Berkman Center for Internet & Society

While cleaning out my phones SD card I found these two photos.

Jeff Goldenson’s copy of A Pattern Language:

From just a few days ago, here’s Karen Coyle’s explanation of how FRBR “works.” (It made sense while she was explaining it.)

Several groups, scholars, and activists in Thailand are demanding the amendment of Article 112 of the country’s Criminal Code or the lese majeste law, which forbids anyone from insulting the King and members of the Royal Family. Many people are alarmed that lese majeste cases have increased in the past few years; from 33 cases in 2005 it went up to 478 reported cases in 2010.

Thailand’s lese majeste is described by many commentators as the worlds’s ‘harshest’ since the law’s minimum mandatory sentence is already three years long while the maximum sentence is 15 years for a single count. Enacted into law in 1908, Thailand’s lese majeste has been amended several times. The 1976 amendment was the most recent with increased penalty of up to 15 years jail.

Amend Article 112. Photo from Asian Correspondent

The Campaign Committee to Amend Article 112 of the Criminal Code or CCAA 112 is a broad network which is spearheading the initiative to reform the law. Meanwhile, Nitirat (Enlightened Jurists) is a group of seven Thammasat University law lecturers who drafted a set of proposed amendments to the Constitution, including amendments to the controversial lèse majesté.

Nitirat explains the need to reform Article 112:

The existing law concerning defamation of, insults to and threats to the King, the Queen, the Heir-apparent, and the Regent is inappropriate both in the structure of its sections, the range of penalties, and its enforcement. In addition, the section provides no exemption for criticism, the expression of opinion or the expression of statements that are made in good faith and in order to uphold the Constitution and democratic system of government. It is at present clear that the law opens a channel for individuals to use it for political purposes or to use it in bad faith in a manner inconsistent with the intent of the law.

A summary of Nitirat’s proposed Constitutional amendments:

Academics from many countries have signed a letter addressed to Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra supporting the proposal to amend Article 112:

Article 112 has become a powerful tool to silence political dissent, and in particular, any dissent interpreted as disloyalty to the institution of the monarchy. There is no political space in present-day Thailand to publicly discuss the role and future of the monarchy under democracy, which is a crucial subject for the country at the moment.

When citizens cannot be certain if, or when, a knock at the door is going to come for a message they have written, an article they have posted online or another action deemed to be disloyal, action and thought are constricted. As long as this occurs, the full exercise of human rights cannot occur in Thailand.

Nitarat’s activities were affected when Thammasat University officials banned the use of the campus for activities related to lèse majesté. Human rights organizations and free speech advocates appealed this decision:

We demand that the administration of the university review its order to prevent the Nitirat Group’s activities from taking place in the university’s premises as long as the activities are carried out peacefully and in compliance with human rights principle.

Kaewmala is worried that those who support Nitarat are demonized by people who called themselves ‘Thais with Patriotic Heart‘:

Why did these “Thais with Patriotic Heart” burn Worachet’s effigy? How much do they know about Nitirat and their proposals? We don’t know for sure. Perhaps even they themselves don’t know for sure.

One placard in the picture reads: “Execution ONLY for whoever insults the monarchy!”

The campaign to amend the lese majeste has reached the provinces. The Isaan Record attended a forum in Khon Kaen:

Sunday’s motley crew of attendees cut across social, if not political boundaries. There were out-and-proud Red Shirts (“I came because I’m a Red Shirt… everyone should be able to critique [the king] just like they can critique a movie star.”), adamantly color-less university technicians (“The movement to correct the constitution is different from the Red Shirt movement.”), closeted Marxists, Yingluck apologists (“In truth Yingluck wants to change the law, but there are many factions in Thailand and she doesn’t want to fight with all these groups.”)

Politicians belonging to the administration and opposition parties are not in favor of amending the particular law. Perhaps they don’t want to be perceived of being impolite to the King, who remains the most popular and influential political icon in the country.

Written by Mong Palatino · comments (0)
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Saudi journalist Hamza Kashgari set off a social media firestorm last week when he tweeted an imaginary conversation with the Prophet Mohammed.  In his tweets, which have since been deleted, he wrote to the Prophet: “I have loved the rebel in you” but “I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you.” He also wrote, “I shall shake [your hand] as equals do … I shall speak to you as a friend, no more.”

Not long after publishing the tweets, Kashgari began to receive death threats.  His address was posted on a social media site, and clerics began calling for him to be executed, or tried for apostasy.  On February 8, he fled the country, headed for New Zealand…but was caught in transit in Malaysia by local authorities, who detained him; shortly after, news emerged that Saudi Arabia had issued an extradition order. Malaysian Home Minister Hishammudin Hussein was quoted as saying that Malaysia would repatriate Kashgari to Saudi Arabia. A Facebook page in solidarity with Kashgari that emerged mid-week has more than 1,500 members.

As of the time of publication, an interim order had been issued to stop Malaysian authorities from deporting Kashgari:

@FadiahNadwa: Justice Rohana Yusuf jz gave interim order 2stop Govt fr deporting #HamzaKashgari to Saudi Arabia.On our way to serve court order to police.

There were, nonetheless, conflicting reports that Kashgari had been extradited.

A battle of opinions

A battle of opinions is being waged on social networks, with many of Kashgari's fellow Saudi citizens continuing to argue for him to be tried. Their calls seem to be outnumbered by calls from members of the international community, as well as citizens of Saudi Arabia and Malaysia, for Malaysia not to extradite Kashgari.

Saudi blogger Ahmed Al Omran believes that there's more to the case than meets the eye:

While I understand how many Muslims would take offense at anything that touches the prophet, I don’t think it explains the whole story. Yes, many feel strongly about such matters and therefore they reacted accordingly. However, it is clear that many on the right decided to take advantage of the incident to score points and make political gains. It was a low hanging fruit.

While some may perceive religious conservatives defending the Prophet’s honor simply as piety, others say there is more behind it, that this is actually part of a long-term plan.

Mariam, a writer for Arab News, is dismayed by the potential charges:

@onlymytweets: I don't recall an Ayah or Hadith saying God has transferred authority to mankind to judge. Or is it just me? #HamzaKashgari @SalmaanTaseer

Self-described Saudi-American poet Bint Talal has been tweeting her concern for Kashgari's safety. She tweets:

@majda72: I want to go to sleep but I'm consumed with fear for #HamzaKashgari I keep checking twitter & fear the worst.

@RFatani is angered by the reactions on social media, tweeting:

@RFatani: 1000's of tweeps calling for #HamzaKashgari head to roll! They should be banned from entering countries that have ‘inciting hate' laws

Writer Khaled Almaeena's tweets expressed the widespread sentiment that the threatened punishments do not fit the crime:

Among those in Saudi Arabia who were happy to hear that Kashgari might be extradited was @AboTamem, who tweeted:

@AboTamem: @nsurendrann Our brother HAMZA in the way to his home…he is not under your law!! #hamzakashgari

@mkabmr also felt that Kashgari went too far:

@mkambr: Personally anyone who ridiculed prophet Muhammad PBUH is a persona non grata #HamzaKashgari

But @ArabRevolution's tweet was more representative of the general sentiment on Twitter:

@ArabRevolution: Just putting this out there, neither I or millions of other Muslims agree to what Saudi decides to do with #HamzaKashgari #freehamza

Written by Jillian C. York · comments (0)
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This post is part of our special coverage Yemen Protests 2011.

Many expected bloodshed when the revolution first started in Yemen, since it is known to be the second most armed nation in the world, yet it amazingly turned out to be the least violent this so-called Arab Spring. Despite the regime's violence, protesters refrained from using their weapons and marched peacefully demanding their rights. They faced security forces excessive violence with bare chests. A year has passed since the revolution started yet Yemenis disagree on the exact day, as I pointed in my blog post:

Yemen's revolution is undoubtedly the longest in the Arab Spring, yet Yemenis disagree on which day it started. Some say it started on February 3rd, when a group of activists protested in front of Sanaa University, some say February 11th, when the first sit-in tents were erected in Taiz, and others say February 20th when the first martyrs were killed in Aden and Taiz. Yet, Yemen's revolution has been mostly associated with February 11th, the downfall of Egypt's Mubarak.

This video posted by SupportYemen on YouTube shows a group of activists expressing their hopes and highlighting the demands of the revolution:

Hundreds were killed and thousands were injured, yet those responsible for their killings were granted immunity as per the power transition deal, brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council and fully supported by the United States and the United Nations.

Protesters in Taiz lit the the flame on the eve of the revolution, on February 10th, in Freedom Square, marking the beginning of the celebrations with chants and fireworks as shown in this video posted by taizpress:

Yemen's Revolution impressed the world with it's massive and powerful marches. Iona Craig, a freelance journalist who was been mostly in Yemen since the revolution started, tweeted a link in which she posted a selection of powerful images she had captured throughout the year, including some of the marches.

@ionacraig: Today marks one year since daily protests began in #Yemen. A selection of pictures I took from Feb. 2011 to Feb. 2012: bit.ly/wk1TTT

This video posted by KareemoS on May 21, shows the massive crowds rallying against Saleh and his regime, chanting “the people want to overthrow the regime” - a demand that has yet to be realized.

Huge celebrations were held in Taiz on February 11th, on the occasion the first anniversary of Yemen's revolution. taizpress posts the following video on YouTube showing part of the celebrations:

Yemeni activist Baraa Shiban sums up the events in Yemen over the past year in his post in Comments MiddleEast. He concludes by saying:

The last days of December witnessed a parallel revolution that paralysed many governmental sectors and led to the resignation of some senior officials. It’s worth mentioning that the employee’s strikes are still continuing as the country forges its own mini revolutions, attempting to purge the remnants of Saleh's regime, and foremost, the last scraps of tyranny in Yemen.

Meanwhile, Yemen faces many challenges. A year of revolt has resulted in the loss of many lives, created an economic and humanitarian crisis due to a shortage in water, electricity and other supplies. Reflecting back on what has been achieved so far, a unity government has been established between the existing ruling party, the GPC (General People's Congress) and the “opposition” JMP (Joint Meeting Party). Saleh, and his regime, whom the people had been revolting against for months, were given an immunity by the international community. Saleh travelled to the US and will be returning to Yemen to cast his vote for his Vice President for the past 18 years, whom he had selected to be his successor and was approved by the GCC as the consensus candidate in the “one man election” taking place on February 21st.
This is one of the posters used for the election campaign, seen on various parts of Sanaa, which speaks for itself, posted by one of the most followed groups in Facebook, (Ar) “We are all Taiz“, with a caption asking for readers comments.

After 34 years of ruling Yemen, Saleh is finally stepping down as president on election day, February 21st, yet his son, nephews and brothers still control the military apparatus, and his regime is very much intact. The independent youth who have been protesting for over a year are back to square one, still in the squares, weak and fragmented, yet still holding on to the hope of building a new Yemen, based on freedom, democracy, justice and social equality.

“Supportyemen posted this video which sends out this strong message:

“Some take basic human rights for granted, but for us, Yemenis, they are aspirations. We march for better education, better healthcare, freedom of speech, real democracy, for justice, and for dignity!

As I admitted in my post:

Sadly, Yemen has openly become an international protectorate, with regional and international players determining it's future rather than it's own people.

Having said that, I hope very much that the power of the people wins over the people in power.

This post is part of our special coverage Yemen Protests 2011.

Written by Noon Arabia · comments (0)
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This post is part of our special coverage Indigenous Rights.

Panama went through one of the biggest crises it has seen since democracy was restored in 1989 when the indigenous people of Gnobe-Bugle decided to take over the highway on January 31, 2012, protesting mining and construction of hydroelectric facilities in their district. They stayed there until February 5, when national police removed them by force.

The crisis has been alleviated for the moment with an agreement between the indigenous group and the government. Even so, the uncertainty of what could happen if there is hydroelectric construction or mining in these districts is still on the minds of Panamanians.

President Martinelli (@rmartinelli) [es] threatened via his Twitter account that without hydroelectric power, things would become more expensive and the country would become even more impoverished:

El problema con los indigenas es que NO quieren que haya mas hidroelectricas en Panamá. Esto encarece todo y nos emprobrece aun mas

In the midst of all of this crisis, one name has emerged as the standard bearer for the indigenous fight. The cacique [Taíno word meaning tribal leader or chief] Silvia Carrera who, after becoming the first woman to be elected to this position, has risen up in opposition to the current government's mining plans.

The following video by Orgun Wagua, uploaded to YouTube by laoruguitaecoloca [es] on February 4, shows the cacique spearheading attempts to start a dialog during the conflict:

UNICEF Panamá dedicated a section on its website [es] when Carrera was campaigning for the position which tells us a little about this woman:

Silvia Carrera Concepción nació, fue criada y vive en Alto Laguna, en el corregimiento Cerro Pelado, en el distrito Ñurum  de la comarca Ngäbe Buglé, comarca que tiene el mayor índice de mortalidad infantil (55.4%) en el país. A los 12 años se integró al movimiento que lideraba Camilo Ortega, que luchaba porque los ngäbe y los buglé tuvieran su comarca. A sus 13 años alumbró su primer hijo, Bernardo Jiménez Carrera, y a los 18 años dio a luz a Sixto Jiménez Carrera. A los 19 años, se separó de su marido.

La resolución de Silvia Carrera fue trabajar la tierra. Sembraba yuca, ñame, otoe, arroz, frijoles, maíz, para alimentar a sus hijos. Y no dejó de militar en el grupo indígena de Ortega, a sus compromisos ella cargaba con sus hijos. Para esta madre fue prioridad enseñarle a sus muchachos que “es importante luchar por nuestros derechos, pedir que nos respeten”. En aquellas reuniones, dice, su hijo mayor aprendió a ser un joven líder. Bernardo Jiménez Carrera, de 27 años, es comisionado de derechos humanos indígenas y está en segundo año de la licenciatura en derecho y ciencias políticas.

The cacique recently opened a Twitter account and continues the fight begun on the highway, through social networks. [all Twitter accounts are in Spanish]. From her account (@CaciqueGeneral) she has sharply criticized Ricardo Martinelli's current leadership with messages in which she calls him a liar:

@rmartinelli es mentiroso nosotros NO queremos Minería, por favor de la cara y no se esconda del pueblo que le dio el voto.

The sympathy of Panamanians seems to have turned in favor of the cacique who has shown herself to be a woman of courage. Vladimir K. Polo (@kendriv) even took an informal poll on the web, putting the cacique up against the president and one of the main presidential candidates. The cacique won:

En la encuesta de hoy ganó la Silvia Carrera Cacique General GB para presidente de la Rep. de Panamá.

Joel Jonas (@joeljonas16) tweets his applause for the cacique, and his appreciation for the clarity with which she expressed herself compared to Minister of Security Raul Mulino, who has been harshly criticized for his handling of the recent crisis.

APLAUDO a la cacique general #Ngöbe por sus palabras, en 3 minutos se expreso mas claro y directo de lo que lo hizo #Mulino en 3 días

Enrique Sosa T. (@esosatribaldos) thinks, on the other hand, that the cacique is exaggerating things a little by saying that they are not taken into account, and for him the proof is that the cacique is able to get free internet access provided by the state.

En cuantos países una cacique general tiene acceso a internet gratis? Piensen 2 veces antes d decir q no son tomados n cuenta #PANAMA

On February 8, the cacique gave a speech to the legislative assembly where she lashed out at the president and warned them that if he didn't keep his promises, they would return to the streets. The speech, which was broadcast on the assembly's channel, was seen and admired by a large number of Panamanians.

Luis Carlos Chacon (@lcchacon) devotes a few words of praise for the leader:

Que ejemplo de dignidad, honorabilidad y valentía nos esta dando La Cacique General Silvia Carrera @CaciqueGeneral

Along the same lines, Evelyn Castrejon (@ECastrejonC) comments that the cacique is a real leader:

La Cacique General: Verdadera Líder! Primera vez que pongo el canal de la asamblea!

Paco Gómez Nadal, a Spanish journalist who was repatriated by the current government for his alleged participation in indigenous protests, comments in the blog Otramerica [es] about the importance of this woman's fight:

Carrera no se ha ocultado en ningún momento de los amargos días de represión y hostigamiento. La historia sigue y las mujeres Ngäbe han demostrado en las manifestaciones y en las protestas que han protagonizado desde hace años, en el río Tabasará, en Changuinola, en ciudad de Panamá, que la dignidad es una palabra de género femenino.

This post is part of our special coverage Indigenous Rights.

Written by Ariel Moreno · Translated by Betsy Galbreath · View original post [es] · comments (0)
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A drama in the air over the Skopje airport received an immediate reflection via Twitter, after a successful emergency landing.

On the night between February 10 and 11, an airplane of the Czech airline CSA first circled for 40 minutes trying to get the dysfunctional flaps to work, and then performed an emergency landing. The pilot managed to stop the plane at the end of the recently extended runway.

Among the passengers were the British Member of the European Parliament Richard Howitt, and the Macedonian Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikola Popovski. Within the EP Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr. Howitt serves as the Rapporteur on Macedonia - and he is also an avid Twitterer. He tweeted immediately after the incident:

All now fine but just had emergency landing at Skopje on aircraft whose flaps failed. Told take brace position. Thought could be the end.

Richard Howitt MEP tweeted immediately after touching ground.

…and added some more details:

Emergency landing. Snow on runway. Fire engines lined up. Stewardess said: “pray, pray, pray.” #Czech Airline staff heroes. All OK now.

A report by MIA (a Macedonian state news agency) provided more details:

As the plane was landing, smoke appeared from the tires and the captain managed to stop the aircraft right at the end of the runway.

Howitt later commented:

…I didn't know at time about smoke. Told Foreign Minister: give pilot medal for stopping plane

Quite a few people re-tweeted Howitt's info and wrote to express support and relief. Mallen Baker wrote:

Glad it ended well - nightmare situation that anyone flying would prefer to avoid! Great that everyone safe

Extension of the runway was a part of the deal with the Turkish company TAV, which renovated and manages the airports in Macedonia through a 20-year lease contract.

While the cited flaps malfunction might have nothing to do with the weather, the ongoing Balkan snow storm does affect the air traffic in the region. A few days ago, the Macedonian Army helicopters that were supposed to carry supplies to the cut-off mountain villages could not take off [mk] due to continuous snowfall.

Written by Filip Stojanovski · comments (0)
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On 11 February, 2012, more than 200 cities around the world joined the global protests against ACTA - the proposed multi-national Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement that aims to establish international standards for intellectual property rights enforcement. In Portugal, around 300 people demonstrated on the streets of Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra, Viseu and Braga, following the calls that had been organized via Facebook.

Kris Haamer summed up the Lisbon event:

‎ACTA is censorship, a return to dictatorship” was what the group, many in Guy Fawkes masks, were shouting in an Anti-ACTA march in Lisbon center. I would describe it as small and unorganized (perhaps 200 people) with little structure and focus on coherent messaging. Very few people with laptops or iPads, iPhones, etc to share the message and only 1 tv station takin an interest..

"ACTA seems to be a marginal concern in Portugal. Few people mostly the youth". Photo by Kris Haamer on Foursquare (used with permission).

In Porto, although more than one thousand netizens had confirmed on Facebook their intention to participate in the protest, only a few dozen actually concentrated in the Aliados Avenue, in front of the City Hall. Some of the demonstrators came from Braga, as they decided to join forces in just one city in the North, due to low participation there.

Protest in Porto. Photo by Nuno Gomes on G+ (used with permission).

The protest, which was livestreamed on the blog of #AnonymousPortugal, then moved to the entrance of the newspaper Jornal de Notícias, in order to capture the attention of mainstream media, with success.

Protest in Porto. Photo by Nuno Gomes on G+ (used with permission).

In Coimbra, out of 154 confirmations on Facebook, only 21 people joined the demonstration.

Protest in Coimbra. Photo sent by an anonymous (used with permission).

"I had a motto but it was censored." Photo from Coimbra sent by an anonymous (used with permission).

In Viseu only 7 people joined. A new demonstration is scheduled for February 18 in Évora.

Activist on intellectual property issues Maria João Nogueira, wrote on her blog an open letter [pt] to the Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho where she mentions some of the countries that have stepped back from signing the agreement, recalling that:

o Embaixador Português no Japão já assinou a ACTA em nome de Portugal (e ainda não vi o pedido de desculpas), embora, curiosamente, não haja notícia desta assinatura, nem da posição do Governo Português acerca deste “tratado”.

On a different post she mentions a statement from 2010 that was signed by some of the members of the Parliament who “had reservations about the transparency of the process and have expressed doubts regarding the contents of this treaty”. Nogueira shares [pt] a list of the representatives, as well as their emails addresses, and invites readers “to ask the ones who signed if they have already clarified their doubts, and to those who didn't sign it, why they didn't do it, and what's their opinion/position about the subject”.

While the treaty is open for signature until March 31, 2012, Avaaz's world wide petition has already gathered more than 2.1 million signatures in just two weeks.

Written by Sara Moreira · comments (0)
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Hundreds of anti-ACTA protests were scheduled all over Europe for Saturday, Feb. 11.

Bulgaria was no exception.

On Friday, a video [bg] calling for people to stand up against the controversial treaty was posted in the Facebook group Ние казваме “НЕ” на ACTA! / Bulgaria says “NO” to ACTA!.

On Saturday morning, the demonstrations in Bulgaria began, with hundreds gathering in front of the National Cultural Centre in the capital city of Sofia. The crowd rapidly grew, as people were marching towards the political navel of the country. (Indeed, in Sofia, the Cabinet's building, the Parliament and the Presidential palace face each other in the very centre of the capital.)

A huge crowd walking towards the Parliament in Sofia, Bulgaria, during the Feb. 11 anti-ACTA protest. Photo by Ruslan Trad (CC-by-SA 3.0)

Global Voices author Ruslan Trad was live-streaming the protests, along with netizen Asen Genov. A video of the protesters marching ahead, by YouTube user selin4eto, is here.

People were in a great mood, despite the cold (-6°C in Sofia and streets covered with snow). User @kislorot (Anton Georgiev) tweeted [bg]:

Полицията е задържала мъж с 0,5 грама торенти.

A nice poster in the middle of the anti-ACTA rally in Sofia. Photo by Ruslan Trad (CC-by-SA 3.0)

According to one of the protesters (@reguligence, Emil A. Georgiev), there were between 5,000 and 10,000 people only in Sofia:

The anti-#ACTA protest in #Sofia went well and peacefull, for the first time in years a number between 5000-10000 gathered. #stopacta

Bulgarian blogger Eneya Worodecky distributed books she could not keep at home due to lack of space. She announced this great initiative - Дарете книга, спрете ACTA/Stop ACTA, share a book [bg] - on her blog:

Можете да дарите книги. Идеята на много компании е, че вие по-скоро сте заели за временно ползване музиката/филмите/сериалите/програмите, които използвате, че не са ваши и не можете да правите с тях каквото прецените. Само че книгите са си ваши. Вие може да ги подарите на когото решите, независимо че според идеите на АСТА това може да се погледне като нарушаване на авторските права.

Затова това, което можете да направите е, съберете книги и ги раздайте. Единственото условие е да напишете на първата страница или да сложите листче защо го правите.

According to Worodecky, she offered ten books to people in the streets during this morning's demonstration in Sofia, and people were greatly astonished but very happy. She is currently searching for those who got the books offered, to post pictures of them, and she is inviting other people to offer, be it books or anything else they wish to offer.

Sofia was not the only city to see protests spreading: they took place in 14 other cities and towns in Bulgaria. Plovdiv, the second largest city, saw 400-500 people marching to say “No” to ACTA.

User @ivaylovs reported [bg]:

В Пловдив беше супер. Една жена попита, това протеста за #ACTA ли е? Аз казах - май този е ПРОТИВ. Може да не бяхме 4 хл., а 400, но бяхме.

(In the end, it seems there was more like a thousand of them, rather than 400.)

Varna (photos by Valentin Stoykov are here), Pernik, and Burgas also witnessed the demonstrations, despite the cold. A famous Bulgarian writer, screenwriter and politician Lyuben Dilov, Jr. [bg] was one of those who joined the protests in Burgas, stating that the ACTA was harmful for creators, for culture in general and for the society as a whole.

As the demonstrations were taking place, many people - such as @Plamy [bg] - complained about silence in the mainstream media:

Не мога да повярвам, че хората се вдигат да протестират срещу нещо, което има толкова голямо значение за всички, а “МЕДИИТЕ” мълчат като РИБИ

Indeed, only three online editions talked about the anti-ACTA mobilization. Furthermore, one of the principal TV channels, bTV (formerly owned by Rupert Murdoch), dedicated very little time to the ongoing protest - and were duly criticised and mocked by netizens, such as @LuboAlamanov [bg]:

Хехе, бТВ дават за хурки, но само споменаха, че “в 15 града има протести”. Фън! :)))

In front of the People's Assembly. The writing on the building reads: "Unity makes strength". Photo by Ruslan Trad (CC-by-SA 3.0)

In the end, people were even more motivated to stand against the treaty.

User @yradunchev (Yordan Radunchev) wrote [bg]:

прибрах се. краката ми са ледени, но ми е топло от вътре. толкова много хора не съм очаквал. #ACTA няма да я бъде, ако действаме все така.

User @yovko (Yovko Lambrev) added [bg]:

Има надежда! Никога не съм си представял, че толкова много хора в този кучи студ ще излязат в защита на Интернет! #ACTA #fb

On his blog Tabakoff.eu [bg], Dimitar Tabakov swiftly uploaded his pictures from Sofia. At the end of the posting, he pointed out:

Добре щеше да е някой народен представител да излезне и да каже нещо, но уви, толкова им е достойнството.

Indeed, no official declaration has been issued so far. Will the government take into account the people's “NO” - or will they pass over and adopt the unpopular regulation anyway?

And even though much remains to be done, Saturday's mobilization has definitely showed a breach in the Bulgarians' apathy wall.

Written by Rayna St. · comments (2)
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The president of Uganda Yoweeri Kaguta Museveni appeared before parliament on February 10, 2012 to brief the nation about the power shortages and oil exploration in Lake Albert. Museveni announced the discovery of oil in 2006 after many years of exploration.

Museveni defended the government decision to sign oil agreements and grant a further license to Tullow oil despite a Parliamentary resolution against any more oil licenses. He said that the oil agreements are to benefit Uganda. He added that the two licenses given to Tullow Oil Exploration Company were to compensate for the time lost in the oil debate.

Map of oil fields in Lake Albert area in Uganda. Photo courtesy of tullowoil.com.

Immediately after his address, Ugandan netizens started discussing it on various social media platoforms. On Twitter, tweeps used hashtags #Museveni, #OilDebate, #Uganda among others.

@Haggae advised:

@Haggae: Becoz oil prices will soon drop Ugandans shld not delay & miss an opportunity of sellin @ a higher price, really Mr.#Museveni?? #oildebate

He added:

@Haggae: #Museveni's speech was as hollow as only convincing #MPs to avoid what he thinks is a ‘mistake of delayin #oilproductn‘#oildebate, #Uganda

@Loyce09 was pessimistic:

@Loyce09: #Uganda is already a sold property, in a few years citizens will also be sold#oildebate

@RosebellK thought that Uganda as a country will not benefit:

@RosebellK: So Oil co.s will take 74 % + of 26 remaining Kaguta and company will take about 90 % #Uganda will b left with nothing. #oildebate

She told Museveni that 2012 is not 1985 when he was about to take power:

@RosebellK: Kwonka #Museveni Kaguta of #Ugandahas no shame!! #Uganda don't need to hear yo rhetoric of feeling like yo back in 1985. Its 2012 dude!!!

Yoweri Museveni with Ugandan MPS at Parliament. Photo courtesy of ugpulse.com.

@andykristian wanted to know if the oil agreements are valid:

@andykristian: Any lawyers in the house? Did #Museveniand Government break the law in signing oil agreements? Are the signed agreements valid? #OilDebate

He warned of oil curse:

@andykristian: #Museveni, stop manipulating us - #Ugandans. You will bring the Oil Curse on US! Just Leave Government, We Beg You Please!!!#OilDebate

@pmagelah argued that Museveni should have consulted MPs before signing the agreements:

@pmagelah: I find it so problematic the the president ignored parliament, then came 2inform them why, instead of 1st consulting them#OilDebate

@DavidTumusiime asked:

@DavidTumusiime: SO…there was a rush to sign #Tullow oil deal quickly bse…? #oildebate12

@gothrockstar80 urged the government to develop the agricultural sector first:

@gothrockstar80: 80% of Ugandans R in the agricultural industry.We should develop that sector and leave this oil BS #oildebate12#Uganda#oildebate#Tullow

On Facebook, Tugumenawe Athanazius wrote:

Uganda sucks.How cn a prezdent present a report full of mistakes to th nation in parliament n he lso confesses????!!!!!!!!!!

Written by James Propa · comments (0)
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Over the past few days, Chinese netizens have been following the story of former Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun's secretive meeting at the U.S. Consulate closely. Many believe that Wang tried to seek asylum in the U.S. in order to protect himself from becoming the scapegoat of Chongqing Chinese Communist Party Secretary Bo Xilai's power struggle in Beijing.

Wang Lijun has been portrayed as a role model of the Chinese police since 2000 after his successful crackdown on a triad network in Liaoning province in 1999. In June 2008, the anti-triad hero was appointed as the head of police bureau in Chongqing city. Working side-by-side with Bo Xilai, he arrested a large number of former government officials in Chongqing on charges of corruption, including former head of the Justice Bureau Wen Qiang and former deputy chief of the Police Bureau Pang Changjian. In May 2011, Wang was elected as deputy mayor of Chongqing.

A dramatic turn took place on February 2, 2012, when the Information Office of Chongqing municipality posted a message via Weibo stating that [zh]:

据悉，近日市委决定，王立军同志不再兼任市公安局局长、党委书记，以副市长身份分管联系经济领域工作。

While Wang still attended a public function in February 6 2012, two days later on February 8, the information office announced [zh] in Sina Weibo again:

据悉，王立军副市长因长期超负荷工作，精神高度紧张，身体严重不适，经同意，现正在接受休假式的治疗。

On the same day, the U.S. State Department confirmed that Wang had had a meeting at the consulate in Chengdu, from which he departed “of his own volition”.

Political analysts with mainstream media [zh] believe that the incident reflects the internal struggle within the Chinese Communist Party and that President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have joined hands to sideline Bo Xilai before they step down in the upcoming 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. The word in Chongqing, it seems, is that Wang's power play was successful and he is now in the custody of Party Central. Meanwhile on Twitter, netizens have their own speculation about what took place.

Bo Xilai left in the lurch: Corruption fighter Wang hops away, leaving Chongqing mayor and deputy Party Secretary Huang Qifan ("red songs") behind; Image by Rebel Pepper.

Tufuwugan, for one, believes [zh] that Wang Lijun has been made Bo Xilai's scapegoat:

估计有人要搞薄都督，想阻止他进常委分赃，先卸了都督的左右膀，都督当然为了自保要牺牲王立军，在文革时连自己老爹都能把他肋骨踹断几根的人，牺牲王立军算什么，王立军估计看到处境不行，也知道都督会把他出卖，所以为了自保，做出跑到美使馆的事，精彩大戏正在上演。

Alan Huang feels that Wang has been too naive in his political career:

蒙古族人王立军从小练得一身好武术，如果领导内蒙古独立，估计能成民族英雄，丫非走蒙奸的道路，最终身败名裂。在这个拼爹的年代，出生于铁路工人家庭的王立军，竟然幻想和太子党党魁薄熙来鱼死网破。连店是谁开的还没搞清楚就敢来砸场子，相当naïve啊。

Qiumazha on the other hand feels [zh] that Wang has made a good move:

我忽然觉得，王立军不傻。闯美领馆避难只是寻求轰动效应，以防被蒸发。另外，他声称他已经将内幕证据等放在了安全的地方，杀他就会自动解密。谁知道这个安全的地方就不是美领馆呢？这个老侦查出身的人，应该比好莱坞谍战片编辑更有想象力。嘲笑王立军闯关之举恐怕是不智的。

Since Wang Lijun has been very harsh in cracking down on political activists, dissidents in Twitter are happy to see him seeking help from the “enemy forces”.

Gongmingyaoyao mocks [zh] Wang:

王立军教育我们，不管怎么当五毛，关键时刻还是美国人才是亲爹啊

Wuyuesanren echoes [zh] Gongmingyaoyao's comment on Sina Weibo:

早就说咱们官员最信任的政府是美国政府，中美关系那不是一般的好，好多人还不信。王立军跑美领馆这事儿再次确证了这种说法吧？我们这帮你们嘴里的美分带路党最多是看好美国的制度，认为值得我们学习，他们才是真把身家性命押在美国那边。五毛们，你们醒醒吧。

Shang Guangluan reports [zh] on what he heard from the street:

晕啊，刚刚在小店吃面，听见几个民工都在谈王立军的事，这事儿成了全民娱乐了。但他们集体得出的结论是：王立军肯定被以叛国罪枪毙。这个……

Political dissident Ye du points out [zh] that:

【网络热点观察】全民网络热炒王立军。王捕头事件深刻反映了在一个互害型社会里，即使是体制中人，也没有一个人是安全的。今天加害于人的，明天也随时因为站队、利益等问题而被害。这就是为什么我们说一个民主社会的来临才是全体公民福泽的原因，这样才可避免互相恐惧、互相伤害。

Writer Ye Kuangzheng believes [zh] that Wang Lijun's move signifies a turn in China history:

王立军进入美国使领馆，已被证实。这是1949年以来，高层官员第一次做出这种令人震惊的举动。林彪那次属出走未遂。由此可想象，王所置身的政治环境，没有巨大恐惧，极难迈出这一步。王立军的这一步，王立军的未来，会对中国未来的政治生态和官员心理有重大影响。王立军引发的政坛地震，也只是刚刚开始

Written by Oiwan Lam · comments (0)
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Tension between Hong Kong and mainland China has mushroomed in recent months. While small conflicts, such as a train scuffle, have ignited fury, the recent introduction of a cross-border self-drive tour scheme, signed by the Hong Kong and Guangdong governments without public consultation, has instigated a new round of social panic and anger among Hong Kong people. Some netizens even compare the situation of Hong Kong to Tibet and Xinjiang, where ethnic conflicts have developed into separatism and repression.

The image below, which has been shared more than 130 times via Facebook, is a re-creation of a photo taken recently in Tibet. The slogan on the military vehicle was originally “Han Chinese and Tibetan are one family” (漢藏一家親. It has been widely circulate via micro-blogs to mock the central government's policy in Tibet that the “family” is united by military force. The Hong Kong version of the photo was produced a famous blogger, Kay Lam & Fokguy remix team. The background of the photo is the busiest commercial district in Hong Kong, Causeway Bay and the slogan on the military vehicle has changed into “China and Hong Kong are one family” (中港一家親).

The photo's subtitle states [zh]:
‎

2015 年 SOGO 門口．自駕遊 X 中港一家親幻想圖（來自 2012 年駐西藏的解放軍車）

The image is a mockery of the newly announced “Self-Drive Tour” scheme, which allows private cars from mainland China to enter Hong Kong without having a local license. User, Bay area, posts [zh] an article at inmediahk explaining the background of the scheme:

近日驚見到沒有港人看的左報新聞，原來林瑞麟及鄭汝樺已在毫無諮詢的情況下私自與大陸簽訂了「私家車自由行」的條款，未來三月內地私家車就可直入市區，橫衝直撞每個角落，意象可怖。我們可以預視到，深圳廣州現時的交通文化，將會嚴重衝擊全港的交通系統：我們香港第一個小悅悅亦將會很快誕生。

Dictionary of Politically Incorrect Hong Kong Cantonese has translated some discussions among Facebook users:

Chan: Individual visit scheme isn’t enough and there will even be self-drive tour… Don’t fool me! Mainlander drivers don’t follow rules. When I was in China, I dared not to cross roads. Their driving skill and unfamiliarity with the roads of Hong Kong, I really afraid that the no. of traffic accidents are going to surge.

Cest la Vie: Population density, usage of road, parking, driving attitude, environmental problem, law enforcement problem, life risking problem…There are so many problems. Why do self-drive tour have to be implemented? Crazy?

Everybody should protect the remaining freedom of Hong Kong. Left handed drive and right handed drive will harm many innocent citizens. Besides, reckless Mainland Chinese drivers really make people shivering. Hong Kong citizen have to object that. Put everybody’s safety to the first priority. Please!

Apart from road safety, air pollution and traffic jams, people are angry about the under-table arrangement of cross-border policy. As by Land Justice League, a civic group advocating social justice and democracy, pointed out :

中港跨境政策一直是本地政治團體和社會運動鞭長莫及的「黑洞」，整套操作完全排斥市民﹝其實是兩地人民﹞，甚至是立法會的參與。由議題設定、研究、制訂政策，市民全不知情，無從過問，每次都是見到曾蔭權或唐英年或林瑞麟與國內官員排排企簽約，市民才透過愈來愈麻木的主流記者得悉，「阿爺又俾著數啦/中央又挺港啦」。

我們每次都是看人家在簽我們的條約，我們從來沒有一次屬於香港人的、可以引以自豪的「簽約儀式」。香港這個不斷「被簽約」的命運共同體要自主，第一步是要離開、違背、拒絕、撕毀綑綁着我們的條約、協議和遊戲規則…

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The Water March that set off from Cajamarca on February 1, 2012, continues on. After a warm welcome [es] in La Libertad region and more support [es] from farmers, fishermen and ecologists [es] on passing through Ancash, the March is now approaching Lima.

Meanwhile, various independent journalists and foreign websites are talking about and giving their opinions about the March. For example, El Ciudadano [es], PiensaChile [es] and Mapu Express [es] of Chile, the Agencia Latinoamericana de Información [es], Rebelión [es], Infolatam [es] are all reporting on the March. In Lima, however, some media are revealing [es] alleged political reports that denounce the March organisers as “reds and extremists” and “experts in the mobilisation of masses”.

The following video, uploaded to YouTube by noenhucal on February 5, captures the beginning of the March in the village of Santa, a little before Chimbote.

In the previous post we left the March on its fifth day, leaving [es] Chimbote and headed for [es] the city of Casma and then on to Huarmey. From there they continued on [es] to Paramonga, which now belongs to the Lima region, where they spent the night. On the Chungo y Batán blog they repost photos [es] of the march through Trujillo and Chimbote, as well as the arrival in Casma on Sunday night.

Al promediar las 8 de la noche, llegaron a la provincia de Casma, conocida como la ciudad del eterno sol, hasta cerca de la media noche realizamos una manifestación cultural, también agradeciendo al alcalde que recibió a los marchantes. Al cierre de la presente edición, nos preparamos para salir marchando hasta Paramonga.

At around 8 o'clock in the evening, they arrived in the province of Casma, known as the city of eternal sun. Until about midnight we held a cultural protest and thanked the Mayor for receiving the marchers. On ending this post we are preparing our march to Paramonga.

The Water March in Santa

The Water March in Chimbote

The Water March in Casma

La Misión de Observación (The Observation Mission) issued [es] their report on the fifth day in which they announced, among other things, the motives of the various Ancash collectives that have supported the March:

Almenzor Gómez y Javier Castro, representando a cientos de pescadores de la provincia de Chimbote, explicaron que ven amenazado su trabajo y la biodiversidad de su costa por la inminente presencia de la petrolera Savia Perú (ex –Petrotech) que pretende levantar una plataforma a 20 millas de Chimbote. […] Por su parte, Javier Castro, […] se refirió al gran riesgo que correría el zócalo marino de Áncash, rico en nutrientes y pesca, si se produjera un derrame de petróleo. Los ancashinos concretaron 4 reivindicaciones centrales por las que se unen a la Marcha: intangibilidad de cabeceras de cuenca, prohibición de la minería con cianuro y mercurio, derecho a la consulta de los pueblos y declarar el agua un derecho constitucional.

After staying overnight [es] in Paramonga, the March set off for Pativilca, Barranca and Supe, where the day ended [es]. In the blog Frente de Defensa Ambiental de Cajamarca (Cajamarca Environmental Defence Front) there is a report [es] with photos.

The Water March in Paramonga

The Water March in Pativilca

The Observation Mission issued its report of the day in which it identifies [es] certain problems related to the March that we have mentioned in previous posts.

En torno al rosario de problemas sociales y ambientales, con sus correspondientes conflictos, que van federándose en torno a la Marcha del Agua, la Misión de Observación toma nota de la denuncia de una campaña de descrédito, según los organizadores, con acusaciones de “politización interesada de la Marcha” e incluso “connivencia terrorista de sus dirigentes”; recientemente viene apareciendo la acusación de que “Chile financia la Marcha”, para que las empresas se vayan allá … Los portavoces de la Marcha insistieron en que su objetivo es poner en la agenda nacional la prioridad del derecho al agua desde la movilización no violenta.

From Supe the marchers headed for Huaura and then [es] to Huacho, the city where they spent the night. Holding [es] a meeting the next day and spreading its proposals through the city streets. Earlier, in the city of Barranca, the members of the Observation Mission and the Water March met. The Mission's report [es] on the day talks about this meeting, highlighting the motives for the March as explained by its organisers:

Jorge Spelucín, maestro, e integrante de la Comisión Nacional del Agua, suscitó la denuncia del largo proceso de criminalización que los distintos dirigentes sufren, “no queremos que continúe la criminalización de la protesta que impuso el anterior gobierno, los pobres hemos soportado por 20 años la violencia política y social de Yanacocha”, dijo.

On February 8 DLOOCHI uploaded the following YouTube video about the Water March in Huacho:

Meanwhile in Lima the March's sympathisers are already preparing to receive them on Thursday, February 9. The organisers that live in the city are meeting to prepare different activities like “Foro Hídrico: Agua, Minería y Desarrollo en el Perú” [es] (Water Forum: Water, Mining and Development in Perú) that begun on February 8 (here you can access its programme [es]) and the Tribunal Nacional de Justicia Hídrica [es] (National Water Justice Tribunal). “Voluntary work for reception, food, adjustment and National Great Water March marcher registration logistics” have also been announced [es] and organised [es] for their arrival in Lima. The Great Water March blog posts [es]the marching route for Lima and on the Seamos Un Río blog they ask for [es] donations:

Este esfuerzo [la marcha] se está realizando de manera autogestionada y autofinanciada, por lo que nos vemos en la necesidad de apelar a su solidaridad y animo de lucha para ayudarnos a cumplir con las metas trazadas durante los 3 días que nuestros compañeros caminantes de la Gran Marcha Nacional del Agua permanecerán en la ciudad de Lima.

El presupuesto que estamos manejando son para la realizacion de las siguientes actividades: **Albergue y Tribunal Hídrico**, **Foro Hídrico**, **Acto Político Cultural**, **Marcha**, **Comunicación, movilidad**

Freddy Otárola, the Nationalists congressman, has recently issued a controversial statement. He said [es]: “We hope that the ‘Water March' will be a failure”. The Prime-minister, Óscar Valdés, hopes [es] that the “March for water” will show a techincal stance rather than a political one. In the meantime from the city of Puno they have announced [es] that the representatives of the struggle committes and the defence fronts of the regions of Puno, Cusco, Arequipa, Madre de Dios, Moquegua and Tacna, will carry out a march and a protest in support of the Water March.

Finally, in this video filmed in the Fórum Social Mundial [pt] (World Social Forum), held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, between January 24 and 29, they have put together some testimonies and messages from participants expressing their support and solidarity with the Water March.

Written by Juan Arellano · Translated by Kathryn Morgan · View original post [es] · comments (0)
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In the spirit of the excellent colloquy here about Marvin’s thinking on First Amendment architectures, I bring up this news item: Arizona State University blocked both Web access to, and e-mail from, the change.org Web site. ASU students had begun a petition demanding that the university reduce tuition. The university essentially made three claims as to why it did so (below, in order of increasing stupidity):

1. It was a technical mistake;
2. Change.org was spamming ASU; and
3. ASU needs to “protect the use of our limited and valuable network resources for legitimate academic, research and administrative uses.”

#1 and #2 run together. If spam is the problem, you don’t need to block access to the Web site. However, if you are concerned that students are going to read the petition, and sign it, you do need to block access to the Web site.

For #2, sorry, ASU, this isn’t spam. Spam is unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail. Change.org is, allegedly, sending unsolicited political e-mail. And that’s protected by the First Amendment – see, for example, the Virginia Supreme Court’s analysis of that state’s anti-spam law that covered political messages. Potential political spammers have a sharp disincentive to fill recipient’s inboxes – it’s a sure-fire way to annoy them into opposing your position.

For #3, ASU doesn’t get to determine what academic and research uses are “legitimate.” If they throttle P2P apps, that’s fine. If they limit file sizes for attachments, no problem. But deciding that the message from Change.org is not “legitimate” is classic, and unconstitutional, viewpoint discrimination.

This looks like censorship. I think it’s more likely to be stupidity: someone in ASU’s IT department decided to block these messages as spam, and to filter outbound Web requests to the site contained within those messages. But: with great power over the network comes great responsibility. Well-intentioned constitutional violations are still unlawful. It would also help if ASU’s spokesperson simply admitted the mistake rather than engaging in idiotic justification.

As I mention in Orwell’s Armchair, public actors are increasingly important sources of Internet access. But when ASU and other public universities take on the role of ISP, they need to remember that they are not AOL: their technical decisions are constrained not merely by tech resources, but by our commitment to free speech. Let’s hope the Sun Devils cool off on the filtering…

Cross-posted at Concurring Opinions.

The artist and producer Jose Marti (@Jose_Marti) has shot one picture a day for the past two years as part of his online project “Fotos de Hoy” (Photos of Today).

He explains:

Dentro de los temas que publico en su mayoría son fotos casuales donde la foto me encuentra a mí en vez de yo buscarla y bien pueden ser fotos de la ciudad, de mi casa o donde quiera que me encuentre por que en realidad lo importante es expresar algo sobre el momento, donde estoy, que estoy haciendo, etc. Ese es el elemento que me ha llevado ha constantemente publicar en Fotos de Hoy, el poder visualmente resumir semanas y diversas experiencias en un compilado accesible por internet.

I have selected some of his pictures of Old San Juan, the colonial city of the capital of San Juan, Puerto Rico (all photos are republished with his permission). You can follow his visual life daily at Fotos de Hoy.

City with a View.

San José Church.

The window.

Beach El Escambrón.

Fort El Morro.

Bar El Batey.

Luna Street.

Written by Firuzeh Shokooh Valle · comments (0)
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[All the links lead to Portuguese language pages except when otherwise noted.]

Brazilians all over the world, as well as citizens from different countries, have mobilized online and organized protests in various cities like Paris, Madrid, Berlin, Buenos Aires, among others, in support of the community of Pinheirinho. The settlement was recently evicted with extreme violence by the Military Police of São Paulo and the Civil Guard in the city of Sao Jose dos Campos, in what became known as the “Massacre of Pinheirinho.”

Teacher Lúcio Flávio de Almeida comments:

Os lutadores e lutadoras do Pinheirinho foram desalojados e vivem uma situação muito difícil, extremamente difícil. No entanto, sua luta, que é nossa luta, continua. Sob certos aspectos, cresce e deve crescer ainda mais.

The citizens were organized under the motto “We are all Pinheirinho” on Facebook, in blogs and on the streets. The movement, in a letter released by the blog Vi o Mundo, explains:

Pessoas em várias cidades do mundo estão agindo em rede para mostrar sua indignação pelos acontencimentos no Brasil. São brasileiros e pessoas de várias nacionalidades buscando pressionar para que a situação das famílias em Pinheirinho não caia no esquecimento facilmente.

Activist Erick Cristiano produced a video with pictures of various events around the world and posted it on YouTube:

“Eu sou do país dos Pinheirinhenses” (I am of the country of the Pinheirinese) is the motto of a group of activists who put out the Tumblr “What is your country?”, which now has dozens of videos of people declaring their solidarity with the people expelled from Pinheirinho like the following uploaded by user engenhoso:

On January 27, a group of Brazilians protested in front of the Brazilian Embassy in Madrid, capital of Spain, with a great banner and a flag of Brazil.

"Solidarity with Pinheirinho. Brazilians in Madrid". Protest in Madrid. Photo by Fábio TQrz, used with permission

The group also released a letter of complaint, in Portuguese and Spanish, questioning the President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, and Minister of the Special Secretariat of Human Rights, Maria do Rosário, requesting action regarding the homeless of Pinheirinho.

Protesters talk to the secretary of the embassy after the ambassador refused to receive them. Photo by Fábio TQrz, used with permission

Protest in Lisbon. Photo by Soraya Barret, used with permission

Protest in Lisbon. Photo by Soraya Barret, used with permission

"We are all Pinheirinho". Photo by Christian Russau, used with permission

"São Paulo: Stop the politics of sanitation". Photo by Christian Russau, used with permission

Protest in Paris. Photo by Dudas Bastos, used with permission

A Facebook group was created where one can read in French, a manifesto in solidarity with Pinheirinho. Daniel Ybarra, on Facebook, announced that the letter sent by the group to the Brazilian Embassy would be sent to the Brazilian government.

Protest in Paris. Photo by Maite Weill, used with permission

Another protest was also held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where at least 30 people engaged in the march from the “Obelisco”, singing all the way.

Protest in Buenos Aires. Photo by Victoria Vajda, used with permission

Photo by Rodrigo Tomazini, used with permission

Filmmaker Pedro Rios Leão ended his hunger strike after 11 days. The activist Alysson Bordi joined him but had to suspend the strike after being referred for medical care in a health clinic on February 7. The activist, however, wrote a manifesto in which he gives the reasons for the end of the strike and asks for support for the cause.

On Sunday the municipal guard of the city of Rio de Janeiro tried to remove the strikers and other activists who were with Pedro:

Pessoal, ontem a guarda municipal gentilmente atendeu a pedidos e chegou para nos remover. Depois de puxar cacetete, ameaçar muito nos agredir, resolveram só nos deixar ao relento. […] Na confusão perdi meu celular e algumas outras coisas. O acampamento ficou desbaratado e os ânimos devastados. No sol, e no pior ponto da greve, eu comecei a passar muito mal.

Firefighters and military police officers on the eve of going on strike in the city supported the hunger strike of Pedro, that completed 11 days on Wednesday, February 8, when it came to an end:

11 dias sem sentir gosto nenhum, 12 quilos a menos no meu corpo. Espero que sirva para alguma coisa. Não peço desculpas pelo transtorno. Isso foi só uma tentativa.

Activists support the hunger strike of Pedro Leão. Photo by Pedro Leão, free use.

On February 2, a great act took more than 5,000 people to the streets of São José dos Campos to protest and show solidarity with the residents of Pinheirinho.

Meanwhile, fundraising campaigns are oganized and it is immense the pressure on politicians to take a stand in relation to the disproportionate violence and on the help the evicted families need.

Written by Raphael Tsavkko Garcia · Translated by Raphael Tsavkko Garcia · View original post [pt] · comments (1)
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St. Petersburg is getting closer to signing into law the notorious “anti-gay propaganda bill” [ru]. On February 8, 2012, lawmakers approved it on its delayed second reading, and, according to AllOut.com's Russia action page, the vote on the third - and final - reading is to take place next week.

Coming Out, a St. Petersburg-based LGBT rights NGO, wrote this about the possible consequences of the law's adoption:

[…] If this law is passed, Russian LGBT will live in fear of punishment just for being open about sexual orientation in their social environment. It paves the way to legalized discrimination, justifies violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. Moreover, under the pretense of protecting minors, this law in fact will lead to further isolation and greater number of suicides by homosexual adolescents in a country that is already leading in the numbers of teenage suicides. […]

The article cited above also has photos and video from a mini-protest that took place in front of St. Petersburg's Legislative Assembly building on Feb. 8. One protester, who ended up being detained by police, held a poster that said, “Hitler started with anti-gay laws”:

British author and actor Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) posted this comment on Twitter, referring to the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who was homosexual, and linking to AllOut.com's appeal, “TELL RUSSIA: NO GAY GAG ORDER”:

Hell's teeth. Something must be done to stop these fantastical monsters. Will talking about Tchaikovsky be banned? http://www.allout.org/en/actions/russia_call

LJ user arzamaskaya ended her post about the lawmakers' initiative with this serious-sounding mock appeal [ru]:

[…] Somebody, do introduce sanctions against us [Russia] at last.

A protest sign outside the Russian consulate in London reads: "Council of Europe Must Defend Russian Gay Rights. Suspend the Russian Vote." Photo by MELPRESSMEN MELPRESSMEN, copyright © Demotix (1/07/11).

LJ user mc-leesnick linked to a Russian-language news item about Stephen Fry's reaction, adding [ru] that Russia, among other things, is also a country where “concrete facts of election fraud are declared 'speculation' before an investigation begins” and where “stealing from the state budget isn't punished but encouraged.”

In the comments section, a rather typical exchange took place between the author of the blog and a reader:

plurlife: There are, of course, many other problems that no one is taking care of. But here we are talking about propaganda and underaged [kids], so to me everything seems logical enough. If you want to love someone of your own gender, do so, but don't make noise about it in the streets and don't hold gay parades. This, however, has to be in the subconscious, not in the legislation.

mc_leesnick: Listen, what's the problem with gay parades? Seriously: what is the problem?

plurlife: The problem is that children see it, they live with it and learn from it, and it becomes normal for them. And the problem is also that after gay parades, mass beatings of such “fun guys” takes place, which is also not very normal - people shouldn't be beaten up because of their orientation. I'm not a homophobe, or whatever you call it, I just don't understand why it is necessary to loudly announce that you're a homosexual, a transsexual, a lesbian, a drag queen? Do not try to convince people that it's normal - no matter how much they want it, it's never going to be normal. […] I don't call it a disorder and I don't think they should be locked and re-made, […], it's just that I don't see a point in such demonstrations - only problems. If even just [a Muslim prayer performed in public causes people to overreact], then what do you expect from homosexuals with their parades.

Another reader, LJ user kuzyabuster, echoed Stephen Fry's irony - and mentioned the lack of adequate response from the city authorities to the truly serious and often life-threatening problem that St. Petersburg's residents have to face every winter:

I can imagine trucks taking out of St. Petersburg the works of [Yukio Mishima], Stephen Fry, biographies of [Alexander the Great], Tchaikovsky, Oscar Wilde […]… Would be better if they were taking snow and icicles out…

Russian journalist Yelena Kostyuchenko is not new to explaining the LGBT community's legal demands to her less knowledgeable compatriots. In May 2011, she wrote a powerful and popular post [ru] about her reasons to attend Moscow Pride 2011, and Global Voices translated parts of it in this text about yet another annual attempt to hold the event.

On February 8, following the St. Petersburg vote, Kostyuchenko (@mirrorsbreath) had a quick - and also quite typical - Twitter conversation with user @vakurov (Aleksandr Vakurov, who describes himself as a “psychoanalyst” and “business consultant”), parts of which are translated from Russian below:

@vakurov: […] What's wrong with it? It's the propaganda that's getting banned, not homosexuality.

@mirrorsbreath: […] Propaganda of homosexuality doesn't exist. In reality, the law stops the work of LGBT organizations, introduces censorship into the mass media and culture.

@vakurov: […] Obviously, I'm not getting something. Don't I have the right to protect my children from the harmful homosexual ideology?

@mirrorsbreath: […] Homosexuality doesn't have an ideology. It's a trait that 5-7% of the population are born with. Relax.

@vakurov: […] No problem. Just don't spoil my appetite. Many people have bad breath - and they aren't demanding special rights.

@mirrorsbreath: […] You are very spiritual, I can see it right away. We do not need special rights - we need equal rights. Do you feel the difference?

@vakurov: […] What inequality are you talking about? Then how about the rights of pedophiles, drug traffickers, rapers, drug addicts? о_0

LJ user vg36 believes [ru] that the new law, if adopted, might affect not just the local LGBT community, but members of the opposition in general:

Until the Russian Federation has learned how to block internet access, the law banning [”gay propaganda”] is ridiculous. But does anyone seriously think that it only targets the Russian LGBT community? […]

They used to send [people dressed up/posing as gays] with rainbow flags to opposition rallies in order to discredit the protesters. Now it turns out that most protesters do not mind rainbow flags - so this will be done [fake gays will be sent in] in order to detain and fine [the protesters]. […]

But the opposition has been asleep, as usual, and/or didn't realize that this was another weapon against them. Or they were afraid to oppose a law that might possibly be very popular with the masses, afraid to defend the freedom of speech of an unpopular group. Well. With the opposition like that, [it's not surprising] we get laws like this and the situation in the country is the way it is.

Written by Veronica Khokhlova · comments (0)
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The political crisis in the Maldives took an ugly turn on Wednesday 8 February, 2012, when police brutally beat and injured supporters of the ousted President Mohamed Nasheed as they protested against what they claimed to be a coup that removed the island nation's first democratically elected president from power.

In the riots that followed, Nasheed's supporters torched and destroyed a number of police stations, courts, local council offices and other public buildings. Scores of police officers were hurt in the violence too.

Earlier in the day, in a meeting of Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), the party which won the first multiparty election of the Maldives in 2008 and brought Nasheed to presidency, the deposed President announced that his resignation on Tuesday was coerced.

“We will come to power again,” Nasheed said. “We will never step back. I will not accept this coup and will bring justice to the Maldivians.”

Police charge teargas on protesters. Image by anonymous photographer, used with permission.

Nasheed and his supporters then marched through the capital Malé and faced a line of police behind shields near the island's main square, just next to military and police headquarters. The protesters threw bottles and stones at the police while the police fired teargas canisters into the crowd. The confrontation between the two sides ended in a brutal crackdown by police, leading to blood-soaked protesters being rushed to hospitals. Among those hurt were members of parliament and senior leaders of Nasheed's party.

FreedomWatchMV has posted this video of the confrontation between the security forces and protesters.

Another video shows police dragging an MP and Nasheed out of a shop after dispersing the crowd. Nasheed was released after a debate between the policemen about whether he should be arrested or not. This video shows a blood-soaked man narrating how the police beat him up.

Yameen blogs about the events that took place in Malé:

There is a brutal, concerted effort by the runaway police department to crush protests by supporters of President Nasheed, following his release today.

I have personally witnessed the heavy handed tactics employed to combat MDP activists, energized by the release of President Nasheed earlier today after yesterday's coup d'etat that forced him to resign.

Tear gas was used indiscriminately on Orchid magu near the Supreme court building. Two people were beaten up and lay motionless on the street for a long time before they were dragged and shoved into an ambulance.

Then I saw a police jeep speeding into a crowd of protesters. A police jeep. Absolutely reprehensible.

Police brutality on protesters. Image by anonymous. used with permission.

Muju Naeem ponders if the Maldives has turned into a military dictatorship:

So if President Waheed did not give the order, then we can safely assume that the security forces were acting on their own. What this means is that we have incidentally slipped into a military/police dictatorship where the executive is there only in name only.
Maldives has become a police state.
Maldivian Twitter users have started using 3 hashtags to tell their story. Please follow;
1. #maldivespolicestate
2. #mvprotest
3. #mvcoup

Following the events in the capital, Nasheed's supporters responded by rioting in outer islands, setting police stations on fire, throwing stones at policemen on duty and burning down courts and several other public buildings. In a number of islands they drove the police out and seized the police stations.

Maldivians and foreigners are tweeting about the new wave of violence that has gripped the holiday haven.

foram divrania tweets:

@divrania: Peace to Maldives..ur too beautiful for politics and violence.

Nattu tweets:

@reallynattu: “@hisherm: I don't support any political parties. I support Maldives.” Including Me!

There is an eerie calm in the islands and the capital on Thursday as people remain tense about what could happen next. In a press conference, the commanders of the police and military assured that order will be restored and promised to investigate the previous day's violence.

Speaking to journalists at his residence, Nasheed said he was forced to resign by some military personnel as the country's police force mutinied against his rule. Calling for fresh elections, he vowed to come back to power and reassured that he has no intention of grabbing power through street riots. He also condemned the acts of violence his supporters had committed in various islands.

Written by Saffah Faroog · comments (0)
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Karen Coyle visited us today to talk with us about why it is time for libraries to move to a more modern idea of data, one that focuses more on the data and less on the records, and probably one that makes use of the linked data format that consists of links pointing at public sources. Here’s a 17-minute podcast with her.

One of the great promises of the internet is that it allows for writing to be distributed outside of the restrictions imposed by traditional publications. On the internet there is no scarcity of resources, no oversight by editors, and no need to tap a pre-identified audience, and these features of web publishing have made it possible for anyone with access to post nearly anything to be read by potentially anyone else.

However, while the gains for writers have been very real, there remains a distinct hierarchy between the products of the traditional publishing industry and web-based writing. Consider what is arguably the greatest textual achievement of the internet age, the multi-language encyclopedia, Wikipedia. Even though it has moved past being an object of general derision in public discourse to being generally accepted, even now many mentions of the site in popular discourse come with qualification, the real or imagined "I found this on Wikipedia, but…" In many quarters, writing on the web still does not get much respect.

But this distinction may soon be a thing of the past. Since the introduction of Amazon's Kindle eReader and its various competitors, the last main physical distinction between web writing and the publishing industry—the printed book, newspaper, or magazine—has been slowly losing ground to the digital text. What makes your book better than my blog? One obvious answer is that it is, in fact, a book. However, when both are rendered in similar formats on the screen of an eReader, this distinction disappears. In other words, when our texts are in the same format, all that matters is the content.

These are some reasons why Apple's recent announcement of iBooks Author, an application for creating rich-media ebooks for the iPad, is so intriguing. While it has been possible for individuals to create their own eBooks for some time—just as eReaders were available for some time prior to the release of the Kindle—iBooks Author could signal a change: a well-designed, easy to use program that allows for the creation of rich-content books that are directly connected to the distribution channels of an influential player in digital media. Now writers have a new and very powerful tool for not merely adding their text to the web, but for competing with major publishers in the eBook space.

But many commentators noted a restrictive section in the license agreement for iBooks Author that dictates that, while free versions of books created with the program can be distributed anywhere, authors who wish to charge for the books they create in iBooks Author can only distribute them through Apple's iBookstore. Further, although Apple's iBooks format is incredibly similar to the ePUB standard, it is currently impossible to output rich-media books from iBooks Author in any format other than Apple's proprietary one. This is part of a disturbing trend in online communication where social networking and other services increasingly restrict or make claims on the media that their users create. Increasingly, the writing we do online is not our own, and, rather than taking the opportunity to open up that ecosystem to more participation, Apple has chosen to restrict it.

This is an area of grave concern. While it is true that the web has democratized publication and the new popularity of eReaders has lowered the barriers for independent authors to compete with major publishers, when this process comes at the cost of giving away our rights as writers, we should be extremely wary of what we are giving away and the long-term effects of those actions. iBooks Author has a lot of promise, but, at least for now, that promise is greatly diminished by the restrictions Apple has placed on the program.

Banner image credit: margot.trudell http://www.flickr.com/photos/margottrudell/3212165890/

The problem of forced evictions is turning for the worse in Cambodia while citizen dissatisfaction over existing resettlement schemes is also rising. While land grabbing is a nationwide problem, it's most evident in the urban areas. In fact, residents of Monivong Hospital, Sombok Chap, Dey Kraham, Group 78, Borei Keila, and Boeung Kak have been evicted already from their homes.

The recent record of forced eviction, which grabbed global attention, happened in Borei Keila, located opposite Bak Tuok High School in central Phnom Penh. This community is home to roughly 1,776 families, including 86 families with members who are HIV positive.

A press statement issued by human rights organization Licadho gives a brief history of the struggle of the residents of the community to assert their land and housing rights:

Demolition in Borei Keila. Photo from blog of Faine Greenwood

Villagers first settled on the land, which was the site of a police training facility, in 1992.

In early 2003, a “land-sharing” arrangement was proposed for Borei Keila, which allowed a private company to develop part of the area for commercial purposes while providing alternative housing to the residents on the remaining land. The idea was hailed because rather than being evicted, villagers would receive compensation for their land in the form of apartments in newly-constructed buildings.

In June 2003, Prime Minister Hun Sen authorized a social land concession for approximately 4.6 hectares of Borei Keila (30% of the total 14.12 hectares of land). Construction giant Phanimex company was contracted by the government to construct 10 apartment buildings on 2 hectares of land for the villagers, in return for obtaining ownership of an additional 2.6 hectares for commercial development.

By May 2007, the Phnom Penh municipality had allocated apartments to only 335 families, including 14 HIV/AIDS-affected families. More than 100 other families, their houses demolished to clear space for new apartment buildings, were left living under tarpaulins in squalid conditions.

In June 2009, 20 HIV affected families in the community were forced to leave their homes and were relocated to Tuol Sambo village of Khan Dangkor, about 20 kilometers outside of the capital. This was strongly condemned by both local and international rights groups as the relocation site was not suitable for human habitation. Moreover, those with HIV were isolated in a remote part of the area which made them more vulnerable to discrimination and social stigmatization.

This case was amply documented in a human rights portal, Sithi.

Phan Imex, the company whose contract with the government was to build ten apartments for villagers, managed to build only eight buildings leaving roughly 300 Borei Keila families excluded from the original agreement. Last month, the company demolished the houses of these ‘excluded' residents with the help from the armed forces. The demolition and dispersal became violent.

Immediately after the incident, a joint statement was issued by several civil society organizations which strongly condemned the violent destruction of the homes:

The destruction of these homes marks yet another sad turn for a development that was once promoted as a model alternative to the eviction and off-site relocation of the Phnom Penh's urban poor.

The statement accused the police of doing nothing to stop the violent demolition of homes:

The demolition was carried out by Phanimex employees and paid workers alongside an excavator, which crushed houses before residents had the opportunity to clear out their belongings. The process was overseen by over 100 mixed police forces who arrested and detained eight community representatives, including one minor who were taken to the main police commissioner and three bodyguards who were taken to an unknown location. Police also fired tear gas and live ammunition on the residents of Borey Keila.

Human rights monitors on site witnessed workers using a jackhammer to break up a large rock surrounding a group of police officers, who then took the stones and threw those at residents. Some also attacked residents with sticks. At least 12 people were injured including one policeman, some seriously.

Human Rights Watch reported that more than 64 people were injured and eight residents were detained:

“State security forces that were present used tear gas and rubber bullets against the residents, and both sides threw rocks, sticks, and bottles. More than 64 people were reportedly injured. The authorities arrested at least eight of the residents, one of whom was released on bail on January 18 while seven remain in detention. These eight residents, including two children, have all been charged under both article 218 (“intentional acts of violence with aggravating circumstances”) and article 504 (“obstruction of public officials with aggravating circumstances”) of the Cambodian penal code.

After the dispersal, there have been a series of peaceful protests by the community demanding the intervention of national government officials. They want the government to halt the demolitions and to release the detained protesters. A letter was also sent to to the Cambodian Prime Minister urging the leader to resolve the Borei Keila issue.

Early this month, about 100 residents from Borei Keila and 50 from Beoung Kak who were marching on Monivong Boulevard were blocked by more than 100 riot police personnel and a violent clash took place. Witnesses saw the police pushing six women into a police van, according to an article reported by the Cambodia Daily.

The arrested six female protesters were released after an overnight detention. City Hall then defended its action to arrest the female protesters

Phnom Penh Capital Hall has no other choice but to take an appropriate counter measure in order to maintain public security, safety and order for people in Phnom Penh so that laws can be effectively enforced as a principle of the rule of law can be applied.

Land grabbing has also spurred the rise of activism in many rural and urban communities. In one instance, land rights activists organized an ‘Avatar' rally to oppose the planned destruction of a forested area. The issue also prompted several groups to highlight the suffering of women and children during evictions

It gave the women a platform where they could tell the world about the suffering involved in forced evictions and sent a clear call to government officials to take immediate action on the ongoing scandal of forced evictions and land grabbing in the country.

Written by Sopheap Chak · comments (0)
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This post is part of our special coverage Europe in Crisis.

They call themselves “the children” of 15M despite the fact that the majority of them far exceed the age of 60, they are retired, they are “iaios” (grandparents, in Catalan) and they are veterans of long-term activism.

Celestino Sánchez, Antonia Jover, Adrián Rísquez, and Rosario Cunillera are some of the members of the the “Iaioflautas,” a collective that emerged in Barcelona last October alongside the camping grounds in Plaza Catalunya.  Its objective is to support the youth in their own way. But the fight, they assert, is the same: “for a dignified democracy by name and social justice against conspiratorial bankers and politicians.”

The “iaioflautas,” whose name was invented in solidarity with the “perroflautas” (gutter punks) — a derrogatory term with which the president of Madrid used to refer to the young occupiers — combine some of the methods they used in the anti-Franco, labor union, local or leftist fights with their learning about new technologies. To summarize, they organize a “direct action” in the street once a month, almost in secret, and do not announce it on their Twitter account, @iaioflautas, or blog [es] until it has already begun. That way, they avoid problems with the police.

The first event took place in November, when they occupied a Santander Bank office in Barcelona.  The most recent one, called “Operation #RebelionBus,” occurred on Wednesday, February 1. Some 70 “yayos” (grandparents) arranged to meet in the very center of the Catalan capital and “hijacked” a bus in protest of the abusive increase in public transportation fares.

They chose Line 47, in reference to the missing bus driver and syndicalist Manuel Vital [es] that hijacked a bus on this line in May of 1978 to demonstrate that he could get to his neighborhood. The following is part of a series of tweets that they started writing a few days before with the help of young activists:

January 30:

@iaioflautas: #eldía1F los @iaioflautas vamos a hacer algo muy loco. (puenting…como que no). Filosofía #occupy 99% ¿Le dais un meneito? Gracias!

@celescolorado: Miércoles 1 por la mañana nueva travesura de @iaioflautas, síguenos

January 31:

@iaioflautas: Tic-tac, tic-tac…cuenta atrás para una travesura más. Será #eldia1f ¡especuladores, os vais a enterar! Somos el 99%. No olvidamos.

February 1:

@iaioflautas:  En marcha! Hoy será un día largo. No olvidéis el bocadillo, medicaciones varias… Hoy entramos en acción. ¡Atentos!

@iaioflautas: Calentando motores, q frío que hace!

@iaioflautas: Hemos ocupado un autobús, el 47, en pl. Catalunya. Somos más de 70 @iaioflautas, la acción ha empezado, seguidnos en #rebelionbus

@iaioflautas: [Calle] Industria con Sardenya. Que se escuche: rechazamos las reducciones de tarifas y el plan de recortes salariales #rebelionbus

@iaioflautas: Aquí podéis ver algunas fotos de #rebelionbus. Vamos por Ronda Guineueta. Estamos ocupando el bus 47 http://www.iaioflautas.org/2012/02/operacio-rebelionbus/

@iaioflautas: Bueno, el trayecto de ida ha acabado. Ahora, volviendo para la Plaza Catalunya. Sobre las 12:30 haremos una asamblea allí #rebelionbus

@iaioflautas: Final del trayecto mañanero de la #rebelionbus. La lucha continúa con #yonopago esta tarde. pic.twitter.com/8GaRmzSw

@celescolorado: En la asamblea final en pz. Catalunya @iaioflautas hemos cantado el cumpleaños feliz a un compañero, Manolo González cumplía 80 años

And here is the video that @15Mbc_tv recorded and edited:

The #RebeliónBus operation had been prepared a week before, during a meeting I attended.  I had been following the Iaioflautas for some time online, and I wanted to get to know them.  There they finalized the details of the action and began planning the “prank” that they will carry out in March.  This is part of what some of them told me:

Celestino Sánchez, 61 years old:  

Celestino. (Screen shot taken by the author)

El 15M representó para gente como nosotros una especie de aire fresco. La situación ha cambiado y hay un nuevo escenario y tenemos que volver a aprender. Eso no quiere decir que nuestro pasado no sirva, pero las cosas son diferentes. Por ejemplo, hace diez años era impensable que se convocara a través de las redes sociales la ocupación de la plaza Catalunya. Se decía que la gente joven no hacía nada, y hace, hace mucho. La gente de las generaciones futuras vivirá peor que la del pasado, ese es otro cambio. Lo que creo que no ha cambiado son los objetivos: una sociedad en las que las personas podamos vivir libremente, que tengamos vivienda, transporte, que estudiemos. Eso lo queríamos hace treinta años y ahora también, sigue siendo vigente. 

Antonia Jover, 72 years old:

Antonia. (Screen shot taken by the author)

Me gusta mucho esta forma de lucha, porque pienso que es una forma directa y, además, responde a la concepción que siempre he tenido de la democracia. La democracia es poder del pueblo, ningún gobierno puede ser democrático, porque los gobiernos son represivos. La verdadera democracia está en el pueblo y en la vigilancia del pueblo de que los gobiernos cumplan lo que prometen. Los iaioflautas podemos aprovechar las experiencias que teníamos del franquismo. Entonces los que queríamos una sociedad democrática teníamos un enemigo común, el franquismo, un sistema bárbaro y represivo. Y ahora, ¿por qué no hacer una misma experiencia de la unidad contra los especuladores y los financieros? Nos afecta al 99% de la población y sólo es el 1% el que se beneficia. Ésta es la idea.”

Adrián Rísquez, 77 years old:

Adrián. (Screen shot taken by the author)

En los iaioflautas me siento muy bien. Llevo cinco años encerrado en la Federación de Asociaciones de vecinos hablando de la sanidad sin salir a la calle y como nuestra trayectoria fue en la calle, dentro de los locales no me aguantaba. Con los iaios hacemos lo que me gusta, en la calle, porque lo hicimos en aquellos tiempos y lo estábamos echando en falta. Decíamos que era necesario que la juventud saliera a la calle, pues ya está en la calle y ahora lo que tenemos que hacer es estar con ellos, que ellos aprendan de nosotros y nosotros de ellos. No se puede estar en casa porque las cosas que tenemos no las hemos conseguido en casa. La sanidad pública se consiguió en la calle y tenemos que conseguir en la calle para que no nos la quiten.

Rosario Cunillera, 66 years old:

Rosario. (Screen shot taken by the author)

Todo empezó cuando fuimos a la plaza Catalunya a ver a los jóvenes y saber qué pensaban. No entramos en su lucha, porque, para mí, era totalmente diferente a cuando vine a Barcelona, a los 18 años, a luchar contra Franco. Pero fue un impulso nuevo. Ellos van a encontrar su forma de luchar, pensé, con el Twitter y todo esto. Y me apunté a los iaioflautas y cada vez que hay algo de los jóvenes, procuramos ir. Los jóvenes del 15M nos han dado un poco de ilusión y eso es algo que nos faltaba a la gente mayor.

This post is part of our special coverage Europe in Crisis.

Written by Lali Sandiumenge · Translated by Marianna Breytman · View original post [es] · comments (0)
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A few months ago, Mike Hanson and I started meeting with James, Paul, Greg, and others on the Google Chrome team. We had a common goal: how might web developers build applications that talk to each other in a way that the user, not the site, decides which application to use? For example, how might a major news site provide a “share” button that connects to the user’s preferred sharing mechanism? Not everyone uses the same top-three social networks, yet users are constantly forced to search for their preferred service within a set of publisher-chosen buttons. That leads to undue centralization and significantly undercuts innovation and user choice. How incredibly inelegant!

We figured that, with a bit more browser smarts, we could do better.

to the design studio!

Mike and I proposed Web Activities, and put together a screencast.

The Google team proposed Web Intents, and put together a far more complete proposal.

Techcrunch covered our collaboration.

While all this was happening, the always amazing Tyler Close, of Web Introducer fame and also from Google, was whispering in our ears “Guys, I think you’re doing it wrong. It’s over-engineered. We can do simpler.” We all ignored him. I think that was a mistake. Tyler was right. Web Activities was over-engineered. And, I fear, Web Intents is too.

(Tantek also deserves credit for pointing out that we can do simpler.)

the glaring inconsistency

Web applications already have a mechanism for communicating with other web applications loaded within the same browser: postMessage. It isn’t perfect, but it works, and it is flexible enough that much innovation has been built on it. Google, Microsoft, Facebook all use it, oftentimes for embedding widgets within other pages, each in a very different way. At Mozilla, we use postMessage extensively for BrowserID, and we’ve built nice abstractions on top of it, like winchan to consistently build a message channel to a new popup window (including all IE workarounds).

postMessage is a very simple, very Webby, and very generative: it’s easy to build new ideas on top of it. It doesn’t care about mime types, dialogs, callbacks, etc. It’s just a simple, authenticated message channel. The only reason postMessage isn’t enough to do what we need is that the sender and receiver are, for the most part, tightly coupled. The sender has to specify its receiver, which means the user can’t easily step in and substitute the endpoint of her choice. postMessage tightly couples the sender and receiver of the channel. We’d like a loose coupling, where the user gets to mix and match senders and receivers.

So wait, if that’s the only gap, then why are we proposing a completely different approach to cross-application messaging? Why should tight and loose coupling of messaging channels be implemented in completely different ways? Given that the postMessage abstraction has been so successful and useful, the “right” way to move forward is to tweak it, minimally, not to redesign a different stack.

a minimalist way forward

A minimalist way forward is to use postMessage as is, and to provide only the bits necessary to enable loose coupling.

Here, Tyler comes to the rescue again. He proposed, in one of the last chats we had with Google, using custom protocol handlers as the target of postMessage channels. So, when a major news site wants to share an article, rather than postMessage’ing (or linking) to http://twitter.com/, it can use the one-indirection-away URL share://.... The browser can then jump in and substitute the user’s preferred implementation of a sharing provider at that custom protocol handler. Everything else, linking or communicating via postMessage, is then the same.The only difference is, there’s one level of indirection to give the user a chance to step in and say “that service, please.”

What’s even more interesting is that we already have basic mechanisms for sites to register themselves as custom protocol handlers: registerProtocolHandler. The current mechanisms aren’t quite good enough yet, but the tweaks we would need are far simpler than building a whole new messaging stack. Mozilla’s own Austin King has prototyped what some of these tweaks might look like using a JavaScript shim, and the results are surprisingly useful with only minor tweaks.

another minimalist approach

There’s also Ian Hickson’s proposal, which is a little bit different than using protocol handlers and has some nice properties. It’s quite similar to Tyler’s proposal in one key way: do the smallest amount of work to set up a message channel, and get out of the way. Mark Hammond has prototyped Ian’s proposal, and it looks like it can be nicely shimmed in pure JavaScript (with just one tweak to the API that’s probably worth considering even for the native implementation.) I like this proposal, too, and I wonder if it could be made to work with custom protocol handlers, which have a nice URL-based architecture.

so now what?

I propose that we stop for a second on the Web Intents discussion and ask ourselves: maybe we’ve been over-engineering this. Maybe we don’t need mime types and new HTML elements and new DOM properties, etc. Maybe there’s a much easier, good-enough solution, based on proven technology, with only minor tweaks to well-understood code paths. It won’t be perfect, we’ll probably need some JS libraries to make things more convenient for developers, but that’s okay. That’s better for the Web. Keep the platform simple, leave the real innovation to the edges.

I believe Web Intents, as currently proposed, are over-engineered. So are Web Activities. But it’s not too late to correct course. Let’s figure out the simplest way to involve the user in choosing an application, set up a message channel, and get out of the way.

South African newspapers ran a story recently about a South African woman who was racially abused in public at the Virgin Active gym in Morningside, Johannesburg. The story has caused a public outcry on social media which resulted in Virgin Active re-opening the investigation into the incident.

Memeburn reported:

The Virgin Active franchise of gyms has reopened an investigation into a racist incident which allegedly occurred during a class at one of its clubs, following pressure on social media.
The incident in question reportedly occurred late last year. During a spinning class one member allegedly took offence to another’s enthusiasm calling her a “bloody k*****, a cockroach and a selfish bitch”.

The woman had reportedly been shouting “Yebo” (meaning “yes” in a number of South Africa’s indigenous languages) as the instructor put them through the various exercises.The two parties were then supposed to meet up, with the man being ordered to apologise to the woman. He then reportedly said that he would not be able to make the arranged meeting.

According to the woman, however, the man saw her at the club on the day in question but refused to speak to her.
Speaking to national newspaper The Star, the woman said that Virgin Active’s disciplinary committee had repeatedly questioned her account as her alleged attacker was a lawyer and that if she was found to be lying her gym contract would be terminated.
Virgin Active’s Karen Gordon, meanwhile, told The Star that “the member that allegedly misbehaved also received formal correspondence…which included a final warning”.

That, it seems, is where Virgin Active would have left the matter had it not received national media attention.

@ComicalTshepo at a Virgin Active Gym in South Africa Virgin Active waiting for the moment to shout 'YEBO' (a Zulu word meaing Yes). Photo courtesy of @ComicalTshepo.

Media reports resulted in an outcry on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, Virgin Active backtracked and decided to re-open the issue. This also resulted in other people coming forward about similar incidents.

Even Virgin Head, Richard Branson decided to respond:

We do not condone any form of discrimination at Virgin - especially racism. We are taking this incident extremely seriously and intend to look at all the facts to reach the right outcome for all parties concerned. Ross Faragher-Thomas, Virgin Active South Africa’s Managing Director, is investigating the whole incident personally and is meeting the two members next week to make sure we look at the facts and are fair to everyone who is involved. A meeting was also conducted with both members on Saturday, and the member apologised to the other.

However, we do not condone members or anybody else abusing each other in any way and intend to reinvestigate this incident fully.

I have been to South Africa on many occasions and been inspired by the many wonderful people I have met there. As Jonathan Jansen said: “My South Africa is…often unseen, yet powered by the remarkable lives of ordinary people. It is the citizens who keep the country together through millions of acts of daily kindness.”

We intend to get to the bottom of this incident and I want to repeat that we will not tolerate any form of prejudice.

Facebook users commented on Virgin Active Facebook page following Richard Branson statement. Anne Barker responded:

I don't think your response is strong enough Mr Branson. Your MD here should have spoken up straight away, suspended the manager of the Sunninghill and blocked the membership of the person who spoke so shockingly to a woman. The millions of acts of kindness become nullified by one racist bigot.

Khanyisa Vuyokazi Mbassa felt that:

Apartheid still lives in this country, all the that the democracy did was to give Black south africans freedom to retaliate without fear of being incarcerated.

The South African blogosphere was not behind. Kaloo5 note that:

So Virgin Active were rather inactive in their response and handling of the matter, possibly hoping that it would simply go away. Kudos to Liz Hleza for insisting her story be told, and not taking the abuse lying down.

Tarryn observed that the incident was not about race:

The fact remains. This was about inappropriate behaviour, not about race. It’s sad how easy it is to start a racial war in this country. More tolerance, people. It’s the only way we’ll survive.

Pierre De Vos looked at the incident from a legal and constitutional perspective:

However, regardless of whether one follows the stricter definition of discrimination provided in the definitions section of PEPUDA or whether one follows the provisions of section 7, the Virgin Active gym might well be found guilty of unfair discrimination.

Meanwhile we await word from Virgin Active to see whether the publicity might have shamed it into taking this reported incident as seriously as it deserves. If it does not, Hleza might well want to take both the abuser and Virgin Active to the Equality Court.

On Twitter @PabiMoloi said:

@PabiMoloi: I'm proud that the Mama spoke up about the racist attack at Virgin Active. There is still deep racism in South Africa. Don't be fooled.

@Eusebius felt that:

@Eusebius: The acid test of whether you TRULY ‘get race' is whether you got angry as you read that article about the racism incident at Virgin Active

@KimSchulze urged virgin active members to protest:

@KimSchulze: I would like to urge every virgin active class-taker tonight, to yell out “YEBO!” in protest against the forty other Spinners who failed to

Some users such as @ComicalTshepo took up the challenge and decided to yell “Yebo” in protest:

At a spin class at Virgin Active waiting for my big moment to shout ‘YEBO'. Wish me luck

@anele wanted to know the culprit's name:

@anele: Dear Virgin Active, as a kaffir I would like to know this guys name just so us kaffirs know to not make the mistake of dealing with him

Written by Ismail Dhorat · comments (0)
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Luis Alberto Spinetta, “El Flaco“, one of the most influential rock musicians in Argentina, died on February 8, 2012, as a result of illness; Spinetta had lung cancer, diagnosed in July, 2011. His condition became public when, towards the end of the year, he addressed his fans with an emotional letter [es] that began like this:

Buenos Aires. Diciembre 23, 2011. Mi nombre es Luis Alberto Spinetta. Tengo 61 años y soy músico. Desde el mes de julio sé que tengo cáncer de pulmón. Estoy muy cuidado por una familia amorosa, por los amigos del alma, y por los mejores médicos que tenemos en el país. Ante el aluvión de información inexacta, quiero aclarar públicamente las condiciones de mi estado de salud. Me encuentro muy bien, en pleno tratamiento hacia una curación definitiva. […]

Luis Alberto Spinetta, by Facundo M. Nívolo. Image licensed by Creative Commons license Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

In January, Spinetta was admitted to the Cemic Institute to undergo surgery for intestinal perforation due to diverticulitis, a diagnosis unrelated to his cancer. On January 30, after 25 days in hospital, he was discharged and was able to go home.

On February 8, just over a week later, “El Flaco” died at home, surrounded by his children: Dante, Catarina, Valentino and Vera,  according to [es] the Argentine newspaper Telám. And it was his children themselves who started a wave [es] of messages full of melancholy, sadness and pain, expressed on the social network Twitter. [translator's note: all Twitter links are in Spanish]

Dante (@dantespinetta), in a brief but very profound tweet said [es]:

Te amo por siempre Papá.

While Valentino (@Leeva_) posted [es] on his account:

T amo papá, siempre vas a estar en mi alma y mi corazón.

Quoting a line from her father, Catarina (@Cataspinetta) also tweeted [es]:

‘No habrá un destino incierto, ni habrá distancia que pueda alejarme de ti…' Amor eterno a mi Padre♥

Reactions on social networks

The hashtag #chauflaco [goodbye Flaco] quickly became a trending topic, gathering the tweets of those users wanting to express their emotions with the news of the death of a musician with one of the longest careers in Argentine rock:

User Paula Castro (@_paucastro) reflected:

La tristeza de decir #chauflaco .. Gracias x tanta poesia!

Technology writer Federico Wiemeyer (@wiemeyer) recalled a verse by Spinetta:

“Si no canto lo que siento me voy a morir por dentro” #ChauFlaco

Pablo Ferreyra (@PabloRFerreyra) mourned:

Murió el mejor músico argentino. El que más voy a extrañar. Barro tal vez, flaco. #ChauFlaco

User Bruno Vaccotti (@peztresojos) quoted Spinetta to explain popular sentiment:

“La gente está incluida en el alma. Yo soy toda la gente” #elflaco dixit. Por eso hoy, todos morimos un poco. #chauflaco

Paula Zuviría (@pau_apichela) related an anecdote:

Mama entra llorando a mi cuarto y me dice: Porque no me contaste que murió Spinetta ? #chauflaco

User Cecilia Ann Tosh (@_CeciliaAnn) reflected:

Por qué se puede estar acongojado por la muerte de alguien que no conociste? Porque su obra enriqueció tu ser. #ChauFlaco

Messages from Twitter netizens are flowing [es] in at a rate that probably won't slow down in the coming days or weeks, which is understandable since Luis Alberto Spinetta is considered by many the greatest exponent of music in Argentina. And while such a statement is completely subjective, it is undeniable that his work has greatly influenced the work of many musicians, and his legacy will always be part of the heart of Argentina and Latin American culture.

“And this is always true, whether you are staying or you are going.”

Written by Natán Calzolari · Translated by Betsy Galbreath · View original post [es] · comments (0)
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South Korean prosecutors indicted a photographer and freedom-of-speech activist last week on charges of violating national security law, for retweeting messages posted by an official North Korean government Twitter account. Despite the international media's widespread coverage, the case went seriously under-reported in South Korean media.

This case has sparked another round of debate on the controversial national security law, which prohibits “acts benefiting the enemy” without specifying what constitutes such acts.

Controversial tweets

Park Jung-geun, 23, was detained last month, but the incident actually goes back to September 2010, when police raided his photo studio in Seoul. According to one news report [ko], Park, from 2010 March to January 2011, with his two Twitter accounts (@seouldecadence, @dprkdecadence), retweeted about 102 messages originally tweeted by North Korean Twitter account @uriminzok. He also tweeted 30 links that led to North Korean video content.

Twitter profile image of user @windburial, the user switched to this image created by Park in order to show his support to Park.

The overall number of Park's “problematic” tweets is 384, which is only about 0.5 per cent of his entire tweets. In his trial, these tweets were depicted as “an expression of an agreement with the enemy's (referring to North Korea) propaganda” and were accused of “promoting the enemy's messages”.

Park claimed his retweets were a joke made to lampoon the North Korean regime and explained that the misunderstanding rose from reading his tweets out of context.

For instance, Park tweeted a tweaked image of a North Korean poster (see right). Using a typically North Korean poster, which are usually aggressive, warmongering and whose major color is red, Park replaced the soldier's face with his own face and the rifle with a bottle of whisky.

In another example, Park compared himself to North Korea's new heir, Kim Jong-un, since like Kim, he had ‘inherited' something from his father, which in Park's case is a photo studio.

South Korean media silence

What has baffled South Koreans however, is that although the police raided Park's studio last year and there has been quite strong opposition against the case online (including the creation of Internet photo memes of Park), recent updates have mostly come from the international media. Until local media reported about this unusual flow of information, Park's indictment was fairly new to the South Korean general public.

Hong Sung-soo (@sungsooh) tweeted [ko]:

“北 풍자한 박정근이 이적행위?”…외신 일제히 비판 : bit.ly/yK0WtI 뉴욕타임스, 워싱턴포스트, AP, AFP, UPI, CBS, MSNBC, 더 오스트레일리안, BBC… 외신보도 슈퍼 그랜드슬램 달성!!

A journalist from progressive newspaper, Huh Jae-yeon (@welovehani) tweeted [ko]:

우리만 보도안하고 있음

A Twitter account has been set up to support Park (@freepark_bot), summarizing[ko] in just one sentence what his real charge is:

박정근의 죄목: 트위터로 이것저것 한 거

Internet photo meme

Here are some of the meme photos produced back in September 2011, consolidated by Wiki Tree: firstly, starting with Park's original Twitter profile photo:

Park's original Twitter profile image, Image from his account @seouldecadence

Profile image of Twitter user @blu_pn. Posted on Wiki Tree site, CC

The image above shows Park's image with him holding a large blue pen. The tweet [ko] read:

Some of the messages from the Wiki Tree link [ko] read…

Twitter user @yawoori [ko]:

우리 모두는 박정근이다!

Twitter user @Chocoberryp [ko]:

프로필 제 사진 아닙니다. ‘국가보안법 위반'이라는 이유로 박정근님에 대한 압수수색에 항의하는 의미에서 수많은 사람들이 프로필에 박정근을 자처하고 있습니다.

Various Internet meme photos of Park Jung-geun, Posted in the Wiki Tree site, CC

Twitter user @Solidaritat [ko]:

이토록 많은 박정근을 죄다 가두지는 못할 것이며, 또 이토록 많은 박정근으로 인해 그 한 명의 박정근은 반드시 자유로워질 것이다. 필시 그리될 것이다.

Rights advocates, including Amnesty International, released a statement to voice worries that the law “has a chilling effect on freedom of expression in South Korea” and “is used not to address threats to national security, but instead to intimidate people and limit their rights to free speech”.

Park's socialist party filed an online petition [ko] denouncing such decision as “an abuse of the national security law which is an icon of the military, authoritarian regime era”.

The remaining problem is that still a considerable number of Korean public are in support of this controversial law under which a considerable number of innocent citizens have been arrested and detained. Kim Nakho (@capcold), who has a Twitter profile photo that tweaked Park's profile image, tweeted [ko]:

어처구니없는 박정근 구속…보다 그에 관한 외신보도 때문에 급 조명받는 시대착오 국보법. 이왕 관심 가진 김에, 왜 그게 지금껏 살아있는지에 대해도 관심을. 국보법 없으면 국가보안 망한다 믿는 평범한 많은 이들의 학습능력 결여된 지지 말이다.

Written by Lee Yoo Eun · comments (0)
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An interview in EngageMedia showcases KOMAS, an organization in Malaysia that since 1993 has been using video production as a tool to educate and advocate for human rights.

Anna Har is the director of Pusat KOMAS (Pusat Komunikasi Masyarakat) Community Communication Centre, and she explains the role video has in their outreach programs where they produce resource materials, facilitate processes, organize communities and give media training on the topics of  non-discrimination, citizenship and voter education, as well as grassroots advocacy:

KOMAS is not a video production house nor do we specialise in producing films; rather, we see it as part of the strategic and creative use of media tools for the advocacy of human rights.

Freedom Film Fest by KOMAS

Between Love and Race is a short film focusing on racial discrimination, produced by KOMAS on 2006. In it, Angela and Rashid face backlash from friends and family because they've decided to date each other. Angela's parents object because they wanted her to date a Chinese boy,

Rashid's mother wishes he dated a nice Malaysian girl, as do Rashid's friends. Angela's friend Yati at least speaks Mandarin since she went to a Chinese school, so even among Yati's friends, Angela is singled out for not speaking her family's language.

Angela comes to discover that through labels, stereotypes, discrimination and expectations on race and love, what maters is how she and Rashid feel about each other.

In addition, KOMAS has also been running the human rights documentary festival FreedomFilmFest in Malaysia since 2003.  The festival includes a documentary film competition where a first time film maker can pitch a proposal that they'll be able make into a documentary if they win, video workshops and film screenings; and it has become a platform for showcasing human rights documentaries  that may not have enough commercial backing or space in mainstream media to get otherwise exposed.  The 2012 FFF will be on the subject of Democracy, with the slogan of “Democracy – Who is the boss?”

The 2011 festival trailer gives us a perspective on the types of issues and topics the film festival promotes:

One of the 2011 winners of the documentary competition include Afiq Deen, who directed Huruf J, a short documentary on the hardships and discrimination faced by divorcees in Malaysia. A society that sets them apart for their condition, debt, poverty and a legal system which is unable to enforce fathers' financial obligations with their children are some of the hurdles these women have to face when trying to move on with their lives. The film includes some subtitles and audio in English.

With the online premiere of the documentary, the FreedomFilmFestival is asking you to view and review the documentary so they can add the opinions on their site.

Written by Juliana Rincón Parra · comments (0)
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In China, all conventional media outlets are under the direct leadership of Chinese Communist Party (CCP). A CCP secretary is planted in every media organization to oversee the content and give direction to the editors and reporters what to highlight and what to censor. Same arrangement would be introduced to the governing of micro-blogging platforms such as Sina and Tencents Weibo, according to the report from United Daily News [zh] on June 6, 2012.

The report said, after the Lunar Chinese New Year, the CCP propaganda department issued a notice to major Weibo portals including Sina, Tencents, NetEase, Sohu and etc. that soon after the real name registration implemented, the CCP would set up a division within these portals to oversee the content management. The party division will make sure orders from the propaganda department and state information office be effectively implemented. A special budget would be allocated for the control over micro-blogging platform.

A source told the United Daily News that the Weibo mobilization on train accident in Wenzhou, the anti PX chemical factory protest in Dalian and Wukan uprising has alerted the CCP. The CCP division in Weibo portal is to make instant decision on content filtering. With the implementation of real name registration, the police division will track information source and take crackdown action. In case of emergency, the CCP division will force the platforms to go offline, the report said.

Written by Oiwan Lam · comments (0)
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According to the blog of GreenBox NGO, Skopje's city government is not interested in providing funds for the online system that informs citizens about the current levels of air pollution.

The automatic system for measuring pollution, located in the center of Skopje, caused quite a stir when it reported alarming levels of air pollution last year.

Some observers related the presence of the cancerous PM10 dust particles to the government-funded construction boom in the Center municipality, which had been turned into a giant construction site through the Skopje 2014 project. The surrounding area is also an epicenter of the activities of the so-called “urban mafia” that uses connections within the local government to change zoning laws and convert public parks, parking lots and small houses to huge and profitable apartment blocks, office spaces and shops.

The “Skopje Breathing” online system [mk], owned by the City of Skopje, stopped functioning at the beginning of January 2011 (1, 2; mk), after several media outlets (1, 2, 3, 4; mk) reported that the air quality was still poor. The webpage displayed this text: “Software upgrade is under way. The application will soon be available.”

Screen shot of Skopje Breething monitoring system, which is 'in construction' since early January 2012.

GreenBox blog posted [mk] the following:

Would you like to know about the quality of the air in the center of Skopje? Then you need to put on your snow shoes, parka, hat, scarf and gloves and trek to Macedonia Street to check the information by looking at the display near the Šmizla [equivalent of the Valley Girl or Barbie-girl stereotype] statue. The website “Skopje Breathing,” which published a live data feed until Christmas [old calendar = Jan 7], is still not working, and most likely will not work in the future.

Air pollution measuring station (right), Šmizla statue (left). Photo by GreenBox blog, republished with permission.

The environmental lab of the company Farmahem, which maintained the system for a year, confirmed that the issue at stake is more than a software upgrade. Their contract has expired, and the City of Skopje has not initiated a renewal. Farmahem allegedly wanted to upgrade the system with a public archive with the measured data, but now the citizens need to turn to the city government, which decides the destiny of this online transparency tool.

The City of Skopje representatives seem totally uninterested in ensuring that the publication of the air quality data online continues. The [City of Skopje's] spokesperson Nedelčo Krstevski says that the website appeared thanks to the initiative and goodwill of the company.

“The website was not ours. At the moment we cannot say whether it depends on us or on Farmahem. For us the important thing is that the measuring stations work and that the citizens can get air quality info from displays on the devices,” Krstevski said.

The City representatives admit that for the “Skopje Breathing” to continue working they would need to start a public procurement procedure, which, according to them, was very complicated and included a public tender. They do not know if that is going to happen.

“I cannot tell you anything now, neither that the site will exist, nor that it won't exist,” said Krstevski.

Through “Skopje Breathing” the citizens learned that the air pollution in the capital was up to 10 times higher than the maximum allowed by law. This resulted in recommendations not to go out at all. After the public pressure forced the city government and the Ministry of Environment to send inspections to the nearby industrial plants, the levels of pollution temporarily dropped. According to the research [mk] by the Institute for Public Health, Skopje could avoid 117 deaths and 420 cases of serious illnesses per year if the concentration of dust dropped by a third of the current levels.

Written by Filip Stojanovski · comments (1)
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Panama went to bed on Saturday February 4, 2012, with the uncertainty as to what would happen on the Panamericana road, where for the fifth day indigenous peoples were spending the night in the middle of the highway and preventing the circulation of vehicles. The latest news stated that mobile phone networks had been shut down in the area of the conflict, leaving protesters and detainees cut off.

La Prensa [es] reported:

Luego de múltiples quejas de los usuarios que han intentado comunicarse con personas en la zona del oriente chiricano en donde está cerrada la vía Interamericana las telefónicas comunicaron que el servicio está suspendido por orden de las autoridades competentes.

Previous experience and the apparent inability of the government to negotiate prompted fears of an inevitable confrontation. On Sunday, the Twitter account of the National Police of Panama (@protegeryservir) [es] reported that it had successfully obtained the release of the “kidnapped” and therefore the re-opening of the Panamericana road.

COMUNICADO N.1: Informamos a la ciudadanía que en 1hora30minutos se logró rescate de todos los secuestrados en Vía Panamericana…

The lack of communication by mobile phone meant that news of the events spread slowly and somewhat strangely. Many rumours surrounding the time and the means taken to open the road spread on social networks. Later on the police confirmed on their Twitter [es] account that a man had died in circumstances which remain unclear:

COMUNICADO N.2: Se confirma el fallecimiento de ciudadano identificado preliminarmente como Jerónimo Montezuma, se investigan las causas…

The opening of the road by force did not bring an end to the problem, but instead unleashed chaos not only on the Panamericana but also in other areas of the country where different groups and unions grouped together to show support for the indigenous people. The violence with which events unfolded was criticised and social networks were filled with photos and videos showing images of the police intervention.

YouTube user hjuonnieful uploaded the following video showing police repression in a hospital on February 5:

On Monday, February 6, streets were closed at various points around the country. The indigenous people also became violent and burnt [es] at least two police stations. Soon a propaganda war began in which the police denied what was being shown in the media and the security minister Raúl Molino criticised the lies which were being told.

The Panamanian blogger “Puppetmaster” complains about this in his blog Oye-pty [es]:

¿Cuál es el afán de la Polícia Nacional, nuestra principal institución de “seguridad”, de desmentir los enfrentamientos entre indígenas y unidades ARMADAS mediante su cuenta de Twitter @ProtegeryServir cuando en realidad si están ocurriendo?  Gracias a Dios la histeria “inncecesaria” que quieren hacer ver que la población crea queda evidenciada en imágenes captadas por los reporteros gráficos, en este caso el excelente trabajo de Eliezer Oses del diario La Estrella en las que se puede ver a un uniformado haciendo uso de su arma de reglamento, aún cuando la Policía lo niega.

In the same way, Joao Q. in his blog Mediocerrado [es] criticises the way in which the security minister has communicated events, and in passing, makes reference to a scandal over the purchase of “overpriced” speed cameras:

Un hombre muere en las protestas. Testigos dicen que de un tiro. Otros tienen evidencias de casquillos de 9mm. Las enseñan en las pantallas. Frente a cámaras de televisión. Ministro niega todo uso de armas de fuego en protestas. Alega que las 9mm no son armas de reglamento policial. Llama mentirosos a los que han hablado de casquillos de este tipo de armas de guerra. Ministro sostiene cara de sarcasmo burlesco mientras dice todo esto en cadena nacional. Su grotesco peinado –black-and-white-pepelepú-style– lo sostiene un fijador muy caro que compró en Italia con dinero de cuestionables fuentes. Uno puede imaginar cosas entre tanta incertidumbre. Pero hay radares que lo indican.

However, there are also those who condemn the behaviour of the indigenous people, as is the case of Luis Felipe Manfredo (@luismanfredo) [es] who suggests that if mining doesn't destroy Panama, the indigenous will:

creo antes ke tal vez lo haga la mineria la destruccion, los mismos indigenas desean destruir a Panama.

Some have also shown their support for the actions of the National Police. For example Clemente Yoell (@CYoell07) [es] thanks the police for fulfilling their constitutional duty:

@protegeryservir ESTAN HACIENDO LO QUE POR LEY LO DEBEN HACER! Felicidades!

On Tuesday, February 7, feelings were still running high although the negotiations which the Panamanians hoped would bring peace had begun.

The indigenous leader Silvia Carrera (@CaciqueGeneral) [es] reported on the beginning of the dialogue with the mediation of the Catholic church on her Twitter account.

Estamos iniciando dialogo con el gobierno en compañía de Monseñor Lacunza y el Padre Adonaí

C. Bernal (@cacike1976) [es], who describes himself in his biography as “A ngäbe father, husband, and someone who is proud of where he comes from”, comments in two Tweets (1 [es], 2 [es]) which forgive the president and ministers for the damage done but which state that it must never be forgotten.

Pueblo ngäbe perdona y no le desea mal a RM (Ricardo Martinelli), su equipo d ministros, unidades policias q asesinaron a nuestros hermanos y a los miles q …

The ngäbe people forgive and wish no harm to RM (Ricardo Martinelli), his team of ministers, the police units who assessinated our brothers and the thousands who…

Nos odian,menosprecian x reclamar lo justo y x el solo hecho d ser ngäbes,perdonados, pero QUEDA PROHIBIDO IGNORAR Y OLVIDAR las injusticias.

By the February 7, a second death was added to the total, a young man of 16 years old, although at the time of writing this post the causes of death are unknown, as La Prensa [es] reports:

Juan José Ibarra, padre de crianza del menor de edad que murió en un incidente confuso en el corregimiento de Las Lomas, provincia de Chiriquí la noche de ayer, pidió este martes, 7 de febrero, que se investigue la muerte de este menor de 16 años.

Finally, at 6pm on Tuesday, February 7, the government gave in to the demands [es] of the Ngäbe Buglé, prohibiting the use of the region for the exploitation of minerals or water. The Panamanians now ask themselves if such doubt and death were necessary in order to reach this agreement. Karla Acedo (@karla_acedo) [es] remains hopeful that a lesson has been learnt:

Ven? eso es sentarse a dialogar, ahora tomen nota y apliquenlo siempre

Written by Ariel Moreno · Translated by Eleanor Staniforth · View original post [es] · comments (0)
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The Federal Trade Commission is the nation's premier privacy enforcer. In the last few years, it has gone after Facebook, Google, Twitter and several other firms for violating consumers' privacy or deceiving them about the degree to which they protect that privacy. To outsiders, the FTC can seem highly secretive - it doesn't announce when it opens an investigation, only when an investigation ends in a settlement, a lawsuit, or a public closing letter.

As a result, although the newspapers and blogs may be filled with stories about a particular privacy firestorm, there is no way to know if the FTC is investigating a company. A year or two later, the FTC might announce a settlement, or, the FTC may quietly close an investigation, without ever tipping the public off to the fact that agency staff spent months investigating the company.

I spent a year working in the FTC's Division of Privacy and Identity Protection between 2009-2010, where I got to assist with several important privacy investigations. I saw first hand how frustrating it is for staff, when advocates, the media and Members of Congress demand that the FTC investigate a company or worse, criticize the FTC for doing nothing, when FTC staff are already several months into a complex investigation.

In order to try and help the general public better understand this topic, I recently sought and obtained (via FOIA) the official Matter Initiation Notices (pdf) filed by FTC staff when they formally opened investigations into all of the major privacy-related cases settled during the past few years.

As these documents show, even the fastest privacy case (Google Buzz) took a year from start to finish, while others, such as Facebook (2.3 years) and ControlScan (2.7 years) took far longer.

The take-home lesson from this data? The FTC's investigations are not quick. Given that there are just a couple dozen attorneys in the Division, this isn't surprising. If we want better (and faster) privacy enforcement, giving the FTC more money to hire additional staff would be a great first step.

Cuban bloggers have been making their feelings known about the impending papal visit to Cuba, their main concern being that the Vatican is putting its stamp of approval on the Castro regime despite regular reports of human rights violations coming out of the island.

In light of new reports of state-sanctioned actions against members of Las Damas de Blanco Last weekend, diaspora blogger Uncommon Sense suggested that:

Pope Benedict XVI should postpone his planned visit in late March to Cuba. The visit was part of a quid pro quo between the regime and the church, but continued repression of women trying to go to Mass should not have been part of the deal.

The blogger also posted a link to an e-Petition soliciting signatures from people who agreed with the postponement of the pontiff's visit “until human rights conditions improve in Cuba”.

Pedazos de la Isla echoed this concern, as he reported on “another Sunday of repression”:

Just weeks before Pope Benedict’s visit to Cuba in March, another Sunday on the island- February 5th 2012- was marked by an excessive level of violence on behalf of the dictatorship against the peaceful Resistance, for simply trying to attend church.

In the city of Holguin, 5 Ladies in White were brutally arrested around 9 in the morning as they tried to reach the Jesus Christ Redeemer of Men Church.

The post went on to detail the kind of violence some of the women testified about:

In Guantanamo, 11 Ladies in White were able to make it to church, despite a constant vigilance. Another 20 Ladies in White assisted mass in the Santuary of El Cobre in Santiago de Cuba. 16 women were arrested as they tried to get to that mass, however, according to the Twitter account of Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia (@jdanielferrer). Among those arrested, according to his Twitter, were Oria Casanova who was “violently arrested, dragged, and beaten by 4 oppressive agents” and Liudmilla Cedeno who was victim of “sexual harassment in the cell where she was being held”. Ferrer Garcia denounced, also through his Twitter, “that is how the henchmen who sustain the Castro brothers are- they beat, sexually assault, and harass defensless women in Cuba”.

The blogger ended by saying:

In Cuba, the Ladies in White and other pro-democracy activists will continue marching, whether Pope Benedict publicly speaks out for them or not.

Speaking out for the Ladies in White is one issue, speaking with them is another. Capitol Hill Cubans reported that:

Last week, the Vatican confirmed meetings with Cuban dictators Raul and Fidel Castro during Pope Benedict XVI's March visit to the island.

Meanwhile, Cuba's courageous Ladies in White have been told to stand idly by as the Pope's agenda is “very heavy” (apparently from meeting with dictators).

How has the Castro regime received this news?

With impunity, of course.

babalu also commented:

Apparently, the Vatican has set aside time during the Pope's visit to Cuba in late March to have the pontiff meet with dictators Fidel and Raul Castro. However, they are not sure if the Pope will have time to meet with the Ladies in White, devout Catholics who are suffering repression, intimidation, beatings, humiliating sexual assaults, and death at the hands of the Castro dictatorship for trying to attend mass every Sunday.

Is it me, or do the Vatican's priorities appear to be backwards?

Iván García, meanwhile, wrote a thoughtful post on “the flirtations of Castro with the Vatican”:

It has been a formidable spin. Pure political juggling. A future strategy.

After a stormy and hostile period against the priests, Catholics and of other religions, where not a few went to jail or were imprisoned in labor camps, Fidel Castro changed his policy of confrontation. It was because of the rise to power by popular and democratic vote of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1971, that Castro was restated his strategy of gunfire toward the Vatican.

Latin America was and is the region with the greatest number of Catholics worldwide. The bearded commander realized at once that any revolution, whether through elections or armed uprising, should begin by acknowledging the role played by priests, bishops and cardinals in a new proposal for social change and advocacy of the always excluded in the hemisphere.

And he began to design a new ideological castling. The Fourth Congress of the Communist Party in 1991, he accepted as members believers of any denomination.

He realized that to subvert, ideas were more important than bullets. And if these ideas were proclaimed from the pulpit…so much the better.

The post continued recounting the chain of events that will culminate in next month's papal visit:

After Castro was on the threshold of death in 2006, his brother, General Raul Castro, took the reins of power and further paved the way to Rome.

When the a political prisoner Orlando Zapata died on February 23, 2010, as a result of a prolonged hunger strike, and the civilized world launched a major campaign against the regime in Havana, due to excessive repression against opponents and the Ladies in White, Castro II knew immediately who to call.

And he called Cardinal Jaime Ortega…The Cardinal would become key political chess piece for the Castro brothers. He was the partner par excellence between government, the militant Ladies in White and the Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos. The talks allowed the release of dissidents who had remained behind bars since the crackdown of March 2003. Someday we will know if Ortega is driven by the hope that the situation in Cuba will lead to a democracy, or other pressures have led him to play a role that some exiled opponents see as cowardly.

What intrigues local observers is whether the conspiracy with the Cuban Catholic Church and the Vatican could lead to a democratic state of law. Or is just a ploy to gain time and give a wider social space to Catholicism in education and health, sectors facing hardships due to the widespread economic crisis in the nation.

Church and state, at least from the Cuban blogosphere's perspective, seem to be irrevocably intertwined.

Written by Janine Mendes-Franco · comments (0)
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This post is part of our special coverage Tunisia Revolution 2011.

In a statement published on its Facebook page, the office of the presidency denied that President Moncef Marzouki, filed a lawsuit against state owned media for referring to him as ”Interim President”.

The statement came in reaction to an article published by Al-Sabah newspaper, claiming that on February 13, a court in Tunisia will issue a verdict about the use of the term “interim” by the state media when referring to the current President Moncef Marzouki and his government.
According to the same source, a lawyer lodged a complaint to the court of first instance of Tunisia, claiming that the use of such a term does not have “a legal basis”.

This is not the first time that the use of term “interim” sparks a debate in Tunisia. Back in January, the Minister of Provisional Justice, and spokesperson of the government, criticized Tunisian media for the use of the word “interim”, claiming that it does not adapt to the current situation”.

In reaction to the complaint a photo with the term "interim" in different languages was created. Image posted to Facebook.

Here are some reactions from the Tunisian Twittersphere, when the news (which then turned out to be rumors) about the President's lawsuit first emerged.

@Tanbirat: Au fait monsieur @Moncef_Marzouki je voulais juste vous dire que vous êtes notre président PROVISOIRE de la république !

@Emnabenjemaa: #Dilou ministre provisoire dans un gouvernement provisoire avec #Marzouki président provisoire

@ahmedchaabane: عجبا في حكومة مؤقتة تقلقها كلمة “مؤقت” أكثر مما يقلقها المليون بطال… #tunisie #tngov #marzouki

@funnypurp: @Moncef_Marzouki et moi je vais porter plainte pour publicité mensongère après avoir voté CPR…

Indeed, those who do not feel at ease with the term “interim”, believe that this government is not interim because it was formed following free and fair elections. On the other hand, the opposition in Tunisia has fears that the current government might stay in power too long - although Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali has recently declared that Tunisia will hold parliamentary and presidential elections within 18 months.

This post is part of our special coverage Tunisia Revolution 2011.

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On February 7, 2012, Walid Bahomane appeared before a court in the Moroccan capital Rabat. The 18-year-old is accused of “defaming Morocco's sacred values” by posting pictures and videos on Facebook mocking king Mohammed VI of Morocco.

This isn't the first time a Moroccan Internet user has faced such charges. In 2008, Fouad Mourtada, a young engineer, was sentenced to three years in prison for impersonating the king’s brother on Facebook. An international outcry and a campaign of support forced the authorities to release Mr Mourtada a month after his arrest.

Walid Bahomane's arrest is the first since a constitutional reform last summer (theoretically) revoked the “sacred” character of the monarch. The king is still, however, the focus of a great deal of devotion in the country.

A copy of the police report filed against Mr Bahomane emerged on the Internet, revealing a first: according to the document, items seized by the police are “two Facebook pages (sic) containing phrases and images insulting the sacred values, and an IBM computer.​​”

Copy of the police report filed against Mr. Walid Bahomane as posted on Facebook.

Despite calls for his release the judge decided to send Walid to a juvenile detention facility near the capital pending his trial. A group of netizens have reacted to the arrest of Mr Bahomane by creating a support group on Facebook called “Mohammed VI, my freedom is more sacred than you!”, where members are invited to publish and share cartoons of the king.

Cartoon representing King Mohammed VI posted on Facebook

The group's preamble reads [ar]:

هذه مجموعة تضامنية مع الشاب وليد بحمان، 18 سنة، معتقل بسجن الأحداث بسلا بتهمة إهانة قداسة محمد السادس على الفيسبوك. فلنثبت لمحمد السادس أن حريتنا أقدس منه

Zineb El Ghazoui, a co-creator of the group, writes on her blog [fr]:

[cette arrestation bat] en brèche la propagande de l'Etat marocain autour du changement et des prétendues avancées démocratiques.

On Twitter, some are timidly following suit. Musique Arabe tweets [fr]:

@MusiqueArabe Opération soutien à Walid Bahomane - publions tous sur nos profils la caricature de notre choix.

Despite the recent constitutional reforms in Morocco the regime does not seem prepared to tolerate any violation of its red lines. In July 2011, a few days after the adoption of the new constitution, a French newspaper, Le Courrier International, was censored [fr] in Morocco because it contained an irreverent caricature of the king.

The independent press has often suffered the wrath of the regime when it dared tackle the sensitive subject of the monarchy. So much so that the Internet seems today the last frontier where most Moroccans can still exercise their right to free expression.

Something Moroccan netizens seem to be fully aware of, inspired by the Arab spring, they seem determined to close ranks and show solidarity with Mr Bahomane.

As a result, exercising censorship will be even more difficult for the regime.

Written by Hisham Almiraat · comments (1)
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On February 7, 2012, Walid Bahomane appeared before a court in the Moroccan capital Rabat. The 18-year-old is accused of “defaming Morocco's sacred values” by posting pictures and videos on Facebook mocking king Mohammed VI of Morocco.

This isn't the first time a Moroccan internet user faces such charges. In 2008 Fouad Mourtada, a young engineer, was sentenced to three years in prison for impersonating the king’s brother on Facebook. An international outcry and a campaign of support forced the authorities to release Mr Mourtada a month after his arrest.

Walid Bahomane's arrest is the first since a constitutional reform last summer (theoretically) revoked the “sacred” character of the monarch. The king is still, however, the focus of a great deal of devotion in the country.

A copy of the police report filed against Mr Bahomane emerged on the internet, revealing a first: according to the document, items seized by the police are “two Facebook pages (sic) containing phrases and images insulting the sacred values, and an IBM computer.​​”

Copy of the police report filed against Mr. Walid Bahomane as posted on Facebook.

Despite calls for his release the judge decided to send Walid to a juvenile detention facility near the capital pending his trial. A group of netizens have reacted to the arrest of Mr Bahomane by creating a support group on Facebook called “Mohammed VI, my freedom is more sacred than you!“, where members are invited to publish and share cartoons of the king.

Cartoon representing king Mohammed VI posted on Facebook

The group's preamble reads [ar]:

هذه مجموعة تضامنية مع الشاب وليد بحمان، 18 سنة، معتقل بسجن الأحداث بسلا بتهمة إهانة قداسة محمد السادس على الفيسبوك. فلنثبت لمحمد السادس أن حريتنا أقدس منه

Zineb El Ghazoui, a co-creator of the group, writes on her blog [fr]:

[cette arrestation bat] en brèche la propagande de l'Etat marocain autour du changement et des prétendues avancées démocratiques.

On Twitter, some are timidly following suit. Musique Arabe tweets [fr]:

@MusiqueArabe Opération soutien à Walid Bahomane - publions tous sur nos profils la caricature de notre choix.

Despite the recent constitutional reforms in Morocco the regime does not seem prepared to tolerate any violation of its red lines. In July 2011, a few days after the adoption of the new constitution, a French newspaper, Le Courrier International, was censored [fr] in Morocco because it contained an irreverent caricature of the king.

The independent press has often suffered the wrath of the regime when it dared tackle the sensitive subject of the monarchy. So much so that the Internet seems today the last frontier where most Moroccans can still exercise their right to free expression.

Something Moroccan netizens seem to be fully aware of. Inspired by the Arab spring, they seem determined to close ranks and show solidarity with Mr Bahomane.

As a result, exercising censorship will be even more difficult for the regime.

Written by Hisham Almiraat · comments (4)
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This post is part of our special coverage Yemen Protests 2011.

Yemen's Vice President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who was unanimously nominated by parliament as the only presidential candidate for Yemen's February 21 elections, has kicked off his campaign. Ironically, its motto is ‘Together to Build the New Yemen' when many Yemenis were excluded from the US/United Nations-backed power transition deal brokered by neighboring Gulf countries.

Those who welcomed the election believe that voting is a step in the right direction for Yemen, to start a “new page” and “avoid getting into war”, albeit under the same regime and using a line that was overused throughout the year of revolution in Yemen.

Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi's campaign poster

The election supporters want Hadi to gain more than 4 million votes because that's what outgoing President Saleh got in the previous election, believing that would give Hadi “more legitimacy”, although he would be president regardless of the vote as per the the GCC brokered deal implementation mechanism, since he was already handed the executive powers.

Tom Finn, a freelance journalist based in Yemen, tweeted:

@tomfinn2: Though there's only 1 candidate most Yemenis I know are pretty positive about the elections, lots of talk of ‘turning a new page'.

He then added:

@gregorydjohnsen @adammbaron A large majority won't vote but I still think there'll be a bigger turn-out than expected..

He estimated the vote turnout to be as low as 15 per cent.

This video which is part of a series posted by YeElection on behalf of the Supreme Committee for Election and Referendum to promote the electoral campaign indicates that every voter has one vote and encourages people to cast their vote, yet it fails to mention that there is also only ONE candidate.

Many neitzens have questioned the point of the election, and thought it ought to be called an appointment or selection instead - since he is the vice president anyway and it is natural for him to rule during the transitional period. They also have argued that there was no need to waste funds on the election campaign and monitors, which are pointless since the result is known beforehand.

Whether Hadi gets one vote or five million, it will not change the outcome, especially when the necessary funds could have been allocated for the relief of other more pressing issues in Yemen. They could have gone to organizations which combat hunger in Yemen and some even suggested that part of of it could have gone to the families of the martyrs and treating the injured.

Facebook pages in Arabic and English were set up by activists to reject and boycott the elections.

Journalist Brian Whitaker tweeted:

@Brian_Whit: An “election” that allows only one candidate is not a real election bit.ly/AflZtW #yemen

He points in his blog:

The “election” itself is illegal and invalid because the Yemeni constitution states very clearly that there must be more than one candidate. Even Saleh accepted that principle in two previous presidential elections (while of course ensuring that opposition candidates never stood a chance of winning).

Here are some of tweets over this very controversial subject.

@The_Wadi tweeted an article that represented both views:

What do Yemenis think of the election? “We'll vote to avoid war.” “Why are there elections if there's no competition?” bit.ly/w2r1PC

@ginnyUK, associate fellow at Chatham House, who runs Yemen Forum, tweeted a genuine concern that many have:

lack of detailed planning for post-Feb 21 military restructuring, national dialogue, constitutional reform gives pause for thought #Yemen

Yemeni @SummerNasser added:

I guess it's up to citizen journalists to write up on the 'selection' (election) in #Yemen..

And Gregory Johnsen, a PHD candidate in Near Eastern studies and close observer of Yemen, tweeted:

@Gregorydjohnsen: Yemen's one-man presidential campaign brought to you by the US and the GCC.

He replied to a tweet teasingly:

Early polls suggest Hadi the favorite RT @Yemen411 Countdown for elections in #Yemen: 15 days & 18 Hours

And replying why there weren't other candidates, he responded:

@abuaardvark Others couldn't get parliamentary support to get on ballot - GCC deal has Hadi taking over, begs the question: why an election?

Adam Baron, @adammbaron, a freelance journalist currently in Yemen, noted:

@abuaardvark @gregorydjohnsen id say b/c elex mean sharia dostooria [translation: constitutional legitamcy], but a 1 man election is actually in violation of #Yemen's constitution

And Iona Craig, @ionacraig, the Times correspondent in Yemen mockingly tweeted:

Remind me. What's the point in having an election campaign when you're the sole candidate and there's no minimum turnout requirement?

@alruwaishan added:

You can argue a lot of things, but one man running against himself being an election is not one of them. #Yemen's “election” is ridiculous.

@al_masani replied:

@alruwaishan when ali saleh was prez AT LEAST he had a candidate running against him. things went from bad to worse 1 candidate? #yemen

@Brian_Whit wondered if Saleh was planning a comeback:

Could Saleh do Putin's trick? RT @ginnyUK: who will replace Hadi as VP when Hadi becomes president? #Yemen

And @SummerNasser concluded with a very likely scenario which many Yemeni would definitely reject:

Let me just give you all a heads up. Hadi will be in place, then in the future Ahmed (Saleh's son) will take over. Mark my words. #BFEY #Yemen

Many Yemenis believe that taking part in this election is pointless since the election results are pre-determined, as was the imposed GCC deal and the immunity it granted Saleh. They doubt that it will bring about any real change in Yemen in the foreseeable future with Hadi, another military man replacing Saleh, and thus that there is no prospect of the civil state which the revolution demanded, especially with Saleh's family still controlling the military apparatus and his regime still intact.

And as @abubakrabdullah points in his post in the Guardian's live blog:

Either way, an end to clashes and the provision of regular electricity, gas and water are more eagerly anticipated in Yemen than an election right now.

This post is part of our special coverage Yemen Protests 2011.

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This post is part of our special coverage Syria Protests 2011/12.

On February 1, 2012, Tunisia, the birthplace of the so-called Arab Spring, has started procedures to expel the Syrian Ambassador in Tunis, and to withdraw recognition of the Syrian regime. That move followed the deadly assault launched on the city of Homs on Friday night, and which resulted in hundreds of deaths according to the Syrian National Council.

The Presidency of the Republic of Tunisia, said in an official statement published on its Facebook page [ar]:

Thank you Tunisia

"Hafedh (father of Bashar Al Assad): May your soul be cursed", written on the door of the Syrian embassy in Tunis. Photograph shared by Facebook page "Union Des Admins Des Pages Tunisiennes"

Netizens from the Arab world, welcomed the step taken by Tunisia, and considered the move as “revolutionary.” Here are some reactions of Arab netizens on the micro blogging website Twitter.

From Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, Ahlam Safi writes [ar]:

Algerian Melissa Rahmouni adds [fr]:

@MelissaRahmouni: Je suis heureuse du soutien de la #Tunisie au combat des syriens pour la #liberté. #syrie

From Kuwait, writer Saadiah Mufarreh tweets [ar]:

And Syrian citizen Geo thanks Tunisia on behalf of the Syrian people:

@CitizenGeo: From #Syria to #Tunisia Thanks for your humanity

Decision divides netizens

Back in Tunisia, the President's decision to break all ties with the Syrian regime, has divided netizens. Those who did not welcome the decision are worried about the safety of Tunisian expatriates in Syria.

@ElyssaDidon tweets [fr]:

@ElyssaDidon: La #tunisie aurait du rapatrier ses siens avant d'expulser l'ambassadeur syrien! #Syrie

@ElyssaDidon: Tunisia should have repatriated its expats before expelling the Syrian ambassador

She adds, in another tweet, defending her opinion:

@ElyssaDidon: J'appuie la decision d'expulser l'ambsdr 2 la #Syrie en #Tunisie msj'aurais préféré la prse 2mesures pr prtger les tunisiens sur plce d'abrd

Blogger and journalist Haythem El Mekki described the decision as “very brave, and very risky”. On his blog, he writes [ar]:

Linda Ben Osman believes that not only the Syrian ambassador, but all ambassadors whose countries committed massacres, and human rights violations need to be expelled. She says [fr]:

Si l'on vire l'ambassadeur syrien pour massacres commis par son pays, il me semble logique que l'on en vire d'autres, à commencer par ceux de tous les pays arabes, et plus spécialement le Qatar et l'Arabie Saoudite, non seulement pour abus commis par leurs pays à l'encontre de leurs peuples et des chiites plus spécifiquement, mais aussi à l'encontre des Bahreïnis aujourd'hui colonisés.

Que l'on vire, l'ambassadeur chinois, pour massacre des tibétains et l'ambassadeur américain, pour massacre des palestiniens, irakiens et afghans pour ne citer qu'eux, et pour torture et abus de pouvoir, et pour maltraitance et violences policières envers les manifestant d'Occupy, pour Guantanamo, et, et, et…

Virons l'ambassadeur français, pays dont le Ministre de l'Intérieur considère que toutes le civilisations ne se valent pas, et qui traite les immigrés illégaux comme des moins que rien.

Virons aussi l'ambassadeur russe pour massacre des tchétchènes…

She adds:

nous, tunisiens révolutionnaires, voulons soutenir tous les peuples lésés par leurs gouverneurs, et si virer les ambassadeurs est la solution adéquate pour montrer notre solidarité , alors soit, virons-les tous!

On Twitter, @tounsiahourra strongly supports the President's decision. She tweets [ar]:

She adds in another tweet [ar]:

And @The_Fan concludes [fr]:

@The_Fan: Je ne comprends pas l'attaque sur la decision diplomatique de la #tunisie, on est quand meme avec la revolution syrienne #syrie non ?

This post is part of our special coverage Syria Protests 2011/12.

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Image courtesy of broodcast, at http://www.flickr.com/photos/nielssienaert/4253272271/.

Most of this report was researched and written by Weiping Li and Mera Szendro Bok, and edited by Sarah Myers.

In the past few weeks, we have witnessed how Internet companies -  the sovereigns of cyberspace - struggle with the conflict between market demands for global expansion and the demands of their users for freedom of expression online. A mark of its rise in global prominence, Twitter announced a decision to block tweets in certain countries to comply with local laws, and Google’s Blogger said that the service is going to restrict content in some countries by redirecting readers to country-specific domains.

Although both companies defended their decisions by pointing out that the transparency of the new policies actually promote free speech and all for continued flow of information in countries where the Internet is controlled, they have triggered fury among netizens who organized protests online. Among the protesters is Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who said he would stop tweeting if Twitter begins censoring. An article in techdirt lamented the possible end of global Internet if other Internet companies follow Blogger and Twitter’s steps to censor content country-by-country.

However, Twitter’s move did receive praise not only from the countries which restrict content, but also from activists who defend free speech. Unsurprisingly, Thailand and China welcomed the decision. Standing on the other side of the spectrum of free speech, Jillian York and Mike Masnick also acknowledged the companies’ efforts to be transparent and to provide users in restrictive online environments ways to skirt the blocks.

Twitter and Blogger are not the first and will not be the last Internet companies practicing geolocational content blockades. As netizens concerned about the fate of Internet freedom, we will keep watching the trend closely and make sure they still stick to the baseline, just as Eva Galperin has suggested.

Below are other trends and stories for the fortnight that you may want to dig into:

Censorship

As mentioned previously, there has been an increased trend in Internet companies complying with the demands and laws of governments in certain countries. The latest example is Facebook's and Google's removal of content deemed “offensive” to comply with an Indian court’s order. At a recent Media Access Project event, Google's Bob Boorstin pointed to India, Korea and Brazil as critical countries in the battle over internet freedom.

In an Index on Censorship interview, Moez Chakchouk, the Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI) chief, discussed how the agency’s role has been transformed from a censorship instrument to a unit which maintains “network neutrality”. The chief also talked about how they are handling censorship machinery passed on from the past regime, and their relationships with the foreign companies whose equipment facilitated the former regime’s censorship.

Faced with criticism for censoring the word “Palestine” in a late-night music show, BBC maintains that it was the right decision, and has insisted that it was improper to express a one-sided political viewpoint during a music show.

Over the past two weeks, several Tibetan blogs have been shut down during fierce protests by the Tibetan people against Chinese rule. Meanwhile, according to a Guardian report, the Chinese government has cut off Internet and phone connections in areas of unrest in Sichuan province.

Also in China, the microblog real-name registration system has resulted in protests over the freedom of speech: several famous Chinese intellectuals who are renowned for their outspoken criticism of the Chinese government closed their Sina microblog accounts because of the tightened controls.

A piece from On the Media reveals the redactions made to Wikileaks documents by the US government in a comparison between the published versions and those recently obtained by the ACLU in a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request.

Surveillance

U.S. congressman Edward Markey proposed a bill to tackle the issue of mobile phone surveillance. According to the draft of the bill, mobile companies should inform consumers that the devices they provide are installed with software like CarrierIQ, which tracks users’ activities on smartphones, and should obtain consumers’ consent before they start monitoring.

A piece by Malicia Rogue on the Global Voices Advocacy blog traces out FBI indicators for terrorism online. According to FBI documents, “attempts to shield the screen from view of others”, or “use of anonymizers, portals, or other means to shield IP address”, show evidence of terrorist activity that should arouse suspicion among FBI officials.

Hawaii’s House of Representatives introduced a bill to require Internet service providers to keep record of customers’ information and Internet destination history information, such as IP addresses and domain names for two years. Not surprisingly, the bill has attracted plenty of criticism and some lawmakers have already decided to back away from the legislation.

Thuggery

Park Jeonggeun, a South Korean activist, was charged with “helping the enemy” and violating South Korea’s National Security Law. The charges were issues for re-tweeting the message “long live Kim Jong-il” from North Korea’s official Twitter account, with the intent to ridicule North Korean leaders.

What are the plights that the journalists face in Iran? Who are the journalists detained in jail? A new Iranian website is dedicated to covering these issues. Though most of the articles are written in Farsi, some of them have been translated into English and are a good insight into issues from the Iranian perspective.

Netizen activism

The online community Reddit played an important role in the anti-SOPA/PIPA protest. Now the community is exploring the possibility of creating a bill together to fight against any future interference with Internet freedom.

Equipped with the power of social media, Africa’s oldest community radio station not only connects more closely with its audience, but also gains the wide support to show the financial backers the reasons to keep the station running.

Once again social media has brought together people around the world to protest against the massacres in Syria. Activists are spreading news through Twitter and Facebook, asking people to protest outside of the Syrian embassies. Many Syrian people answered the call and expressed their anger outside the embassies in Kuwait, London, Berlin and Washington D.C.

National Policy

According to the Akamai State of the Internet report for the third quarter of 2011, South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan are ahead of other countries in broadband adoption, while China and India lag behind.

UK media reported that North Korea has prohibited its people from using mobile phones during the 100-day mourning period for Kim Jong-il for fear of spurring discontent toward the government.

Sovereigns of Cyberspace

Facebook’s filing for an IPO hit the headlines on February 1st. The IPO is not only a big event for the global market, but also has important implications for human rights and privacy issues on the global social network. Elisa Massimino, the CEO of Human Rights First, explains the importance of Facebook's mega-IPO from the human rights viewpoint . An article in Ars Technica also pointed out that Facebook going public means that cases of inquiry and investigations of Facebook led by the FTC and attorney general, which in the past would be kept private, will now be public.

Google’s new privacy policy consolidating users’ personal information across its services goes live on March 1st, and has instigated serious concerns over customers’ privacy. For users, this means that Google may make predictions about your age and preferences, which they provide to ad companies.

For the past two weeks, Google has been busy clarifying “myths” about its new privacy policy. It also responded to Congress’ question in a 13 page letter and guaranteed “the new privacy policy will not change how Google archives or deletes user data”.

Meg Roggensack, Senior Advisor for Business and Human Rights at Human Rights First examined the responsibility of private telecom companies in an authoritarian regime.

Google has proposed a number of Internet standards changes to Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), which is the transport layer protocol used by applications that require guaranteed delivery of data.

Copyright

After 22 European countries signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), anti-ACTA protests prevailed in Europe. In the last weekend of January, protestors in the Czech Republic, Belgium, Ireland, UK and France took to the streets to protest against the agreement. Hackers battled on the Internet to express their discontent - however a piece by Timothy B. Lee in ars technica overviews accurate and inaccurate claims made about the treaty on both sides.

The protests online have proven successful in Europe: the European Parliament's rapporteur for ACTA resigned and criticized the negotiation process, and the Polish parliamentarians wore Guy Fawkes masks to show their opposition. The Slovenian ambassador apologized publicly for signing the agreement and Prime Minister of Poland has also suspended the ratification on the agreement. Most recently, the Czech government suspended its ratification of the treaty.

A note from European Parliament member Marietje Schaake outlines actions that citizens can take in opposition to the treaty.

Rashmi Rangnath wrote a piece on the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, which would also have implications for free speech online, available at Public Knowledge.

According to news reports, the data saved at Megaupload may be deleted. The file-hosting service was charged with illegal file-sharing and  its assets have been seized by the U.S. government for investigation. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sent a letter to the Eastern Virginia office and to lawyers for Megaupload, asking them to retain the data for innocent users. In Europe, the Pirate Party of Catalonia is also planning to sue the U.S. FBI in a Spanish court for legitimate users.

Being concerned about the personal security of the officials, prosecutors, and their family members, the U.S. government decided not to reveal the names who are investigating the Megaupload case in the press release and public statement. The government officials said that there is a great possibility that hackers will retaliate against the agencies involved in the case.

In a recent interview, Yochai Benkler also discussed the targeting of Megaupload by the U.S. Department of Justice, just days after netizens showed “effective political force” against SOPA. Benkler says seizing the assets and people working on Megaupload without a trial is a “fairly aggressive and expansive” move.

In UK, a judge’s rule on photo copyright infringement may further blur the idea/expression distinction in copyright law and restrain creativity.

Cybersecurity

A group of hackers who support Syrian president Bashar al-Assad attacked and posted pro-Assad messages on Al Jazeera English’s “Syria Live Blog”. The blog has been devoted to covering the unrest in Syria.

According to the World Economic Forum's (WEF) Global Risks for 2012 report, cyber-attacks against governments and the private sector is ranked as number 4 among global risks which may become real. The report also calls for “correcting information asymmetries’ over cyber risks to improve global Internet security.

Governments, terrorists, and crime organizations have been more and more sophisticated in using Internet skills to surveil their targets — and many of the targets are journalists. However, many journalists haven’t equipped themselves with cyber-security technical skills. An article from the Columbia Journalism Review blog examines cyber-security education in the U.S. journalism school.

Written by Rebecca MacKinnon · comments (0)
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The University of Hong Kong has finished a review report on the arrangement of China's Vice Premier Li Keqiang's visit to the university last year for its centennial celebration, or the so-called Hong Kong 818 incident.

During the ceremony, the campus was sealed off by heavy police forces stationed among students and alumni present, and the scene of a student brutally held down by a group of police officers when he tried to join other protesters quickly stirred up public outrage.

The newly-released report now reveals that the ceremony was scheduled to coincide with the vice premier's visit, proving true much public speculation that the ceremony was carefully designed as a political “show” aimed at pleasing the Beijing government.

The comic below is a recreation of the university's logo which has been widely circulated on Facebook this week. Replacing the symbol of the dragon-lion with the flag of China and the school motto, “Sapientia Et Virtus”, with “loyalty to the Party and to the State - the First People's University of Hong Kong City, Guangdong province” (忠黨愛國﹣廣東省香港市第一人民大學), the comic is a mocking reference to the downgrading of a what is currently an international university to that of a third-grade (city level) university in China. (I have shared the picture in my own Facebook Wall).

A satirical comic widely circulated online about the Hong Kong 818 incident

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Even though the People's Daily propagated [zh] that “China’s veto was in accordance with the Syrian people’s basic interests”, Chinese concern citizens have not been misled by the official media and believed that China should be responsibility for bloodshed after Syrian resolution veto. However, the popular opinion against China's vote has been quickly deleted online.

South Seas Conversation has captured some discussions in Netease's news thread before and after censorship. Here come the pre-censored opinions:

Aye, some people are afraid that the ‘crafty masses’ (diaomin) will have an example to look at… [2500 recommends]

The ‘China’ in the sentence ‘Rice indicated that Russia and China will be responsible for the bloodshed ahead’ has no relation with the Chinese people, it’s nothing more a crowd of of mainland mongrels (zazhong)! Regarding the ‘Russia’, that may be just one section of Russia’s high-level political hoodlums, like Putin – the little czar. [2412]

Everyone can see why this country [China] is not popular in the world, why you have the world beseiging you. [2211]

The new Axis of Evil [1824]

With the active intervention of web-censor, the opinions have been harmonized within several hours into the followings:

We are also angry about this but there’s nothing we can do. The Syrian people can only rely on themselves to get rid of this tyrant. Respect to all countries and people who support the Syrian people’s movement for justice. [5362 recommends]

Iraq, Afghanistan, it’s been 10 years already, should America take responsibility? Does Libya now need 10 years and then it can intervene in America? Why can’t America tell north from south? [4129]

Responsibility for incidents should start with those countries (people) who provoke trouble. On what basis are China and Russia responsible? This is entirely a case of the West looking for an excuse for their next evil deed. [2850]

Can this kind of inhuman government be popular (shou huanying)? [2354]

13 approvals, 2 vetos. [2343]

Public enemy of humanity. [2145]

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Malév, Hungary's state airline since 1946, ceased operation on February 3, 2012, due to bankruptcy. According to news reports [hu], even the airline's employees were informed about the shutdown just an hour or so in advance. Some passengers learned the news when they tried to check in at the Budapest Liszt Ferenc Airport.

Hungarian citizens were shocked by the news, because even though the national carrier’s bad financial situation was well-known, Malév's rescue plans were being negotiated during the past few weeks. Many claimed the cause of the company's ill fate was bad financial management. In January, even the 2007-2010 state financial aid to the airline was deemed illegal by the European Commission. Eventually, business partners lost their trust in the company, and this tipped the balance on Friday when Dublin and Tel Aviv airports refused to give take-off permissions to Malév flights.

A Malév commercial, music composed by Gábor Presser

According to A REPÜLÉS Szakmai blog (THE AVIATION Professional blog) [hu], the last Malév flight landed in Budapest on Friday at 08:46 UTC (09:46 AM in Hungary), arriving from Helsinki. The words that the pilot said to the air traffic controllers have been shared by Hungarian netizens on many sound- and video-sharing sites:

Pilot: On behalf of the last Malév flight’s crew, we would like to thank you for the good, several-decade-long cooperation. See you.
Air Traffic Controller: We also thank you and wish you a good rest, I hope we will meet.
Pilot: Hope so, under some different name.

According to AIRportal.hu [hu], on Friday evening 14 Malév planes were returned to their lessor ILFC at an airport in Ireland. (See here for Malcolm Neson's photos of the Malév planes at Shannon Airport in Ireland.)

Csaba Demeter, a pilot who was among those flying the planes back, shared his story on Facebook [hu]:

[…] Around midnight we arrived to EINN [airport code for Shannon Airport, Ireland], landed one after another and rolled nicely, to salute in this way the past period. We stopped one after another, on rolling-roads, on parking spaces, we stopped them, unpacked and turned off the lights, our planes were in the darkness. It was an awful feeling, WE HAD TO LEAVE THEM THERE. We were hoping for a call [saying] COME HOME WITH THE PLANES this was just a dream or a bad joke. But nothing like that came. THEY STAYED THERE. All of them. :-( […]

People shared their thoughts on the sad fate of the national carrier. Csaba’s memories on Fékszárny blog [hu] tell the best what Malév meant for the citizens of this small Central European country:

I flew a lot with them, I have many good and many bad experiences as well. I wouldn’t tell about those because there is nothing special among them. Why I very much loved to fly with Malév and it always enjoyed priority in contrast to the others is that they were OURS. After being away from home for a long time they were the first signs of coming home. The mentioned white-blue painting with the Hungarian tricolor, the greeting at the door and the Hungarian newspapers. I usually spent 2-3 weeks abroad and not in cities and comfortable hotels, but in deserts and other great places. So coming home was always a big joy and its first messenger was the crew of the Malév flight. After a long, stressful trip even my eyes filled with tears when landing at the Ferihegy [airport]. It was a very bad [feeling] to look at the pictures and read the news on the internet. Let’s hope not all is lost, it would be good to see the red-white-green planes again.

Csaba

According to Véleményvezér blog [hu], the national carrier “got into the perfect storm” of Hungary's economic dynamics:

[…] Malév got into the perfect storm from this perspective: it should have survived almost a decade of economic stagnation and almost a decade of mismanagement; whilst the two phenomena amplified each other. It did not survive and this is yet another nail in the coffin of our dreams and illusions about the leading position of Budapest and Hungary in the region.

Until a new Hungarian carrier is founded, Origo news site reports [hu] the pilots of the “Malév Hungarian Airlines Virtual” will keep on “flying” with the Malév call signs.

Written by Marietta Le · comments (1)
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Over the last three weeks, two buildings have collapsed in downtown Havana. Located on Calzada de Infanta, a bustling thoroughfare that runs from the Vedado section of the city to Old Havana, the first building to fall killed three of its inhabitants and severely injured six more. There were no fatalities or injuries with the fall of the second building, an old theater that was no longer in use.

Bloggers from Voces Cubanas [es] and Havana Times saw the incidents as clear evidence of state officials' negligence of housing conditions in the city.

Generacion Y's [es] Yoani Sánchez wrote (English translation here):

Calzada de Infanta, in Havana. Photo by Flickr user amycgx (CC: BY - NC)

¿Qué solución urgente se aplicará para que esas tragedias no sigan siendo parte del escenario cotidiano? No vamos a aceptar una respuesta al estilo de que “se está estudiando el tema para aplicar soluciones de manera paulatina”. Tampoco nos vengan ahora con que la culpa la tienen los propios moradores que se quedaron en un lugar inhabitable. ¿A dónde hubieran podido ir? En lugar de eso exigimos que se construya, se repare, se nos proteja.

Sin EVAsion's [es] Miriam Celaya wrote that such incidents have become “commonplace” in the city, but that the first received much greater attention than usual, due to the building's central location, and reports of the collapse by citizens using Twitter.

As Twitter users and bloggers reported on the incident, Celaya wrote that the state press had little choice but to cover it as well. She criticized their approach to the story (English translation here):

La prensa revolucionaria aprovechó la desgracia para resaltar la importancia de la intervención del Cuerpo de Bomberos, la Policía Nacional Revolucionaria, los servicios médicos de urgencia y las autoridades de la provincia y de los municipios Centro Habana y Plaza de la Revolución. Ellos fueron, a juzgar por los medios, los verdaderos protagonistas. La tragedia humana palidecía y se empequeñecía frente a la grandeza de las instituciones revolucionarias.

She summarizes the article about the collapse that appeared in the print version of the national daily, Granma [es], on Thursday, January 19:

“la actuación coordinada e intensa” de “las fuerzas del Cuerpo de Bomberos y los servicios médicos de urgencia en el rescate de las víctimas y en el empeño de salvar la vida de los que se encontraban atrapados”, como si esa no fuera exactamente la función que se espera deben cumplir dichos cuerpos; o como si los derrumbes fuesen un accidente del clima o un mero capricho arquitectónico. Algo inesperado, impredecible, antojadizo, casual.

Isbel Díaz Torres, at Havana Times, wrote of the many buildings in Havana that have fallen into disrepair and described how government policies have left Cubans with little capacity to repair their homes:

From what has been announced, the new formula designed by the government to provide home improvement loans and grants doesn’t allow for major structural work, which is what is required for many of the dilapidated buildings that abound across the capital, particularly in the municipalities of Centro Havana and Old Havana.

[…]

Of course many of the buildings are in such deteriorated states of construction that the only plausible solution would be their demolition. This, however, is impossible without a housing option for those people still living in them.

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From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, Rising Voices received 1175 proposals from 124 countries from around the globe. This welcome increase in the number of applications as compared to last year demonstrates the ongoing interest and need in bringing citizen media to local underrepresented communities. While we are reading over these project proposals, we thought our readers might be interested in some of the initial demographical results from this open call for proposals.

The East African nations of Uganda and Kenya led the way in the countries with the most number of applications. For a closer look at what other countries were represented among the applications, please take a look at the word cloud created by the site Wordle. The size of the country name corresponds with the number of applications received from that country.

Countries Represented Word Cloud - Click for a larger image.

Ninety-five percent of applicants submitted a proposal for the first time, meaning that the remaining five percent participated in past Rising Voices microgrant competitions beginning in 2007. We also asked applicants to best describe the focus area of their project, and Education, Women and Gender, Indigenous Communities, and Development were the categories mentioned the most.

It was also interesting to input the text from the project descriptions from all of the proposals. Again using a word cloud, one can see which terms and concepts were used most often.

Project Term Word Cloud - Click to see a larger image

These are just some quick demographical details gathered from an initial look at the 1175 proposals. In the near future, we will be developing a map that will help visualize the specific locations from which the proposals came. We will also help show places around the world that share similar interests based on the topic of their citizen media outreach projects. Only those projects which gave permission to Rising Voices to publicly share that information will be included in the map.

Written by Eddie Avila
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Rising Voices would like to thank everyone for their interest in the 2012 open call for proposals for citizen media outreach projects. This year we received 1175 proposals from over 120 countries with many great and innovative ideas for engaging communities with online citizen media. This is a significant increase from last year when we received 755 proposals from 90 countries.

Over the next six weeks, we'll be carefully reviewing each proposal with our selection committee. Shortlisted finalists will be contacted sometime in late February. We will also contact all applicants that have not been selected. Due to the high volume of applications, the anticipated announcement for the winners will now be mid-March.

We are delighted with the widespread interest in bringing citizen media to underrepresented communities around the world. Around 95% of the proposals were from first-time applicants, meaning most are new to the work of Rising Voices. We strive to be a resource for organizations and individuals like you who wish to bring digital participatory media to their communities. We share news of competitions, contests, funding opportunities, tutorials, and examples of outreach initiatives. We also try to feature the work of other organizations and individuals working in local underrepresented communities around the world to bring the benefits of citizen media to more people.

We hope that you continue to stay in touch and become a part of the Rising Voices community. There are several ways to do so:

• Read and participate on the Rising Voices blog for news about grantees, case studies of projects, and news from our working groups. (Please leave a comment if there is something you find interesting).
• Join the Rising Voices mailing list where we share links and news about external funding opportunities and resources for those interested in citizen media in developing countries.
• Follow us on Twitter (Please say hello! @risingvoices).
• Follow us on Facebook (Let us know on our wall that you applied for the microgrant! We'd love to hear from you).

Thanks again for your interest and best of luck!

Written by Eddie Avila
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In this 23min podcast [ogg here], Sebastian Hammer, president of IndexData, explains the srengths and limitations of federated search, which runs queries on a distributed set of sources, as opposed to using a big honking centralized index.

It has been 7 days since the Great Water March set off, on February 1, 2012, from the heights of Celendín, Cajamarca, Peru, where the lakes threatened by the Conga [es] mining project are located. The march has unfolded practically without incidents, and is currently halfway to Lima, its final destination.

Meanwhile, the media are reporting on its progress, and publishing editorials [es] on the real purpose of the march, stressing above all its political and ideological affiliations; and government spokespeople declare [es] that in reality “there is an excess of water in Cajamarca”.

The media does not have a standard figure on the number of people who departed from Celendín on February 1. While Terra.pe writes [es] of 200 people, EFE counts [es] 300. Newspaper El Comercio mentions [es] that 600 community landowners started the journey, and RPP indicates [es] that 300 people arrived at Cajamarca's Plaza de Armas to sleep overnight and continue marching the next day.

The blog Seamos un río (Let's be a river) reproduced [es] what was published by Marcio Arana, one of the march's organisers:

Salimos a las 4am, nos reunimos en la plaza de armas de Celendin. Líderes ronderos, mujeres, jóvenes, músicos, maestros, comunicadores, vamos llegando. No hace mucho frio y una suave llovizna nos anuncia que la tierra fértil la está esperando y que los pequeños ríos van a juntarse hasta formar el Gran Rio de Vida que es nuestra Marcha. […]

La noche anterior habían llegado los responsables de barrios trayendo sus aportes económicos para apoyar a los caminantes. Hasta la colecta de profesores, maestros católicos y una niña que en nombre de sus padres dona 20 nuevos soles son aplaudidos. En Lima no faltan políticos que se preguntan quién financia la marcha. Los políticos financiados por grandes grupos de poder económico jamás comprenderán la fuerza y el poder de las pequeñas donaciones como no están entendiendo el gran río que serán los pequeños riachuelos y manantiales.

The first moments of the march were recorded, as can be seen in these videos from users GobRegCajamarca and jampaoli [es]. There were also various statements, like this one from user MetsaRiba who captures the words of a participating campesino:

Or this one showing women from Cajamarca chanting pro-water slogans:

That same day another march took place in Cajamarca, the Jug March [es], where 2,000 people marched in favour of nature and ecology, and protested against polluting mining activities. Servindi published some photos to accompany its report on the solidarity parade held in Lima, which can also be seen on a video uploaded on YouTube [es]. On the blog Celendín Libre (Free Celendín) an itinerary for the first day of the Water March was posted [es], alongside photos of the day's events:

10:30 a.m. Primer obstáculo, una tranquera particular en plena vía pública no deja el pase a ningún vehículo. Los manifestantes proceden a retirarla.

Arribo a la Laguna Cortada (a más de 3 800 m.s.n.m.), donde unas 300 personas dan inicio a la Marcha por el Agua con un rito simbólico de agradecimiento a la mamapacha y mamacocha, por comuneros del Ámaro.

Payment to mamapacha. Image by Celendín Libre blog.

Beginning of the Water March. Image by Celendín Libre blog.

In its blog [es], an “International Observation Mission of the Great National March for the Right to Water”[es] publishes information on the march's events, as well as monitoring its peaceful development. There they share the mission's principles and objectives [es] and a list [es] of the entities supporting it. On the first day of the march they commented:

La movilización también ha sido secundada en la región norteña de La Libertad, donde un grupo numeroso de campesinos inició una marcha hacia la ciudad de Trujillo desde las provincias andinas de Huamachuco y Santiago de Chuco.

En Lima, unas 300 personas, en su mayoría jóvenes y dirigentes estudiantiles, realizaron un Pasacalle para celebrar el arranque de la Marcha que culminó en la Plaza San Martín.

The next day, the second of the march, participants from Celendín, Bambamarca and other towns departed [es] Cajamarca for Ciudad de Dios in La Libertad, where they spent the night, though not before passing through Choropampa. This is a town where in the year 2000 about 151 kg of mercury belonging to the Yanacocha mine were spilled, greatly affecting the local population. The Observation Mission reported on this day in their blog [es]. Videos [es] of the departure [es] from Cajamarca in the morning have also been uploaded to the internet.

On the third day the marchers left Ciudad de Dios, passed [es] through Pacasmayo and arrived [es] in Trujillo, where they were joined by other delegations from various towns in the La Libertad region, in numbers estimated at around 2,000 [es]. These delegations were greeted by about 5,000 people, and then a rally was held, which included discussion sessions, the presentation of petitions, and other activities as planned [es].

In a post [es] on the blog “El Maletero” “Red Verde Cajamarca” (”The Trunk” “Cajamarca Green Network”) photos from the first three days of the march can be seen. Meanwhile the blog Frente de Defensa Ambiental de Cajamarca (”Cajamarca Environmental Defense Front”) shares more photos [es] of the day in Trujillo. A post on the blog ¡Conga no va! (”Conga will not happen!”) links to a set of photos on Flickr taken in Trujillo.

Twitpic user @YoDash posted some photos of the protest in Trujillo's Plaza de Armas, like this one:

Water March in Trujillo, image from Twitpic user @YoDash

Meanwhile, on Facebook the Water March's page reports [es] that in Trujillo defamatory flyers [es] were distributed, attempting to link the March and its organisers with terrorist movements. In spite of this, the protest continued in the Plaza de Armas until night time with various musical numbers, some of them related to the march and surrounding circumstances, as can be seen in this video posted on YouTube by user Fuzzerjoga:

In the Observation Mission's daily report [es] they note some incidents during a strike carried out in Huarmey:

La Comisión Nacional Organizadora de la Gran Marcha Nacional del Agua ha reportado y denuncia una acción represiva por parte de efectivos policiales. El jueves en la noche, en Huarmey, uno de los puntos de concentración previstos en la Marcha, se produjeron enfrentamientos entre la policía y la población en el marco de un paro de 48 horas contra la minera Antamina, a la que acusan de contaminar el acuífero que les provee de agua potable.

On the fourth day of the march, Saturday 4, the protesters stayed in Trujillo to rest, but they also continued holding discussions and making contact with the local population. On Sunday 5, the fifth day of the march, the group left [es] for the city of Chimbote. The Water March's Facebook page uploaded a video [es] of their arrival in the village of Santa, just before Chimbote. Once in the city they met [es] with the Fisherman's Union, and then left for the city of Casma, following the route South towards Lima.

Meanwhile the Observation Mission's fourth report [es] stresses the government's attitude towards the problem of mining companies and water, bringing together various statements and declarations, including:

- El pronunciamiento del Colegio de Ingenieros del Perú, señalando que: “El Gobierno Peruano, desde la época republicana y hasta la fecha, no tiene una visión de desarrollo sostenido, ya que ha cimentado gran parte de su crecimiento en la explotación minera”.

- El presidente Ollanta Humala señaló que “ningún proyecto se paralizará por la consulta previa, y que esto no es un pretexto para que se detenga la inversión”, en referencia a la falta de la reglamentación de la ley que debía estar lista en diciembre pasado. En agosto del año pasado, sin embargo, el propio presidente escribía en twitter: “El derecho a la consulta previa sobre del desarrollo de los pueblos indígenas es un signo más de inclusión social. Forjamos un Perú para todos”

En este contexto, parecen razonables las palabras de Emma Gómez, de Cooperacción: “hay una lectura equivocada del presidente Humala sobre la Consulta Previa, la cual está siendo considerada como un obstáculo para la inversión privada más que un imperativo para que las empresas extractivas cumplan con los estándares ambientales y sociales de una inversión seria y que respeten los derechos de las poblaciones en las zonas de influencia”.

Written by Juan Arellano · Translated by Kitty Garden · View original post [es] · comments (0)
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Mohamed Nasheed, the president of Maldives most famously known as a climate champion, announced his resignation on Tuesday 7 February, 2012, after the military forces joined the police mutiny against his rule.

Nasheed, sworn in to office in November 2008 after the country's first democratic multiparty election, was inside the military headquarters when the military started withdrawing their allegiance to him. He was taken in a car to the nearby President's Office where he announced his resignation on live television in front of journalists.

Some Maldivians were worried about the safety of the president. Maeed wrote:

One Sincere Request remain, DO NOT HURT A PRESIDENT OF MALDIVES. UPHOLD DIGNITY and DON'T LET HISTORY REPEAT. PROTECT HIM.

People gather in front of Bandaara Koshi, the headquarters of Maldives National Defense Force (MNDF) where president Nasheed was taken. Image by MUHA. Used with permission.

He added in a following post:

We shifted from a Dictatorship to a democracy in 2008 and we showed an example to the world then. I call the Security forces to show that example again.

Earlier in the day, tension escalated as the police rioted against what they claimed were unlawful commands. After what appeared to be a bitter stand-off between the military and the police, the military retreated into their headquarters. The police protest was preceded by three weeks of evening protests organised by the opposition parties in the capital Male', after the government ordered the military to detain a top judge.

Mohamed Waheed Hassan, the vice president in Nasheed's administration, has been sworn in as the new president. Even though Hassan urged for calm during a speech after taking oath, it remains to be seen if the country can quickly restore stability after weeks of protests, destruction of property and attacks on journalists and media outlets.

Soldiers who mutinied shake hands with public. Image by MUHA. Used with permission

The continuity of the democratic exercise of the Maldives is in question as tension remains high. The supporters of the deposed president label the change in power as a coup while his opponents claim Tuesday's events showed the will of the people.

Opinion is divided and feelings are mixed on social networks and twitter as Maldivians try to come to terms with the fact that the government has changed approximately two years before the next scheduled election. The hashtag #Maldives trended on Twitter today.

Dhaanish tweets:

@Dhaaanish: @JeelAli @yaittey People will start realizing how sane Nasheed is compared to all these opposition retards later! Mark my words!””

Hum_Don tweets:

@Hum_Don: I feel sorry and sad to see the resignation of the very president we worked so hard to elect.

Epicloser expressed his views:

@epicloser: You didn't listen to #Dec23 protest Nasheed, you just made fun out of us and called us terrorists. This is the outcome for you. Peace.

Haumaldives has this to say about the mutiny:

@haumaldives: @CNN Maldives Nasheed carried arbitary arrests using the Military which led to protests.. and Military crackdown led to Police revolt.

People waving Maldives flags after the tension is over. Image by MUHA. Used with permission.

Limmto tweets:

@Limmto: Citizens beat #Nasheed at his own game. The #muzaaharaa. #Maldives #MVrevolution

profEuLOGist tweets about the rebranding of the state-owned TV station after police took over:

@profEuLOGist: Fastest transition of a media and rebranding I have ever seen! TVM to MNBC1 took months but back 2 TVM - 10mins!

Mashafeeg has this to say about the turn of events:

@mashafeeg: New era of democracy in Maldives, people proves their power and president shown his bravery by the resignation.

Maldives11 responded to Mashafeeg's tweet:

@Maldives11: @mashafeeg I doubt it was the people. sorry I am not convinced it was the people.

Mashafeeg also ponders about the future:

@mashafeeg: At last Dr.Waheed’s longed dream has come true, wonder how people will accept his presidency! better wait and see for a while! #Maldives

Hilmy7007, has high expectations of the new government:

@Hilmy7007: President Waheed should ensure his government is corruption free. We demand transparency n accountability in all projects awarded.

Written by Saffah Faroog · comments (0)
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In the latest examples creative repression over the internet, the Islamic regime has used Skype as a long-distance interrogation tool, and wrested control over a Facebook group for photos of hot guys and girls from its administrators.

Skype interrogation

In order to increase the pressure on one foreign-based Iranian journalist for the BBC, a relative in Iran was arbitrarily detained for nearly two weeks, and the journalist was interrogated over the internet on Skype video.

According to Human Rights Watch, the Iranian government has been intimidating and detaining relatives and friends of foreign-based Persian-language journalists to obtain information or silence them.

Iranian blogger Tahriyeh Khamoush writes [fa]:

… reading this story we can see what a monster the Islamic Republic has become. 40 minutes of interrogation via Skype while the journalist’s sister was jailed. The journalist was at her home in London while she was interrogated by revolutionary guards intelligence agents. The journalist only heard the voices in Iran while the interrogators could both see her and listen to her voice.

The journalist’s sister was released after the interrogation. She said she was forced to make false confessions broadcast on TV.

There are three jailed bloggers and journalists, Parastou Dokouhaki, Mazieh Rasouli and Sahmoldin Borghani who are under pressure to confess collaboration with BBC.

Attacking a Facebook group

Message by cyber police on what was formerly the 'Daaf & Paaf' Facebook page promoting a photo contest.

About a week ago a Facebook page called Daaf & Paaf (meaning “hot girl & hot boy”) came under the control of Iran's cyber police who announced [fa] on the group's Facebook “wall” that “the administrators of this group have confessed to promoting banality”.

The group promoted an online photo contest for hot Iranian men and women, and had around 27,000 fans [the content is not available anymore].

Cyber police reportedly arrested four men and women for administrating the Facebook page.

Faryadeazadi collected and republished [fa] several comments that users left on the Daaf & Paaf Facebook page after it came under control by Iranian security forces:

You beat the poor guys and got their passwords, and now you think you performed a masterpiece by controlling this page… Look at our cyber police, instead of running after criminals and thieves, it gets involved with this kind of story… Mark Zuckerbeg was involved too, go arrest him as well.

A long history

The Iranian regime not only represses bloggers and filters websites and blogs, but has many times used the internet creatively as a tool to increase pressure or spread fear.

In 2009, the regime employed crowd sourcing to target suspects when the protest movement erupted. Using widely disseminated online photos from post-election demonstrations, a website of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps called Gerdab (which means ‘vortex'), encouraged people to submit information that could lead to the arrest of protesters.

We can add to this menu of creativity, the recent “Law of Computer Crimes” that make almost all ordinary users computer criminals.

Indeed, the internet is not only a gift for freedom lovers but also for repressive machines.

Written by Fred Petrossian · comments (0)
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I knew Bryan Alexander was intense when I first spotted him in the audience at a talk I gave in the late 1990s. Just look at him. Old Testament prophet? Civil War general? Straight out of Middle Earth or Hogwarts? It's not just the beard and the eyes. When you watch my video interview with Bryan (below), you can't help but notice he is always in motion. I've actually seen him pound the podium. He's an educator and an educator of educators who can't disguise his passion and doesn't care if he stands out in the crowd. A man after my own heart. At that late ‘90s gathering, I had been speaking to an auditorium full of educators and Dr. Alexander was one of those who joined me for dinner afterward. I invited him to join a private virtual community I had organized in 1998. In 1999 and 2000, when I cat-herded a confederacy of virtual community consultants (a decade before thousands of people began describing themselves as "social media gurus"), we worked together to help start-ups and established companies try to plan, organize, and grow virtual communities. Not long after we met, Alexander collaborated with other Centenary College professors on online simulation games in an interdisciplinary course on the Vietnam War. A couple of years later, as Director of the Center for Educational Technology for Middlebury college, Alexander reflected on the experience -- ten years ago. These days, he writes for publications such as Educause Review and roams the world of liberal arts colleges, weaving networks of people, media, and pedagogy through future practices such as prediction markets, scenarios, and indicators. Don't take my word for it. Check out the video and experience his raw energy directly. A few excerpts:

What does it mean to read on a Kindle, to read on an iPad, to read on a phone? Are we in the era of social reading, where you and I can read the same book, and then share annotations through the web or through mutual devices? Trying to figure out the specific technologies in some ways is not as important as looking at how we make use of it.

We are trying to help colleges think through, strategically, the future of higher education and their institution in that landscape. There’s a whole battery of futures methods used by corporations, by nonprofits, and by governments, from prediction markets to delphi reports to environmental scanning. We want to translate and bring those methods to small colleges so they can get a better handle on where their students will be in five years.

Sinking yourself down into a game about history opens up your understanding of possibilities. The events that in retrospect look so foreordained and so determined become more complex, more unstable, and more uncertain. You can really see decisions as live things and not as automatic blunders.

We’re trying to help these schools have ways of thinking about the future in a structured and provocative way, which is not trivial. It’s very difficult for us to throw our bodies forward. It’s easy to think about what we might be doing tomorrow as individuals, but to think about complex institutions involving thousands of people over a decade, it’s very challenging and exciting.

What we found -- to our surprise -- was a lot of optimism about open access and open education resources. We were surprised because the adoption of open content still seems to be gradual, incremental, not yet logarithmic, or exponential. We found that people were very optimistic about the number of open access journals available and about the number of open content items. That was a huge eye opener for us.

Banner image credit: Rachel Smith http://www.flickr.com/photos/ninmah/4589316502/

Secondary image credit: Howard Rheingold

For Kyrgyzstan-based netizens the story of last week was undoubtedly the sudden and violent meltdown of Alexander Kramer, head of the World Bank's Bishkek office, at a high level government-donor round table on February 3, 2012.

Kramer appeared to boil over during a speech by his IMF counterpart, Koba Gvenetadze, during which he rose from his chair, lobbed a drinking glass in the direction of Kyrgyz Deputy Prime Minister Jomart Otorbayev, and stormed out of the meeting.

David Trilling, Eurasianet's Central Asia editor, was one of the first to blog the news:

The incident occurred during a donor meeting at government headquarters, known as the White House, in Bishkek. According to one eyewitness, Kramer had just spoken for a few minutes, praising recent government initiatives and encouraging Bishkek to ensure officials are chosen for their merits. He defended the World Bank’s sometimes slow motions in the country, noting that development is “a marathon rather than a sprint,” according to EurasiaNet's source. During the next set of remarks, by the International Monetary Fund’s country director, Kramer suddenly stood up, yelled, “This is all crap!” and threw the glass, which shattered on the floor in front of Otorbayev.

Although the Kyrgyz government and the World Bank offered slightly different versions of the condition that caused Alexander Kramer to “totally freak out“, as one online news agency put it, both agreed that it was something to do with blood.

According [ru] to citizen media portal Kloop.kg:

The World Bank argues that the office head performed the act solely because of his sharply deteriorating health. The glass, they say, was thrown by accident, and now Kramer is in hospital.

“The act of A. Kramer was caused solely by the state of his health: there was a sudden onset of circulatory disorders of the brain, which led to the extraordinary and unusual behavior of A. Kramer,” said the World Bank in a press release.

The government press service similarly reported that the behavior of Kramer was the result of a “heart attack”.

Tellingly, Kloop's reportage continued:

The World Bank has apologized for the behavior of the head of its office and said that the incident had nothing to do with the person speaking at the time – the head of the International Monetary Fund in Kyrgyzstan, Koba Gvenetadze.

It is no secret that officials from the fund and the bank often regard each other with suspicion and occasionally even hostility. In fact, the dysfunctional relationship between the global economic order's bad and good cops was the subject of a fascinating chapter in ex-World Bank Chief Economist Joseph Stieglitz's 2002 whistleblowing best-seller “Globalization and its Discontents”. But if the IMF's abrasive, take no prisoners approach to fiscal policy in the developing world was the source of Kramer's red mist, why did the tumbler land closest to Deputy PM Otorbayev?

Twitter user @Ahmadon had [ru] another theory:

Hahaha, Alexander Kramer – hero, man, baike [elder brother in Kyrgyz], you see, he couldn’t be f***ed to listen to the empty chatter of our state officials

A second Twitter user, @azzzik, compared [ru] Kramer to ex-presidential candidate turned nutty clairvoyant Arstanbek Abdylaev, the subject of this recent Global Voices Post. However, post-tumblergate, Abdylaev's premonitions of ruptures in the international political order seem suddenly prescient, and a third user of the service suggested Sabri bey, a Turkish man who thinks he can fly, was a more worthy parallel.

A few days on from the scandle, the focus of Bishkek Twiterazzi is on Kramer's future:

@ajoroev: Is it true that Alexander Kramer is already the ex-head of the World Bank in Kyrgyzstan and moreover, [already] overseas?

While the former has yet to be confirmed, various agencies have since reported that he is now recuperating in London.

Whatever happens to Alexander Kramer in the long run, it is clear that one projectile-throwing monkey won't stop the show. Yesterday, the World Bank announced that it would be providing nearly $20 million in infrastructural funding for Kyrgyzstan's two main cities, Bishkek and Osh, in 2012. Whether that package will include compensation for a certain smashed glass will doubtless be the subject of a future round table.

Written by Chris Rickleton · comments (0)
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Three years after the first democratic multiparty election in the Maldives ushered a democratic government to power, the infant democracy of the Maldives seems to be on the brink of anarchy and chaos. The democratic experiment of the Maldives could face an untimely demise as thugs belonging to the ruling party and the opposition clash on the streets of the capital Male‘, vandalising private property, torching private TV stations and attacking one another under showers of bricks and stones.

A rebellion within the ranks of police officers has created a nasty stand-off between the military and the police and a number of military personnel have joined the police in mutiny. Tension has reached a tipping point when there are conflicting reports about whether the president will resign.

The political crisis facing the Maldives was given a head-start in January when the government asked the police to start investigations against certain opposition leaders for what the government claimed were baseless insinuations and allegations that the government was undermining the Islamic faith of the country. Critics were puzzled when the police detained said opposition leaders in high profile investigation cases while the claims of the opposition could have been addressed through a civil case of defamation.

The ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) then started a public campaign named ‘Thiheneh Nukiyeyne‘ [div] (You Can't Say That), proclaiming that the party would not permit the opposition to continue making what it believed to be baseless allegations.

In the past, defamation was a criminal act and writers and individuals were sentenced to prison, based on defamation charges, for criticism they had expressed. Decriminalizing defamation in 2009 was hailed as a remarkable improvement for freedom of expression in the Maldives. The government's inclination towards criminal investigations regarding cases of defamation has become a deep concern for advocates of free speech.

After the Abdulla Mohamed, the Chief Judge of the Criminal Court ruled that the detention of the Vice President of the Dhivehi Qaumee Party (DQP) was illegal and ordered to release him from police custody, the police requested the assistance of the Maldives National Defence Force or the military to apprehend the judge. Mohamed has been under military custody since January 16 and his enforced disappearance has sparked street protests which has continued for three weeks.

Mohamed himself had been in the centre of several controversies earlier and the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) has found that he had violated the code of conduct for judges. Mohamed appealed this decision of the JSC in the Civil Court, and the court has issued an injunction against JSC not to take any disciplinary measures against Mohamed till the appeal case is closed. This injunction by the Civil Court itself is highly controversial because it encroaches on the powers the constitution has granted to JSC to make the judiciary accountable.

The government has since then claimed that the detention of Mohamed is part of its campaign to clean up the judiciary, which is corrupt to the core, according to the government.

Mohamed's detention in a military training camp has been declared unlawful and a violation of the constitution by several parties which point out that the military does not have legal authority to detain people. The government has not put any formal charges against Mohamed. The military claims that it has provided Mohamed with access to a lawyer and it has permitted the Human Rights Commission of the Maldives to visit him. His family was informed about his whereabouts only days after he was detained.

A number of eminent lawyers in the Maldives have spoken out against the detention of Judge Abdulla Mohamed. Among them are Shaheen Hameed, the Vice President of the Constituent Assembly which drafted the current constitution, Dhiyana Saeed, the first Attorney-General of the present government and Husnu Suood, another former Attorney-General under the present government.

Prosecutor-General Ahmed Muizzu, who was a prominent practicing lawyer of the country before his appointment as PG, has also pointed out that the detention is unlawful. Ahmed Faiz, the Chief Justice, has called for the judge to be released.

The Human Rights Commission of the Maldives has also expressed concerns about the continued detention of the judge. The UN has urged the government of the Maldives to either release the judge or to press formal charges against him. Abbas Faiz, South Asia Researcher at Amnesty International, in an opinion piece published in the local Minivan News website, has said that the judge's detention is arbitrary. “Amnesty International is calling on the government to either bring formal criminal charges against him or release him,” Faiz wrote.

Tension has reached a tipping point when protesters from the ruling party and the opposition parties clashed on February 6 evening leading to considerable violence. Thereafter, some police units stormed the assembly hall of the ruling party and allegedly vandalised property there. A group of police officers have rebelled against what they say are unlawful commands and gathered after midnight at the Republic Square in Male' in protest.

In a night filled with violence, the offices of VTV, a private broadcaster which is sympathetic towards the opposition and is owned by an opposition leader, was set on fire by a group of thugs. Aminath Shifleen, a journalist at Haveeru Daily, was injured while covering the protest. In the past few weeks, a number of journalists have been attacked during the protests and offices of media outlets have been attacked on multiple occasions. Private property destruction has also been a common feature of the protests that has engulfed the Maldives.

In the early hours of the morning some people are still active on social media, expressing their opinion on the unfolding crisis. This Facebook page titled Zuvaanunge' Maidhaan (The Square of Youth) has some pictures of the protests. There are frequent updates in Twitter:

Husnu Suood, former Attorney-General, tweets:

@hsuood: dont think they can avoid a bloody confrontation. Sad day for Maldives. #mvprotest

Nattu tweets:

Maldives National Defence Force vs Maldives Police #mvprotest. MNDF steps back.

Yoosuf Waheed asks:

What's going on! Hard thing r pretty nasty in #Maldives

Ali Tholhath says:

@tholhath: Sad day for Maldives. Stop this madness.

Ali Shiyan tweets:

@falho_D: Sad to see it all come to this, who is winning now? And to think it cud hav been so simple,sad day for Maldives indeed.

Shareef asks:

@shareef: Things are getting worse, #Maldives Army V/s Maldives Police. Who will Win

Agisa asks:

@agisaa: what happened to the #maldives while i was sleeping?

Sofwathullah Mohamed tweets:

@sofwath: Nothing more to say. Blame games won't help. God save Maldives. #mvprotest

And here is an update: Ahmed Affan Shafy reports with a picture:

Maldives Military joins forces with police and the public against the unconstitutional rule of Mr Nasheed.

Image posted to Twitter by @AhmedAffanShafy

Written by Saffah Faroog · comments (1)
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