering adult content….if we look further down this slippery slope, we might end up filtering blogs, news, religion, comedy and maybe one day even social media…
The distribution and production of pornography is illegal under Lebanese law, but the policies governing these activities were written long before the era of the Internet. In the past, police occasionally would raid adult video shops to confiscate pornographic materials and the like, but the law was never strictly applied. Likely due to changing social norms and easier access to porn online, the law has never been applied in the online space, until now.
Despite the fact that there are legal grounds for the sites to be filtered, many Internet users see the blocking as an attack on freedom of expression and are deeply troubled about the lack of transparency around the decision to block the sites.
In response to a tweet from Social Media Exchange director and Global Voices community member Mohamad Najem, Walid Karam, an advisor to the Ministry of Telecommunications, explained that the decision came from the Ministry of Justice
توضيح-وزارة الإتصالات لا تحجب مواقع إلكترونية وتحرص على الحريات. قرار الحجب أتى من النيابة العامة ومعطيات هذا القرار لا تملكها الوزارة
— Walid Karam (@WalidKaram) September 1, 2014
The Ministry of Telecommunications does not censor websites. It protects freedom. The decision came from the Public Prosecution and the Ministry. [We do] not know the facts behind the decision.
On the Social Media Exchange blog, Najem pointed to the risks incurred by Lebanon's lack of a legal framework for such a decision. He added that state-run Ogero offers technical filtering options geared towards parents who wish to block certain websites in their own households.
ليس واضحاً بعد ما هي المادة القانونية و/او آلية إتخاذ القرار في هذا الحجب، مما يدل على خطورة هكذا قرارات و عدم شرعيتها لو تم التأكد من حصولها.
تقدم أوجيرو خدمة الرقابة المنزلية، مما يعطي حق لرب المنزل بحجب المواقع الإباحية عن منزله فقط، و هو شيئ إيجابي، و يعطي الحرية للأفراد بإتخاذ القرار الذي يناسبهم. كما نلفت ان الحجب من دون أي مسوغ قانوني واضح يفتح الأبواب أمام حجب المواقع السياسية، الدينية، الخ، بإستخدام حجج واهية مما يؤثر سلباً على حرية التعبير.
The law and/or decision-making mechanism behind the ban is unclear. This indicates the danger behind such decisions and its lack of legitimacy if the information is verified.
Ogero provides a service that allows the heads of households to block pornographic content in their homes, and that is a positive thing, as it gives individuals the right to make the decision that suits them. Blocking websites without a legal justification opens the door to the ban of political websites, religious ones…etc, using flimsy arguments which have a negative effect on freedom of expression.
As the websites listed in the document advertise “teen porn”, some Twitter users following the issue questioned whether or not they contained images showing sexual abuse of minors — in this case, the content would be illegal under local law and international standards. Blogger @LebaneseVoices tweeted a screenshot of the clearance and warning messages on one of the websites, specifically stating that the actors and models in the videos are over 18.
@arzleb @monajem @WalidKaram they seem to have enough clearance and warnings. pic.twitter.com/djghbJtyov
— تي (@LebaneseVoices) September 1, 2014
It seems that the websites do indeed feature adult actors. In an update, SMEX added that according to news website Elnashra Finance.com, a Lebanese man accused of sexually harassing minors said he watched videos on these 6 websites. This is what reportedly prompted a judge to issue the order. If that is the case, then the seemingly arbitrary ban, outside any transparent policy-enforcement mechanism, could cast a long shadow on the exercise of free expression in Lebanon.
On another note, in a post titled “Lebanon Banning Websites Using Fax Machines,” Mustafa Hamoui highlights the Ministry's apparently “primitive” and limited means of censorship:
Think of how absurd this is: A fax machine request to ban a list of websites. Forget about how this list will go viral and how everyone will now know about these websites (regardless, I’m not contributing to this so I’m redacting them here), this is a technologically primitive way to ban websites.
Blacklisting (hard coding a list of websites that should be banned) only worked when the web was so small we had actual lists of websites (Think Yahoo! Directory). But in today’s age of apps, social media and data streams, you need hugely sophisticated algorithms, big CPU power and large bureaucracies to analyze keywords, patterns and natural language, only to achieve a partial ban on information (the hackers will always find a way). What the leaked document tells us is that our cyber crime fighters only have bicycles but they’re trying to catch criminals with cars and planes and spaceships.
Much of current law in Lebanon dates back to the era of the Ottoman empire, when social norms were more conservative, and access to information and interaction among citizens was limited to traditional mediums that followed specific legal frameworks. In the digital era, the information environment and media ecology have changed drastically, as has the collective mindset of citizens concerning issues such as these. Lebanon needs new, more flexible legal frameworks that can be adaptable to evolving communications technologies and grounded in the interests of citizens’ rights to free expression and access to information.

author: Nada


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Less Than 10% of Rural Sub-Saharan Africans Have Access to Electricity. What’s Being Done to Change That? · Global Voices
Theo Vallon

Solar panel in Bazaruto island, Mozambique. Photo by Cotrim. Public Domain CC0
This summer, the World Bank announced that it will allocate $5 billion in aid to Africa to help the continent optimize its potential for electricity production. The initiative focuses on hydroelectric power, among other sources. Although its regional economies are expanding rapidly, Africa still suffers from significant deficiencies in electrification, a factor which hinders development.
There is a plethora of initiatives both private and public aiming to increase access to electricity, but the scale of the task at hands is daunting. Fifteen percent of the world's population lives on the African continent, yet they represent only 3 percent of global electricity consumption. The lack of resources, as well as nonexistent infrastructure, means that public and private organizations must now unite to empower Africa and to consolidate development efforts. For instance, Électricité de France (EDF), the French public national power company, is currently conducting multiple electrification projects on the continent.
Africa today is a continent full of promise and rich in natural resources, a young continent still in the process of development. It is also the land which has, rather poetically, been referred to as “a society in eternal darkness”, due to the scarcity of electricity across most of its nations. Nearly 600 million people are without electricity in 2014. The electrification rate across the African continent is about 42 percent.
Although this figure is one of the lowest amongst all emerging nations, if not the lowest, it is also subject to pronounced regional disparities. While 99 percent of the Maghreb has electricity, the rate is only 31 percent in sub-Saharan Africa. There is furthermore a matter of inequality due to the divide which separates urban zones from rural zones. Sixty-nine percent of cities are electrified, but the African countryside must still make do with a rate of about 25 percent. For this reason, less than 10 percent of the population of rural sub-Saharan zones enjoy the benefits of electricity.
These figures reflect the lack of resources of a continent struggling to simultaneously attract investment and maintain national companies dedicated to the provision of electricity. In the search for profitability, investors are confronted with a population in which 70 percent of the people live on less than $2 per day, and with revenues that are not able to cover the expenditures required for even minimal electricity consumption. In addition, electric utilities must operate heavy and aging installations, with which they are not entitled to make money by focusing only on the retail segment. Given this lack of capital, NGOs and public and private groups from the international community are engaging in electrification projects, that today still take on the appearance of development aid.
The under-electrification of Africa is an issue that involves actors from around the world, focusing particularly on solar energy, because of the exceptional amount of sunshine enjoyed by the continent. Thus, Mozambique was awarded a $35 billion loan from South Korea four years ago. This provision was intended to fund the construction of three solar power plants, and to permit the country to consolidate its power capacity. Meanwhile, French telecom group Orange embarked on a venture through which 1,300 antennas were installed, scattered across rural areas, with the aim of enabling people to recharge their cellular phones.
When considering the deployment of electricity in Africa, which is mostly in sub-Saharan areas, emphasis is often placed on renewable energy to better meet the needs of Africa while optimizing natural resources. Thus, 30 American investors announced in early June of this year their intention to fund the development of solar power plants and hydroelectric power plants in this part of the continent, to the tune of one billion dollars. These funds, over five years, will also be used to train African experts in the energy field, and to collect money to support local electricity providers. Ernest Moniz, Secretary of Energy of the United States, has stated:
Access to centralized networks of electricity is not a comprehensive solution for these countries located on one of the least urbanized continents […] But with solutions including off-grid and small-scale projects, we can bring electricity to the rural areas.
EDF recently joined the  International Finance Corporation (a subsidiary of the World Bank), to intervene in sub-Saharan African rural areas, with the goal of connecting 500,000 people living in these areas to power grids. The French group, led by Henri Proglio, will proceed with the implementation of off-grid electrification, which is less expensive and has the advantage of being more self-sufficient. Currently, a test phase was launched in Benin, with the ambition to connect 25,000 people, using a hybrid diesel-solar grid, along with power stations delivering bioenergy. For Edward Dahomé, EDF Director for Africa and Energy Access, electricity is:
Un produit vital sans lequel aucun vrai développement n’est possible. L’accès à l’énergie des populations rurales, souvent les plus défavorisées, permet de réduire la pauvreté en développant les activités génératrices de revenus, mais aussi l’éducation, la santé, l’accès à l’eau etc.
a vital product, without which no true development is possible. Access to energy for the poorest rural populations often reduces poverty by developing income-generating activities, and also education, health, access to water, etc.
The electrical power group is undertaking more and more projects, such that the greatest number of nations may benefit from its practical knowledge. In Botswana, EDF was selected by the national electrical utility, Botswana Power Corporation, to realize its program for decentralized rural electrification. In Mali, in conjunction with ADEME, the energy giant has created a Society for Decentralized Services (SDS), with the aim of offering energy services to be supported by a local law firm. The mission of the SDS is to electrify 20 villages in the region, using low and medium-voltage microstations, supplemented by diesel and solar energy. More than just developmental aid, such projects allow EDF to promote its services and demonstrate its capabilities. The group has had extensive experience working on environmentally responsible projects in Morocco and Senegal.
EDF is not the only French conglomerate to take an interest in the extent of the African market. The industrial group Schneider Electric has also launched a venture, having announced last year the intention to implement solutions for “increasing the amount of available electricity in Africa, with limited investment”. This project, entitled “Smart Cities”, is based on the modernization of the existing network, and deployment of renewable energy sources, and may save up to 30 percent of the energy used in African cities.
Mohammed Saad, president of Schneider Electric in Africa, said :
Le défi consiste non seulement à produire plus d’électricité, mais aussi à générer une énergie intelligente afin de permettre une croissance intelligente en Afrique.
The challenge is not only to produce more electricity, but also to generate energy intelligently, to enable smart growth in Africa.
Although rural electrification in Africa still offers little return-on-investment for those attempting it, the initiative supports the growth of many countries, and thus participates in the emergence of a potential market of more than 589 million people. To do this, many more investments will still be necessary. The World Bank predicts that less than 60 percent of the African population will have electricity in their homes by the year 2030, and that it would require an annual investment of 40 billion euros to meet the entire energy needs of the continent.

author: Theo Vallon


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A Meteorite Causes a Scare But No Damage in Nicaragua’s Capital · Global Voices
Gabriela García Calderón Orbe

Meteorite, Imagen on Flickr by user Scheihing Edgardo (CC BY 2.0).
A strong blast shook the northern area of the Nicaraguan capital city Managua around midnight on Saturday, September 6, 2014. The cause was a meteorite's impact. No one was injured nor was damage caused.
The loud noise alarmed the families that live nearby. Some fled from their houses fearing an earthquake.
#Internacionales Un meteorito cayó en capital de Nicaragua http://t.co/4tBkan8ddF pic.twitter.com/EMQc2dmbP8 #marquezgeografia
— Manel Márquez (@ManelMarquezB) septiembre 8, 2014
A meteorite struck Nicaragua's capital.
Impacto de un meteorito causa una explosión en Managua: http://t.co/gFYhy0RwiN Un meteorito ha provocado… http://t.co/YjFVSbX0vW
— Ruben Amilcar Rivas (@Ruben23am) septiembre 8, 2014
The impact of a meteorite causes an explosion in Managua.

author: Gabriela García Calderón Orbe


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Lebanon Is Deporting Locally Born Children of Migrant Workers, Human Rights Groups Say · Global Voices
Elia J. Ayoub

Female domestic migrant workers in Beirut, Lebanon, in February 2009. Photo by Sandra ten Zijthoff. Copyright Demotix.
Nine Lebanese civil society organizations have released a statement condemning the expulsion of children of migrant workers born in Lebanon.
In a press release, entitled “Migrant Workers’ Children Expelled: Directive Tearing Families Apart“, both local and international human rights NGOs have condemned the government's decision to deport locally born children of migrant workers and in some cases their mothers.
There are between 200,000 and 250,000 migrant workers in Lebanon working under the controversial Kafala, or ‘Sponsorship’, system. Under the Kafala system, any ‘unskilled laborer’ (domestic worker) has his or her legal status in the hands of an employer or ‘in-country sponsor’. “With the Kafala system,” International Labor Organization (ILO) senior Ms. Simel Esim was quoted as saying, “you are creating a total dependency of the worker on the employer for her food, sleeping, health, everything… total dependency creates total vulnerability and opens the door wide to exploitation.” Indeed, abuses such as this one are common on both societal and governmental levels.
The business side of the situation was highlighted by a recent report by Lebanon human rights NGO KAFA, whose name translates to Enough. The report details the lucrative recruitment business which often deceives migrant workers into coming to Lebanon. Indeed, as many as 88% of Nepalis and Bangladeshis interviewed reported that they would not have come to Lebanon “had they fully known the reality.”
The statement, signed by the Anti-Racism Movement (ARM), Lebanese Association for Education and Training (ALEF), Human Rights Watch MENA (HRW), Insan Association, Lebanese Center for Human Rights (CLDH), Legal Agenda, Migrant Community Center (MCC), Migrant Workers Task Force (MWTF) and The Association for Justice and Mercy (AJEM), condemn the decision as unjustified:
Under General Security’s new directive some families are being torn apart while others are apparently being denied their livelihoods simply because they’ve had children in Lebanon,” said a spokesperson for the organizations. “The Lebanese authorities have not given any justification for this new policy and should immediately revoke this directive as it interferes with the right to family life.
The decision seems to be directly targeted at low-wage migrant workers:
Since May 2014, nearly a dozen female migrant workers, many of them longstanding residents of Lebanon, reported to human rights groups that when they went to General Security to renew residency papers for themselves and their children, they were turned down. Some were told they were not allowed to have children in Lebanon and given a short period of time to leave the country. In some cases, they said, they were given as little as 48 hours.
[…] Sources within General Security have confirmed to nongovernmental groups that the agency has a new directive regarding the renewal of residency permits for Lebanon-born children of low-wage migrants and their migrant parents. Despite written requests from the nongovernmental groups to receive a copy of the directive the agency has yet to respond. Activists say the directive was apparently adopted in January 2014, but has been applied more stringently since May and has resulted in the expulsion of some family members of migrant workers.
Based on research by the organizations, all migrant workers interviewed who were affected by the decision so far appear to be women who are Category 3 and 4 workers under Lebanon’s labor regulations – low-paid workers in industries such as sanitation, agriculture, and domestic work. Although foreign workers in these categories are not allowed to sponsor the residency for their spouses or children, until recently, women in these categories could extend their residency permits to include children born in Lebanon.
If implemented, this policy will be in direct violation of several international human rights treaties which were signed by Lebanon, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), according to the statement.
The statement ends with a call for the Lebanese government to uphold its legal obligations:
The Lebanese government should comply with its international obligations by ensuring that General Security considers the family interests involved before rejecting the renewal of residency for workers or their children or considering their expulsion. The government should also ratify the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families to safeguard the rights of migrants in Lebanon.

author: Elia J. Ayoub


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An NGO in Peru Feeds Pelicans to Prevent Them From Starving · Global Voices
Gabriela García Calderón Orbe

White pelicans. Photo on Flickr by user jacinta lluch valero (CC BY-SA 2.0).
At the estuary of Moche river in the northern Peruvian province of Trujillo, members of the NGO Corazones Bondadosos (Generous Hearts) fed more than 400 pelicans with fresh fish to prevent their starvation.
Colectivo ‘Corazones Bondadosos’ alimentan a pelicanos en Trujillo. Noble gesto. Piden apoyo de autoridades @tromepe pic.twitter.com/y4py4NpaYr
— Jota Rosado (@jotarosadol) septiembre 7, 2014
Collective ‘Corazones Bondadosos’ (Generous Hearts) feeds pelicans in Trujillo. Noble gesture. They ask authorities to support them.
#Trujillo [GALERÍA] Pelícanos muertos son un riesgo para la salud http://t.co/0EyIuJwRBZ pic.twitter.com/WONAphvabl
— laindustria.pe (@weblaindustria) septiembre 1, 2014
Dead pelicans are a health hazard.
In late August, about 120 dead pelicans were buried at the beach Las Delicias, located in the same area. They were buried six feet under the sand and then covered with lime to prevent potential illnesses.


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Russian Email Giants Yandex and Mail.Ru Bleed Passwords, Deny Hacking  · Global Voices
Sergey Kozlovsky

Why did someone leak millions of Yandex and Mail.Ru email passwords, most of them inactive? Images mixed by Tetyana Lokot.
Russia's largest email services, Yandex and Mail.Ru, were both hit with password leaks recently, resulting in millions of passwords published openly online and heated discussions in Russian web communities. The companies claimed the passwords were obtained through phishing scams on the users’ end rather than hacking attacks on their servers.
Yandex was the first to fall, when Habrahabr.ru, a popular tech and internet news forum, first published news of the password leak. User lagudal said he discovered the file with 1.2 million Yandex email logins and passwords on the Infosliv forum, a traditional leak dump space. Some of the other Habrahabr.ru users investigated the file and found their Yandex account information there, proving the database was at least in part real.
Such a massive password dump inevitably caused a commotion in the RuNet and invited witticisms based on Yandex's search engine slogan, “Найдётся всё” (Anything can be found), like this one from Twitter user Shulz:
Яндекс. Найдётся всё. Даже пароли от ваших аккаунтов в Яндексе.
— Дядюшка Шу (@Shulz) September 8, 2014
Yandex. Anything can be found. Even your Yandex accounts’ passwords.
Editors of Zuckerberg Calling, a Russian website about startup and internet business news, also tested out some of the email login and password pairs and found that in many cases the inboxes were real, but appeared forsaken or inactive. Even so, word quickly got around, and everyone set about to changing their passwords just in case. Helpful netizens set up a website where one could check to see if their Yandex email was among those dumped in the password leak.
Habrahabr.ru user Haoose decided to investigate the security and strength of the leaked passwords and published a ranked list of the most used ones. As is usually the case, the combination “123456” was at the top of the list, found in the database 37,821 times, and followed by security gems “123456789” and “111111”. Average email users, it seems, never change.
Speculation was rife about a hacker attack on Yandex servers or an internal leak, when Yandex's press-service finally denied any instances of hacking or leaking. Yandex confirmed that active account passwords only made up 15% of the published database, and the remaining 85% were inactive accounts, which had not responded to earlier password reset notifications sent out by the tech staff.
The active account information and passwords in the published database, Yandex said, were compromised by the users themselves, either as a result of virus attacks or phishing scams, and Yandex had launched verification procedures for these accounts. Yandex also insisted they never store passwords in plaintext, and use the necessary precautions for encrypting them.
Мы не храним пароли открытым текстом, никогда не передаём их по сети открытым текстом и не открываем их любым третьим лицам. Более того, большинство из этих паролей слишком простые, и сейчас их даже установить не получилось бы.
We don’t store the passwords in cleartext (plaintext), we never transmit them on the Internet in cleartext and don’t open them up to third parties. Moreover, the majority of these passwords are too simple, and could not even be used [by our email subscribers] now.
Regardless, Yandex did reset the passwords of the 1.2 million compromised accounts, both inactive and active ones. VKontakte also suspended all pages of users who used leaked Yandex emails to register, asking them to change their passwords, VK's press-secretary George Lobushkin said on Twitter.
В целях безопасности заморозили все аккаунты, зарегистрированные на скомпрометированные адреса Яндекса, пока их владельцы не поменяют пароли
— George Lobushkin (@lobushkin) September 8, 2014
As a safety precaution, we've frozen all the accounts registered to the compromised Yandex addresses until their owners change their passwords.
The discussion about the Yandex “leak” had hardly died down, when another Habrahabr.ru user polym0rph found a different database with 4,5 million Mail.ru logins and passwords, published on the Bitcoin Security forum. Mail.ru analysed the database and concluded that 95% of the leaked accounts had been flagged as compromised previously, asked to change their passwords, and were restricted from sending emails or inactive. The overall context of the “leaked” database and the seemingly huge numbers of compromised accounts seemed suspiciously like the Yandex incident, which took place only hours before.
The almost simultaneous publication of two big password databases raises questions, but the arguments of Yandex and Mail.ru in reaction to the security scare seem valid: you don’t have to be a sophisticated hacker to crack a password like “123456,” and you don't have to hack the system, just hijack a few passwords.
In spite of these convincing arguments, some experts don't believe that the users’ data leaked out entirely through a fault of their own. The amount of stolen passwords seems too large to be collected by means of viruses and fishing, Andrey Zerenkov, senior information security consultant at Semantic, told Vedomosti.
Zerenkov acknowledged that such a massive dataset could be gathered manually over a period of several years, which does not explain why it was leaked at this particular moment.
Разумеется, этот список мог составляться не один год и даже группой лиц, но тогда непонятен мотив появления этих данных. Обычно подобные публикации — это результат утечки, а не долгой и кропотливой работы с какой-то скрытой целью, чаще всего криминального характера.
Of course, this list could have been put together over a few years and by a group of people even, but then the motive of publishing this data is unclear. Usually such publications are a result of leaks, and not of long and arduous labor with a concealed purpose, usually of a criminal nature.
According to IT entrepreneur Anton Nossik, there could be several reasons for laying this data open to the public all at once. He supposes one reason might be that the Russian government is trying to prime public opinion for a new Internet law. The law in question might be an initiative about storing personal data (like the well-known data servers law) or a directive about a government-owned mail service.
While Nossik's conjectures are pure speculation, the Kremlin does enjoy skewing public opinion on matters of importance, and is quite good at it. Knowing how prolific Russian lawmakers have been lately on Internet-related matters, we only have to wait a little bit to find out.

author: Sergey Kozlovsky


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Russian Nationalists Grasp at Straws with ‘Scottish Solidarity’ Campaign · Global Voices
Aric Toler

Images edited by Kevin Rothrock.
After massive referenda earlier this year in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, the Kremlin's supporters online have embraced a new separatist vote over 1,500 miles from Moscow. Last week, Russian nationalists—some pro-Putin and others not so much—began expressing their support for the Scottish independence referendum, often drawing parallels between self-determination rights of Scots in the United Kingdom and ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine. The connections between the Scottish and Eastern Ukrainian independence movements are, for the most part, thoroughly imagined, but the fantasy has produced several funny pictures.
A number of popular Russian bloggers, like Konstantin Rykov and the popular pro-separatist user @Novorossiya2015, have added the blue “Yes” button to their Twitter avatars. Responding to the perceived link between the activities of pro-Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine and the independence movement in Scotland, Russians have generated a number of humorous images featuring kilts and references to the Hollywood movie Braveheart.
Irresistibly, it seems, one user dressed the “legendary hero” of the separatists, Igor “Strelkov” Girkin, in a kilt.
Где-то в Шотландии….. pic.twitter.com/mMdC03sCzf
— Алексей Сотник (@somsok5412) September 9, 2014
Somewhere in Scotland…
Since Stelkov's sudden and still unexplained resignation from Donetsk's military command, Russian Internet users have cast him in a “Where's-Waldo” cartographical drama. From Ferguson to Crimea, he's been “spotted” everywhere. Now he's in Scotland, of course.
@SolomonHaykin Так и есть! #Шотландия #Scotland #YesScotland #VoteYES pic.twitter.com/cuGpKKWNlX
— Грантштейн (@garnshtein) September 9, 2014
They say that in Scotland, a man has been spotted who looks like Strelkov/Girkin … That’s right!
The “Russia.ru” Twitter account, which is tied to the pro-Kremlin Vzglyad online portal, reported another Scottish “sighting” of a formerly active separatist, the notorious Cossack known as Babai, who fought in Slavyansk against Ukraine.
Наш Бабай уже в Шотландии. До референдума 9 дней! pic.twitter.com/5rX6vKNGIk
— Russia.ru (@russiaru) September 9, 2014
Our Babai is already in Scotland. Nine days until the referendum!
Fun with maps has given way to jokes about flags. One Twitter user thought the similarities between the flags of Novorossiya and Scotland must speak to a common fate.
Шотландия и Новороссия будут свободными! #YesScotland pic.twitter.com/H7cVgRQdUL
— Wizard (@MitichkinS) September 9, 2014
Scotland and Novorossiya will be free!
Popular blogger Lev Sharansky combined a handful of would-be states into the “People’s Republic of Scotorossia”
Шотландия будет свободной #yesscotland pic.twitter.com/zZyVoM1T47
— Lev Sharansky (@LevSharansky) September 9, 2014
Scotland will be free.
The nationalist blog “Sputnik & Pogrom” imagined the Ukrainian crisis transported to the United Kingdom, writing an alternate-reality version of a report about a modern-day separatist uprising in Scotland.
Даунинг-стрит, Лондон—на пресс-конференции в воскресенье британские силовики заявили, что антитеррористическая операция против кельтских сепаратистов из Шотландской Народной Республики будет продолжаться. Предложенный ОБСЕ в прошлый четверг план деэскалации конфликта провалился: войска Соединённого Королевства продолжают обстрелы шотландских городов и почти замкнули кольцо вокруг Глазго.
Downing Street, London – At a press conference on Sunday, British military officials announced that the anti-terrorist operation against the Celtic separatists from the People’s Republic of Scotland will continue. The plan proposed by the OSCE last Thursday to de-escalate the conflict has failed: British troops continue to shell Scottish cities and have almost completely encircled Glasgow.
Whether in William Wallace jokes or sincere declarations of brotherhood, many Russians who supported the referenda in Crimea and East Ukraine seem genuinely to see a connection with Scotland's vote. The Scots themselves, whose road to independence has adhered to an inclusive voting process and non-violent appeals to the central government, don't likely think much of Russians’ theory of solidarity. What’s more, Scotland is more liberal than the rest of the UK—a far cry from Ukraine's separatists, whose closer historical parallels are probably the pro-monarchist White Guard or ultra-nationalist Black Hundreds, not William Wallace (or even Mel Gibson).

author: Aric Toler


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The Flash Floods Wreaking Havoc In Pakistan Aren’t Done Yet · Global Voices
Ammar Faheem

Heavy rains flood Lahore streets. Image by Ashbel Sultan. Copyright Demotix (5/9/2014)
Torrential monsoon rains have hit Pakistan's Punjab province, causing the area's five rivers to spill over their banks, flooding over a thousand villages (in Punjab, Azad Jammu, and Kashmir). The death toll in Pakistan alone is reported to be more than 240 people. Hundreds of thousands of people are affected, as the floods have forced thousands from their homes. For a country already in a domestic political crisis, Pakistan faces a truly awesome disaster in the new flooding.
The Indus river system, which flows through the northern regions of India and Pakistan, is formed by major rivers of Indus, Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej. Image from Wikipedia by kmhkmh. CC By 3.0
The overflowing Chenab and Jehlum rivers have caused the most damage. Waters spilled over both banks of the Jammu in Kashmir, flooding both Pakistan and India, after heavy rainfall began on September 2. Flash floods and landslides soon hit the Chenab and Jhelum rivers, first affecting India and then moving downstream to areas in Pakistan.
This year's flood is said to be the worst in the past five decades. Indeed, most eyewitnesses say they have never encountered a catastrophe on this scale. When the waters subside, the combined death toll in India and Pakistan could be extraordinary high.
Pakistan's NDMA (National Disaster Management Authority) has declared the Gujranwala divisions in the Punjab province, as well as the Haveli districts of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, to be the worst affected.
Already swimming in political turmoil, the Pakistani government was quick to begin rescue efforts for those displaced and stranded in Kashmir, parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and in Punjab. Ordinary Pakistani citizens are at the forefront of relief efforts, donating and organizing aid through several charities.
Bloggers, Twitter users, and citizen journalists in Pakistan have used the hashtag #PakistanFloods to call for help, promote the need for donations and rescue workers, and also to report news from the scene of the disaster.
Faizan Lakhani, a journalist from Karachi, has tweeted images of the floods’ devastation:
Pictures explaining flood situation in Wazirabad. #PakistanFloods #Pakistan pic.twitter.com/b0YYicedOR
— Faizan Lakhani (@faizanlakhani) September 7, 2014
Earlier this week, Javed Malik, the prime minister's special envoy, announced he will soon launch a campaign to aid flood victims:
Will be launching a campaign to raise awareness and extend support for the victims Floods in Pakistan #pakistanfloods & #IDPS
— Javed Malik (@JavedMalik) September 5, 2014
The danger in many areas hasn't yet subsided. Andrew North, the BBC's South Asia Correspondent, has raised alarm bells about the rising water levels in River Jehlum:
River Jhelum now rising every min at Trimu barrage with water coming fr India #PakistanFloods pic.twitter.com/YNUX3KRJ1i
— Andrew North (@NorthAndrew) September 8, 2014
This Facebook video capture the devastation of flooding in Sialkot.
Night War, a Pakistani Twitter user, posted the following pictures of half-submerged buildings in Wazirabad, one of the hardest-hit areas in Pakistan:
Buildings half submerged by floodwater after heavy rain in Wazirabad. #Punjab #Pakistan #PakistanFloods pic.twitter.com/0AZEVmK67S
— Night War (@battlehawk_) September 8, 2014
Ahmed, another citizen journalist, claims that the current crisis is the result of “criminal negligence” more than any natural disaster:
#pakistanfloods It's criminal negligence, not a natural disaster. @ChNisarAli @MaryamNSharif pic.twitter.com/mYzb6xEGNW — Ahmed (@amePTI) September 6, 2014
Faisal Kapadia, a Global Voices author from Pakistan, has worried on Twitter that the situation could become worse. Indeed, floodwaters continue to make their way downstream, toward Jhang and the Sindh province.
The coming monsoon rains.. seem like a tough period for us here in Pakistan…shudder to think what can happen
— FK (@faisalkapadia) September 6, 2014
Also on Twitter, Fatima Ali says rescue efforts are finding some success.
Since start of relief Operation, #Pakistan Army troops have rescued more than 17000 stranded people to safer places. #PakistanFloods
— Fatima Ali (@FatimaAli52) September 9, 2014
Reporting on the floods, it is important to consider Pakistan's current political turmoil. The legitimacy of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, in particular, faces serious questions. Recently, in fact, protesters charged his motorcade, causing a scene in front of cameras.
Protester in front of Nawaz sharif car in sialkot and police man pushing him back & beat him #GoNawazGo #AzadiSquare pic.twitter.com/5F6FluIWxD
— Mujtaba Sharf (@MujtabaSharf) September 7, 2014
The NDMA in Pakistan has been issuing a daily “Situation Report” that gives a snap shot of the flood damage so far. The latest report, as published on September 8, can be viewed here (in PDF).
The government has taken criticism for its response, but citizen-led efforts remain popular. Engineering student Jihane Akharraz, for instance, welcomes the humanitarian efforts by ordinary people in affected areas:
Consideration to animals, commitment to education, Simply HUMANITY. Pictures taken in Kashmir #PakistanFloods pic.twitter.com/xzAZlb4IRD
— || JihaneAk (@JihaneeAk) September 7, 2014
The provincial government of Punjab, in Pakistan, and the local PDMA office have launched an online “Flood Relief Dashboard” to monitor relief efforts, as well as share high-resolution, real-time satellite images of the region's flooded areas. Authorities have also established a control room with dedicated phone lines to coordinate rescue and relief operations.
In a rare gesture of friendship, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif assistance with relief operations in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
This is a developing story and downstream floods continue to cause further destruction and devastation in Pakistan.

author: Ammar Faheem


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The Politics of “Pretty” in Jamaica · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

As Laurie-Ann Chin is crowned this year's Miss Jamaica World – apparently despite the live audience's disapproval – Carolyn Joy Cooper, who blogs at Jamaica Woman Tongue, takes on the ugly underbelly of the country's beauty contests.
“If you follow these beauty contests, it’s easy to predict the outcome,” she says. “The light-skinned girl is almost always going to win.” This certainly seems to be the trend. Writer Marlon James blogged about “The Miss Jamaica Mulatto Factory” in 2008. More recently, author Kei Miller contended that the Miss Jamaica franchise represents “hierarchies of race and class as they still operate in Jamaica today”, saying:
The issue is that there is an idea in Jamaica of who is beautiful and who isn’t…that this idea of beauty is, to a large extent, a racially constructed one.
Cooper, who tracked the trend as far back as the 1960s, recalled a column she had written five years ago, dealing with the same issue, in which she “mischievously suggested that we forget about old-style beauty contests and promote a new model”:
So every year we ask ourselves this very loaded question: ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of us all?’ And we all know the usual answer: ‘the fairest.’ But in an ‘out-of-many-one’ society it’s simply not fair that it’s only one type of beauty that is almost always privileged as the winner.
She also challenged the politics of beauty, saying, “It’s really all about power”:
Judges assume the right to decide who is ugly and who is beautiful. Who gives them that power? The contestants? The audience? The owners of the competition?

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


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Trinidad & Tobago Needs to Pass the Public Procurement Bill  · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Trinidad and Tobago's Finance Minister yesterday delivered what many are calling a “welfare budget”, but prior to its unveiling in Parliament, blogger Afra Raymond had hoped that “a more restrained approach might be taken.”
In examining the country's national budgets since 2005, Raymond found it telling that “many of the key issues identified a full decade ago are still at the fore of the more recent budgets.” There have been recurring themes: the need for economic diversification, better infrastructure, more effective crime fighting and tactics to help reduce the incidence white-collar crime. The figures revealed a tendency towards increased expenditure, with only occasional surpluses, leading him to conclude:
The reality that we are on the verge of a national election which is sure to be strongly-contested, leaves me in little doubt that the 2015 budget is also likely to be a deficit budget, with the State spending more than it earns.
Making the point that “the extent to which our Treasury is protected from being plundered by criminal elements is a serious question which should concern every citizen”, the blogger notes that adding insult to injury is the fact that corruption goes virtually unpunished in the country.
But how to stem the tide? Raymond is convinced that passing the long overdue Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Property Bill “would play an important part in greatly reducing the scope for waste and theft of Public Money.”


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Trinidad & Tobago’s Parliament Passes Constitutional Reform, But Opponents Vow to Continue to Fight · Global Voices
Matthew Hunte

The Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, at the opening of the Commonwealth Business Forum in Perth, Australia. Photo by ©Commonwealth Secretariat/Annaliese Frank. Used under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license.
Both houses of Trinidad and Tobago's Parliament have approved controversial constitutional reform, which now awaits assent from the country's president, Anthony Carmona, before it becomes law.
Many citizens were up in arms about the proposed amendments, some of which included a ten-year term limit for the office of prime minister, the right to recall members of Parliament, and automatic run-offs when no candidate has more than 50 percent of the vote. The run-off election clause struck a particularly discordant note, as some saw the potential for it to make tribal voting more entrenched and allow the two-party system to thrive. It didn't help the government's cause that the run-off idea had not been included in the public consultations on constitutional reform and that the country's Elections and Boundaries Commission, under whose purview national elections fall, confirmed that it had not been consulted about that particular amendment.
In an effort to register their disapproval, protesters gathered in front of Parliament while the bill was being debated. Blogger and activist Attilah Springer wrote about being in front of Parliament the night before the Senate voted on the bill, which had already been passed in the Lower House:
The Senate debates the Constitution Amendment Bill tomorrow and from tonight we’re going to be outside the Parliament keeping watch over what is left of our democracy.
It’s not about activists. It’s not about protestors. It’s not about who talking the loudest. It’s not about red jersey or yellow jersey. It’s not about rum or roti or pelau or the same colonialist Afro vs Indo bullshit that they keep trying to divide us with.
It’s about the teachers who will share what they learn in the classroom. It’s about lawyers who could help bail out anybody that get lock up. It’s about yogis who help people stretch out a night’s worth of standing on a cold wet pavement. It’s about the snow cone man who turns up in the heat of the day. It’s about the lady who sends the pack of water and the sweetbread. It’s about fluid leadership […] It’s about the drummer who turns up at midnight to lift dampened spirits. It is about all of us. Standing up together. It’s about defying the defeatist agenda. It’s about doing what you can with whatever you have. It is about finally claiming what is yours.
Springer cited a letter from Winston Riley to the Senate of Trinidad and Tobago, underscoring the point that some of amendments to the constitution had not been recommended by the Constitutional Reform Committee:
We write to inform you that an Assembly of Citizens drawn from a number of civil society organisations has joined the call for a halt to the parliamentary debate on the Constitution Amendment Bill, 2014.
The Assembly […] wishes to alert you to the fact that the proposed amendment to the Constitution has been brought before you without input from the public. This is in direct contradiction to the Prime Minister’s pledge of engaging ‘a system of participatory democracy’ as the basis of the Commission’s work.
Some commenters thought the reforms were positive. “Mamoo”, for instance, believed the run-off provision would actually kill ethnic voting:
I am confident after all the emotional halabaloo is gone Trinis will realise that power really is in their hands. Trinidad has several active political parties […] Under the first past the post system the standard was low, a party gaining 35% of the vote could win the seat. Today they are required to woo at least 50% of the voters (except in the 25% scenario) to their side. That means ethnic voting will lose its appeal in the second ballot and people will be looking for someone who could represent them effectively, to send to Parliament.
The PNM [the People's National Movement, currently in opposition] embrace the ‘run off’ in their Constitution but does not want it for the nation. To be clear the run off does not favour any political party. It truly places power in the hand of the voter.
Many pointed out that according to Section 61 of the Trinidad and Tobago Constitution, President Carmona has the authority to veto the bill. The watchdog group Speaking Out T&T has been pushing this point, to counter the argument of those who believed the President was obligated to sign the law:
The constitution gives him that power as a check and balance to preserve the principles of democracy. Don't buy into the propaganda propagated by those who are clearly paid off bloggers following a political mandate.#DontBuyTheTrash
Ricardo Roberts believed that the criticism of Carmona might be overdone:
I have no issue with this group's position because I too wish that the President does not sign the bill into law…my only issue is that we don't have to be disrespectful to the sitting Head of State.
Several groups, including the Movement For Social Justice, a former member party of the coalition government, have planned to petition Carmona to veto the bill. The president can assent to the bill anytime during the life of the current Parliament.

author: Matthew Hunte


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5 Tips to Prevent Threats of Cyber Snooping in China · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Want to prevent threats of cyber snooping in China? See the details of the following five tips given by Sean Maples on ChinaHush:
1. Upgrade your operating system
2. Remove extra data
3. Bring a simple cellphone
4. Use a Virtual Private Network (VPN)
5. Reformat your digital device

author: Oiwan Lam


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China’s New Regulations on Instant Messaging Tools Explained · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Hu Yong, associate professor at Peking University’s School of Journalism and Communication, explained the issue at stake regarding China's latest regulations on instant messaging tools on Chinafile. The regulations forbidden public account holders, except from registered media organizations accounts, to republish articles on current events. The result is a highly selective enforcement of law as any comment can fall under the category of “news commentary”.


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Russia Cracks Down on Internet Free Speech, Except When It’s ISIS · Global Voices
Tanya Lokot

Is the “Islamic State” now recruiting its fighters on Russian social networks? Image by Nils Henriks from Demotix.
The Internet army of the “Islamic State,” having lost some of its battles in the West, is now recruiting and fundraising on the Russian social network VKontakte, a Russian media investigation claims.
In an extensive feature story, Apparat, a Russian Internet and technology news website, reveals what they say is proof of ISIS’ massive move into the “free” and “comfortable” Russian social network space, after ISIS accounts on Facebook and Twitter came under pressure.
According to the report, there is now a large undercover ISIS network on VKontakte, with accounts and pages in both Arabic and Russian. The network engages in recruiting efforts, as well as propaganda and fundraising for ISIS. Apparat says the first pages sprung up on VKontakte about a month ago, after Twitter and Facebook began blocking ISIS-led accounts. Among the first pages to appear on VK were those of the propaganda arms of the “Islamic State”: the Arabic-language al-Itisam and the English-language al-Hayat. ISIS also created several clones of the communities under the common brand “Islamic State News,” Apparat's investigation shows.
Apparat found that VKontakte now hosts many public pages for the “Caliphate”‘s provinces, as well as accounts belonging to ISIS fighters and supporters. Journalists note that ISIS “fan groups” are nothing new to VKontakte: the largest Russian-language ISIS community, ShamToday, has been around since the fall of last year, and now has over 12,000 subscribers.
In the course of its investigation, Apparat says it was able to contact some ISIS fundraisers and recruiters, using VKontakte messaging and phone numbers published in VK communities. Finding out how to support financially or even how to join ISIS was relatively easy, Apparat reporters say. (The website claims it spoke to some Russia-based recruits, who say it's possible to reach the Islamic State through Turkey).
Earlier this month, ISIS released a video addressed to Russia's Vladimir Putin, claiming they were headed to the North Caucasus to liberate the restive region and wage war on Russia. This got a reaction from Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who said on Instagram that anyone who threatens Russia or mentions Putin's name “will be destroyed where he stands.”
Apparat claims this photo is from the VKontakte page of one of the Russian-speaking fighters working with Islamic State. Image from Apparat.cc.
VKontakte, the world's largest Russian-language social network, covers many post-Soviet states, and many of the recruits allegedly come from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. But Russians join ISIS, as well, Apparat says. Indeed, the website lists “a graduate of an education department in Ufa, a young father from Derbent, and a Kazan university student” among the profiles it found on VKontakte.
Apparat says they contacted the VKontakte press service and Russian communication watchdog Roskomnadzor for comments. The state watchdog did not respond to the request, while VKontakte said, “Unfortunately, we will not comment on that.”
In Russia, ISIS and its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi are on the list of extremist and terrorist organizations and individuals. According to Russian anti-terrorism laws, any pages of these entities online are subject to immediate blocking or removal. Despite this, Apparat found that Vkontakte blocked only two out of several hundred ISIS-related pages guilty of publishing calls to violence.
Apparat's discovery of a massive ISIS network on VKontakte, existing uninhibited in the otherwise more and more restricted RuNet, does seem strange, especially if we recall the relatively innocuous content that has activated state censors in the past. Just a month ago, for instance, the Prosecutor's office in Russia blocked the VK page of the “March for Federalization of Siberia” on accusations of separatism. And in April of this year, Roscomnadzor blocked a number of pages linked to the Ukrainian “Right Sector” movement, claiming that the group is extremist.
Until the Russian government releases more details about its policy toward ISIS-related online content, it's hard to deny the Kremlin's double standard, which at best seems to be a case of willful ignorance.
Updated on September 11, 2014: Several hours after the Apparat feature was published, head of VKontakte public relations George Lobushkin voiced the official stance of the social network regarding “Islamic State” pages. “We block all known ISIS communities (including the ones described in the story) that have calls to terrorist activity,” Lobushkin said.

author: Tanya Lokot


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Right to Be Forgotten: With Free Expression Under Threat, Europe Needs a ‘Marco Civil Moment’ · Global Voices
Guest Contributor

Mugshot for American organized crime leader James “Whitey” Bulger. Criminal data like this could be subject to de-indexation under the RTBF ruling. Photo by Bureau of Prisons, released to public domain.
Interview with Félix Tréguer, researcher at EHESS and founding member of La Quadrature du Net, France.
Conversations among the Global Voices members and across the digital rights space inspired our community to ask our colleagues — Internet law experts around the globe — to comment on the ruling and describe what impact it has had on policy and political debate in their countries since it was issued. In this second installment in the series, we hear from French Internet law scholar Félix Tréguer.
Yes. In Europe, the EU Court of Justice “Costeja” ruling has stirred a very heated debate about privacy and free speech on the Internet.
But I must underline that the ruling itself is not literally about the right to be forgotten. More accurately, it is a ruling that recognizes a right to the de-indexation of links attached to a person's name in search engines, based on the 1995 EU law on the protection of personal data. This means that when a given item is de-indexed by Google in the search results to a query that includes a person's name, it remains accessible through the search engines as long as the search query does not include that name. So it is quite a far cry from an actual right to be forgotten.
That being said, the ruling of course raises important concerns about free speech online. Clearly, the Court's decision restricts the right to information for Internet users, and the right to freedom of expression of online publishers whose content will be harder to find once it is de-indexed from some search results.
To me, the worst aspect of the ruling is the fact that, while it recognizes that the right to de-indexation is not absolute, it is the responsibility of search engines to make a judgment about whether a person's request for de-indexation of online content is valid. The Court noted that the search engine's decision on the request would depend on the “role played [by the claimant] in public life”. Accordingly, the threshold for de-indexing content is higher for a public figure than for the average citizen.So the ruling effectively gives Google the task of drawing the boundaries of whom and what belongs to the public sphere. By doing so, it is reinforcing the dangerous trend toward privatized online censorship – a trend we've gotten used to in the context of copyright enforcement.
It is truly disconcerting to see Europe's highest court issuing such an important ruling while being blind to the wider legal and regulatory ecology surrounding fundamental rights on the Internet.
Yes, besides the ECJ ruling, there have been court cases across Europe regarding the right to be forgotten.
Last January in France, a Parisian art dealer with a criminal record demanded the de-indexation of links to content related to a past conviction. A lower court decided in his favor, ruling that the complainant had a right to protect his reputation under France's law on personal data.
In 2012, a former porn actress also won a case on the grounds of local privacy laws after Google denied her requests to de-index links to her pornographic videos.
But besides these judicial decisions, there is an even more problematic side to the “right to be forgotten” debate in Europe. Right after the ECJ ruling, in May, the president of the French Data Protection Authority (DPA), who is currently coordinating the works of all European DPAs on the matter, announced in an interview that a third of the complaints received by her services (about 2000 out of approximately 6000 a year) were related to online content. Shockingly, she made clear that in those cases, the DPA does not just ask search engines to de-index specific content and links in search results, but that it goes straight to publishers (online media editors, bloggers, etc) to request that online information pertaining to any given complainant be removed or anonymized.
The prototypical case for the DPA is as follows: a former union leader comes to the DPA requesting action on a decade-old video showing him in speaking vehemently against his company's CEO. The video now tops the search results associated with his name, and, as he explains in his request, prevents him from finding a job. What the DPA can do in such cases is ask the publisher of the video to delete the name of that person from the text associated with the video.
But what this also means is that without any court approval or even clear legal principles on how to balance privacy and free speech, with absolutely no transparency on how much and what content is being taken down, and without considering other ways of protecting that person from employment discrimination, administrative agencies are orchestrating the censorship of online material. And this can have a big impact on the democratic debate. To continue with the previous example, what if, five years from now, the former union leader enters the field of electoral politics? Shouldn't the electorate have a right to know about his previous political engagement?
Even before the ECJ ruling, the implementation of the right to be forgotten had already gotten out of control in Europe. There is hence an urgent need to create an appropriate framework for balancing the right to privacy and freedom of expression, since neither existing law nor the ECJ ruling provide the appropriate answers.
In the aftermath of the ECJ ruling, we're witnessing very dangerous developments. Besides encouraging the trend toward privatized censorship, the decision is also giving way to a rule-making problem.
First, Google is acting as a de facto public body and putting together a consultation on how best to implement the right to be forgotten. Google has denounced the ECJ ruling but is forced to implement it, and they logically need to come up with guidelines considering that both the ruling itself and EU law are very vague. But I find it odd that instead of calling for a legislative debate on workable principles regarding the privacy/free speech balance, the company instead created an “expert committee” to issue these guidelines. Even though the committee includes very commendable people such as Frank La Rue (the outgoing UN special rapporteur for freedom of expression), this process further legitimizes a form of private rule-making for the regulation of fundamental rights on the Internet, and as such it just cannot lead to legitimate rules.
Then, there are the national Data Protection Authorities from each EU member states who, in part in response to Google's own committee, are also working on guidelines regarding the implementation of the ruling. They started the process in July by questioning search engines (Google has already issued its response; Bing, Yahoo and others should soon follow suit). But while they have more legitimacy in this position than Google does, DPAs are administrative agencies and lack the democratic legitimacy or accountability of actual lawmakers. Culturally, they are also heavily biased towards the protection of privacy. Google's response to the DPA inquiries explains that in evaluating the requests received so far and acting upon them, it is facing questions such as:
(Excerpted from Google's response to question n° 25 of the WP29 questionnaire)
So absent clear legal principles, it's quite worrying to see DPAs making up rules and adjudicating these very difficult questions raised by the right to be forgotten.
That is indeed the crucial question, but one that needs to be taken up by both lawmakers and citizens, not by private companies and administrative agencies.
The right to be forgotten has its roots in criminal law, and no doubt there are very legitimate cases in which the protection of privacy should prevail upon freedom of expression. Europe has traditionally been a defender of strong privacy rights, which is in part explained by its history – in particular the surveillance practiced by totalitarian regimes in the 20th century – and the subsequent fear of seeing computers being used to empower states and private companies to spy on people. The focus on privacy has made Europe the worldwide leader for the protection of personal data. Today – in the age of the Internet, and especially in these “post-Snowden times” – it is an important legacy to carry forward. These old principles must be adapted to the technical and social realities of the Internet, so that we can protect the privacy of Internet users in the face of the harmful practices of the advertising, insurance and banking industries, among others, but also against the stunning return of mass surveillance by state powers.
On the other hand, in Europe, freedom of expression has not enjoyed a similar level of concern or protection as privacy. So in this debate on the right to be forgotten, there is a risk that online free speech will be routinely undermined, especially given that the problems raised by the ECJ ruling echo wider issues surrounding online censorship.
Going forward, there is a premise that should be questioned, namely the idea that the rules on the protection of personal data can apply as such to speech that is part of the public sphere. From a legal perspective, it seems to be a dangerous overreach, since I don't think it was the intention of French lawmakers in 1978, when they adopted the first law on personal data (nicknamed the “Computing and Freedoms” law). Still today, before the ECJ ruling, case law was unsettled: Many judges felt that only press laws should be used to regulate the public sphere, and thus refused to apply data protection laws to restrict freedom of expression online.
In the aftermath of the ECJ ruling, but also in the face of the many threats looming on freedoms online, Europe needs a “Marco Civil” moment. We need to raise and answer big questions about fundamental rights on the Internet, and in particular on the right to freedom of expression and the right to privacy, how to protect them, when and how they can be limited and balanced, while paying the utmost attention to applicable international human rights law.
Ultimately, it should not be up to Google or other Internet companies to implement these rules. Nor should it be the responsibility of the Data Protection Authorities. It must fall to European lawmakers to issue these rules and, consistent with the rule of law, up to the judiciary to implement them. An option to avoid private censorship while making sure courts are not flooded with requests would be having a “mediation authority” representing all stakeholders, from the public and private sectors as well as from civil society. Such a mediation body could give legal advice to claimants and online actors so as to find a common ground based on what the statutes and case law say. But when no agreement can be reached, then the case would be referred to a judge.
Want to lend your ideas to the conversation? We invite experts and interested individuals to answer these questions for us — please feel encouraged to respond to this post in the comments section or to send your thoughts to us at advocacy [at] globalvoicesonline [dot] org. We look forward to publishing them and continuing the conversation.

author: Guest Contributor


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A Fleet of Life-Size Paper Boats Is Sailing Down the Hudson River to Protest Climate Change · Global Voices
350.org

We All Live Downstream from HYPERGEIST on Vimeo.
This article was written by Duncan Meisel for 350.org, an organization building a global climate movement, and is republished on Global Voices as part of a content sharing agreement.
A poetic action by artists local and global is making its way to New York by way of the Hudson River. SeaChange: We All Live Downstream, a collaboration between 350.organd Brooklyn-based maritime arts collective Mare Liberum, has handcrafted a flotilla of life-size canoes made of paper and is paddling them the full length of the Hudson River estuary from Troy, New York to New York City in the weeks leading up to the People’s Climate March.
The SeaChange crew will be joined by local paddlers as they make their way down the river, stopping to hold community potlucks, performances, screenings, and talks in riverside towns including Albany, Catskill, Hudson, Tivoli, Newburgh, Cold Spring, Peekskill, Ossining, and finally New York City. The Hudson Valley is an important watershed region and home to communities struggling with the effects of climate change and the industries that fuel it, from encroaching hydro-fracking developments to dangerous crude oil transport. The SeaChange journey will connect these local communities’ concerns to each other, as well as to the larger global struggle against climate change manifesting in New York City this September during the People’s Climate March and the UN Climate Summit.
Some of these issues and projects on the Hudson include:
So what do paper boats have to do with all of this? As artists, the makers of SeaChange are interested in the poetry of the paper boat. These social sculptures and the accompanying journey provide a model of a sustainable, nomadic community on the water. It gives a sense of what might be possible.
Confronting climate change and the powerful industries which fuel it can sometimes seem as impossible as a boat made out of paper, but the SeaChange idea is that if we apply resistance, layer upon layer, just as they’ve applied paper to make these boats, we will come up with something strong and sturdy that keeps us afloat.
The SeaChange flotilla will arrive in New York City on September 13 and lead an exciting circumnavigation of Manhattan the next day and into the night of September 14. Expect music, lights, and fanfare on the water as the paddlers model the need to stay afloat on rising sea levels and come up with creative solutions to the challenge of climate change.
Follow SeaChange on Twitter: @seachange2014 and Instagram: @seachange2014. You can read dispatches from the river on the SeaChange Journal


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Sri Lanka’s Slow LLRC Implementation · Global Voices
Rezwan

The Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) was a commission of inquiry mandated to investigate the facts and circumstances which led to the bloody civil war in Sri Lanka. After an 18-month inquiry, the commission submitted its report to Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa almost three years ago, on 15 November 2011. The Sri Lankan citizen journalism website Groundviews recently posted an infographic released by Center For Policy Alternatives, a think tank, showing the slow progress of implementing the LLRC's recommendations.
It is noteworthy how Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe in March 2013 claimed that 99% of the LLRC Action Plan had been implemented, with President Rajapaksa claiming in May 2014 that only 30% had been implemented. These discrepancies highlight the lack of clarity across the GoSL [Government of Sri Lanka] on reconciliation efforts.

author: Rezwan


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Building Sustainable Peace in The  Central African Republic  · Global Voices
Lova Rakotomalala

As the UN launchs its peace keeping mission with the arrival of 1,500 troops in the Central African Republic (CAR), a few observers were wondering why it took so long given the extent of the casualties. Les Cercles nationaux de Réflexion sur la Jeunesse (CNRJ) is an NGO in Bangui, CAR that strives to build the foundation for sustainable peace in the country in partnership with the University of Bangui. Here is a video that illustrates the work in process :

author: Lova Rakotomalala


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Global Voices’ Alexander Sodiqov Is Safe With His Family in Toronto, Canada · Global Voices
Chris Rickleton

Alex Sodiqov with his wife and daughter. Shared via www.freesodiqov.org
This post is part of our campaign #FreeAlexSodiqov: GV Author Detained in Tajikistan.
Global Voices is thrilled to relay that Alexander Sodiqov, a GV author and the former editor of Global Voices Central Asia, has touched down in Toronto and is ready to continue his life as an academic in Canada. Alex flew into Toronto on Wednesday. He was joined by his wife Musharraf and daughter Erica today.
He will continue his PhD studies at the University of Toronto under the supervision of Dr. Edward Schatz, who, alongside John Heathershaw, was responsible for coordinating the freealexsodiqov campaign.
A message shared by Schatz on Facebook reads as follows:
John Heathershaw and I are ecstatic that Alexander Sodiqov, Musharraf Sodiqova and daughter Erica are now back in Toronto! A formal request was made of the authorities to permit his return, and it was granted. Formally, Alexander remains under investigation, but the fact that the Tajik authorities saw fit to let him travel abroad strongly suggests that they are also convinced of the need to exonerate him. We want to thank the many people and institutions that advocated publicly and worked privately for Alexander’s return to his PhD work at the University of Toronto. As you can imagine, it has been a difficult period for all of them, and one expects that the transition back to life in Toronto will be somewhat disorienting. Please do welcome them back but please also respect their need for privacy.
Arrested on June 16 while carrying out academic research in the politically restive town of Khorog, Tajikistan, Alex was released from captivity by the GKNB (formerly KGB) on July 22. Nevertheless, anxiety over his fate grew when Tajik authorities exercised the option to extend their criminal investigation on August 19, with one Tajik blogger suggesting a struggle within the Tajik government might be holding his case up.
As Schatz's post notes charges have not been formally dropped yet, but it does look like life for Alex, Musharraf and Erica is about to take a turn in favor of normality after a summer of fear and stress.
Below are photos from the July 16 global vigil held in Sodiqov's name:

author: Chris Rickleton