Berkman Center for Internet & Society

In the same week that Threatened Voices, an online project to map bloggers under attack worldwide was launched, the trial of detained video blogging youth activists Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli in Baku, Azerbaijan, continued. The last court hearing was adjourned because witnesses did not turn up. Media Helping Media comments on the latest developments in what many consider to be a politically motivated case to silence dissent in the country.

The trial of Adnan Hajizade and Emin Abdullayev (also known as Milli) was adjourned ten days ago after a brief appearance by the two on hooliganism and violence charges.

[…]

Those campaigning for the release of the two men suspect that there may be political reasons behind the delays.

Media freedom groups have been protesting about the arrests and detention and claim it is part of an effort to limit freedom of expression.

Two days before the trial, Emotions on Air, Mind Mute, a newly launched English-language Azeri blog, reflected on the the case against the two young activists.

I started to intensely think about Emin and Adnan. I came to be proud of their parents,teachers and elders. I became curious about books they have read. I got jealous of friends they have, as they were lucky to know these great men personally.

Now it hurts very much that they are in prison. Their great time of lives has been stolen. Their summer has been taken away. Their parents spend sleepless nights. They have been deprived to enjoy their work, make mistakes, hang out with youth and talk to them. Their email inboxes are flooded with messages and run out of extra space.

But they keep on inspiring youth. They are hoping and planting seeds of liberty. They are spiritually free despite that their physical freedom is limited.

[…]

I think of my future now. How will it be? Will it come at all given the society I live in. Will I be arrested one day? My kids I will have.. if ever. […]

All I know is I want them to be hooligans like Emin and Adnan.

Nevertheless, many of Hajizade and Milli's supporters remained resigned to more delays.

As it was, the hearing was held although witnesses displayed selective memories. As usual, friends and supporters of Hajizade and Milli used new and social media such as Facebook and Twitter to update others.

The fact that key witnesses and the alleged victims themselves were unable to provide testimony prompted one supporter to hope that the trial might now end.

However, although it was proven that the two activists had reported an incident of physical assault against themselves, missing key evidence soon gave many reason to fear the worst. [Update: Eurasianet has since reported that the phone records were ruled inadmissible by the judge]

Amidst criticism that the authorities are stringing out the trial indefinitely, their fears were probably well founded. Despite calling a break, the hearing was not resumed.

Yet, while the action against Hajizade and Milli looks set to continue in a trial considered by the international community and local civil society organizations to be highly flawed, perhaps the last laugh went to Hajizade and Milli's supporters who noticed the irony when the two activists were taken away.

The following day, two English-language bloggers from Azerbaijan reacted to the aborted court hearing. Both seemed pessimistic and unhappy with how the trial has been conducted to date, but nonetheless said they would continue to fight for the two men's release.

In particular, L4L shared his observations from the hearing, and specifically on the decision not to enter phone records in Hajizade and Milli's defense into court.

During today’s hearing of “Wild-beating-taekwando-champions-bloggers-Adnan-and-Emin” case I was able to enter courtroom for the first time. Mixed feelings of what was happening. I saw Emin and Adnan, saw how strong they are. And this made me happy and proud. I had dozen or so rounds of laugh in the expense of “victims” Vusal and Babek. I was annoyed as hell.

Azercell answered to enquiry of the court and gave reports on calls made on July 8 by “victims” and Adnan. […] reports of Adnan’s calls shows that he was in the 39th police station. This little fact demolishes the case of the prosecutor. This shows that Adnan and Emin weren’t brought to police station handcuffed. […]

[…]

Then Vusal showed that he is “real Caucasian man” with valor and strong feeling of “qeyret”. He asked judge not to give Azercell’s report on his calls to defense. “I don’t want them to disturb my relatives and those close to me”. […] naturally, judge is “real Caucasian man” too, so he understood Vusal’s tender feelings and was with him on that.

Anyways. Amnesia. Adnan and Emin answered few questions after Vusal and Babek and they were so clear and accurate, contrast was almost scary. […]

[…] People like Emin and Adnan who made their choice and are proudly standing by it. Who will not back off. We should help their case. Only this way this nation will shake its AMNESIA.

Meanwhile, Flying Carpets and Broken Pipelines remembered events to date, but also looked to the future.

Its been 4 months since Emin and Adnan's arrest- time goes by but somethings simply don't change. […]

[…] happiness and sense of victory slowly disappeared as in July, two youth activists- Emin Milli (30) and Adnan Hajizada (26) were arrested and charged with “hooliganism” and are now facing up to 5 year of imprisonment. They didn't do anything- they were attacked by two men who are now treated as “victims” and are set free while Emin and Adnan are spending their time behind bars. But they are keeping their chin up. […]

[…]

Looking back it makes one wonder will there ever be a change? Will people actually enjoy their lives rather than worry about making extra money to feed their families? Will our youth be able to study in corruption free universities and actually get a descent education? Will people be happy again? For now, there is only one answer, time will show so let it go by but be patient and hopefully we, or our children, or our grand children will see that change…

Incidentally, the date set for the next hearing (11 November) will coincide with a roundtable discussion on the case at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.

Hooliganism or Freedom of Speech? The case of two bloggers detained in Azerbaijan

On July 8, 2009, two bloggers and political activists, Andnan Hajizade and Emin Milli, were arrested in Azerbaijan on charges of “hooliganism”. The bloggers were detained shortly after posting a video on YouTube mocking the Azeri government's purchase of donkeys from Germany. After nine trials, the two bloggers (both without prior criminal records) remain imprisoned. The four presenters will form a panel discussion to speak about this particular case of the bloggers and what it means for freedom of speech in Azerbaijan as well as the greater Caucasus region.

Present for the event will be Parvana Persiani, Hajizade's girlfriend and a senior figure in the OL! Azerbaijani youth movement, who will also be attending next week's World Blogging Forum in Bucharest, Romania.

Global Voices Online will interview her there and Persiani will also feature in a live online interview on Kosmoshow.

Full coverage of the detention and trial of Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli is available in the Azerbaijan section of Global Voices Online and on the OL! Blog (in English and Azeri). The hashtag #EminAdnan is also used on Twitter.

Perhaps it was only a matter of time, but Yoaní Sánchez, Cuba's most famous blogger, who has received countless international awards for her activism, was detained briefly and beaten by Cuban authorities on November 6, along with fellow bloggers, Claudia Cadelo (a Global Voices contributor) and Orlando Luís Pardo Lazo. The three were on their way to an anti-violence march in the Cuban capital, Havana.

Spanish blogger Rosa Jiménez Cano, who works at the Spanish news daily El País, reported that she received the following SMS text meessage from Yoaní around 2am Madrid time:

Fui detenida junto a Orlando L. Pardo y Claudia Cadelo nos llevaron a la fuerza estilo siciliano. Golpes. Nos dejaron tirados en una esquina.

The morning after the events, Yoaní posted the following account on her blog:

Cerca de la calle 23 y justo en la rotonda de la Avenida de los Presidente, fue que vimos llegar en un auto negro –de fabricación china– a tres fornidos desconocidos: ‘Yoani, móntate en el auto' me dijo uno mientras me aguantaba fuertemente por la muñeca. Los otros dos rodeaban a Claudia Cadelo, Orlando Luís Pardo Lazo y una amiga que nos acompañaba a una marcha contra la violencia. Ironías de la vida, fue una tarde cargada de golpes, gritos y malas palabras la que debió transcurrir como una jornada de paz y concordia. Los mismos ‘agresores' llamaron a una patrulla que se llevó a mis otras dos acompañantes, Orlando y yo estábamos condenados al auto de matrícula amarilla, al pavoroso terreno de la ilegalidad y la impunidad del Armagedón.

Me negué a subir al brillante Geely y exigimos nos mostraran una identificación o una orden judicial para llevarnos. Claro que no enseñaron ningún papel que probara la legitimidad de nuestro arresto. Los curiosos se agolpaban alrededor y yo gritaba ‘Auxilio, estos hombres nos quieren secuestrar', pero ellos pararon a los que querían intervenir con un grito que revelaba todo el trasfondo ideológico de la operación: ‘No se metan, estos son unos contrarrevolucionarios'. Ante nuestra resistencia verbal, tomaron el teléfono y dijeron a alguien que debió ser su jefe: ‘¿Qué hacemos? No quieren subir al auto'. Imagino que del otro lado la respuesta fue tajante, porque después vino una andanada de golpes, empujones, me cargaron con la cabeza hacia abajo e intentaron colarme en el carro. Me aguanté de la puerta… golpes en los nudillos… alcancé a quitarle un papel que uno de ellos llevaba en el bolsillo y me lo metí en la boca. Otra andanada de golpes para que les devolviera el documento.

Yoaní's post goes on to describe further brutality inflicted on herself and Orlando, and their eventual release:

Nos dejaron tirados y adoloridos en una calle de la Timba, una mujer se acercó ‘¿Qué les ha pasado?'… ‘Un secuestro', atiné a decir. Lloramos abrazados en medio de la acera, pensaba en Teo, por Dios cómo voy a explicarle todos estos morados. Cómo voy a decirle que vive en un país donde ocurre esto, cómo voy a mirarlo y contarle que a su madre, por escribir un blog y poner sus opiniones en kilobytes, la han violentado en plena calle. Cómo describirle la cara despótica de quienes nos montaron a la fuerza en aquel auto, el disfrute que se les notaba al pegarnos, al levantar mi saya y arrastrarme semidesnuda hasta el auto.

At the time of writing, Yoaní's post had attracted 1,412 comments.

Claudia also quickly entered her version of the incident on her blog:

We refused to get in the car, there were three of them and they threatened us:

‘Get in the car, now.'
‘Let us see your documents, or bring a policeman.'

Orlando had his cell phone in his hand. ‘Pardo, don’t record,' said the one in the orange shirt, and I got my cell out. Nobody noticed me, I sent the first Tweet… In less than three minutes a patrol car came up with a couple of cops—a woman and a man—completely dumbstruck by the scene. The carried out their orders almost in slow motion, the woman told me:

‘Don’t resist.'

‘They are undocumented,' it occurred to me to enlighten her.

Yoani was clinging to a bush, I was clinging to her waist, and the woman was pulling me by the leg. They had already dragged Orlando off, outside my field of vision. A man at the bus-stop looked on with an expression of terror, people didn’t say a single word. The officer, very young, got me in an armlock that immobilized me. I could have kicked a little but I was too astonished at seeing Yoani’s legs sticking out the rear window of the State Security car.

Her post goes on to relate the chain of events in great detail, but she ends on a triumphant note:

Then the first call came, with a 00 international prefix, and I knew nothing had been in vain, even if we had all been arrested and the march suspended. When, later, I saw the video that Ciro brought me, I knew for certain: They lost; it's the countdown.

Commenting on the incident, diaspora blogger Uncommon Sense expresses some surprise, since “those of us overseas who presume that because Yoani, Claudia and the others are so well known, the Castro dictatorship would never dare arrest them.” Yet arrest them they reportedly did. He continues:

Of course, we should never be surprised at what the regime does when it comes to trying to silence its opposition on the island.

And we should never underestimate the importance of the protection we provide every time we read one of their blogs. Obviously, it doesn't provide them absolute immunity, but it is conceivable that someone like Yoani Sanchez would have a long ago been locked away in the Castro gulag were it not for the fact that she is so well known.

What you provide them with each click is the moral support vital for their continuing struggle for freedom.

Meanwhile, Babalu Blog, after publishing the story as breaking news, kept updating the post as more details became available, including an 8:15 am entry showing evidence of physical abuse via a photo that was sent to Penultimos Dias by Orlando Luis Pardo. Cuban American Pundits‘ John R. learned of Yoani's detention from Babalu and goes on to comment:

It can only be said that the Cuba Governement is afraid, and that these heirs to Cuba's future are extremely brave.

The blog also searched mainstream media sites to determine how big the story was and was disappointed to learn that “the only thing CNN is covering on Cuba is how Miller Beer and Haagen Dazs ice cream may be sold in Cuba — for a premium nonetheless. As Cuban citizens are sequestered and beaten for their exercising of free speech, Chicago food (and other companies) are negotiating how beer and ice cream are to be sold on the island.” (CNN eventually went on to cover the story of the bloggers' seizure.) The post goes on to comment on the U.S. economic embargo against the island, saying:

For those who claim that a new era has dawned on Cuba should take a close look at the incident that happened with a peaceful group of Cuban bloggers. Nothing has changed. Oppression remains in the cities while luxury and freedom exudes in the resorts.

I don't know about you, but I'm no longer eating Hagen Dazs ice cream nor drinking Miller beer.

Oswaldo Payá of the Movimiento Cristiano Liberación issued a statement expressing solidarity with Sánchez and other victims of repression. My big, fat Cuban family is also standing in solidarity with her Cuban sisters:

I have the supreme luxury of writing about anything that excites or amuses me at any given time. And I do.

Today I want to make you aware if you're not already, of a group of dissident bloggers presently under fire for blogging in Cuba.

Unlike me, they write about the everyday indignities of living in castro's gulag. You understand, of course, that in a communist country, dissension is not just discouraged, it is oftentimes attacked.

Yet these brave bloggers persist…Tonight, Yoani Sanchez and a group of dissidents were picked up, harassed, detained and beaten as they prepared to attend, ironically, a demonstration against the use of violence.

They knew and called her by name and forced her into a car where she figured that this was a kidnapping which would end in her execution. Although she and her dissident companions were beaten severely they were subsequently released.

Her safety lies here. On blogs like mine.

Along the Malecon gives some background to the incident and firmly believes that “the legend of Yoani Sanchez grew Friday after Cuban authorities snatched her off the street, shoved her into a car and roughed her up before freeing her”:

Luis Eligio, of the counterculture group OMNI-Zona Franca, and two rappers organized the march. On Oct. 20, Sanchez was one of more than 10 bloggers who staged a ‘virtual protest' using Tweets, cell phone text messages and blog posts to call for the release of political prisoners. All this puts the socialist government in a tough spot. The more force authorities use, the easier it will be for opposition activists to recruit followers. These incidents also help galvanize international support for Sanchez and other bloggers. This support grows at an exponential rate, colonizing cyberspace and making it difficult for the Cuban government to effectively counter.

In a separate post, the blogger highlights the views of those who are a tad sceptical about the whole event, one of whom is Cuban journalist Vladia Rubio Jiménez, who writes in her blog:

Francamente, me resulta bien oscuro el asunto. ¿A partir de ahora seremos testigos de “espontáneas” marchas de protesta? ¿Contra qué violencia estaban pronunciándose esos muchachos con sus abstractos carteles? ¿Sería contra la que está ocurriendo en Afganistán, Honduras, o contra lo acontecido en la más importante base militar norteamericana donde un enloquecido disparó y dejó muertas a 13 personas y varios heridos?

She continues:

Por lo que leo, parece haber sido una manifestación organizada sobre todo a través de algunos blogs, entre ellos Octavo Cerco; y también me asombra ver las posibilidades tecnológicas de que disponen: teléfonos celulares, rápidas conexiones a Internet que incluso les permiten subir los videos… En ninguna parte dice con claridad quién convocó esa marcha.

Yohandry's Weblog echoes her sceptisicm:

Pero bien, Claudia Cadelo dejó este vídeo en su blog. No comprendo cómo pueden subir sus videos a Youtube tan rápido, pero allí está. Ella misma por Twitter dijo que no había llegado hasta el performance, además de que explicó que estaba detenida.

Cómo pudo hacer Twitter detenida, cómo subió el video desde un carro de la policía?

Entra en acción Yoani Sánchez. Ahora bien, Yoani Sánchez cuenta a las siempre listas agencias y emisoras que tienen la misión de cubrir sus actividades lo ocurrido con ella y otros bloggers que se encaminaban al performance, quizás con el objetivo de provocar, nadie sabe.

Les dejo la grabación, ¡esos medios tan ágiles al servicio de Yoani! Adelanto que cuenta que ella tiene celular, computadora y seguirá haciendo Twitter, cosa que no acabo de comprender, cuando ella misma dice que no tiene libertad para trabajar en Cuba.

Y yo esperaré ahora la otra versión de lo ocurrido. Como dice el dicho, siempre hay un ojo que te ve.

Social media users are certainly keeping a close eye on developments. Even as Claudia tweeted about the incident, apparently while it was happening - “Estoy detenidaabout 22 hours ago from txt” was her first entry - her Twitter followers have shown their support, with one user calling her “muy valiente” (”very brave”).

The Public Pilot Library of Medellín, Colombia at the La Loma was robbed last month and it shocked the local residents. The community expressed their rejection to this criminal act. Although there was a relief that the Golden Nicca prize was recovered, the members of the Rising Voices grantee Hiperbarrio wondered why this happened.

Hiperbarrio member Camela is appalled by the theft and she calls it a “desecration”. Argos points out what the library means to the community:

This is our workplace, our meeting place and the only place of public open permanently to the community in a territory that has no parks, public spaces or platforms.

The robbers came through the roof and used the shelves as ladder

Catalina Restrepo writes:

“For eight days our souls have departed“, said Gabriel Jaime Vanegas every time they ask him about what happened in the library of La Loma. Today there are many voices calling for the dissemination of this press release through their sites and social networks:

“If you consider the public library as a place of encounter, knowledge and service to the community for over 50 years, it is unacceptable that some take for themselves what belong to another property, intangible assets and property that belong to the community. [..]

“Thus our community today requires and demands the presence of the authorities responsible so that these criminal acts are not repeated.”

Alvaro Ramirez wonders who are behind the robbery:

The theft is consummated and many questions remain in the air. The key may be what motivates these thieves to enter in a library? [..]

As the statuette was abandoned, I think think this may be (the work of) drug addicts. It is very sad to accept, but in Colombia today, they proliferate and their desperation to get money makes them steal, even from their own family and friends.

And he urges that the pain of this tragic event should be converted into action:

It strikes me that if I were now in Medellin, I would go to all the schools in La Loma. To speak with teachers and offer them a class of an hour with each group to tell them about the theft and ask the kids what they think of the event. It is not going to preach the importance of being honest and to respect the community in which they live. We do this often. It is something more radical. To ask questions and engage into deep thinking with them, and let them express themselves with their own mind and think about the future that awaits us.

Suppressing crime is important and must be stopped. But at the same time it is important to discuss these acts of vandalism, with children, young people and older people to find ways to stop this wave of thefts, threats and intimidation within the villages where we live. I think it important to mobilize quickly, and from below, while putting pressure on government authorities to act.

Argos explains how the society has been ignoring the crimes and the pain of the youth:

Every time we see our loved ones suffer. The young people who have seen it grow are those who feel cornered. Without getting more sense in their lives, no future or opportunity in a society that denies them both. A society that is more interested in the further alienation of people by immersing in football, entertainment and media.

Now let us look at other issues the Hiperbarrio bloggers are blogging about.

The flower museum in San Cristobal. Image courtesy Angela Alvarez

Camela writes about the Halloween celebrations and the need to be careful about the safety of the children:

I believe that young people are invincible and do not understand reasons, at least we should take care to children, because this Halloween, they just want to collect their candy and show off their best costumes. Please, make sure to take them out early to collect their candy and be accompanied by their fathers or elders.

Homohabitus

Henry Elsucio writes about a recent workshop on animation, networking and socio-cultural issues held in Medellin. Hiperbarrio participated in it:

HiperBarrio was invited to socialize their expertise in the room 4: The digital information technologies and communication processes applied to socio-cultural. Besides socializing are two experiences that are of much more interest in what has been generating using Websocial tools. [..]

The interesting thing about this socialization was that attendees ranging from community service organizations, social work professionals, leaders and persons from community action boards and rechargeable HiperBarrio interest in how this project uses the tools of new technologies for building construction citizenship, on the other side's bench was very productive where it could make an important contact with hypertrophic project that showed interest in the work being done in HiperBarrio, exchanged emails and phone for a possible exchange of knowledge.

Colonel Murión criticize the local media for the veneration of narcotic and mob culture which are affecting the social psyche of the youth.

Landscape of Ituango

Meanwhile we have got news from Ituango. The town in situated on the North of Antioquia mountains with beautiful landscapes and kind people as this post describes. Several members of Hiperbarrio visited Ituango for a workshop and cultural week activities but a power cut had postponed the events. “Ituango is an amazing town, a municipality that falls with the human warmth of people who have all the resilient capacity of the world,” writes Catalina Restrepo.

(The translations in this post has been done using Google Translate)

A friend recently pointed me to a 2007 New Republic article in which the author, Noam Scheiber, argues that the "Freakonomics" phenomenon is lamentable because it represents a trend toward research in which clever identification strategies are prized over attempts to answer what Scheiber calls "truly deep questions." Although two years and the publication date of a second Levitt and Dubner book have since passed, the article caught my attention because I have been considering a related issue of late. We are all well aware of how difficult it is to make causal inferences in the social sciences, so it is not surprising that researchers are drawn to settings in which some source of exogenous variation allows for identification of the influence of a specific causal factor. In fact, progress on those "truly deep questions" depends in part on this type of work. However, focus on clean identification has some potentially negative implications. Scheiber names one: answering questions of peripheral interest. A second, which is of greater concern for me, is concentrating on population subgroups that may or may not be of scientific interest in and of themselves and that, in either case, are unable to provide direct insights into broader population dynamics.

One hundred years ago, Peruvian writer Ciro Alegría was born in the Northern Department of La Libertad, and who wrote novels such as The Golden Snake (1935) and The Hungry Dogs (1939). Alegría's works often centered on indigenous Peruvians, and their way of life, which was often characterized by their oppression and hardship. However, he also also took great pride in indigenous culture and was a supporter of social justice for this population.

The blogger at Postre Literario [es] writes about this focus, “To talk with Ciro Alegría is to feel the pride in the indigenism that we have in our blood and that makes us different, unique, grand because of our history.”

Perhaps, Alegria's best-known work is Broad and Alien is the World (1941), which according to the La República newspaper, is “brilliant from the beginning. The novel Broad and Alien is the World takes place in a mountainous community in Northern Peru, troubled by the resistance of its residents and its wise mayor troubled by the plundering by the political bosses, the Holocaust, and the emigration by the victims.” The novel was awarded the Grand Prize for Continental Novel in 1941. The blog Desafío Perú [es] summarizes the work:

la aldea de Rumi, auténtica protagonista de la novela, cuya vida se describe maravillosamente, es objeto de la codicia del terrateniente blanco; destruida, sus habitantes se dispersan: unos mueren, otros son reducidos a esclavos o marchan a las grandes ciudades. El mundo es ancho y ajeno es así un gran cuadro épico de las luchas de una arquetípica comunidad indígena contra los tres poderes que quieren destruirla: la oligarquía terrateniente, el Ejército y el Gobierno al servicio de los intereses estadounidenses.

Gonzalo Espino of the blog La Alforja de Chuque [es] writes the following in an analysis of the book:

Un aspecto descuidado por la crítica es la singularidad de lo maravilloso -lo mágico maravilloso- que aparece a lo largo de la novela. Se trata de pasajes que resultan extremadamente sospechosos, por que cuestionan nuestro esquema de realidad, y aun siéndolo, los ubicamos como aspectos extremadamente ficcionales. Pongo, aquí solamente dos casos: el de la comunidad Muncha allí donde no hay agua, pero sin embargo una joven tiene “macetas de claveles” que crea esa sensualidad olfativa en medio de la sequedad o el otro caso, es el diablo que atraviesa los andes y que en el relato sabemos que es el Mágico.

Eduardo Jiménez of the blog El Observador [es] takes stock of his writing and notes that his other works did not reach the level than his most famous book:

siempre me pregunté porqué llegó Alegría a un silencio casi total luego de la publicación de El mundo es ancho y ajeno. Siguió escribiendo, sí, y publicando uno que otro libro desperdigado en el tiempo, pero sin llegar jamás a esa cúspide que significó El mundo… Sólo queda la especulación para dar una respuesta. Posiblemente sintió que ya había llegado a su límite, a ese non plus ultra que los escritores de verdad reconocen en su fuero interno y ser conciente que lo publicado después no estaría a la misma altura. Con El mundo es ancho y ajeno terminado y publicado, su pathos ya estaba agotado, salvo que hubiese repetido fórmulas, lo que un escritor auténtico jamás haría.

Alegría spent a large part of his life in exile in Chile, the United States, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. As a member of the APRA political party, he was also jailed twice. It was here where he developed ideas for his novels. Writer Eduardo González Viaña tells an anecdote in his blog El Correo de Salem [es]:

Cuando lo conocí, varias décadas más tarde, Alegría me contó que allí, entre sueños y en medio de las cuatro paredes carcelarias, había visto a Rosendo Maqui y a los diversos personajes de su épica novela “El mundo es ancho y ajeno”. “Me moría de ganas de salir de allí para escribirla”.-me dijo. A Ciro le fue conmutada la pena de muerte por una prisión que padeció algunos años para luego exiliarse en Chile.

There were several events honoring the life and works of Alegría, such as a ceremony at the San Marcos Cultural Center on November 4, according to the blog La Torre de las Paradojas [es]. In addition, in the city of Cajamarca, the IV Gathering of Peruvian Storytellers “Ciro Alegría.” More information can be found on the event's blog [es].

Perhaps it was only a matter of time, but Yoaní Sánchez, Cuba's most famous blogger, who has received countless international awards for her activism, was detained briefly and beaten by Cuban authorities on November 6, along with fellow bloggers, Claudia Cadelo (a Global Voices contributor) and Orlando Luís Pardo Lazo. The three were on their way to an anti-violence march in the Cuban capital, Havana.

Spanish blogger Rosa Jiménez Cano, who works at the Spanish news daily El País, reported that she received the following SMS text meessage from Yoaní around 2am Madrid time:

Fui detenida junto a Orlando L. Pardo y Claudia Cadelo nos llevaron a la fuerza estilo siciliano. Golpes. Nos dejaron tirados en una esquina.

The morning after the events, Yoaní posted the following account on her blog:

Cerca de la calle 23 y justo en la rotonda de la Avenida de los Presidente, fue que vimos llegar en un auto negro –de fabricación china– a tres fornidos desconocidos: ‘Yoani, móntate en el auto' me dijo uno mientras me aguantaba fuertemente por la muñeca. Los otros dos rodeaban a Claudia Cadelo, Orlando Luís Pardo Lazo y una amiga que nos acompañaba a una marcha contra la violencia. Ironías de la vida, fue una tarde cargada de golpes, gritos y malas palabras la que debió transcurrir como una jornada de paz y concordia.  Los mismos ‘agresores' llamaron a una patrulla que se llevó a mis otras dos acompañantes, Orlando y yo estábamos condenados al auto de matrícula amarilla, al pavoroso terreno de la ilegalidad y la impunidad del Armagedón.

Me negué a subir al brillante Geely y exigimos nos mostraran una identificación o una orden judicial para llevarnos. Claro que no enseñaron ningún papel que probara la legitimidad de nuestro arresto. Los curiosos se agolpaban alrededor y yo gritaba ‘Auxilio, estos hombres nos quieren secuestrar', pero ellos pararon a los que querían intervenir con un grito que revelaba todo el trasfondo ideológico de la operación: ‘No se metan, estos son unos contrarrevolucionarios'. Ante nuestra resistencia verbal, tomaron el teléfono y dijeron a alguien que debió ser su jefe: ‘¿Qué hacemos? No quieren subir al auto'. Imagino que del otro lado la respuesta fue tajante, porque después vino una andanada de golpes, empujones, me cargaron con la cabeza hacia abajo e intentaron colarme en el carro. Me aguanté de la puerta… golpes en los nudillos… alcancé a quitarle un papel que uno de ellos llevaba en el bolsillo y me lo metí en la boca. Otra andanada de golpes para que les devolviera el documento.

Yoaní's post goes on to describe further brutality inflicted on herself and Orlando, and their eventual release:

Nos dejaron tirados y adoloridos en una calle de la Timba, una mujer se acercó ‘¿Qué les ha pasado?'… ‘Un secuestro', atiné a decir. Lloramos abrazados en medio de la acera, pensaba en Teo, por Dios cómo voy a explicarle todos estos morados. Cómo voy a decirle que vive en un país donde ocurre esto, cómo voy a mirarlo y contarle que a su madre, por escribir un blog y poner sus opiniones en kilobytes, la han violentado en plena calle. Cómo describirle la cara despótica de quienes nos montaron a la fuerza en aquel auto, el disfrute que se les notaba al pegarnos, al levantar mi saya y arrastrarme semidesnuda hasta el auto.

At the time of writing, Yoaní's post had attracted 1,412 comments.

Claudia also quickly entered her version of the incident on her blog:

We refused to get in the car, there were three of them and they threatened us:

‘Get in the car, now.'
‘Let us see your documents, or bring a policeman.'

Orlando had his cell phone in his hand. ‘Pardo, don’t record,' said the one in the orange shirt, and I got my cell out. Nobody noticed me, I sent the first Tweet… In less than three minutes a patrol car came up with a couple of cops—a woman and a man—completely dumbstruck by the scene. The carried out their orders almost in slow motion, the woman told me:

‘Don’t resist.'

‘They are undocumented,' it occurred to me to enlighten her.

Yoani was clinging to a bush, I was clinging to her waist, and the woman was pulling me by the leg. They had already dragged Orlando off, outside my field of vision. A man at the bus-stop looked on with an expression of terror, people didn’t say a single word. The officer, very young, got me in an armlock that immobilized me. I could have kicked a little but I was too astonished at seeing Yoani’s legs sticking out the rear window of the State Security car.

Her post goes on to relate the chain of events in great detail, but she ends on a triumphant note:

Then the first call came, with a 00 international prefix, and I knew nothing had been in vain, even if we had all been arrested and the march suspended. When, later, I saw the video that Ciro brought me, I knew for certain: They lost; it's the countdown.

Commenting on the incident, diaspora blogger Uncommon Sense expresses some surprise, since “those of us overseas who presume that because Yoani, Claudia and the others are so well known, the Castro dictatorship would never dare arrest them.” Yet arrest them they reportedly did. He continues:

Of course, we should never be surprised at what the regime does when it comes to trying to silence its opposition on the island.

And we should never underestimate the importance of the protection we provide every time we read one of their blogs. Obviously, it doesn't provide them absolute immunity, but it is conceivable that someone like Yoani Sanchez would have a long ago been locked away in the Castro gulag were it not for the fact that she is so well known.

What you provide them with each click is the moral support vital for their continuing struggle for freedom.

Meanwhile, Babalu Blog, after publishing the story as breaking news, kept updating the post as more details became available, including an 8:15 am entry showing evidence of physical abuse via a photo that was sent to Penultimos Dias by Orlando Luis Pardo.  Cuban American Pundits‘ John R. learned of Yoani's detention from Babalu and goes on to comment:

It can only be said that the Cuba Governement is afraid, and that these heirs to Cuba's future are extremely brave.

The blog also searched mainstream media sites to determine how big the story was and was disappointed to learn that “the only thing CNN is covering on Cuba is how Miller Beer and Haagen Dazs ice cream may be sold in Cuba — for a premium nonetheless. As Cuban citizens are sequestered and beaten for their exercising of free speech, Chicago food (and other companies) are negotiating how beer and ice cream are to be sold on the island.” (CNN eventually went on to cover the story of the bloggers' seizure.)  The post goes on to comment on the U.S. economic embargo against the island, saying:

For those who claim that a new era has dawned on Cuba should take a close look at the incident that happened with a peaceful group of Cuban bloggers. Nothing has changed. Oppression remains in the cities while luxury and freedom exudes in the resorts.

I don't know about you, but I'm no longer eating Hagen Dazs ice cream nor drinking Miller beer.

Oswaldo Payá of the Movimiento Cristiano Liberación issued a statement expressing solidarity with Sánchez and other victims of repression. My big, fat Cuban family is also standing in solidarity with her Cuban sisters:

I have the supreme luxury of writing about anything that excites or amuses me at any given time. And I do.

Today I want to make you aware if you're not already, of a group of dissident bloggers presently under fire for blogging in Cuba.

Unlike me, they write about the everyday indignities of living in castro's gulag. You understand, of course, that in a communist country, dissension is not just discouraged, it is oftentimes attacked.

Yet these brave bloggers persist…Tonight, Yoani Sanchez and a group of dissidents were picked up, harassed, detained and beaten as they prepared to attend, ironically, a demonstration against the use of violence.

They knew and called her by name and forced her into a car where she figured that this was a kidnapping  which would end in her execution. Although she and her dissident companions were beaten severely they were subsequently released.

Her safety lies here. On blogs like mine.

Along the Malecon gives some background to the incident and firmly believes that “the legend of Yoani Sanchez grew Friday after Cuban authorities snatched her off the street, shoved her into a car and roughed her up before freeing her”:

Luis Eligio, of the counterculture group OMNI-Zona Franca, and two rappers organized the march. On Oct. 20, Sanchez was one of more than 10 bloggers who staged a ‘virtual protest' using Tweets, cell phone text messages and blog posts to call for the release of political prisoners. All this puts the socialist government in a tough spot. The more force authorities use, the easier it will be for opposition activists to recruit followers. These incidents also help galvanize international support for Sanchez and other bloggers. This support grows at an exponential rate, colonizing cyberspace and making it difficult for the Cuban government to effectively counter.

In a separate post, the blogger highlights the views of those who are a tad sceptical about the whole event, one of whom is Cuban journalist Vladia Rubio Jiménez, who writes in her blog:

Francamente, me resulta bien oscuro el asunto. ¿A partir de ahora seremos testigos de “espontáneas” marchas de protesta? ¿Contra qué violencia estaban pronunciándose esos muchachos con sus abstractos carteles? ¿Sería contra la que está ocurriendo en Afganistán, Honduras,  o contra lo acontecido en la más importante base militar norteamericana donde un enloquecido disparó y dejó muertas a 13 personas y varios heridos?

She continues:

Por lo que leo, parece haber sido una manifestación organizada sobre todo a través de algunos blogs, entre ellos Octavo Cerco; y también me asombra ver las posibilidades tecnológicas de que disponen: teléfonos celulares, rápidas conexiones a Internet que incluso les permiten subir los videos… En ninguna parte dice con claridad quién convocó esa marcha.

Yohandry's Weblog echoes her sceptisicm:

Pero bien, Claudia Cadelo dejó este vídeo en su blog. No comprendo cómo pueden subir sus videos a Youtube tan rápido, pero allí está. Ella misma por Twitter dijo que no había llegado hasta el performance, además de que explicó que estaba detenida.

Cómo pudo hacer Twitter detenida, cómo subió el video desde un carro de la policía?

Entra en acción Yoani Sánchez. Ahora bien, Yoani Sánchez cuenta a las siempre listas agencias y emisoras que tienen la misión de cubrir sus actividades lo ocurrido con ella y otros bloggers que se encaminaban al performance, quizás con el objetivo de provocar, nadie sabe.

Les dejo la grabación, ¡esos medios tan ágiles al servicio de Yoani! Adelanto que cuenta que ella tiene celular, computadora y seguirá haciendo Twitter, cosa que no acabo de comprender, cuando ella misma dice que no tiene libertad para trabajar en Cuba.

Y yo esperaré ahora la otra versión de lo ocurrido. Como dice el dicho, siempre hay un ojo que te ve.

Social media users are certainly keeping a close eye on developments.  Even as Claudia tweeted about the incident, apparently while it was happening - “Estoy detenidaabout 22 hours ago from txt” was her first entry - her Twitter followers have shown their support, with one user calling her “muy valiente” (”very brave”).

Many countries have introduced vaccinations to help combat the spread of H1N1, or swine flu. As the sickness toll increases, so does the buzz online.

Saudi Arabia is gearing up for the Haj season, where millions of Muslims will converge to Mecca to perform pilgrimage. At Crossroads Arabia, John Burgess writes:

With Haj due to start in just a couple of weeks, the Saudis are really bearing down on the issue of an outbreak of swine flu. Saudi Gazette reports on a conference of Saudi medical emergency experts to make sure that plans are locked down. The article notes that residents of Mecca and Medina will be among the first Saudis to be offered swine flu vaccines. This would help to establish a sort of fire-break in the case of a rapid spread of the disease.

In Turkey, the situation isn't as acute. Turkish blogger Erkan  admits that he was more afraid of previous pandemics:

I did not have a single moment of panic, I declare. I do not know why. I was more worried with crimean congo hemorrhagic fever or bird flu.
However, there is a low level panic feeling about swine flu now here in Istanbul, too. What is promising is that many ordinary people are in fact following authorities and try to take measures as much as they could. They are not fatalistic and they sure are not as indifferent as I am.

Meanwhile, at Memories Documented, Jordanian Qwaider shares a conspiracy theory:

A friend of mine, is one of those believing in every possible conspiracy that involves pharmaceutical companies. She would argue for hours on how vaccines are bad, and how the companies are deliberately taking actions to “reduce the human population” starting with the young, the weak and the ill.

He adds:

I think people are scared, and when people get scared they create demons, and feel afraid and threatened by them. When people are afraid many stick to the norms that they are comfortable with.

But diseases might require a person to go out of their regular routine to get better…

I'm not sure, but I believe in science… I really do, and I would take the words of doctors and pharmacist over the words of any conspiracy theorists no matter how hard they tried to convince me.

And The View from Fez, from Morocco, has the following update on H1N1:

Forty-two new H1N1 cases were confirmed on Thursday in the cities of Casablanca, Tanger, Marrakech, Fès, Benslimane, Oujda and Meknès, the health ministry said.

This takes the total of confirmed cases to 592, including 297 cases in schools, the ministry said in a statement.

All the patients are receiving home care, with medical check-ups, said the ministry, adding that none of the cases is complicated. The ministry made clear that no case of death was documented in the country.

Moving on to lighter observations, Jordanian Hareega writes:

I understand how terrible H1N1 can be, but if you smoke 3 packs of cigarettes and enjoy a ginormous seder of mansaf (Jordanian rice dish) everyday don't worry much about H1N1. Something else will get you faster.

In the same post, Hareega adds:

Seven Jordanians died of H1N1 so far. Ten times that number died while watching our football team lose to UAE 3-1. We need to set our priorities straight. Before vaccinating the nation send our football players to jail.

“For you, access to information costs one click. In China, it would have cost a journalist seven years in jail”. This is the message you will currently find on the New York Times website as well as on USATODAY.com.

Reporters Without Borders, an international organization advocating press freedom, defending journalists imprisoned or persecuted for doing their job and exposing the mistreatment and torture of them in many countries, is launching a national campaign, entitled: “Press Freedom is the Price for Democracy.”

According to the organization, it is meant to inform the American public about the injustices committed against the press. The goal is to show every time a member of the press is killed or censored, citizens are deprived of important information. At least, in the last fifteen years, getting the news has cost the lives of 850 reporters.

As part of the campaign, Reporters Without Borders posted a YouTube video, “Shot for News?!” featuring a young woman in the streets of New York, seconds later a man standing by a newspaper stand is shot multiple times. The message goes like this: Unlike many other countries, getting the news here will never cost a life. RWB recently released its annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index, which measures the degree of freedom journalists have in 175 countries. Currently, more than 200 reporters and media assistants are jailed worldwide. 91 cyberdissidents are behind bars because of their online work. To see how your country ranks on press freedom:
http://www.rsf.org/en-classement1003-2009.html

Newspapers across the country have also been asked to donate free space for print or online advertisements to publicize the message to the greater public.

While Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has warned the opposition not to hold protest on 4^th of November, Iranian people prepare for huge rallies against dictatorship. 4^th of November marks the anniversary of US embassy seizure. 30 years ago, students grabbed the embassy, but now students have changed significantly, so this time in the memory of that day they want to sent peaceful message to the world.

As a result, the internet received massive artistic posters that are expressing Iranian’s thought, moreover these posters are aimed to encourage people to get together and protest dictatorship and discrimination, and stand for equality and human rights.

Besides, huge amount of blogs are trying to express their opinions about the current condition of the Iranian society, an important number of podcasts have been published online about 4^th of November. Facebook and Youtube are filled by clips, images and notes in the memory of those killed during the post-election’s protest.

In contrast, prominent politicians and the IRGC warned the opposition and the people not to hold any other protest except the one that is against the US. In the meantime, government tried to put the mainstream media under pressure as recently one of the Iranian newspapers has been banned with unclear reasons.

IRGC pointed out that, people should be careful not to stray from the fundamental governmental policies. According to IRGC, the opposition is induced by foreign governments such as US and other western countries. The Iranian regime send a warning, on the IRNA state news agency, that it would be not tolerate any “diversionary and false” slogans.

However, opposition’ leader Mr. Mousavi and Karobi are still encouraging people to come out and stand for their basic rights. Moreover, there are too many actions that came out from universities and even high schools in order to support Iran’s green movement. Universities’ movements activated largely after one of the students from Sharif University shouted over dictatorship in front of Ayatollah Khamenei in a meeting.

The atmosphere within academic sphere in Iran such as universities and high schools is convulsive as with many protests. In addition, 4^th of November is also called students’ day.

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As the trial of video blogging youth activists Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli continues in Baku, two English-language bloggers from Azerbaijan react to yesterday's aborted court hearing. Both seem pessimistic and unhappy with how the trial has been conducted to date, but nonetheless say they will continue to fight for the two men's release.

In particular, L4L shares his observations from yesterday's hearing, and specifically on the decision not to enter phone records in Hajizade and Milli's defense into court.

During today’s hearing of “Wild-beating-taekwando-champions-bloggers-Adnan-and-Emin” case I was able to enter courtroom for the first time. Mixed feelings of what was happening. I saw Emin and Adnan, saw how strong they are. And this made me happy and proud. I had dozen or so rounds of laugh in the expense of “victims” Vusal and Babek. I was annoyed as hell.

Azercell answered to enquiry of the court and gave reports on calls made on July 8 by “victims” and Adnan. […] reports of Adnan’s calls shows that he was in the 39th police station. This little fact demolishes the case of the prosecutor. This shows that Adnan and Emin weren’t brought to police station handcuffed. […]

[…]

Then Vusal showed that he is “real Caucasian man” with valor and strong feeling of “qeyret”. He asked judge not to give Azercell’s report on his calls to defense. “I don’t want them to disturb my relatives and those close to me”. […] naturally, judge is “real Caucasian man” too, so he understood Vusal’s tender feelings and was with him on that.

Anyways. Amnesia. Adnan and Emin answered few questions after Vusal and Babek and they were so clear and accurate, contrast was almost scary. […]

[…] People like Emin and Adnan who made their choice and are proudly standing by it. Who will not back off. We should help their case. Only this way this nation will shake its AMNESIA.

Meanwhile, Flying Carpets and Broken Pipelines remembers events to date, but also looks to the future.

Its been 4 months since Emin and Adnan's arrest- time goes by but somethings simply don't change. […]

[…] happiness and sense of victory slowly disappeared as in July, two youth activists- Emin Milli (30) and Adnan Hajizada (26) were arrested and charged with “hooliganism” and are now facing up to 5 year of imprisonment. They didn't do anything- they were attacked by two men who are now treated as “victims” and are set free while Emin and Adnan are spending their time behind bars. But they are keeping their chin up. […]

[…]

Looking back it makes one wonder will there ever be a change? Will people actually enjoy their lives rather than worry about making extra money to feed their families? Will our youth be able to study in corruption free universities and actually get a descent education? Will people be happy again? For now, there is only one answer, time will show so let it go by but be patient and hopefully we, or our children, or our grand children will see that change…

Incidentally, the date set for the next hearing (11 November) will coincide with a roundtable discussion on the case at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.

Hooliganism or Freedom of Speech? The case of two bloggers detained in Azerbaijan

On July 8, 2009, two bloggers and political activists, Andnan Hajizade and Emin Milli, were arrested in Azerbaijan on charges of “hooliganism”. The bloggers were detained shortly after posting a video on YouTube mocking the Azeri government's purchase of donkeys from Germany. After nine trials, the two bloggers (both without prior criminal records) remain imprisoned. The four presenters will form a panel discussion to speak about this particular case of the bloggers and what it means for freedom of speech in Azerbaijan as well as the greater Caucasus region.

Present for the event will be Parvana Persiani, Hajizade's girlfriend and a senior figure in the OL! Azerbaijani youth movement, who will also be attending next week's World Blogging Forum in Bucharest, Romania.

Global Voices Online will interview her there and Persiani will also feature in a live online interview on Kosmoshow.

Full coverage of the detention and trial of Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli is available in the Azerbaijan section of Global Voices Online and on the OL! Blog (in English and Azeri). The hashtag #EminAdnan is also used on Twitter.

Two different organizations in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories are using video tools to help both Arabic and Jewish youth to understand the conflict and bridge gaps between them,  creating spaces for interaction and communication where they can share their dreams, concerns and thoughts regarding the complex situation they live in.

One of the initiatives is Sadaka Reut, and this is what they say about their program:

With the majority of Palestinian and Jewish youth physically segregated from one another (in separate communities and schools) and fears, racism and prejudice the result, we look to build alternative models for interaction between the two groups. The ‘Building a Culture of Peace’ program seeks to create a space in which both Palestinian and Jewish youth may feel equal, respected and recognized as individuals and as national collectives.

The members of their program have also been participating in the One Minute Video Project, where they learn about video activism during a one-week workshop. Here are some of the results, and you can see the rest by clicking through to their site:

Arab:

AM/FM:

Few Love Singing:

Another initiative is the Windows for Peace project, which started back in 1991 as an effort to produce a bilingual and bicultural magazine for youth as a way for them to connect and learn about the conflict, promote equality and empower youth. However, it hasn't been easy, as they explain on their site:

It is no simple task for Israeli and Palestinian youth to overcome the vast amount of misinformation and stereotypes they are taught about one another. The limited availability for interaction, a result of living in mostly segregated communities and exacerbated by the ongoing violent political conflict, perpetuates the historical fears, prejudice, and hatred that divide the two peoples. Windows is therefore dedicated to fostering large scale change in the way Israeli and Palestinian youth see themselves, “the other” and the conflict. Participants in Windows programs go through experiences that promote conflict transformation among both peoples, towards a peaceful reality with which both sides can live. We believe that a just and lasting peace must be based on democratic values, human rights, and mutual knowledge and acceptance of “the other.”

They are also working on a new initiative called Through the Lens, where 15 to 17 year old youth who “graduate” from the magazine continue developing skills to create short films, news pieces and other video productions to further “productive, peace-building dialogue and positive interaction”.

Here is a video where the participants of Windows speak about their experience in the group and how they have dealt with the challenges it represents to get out of their comfort zone and speak about difficult topics such as the conflict between Israel and Palestine:

As the children in the video state in so many words: they may have a hard time dealing with many of the opinions and perceptions other children express, but having the space to discuss issues in a safe and secure manner helps them understand the world they live in with a possibility to interact, learn and share with other children and youth and even change these perceptions.

• Sweden's Pirate Party, which supports OA, will gain its second seat in the European Parliament, thanks to reapportionment as part of the recently ratified Lisbon Treaty.
• Three more BioMed Central journals have been accepted for tracking by Thomson Reuters and will receive impact factors.
• RePEc added 16 new participating archives in October 2009.
• PubMed Central will show the table of contents for some embargoed journals before the embargoed content is available.
• The OA Hazardous Substances Data Bank added its first set of records on nanomaterials.
• John Wilbanks shares his further thoughts on why "open source" is an insufficient metaphor for open approaches to science.
• Barbara Fister on libraries: "We must position ourselves as the champions of students and faculty and their right to read and learn without ... hindrances and barriers".
• Meanwhile, Lawrence Lessig tells educational technologies to become "radical militant activists" for legal, accessible sharing of knowledge.
• The revised draft Google Book Settlement is due on November 9, Kenneth Crews reminds us.
• Anne Fitzgerald released her report on public sector information, Open access policies, practices and licensing: a review of the literature in Australia and selected jurisdictions.

The Association of Research Libraries has released its strategic plan for 2010-2012. Each of the plan's three strategic directions touches on OA, directly or indirectly.

From the strategic direction Influencing Public Policies:

... Expand ARL’s capacity for advancing open access/open science and access to data through increased advocacy and collaboration with other allied and partner organizations such as the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC). ...

From the strategic direction Reshaping Scholarly Communication:

... Sponsor, conduct, and promote research that will inform the development and assessments of models of scholarly communication. ...

As previously announced, PubMed Central Canada launched during Open Access Week. The manuscript submission system will launch later this year.

See also our past posts on PMC Canada.

Yandex.ru, Russian most popular search engine, announced on November 3 that it would close its blog ranking service Yandex Blogs Top (YBT) [RUS] by the end of the month. A spokesman for Yandex.ru said the reason for closure was that the blog rating “had become a specialized media platform.” Bloggers accused the company of giving in to political pressure from the Russian government.

Anton Volnukhin (aka Ya.blogs user Antonme), a spokesman for Yandex.ru, wrote on the company blog [RUS]:

We noticed that service, which had been initially created as a mirror, a reflection of the blogosphere, became an amplifier, a media tool. The effect of a positive feedback took place: many bloggers started to write, comment and include links with a purpose to “bring a post to the top.”

Just about everyone started to use this tool - from the disseminators of the links “please help collect money” to radicals of any kind. As a result, radicals of one kind started to accuse Yandex of helping radicals of another kind and vice versa. Journalists got into the habit of looking through the blog ranking, bringing posts to the top became a paid service and now the authorities perceive the ranking as vox populi.

Transformation of the blog ranking  into a specialized media platform doesn't allow us to develop this service as a part of Yandex portal. We don't see any perspective to make it a mass service - and the development of Yandex is mainly focused on mass services. This is why we decided to stop supporting the service and, at the same time, simultaneously provide everyone with the technical ability to create their own ranking of popular blogs, their own version of the answer to the question “what do popular bloggers care about?” Similar rankings already exist on different sites of RuNet. We hope that the usage of data from Yandex Blog Search will create many similar services and will help everyone find a suitable ranking.

Artemiy Lebedev (aka LJ-user tema [RUS]), one of the most influential and controversial personalities of RuNet, is the first who started using Yandex Blog Top RSS on his Web site [RUS]. Lebedev claimed that the ranking was shut down due to the reasons not mentioned in the official statement from Yandex:

Well, to be short, Yandex got completely fed up with complains about the blog ranking which has always been the most crystal clear and honest rating in the world.

This is why rating will continue to exist on the Web site of Artemy Lebedev's Studio…

Because it is written in the studio charter that politicians and priests can f…k themselves, the director of the company will not hesitate to tell any politician or pries to f…k themselves.

First, let f…k themselves […] anyone who is not OK with the fact that the ranking is created by a robot on the basis of objective parameters.

The other version of Yandex Blog Top RSS also appeared on the site Whoyougle [RUS].

Yandex.ru has bigger audience than many cable TV-channels in Russian (20 million visitors in September 2009 [RUS]). Bloggers used the popularity of the site to bring many controversial topics to the attention of the Russian audience by including links and adding comments to the posts. Some believe this led to political pressure resulting in the elimination of the blog ranking.

Habrahabr user SSE [RUS] claims [RUS] that political pressure on Yandex wasn't a secret:

It became known as early as in October that someone “at the top” wasn't very happy with the free ranking of alternative points of view.

Andrey Malgin (aka LJ-user avmalgin[RUS]) explained [RUS]:

A pleasing picture that we saw in  TV newscasts was very different from the things that bloggers, especially politicized ones, were writing about. Now this has been ended…

Roman Ivanov (aka LJ-user kukutz [RUS]), Yandex “chief Lulz officer” (Yandex virtual spokesman), argues [RUS] that the Yandex blog ranking did not attract a large audeince and had only 7 thousand visitors a day. At the same time, the amount Yandex Blog Search monthly visitors  in September 2009 was around 2,5 mln visitors in September 2009 [RUS] or 12,5 percent of the total monthly visitors of Yandex.ru. Many RuNet users strongly disagree with this statistics and claim that the blog ranking was much more popular than Yandex officially announced.

Additional info

Yandex.ru dominates Russian search engine market. According to Vedomosti newspaper [RUS], it is accouned for 54,5 percent of the Russian search traffic. In July 2009, ComScore research [ENG] stated that Yandex is among top 10 world's search engines with 1,5 percent of the world search traffic.

Over the past few days, a company called DeepDyve, who run a search engine that we use on the PLoS.org website, announced a rental service for research articles. DeepDyve offers two types of content on its site - restricted-access content (from traditional publishers such as OUP, Wiley-Blackwell, Sage and others) which can be "rented" for $0.99 on a "pay-as-you-go" model and open-access content, which is always free.

The open-access and library community have been asking some pertinent questions about this new launch and our involvement with it which we'd like to address in this blog post.

Q: Is PLoS charging a fee for access to articles that appear in DeepDyve?

A: There is no financial gain to PLoS - all our content is freely available online to everyone, including commercial organizations, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License that we use.

Q: Why has PLoS agreed to provide its content to DeepDyve?

A. The Creative Commons License means that no permission is required to reuse PLoS content - in fact, creative reuse for commercial as well as non-commercial purposes is encouraged. Readers might like to know that almost every organization that wants to use PLoS content in bulk checks in with us first out of courtesy and this was the case with Deep Dyve. ...

Q. Is PLoS doing this to gain eyeballs on its content?

A. PLoS content is freely available to everyone who wants to reuse it. We want as many people as possible to take advantage of this content because research information is most powerful when more people can discover and use it and naturally, we're in favor of maximum exposure for the work of PLoS authors. ...

Finally, when we raised some of the concerns of the community, listed above, with DeepDyve they were responsive and immediately made the status of open-access content clearer on their website.

I am offering today's post as part of the ongoing conversation I've been having throughout the semester about transmedia storytelling practices. Below you will find the first of two installments written by HyeRyoung OK, a recently minted USC PhD, who I have met through my work with a new MacArthur Foundation Research Hub on Youth, New Media, and Public Participation.

read more

Joining a growing national trend, Utah State University Press will merge with the administrative structure of Merrill-Cazier Library at Utah State University. The transition has begun, with the arrangement officially taking effect at the start of fiscal year 2010-11.

The move was recently approved by USU’s Executive Vice President and Provost Raymond T. Coward, following a proposal from Richard Clement, dean of USU Libraries, and Michael Spooner, director of USU Press.

The merger of a scholarly press with a university library has been used at other institutions to innovatively address a number of trends in scholarly publication, Clement and Spooner said.

Digital publishing, for example, will play an important part in the future of scholarly publication, and university libraries and presses are both deeply interested in its potential for transforming the way research is distributed.

“Many university presses are moving toward open access, often under the administration of the library,” Clement said. “The most conspicuous example in the recent past is the University of Michigan Press which moved into the library and is now focusing on OA and other forms of digital publication. We propose to move the USU Press along the same path.” ...

“Among universities with presses, there is an emerging trend in this direction, and Utah State University Press now joins the first dozen or so university presses to pursue this relationship,” Spooner said.

While the decision to move USU Press to Merrill-Cazier Library was not completely budget-driven, it will result in significant savings, Clement said. With a larger staff in place, the library will assume a number of support activities for the press, including accounting, IT support, graphic design and public relations. ...

USU Press will adopt a new publication model, with open access as a central component and will move toward increased digital delivery of books. ...

“This move directly serves the needs of the university,” Clement said. “Open access allows us to go back to where university presses began — to publish work by all faculty in every discipline.”

At the same time, USU Press remains a refereed scholarly press, with the standards of rigorous peer review appropriate to a university publisher. ...

For the last nine months, the survival of the Utah State University Press has been in doubt, with fears that deep cuts being made to public higher education in Utah would end up killing off the publishing outlet.

This week comes news that the press will survive -- in part by embracing a new model of organization (becoming part of the university library) and a new business model (embracing open access, in which most publications would be available online and free). ...

Although not its official birthday, Global Voices Online made its first ever post on threats made against Iranian dissident blogger Hossein Derakhshan, aka Hoder five years ago today. And in the same week that Threatened Voices, an online project to map bloggers under attack worldwide was launched, Derakhshan marked the first anniversary of his incarceration in prison.

Today is also notable for another event — the continuing trial of detained video blogging youth activists Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli in Baku, Azerbaijan. The last court hearing was adjourned because witnesses did not turn up. Media Helping Media comments on the latest developments in what many consider to be a politically motivated case to silence dissent in the country.

The trial of Adnan Hajizade and Emin Abdullayev (also known as Milli) was adjourned ten days ago after a brief appearance by the two on hooliganism and violence charges.

[…]

Those campaigning for the release of the two men suspect that there may be political reasons behind the delays.

Media freedom groups have been protesting about the arrests and detention and claim it is part of an effort to limit freedom of expression.

Two days ago, Emotions on Air, Mind Mute, a newly launched English-language Azeri blog, reflected on the the case against the two young activists.

I started to intensely think about Emin and Adnan. I came to be proud of their parents,teachers and elders. I became curious about books they have read. I got jealous of friends they have, as they were lucky to know these great men personally.

Now it hurts very much that they are in prison. Their great time of lives has been stolen. Their summer has been taken away. Their parents spend sleepless nights. They have been deprived to enjoy their work, make mistakes, hang out with youth and talk to them. Their email inboxes are flooded with messages and run out of extra space.

But they keep on inspiring youth. They are hoping and planting seeds of liberty. They are spiritually free despite that their physical freedom is limited.

[…]

I think of my future now. How will it be? Will it come at all given the society I live in. Will I be arrested one day? My kids I will have.. if ever. […]

All I know is I want them to be hooligans like Emin and Adnan.

Nevertheless, many of Hajizade and Milli's supporters remained resigned to more delays.

As it was, the hearing was held although witnesses displayed selective memories. As usual, friends and supporters of Hajizade and Milli used new and social media such as Facebook and Twitter to update others.

The fact that key witnesses and the alleged victims themselves were unable to provide testimony prompted one supporter to hope that the trial might now end.

However, although it was proven that the two activists had reported an incident of physical assault against themselves, missing key evidence soon gave many reason to fear the worst. [Update: Eurasianet has since reported that the phone records were ruled inadmissible by the judge]

Amidst criticism that the authorities are stringing out the trial indefinitely, their fears were probably well founded. Despite calling a break, the hearing was not resumed.

Yet, while the action against Hajizade and Milli looks set to continue in a trial considered by the international community and local civil society organizations to be highly flawed, perhaps the last laugh went to Hajizade and Milli's supporters who noticed the irony when the two activists were taken away.

Also somewhat ironically, the date set for the next hearing will coincide with a roundtable discussion on the case at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.

Hooliganism or Freedom of Speech? The case of two bloggers detained in Azerbaijan

On July 8, 2009, two bloggers and political activists, Andnan Hajizade and Emin Milli, were arrested in Azerbaijan on charges of “hooliganism”. The bloggers were detained shortly after posting a video on YouTube mocking the Azeri government's purchase of donkeys from Germany. After nine trials, the two bloggers (both without prior criminal records) remain imprisoned. The four presenters will form a panel discussion to speak about this particular case of the bloggers and what it means for freedom of speech in Azerbaijan as well as the greater Caucasus region.

Present for the event will be Parvana Persiani, Hajizade's girlfriend and a senior figure in the OL! Azerbaijani youth movement, who will also be attending next week's World Blogging Forum in Bucharest, Romania.

Global Voices Online hopes to interview her there and Persiani will also feature in a live Internet interview on Kosmoshow.

Full coverage of the detention and trial of Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli is available in the Azerbaijan section of Global Voices Online and on the OL! Blog (in English and Azeri). The hashtag #EminAdnan is also used on Twitter.

Syria was among the last countries in the Middle East to introduce the Internet. On February 24, 1996, the Syrian Telecommunications Establishment (STE) received permission from the prime minister’s office to do so, and to serve as the body responsible for the Country Top-Level Domain Code (sy.). Two weeks later, STE signed an agreement with the Syrian Computer Society (SCS), headed by the country’s future president, Bashar al-Asad, to connect governmental institutions to the Internet in order to conduct an initial evaluation. The result was a decision to move forward, for the following declared reasons:

1. the Internet made an enormous wealth of information and services accessible to students and researchers;

2. it was an important venue for commercial publicity and trade;

3. Syrian institutions could employ the Internet to promote Syria’s cultural, archaeological and historical heritage and thus advance the tourism industry;

4. Syria’s positions and rights on vital political issues could be advanced, thus countering the “mistaken positions, lies, and distorted views of Syria which appear on Internet sites supported by international Zionism.”[1]

Eighteen months later, on November 17, 1997, Syria began linking up 150

selected government bodies to the Internet. At the beginning of 1999, accessibility was extended to the broader public, and included e-mail, surfing and file transfer (FTP) capabilities within the country itself.

In its approach to the Internet, the Syrian regime, like other governments in the region, seeks to counter material critical of it that is widely available on-line, while insuring that technological innovation in the country is managed with great care in order to fend off unwanted cultural and political penetration and thus maintain tight control over the population. Hence, the authorities agreed to make the Internet accessible only after confirming that they had the ability to control and monitor its content. Adding to the limitations on Syrian users were the high costs of purchasing a computer and connecting to the Internet, and the country’s inferior communications infrastructure. To be sure, Internet usage has expanded since the beginning of the decade by no less than 12,000(!)%, partly because the costs for doing so have been reduced, and partly because of the strong desire for access among Syria’s relatively educated population. However, the regime has made it clear that control over access will remain in force, and that some sites would remain blocked, in line with “country's traditions and habits”[2]

Hence, only 16.4% of the population currently uses the Internet. Moreover, the restrictions imposed on them by the authorities render Syria, in the words of ‘Reporters Without Borders', among the “Internet’s enemies”.[3] Syrian authorities block websites containing material on human rights, freedom of speech, Syrian opposition organizations and Syria’s Kurdish minority, as well as pornographic and Israeli sites. In recent years, they also began to block international social networking sites, in light of their considerable popularity in the country. In 2007, Syria was even termed the “largest prison in the Middle East” for Internet users and bloggers[4] (as well as one of the 10 worst countries to be a blogger in 2009).[5] Indeed, bloggers often serve lengthy prison sentences and are hounded by the authorities in a variety of ways for their activities.

From the opposite direction, there are Western internet companies which prevent access by Syrian citizens to some of their services. For example, in April 2009, the business-oriented social networking ‘LinkedIn' blocked access from Syria, but quickly relented following protests by users, which were expressed through Twitter, among other means. LinkedIn explained its initial action as a human error. But internet firms such as ‘Google' and ‘Sun' routinely prevent Syrian users from using some of their services, in line with US government restrictions on supplying goods and services to the country.

Notwithstanding these limitations, the penetration of the Internet and the spread of social networking sites in Syria has created an important tool to disseminate information within the country and beyond. Users have often found ways to bypass the authorities’ strictures limiting the freedom of expression and organized activities through the formation of on-line pressure groups which address social and economic issues facing the country. The social networking site ‘Facebook', which operates in scores of languages, including, of course, Arabic, is especially popular in Syria.

The Syrian government’s recent campaign against Facebook and call to boycott it has brought the issue of social networking sites onto the public stage. The matter surfaced following a decision by Facebook’s management to view the Golan Heights as part of Israel, registering users from Israeli settlements there as residents of Israel, and not as residents of Syria, as had been done previously. It was even reported that Syria would block the site entirely. In fact, access had already been hindered for two years, both directly and via proxy sites which make it possible to use Facebook anonymously.[6]

The restrictions on social networking sites were designed to try and prevent Internet users from maintaining contact with one another, whether within the country or beyond. Indeed, it should be noted that on-line connections had been established in the past between Israeli and Syrian residents through Facebook proxy sites. Facebook includes hundreds of Syria-related groups, whose participants, both in-country and outside of Syria, number from the very few to thousands. They cover the gamut of subjects: tourism, business, technology, art and music, sports and student life. These sites also enable users to organize on-line protests, sometimes with considerable effect. For example, the rape of a teenage girl prompted a public discussion regarding the sexual exploitation of children, thanks to an on-line campaign involving thousands of people. An on-line campaign against a draft law dealing with matters of personal status appears to have been decisive in the government’s decision to abandon the proposed statute. Other on-line battles have included one advocating the lifting of all on-line restrictions, for which a personal appeal was even made to Syrian president Bashar al-Asad; and a call by local bloggers to boycott suppliers of cellular phones over matters of price, quality and service. In addition, Syrian Facebook users have organized on behalf of local bloggers who were imprisoned for their activities.

‘YouTube' is also employed by Syrians seeking to promote causes which are opposed to official policies. For example, clips documenting the repression of Syria’s Kurdish minority have been uploaded to the site. In response, it was reported in August 2007 that the site was blocked by the authorities because it contained a clip which showed the dress of the president’s wife flapping in the breeze during an official state function. Similarly, in May 2008, it was reported that access to the Arabic-language Wikipedia site was blocked by all internet service-providers in the country, without explanation, but in February 2009 the restriction was removed, an unprecedented step.

On-line social networks in Syria serve as a tool for organizing pressure groups, something which simply cannot be done in daily life, owing to the regime’s heavy-handed oversight and repression. These networks provide further tangible evidence of the strength of the Internet not just as a tool to transmit information within extremely restricted political environments but also to create a basis for social change in these countries. As such, they constitute a direct challenge to highly centralized authoritarian regimes such as Syria. This challenge can only grow in the years ahead, as the Internet inevitably expands its reach in the country.

Download this article as a pdf file

[1] Dr. Hasna Askhita, “L’internet en Syrie,”, Assad National Library, Damascus.

Paper delivered at the International Federation of Library Associations &

Institutions meeting, “Réseaux pour le développement des Bibliothèques dans

les Etats Arabes.” Beirut, 2-4 March 2000.

http://nmit.wordpress.com/2008/09/06/linternet-en-syrie/#more-11

[2] SyriaLive.net, “Syrian Internet Installation and Subscription Rates to be

Scrapped,” Computer and Internet – 2002, 5 March 2002.

http://web.archive.org/web/20071212172006/http://www.syrialive.net/computer/ar

chive/com-puter_2002.htm

[3] http://www.rsf.org

[4] Reporters Without Borders, “Syria,” 1 February 2007.

http://www.rsf.org/Syria,20777.html

[5] Committee to Protect Journalists, “10 Worst Countries to be a Blogger,” 30

April 2009.

http://cpj.org/reports/2009/04/10-worst-countries-to-be-a-blogger.php

[6] http://www.gotofacebook.co.za, http://facebookoxy.com

Rick Carback from the Scantegrity team just pointed out to me that my totals are not quite the same as theirs, and he surmises that I may have read the Instant Runoff rules incorrectly. Specifically, my code considers that ballots that skip a rank, i.e. that go directly to choice #2 and never indicate a choice #1, are “exhausted”, meaning they don’t count anymore. In fact, the rules for Takoma Park state that, in that case, the next candidate choice counts, but if two choices are skipped, then it’s exhausted. He’s absolutely right, and I’ve updated my tally code appropriately, and now my numbers match….

Except for one more detail: the Scantegrity team is continuing the Instant Runoff candidate elimination past the point of a candidate gaining absolute majority. I think that’s wrong. It doesn’t affect the outcome, but it does affect the final tally count, so we’ll wait and see what the official word is.

In any case… isn’t it cool that we can audit each other and work out these differences with public code, public results, and complete oversight from anyone who wants to watch? That, again, is the power of open-audit elections using systems like Scantegrity or Helios.

update 1: November 6th, 2009 - Lawyer Ben Debba said fatma has been transferred to Bouchoucha police station and might be summoned to appear before a public prosecutor.

update 2: November 7th, 2009 - Lawyer Ben Debba said that fatma has been released.

On Monday, November 2nd, 2009, Tunisian blogger and college Theatre professor, Fatma Riahi (34), known online as Arabicca, was summoned to appear before the Criminal Brigade of Gorjani (Tunis), where she was questioned about her online activities.

Fatma was released the same day around 10 pm then summoned again the next day, on Tuesday November 3rd when three Security officers escorted her to her house in Monastir, located at 160 km from the capital (Tunis), to conduct a search for evidence that she may be hiding behind the pen-name of the famous Tunisian cartoonist blogger Blog de Z. They also confiscated her PC. On Wednesday, they escorted her again to her home in search for her passwords and managed to access her facebook account.

Since then, Arabicca has not been released and has been denied to meet her lawyer, Miss Laila Ben Debba, who spoke to her only for few minutes. Arabicca is being detained in Gorjani Police Station and could face criminal libel charge that potentially carries a prison term to up to three years in prison.

Fatma was blogging at Fatma Arabicca. A blog that she deleted three days before the arrest.

A Free Arabicca campaign blog has been launched by fellow Tunisian bloggers in support for Fatma, as well as a facebook page.

Coverage of the Takoma Park election continues, with a good article in Wired. And so does the audit!

Some people who showed up on election day couldn’t be verified as registered voters. Thanks to one of the useful HAVA provisions, they got to vote provisionally, meaning their ballot was set aside in an envelope labeled with their name, and their eligibility was checked later. A number of folks did turn out to be eligible, so their ballots need to be tallied. The Scantegrity team has scanned those ballots, and has thus updated its D (shuffle) and R (results) tables which now include all of the old plus new ballots.

So it’s time to run my audit code again, which I had to update for this new development (I didn’t realize we were counting provisional ballots, too!). It looks like all of the confirmation code reveals check out.

Here is the new list of confirmation codes, and the updated tally.

Though the vote totals did change, the low number of provisional ballots means that no race came close to having a new winner because of provisional ballots.

once upon a time, you mentioned something about vote secrecy…

The secrecy of provisional ballots is much less than that of normal ballots, since you can obviously see which candidates gained a small number of votes, and thus you can often tell how some provisional voters voted. I hear that Josh Benaloh has proposed a slightly different approach, which I think is a very nice twist: count *all* of the ballots by default, and then exclude the provisional ballots that fail. This would mean that only the privacy of the unqualified voters would be at stake, not that of the qualified voters, and that’s much nicer. Next time, maybe!

and now?…

We wait for complaints from voters who might not have been able to verify their confirmation codes. Then, once the complaint period ends, the Scantegrity team will meet again to do two last audits: the left-vs-right opening of the shuffle tables, and then the full opening of the spoiled ballots. The tallies already produced won’t change, but those meetings will confirm our confidence in those tallies.

Almost there!

Artists and creatives of all types are sharing some incredible CC-licensed content on The Behance Network.

Levi van Veluw showcases miniature landscapes built on a human canvas in Landscapes (BY-NC-ND); Glenn Jones offers ideas for future t-shirts (BY-NC); L Filipe dos Santos highlights illustrations with See. Saw (BY-NC-ND); Si Sott offers a poster series in Silent Records (BY-NC-ND); and Iain Crawford shares his stunning still photography (BY-NC).

It is fantastic to see this kind of up-take with our licenses, and Behance is only one of the many content directories that use our tools to help increase sharing and reuse. For more info on Behance, be sure to read our intervew with founder/CEO Scott Belsky as well as explore the Behance Network itself.

Excerpt from See . Saw Series by L Filipe dos Santos | CC BY-NC-ND

Iran's Green Movement opposition organized mass street protests on the 4th of November (13th of Aban), taking advantage of the official rallies being held on the same day to mark the 30th anniversary of the occupation of the US embassy in Tehran. The opposition protests were met with a violent crackdown by security forces.

As has come to be expected, Iranian citizen media recorded “history” on their mobile phones.

Protesters in Tehran trampled on a portrait of the country's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, an act that would have been unimaginable a few months ago.

A message to Obama: Either you are with us or with them.

Mehdi Karoubi, an opposition leader, among the people.

Security forces attack protesters

In July, CC Learn officially launched DiscoverEd, a search prototype that provides scalable search and discovery for educational resources on the web. We blogged about it again during Back to School week, emphasizing the future of search and discovery of educational resources and how we hoped DiscoverEd would catalyze efforts in that direction. Since then, we have been working with various organizations and projects who want to include their resources into DiscoverEd, and through all the back and forth about feeds and mark-up–essentially what’s required to get your stuff included for greater discovery–we realized we could streamline the process by putting some necessary information into a brief document.

Preparing Your Educational Resources for DiscoverEd is second in the CC Learn Step by Step Guides series, which is part of our larger Productions schema. It is a basic guide for those interested in preparing their resources for inclusion into search engines like DiscoverEd that utilize structured data. It is targeted at people or institutions interested in making their digitally published educational resources more discoverable. Though the document contains technical language and sample XHTML and RDFa, it’s really not all too complicated. Basically, you just need one of the right feeds to start, which you can then copy and paste the link of into ODEPO (the Open Database of Educational Projects and Organizations). ODEPO is hosted on OpenED, the community site for open education. It’s a wiki, so anyone can create an account and add their project or organization to the database.

But the guide explains all that, (as does the DiscoverEd FAQ) and the alternatives–which include contacting us directly. DiscoverEd already pulls from a number of institutions and repositories, and as it expands we hope to improve its search capabilities. Any feedback is welcome.

The Somali Media Centre is a forum of Somali journalists and bloggers living in Somalia and outside. The Centre distributes news content and publishes blogs written by journalists.

The Somali Media Centre is an independent forum for the Somali journalists in and outside the country. It is established to promote the profile of the brave, hardworking journalists who devoted their lives to serve their people worldwide.
Somalia has been dubbed as a failed state, a country associated with death, long running civil strife, warlords, terrorism and modern piracy. But one of the most successful stories over the years has been the rise of the independent media and freedom of thought. However, the dedication and reporting of the truth come at a price.

The Centre publishes running blogs by these journalists. Also, the Centre distributes news content and reports by the journalists. The Centre coordinates between the Somali and non-Somali journalists. It gives non-Somali journalists who may be traveling to Somalia with first hand advice and contacts. The Centre also works with high profile international media organizations in commissioning, producing and filing stories and reports about Somalia and the Horn of Africa region.

Solana Larsen writes about the origin of Somali Media Centre project:

In case you hadn't guessed, I'm not Somali.

In journalism school in London in 2002 I had a classmate named Harun Hassan who I used to ask a lot of questions about life in Mogadishu and Somali politics. After we graduated, we remained friends and I introduced him to writing for openDemocracy.net where I was a commissioning editor for a few years. Later on, I became a managing editor at Global Voices Online, where we occasionally also have stories about Somali bloggers.

Harun used to tell me about ideas he had for media projects involving the Somali community in London. He created a newsletter on paper in Somali, and at one point he approached me about making a website for something he called the Somali Media Centre.

Media coverage of the Somali community in the UK was so negative and inaccurate, Harun felt the only way to correct it, was to make it easier for UK journalists to find Somali journalists and researchers to talk to.

We made a website and blog, but we were soon distracted by other work and the project lay dormant.

The website you are looking at now, is our second attempt at creating a networking tool for Somali journalists and others to use to help improve global understanding of Somalis and Somalia.

Below are some of latest blog posts from The Somalia Media Centre:

In a post titled, Affair to Remember, Fathia Absie writes about the conviction of Joshua Asisa, a peace-keeper in Somalia, for engaging in an affair with a young Somali woman:

Military court in Kampala convicted Joshua Asisa to a one-and-half years in prison. Mr. Asisa who is a member of the AMASOM peace-keepers in Somalia have been found guilty for engaging in an affair with a young Somali woman by the name of Nimco Omar and impregnating her after marrying her under a false pretence by telling her that he was a Muslim.
This story took place last year in Mogadisho but no one heard of it till this young woman went to Kampala and took Mr. Asisa to court for lying to her. Mohamed Abukar Ahmed who is the Journalist that broke the story has told me that he has learned the story after it was reported by a news paper in Uganda. After that Mr. Ahmed tried to get in touch with the leaders of the Somali community in Kambala and was able to get in touch with the girl. He told me that Ms. Omar told him about her story and how she met Mr. Asisa who is doctor. He was working at a private hospital for the Uganda military in Mogadisho.

“in the spirit of spreading the word..,” writes Idil Osman:

The recruitment taking place in the Somali refugee camps in Dadaab, Northeastern Kenya has stirred some controversial outbursts by many in and outside the region. However what I am particularly bewildered with is the stand-point of the Kenyan government. I did an investigative report on this issue earlier on at work where the defense minister of Kenya firmly claimed Kenya had not given permission for this recruitment to take place.
Meanwhile witnesses and human rights activists are recording and documenting evidence of these youngsters being put in Kenyan military trucks and driven to Kenyan military training bases.
Many of these youngsters are taken under false pretence and the promise of regular salary and a stable job with a UN/EU/AU backed military project.
In reality they are being recruited to go and fight in the very war they fled from and had turned them into refugees. Many of these young refugees are reported to be underage and taken without their parents' consent. It also violated their international human right as refugees according to the recently released Human Rights Watch press release, because refugees are meant to be kept in civilian conditions.

Solana discusses the issue of “unnamed sources” in Western media reports in her post titled “When Local Sources go Unnamed“:

just picked up the latest edition of National Geographic Magazine for their story on “Shattered Somalia”. The photos of Mogadishu by Pascal Maitre are beautiful, though they show a lot of destruction. And the writer, Robert Draper gives a fair and sympathetic summary of a complicated history. He also definitely makes the challenges of foreign reporting in Somalia clear.

Curiously, Somali journalist Harun Hassan is mentioned by name in a photo caption of a traffic guard in Mogadishu, but as far as I can see nowhere in the text itself. Why the reluctance to reveal sources? If Draper has taken the trouble of contacting and interviewing Somali media sources, why not share this information with the readers?

Is this a typical experience of Somali journalists who assist Western journalists with their reporting? I hope members of the Somali Media Centre will help shed light on what it's like to be on that end of the reporting team.

You can see the list of current members of the Centre here.

So (with a hat-tip to Boingboing again for the alert) I direct your attention to Public Knowledge's latest attempt to keep the Cartel from driving the home entertainment experience off a cliff. The details are long and boring - what you need to realize is that they are requesting permission to shut off part of your home entertainment system, whenever they think it's a good idea.

Of course, you'd have to buy all new equipment to comply with this. The straightjacket and compulsory eyes-open technology will no doubt be included, to ensure you're actually watching what and when they want.

Please, take a moment to read over Public Knowledge's suggested comments, make them your own (or write your own) and submit them.

The works of Venezuelan artist Jesús Soto (1923 - 2005) are among the most famous representations of Latin American modern art, known mostly for his kinetic works. Soto was born in Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela, where he began working as a painter of cinema posters. He received his education in the cities of Caracas and Maracaibo, but it was in Paris where his career took a powerful turn. His most famous works are the “penetrables,” which are interactive sculptures consisting of an array of square, thin, dangling tubes of shiny colors made from plastic and in which the public can walk through.

Photo of a child in a Soto exhibit by Alé and used under a Creative Commons license.

According to the art experts, Soto's art is inseparable from the viewer, who is an active participant of the artist’s piece. The illusion and the senses are completed by the perceptions of the mind as a result of observing, touching, and becoming part of the piece. Venezuelan bloggers and the online community in general, celebrate his art through articles, reviews, and videos taken in museums and inside the works themselves, while explaining the meaning of Soto’s works in their culture, landscape and daily life.

In his blog Literanova [es], Eduardo Casanova goes a bit deeper on Soto’s life and gives an insight of the history of the city he was born:

Jesús Rafael Soto nació en Venezuela, en 1923, en una población cargada de historia: Ciudad Bolívar, donde se instituyó la prensa escrita y se fraguó la creación de la llamada Gran Colombia (…) Era una población aislada, sin museos ni actividades del arte. El mismo ha dicho que aprendió solo el arte de la pintura. Deja su ciudad natal y viaja a Maracaibo, en el occidente del país, para encargarse de la dirección de una escuela de artes plásticas. En 1950 se va a París y allí comienza su carrera de artista creador de nuevas formas.

Photo of Soto Sphere in Caracas by Guillermo Ramos Flamerich under a GNU Free Documentation License

The YouTube channel of VenezuelaTuya gives an example of an experience walking through a piece exhibited in the Jesús Soto Museum, in Ciudad Bolívar:

The blog Talento Venezolano [es] also dedicates a space to talk about the artists and his most famous creations:

En 1967 creó la primera obra de la serie Penetrables, la cual consiste en instalaciones de tubos de plástico a través de los cuales el espectador se siente en un espacio mágico. Ambas obras que pudieron admirarse en el Museo de Arte Moderno, en el Grand Palais y el Centro Pompidou de París.

You Tube has also been a way for people to show their contact and emotions while interacting with Soto’s works. Children in particular, have had a special approach to the artistic experience inside the artist’s work, which has been shown and shared through these videos:

YouTube user elizaul1:

and YouTube user skaracas:

At the artist's webpage there are more galleries and information.

Morocco has announced this week the launch of a solar energy project, with an estimated cost of $9 billion, aiming at raising the share of renewable sources in the country's energy production. Mostly supportive bloggers have been sharing their thoughts.

I See the Light by si David on Flickr

The plan, unveiled in the southern Moroccan city of Ouarzazate during a ceremony attended by king Mohammed VI and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will, according to the local news agency, enable the country to equally divide its renewable energies' national production between solar, wind and hydroelectric sources by the year 2020. By then, renewable energies will account for 38% of the country's overall energy production, according to the source.

Taha Balafrej, blogging on Vue du Maroc [Fr], explains that there might be a viable economic basis for the country's new policy inclination. He writes:

Dans le milieu des affaires, un intérêt grandissant est perceptible. Il faut reconnaître que l’effet Obama n’est pas étranger à cette prise de conscience animée par les opportunités économiques qu’elle engendre. Un pays comme le Maroc qui dépend presque entièrement des importations pour son énergie, et dont les ressources en eau se raréfient, a tout intérêt à rejoindre les pays qui y croient et y investissent.

The solar project, which is both publicly and privately funded, will benefit from American solar and steam technology, which seems to have won the market over traditional investors–primarily French–which is something thestrategist, blogging on Genesis Morocco, unequivocally endorses:

Seems the Europeans are out on this one. A clean shot for [American investors]. I'm all for it, the Europeans cannot match the Americans expertise in managing large scale programs…

thestrategist, publishing an open letter to the Moroccan king, further explains [Fr] his enthusiasm. He writes:

[Cette technologie pourrait] nous libérer des aléas de la pluviométrie en utilisant l'énergie abondante et renouvelable […], afin de dessaler l'eau de mer et approvisionner outre les besoins de l'industrie et des ménages, un système d'irrigation nationale en appoint, voire en remplacement, de la stratégie des barrages…

Whilst the majority seems to be supporting the scheme, not everybody is impressed. Jebli, commenting [Fr] on a post published by online news journal, Hesspress [Ar], finds the cost way too expensive. He writes:

[C]e projet solaire va produire 2000Mega Watt/h, pour un cout de 9 milliards de dollars, ce qui est TROP TROP TROP cher.
Une centrale nucléaire, sa construction de bout en bout coute 1,5 milliard de dollars et produit 1000Mega watt/heure.
Ainsi, avec 9 milliards de dollars le Maroc aurait pu créer 6 centrales nucléaires, et aurait produit 6000Mega watt/heure.
Franchement, je ne comprend pas le choix de nos dirigeants, ils choisissent des téchnologies au hasard, sans réflichir, vraiment ils gaspillent l'argent public.

Commenting on the same post, Hay Bin Yaqdan sees in the project [Ar] another stranglehold of foreign powers on local resources. He writes:

What's inside:

• This Thursday: C4FCM featured at MIT Communications Forum
• LostInBoston.org unveiled
• Rick's Startup Whiteboard, Ep. 3
• In the News: Sourcemap
• Welcoming new fellow: Jeff Warren

Want C4FCM news as it happens? Follow us on Twitter (@c4fcm) and provide feedback on our projects at civic.mit.edu.

This Thursday: C4FCM Featured at MIT Communications Forum

MIT Center for Future Civic Media Director Chris Csikszentmihalyi presents the Center's most recent projects. Our researchers will demonstrate their projects in a lightning-round format, with time for discussion and questions following each presentation--from community mapping to news tracking, from collective action to rural empowerment, from cultural mixing to carbon consciousness.

LostInBoston.org unveiled (video)

Rick Borovoy, Visiting Scientist at the MIT Media Lab and the Center for Future Civic Media, proudly unveiled the first Lost in Boston sign last week.

It's about helping Bostonians work together to make their neighborhoods more visitor-friendly. Community groups are partnering with local businesses and institutions to design signs that call out the key spots in their area. Signs are placed on private land.

LostInBoston.org is a collaboration between the Urban Arts Institute at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and the Center for Future Civic Media at MIT. To get involved, contact info[at]lostinboston.org.

Rick's Startup Whiteboard Ep. 3

Rick Borovoy has also been busy with a series of how-to videos on launching a civic media product:

Rick's Startup Whiteboard #3: Designing a Validation Trajectory for your Startup:


Everyone knows that creating a startup involves a carefully-ordered sequence of steps -- eg, don't start selling your product until you have a product (actually, that's surprisingly easy to screw up). However, there's a guiding principle about designing the right sequence that doesn't get talked about enough. You need to think about designing your "Validation Trajectory".

Earlier episodes:
Rick's Startup Whiteboard #1: Pony-Diving
Rick's Startup Whiteboard #2: You Need Partners, Not Employees

In the News: Sourcemap

Sourcemap is "a collective tool for transparency and sustainability": it maps the sources of all the stuff that ends up in consumer goods and helps calculate those goods' total carbon footprints. And it's potential has people talking. The BBC reports that businesses in Scotland are piloting the program:

Several businesses have already volunteered to get involved.

They include Connage Farm Dairy in Ardersier, Cairngorm Brewery, The Lovat Hotel in Fort Augustus, the Spa Soap Company in Strathpeffer, Plexus Media in Cromarty along with Forres-based Tuminds, Macbeaths Butchers and Open Brolly.

The Lovat said it already offered price reductions to guests who travel to the hotel by public transport, walking or cycling.

Sourcemap developer Leo Bonnani told the BBC that Scotland was an ideal testing ground, because local really means local. "Local sourcing in the US might mean 1,000 miles while here in the Highlands people are hesitant to get something from out with Scotland."

Welcoming new fellow: Jeff Warren

We'd also like to welcome new fellow Jeff Warren from the Media Lab's Design Ecology group.

Jeff is developing an exciting set of mobile mapping tools called Cartagen. Cartagen, using Geographic Style Sheets, can help people map dynamic data--in turn helping augment everything from air polution data to disaster response.

You can see Cartagen in action at Newsflow, a dynamic, real-time map of news reporting that Warren developed along with David Small.

Happy November!

Andrew Whitacre
Communications Manager
Comparative Media Studies & Center for Future Civic Media
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(617) 324-0490
awhit@mit.edu

read more

• Stanford is dropping the requirement that dissertations be submitted to ProQuest and will instead host them in its IR, with optional embargo.
• The PEER Project (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research) published its final report on workflows for publishers and repositories participating in the project's research.
• Consumers International launched a survey on barriers to access to knowledge.
• The OA collection Les Classiques des sciences sociales added its 4,000th title.
• Science Commons released a guide to copyright considerations for ontologies.
• The Fedorazon project released its final report on running a "repository in the cloud".
• The Open Source Paleontologist examines pay-per-download article prices and finds them disproportionate. Matthew Burton-Kelly comments as well.
• Andrew Spong says that participatory culture changes how the value of content is conceptualized, which makes TA publishers' value proposition "an increasingly isolated, static and entropic one."

A 40-fee Dita Tree became a refuge for 36 members of 7 families in Barangay Bagong Silangan (New East Village), Quezon City, Metro Manila as flood waters rose last September 26. The flashflood was caused by a record rainfall unleashed by Typhoon Ketsana which hit the Philippines last September. It was the worst flooding in the country in the past 40 years.

There are only few Dita Trees left in urban Metro Manila. Barangay Bagong Silangan is an urban poor community located in the northeastern part of the country’s capital. More than 30 individuals died in this community during the flooding disaster.

Arkibong Bayan provides more details:

36 members of 7 families climbed up this dita tree as the flood waters was rising and were saved. They stayed on the branches of this tree from 10 AM of Sept. 26 up to 3 AM of the following day when they climbed down with the waters still waist deep because they were cold and hungry for 17 hours. The oldest was 60 years old and the youngest 2 weeks old

Moral lesson: Don't cut trees, they may save your life one day. (In this case, literally.)

Survivors recounted that there were many big snakes which also sought refuge in the Dita Tree.

Aside from the Dita Tree, there was another tree which residents claimed also saved the lives of other villagers

Sabi ng mga taong nakausap namin nung magpunta din kami dun, maliban sa dita tree, may isa pang puno dun na mas manipis pero mataas din. doon daw sumabit yung isang pamilyang nakasakay sa yero. Meron ding 2 month old baby na natangay ng agos sa puno kaya sinungkit din nila.

TASK FORCE: children of the storm was able to visit the village and the group also saw the “Tree of Life”

We were also shown what we now call the “Tree of Life”, the Dita tree where 7 families (34 individuals) sought refuge during the flood and were saved from the raging flood waters.

The surviving residents, who were surveying their homes for repairs, talked of how they climbed from roof to roof seeking higher grounds. They recounted how they rescued a 2 month old baby on floating aluminum roofing.

Arkibong Bayan received a comment from a reader who shared a similar story about how a mango tree saved lives during a natural disaster three years ago

During the onslaught of Supertyphoon Reming on November 30, 2006, a mango tree saved 5 lives in Padang, Legazpi City (Bicol Region in Luzon Island). One survivor had two choices: the mango tree or the slab roof of a house. She chose the tree; those on the slab roof were entirely swept away to the sea.

Lesson: Plant a tree. It may save your life

After surviving the deadly flood last September, residents of Barangay Bagong Silangan are facing a bigger challenge: rebuilding their homes and their lives. The community is a changed community. Houses were swept away and many basic infrastructure were damaged.

We were told that before Ondoy (Typhoon Ketsana) the area was congested like any other urban poor area.

Now, only the relatively sturdy homes survived. And the area looks spacious with wide, open spaces — all because the homes had been swept away by rampaging and swirling flood waters.

Brill, a prominent scholarly publisher in the Humanities and International Law, is pleased to announce the launch of Brill Open. This new author service offers the option of making articles freely available upon publication. Brill Open enables authors to comply with research funding bodies and institutions which require open access.

The Brill Open option will be available for all 135 journals published under the imprints Brill, Martinus Nijhoff and VSP. Articles will be put in online open access in exchange for an article publishing fee to be arranged by the author.

Sam Bruinsma, Brill’s Business Development Director, explains: ‘We are launching this new service in answer to a growing number of research funding bodies and universities announcing their compliance with the open access model. With Brill Open our journals are ready to meet the expected increase in contributions under this model.’

In order to ensure that authors' funder requirements have no influence on the editorial peer review and decision-making, Brill Open will be made available to authors only upon acceptance of their paper for publication. Those authors who do not wish to use this service will be under no pressure to do so, and their accepted article will be published in the usual manner.

Brill’s strategic intent is to adjust the future subscription price of a journal to reflect an increase in Brill Open fees. Sam Bruinsma comments: ‘Our view on open access developments is positive. We accept that over time an increasing part of our revenues will come through this new model. This will have an impact on the revenues from our library subscription service. The combination of these two business models will continue to support a healthy and sustainable journal program attractive to the best authors in the field.’

[This post is part of my Auditing the Takoma Park Municipal Election series.]

So the votes have been cast, and voters went home. Some of them wrote down their confirmation codes. They probably checked those codes against the official Scantegrity web site. But why would they trust that web site to do all of the math right in the backend?

That’s where the audit work comes in. I’ve now run the Meeting 3 verification, and it looks good: the confirmation codes were properly opened, and I’ve posted my own re-computed version of the confirmation codes. If you’re a Takoma Park voter and you want extra certainty that your vote counted, you should check those confirmation codes and let me know if your confirmation codes don’t appear properly.

But it’s not just the confirmation codes, since we now have the unofficial tally. I’ve posted the tally that I have re-computed from these ballots. Very close to the preliminary results from the unverified opscan software itself, as in, off by only a couple of votes here and there in no way that comes close to changing the results.

Ummmm, but you said this was verifiable, so where is the discrepancy coming from?

There is paper involved, and there is scanning of paper involved. Whenever that happens, errors will occur, either in the normal opscan process, or in the reading of verification codes. If I had to bet money, I’d say it’s probably the opscan scanning that is off, while the Scantegrity code is exactly correct. But, we probably won’t know for sure, and it doesn’t make a difference as long as very few (hopefully no) voters complain about missing confirmation codes.

Now remember, again, this is the unverified tally. We have to give voters the chance to complain about their confirmation codes first. Only then will we run the final audit steps, Meeting 4 + the spoiled ballot checks.

Can I run this myself already?

Yes, check out my audit code from github:

git clone git://github.com/benadida/scantegrity-audit.git

and do a subversion checkout of the Scantegrity data:

svn checkout https://scantegrity.org/svn/data/takoma-nov3-2009

Instructions on how to run the verifications are in the README file, in this case:

python meeting3.py {DATA_DIR} {CONFIRMATION_CODES_OUTPUT_FILE_PATH}

for each of the 6 wards’ data directory. The confirmation codes are written to the given output file.

Then, to run the tally:

python tally.py {QUESTION_ID} {DATA_PATH_1} {DATA_PATH_2} ...

For QUESTION_ID 0, the mayoral race run across all wards, you’ll need all 6 data paths.

For QUESTION_ID 1, you’ll need to run tally.py against each individual ward’s data path, since those are different races.

Almost a month ago we launched the 2009 fundraising campaign, with the goal of raising $500,000 by the end of the year. Despite the daunting economic climate, we’ve set our goal high, and we’ll need everyone who cares about CC to pitch in whatever they can. So, in order to make your dollar go a little farther when you give a gift to CC, we’ve teamed up with our friends at Canonical, who’ll generously match every donation dollar for dollar for the next week – up to $3,000! Donate now to help us meet the challenge!

Canonical, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu project, was founded in 2004. The headquarters are in Europe, with over 200 employees working in 23 countries. Their mission is “to realize the potential of free software in the lives of individuals and organisations,” which they do by delivering the world’s best software platform and ensuring its availability to everyone.

From Jono Bacon, Canonical’s Ubuntu Community Manager: “Canonical are really happy to support the Creative Commons, an organization at the corner-stone of an ethos that we share in the Ubuntu world and that we are proud to support.” Likewise, we feel that Canonical’s mission could not be better aligned with our own, and as such we’re thrilled to partner with them on on this matching challenge.

Join Canonical in investing in the future of creativity and knowledge and give what you can today!

Forty internationally known leaders in open education and technology met in Barcelona on October 19-20, 2009, at the NMC's first official European event, the Open EdTech Summit, cosponsored by the Open University of Catalunya and the New Media Consortium. ...

Summit attendees generated fifty action items necessary to realize the goal of creating an institution that can meet the needs of students today and into the foreseeable future, and then ranked them. Those which ranked highest are captured here, and framed as a Call to Action - five major tasks that are perceived as critical to achieving the promise of open education: ...

4. We must enable a culture of sharing. Recognizing that the sharing and reuse of scholarly work is a key component of the university of the future, we advocate building a culture of sharing in which concerns about intellectual property, copyright, and student-to-student collaboration are alleviated and the model of proprietary work dissolves in favor of a more open one. To this end, we must establish reward structures that support the sharing of work in progress, ongoing research, highly collaborative projects, and scholarly publications of all kinds, including reputation systems, peer review processes, and new models for citation of such content. ...

Desertification might sound similar to desert, but there is a fundamental difference between the two: while deserts are one of nature’s wonderful formations, desertification is a process of degradation that lands go through after they are affected by climate change, human activities, and natural forces until they eventually become deserts.

Photo by Macnolete and used under a Creative Commons license.

Although the influence of climate change on desertification has not been fully understood yet, according to GreenFacts, it is known that higher temperatures resulting from increased carbon dioxide levels can have a negative impact through increased loss of water from soil and reduced rainfall in drylands. At the same time desertification contributes to climate change by releasing to the atmosphere carbon stored in dryland vegetation and soils.

Desertification is taking its toll worldwide. At this moment it’s destroying harvests, driving up the price of remaining food, and in some areas, animals are dying. People are also being driven away from their homes, as blogger Miguel Angel Alvarado from El Salvador explains about the president’s home needing to be moved because of desertification [es]:

El traslado de casa presidencial, del Barrio san Jacinto al local en donde estaba el Ministerio de Relaciones exteriores, según informes extrajudiciales, obedece a la prevención del ejecutivo ante un posible hundimiento del suelo generado por cárcavas en este sector.

The most affected continent is Africa, and this can be seen especially in Kenya, where one of the most susceptible sectors to the effects of desertification and drought are young girls. When the water storage tanks have been used up at Dago Dala Hera orphanage in western Kenya, volunteer mothers and children have to draw unclean water from a nearby river for cooking and drinking. “Going to the river alone late in the evening is making girls more vulnerable to men who can sexually abuse them,” said Edwin Odoyo, whose mother Pamela founded the orphanage.

Even though desertification has its greatest impact in Africa, Latin America’s environmental conditions are also undergoing significant transformations, as discussed recently in the Ninth session of the Conference to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Italian expert Massimo Candelori, representative of the Convention to Combat Desertification, said in an interview with Tierramerica that the situation in Latin America is worrisome considering that there is not enough information about desertification’s scope in the region. “We have no current data. One of the goals discussed during the ninth session was to get indicators that allow us to better understand the situation….the last data we have is from ten years ago” said Candelori.

In Latin American countries where farming and cattle are one of the main sectors of the economy, desertification can be a silent, but dreadful predator. At least 25 percent of the regional territory is already degraded and the population is increasingly becoming concerned about this, as it is reflected in various blogs.

Eco Briefings [pt], a Brazilian blog, points out that Brazilians in the Northeastern region are witnessing an alarming expansion of desertification[pt]:

Mais um alerta está ligado. Temos pouco tempo para corrigir as coisas. (…)

No Brasil a desertificação tem avançado na caatinga, e zonas do polígono da seca no Nordeste e Norte de Minas Gerais, e também em Estados que antes não tinham áreas secas ou desertificadas como o Rio Grande do Sul. O Rio Amazonas viveu já uma grande seca a pouco tempo, grande com mortandade de peixes.

Argentina has several areas affected as well. In the region of Valles Aridos, in the Northeast, where the main economic activity is sheep raising, it is stipulated that during the last 100 years at least 180 thousand people had to emigrate [es] (.pdf format). Southern Argentina has not escaped desertification either. Blogger Ailen Romero, comments on the blog Geoperspectivas [es] that in the Patagonia region, the government actions to combat desertification are not enough:

En la Patagonia, la amplitud del problema es de tal magnitud que ha comenzado a adquirir estado público. Pocos ignoran el tema, pero pocos tienen la posibilidad de actuar de alguna forma o con el conocimiento para hacerlo. El problema de la desertificación en el caso de la Patagonia supera a los planes que se han elaborado para combatirlo. Es por eso que no deben ahorrarse esfuerzos, ni limitar la imaginación de soluciones alternativas.”Si la geografía es la manifestación de la sociedad en el espacio físico, un espacio físico deteriorado refleja una sociedad deteriorada” afirman del Valle y Coronato(investigadores del Centro Nacional Patagónico)

In Chile, where 62% of the national territory is already affected by desertification [es], blogger Alfredo Erlwein expressed concern on the blog El Ciudadano [es] (The Citizen) on how little knowledge citizens have about desertification.

Efectivamente la desertificación es el problema ambiental más grave de Chile y muy poco conocido. Existen grandes zonas, como en la costa de la octava región, donde la erosión severa supera el 50% de la superficie: esto es que literalmente más de la mitad de los suelos se ha perdido por completo. En esas zonas se encuentran cárcavas de más de 50 metros de profundidad. Una tasa normal de formación de suelo puede ser de 0.2 cm por año, lo que evidencia la gravedad del asunto.

According to Italian expert Candelori, using soil in the carbon market will help fighting desertification; this can be decided during the Copenhagen conference. The countdown to Copenhagen has begun and the world awaits it.

The quintessential element of Moroccan cooking…the tajine!

Ask anyone who's never been what they know about Morocco, and it's likely that one of the first words out of their mouth will be “couscous.”  The seminal Moroccan dish is famous the world over, and to many, is synonymous with the country itself.  But Moroccan cuisine goes far beyond couscous, offering delectables both sweet and savory, meaty and vegetarian.  And this week, bloggers are tempting us with all of it!

The View from Fez digs into couscous in a post about Peace Corps volunteer Cynthia Berning (a blogger herself), who is working with Association ENNAHDA to create an eco-tourism experience around food.  The blogger writes:

Now the association has an eco-tourism project where groups of visitors are welcomed to Khoukhate to learn the secrets of a good Moroccan couscous, and at the same time experience traditional rural life. Visitors roll their own couscous from scratch with the local women, and then cook it and eat it for lunch.

(A note to tourists: Fez Food has teamed up with Association ENNAHDA to offer the experience in the city of Fez.)

Typical seven-vegetable couscous (photo by ukcider*)

Moving to American blogger 760 Days in Morocco, we learn about fast food options in the city of Rabat.  The blogger shares her favorite quick-stop restaurant, writing:

Our favorite place for roasted chicken platters is Brador Pizza Restaurant because their rice is deliciously spiked with veggies, cloves and herbs.  They also serve roasted garlic and herb potatoes, plus fries and their tomato sauce is excellent.  Any leftovers from there are promptly eaten as a snack later in the evening.  One of the best parts of this meal is the price, usually 20-25 DH at any given place which is $2.60-3.25 as of today’s exchange rate- for all that food!

The blogger also shares a tempting soup recipe accompanied by photos of the finished product.

Photo from Mint Tea & Tagine

After couscous, tajine is probably the best-known dish (or group of dishes) that comes to mind.  Named for the conical pot it's cooked in, a tajine can take many forms; some are filled with meat and eggs, while others combine sweet and savory with chicken and prunes.  The aptly-named blog Mint Tea & Tagine shares a delectable-sounding recipe for Chicken and Fennel Tajine, complete with photographs (see left).

And what would any good cuisine be without dessert?  The blogger behind The Good Life in Morocco shares some photographs of delicate Moroccan pastries in this post.  And of course, what would any dessert be without an obligatory (best obligation ever!) cup of steaming hot mint tea?  Christine Benlafquih, the About.com guide to Moroccan food, recently shared the darija vocabulary for tea:

Atay is the Moroccan Arabic word for tea. In Morocco, green tea is usually steeped in a berrad (Moroccan teapot) with lots of mint (na'na') and then sweetened with generous amounts of sugar.

The resulting drink is Morocco's famous mint tea, or atay bi na'na. The Moroccan Mint Tea Recipe tells how to make it, and you can see more Moroccan tea recipes in the glossary listing for atay.

For those do-it-yourself types following along at home, Christine's page is an excellent place to find authentic Moroccan recipes.  And for an extra-special treat, you can follow Mediterranean cooking expert (and cookbook author) Paula Wolfert on Twitter.  Happy cooking!

*Creative Commons-licensed photo by ukcider.

These are just some of the actions that have been taken place in order to prevent Iranian Netizens from accessing the Web during the 4^th of November:

• According to some sources from Iran, the internet speed has become too low and even when using ADSL, it is hard to open emails or display small size images.
• According to Emipmans blog, it seems that Yahoo messenger is inaccessible in Iran. Moreover, some proxy software such as Ultra Surf and the like are not working.
• According to Saitak, the Iranian government wanted to change the route (map) of protest by sending false emails to Iranian users.
• Also Saitak pointed out that some ISPs in Iran opened the access to Youtube and Facebook in order to identify and track users who are people upload video clips and other content.
• Saitak2 blog argued that the government has send warning SMS to people containing the following message: “by laws if you get involved in protest you will be identified and arrested.“
• According to Saitak2Mobile internet access has been blocked as well.
• More and more Iranian are reporting that a huge number of websites are being filtered. The amount of noises on foreign channel such as VOA, BBC Persian and so on is too high and they are inaccessible. People are also reporting that the SMS system does not deliver their massages, also the antenna coverage range is such low that people cannot call each other easily.

However as Balatarin shows, too many blogs and websites are being updated every second. They all try to cover the news and events. It is clearly seen that every Iranian user is trying to get involved in this event. They stay updated and organize their movement using blogs and social networking websites, such as Facebook.

Newly, the Green movement in Iran just launched a new web site called Green Chain that aims to Encourage bloggers who are supporting the movement to stay in touch with each other and guide them to publish mass texts i support for the movement.

The Iranian internet is almost filtered, proxy softwares do not work and Yahoo, MSN, G-Talk and even other sites such as meebo and so on are inaccessible. However, bunch of clips and news came out from Iran.

Here is a lis of some video clips covering the recent protest in Iran:

• >no to left no to right we want Iranian republic.
• Mehdi Karobi one of the leaders of Green Movement can be seen, was injured by Basij militants during the protest.
• Special Guard attacked people during the protest; too many people have been injured as a result of that.
• weapons and basij wouldn’t stop us anymore.
• another protest in Shiraz University
• Tehran University was also inflamed and students were protesting there as well.
• while basij tried to disperse people from the main square, protesters gathered in smaller groups in minor streets.
• Protesters shouting: “Khamenei is a murderer so his leadership is futile“.
• people helping injured youth who have been aggressed by basij.
• massive protest in Ferdowsi university in Mashhad, Khorasan .
• police officer attacking people, mostly women and students. Gunshot can be heard clearly.
• BBC: political prisoners should be freed..
• how police forces are treating Iranian people: here and here.
•  and interesting video clip about what happened on November 4th.

Display more videos on Youtube by accessing this link

Or you can search “13 آبان” in Youtube.

According to (BBC Persian, there were huge protests in Tehran and other big cities of Iran. Reports from Iran pointed that people protested from other provinces such as Rasht, Isphehan, Zahedan, Kermanshah,Tabriz, Mashhad and Shiraz.

As witnesses reported, police, special guard and basij attacked people by tear gas; also batons and electrical shocks were used.

Moreover, more reports from Iran are saying that universities and school students are covering Teheran walls with green color, the symbol of the Green Movement.

The military has finally launched the much-anticipated operation in South Waziristan against the Taliban. After a series of terrorist attacks across the country the government had announced that the operation was inevitable. The operation has since triggered a wave of retaliations by Taliban and has forced over 120,000 locals to flee from their houses. Maria Sultan at Pak Spectator sheds a light on the internally displaced people of Waziristan:

On foot, these internally displaced people (IDP) of South Waziristan have reached to D.I. Khan after traveling for hundreds of miles and their plight is very dismal. Rudimentary camps have been established in D.I Khan area, but these camps don’t have enough food, medicine and shelter and  drinking water. Still the special support group officials are not in these areas and a human tragedy is in making.

Meanwhile a report of Dawn highlights the ill-treatment of locals fleeing from the battlefield. Most of these people are reportedly facing discrimination and don't seem much hopeful about the ongoing offensive.

Hina Safdar at Chowrangi is hopeful that the government would take immediate steps in preventing a refugee crisis.

Refugees fled to Dera Ismail Khan and Tank, the two major towns in North-West Frontier Province on the border of South Waziristan. Aid workers said humanitarian access to the refugees remains the key challenge for the government given the area’s volatile security environment. The government denies there is any refugee crisis, saying it had made arrangements for the displaced, including a system to provide them with cash support and food items. It wasn’t feasible to set up camps, in part because of concerns about tribal violence because of traditional rivalry. The displaced are mostly staying with relatives or clansmen(..)I hope that Pakistan army will once again succeed and nip the evil forever so that we would not witness any refugee crisis again.

The crisis in Waziristan appears to be quite different from that of the Swat Valley region. Regardless of the number of people displaced the most important factor remains is the handling and keeping checks on people to avoid Taliban infiltration in the camps. However with reports of agitations from the locals and lack of proper camps keeping track seems extremely difficult.

In a post titled “Questions to ask before South Waziristan Battle” at Pakspectator , Altaf Khan gives voice to the concerns of the majority.

• Is the army prepared, in terms of equipment, training and tactics, for the kind of guerrilla warfare that it is likely to come up with?
• How the local population will be differentiated with the terrorists, especially how the Mehsud tribe will be segregated from the Mehsud militants?

These remain few of the many questions in the mind of the most as the battle continues. Although the people appear to be supportive of the offensive the concerns about the handling of IDPs and how to prevent a humanitarian crisis linger on. In my own blog I raised concerns and posted an analysis about the ongoing situation and the problems that need to be tackled:

The fact is, the attitude of the authorities and the public at large towards the Mehsuds is one of caution and fear more than sympathy and concern. Such prejudice only bolsters the Taliban agenda, fueling recruitment from among Mehsud ranks. But the war cannot be won if the Waziristan locals show indifference towards the need for combating Taliban and their infrastructure. Without winning the hearts of the people, the military’s victory will only be temporary. If we want this to be a ‘decisive blow,’ we have to overcome our insecurities and let sympathy overcome prejudice.Dire situations such as these require us to rise as a nation. Let us extend our support to the IDPs of Waziristan, regardless of their past and their support for the Taliban. This is our chance to help our people break free from the shackles of the Taliban. Let’s take the path of salvation together.

... [The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association] has established a sub-group for mixed model publishers headed by David Ross from SAGE Publications. A sub-group for scholar publishers is also being established, building upon the energy and dialogue established amongst this group at [the Conference on Open Access Scholarly Publishing (Lund, September 14-16, 2009)]. The need to address open access books publishing was also clearly expressed and OASPA will support the establishment of a sub-group within the organization. We expect proposals for other sub-groups over the next year.

Because an exchange of information should also extend beyond our own membership, OASPA has also established groups in LinkedIn and on Facebook. ...

The OASPA blog will also be an important forum for exchanging information. ... Paul Peters of Hindawi Publishing Corporation will edit and coordinate the blog. ...

During the next month the OASPA board will hold a special board meeting to discuss the establishment of a sub-committee focused on the financing of open access publishing. In a breakout session at COASP librarians and administrators called upon publishers to aggregate their pre-payment and membership programs, and to possibly work through library consortia to negotiate centralized Open Access funding sources. Professional publishing organizations arrived at a similar suggestion during their session, and this common view of the situation by these two stakeholder groups lends hope to the possibility of creating sustainable funding sources to centrally support Open Access publishing at an institutional, consortial, or possibly even national level.

OASPA members can also expect to see new membership benefits added. A contract has been negotiated with CrossRef to provide scholar publisher members with DOIs through OASPA. ... Knowledge Exchange has also offered a discounted rate for OASPA members, and we look to establishing additional arrangements with other organizations supporting OA publishing. ...

... There is solid evidence that commercialization pressure and the involvement of industry can:

• adversely affect the collaborative nature of research
• increase data withholding behavior (that is, stop researchers from sharing information)
• lead to the premature implementation of technologies
• distort research results and corrode public trust.

For example, a 2009 study by Hong and Walsh concluded that “commercial linkages and increased pressures from scientific competition” was a predictor of increased data withholding. This study also found that, in the realm of biology, data withholding was not correlated with patenting. Commercialization pressure, not patenting, is the problem. ...