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Frustrated by a 2-Hour Delay, Passengers Refuse to Let Pakistani Politician Rehman Malik Board Plane · Global Voices
Sahar Habib Ghazi

A mobile video showing angry airline passengers shooing off one of Pakistan's most prominent politicians Rehman Malik from a delayed Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight leaving Karachi for capital city Islamabad has gone viral.
Flight delays because of politicians or well-connected individuals are not uncommon on Pakistan's national airline. It is unclear whether PK 370 was ‘delayed’ for Malik or because of technical difficulties, which is also fairly common. But some of the flight's disgruntled passengers decided that the two-hour delay was Malik's fault and refused to let him enter the plane. After the incident, Malik tweeted that the delay had nothing to do with him.
According to Daily Motion user Minator90210, who posted a series of mobile videos from inside the plane, crew members told passengers the delay was because of a technical difficulty initially. But a buzz started on the plane that the delay was because of VIP passenger former Interior Minister Rehman Malik, who was running late.
Within three hours of being posted on the video sharing site Daily Motion, the mobile clip showing Rehman Malik being confronted by angry passengers has been viewed more than 53,000 times. (YouTube is banned in Pakistan but the clip has also been reposted there.)
A few disgruntled passengers are clearly heard but not visible in the mobile video, which focuses on the entrance of the plane connected to the jet bridge. One passenger says in English, “My foot VIP. I will grill him. Don't you worry. When he comes in.”
Another frustrated passenger chimes in Urdu,”Sir, someone should grill these donkeys. They delay us by 2-3 hours all the time.”
A few more passengers join in, completing each other's sentences, “We have taken it [the VIP culture] for 68 years [that's how long Pakistan has been independent]. Are we going to take it for another 68 years?”
As Malik is visible walking through the the jet bridge towards the plane, one passenger exclaims in Urdu, “He has arrived. He has arrived.”
Angry passengers start accusing and shouting at him for delaying the flight for two hours. Malik almost instantly turns back with his entourage before boarding the plane.
Other passengers can be heard angrily cursing at the minister from behind. The passenger who promised to grill him apologizes for the aggression and tries to take a softer approach in his tone, but a member of the crew tries to stop him, then he shouts to Malik, “Sir, before you go back, you should apologize to these passengers!”
Malik turns around for a second, and we can't hear what he says. The same passenger continues, “Rehman Malik, 250 passengers have been delayed because of you. I am sorry. It is your fault sir. You should be ashamed of yourself. Mr. Malik, you are not a minister anymore. And even if you are a minister, we don't care. We don't care! You people have to become humans. Come down to earth!”
As Malik exits, the passenger says, “Close the gates and fly this plane to Islamabad. This should be [known] and recorded. Rehman Malik has been offloaded. [We] threw him out!”
After Malik turned back from the plane, the politician, who has over 200K followers on Twitter, turned to the platform to explain his side:
I am neither a VIP nor ever I behave VIP.I travel economy class.i saw two passengers abusing PIA.i saw them and returned to the lounge.
— Rehman Malik (@SenRehmanMalik) September 15, 2014
The PIA flight was not delayed for me.I saw one guy looked to be drunk shouting at PIA and I decided to return as the door was closed
— Rehman Malik (@SenRehmanMalik) September 15, 2014
The flt was announced to be delayed at 6pm till 830.i suffered equally.i reached at 835.it is wrongly thought that delay was b/c of me
— Rehman Malik (@SenRehmanMalik) September 15, 2014
Minator90210 also posted two other videos from inside the plane before Rehman was shooed off. In the first one, passengers try to confirm if Rehman Malik is delaying the plane; it is titled “PIA officials trying to hide identity of Rehman Malik:”
“Who delayed this plane? Rehman Malik? I demand the captain close the door of the plane now. Tell Rehman Malik to take a bus to Islamabad. This is not fair,” exclaims a passenger in the video. A lawyer says, “Who will fight my case tomorrow, my father? I have work to get to!”
A second video posted by Minator90210 shows another politician from the ruling party PML-N Ramesh Kumar Vankwani entering the plane late as well. Passengers ask him who he is and accuse him of being with Rehman Malik; he gives them a confirmation that Rehman Malik was indeed a passenger on the plane, but says he isn't with him. Passengers aren't convinced by his story and shoo him off the plane as well, chanting “shame, shame, shame, get off the plane.”
Rehman Malik served as Pakistan's minister of interior from 2008-2013, and was at the forefront of the country's battle against terrorism in the last government led by Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). Recently Malik was back in the news for trying to help the current government of Nawaz Sharif negotiate with politicians leading massive anti-government protests in Islamabad, which has attracted tens of thousands of protesters across the country, around slogans decrying corruption, and Pakistan's VIP and entitlement culture.

author: Sahar Habib Ghazi


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How a Vote for Scottish Independence Could Affect the Caribbean · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Labour for Scottish Independence; photo by Màrtainn MacDhòmhnaill, used under a CC BY-NC 2.0 license.
As former colonies and current members of the Commonwealth, a group that comprises the United Kingdom and states that were once part of its empire, including dependencies, the Caribbean is taking a particularly keen interest in the Scottish referendum on independence from the UK. The move towards independence is being pushed by The Scottish National Party, which won 2011's Scottish parliamentary election by a definitive margin.
Proponents of the “Yes” vote maintain that the centuries-old union no longer meets modern-day needs. They feel like what West Indians refer to as the “outside child” of the UK parliament and think that Scotland can be better served by using its economic strength (primarily derived from oil and gas revenues) for its own interests.
“catch a fire”, a blog run by a Bermudian resident who can and will vote in this Thursday's referendum, thought that a vote for independence could have a strong impact on Bermuda. He noted that the British overseas territory actually held a referendum on independence in 1995, but “in general, support for Bermudian independence has hovered at around 25-30% – […] a minority position.” The blogger suggested that despite “the potential loss of the colonial carrots of home tuition and EU [European Union] citizenship, the Scottish independence movement – and actual Scottish independence in the event of a Yes vote – has the potential to captivate the imagination of Bermudians about the potential of Bermudian independence.”
The UK, in its current formation (of which Scotland is an integral part), offers many benefits to the Caribbean under the umbrella of the Commonwealth of Nations. Member states cooperate with one another on issues of democracy, including things like human rights, international peace, transparency, good governance and sustainable development, values which are enshrined in the Commonwealth Charter. The group is also supportive of the needs of smaller and more economically vulnerable member states.
With this in mind, a guest post by Sir Ronald Sanders at Barbadian diaspora blog The Bajan Reporter  called Scottish independence “a one-way ticket to their own misfortune, and with consequences that will go beyond their borders”:
For countries in the Caribbean, a shrunken UK has several consequences. One of them is as basic as contributions to the Commonwealth Secretariat and its Fund for Technical Cooperation. […] The 12 Commonwealth Caribbean countries also need a strong UK in the European Community and in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development as an advocate for Caribbean interests […] there are a host of economic linkages including tourism, investment and development assistance that a less well-off UK will certainly be forced to curtail.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


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Nearly 70% of Young Iranians Use Illegal Internet Circumvention Tools · Global Voices
Mahsa Alimardani

“God is with us. Will you filter him too?” Photo by Cyrus Farivar via Flickr (CC BY-ND-SA 2.0)
In a report conducted by Iran's Ministry of Youth and Sports, the Iranian government announced that of 23.5 million youth using the Internet, 69.3 percent of them are using circumvention technology such as proxies and VPNs — virtual private networks that provide access to the “global Internet”.
At the moment, Iranians often encounter a firewall when trying to access websites that appear antagonistic towards the government or the nation’s Islamic ideals. The report did not make mention of the legality of circumvention tools. But according to Iran’s list of Computer Crimes, the distribution of both circumvention technology and instructions to use such tools are both illegal. Violating these laws can result in severe punishment.
Iran's Internet policy remains an often incoherent and fractious issue. Last week President Hassan Rouhani stated that filters could never be effective in a nation like Iran; however a few days later the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance started blocking news websites without proper press licensing. Similarly, while Rouhani and key members of his cabinet are some of the most recognized Twitter and Facebook users in the country, both social networks remain blocked for regular Iranian Internet users.
While some have argued that Rouhani’s Internet policy is one of the rare areas where rhetoric and action coincide, pointing to recent improvements in mobile and fixed line Internet infrastructure, reports like this one perpetuate a feeling of overall uncertainty among many users and open Internet advocates in the country.

author: Mahsa Alimardani


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One Man’s Response to Chinese Communist Party-Style Patriotism: Here, Have a Chrysanthemum · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Beijing netizen “Fisherman” protested outside Renmin University against the promotion of party-state patriotism by a Marxist professor.
A Beijing netizen who goes by the name of Fisherman recently brought Marxism professor Chen Xiankui at Renmin University a Chrysanthemum. But the flower wasn't meant as a gesture of love or gratitude for the scholar. In traditional Chinese culture, Chrysanthemums are an for offering to the dead. In popular online usage, it also means “ass kissing.”
Fisherman and his flower were protesting Chen's opinion piece in Chinese Communist Party (CCP) mouthpiece Global Times stating that “patriotism and loving the party is the same” in contemporary China. Chen argued that treating love of country as separate from love of the communist party is a western idea that undermines the foundation of the one-party regime in China.
Chen's opinion is unacceptable to liberal-minded mainland Chinese people, like Fisherman. Twitter user @minshenguancha reported on the protest:
网民人大举牌 斥“爱国和爱党在中国是一致的”论 http://t.co/czBSsBcxHs pic.twitter.com/zaZKMV5ayo
— 民生观察 (@minshengguancha) September 11, 2014
Netizen shows protest placard in front of Renmin University to condemn the propaganda of “loving the country is the same as loving the party”.
The placard says: “Chen Xiankui: Fisherman is here to deliver the Chrysanthemum to you. Lick it hard. And remember to bring a lightning rod with you whenever you go out.”
One of the major fronts in the ideological battle launched by the new leadership of the CCP under President Xi Jinping is convincing Chinese to accept the idea that loving the country is equal to loving the party. Twitter user @xinyouqingbo explained the implication of Chen's patriotism theory:
总有一群御用文人甘冒矢石、自辱其祖的出来舔菊，还把所谓爱国的格调搞得如此低下，从政治上说，这不是破坏统一战线吗？不爱国从此变得如此容易，陈教授功莫大焉，可喜可贺。从此中国法律又有一个新罪行：不爱共产党＝叛国。
— 心有清波 (@xinyouqingbo) September 10, 2014
One can alway find a group of intellectuals who are willing to act as shield and insult one's ancestor by licking [the party's] ass. They debase the term patriotism. And when judging from the perspective of political tactics, they are destroying the construction of a united front. Professor Chen has turned people away from their country so easily. A new crime will soon emerge: Not loving the party = treason.
On Twitter-like Weibo, Chinese netizens also spoke out against the blurred line between country and party. Below is a selection of comments from caijing's Weibo news thread:
张耀辉-从容中道：[…]“党”由西方导入，在中国不过一百年历史，若此教授逻辑存在，真不知古人如何爱国。
冬夜明月月1976：一个贪污腐败的利益集团也让我必须爱他！苏共垮台俄罗斯还在，罗共垮台罗马尼亚还在，柬共灭亡柬普寨还在，真无耻！
hitrust：建议大陆人一出生就拥有中共党籍，保证实现该类型逗比的想法
周末心情_木：党能等同于国？？这是有多愚蠢！国是家，党是管家，你爱家还非要爱你管家？还无论如何不能换管家？
Zhang Yaohui: […] “Party” is a term from the west. Political party only has more than a century of history in China. According to Chen's argument, I wonder how people in the past loved their country.
“Winter moon 1976″: How can you compel me to love a corrupted interest group? Russia still exists after the Soviet Communist Party lost power. Romania still exists after the Romanian Communist Party lost power. Cambodia still exists after the Cambodian Communist Party lost power. Shameless [theory].
hitrust: I suggest that people born in mainland China automatically sign up as Chinese Communist Party members so as to make this kind of patriotism a reality.
“Weekend mood”: The party is the same with the country? This is so stupid. The country is home, the party is just a housekeeper. You don't need to love the housekeeper for loving your home. Can't you change the housekeeper?
Both “Sitting on the floor 2013″ from Weibo and @leo3194 from Twitter pointed out that Chen just described the reality:
席地而坐2013：他说的是真话，你只爱德国，不爱纳粹，在二战时的德国行不通的!
“Sitting on floor 2013″: What he said is true. You could not love Germany without loving the Nazis in Germany during second World War.
那个说爱国和爱党本就一样的人说的本来就是实话，反党分子和反华分子难道在党那里的标准不是一样的么。
— 奥哥–leo (@leo3194) September 11, 2014
The person who said loving the party is the same as loving the country just told the truth. In the eyes of the CCP, anti-party and anti-China are no different.
Chen's notion of patriotism is in line with mainland Chinese top official Li Fei's explanatory remarks on Beijing's framework for political reform in Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China. The mainland requires that candidates for Hong Kong's chief executive be endorsed by the majority of a pro-Beijing nominating committee before being allowed on the ballot for the city's first direct vote of their leader in 2017.
Li stressed that the ruling role of CCP is established in China's Constitution and thereby it goes without saying that the chief executive of Hong Kong should embrace the party-state. Pro-democracy activists are planning to challenge that thinking with a massive sit-in in the city's financial district to demand the right to choose the candidates.
The imposition of such an unpopular party-state patriotism onto the election system in Hong Kong will inevitably escalate the political conflict in the pearl city, where “East meets West”.

author: Oiwan Lam


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Presenting the 2014 Rising Voices Amazonia Grantees · Global Voices
Eduardo Avila

Rising Voices is pleased to announce this year's Amazonia microgrants will be awarded to seven citizen media outreach projects across South America.
Earlier this year, we invited local Amazon communities to submit their ideas on how citizen media could help to tell their own digital story. We received a total of 52 proposals from six different countries focusing on a variety of topics that included climate change, biodiversity, conflict and reconciliation. Many projects came from indigenous communities across the region who wanted to embrace digital technologies for their communication needs.
Applicants were given the option to share their proposal publicly through our interactive platform available in both Spanish and Portuguese. There they were able to exchange feedback and comments with other applicants, as well as help facilitate potential collaborative partnerships.
Originally we were slated to select six winners, but we were able to fund seven projects in total. These grantees will join the Rising Voices community, where we will provide microgrants so that they can carry out their ideas. They will also receive mentoring and other technical support, as well as amplification and translation of their digital stories.
Congratulations to the newest grantee projects! The seven winners (in alphabetical order by country):
Bolivia: Tsimané Linguistic Universe
Many rural Tsimané indigenous communities in the Beni region of Bolivia are left without Internet or mobile connections. While there is hope that a new government telecommunications satellite will eventually fill these connectivity gaps, those wanting access to the web must make a trek to the nearest town of San Borja. When they do get online, there is little to no content in the Tsimané language, but this project seeks to address this need. A team of young people, which includes students, teachers, and researchers, who often make this trek themselves to study or work in San Borja will create a multimedia encyclopedia that collects digital audio recordings to encourage a new generation of tech-savvy young people to use their language online.
Brasil: Rádio Arraia
Since 2011, young artists from the project “Rivers of Meeting” located in the Afro-indigenous community of Cabelo Seco situated between the Tocantins and Itaciúnas rivers have been producing a rich variety of creative content about the realities of their surroundings. Despite a high-degree of social marginalization, poverty, and drug-related violence, the community of Cabelo Seco reflects solidarity, cooperation, and a colorful popular culture, which has been passed on by generations. The project will create an online/offline radio station to help capture the richness of this popular culture through the production of radio theater, local interviews, debates, home remedies, and citizen journalism, all produced by a team of youth participants using free software tools and shared through social networks.
Colombia: Yadiko Uruk + Sons of Yadiko
Dozens of analog audio and video cassettes containing ancestral stories from a community of Witoto – M+n+ka indigenous people, as well as documentation of the sacred ritual called Yadiko, were recorded by external researchers in the 1980s. This rich content, however, remains inaccessible to the community of Cabildo Milán located in La Chorrera in the Colombian Amazon region, where the recordings were made. A young university student named Ever Kuiru, who was orphaned at at a young age and left the community, wants to transfer these recordings to a digital format and present them to the community in the hopes of inspiring and training others to make their own podcasts. Through this process, Ever hopes to maintain ties with his roots through the stories of his late father and grandfather found in these recordings.
Ecuador: Shuar y Achuar: Our Digital Stories in Our Own Language
Community radio stations in the Ecuadorian Amazonian indigenous communities Shuar and Achuar have a rich history of transmitting in their native languages about issues important to this region. The people behind these radio stations want to learn how to take these intercultural stories to the web using free software tools to stream online and create blogs to complement their traditional transmission. Young members of these radio stations will be trained in the use of these free tools as a way to strengthen inter-generational dialogue and communication in their own native Shuar and Achuar languages.
Ecuador: Southern Amazon: Young Images of Resistance and Ancestral Alternatives
Sumak Allpa (Forest Alive) is a concept promoted by Kichwa peoples living in the community of Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian province of Pastaza. Sarayaku is a community that can only be reached by small plane or canoe; there are no highways leading in or out. However, thanks to a satellite connection, young indigenous people will use free software and community digital video to share their stories of resistance following Sumak Allpa in defense of their territories against the XI Oil Round, which seeks to provide concessions for oil extraction in large sections of ancestral territory belonging to seven indigenous nations located in the Southern Amazon in Ecuador.
Perú: Chariboan Joi
A storytelling festival planned for the community of Nueva Betania on the outskirts of Yarinacocha in Ucayali, Peru will be the starting point for this project. With support from the Arkana Alliance, newly trained citizen reporters from the Organization of Indigenous Youth from the Ucayali Region (OJIRU) will explore how to use mobile phones to cover the event and help document the legends and stories shared by the local artists in the native Shipibo language and translated into other languages. From there, the citizen reporters will continue to create digital stories about their communities focusing on preserving cultural traditions and language, but also examining the effects of extractivism on the surrounding environment. By establishing partnerships with local radio stations and employing other distribution techniques, such as loud speakers in public spaces, the citizen reporters will be able to better reach those without internet access.
Venezuela: Jatta Wöötanö
In the Yekuana indigenous community of Boca de Ninchare located within the Caura River Basin in Venezuela, a new generation of young people are discovering the potential of digital media as these tools become more widely available. This project will engage young people from the community to create a team of “ethno-communicators,” a term used to describe individuals who use social communication and have a deep knowledge of their culture with a desire to share knowledge. Members of the coordinating team have strong ties to the Indigenous University of Venezuela as current students and former professors. While there is a draw of young people to the cities to use these technology, thanks to a community Internet connection provided by a national telecommunications company, these ethno-communicators will now have the chance to tell their stories from where the stories take place.
This Rising Voices Amazonia project is made possible by the generous support of Avina Americas, Fundación Avina, and the Skoll Foundation.
Please join us in welcoming these new projects and look for updates very soon.

author: Eduardo Avila


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Trinidadians Concerned Over “Largest Ever Budget” · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

As the Trinidad and Tobago government, in anticipation of national elections next year, serves up a massive budget, two political bloggers take the country's leaders to task.
Afra Raymond, whose blog keeps a close eye on politics, corruption and transparency, provided some disturbing financial context:
The Minister of Finance has just met cynical expectations by announcing Trinidad & Tobago’s largest-ever budget for 2015, with estimated revenue of $60.351 Billion in support of estimated expenditure of $64.664 Billion.  This expenditure is $4.313 Billion more than the expected revenue, with 2015 being the sixth consecutive year of deficit budgets with a nominal total of just under $34 Billion in excess expenditure in that period.
While Raymond was not surprised at the “high-stakes election budget”, he maintained that there were a few key issues to be considered – the importance of the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Property law being passed, the government's exclusion of a billion dollar water recycling project in the country's accounts, continued ambiguity about the specific output of the state housing programme and the issue of campaign finance reform, to name a few.
Over at This Beach Called Life, the blogger had additional concerns, such as the intolerable traffic situation between south and north Trinidad (most corporate offices and state agencies are concentrated in the island's capital, Port of Spain, with nothing being done to alleviate the problem), as well as the government's latest controversial crime-fighting gimmick, the purchase of armoured vehicles that has been one of the hot topics of discussion on social media, with many netizens getting the sense that the concept of community policing has been traded for an approach that could potentially endanger civilians. The blogger summed up the situation this way:
Naturally, Kamla’s [Persad-Bissessar, the Prime Minister] amusing and often childish sounding chant ‘serve the people, serve the people, serve the people’ can no longer be heard as the Government buys fifty two armored vehicles to ‘blow up the people’ should they step out of line. Are we a nation on the verge of revolt?
Yes, a revolt might be near simply because when the Government […] removes the unsustainable subsides on gasoline, water, electricity […] all hell will break loose in paradise and whether party financiers get their contracts and the appropriate kickbacks paid will be the least of the Government’s concerns.


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Ukrainian Daredevil “Mustang Wanted” Now Officially Wanted in Russia · Global Voices
Lewis May

Mustang Wanted in action. Anonymous image circulated online.
Skyscraper-climber Mustang Wanted is a man used to high places, but his latest exploits have taken him to dangerous new heights, including a warrant for his arrest in Russia. Following Mustang's confession that he decorated a Moscow skyscraper’s crowning star with the Ukrainian flag and colors, Russian police put out an order for his arrest. Not surprisingly, Ukraine's authorities promptly refused to comply.
Mustang, whose real name is allegedly Pavel Ushyvets, says he sold footage of the act for $5,000 to Russian television and donated the funds to a Ukrainian volunteer battalion, for which he received the 2014 Troublemaker Award.
Last week, a Moscow judge placed Mustang on an international wanted list (currently limited to the CIS states, and not involving the Interpol), charging him with hooliganism and vandalism. The arrest warrant suggests that Russian authorities have no interest in Mustang's offer to turn himself in peacefully, in exchange for the release of Ukrainian military pilot Nadezhda Savchenko, who's currently in pretrial detention in Voronezh.
In a Facebook post, Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor at the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, stated that the Ukrainian government has no plans to extradite Mustang. Article 25 of the Ukrainian Constitution, Gerashchenko said, ensures that no Ukrainian citizen can be extradited for trial abroad.  Gerashchenko praised Mustang for his actions, celebrating their global scope and the symbolic insult they had delivered to Russia.
Это тот самый Герой Украины, который взобравшись на одну из сталинских высоток в Москве, сам, один, за ночь раскрасил звезду венчавшую шпиль, в цвета украинского национального флага и сделал фото обошедшее весь мир! Чем поверг в большое уныние Кремль и одурманенных пропагандой Москвичей.  И напротив, вызвал восторг своей смелостью и смекалкой у украинцев и всего мира. . . Мы украинцы сильная и креативная нация, а Павел – один из лучших ее сынов!
This is the same Hero of Ukraine who climbed one of Stalin's towers in Moscow, the one who single-handedly, in one night, painted the tower’s crowning star in the colors of the Ukrainian national flag. He took a photo that's traveled the whole world! That photo struck at the heart of the Kremlin and all the Muscovites drugged on Russian propaganda. It also inspired Ukrainians and the whole world with its bravery and daring. We Ukrainians are a strong and creative nation, and Pavel is one of its greatest sons.
Interestingly, Gerashchenko went on to say that to spite the Russian authorities, Mustang would be changing his legal name, and that the Ukrainian government would be happy to help.  There was no official word as to what that name would be or if it would help him evade arrest. However, Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov speculated on Facebook that Mustang was actually changing his name to “Vladimir Putin,” which caused much mirth among the RuNet users.
Сегодня он заявил, что сменит ФИО на Владимира Путина. Украинские законы позволяют это легко сделать. И пусть Владимира Владимировича Путина объявляют в международный розыск.
He announced today [September 12] that he's changing his name to Vladimir Putin. Ukrainian laws allow to do this easily. And then let Vladimir Putin be wanted internationally.
In addition to being inspiring, Mustang’s high-climbing feats have been increasingly lucrative. After selling a video of his star-painting climb to the pro-Kremlin news outfit LifeNews for $5,000, Mustang donated the money to Semen Semenchenko, the leader of the anti-separatist Donbas battalion. The militia group, based in Dnipropetrovsk, functions as an autonomous volunteer battalion in Ukraine's “anti-terrorist operation.” Mustang has made his support for Ukrainian armed forces clear in the past, posting pictures of himself in body armor alongside Ukrainian soldiers with the hashtag #UkrainianRevolution.
In honor of his Moscow skyscraper stunt, his advocacy for Savchenko, and his donation to Semenchenko, Pavel recently earned the 2014 Troublemaker Award, which comes with $10,000. The award, given by Moscow-born and Boston-based entrepreneur Semyon Dukach, aims to reward the “good kind of trouble making […] when you take a risk and bend social norms for a greater good.” Past winners of the Award include Nadia Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot and young American educational activist Zack Kopplin. Dukach recently told Radio Free Europe why he chose to decorate Mustang.
То, что он сделал в Москве, офигенно! То, что сделал Мустанг – это гуманно, он никого не убивал, он нанес максимальный удар по символике, в Москве на звезду эту красную вывесил флаг.  Первое было это, потом призыв освободить Савченко, которая точно не виновата, и третье – шутка или не шутка, что 5 тысяч долларов он взял с LifeNews за видео и отдал их Семенченко в батальон “Донбасс” и посмеялся над LifeNews.  Мне кажется, это прекрасно.
What he did in Moscow was awesome! What Mustang did was humane, he killed no one, he delivered the maximum strike through a symbol, in Moscow, hanging the flag on this red star. First he did this, then he called for the freeing of Savchenko, who is definitely innocent, and third, whether it's a joke or not, he gave the 5,000 dollars he took from LifeNews to Semenchenko and the Donbas Battalion and laughed at LifeNews. To me, that’s wonderful.
Left to right: Pussy Riot's Maria Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, and Semyon Dukach. Image from Facebook.
It's anybody's guess where Mustang heads next. To the east, arrest and prison time await him in Russia. To the west, there are $10,000 with his name on them. Wherever he goes, Mustang's adventures will likely make for good entertainment on YouTube, where his videos have attracted more than 100,000 subscribers and more than 13 million views.

author: Lewis May


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Was a Popular Saint Lucia Blog Taken Down by Google Hateful or Just Outspoken? · Global Voices
Matthew Hunte

Writer and actor Jason Sifflet's popular Saint Lucia-based Flogg Blog was taken down by Google for violating its terms of service before being restored last week. The no-holds-barred, muckraking blog had become both notorious and controversial among people interested in local politics.
Sifflet reported the removal of the blog in a series of posts on his Facebook page:
4am SATURDAY, AUGUST 30: When the other NEG left the tower, I went back to my mocambo and got out my cyber-drum. Imagine my surprise to find that GOOGLE had burnt my cyber-fort THE FLOGG BLOG to the ground. No warning. No prior notification. Just an email saying:
Hello, Your blog at http://thefloggblog.blogspot.com/ has been reviewed and confirmed as in violation of our Terms of Service for: HATE.
In accordance to these terms, we've removed the blog and the URL is no longer accessible. For more information, please review the following resources:
Terms of Service: http://www.blogger.com/go/terms
Blogger Content Policy:http://blogger.com/go/contentpolicy
-The Blogger Team
Sifflet, still considered an enfant terrible despite a career that spans nearly two decades, had a dedicated following and The Flogg Blog's sudden demise has been a major topic of discussion in both mainstream and social media on the Caribbean island, with much speculation on what motivated the blog's removal. The Flogg Blog's contents ranged from investigative reporting to acerbic satirical pieces, all written in a freewheeling, profane style which was usually leavened with profanity. Sifflet's blog included investigations into mismanagement at several statutory boards, including the Saint Lucia Tourist Board, which were particularly controversial.
Sifflet discussed The Flogg Blog and his career in a lengthy interview a few days before the blog was taken down:
Norbert Williams believed the controversy will have a “Streisand effect”, making Sifflet's work even more prominent:
Williams added that Sifflet has merely exposed the topics that many Saint Lucians already discuss privately:
The Flogg Blog has shaken things up in St. Lucia. Even though it was not articulated in mainstream media, much of what Jason wrote has been thought of and discussed by many St. Lucians. They talked about the Flogg Blog at work, on Facebook, in emails, some mother-floggers even stayed up late at night unable to sleep because of the details and damning information contained within.
Kevin Edmonds suspected that Sifflet's harsh criticism of the tourism industry is what may landed him in trouble (A few days after the Flogg Blog was taken down, Sifflet announced on Facebook that his wife had lost her job at a local hotel) :
A series of recent posts on the Flogg Blog sharply critiqued the St. Lucian tourism industry, discussing such topics as high level corruption, crime, money laundering and bluntly stating that it is creating an apartheid like system on the island. Heavy stuff, no doubt – but it was excellent, much needed stuff.  You do not find this kind of pointed critique in The Star, The Voice or the Mirror. This is because one would be a fool to think that the mainstream media in St. Lucia or anywhere else is divorced from power. It acts as little more than public relations for the power – allowing critique to fall within a very narrow, previously agreed upon spectrum. Go outside of that and you are in trouble. See Jason Sifflet as Exhibit A.
He continued:
In contrast, Tonjaka Ewart Kho-Hinkson noted that because Google is a private company that can make and enforce its own rules about content created by its users, the removal of Sifflet's blog, while problematic, actually may not constitute a violation of free speech:
The right to free speech DOES NOT exist between two private actors such as between two persons or two companies or any combination thereof. So you do not have a right to say whatever you like on my property, for example. […] The Flogg Blogg does not have a ‘right’ to free speech where the exercise of that right is being enforced against Google (a company) who is a private actor. In fact, it wouldn't be enforceable against Facebook for that matter. So unless it can be shown that the views contained within the Flogg Blogg are censored after being expressed on a domain owned and controlled by the Flogg Blogg itself, and censorship is conducted by the state, then there is no attack on free speech here. This is a wrong [assertion] in law.
Hinkson addressed the likelihood of Google acting under the instructions of government officials:
In the interesting case of the SLU government putting pressure on google to take down the blog, if there were any evidence of this, then this still would not amount to a violation of Article 10 of the St. Lucia constitution. Only if that pressure gave google no choice other than to remove the blog would there be a violation. But my guess is that google is not beholden to the whims of the St. Lucia government, and it would have to be shown that google would have been significantly affected financially by that pressure.
Hinkson stated that he has advised Sifflet to purchase his own domain name. In the mean time, Sifflet continued his work on a new blog on a different platform and began an attempt to uncover the reasons for the Flogg Blog being taken down.
Interestingly, the blog was restored on the Google platform on September 11. Global Voices got in touch with Sifflet to determine whether he was given any explanation for The Flogg Blog being taken down in the first place. This is what he said:
The email of Sat Aug 31 3:35 am informed me that the blog was deleted for TOS hate [violating Google's Terms of Service concerning hate speech on the Blogger platform]. It was one paragraph, very simple, no warning. By nine the next morning, I had a few calls that ratted out some culprits. One name remained the same and other names kinda changed. But the suspects were all political lawyers and statcorp CEOs – i.e. people who felt attacked by the blog.
By this time, I had already appealed for review through the help forums. But it was discouraging cos I couldn’t get a human response. Just automated response.
Automated response after automated response for days.
But then, a couple of American lawyers came out of the woodwork to bat for me on the other side. And a couple of Lucians had a friend of a friend in Google who might be able to check. The field research over the next few days revealed some surprising things which will take some time to work out.
So Wednesday, afternoon, I think, after I set up the new DIS Flogg and started republishing old Tourist board articles, just to fuck with the people I know fucked with me…Google reinstates the FLOGG with a simple message saying it was like a mistake of an automated scan.
In any case, I drop one story from each blog, just to be a dick and then, SOURCE B at Google calls me for an unofficial source, he sounds really formal and official with me.
‘This was a mistake. It should never have happened. It seems there was a community complaint which should not have been dealt with at the level it was. As a result, your blog has been flagged so that this never happens again. In fact, if there are new complaints, they have to bee forwarded higher up the chain than the regular blog, because of this incident. This was a big mistake. Your blog contains nothing that is hateful or violates free speech. This should never have happened.’
Our conversation went like this for 20 minutes.
All the while, I’m trying to get him to give me transcripts and identities, but he is insisting the same way I have freedom of speech, so do the people who complained and Google guaranteed them anonymity, which means the lawyers who are helping me now have a very well defined assignment on their hands.
Sifflet's story provides an instructive example of a case that pits speech and privacy rights against one another, and of a situation in which further inquiry with the decision-maker (Google, in this case) led to a strong outcome.
To learn more about blogging and social media content removals and appeals processes for these kinds of incidents, read “Account Deactivation and Content Removal: Guiding Principles and Practices for Companies and Users,” a collaborative report by the Center for Democracy & Technology and the Berkman Center.

author: Matthew Hunte


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Why One Trinidadian Father Will Never Hit His Kids · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Corporal punishment has, for a long time, been ingrained into the fabric of Caribbean societies, with some making the connection between the region's harsh colonial history and its modern day bent towards violence. In many cases, the recipients of such beatings are the most defenseless members of society – children.
In Trinidad and Tobago, this year alone, there have been two high-profile cases in which videos, one of a mother beating her daughter with a belt and the other of a mother repeatedly hitting a child with a shovel, went viral, prompting a national discussion on the fine line between discipline and child abuse.
Discipline, in its truest sense, is nothing more than an opportunity to teach, and judging from the findings of modern scientific research, you can't connect with children – or anyone for that matter – when they're scared, because the fight or flight instinct takes over.
In reality, though, it can be difficult for parents to walk away from old ideas, especially if the rod was not spared during their own childhood – which is why it was especially refreshing to come across this blog post by a Trinidadian father, living in the United States, detailing exactly how he came to change his mind about corporal punishment:
I used to think spanking a kid was okay – necessary, even.  I come from a culture where it is accepted, even expected.  I no longer think that it is any of those things.
If you think that a stronger, more physically powerful person hitting a woman is wrong under all circumstances, then you must accept that hitting a weaker, much less powerful human being is equally as wrong – if not more so.
The idea that ‘well, I got hit as a kid and I turned out okay’ is, I think, a fallacy.  Because I think that if you think that hitting a kid is okay under [insert circumstances here], you, in fact, did not ‘turn out okay’.
Hitting a kid, especially a young kid, is pure laziness.  It’s ‘I can’t be bothered to understand what’s driving my kid to do X so I’m going to revert to my base instinct and lash out.’  It’s lazy, and it is wrong.
I was spanked as a kid.  Not often […] but I got spanked.  I love my mom, and she is my hero for how she brought us up – but on this, she was wrong […] If I am half the parent to my children that my mother was to us, I’ll be an excellent parent.  But I will never hit my kids.  That’s one thing that stops with me.


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How Entrepreneurship Helped a Bangladeshi Girl Avoid Child Marriage · Global Voices
Rezwan

Bangladeshi blogger Raad Rahman tells the story of a girl in rural Bangladesh who avoided a forced child marriage after she started a grocery shop using a small grant from a local non-government organisation. She was going to be married off to her neighbour's son because her family could no longer support her financially.

author: Rezwan


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Interview With the Author of ‘Chinese Turkestan’, a Photographic Documentary of Xinjiang · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Far West China interviewed Ryan Pyle, a Shanghai-based photographer who recently published a photographic documentary of Xinjiang titled “Chinese Turkestan”:
The news is so segregated and so focused on conflict areas that places like Xinjiang get left off the map. When the spotlight does turn there, it’s all about the violence that is happening there. It’s had its problems, sure, but there is so much more of a story to tell.
Before I first went to Xinjiang in 2001, I was sitting in a hostel in Beijing and people were saying “Don’t go to Xinjiang” and the Chinese and other foreigners were saying “Don’t go to Xinjiang.” But I went out there, and I had the most amazing time. It was such and eye-opening experience.


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The Internet Helps Double Russia’s Number of Extremism Cases · Global Voices
Tanya Lokot

As the Russian web becomes more politicized, law enforcement cracks down on “extremist” content. Images mixed by Tetyana Lokot.
The number of criminal cases opened on extremism charges in Russia has doubled during 2014, and the Internet is responsible for most of the growth, as more political activity, campaigning, and recruiting happen online, and law enforcement becomes more web-savvy.
According to an Izvestia report which quotes the numbers from the Russian Supreme court, in 2012 the courts received 260 criminal cases under “extremism” articles 280 and 282 of the criminal code, and 208 people received sentences for extremism. In 2013 this number grew to 402 court cases and 309 persons sentenced.
By the end of August 2014 the Interior Ministry's counter-extremism division had already sent 485 cases to the courts, with 594 persons named as defendants in those cases. Sverdlovsk region and Tatarstan took the lead on extremism charges in Russia, with 38 and 33 criminal cases respectively.
The Interior Ministry says the growing numbers of cases and convictions are caused by a spike in online activity, both on the part of the politically active citizens, and on the part of law enforcement. In 2014 alone over 500 “extremist materials” have been removed from the web, and 406 pages or communities were deemed “extremist” and taken down. The Interior Ministry concludes that extremism in Russia is becoming less explicitly violent, and more digital in nature, as it moves online. Those labeled by the authorities as “extremists” engage in fewer forceful actions on the streets and use social networks to share their calls to action and rally for their causes.
An extremism research think tank at Saint Petersburg State University concludes that most materials that resulted in criminal investigations this year had been published online several years earlier, and the only reason the court cases are piling up now is that law enforcement has become more diligent at checking websites and discovering “extremist” content. Sergey Kuznetsov, the think tank's director, told Izvestia that a good share of the investigations deal with content that has been online for ages, and is just now registering on the investigators’ radar.
The Ministry's operatives acknowledge it's more difficult to counteract “extremists” online, since the space often allows them to remain anonymous and to open new platforms for political action once the existing ones are blocked, whether by setting up mirror websites or by creating carbon copies of their public pages on social networks.
Kuznetsov also claimed that Russian nationalists are becoming less active online, while Ukrainians are occupying the vacant spaces.
В социальных сетях снижается активность русского национализма, зато резко возросло количество материалов от украинских экстремистов. Они приходят в российский сегмент соцсетей и выкладывают там провоцирующие фото-, видео- и текстовые материалы.
The activity of Russian nationalism on social networks is waning, while the number of materials from Ukrainian extremists has seen rapid growth. They come to the Russian segment of the social networks and publish provocative photos, videos and textual content.
The Kremlin has made a concerted effort to limit the online freedoms of its citizens lately, and the “extremism” articles in the criminal code and their application to online content are just one of many examples of the crackdown. Other initiatives include the notorious blogger law requiring anyone with a daily audience of over 3 thousand users to go on a government registry, the law on personal data retention mandating websites store Russians’ data inside the country, and more extravagant suggestions by some politicians, such as the call to prepare for an autonomous Internet in Russia.
While the authorities’ explanations for the growth of convictions on charges of extremism seem logical, they are also a prime example of the demonization of the Internet as a space that is unregulated, unsafe and needs a firmer set of controls in order to function properly. Given the recent wave of email password leaks, VKontakte shutting down a number of ISIS-related accounts, and the unwise use of social networks by Russian soldiers exposing their presence in Ukraine, the shadowy menace of “online extremists,” coupled with hysteria around the Ukrainian nationalist and far-right agenda, emerges as an excellent scare tactic which could potentially undermine the desire of many Russians to post critical thoughts on their blogs or pages, let alone engage in any kind of subversive activity online. Just how much the Russian authorities are afraid of the free Internet and whether they will manage to scare Russian netizens into complacency remains to be seen.

author: Tanya Lokot


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About Homeland, Lanterns, Parades and Independence in Costa Rica · Global Voices
Gabriela García Calderón Orbe

Parade organized in Aguas Zarcas, Alajuela, Costa Rica. Image on Flickr by user Allan Javier Aguilar Castillo (CC BY-SA 2.0).
On her blog Anchas Alamedas, Solentiname remembers how she used to spend Costa Rica independence day, September 15, when she was a schoogirl, and the parades with lanterns and flags:
Teníamos estandarte y era un honor reservado para los mejores estudiantes de todo el colegio y solo tres: el que lo llevaba y dos a cada lado, que además quisieran quedarse practicando después de clases en la cancha de basketball el izquier dos tres cuatro.
Teníamos bastoneras. Las más lindas de cada nivel eran las bastoneras. Podían mover el bastón igual que las muchachas que veíamos en la tele y usaban uniformes de enaguas cortas y voladas, hombreras militares y sombreros de circo. Y las botas. Unas botas lindísimas con tiritas y botones dorados.
[…]
El año en que el Ministerio decidió imponer por la fuerza el uniforme único, nos advirtió que al desfile iban todos de celeste y azul o no íbamos. Fuimos, pero con el uniforme de gala que ese año se diseño aun exuberante. […] Como resultado, nos castigaron por cinco años en los que no pudimos participar en nada, solo como pelotón común y corriente y, por supuesto, vestidos de azul y de celeste.
We had standard and it was an honor reserved for the best students of the whole school, just three: the one who carried it and two by each sides, that would want to stay practicing after school in the basketball field the “left, two three four”.
We had baton twirlers. The prettiest girls of each class were the baton twirlers. They could handle the baton just as the girls we saw on TV and wore uniforms of short skirts, military shoulder pads and circus hats. And the boots. The prettiest boots with golden strips and buttons.
[…]
The year the Ministry decided to impose by force the same uniform for everybody, we were warned that for the parade we must wear the light blue and the blue, or we shouldn't go at all. We went, but in our full uniform, that that year had still a lush design. […] As a result, we were punished for five years during which we weren't able to participate in anything, just as a regular platoon and, of course, wearing the light blue and the blue.
She ends up with a nostalgic reflection about the idea of homeland:
15 de setiembre no me despierta la noción de patria, ya ni siquiera para reclamar una independencia verdadera. Apenas me vuelve aquella sensación de tostamiento e insolación, la participación forzada y un terrible cansancio y, cada año, dedico un ratito del día feriado a imaginar en detalle el farolito ingenioso que hubiera hecho y lo lindo que se hubiera visto encendido una noche de lluvia, la víspera de la independencia de Centroamérica.
September 15 doesn't make me feel the idea of homeland, not even to claim a true independence. I just feel again that sensation of tan and sunstroke, the forced participation and a terrible fatigue and, every year, I dedicate a little moment of the holiday to imagine in detail the ingenious lantern I'd have made and how beautifully lit it would be during a rainy night, on the eve of the independence of Central America.

author: Gabriela García Calderón Orbe


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Ebola Hasn’t Reached the Gambia, and People Are Working to Keep It That Way  · Global Voices
Demba Kandeh

The logo of #EbolaFreeGambia campaign. Image source: #EbolaFreeGambia Facebook page.
Efforts in the tiny West African state of the Gambia, which hasn't been affected by the devastating Ebola outbreak, are being intensified to protect the country from the deadly virus.
As of 31 August, nearly 1,900 people in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone have died, according to the World Health Organisation. Following the confirmation of the first Ebola case in Senegal, the Gambia's immediate neighbour, concerns soared over the country's preparedness and public awareness about the disease. The confirmation created widespread fear among the Gambians because of the closeness of Senegal to Gambia and porous borders between the two countries.
A coalition of civil society in the Gambia have launched Ebola Free Gambia to try and keep the country Ebola free. Its Facebook page, created on the 30 August, has over 2,900 likes.
A description of the coalition on its website says:
In light of the proximity of Gambia to the Ebola infected areas, there is a pressing need for immediate action to arrest the possible spread of Ebola into The Gambia by sensitizing the population about the nature of the disease, how it is spread and how to avoid being infected. The Government of the Gambia from the onset of the outbreak in West Africa has taken some steps to protect our country from Ebola. The impact of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa already having dire economic consequences to the Gambia not to mention the potential health implications if the disease were to spread into the Gambia.
The campaign complements government's efforts by raising awareness about preparedness, prevention and response using their website, YouTube videos, Facebook and sensitization drives around the country.
Watch one of the campaign's YouTube video below:
Meanwhile, on 11 September the US Embassy in Banjul in collaboration with Gambian artists launched a song dedicated to the crusade against Ebola. “The Ebola Song” features musicians Tra, Badibunka, Cess Ngum, Killa ACE, & Sandeng, and Amadou Sussocebook. Listen to it below:
The Ministry of Health and Social Welfare in Banjul has already established a 24-hour information hotline from any network within the country. #EbolaFreeGambia campaign is different from the efforts by the Ministry of Health to sensitize Gambians.
The news of first Ebola case in Senegal prompted Gambian Facebook user Arfang Jobe to suggest that mobile phone companies partner with the Ministry of Health to send text messages to raise awareness about the disease.
Commenting on the suggestion, Hassan Njie cautioned:
The last thing we want is to send fear into the minds of Gambians. The messages must be tailor made for easy understanding. People interpret and react to information differently. Let us be on our guard!
Kb Bojang advised:
I think it will be great too, if they can send voice mails in the different languages we have, to their respective customers with regards to Ebola preventive measures, because I doubt everyone will be able to read the text messages
Mobile phone companies have started sending Ebola related messages to subscribers. However, It is not clear whether this initiative is the direct result of the Ebola free campaign on social media.
In August, researchers at Oxford University announced that they will begin a trial of a potential vaccine on healthy UK volunteers once ethical approval is granted, which will eventually extend to the Gambia and Mali. This announcement has since been received with mixed feelings in the Gambia with some being skeptical.
Commenting on the announcement, Mass Bajinka wrote on Facebook:
Why not Liberia, Nigeria and the countries that's already have the virus….why Gambia????? We don't have single virus their so why Gambia ? I hope the government say nope.
Eddie Baldeh advised:
The government should say no to this…why The Gambia? a Country that an Ebola has never been reported or diagnose…Do your trials somewhere n leave Gambia alone…in Peace!!
But some are more optimistic and would like the trial to go ahead in the Gambia:
One reason why everyone is worried about this outbreak is because there is no cure. And now that a prospective vaccine is about to go through trials, here we go again with our conspiracy theories. Every single drug in the market has a side effect and before they are progressed to clinical trial phase they have to pass safety tests in animals first and the vaccine is deactivated before administering, so it cannot cause disease. And why Gambia? because vaccines have to be tested on healthy individuals to assess their effectiveness and MRC has years of experience in conducting such studies. Let's just stop the pessimism people and just be thankful that there is active research being geared towards fighting the deadly disease.
Whatever the case may be, the fact is that many people in the country are worried about the deadly virus entering the country.
Follow our in-depth coverage: The Struggle to #StopEbola in West Africa

author: Demba Kandeh


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Right to Be Forgotten: A Win for Argentina’s Lawsuit-Happy Celebrities? · Global Voices
Guest Contributor

Argentine model Belen Rodriguez, who sued Google Argentina in landmark defamation case. Photo by Manuela Capitanucci via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Since the EU Court of Justice ruled to uphold and codify the Right to Be Forgotten last May, Google has received over 91,000 requests for removals, roughly half of which were granted. Free expression activists fear that the decision will open the door for corporate and government powers to remove unsavory information about themselves from search results. And the fact that it will be incumbent on tech companies like Google and Yahoo to make these decisions is no small matter — taking this decision out of the hands of the judiciary is a serious blunder in the field of online rights.
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 third installment in the series, Ramiro Alvarez Ugarte, formerly a senior attorney at the Association for Civil Rights (Asociación por los Derechos Civiles) in Buenos Aires, Argentina and now a PhD student at Columbia University describes how the decision might impact the strong trend towards defamation lawsuits among Argentine celebrities and public figures.
Yes, I am. The case itself seems, to me, to be rather broad and open-ended in the following sense: It does not clarify when the RTBF will apply and when not, so instead of solving an issue it opens up the door for further litigation in which lower courts will do the work of shaping the RTBF, something the EU court has not done.
The European Court has not provided clear definitions of when the RTBF will apply and when a public interest analysis will prevail. Hence, lower courts who wish to follow the case-law of the European Court will face the tough questions that hasn’t been answered yet.
The most important question for me is, when does public interest trump the RTBF? It is not an easy question to answer. Should a public official who has been punished for some wrongdoing be able to have that information removed from the Internet because he has already paid the penalty or served the time? Should it matter whether that public official is now a private person, still holds public office or is running for office? Could a person who is running for public office eliminate from the web things like past traffic tickets? These are the kinds of pivotal questions that will be answered by lower courts.
There has not been, so far, a RTBF case in Argentina. However, there is a lot of litigation on intermediary liability, basically legal claims presented by celebrities against Google and Yahoo complaining about the results they get when they Google themselves. They accuse the search engines of defamation and the use of their image without their permission by third-party websites with sexual content.
In the context of those claims, the EU decision was received as a victory by celebrities’ lawyers. We were quite concerned about it as the decision came out just a few days before the Supreme Court held a public hearing on a landmark case on the issue in Argentina.
In Rodríguez  v. Google Argentina, professional model Belen Rodriguez has claimed that these search engines are violating her right to her own image and that they are engaging in defamation, as her name is linked to web pages with sexual content. This case is just one in many: Lower courts in Argentina have received many similar claims, usually advanced by celebrities represented by the same lawyers. And they have been somewhat successful, getting damages and injunctions against the search engines if they don’t exclude their names from search results. The problem with these claims is that it punishes the search engine over content produced by a separate party. We at ADC believe that intermediaries should not be in charge of any kind of censorship nor should they be liable for content they did not produce.
Sadly, the partial success obtained in Argentinean courts by celebrities so far has resulted in these intermediaries being asked to engage in private censorship. They do so through liability: If for-profit companies like Google are going to be liable for content produced by third parties, then they have a huge incentive to engage in censorship. If they are public companies, it could even be argued that they are obliged to take necessary measures to prevent avoidable financial loss. A court should not impose this kind of burden on intermediaries. The Supreme Court of Argentina has a chance to make things right in the Rodríguez case and we are confident it will do so, following the long-standing, protective freedom of expression case-law in Argentina, which should grant some kind of immunity to intermediaries. But the EU case is certainly an argument for the other side.
I believe the RTBF is troublesome from the point of view of public debate. Who is going to decide what has to stay and what needs to go? That’s the basic question that is going to be —I think— shaped by lots of litigation everywhere, where old freedom of expression principles will come into play, specially on the issue of public interest, public officials, and so on. The not-so-clear cases will be tougher though and I’m sure many legal battles are to come in the future.
The decision does not provide clear categorical definitions on when the RTBF does and does not apply. So public officials may or may be not capable of making claims under the RTBF. I can think of cases where such claims could be successful, e.g., if a low-ranking public official wants to remove embarrassing information that has nothing to do with his office versus cases where those claims would not be successful. Or if a candidate running for election wanted to eliminate information on past wrong-doings. However, these cases themselves are not that clear and their resolution depends on the way local freedom of expression criteria plays out when applied to this new right. It’s kind of unpredictable — the actual outcomes remain to be seen.
It is difficult, but not impossible. I think the guiding principle should be freedom of expression case-law. In the US the actual malice test involves public officials or private individuals who have voluntarily joined public debate. This is a proxy for dealing with public interest cases without getting into the thicket of producing a definition of what public interest is.
The actual malice doctrine is a test applied by the US Supreme Court on freedom of speech cases which involve public officials or private individuals who have willingly entered public debate. It basically says that a journalist or a media outlet should not be liable for false information unless they published knowing that the information was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not. It comes from New York Times v. Sullivan in 1964 and has been, since then, shaped by other decisions.
This public official requirement is, however, a proxy for covering public interest cases. But because public interest is not a concept which is easy to define, US courts have traditionally used the category of public official to define public interest cases: Whether a public official is involved in the news-story or not is a much easier question to answer than whether the news itself is of public interest. Latin American courts have not followed this approach and have taken the actual malice test in its raw form: It applies to public interest cases, and the definition of what is and what is not of public interest is decided on a case-by-case basis.
The RTBF cases must be decided on a public interest test as well: If the information is in the public interest, it should remain public. If it is not, the RTBF may apply. However, the actual malice test only applies to information that is false, when the RTBF applies only to information that is true. What I am thinking is that one possible way of dealing with this is to extend the actual malice doctrine and criteria to cases where the information is true, not for liability but for the elimination of said information from relevant records. This step can be taken, but it would restrict the deliberative sphere freedom of expression wants to protect. But I believe this is an unavoidable consequence of the RTBF as crafted by the European court so far.
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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After US Ambassador to Ukraine’s Twitter Gaffe, RT Says ‘World Won’t Be Duped Again’ · Global Voices
Kevin Rothrock

US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt tweeted some images that weren't what he said they were. At least he didn't tweet this. (Images edited by Kevin Rothrock.)
The shooting war in Eastern Ukraine has an ugly sibling that people outside Ukraine know far better: the news war. In Donetsk and Luhansk, men with guns exchange bullets and bombs. Online and in the media around the world, reporters, officials, and ordinary Internet users exchange tweets and blog posts. One is localized; the other is global. One is—well, you get the point.
Earlier this week, the United States Army started joint military exercises with 14 other nations in Yavoriv, Ukraine. “Rapid Trident” is meant to support “interoperability among Ukraine, US, NATO, and Partnership for Peace member nations.” About 1,300 soldiers are involved in what the Army says are “battalion-level field training exercises.”
America’s ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, has tweeted several times about the start of Rapid Trident. Inexplicably, the ambassador seems to have tweeted at least two photographs that are not actually from Rapid Trident, though his tweets say they are. One of the images is more than a month old, and the second photograph is almost a year old.
US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt. Twitter avatar.
In Russia, Pyatt’s misleading tweets made news headlines quickly. The English-language service of the pro-Kremlin news agency RT (formerly “Russia Today”) reported Pyatt’s mistake within hours, saying Pyatt was left “red-faced after posting unverified shots on Twitter.” RT didn’t take credit for the discovery, however. Instead, it credited “some bloggers” with revealing that Pyatt’s “version of events” were “fabricated and manipulated [sic].”
But the story about the terrible tweets hasn’t been much to shout about on the RuNet. Two days after RT’s report, Echo of Moscow did host a blog post by a member of Russia’s Civic Chamber (a consultative body of the federal government), but overall bloggers do not appear to have paid Pyatt’s tweets much attention.
In a Russian-language summary of the scandal, RT didn't give any further specifics about the netizens responsible for catching Pyatt’s slip-up, but it did cite freelance journalist and occasional RT-collaborator Graham Phillips, who wrote the US ambassador a nasty note on Twitter:
Нет, Посол США @GeoffPyatt – это не сегодня – это старые фотографии – и вы просто врун. https://t.co/CWNZNUR2EW – http://t.co/dEchWFFGf8
— Graham Phillips (@GrahamWP_UK) September 15, 2014
No, Ambassador of the USA, this isn’t today, these are old photographs, and you’re just a liar.
RT correspondent Marina Portnaya seemed to find Pyatt’s mistake especially obscene, telling viewers:
Now the US administration has been relying on Twitter in part to shift public opinion surrounding the crisis in Ukraine, but [sic] it’s clear that Washington does want to present its version of what’s happening there, but obviously the PR campaign falls apart when the world discovers that fake [sic] and outdated pictures are being presented as fact.
When Portnaya finished her speech, RT’s anchor responded, “Yeah, Marina, the world will not be duped anymore.” Indeed, America’s diabolical plan to dupe the world has been foiled.
The Rapid Trident military exercises are real, however, and—after three days—they’re not even over. In fact, there is still more than a week left of marching, shooting, and driving around. Ambassador Pyatt’s tweets are a stupid mistake, undoubtedly. One assumes the embassy’s staff running his Twitter account simply searched the Internet for images labeled “USAREUR” and “Ukraine,” posting whatever looked impressive enough. (Neither Ambassador Pyatt nor the US State Department responded to RuNet Echo’s requests for comment.) Perhaps more embarrassingly, the clearly inaccurate tweets are still published on Twitter! (No one in Pyatt’s office has deleted them!)
That said, bureaucrats—maybe by definition—make mistakes. And it’s not as though US propaganda on Ukraine was perfect up until this gaffe. America’s social media outreach on the Ukraine crisis has always been flawed, if only because Uncle Sam is up against an adversary that frequently camouflages its online propaganda as “grassroots” activism.

author: Kevin Rothrock


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To Go or Not to Go? Scotland Votes on Independence from UK · Global Voices
Anna Chworow

A household in Gateside, Fife. Photo by Anna Chworow.
It is Thursday, 18th September, and Scotland is facing its biggest democratic vote in the country’s history – the independence referendum. If the majority of the electorate responds ‘yes’ to the question ‘Should Scotland be an independent country?’, the nation, which is currently a part of the union of the United Kingdom, will become a sovereign state.
The debate started in 2011 with the launch of pro-independence Yes Scotland and pro-union Better Together campaigns. The polls, which a year ago showed merely 32 percent in favour of independence, with 49 percent of those being pro-union and 19 percent undecided, for the first time put the ‘Yes’ Campaign in the lead on 12th September 2014, with 49 percent favouring independence, 42 percent against, and only 9 percent undecided.
It has been a heated campaign, often portrayed as a grassroots effort of the ‘Yes’ camp versus a unionist stance favoured by the leading UK political parties. However, with promises of a fairer, more equal society, a written constitution (the UK doesn't have one), nuclear disarmament, and a pro-immigration stance, the ‘Yes’ Campaign has had strong support from the Scottish Green Party, the Socialist Party, and spearheaded by the Scottish National Party, which currently holds the majority in Scottish Parliament.
The independence debate covered a spectacularly wide range of issues. A passionate appeal in Edinburgh. Photo by Anna Chworow.
Yes campaigners coined a phrase: ‘Houses are voting yes, fields are voting no’, pointing to the promises of land tax and reform in independent Scotland which would primarily affect the big landowners. ‘No thanks’ sign in a field in Auchtermuchty, Fife. Photo by Anna Chworow.
Young people became fully engaged in the debate. A window posted in Edinbrugh. Photo by Anna Chworow.
In the meantime, pro-independence activists have managed to capture the hearts and imaginations on many voters in Scotland in a way that the unionist camp has not. Drawing inspiration from what are considered to be the fairer and more prosperous Nordic countries with high levels of democratic participation, many in Scotland became involved in the campaign at the grassroots level.
The Better Together campaign, renamed by its critics as the ‘Bitter Together’, emphasized economic uncertainties, potential increases in fuel and food prices, questions over currency, as well as Scotland's potential membership in the EU as an independent state. Many major banks and companies threatened that, should Scotland become independent, they would consider relocating their headquarters to England, and warned of the possible economic implications of such moves.
Green Yes supporter in Edinburgh. Photo by Anna Chworow.
Yes Campaign banner on approach to Strathmiglo, Fife. Photo by Anna Chworow
Arguments presented by both sides are difficult to take into consideration in just one breath. There are, however, two major achievements of the campaigns that are worth highlighting. First, the debate over a potential break-up of a 300-year-old union, a vote of historic significance, took place without a single act of violence. The worst reported incidents were the egging of a pro-union politician Jim Murphy by the ‘Yes’ camp protesters and the spray-painting of the ‘Yes’ campaign headquarters in Edinburgh with ‘No thanks’ and Nazi symbols. Many households, families and workplaces have been polarised by their views on independence, but united by their engagement in the debate and an obvious desire for the best outcome for Scotland.
What should also be highlighted is the unprecedented level of public engagement resulting from the debate. Twitter and Facebook have been flooded with heated discussions, with the #indyref hashtag mentioned over 2.6 million times in just the past 30 days. There have also been a record number of people registering to vote, with estimates suggesting as much as 97 percent of those eligible to vote have registered. There have been countless marches, blogs, canvassing events, cultural events, speeches, discussion circles and more. These images collected on Twitter provide a glimpse of the exciting times Scotland has experienced over the past two and a half years.
Lampost in North Queensferry. pic.twitter.com/79RGJo5Hpl
— David Greig (@DavieGreig) September 16, 2014
.@scotgp campaign for a Yes vote on Leith Walk in Edinburgh #indyref pic.twitter.com/n8Tq7Pt2TH
— Fiona Winchester (@FiWinchester) September 16, 2014
Loving this Portobello resident who has taken the time to share with his neighbours why he's #nothanks pic.twitter.com/ooHe25ZVHA
— Kezia Dugdale (@kdugdalemsp) September 16, 2014
Wonderful sunny Glasgow Great day for #LabourNo to be here.The UK needs Scotland.Lets stay together #bettertogether pic.twitter.com/4P46vlzAc5
— Kate Hoey MP (@hoeykateMP) September 11, 2014
This started with one guy tweeting, let's have a rally on Tuesday. Ordinary folk after work. It's huge! pic.twitter.com/0ay2SbCic4
— Dawn (@Dawnf1) September 16, 2014
Will the people of Scotland vote to stay or to go? The results of the referendum are to be announced by 7am tomorrow morning.

author: Anna Chworow


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Trinidadian Diaspora Blogger Appeals to Domestic Violence Victims After Seeing Rice Viral Video  · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Once the video of Ray Rice (the American football player for the Baltimore Ravens) hitting his wife went viral, Trinidadian diaspora blogger Afrobella couldn't get the incident out of her mind. “The video where he spits and hits the woman who would go on to be his wife, where he knocks her unconscious and drags her out of the elevator,” she says, “It’s enough to give you nightmares.”
She was also not impressed by the public's response, citing distasteful hashtags on Twitter that made light of a distressing situation and a general bent towards blaming the victim. The blogger, Patrice Grell-Yursik, expressed her concern for the plight of Janay, Rice's wife, and their daughter – but in her effort to understand her situation, she realised that Rice is one of many women stuck in the cycle of domestic abuse:
The more I […] considered this story […], the more I kept thinking about my best friend from childhood. Her name is Carys Jenkins, and she works as the manager of the independent domestic violence advisory service (IDVA) at RISE. She’s been working closely with women dealing with domestic violence for years and years. When I mentioned how sick seeing the Ray Rice video made me, she simply responded, ‘I see lots of videos.’
Jenkins shared with her the “cycle of abuse” and the psychological tactics women use to survive. The post also offered practical advice to women who may be contemplating leaving an abusive union, with the blogger noting that “one of the few good things to come out of this story is the sharing and honesty by people who have experienced domestic violence themselves […] For anyone who’s stuck in an abusive relationship, please know there’s a way out. Please know that a healthy, loving relationship isn’t one that diminishes you as a person or threatens your health and happiness. You can break the cycle of abuse.”


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Using Mobile Phones to Connect Pregnant Women and Midwives in Timor Leste · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Liga Inan is using mobile phones to connect pregnant women and health workers in Timor Leste. The innovative program provides mothers with vital information and health advice to ensure the safe delivery of babies. Since its launch, almost 2,000 mothers have been already enrolled in the program.

author: Mong Palatino


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Why Is It Such a Controversy to Start the School Day at 9am in South Korea? · Global Voices
Lee Yoo Eun

Young Korean children studying at a “hagwon.” Image by Flickr user knittymarie. CC BY-SA 2.0.
South Korea is notorious for its highly competitive and grueling education system, which forces young children to study from early in the morning until late at night. The official school day runs from just 8am until 4pm, but students typically leave campus for “hagwons,” private tutoring institutes, where they continue studying until late at night (and sometimes even into the morning hours).
In mid-August, South Korea's Gyeonggi Province decided to delay the start of the school day by one hour, hoping to allow children more sleep. This new “9am late-start system” has provoked a nationwide debate, and several other provinces are now considering similar policies.
The response online has been divided. Some Koreans say the “reform” merely restores school hours that used to be in place. Others have expressed concerns that over-zealous parents will still find ways to abuse the news system, presumably by finding new tutoring in the early morning hours.
9시 등교 논란은 고속도로에서 100km/h 지키자는 사람한테 과속하던 운전자들이 미쳤냐고 따지는 꼴
— 알이z웰! 스카이콩콩 (@FugioErgoSum) August 26, 2014
Those people who call the 9am late-start system a controversy — it's like watching drivers who go over 100km per hour on the highway criticize the sane ones who drive under the 100km/h limit, calling THEM crazy.
Both posts below have attracted more than 1,300 retweets.
개소름인게 9시 등교한다니까 그럼 애들 학습 능률 떨어진다고 7시 전에 깨워서 한시간 두시간동안 구몬 학습지 같은거 풀게할거라고 아줌마들이 웃으며 밖에서 이야기하고 있음 미친 것 같다…
— 십만온 가고싶다 공삼 (@roree03_u) August 16, 2014
What gives me goosebumps are these soccer moms chatting about the 9am late-start system. I overheard them talking, all giggling, that the late-start might undermine effective studying. Now they will wake them up before 7am and put them to work on their prep books or something. They are insane.
의외로 9시등교를 안달가워하는 애들이 많더라구요.. 늦게 시작해서 늦게 끝나면 안그래도 모자라는 개인시간이 더 부족해지니까. 주5일제 시행할때는 수업시수를 맞추느라 방학을 줄였고, 정말 필요한건 과한 수업시수를 줄이는 거라고 생각하는데ㅋㅋㅋ
— 브라운하엘 (@HAPPY_LOVEGAZER) August 20, 2014
Actually there are many kids who oppose the 9am system, as it would likely push regular school hours later, cutting into students’ already limited free time. When schools switched from a 6-day school week to a 5-day week, for instance, vacation times shrunk, because the number of mandatory total school days remained high. The total number of mandatory school days is what needs to be reduced.
The controversy about the later start time isn't entirely about students’ wellbeing, of course. Many of the worries have more to do with parents’ work schedules than children's studying. Indeed, according to one survey, over 73 percent of students like the new change, while only 56 percent parents are in favor.
9시 등교를 하게 되면 맞벌이 부부가 곤란하다는 건 알겠는데 뉴스 인터뷰에서 ‘맞벌이라 반대'라고 말하는 엄마를 보자 난감한 느낌. 일찍 등교해야 하는 아이를 위해 보완책을 세워 달라든가 요구를 해야지 자신의 사정 때문에 ‘반대'라니 이상하지 않나
— 살 빼야 날으는 원더우먼 (@artemizhb) August 18, 2014
I fully understand that double-income parents have a hard time adjusting to the 9am system. But I was left a bit perplexed, watching a mother on the morning news tell reporters that she opposes the new system “because she works.” She could have demanded that schools find something else for kids to do before the school day, but opposing it just because it's inconvenient is ridiculous.

author: Lee Yoo Eun


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Why the Construction of an American Military Base in Henoko Is Being Described as Japan’s Ferguson · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

A man marching in Tokyo to protest US Osprey aircraft deployment. Sign reads, “Close all US bases on Okinawa.” (January 27, 2013). Photo by KAZUMAC. Copyright Demotix.
One of Japan’s biggest but underreported stories – both in Japan and abroad – is the decision to relocate the US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma from the central part of Okinawa Island to Henoko, about 50 kilometers to the north.
The decision to relocate Futenma to Henoko has generated large-scale protests both on land and on the sea over the summer. Some commentators are calling the events at Henoko Japan’s Ferguson, referring to the fatal shooting of an unarmed teenager in Ferguson, Missouri by police in August, which provoked protests and riots.
As video hosted on the local Ryuku Shimpo shows, as of mid-September 2014, protesters who venture near the construction are being swiftly apprehended and detained by a large force of Coast Guard personnel for violating a court order (令状主義違反) to stay away from the area.
Meanwhile on land, protests against the Henoko base are drawing crowds of 10,000 people.
Okinawa is both the southernmost of Japan’s 47 prefectures and the country’s poorest prefecture in Japan.
Despite its small size (Okinawa covers just 0.6 percent of Japan's land area) Okinawa hosts at least 28 American military installations and three quarters of American service personnel stationed in Japan. About 20 percent of Okinawa is devoted to military installations, a legacy of Okiniwa’s postwar status as an American “trustee” territory that was only returned to Japan in 1972.
Many of the 28 military American installations are located within densely populated neighbourhoods – Marine Air Corps Futenma is located in the heart of Ginowan City.
For many years there have been attempts to relocate American forces. Then, at the end of 2013 Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Governor of Okinawa Hirokazu Nakaima signed an agreement to build a new US marine base at Henoko, a relatively pristine site about an hour by car from Ginowan.
Despite talk of relocating the Marines to Guam, and pre-election promises by local politicians to resist building at Henoko, US forces will not be leaving Okinawa any time soon. Okinawa residents feel betrayed.
The new American military base at Henoko in Okinawa will be construction on a coral reef and seagrass beds which is inhabited by the dugong, an endangered marine mammal protected under Japanese and US law.
Keiko Tsuyama, a New York-based Japanese journalist interviewed by GV recently, says, “If this sort of project were planned for the East Coast or the West Coast of the United States, it would never be tolerated by Americans. Why Henoko?”
Local resentment over the decision to build a base at Henoko quickly grew following the agreement in late 2014. Over the summer, the road in front of construction site at Henoko had become a large protest camp.
Some protesters have been camped out here since 1996, when plans were first made to locate the base at Henoko:
Over this past summer, some protestors took to the ocean in kayaks and canoes, in an attempt to protest a seabed study in Oura Bay, off Henoko, prior to construction taking place.
While there has been television coverage of the protests, the footage generally captures a low-intensity cat-and-mouse game occurring between authorities and protesters.
For example, a local news report from September 3, 2014, showed security forces chasing off a protester who has draped a net over a platform used to drill boreholes for a seismic study. (Update: Since the publication of this story, this video has been deleted.)
Local newspaper Ryuku Shimpo has uploaded some YouTube footage of Japan Coast Guard officers enforcing the court order:
The Twitter hashtag #henoko also provides regular updates about the Henoko protests.
Throughout the summer and now into September, many Twitter users are capturing a government response of surprising intensity:
辺野古新基地：海保、カヌー十数隻押収 http://t.co/3Xe0mk3Em1 県知事選挙で必ず勝利し、圧政をひっくり返そう pic.twitter.com/InobVcgZMQ
— The daily olive news (@olivenews) September 15, 2014
Dozens of canoes have been confiscated, (according to the Okinawa Times). In the next prefectural gubernatorial election we must prevail and overturn this despotic regime.
Henoko.net is a frequently-updated blog that provides detailed coverage of protests, and responses to the protests by the Coast Guard. The most recent update is for September 14:
辺野古の海は今、海上保安庁による恐怖と暴力によって占領されています。
まずは、この動画をご覧下さい。この動画は辺野古の新基地建設・移設反対の抗議船に乗船した…ある名護市民の方から提供された未公開映像で、このブログ「辺野古戦記」ではじめて一般公開されるものです。
The Coast Guard is using aggressive tactics and intimidation to asset control over the sea off Henoko. To get a sense of the tactics, watch the video below. We have received video taken by local residents of Nago of officers boarding protest vessels off the planned base site – this is the first time these images have been posted online for the public to see.
It's unlikely aggressive tactics will be enough to deter an Okinawan population that first survived the Battle of Okinawa at the end of the war, then 30 years of American occupation, and now years of pressuring government to reduce the number of American bases in the prefecture.
One Twitter user sums up the spirit of the protesters:
RT @GeorgeBowWow あきらめない 辺野古新基地建設予定地フェンス pic.twitter.com/i2v5n371rI
— 平和への道＠彡トシピコ彡 (@toshipiko1) September 15, 2014
“We Will Never Give Up” – posted on the fence of the planned Henoko base.

author: Nevin Thompson


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Bahraini Human Rights Activist Maryam Al Khawaja Is Released From Prison While She Awaits Trial · Global Voices
Amira Al Hussaini

Maryam Al Khawaja with her lawyer Mohammed Al Jishi after her release from prison in Bahrain last night. Source: @Mohamed_AlJishi
Following international pressure, Bahrain released human rights activist Maryam Al Khawaja last night. The co-director of the Gulf Center For Human Rights was denied entry to her country and arrested at the airport on August 30, 2014.
According to the organisation, the Bahraini activist, who also holds Danish nationality, was planning to visit her father, prominent human rights activist Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, who is in prison and on his 27th day of a hunger strike. Her father was jailed during the harsh government crackdown that followed pro-democracy protests, which swept Bahrain starting on February 14, 2011. He is sentenced to life imprisonment. This is his second hunger strike. His first lasted for 110 days and ended after he was force-fed by authorities.
Maryam Al Khawaja was arrested at the airport and accused of attacking a policeman. Activists accuse the authorities of framing them for alleged crimes, to intimidate and silence them. Despite her release, the authorities will continue to press charges and Maryam, who has been slapped a travel ban, is expected to appear in court on October 1.
She explains her situation to her 101K followers:
Despite the release, I am banned from traveling and the charges have not been dropped. First hearing will b on October 1st #Bahrain
— Maryam Alkhawaja (@MARYAMALKHAWAJA) September 18, 2014
Immediately after her release, Al Khawaja took to Twitter to thank those who worked for her release, promising to continue her work in defending human rights:
Before leaving prison, I informed them that I will continue my human rights work. #Bahrain
— Maryam Alkhawaja (@MARYAMALKHAWAJA) September 18, 2014
Like Maryam and her father, thousands of people have been arrested since anti-regime protests started in Bahrain on February 14, 2011. Al Khawaja drew attention to their plight:
If the international community cud secure my release tht gives me hope that we can do the same 4 d thousands of political prisoners #Bahrain
— Maryam Alkhawaja (@MARYAMALKHAWAJA) September 18, 2014
She also reminded her followers of the thousands of other activists across the Arab world jailed for taking a position against oppression in their countries since the start of the so-called Arab Spring:
Happy to hear @Alaa was released, waiting for news on Yara Sallam, Sanaa Seif, Mahienour and Razan Zeitounah #Egypt #Syria
— Maryam Alkhawaja (@MARYAMALKHAWAJA) September 18, 2014
Egyptian activist and blogger Alaa Abd El Fattah was just released from prison on bail; activists Yara Sallam, Abd El Fattah's sister Sanaa Seif, Mahienour Al Masry are all detained in Egypt; and human rights defender Razan Zeitounah is jailed in Syria.
Activists around the world shared news of Al Khawaja's release.
Jonathan Moremi tweeted what seemed to be a message to the Bahrain government:
Bottom line of #Bahrain arresting, harrassing, threatening and releasing @MARYAMALKHAWAJA is they make an utter fool of themselves. Shameful
— Jonathan Moremi (@jonamorem) September 18, 2014
Moroccan Samia Errazzouki was happy:
The sound of hearing the voice of friends who’ve been unjustly silenced in prison <3 So glad you’re out @MARYAMALKHAWAJA
— Samia Errazzouki (@charquaouia) September 18, 2014
And CNN's Mohammed Jamjoom was apprehensive of what awaits Al Khawaja:
Great news that brave activist @MARYAMALKHAWAJA is out of jail, but terrible she's banned from travel & facing trial #FreeMaryam #Bahrain
— Mohammed Jamjoom (@MIJamjoom) September 18, 2014

author: Amira Al Hussaini


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Bollywood Actress Deepika Padukone: ‘Yes! I Am a Woman. I Have Breasts and a Cleavage! You Got a Problem?!’ · Global Voices
Subhashish Panigrahi

Indian Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone in Mumbai. Image by Ravindra Hande. Copyright Demotix (5/11/2014)
A popular news portal's tasteless remark about Indian film actress Deepika Padukone‘s cleavage in the upcoming satirical movie ‘Finding Fanny‘ has received a lashing from irate Twitter users, including from the actress herself.
Leading news media Times of India‘s entertainment page TOI Entertainment posted a screenshot from the film cropped around Padukone's cleavage linking to a photo gallery post and the comment “Deepika's cleavage show” on Twitter on September 14. Padukone angrily responded the same day in a tweet:
YES!I am a Woman.I have breasts AND a cleavage! You got a problem!!??
— Deepika Padukone (@deepikapadukone) September 14, 2014
After Padukone shared her first tweet, it grabbed many eyes, and people started strongly criticizing the portal's comment. TOIEntertainment responded to Padukone saying that their comment was a compliment and they wanted others to know how great she looked. This, in turn, provoked more criticism and even abuse to be directed at them.
TOI eventually deleted both the tweets and the photo gallery after Padukone accused them of disrespecting women:
Dont talk about Woman's Empowerment when YOU don't know how to RESPECT Women!
— Deepika Padukone (@deepikapadukone) September 14, 2014
Born to famous Indian badminton player Prakash Padukone, Padukone has acted in 26 movies since her debut in 2006 and has a large online following — she has 21+ million fans on her Facebook page and 7+ million followers on Twitter. About 26,500 people tweeted about TOI's remark with the hashtag #IStandWithDeepikaPadukone.
Fans and fellow Bollywood figures took to their Twitter accounts to support Padukone. A popular parody account of Indian cricketer Ravindra Jadeja wondered why TOI scrubbed the tweet if they indeed believed their own defense:
Dear TOI, If it really was a Compliment, then why you deleted that tweet? #IStandWithDeepika #FindingFanny pic.twitter.com/7GIM5YsKOp — Sir Ravindra Jadeja (@SirJadeja) September 14, 2014
Indian film actress Nimrat Kaur tweeted:
Dear @TOIEntertain…with this ‘compliment’ , I shudder to think who this ‘everyone’ is you're reaching out to ? pic.twitter.com/FHN9f3FL8m — Nimrat Kaur (@NimratOfficial) September 14, 2014
Film director Gauri Shinde condemned TOI's tweet:
What the hell is going on!!Shameful! Shocking!curse to be a woman in this country #IStandWithDeepikaPadukone @deepikapadukone — Gauri Shinde (@gauris) September 15, 2014
Indian model and actor Pulkit Samrat, who has 122,000 followers on Twitter, questioned the journalistic purpose behind TOI's tweet:
Journalism or Voyeurism?! “@deepikapadukone: Supposedly India's ‘LEADING’ newspaper and this is ‘NEWS'!!?? pic.twitter.com/uJ4RzM2A3p” — Pulkit Samrat (@PulkitSamrat) September 14, 2014
News-oriented Facebook page ‘The Logical Indian’, which as more than 1.4 million likes, poked holes in TOI's response that their remark was a compliment:
Dear TOI Make sure you equally “COMPLIMENT” your Mom, Sis & Daughter too each time their cleavages show up! Regards, TLI #IStandWithDeepika — The Logical Indian (@dlogicalindian) September 15, 2014
Collage of Facebook posts by supporting Deepika Padukone's bold response to TOI. Courtesy: The Logical Indian
TOI has still not published any public apology to date, which has strongly been debated on the social media and blogs.
Indian Homemaker, who blogs at ‘The Life and Times of an Indian Homemaker‘, analysed reactions to the controversy that were less than supportive of the actress. She argued that Padukone's response was positive:
It should start a much needed dialogue and hopefully influence in some small way, the way women’s bodies are viewed. As of now, everybody in India seems to know who owns women’s bodies – including the bodies of women in public spaces.
The blogger also commented on a statement that rape and crime against women are increasing in India and the actresses play a important part in that:
Rapes and crime against women are not increasing. The silence of survivors is ‘decreasing’. The confidence to report rape is increasing.The fear of being shamed, blamed and named is decreasing.
India has faced intense international scrutiny over the country's attitudes towards women following the horrific gang rape of a 23-year-old woman in Delhi in 2012. The woman later died of her injuries. Padukone's stance can inspire a lot of women in India to protest against discrimination and abuse.

author: Subhashish Panigrahi


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China: ‘The More You Exploit Us, the Happier We Get’ · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Kevin Slaten from China Labour Watch wrote on China File on the situation of labour exploitation in China — the fact that industrial safety and workers’ lives were taken for granted for economic growth, which is reflected in a notorious local Kunshan government's appeal to foreign investors: “The Kunshan people welcome your investment. The more you exploit us, the happier we get.”


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Digital Library of Traditional Philippine Healing Practices · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Initiated by several government agencies, the Philippine Traditional Knowledge Digital Library on Health (TKDL-Health) seeks to document and digitize indigenous health practices in the country.
The communities, characteristically living in the mountains or their fringes, have depended mostly on plants and other natural products from the forest to prevent or treat sickness. But environmental degradation and the onslaught of lowland mainstream cultures now threaten their healing traditions.