Global Voices » Ideas

Puerto Rico: Extraordinary Decisions

Janine Mendes-Franco — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:17:29 +0000

“What do you say when you meet someone you think is extraordinary? You should say ‘Hi!' and then start a conversation,” says Gil the Jenius, who profiles the extraordinary Andrea Pérez, a speaker at the recently held TEDx San Juan.

Peru: A blogger's proposition

Gabriela García Calderón — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:46:32 +0000

Peruvian blogger Cyrano makes a proposition on his blog [es]: “today February 7, 2012, without fail (or whenever you read this), let's make a call to someone we don't talk to for a while and let's simply tell them: ‘I care a lot about you'”.

Jamaica, St. Vincent: Happy Earth Day, Mr. Marley

Janine Mendes-Franco — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:52:05 +0000

Geoffrey Philp and Abeni both pay tribute to the late reggae icon Bob Marley on his birthday.

Cuba: Politics & Internet Access

Janine Mendes-Franco — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:46:06 +0000

Dariela Aquique, writing at Havana Times, has a theory that “the Cuban blogosphere is fragmented, consisting of fiefdoms and courts like in the Middle Ages. While some share commonalities, others are definitely at opposing ends of the political spectrum.”

Venezuela: Reflections on Consumption and Advertising

Silvia Viñas — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:26:56 +0000

The blog El Ultimatum Hiperboreo [es] shares some thoughts on the western culture of consumption in Venezuela as seen through the advertising that seems to fill the pages of one of the most important Sunday magazines in the country.

Global Voices Podcast: Occupy This!

Jamillah Knowles — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:30:05 +0000

This post is part of our special coverage #Occupy Worldwide.

Hello World!

Welcome to another edition of the Global Voices podcast. In this episode we talk through some of the ideas and issues surrounding the global Occupy movement and protests, as we listen to recordings from our team in different parts of the world.

My Greek Co-Host

In this edition, I “occupy” the podcast with Asteris Masouras, Global Voices author and Global Voices in Greek editor.

Asteris has been monitoring the global #Occupy movement online since it all began. Who better to accompany us through this edition of the podcast?

We got together on Skype and discussed Greece, Europe, and the Occupy world, especially in regards to how the movement communicates with itself and others.

Occupy Denmark

Global Voices in Danish co-editor, Maria Grabowski Kjær in Denmark, visits the Occupation there to find out what their methods and messages are. Though many seem to think the protesters are hippies, Thomas, who helped organise the movement in Denmark, aims to prove that this stereotype is not true at all.

Thomas of Occupy Denmark talked to Maria Grabowski Kjier about the movement

London papers

Here in London, the Occupy movement at St Paul’s Cathedral is presented with a newspaper called The Occupied Times of London. I met with Steve Maclean, the editor of the paper, to find out how it works.

Occupy London, Steve Maclean, editor of The Occupied Times

A Camp in Maine

Frances Harlow is an independent radio producer, and friend of Global Voices. In Portland, Maine in the United States, she recorded at a local Occupy camp during her studies at the Salt Institute, after graduating from Brown University.

Frances’ report shows that it’s not always easy to consolidate a message among such passionate people. You can listen to more of Frances' brilliant audio work here.

What do you make of the global Occupy movement? Is there a camp near you or do you participate?

It’s not easy to fit the entire movement into a short podcast but it has been interesting to highlight the similarities and differences across borders. There’s a whole lot more you can read up on at the special coverage page about the global Occupy movement on Global Voices.

Music Credits
In the podcast you can hear lots of lovely Creative Commons music. Thanks to Mark Cotton for his fantastic creations and thanks also to all of the wonderful voice over performances and clips that help to glue the podcast together.

The Global Voices Podcast, the world is talking, we hope you’re listening!

This post is part of our special coverage #Occupy Worldwide.

Costa Rica: Young Entrepreneurs Present Mobile Game

Silvia Viñas — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:42:44 +0000

Six young Costa Rican entrepreneurs have created a mobile game platform called TweetLand. In the blog Fusil de Chispas [es], Cristian Cambronero writes about the debut of Route 140, the first game in the collection.

China: ‘Anti-American Warrior' Gets Head Stuck in DC Airport Escalator

John Kennedy — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:00:20 +0000

“America is the enemy of all the people in the world.”

So wrote Sima Nan, one of China's most vocal opponents of Western liberal values, before he boarded a plane to Washington, DC, on January 20, 2012. At some point after arriving at Dulles International Airport, Sima leaned over the handrail of an escalator and wound up getting his head pinched between the handrail and an approaching section of wall.

Sima was put in a neck brace and taken to a hospital where he remains today, partially mobile and busy updating his microblog [zh].

The news that the media figure, who has made a career out of bashing the United States, quietly traveled there on the eve of Chinese New Year broke first online and, among other things, led to rumors that Sima had gone stateside to reunite with his wife and daughter. Sima has claimed that no warning sign was posted on the escalator and has said that he will sue the airport.

Sima, who was on his way to a conference, has been mocked to no end over the past week, as dragonwell summarizeshere at the Tea Leaf Nation blog, along with some of what he has written since confirming the news of his injury on January 24.

Image from Rebel Pepper

On the Phoenix TV blog portal, Canada-based blogger Yu Xiaoping has written on the hypocrisy [zh] of Sima's position, regardless of the nature of the conference he had been invited to attend:

刚刚听说反美斗士司马南在美国机场被人认出来还以为是有人在造谣呢，结果网上登出来伤者的照片。而他也在自己的微博当中证实，的确他在美国的机场被滚梯卡住了脑袋。乘坐滚梯不要将脑袋伸到外面，这是正常人都能知道的道理。每天都有成千上万的人往返于这个华盛顿机场，能把个强烈反美的人脑袋卡住，这显得特别不可思议。

Just heard that the anti-American warrior Sima Nan was spotted at an American airport and I thought it must have been a rumor, but then photos of the person injured appeared online. He's confirmed this on his own Weibo, that he did in fact get his head stuck on an escalator in an American airport. You don't stick your head out when you're riding an escalator, this is something all normal people know. Tens of thousands of people pass through this Washington, DC, airport each day, which makes it all the more hard to believe that someone as fiercely opposed to the US as this could get his head stuck there.

对伤者我深表同情，我觉得不宜在这种时候讽刺人家。对网上流传的他是与家人团聚，在未经证实的情况下也不好传播。不可否认的是，很多当年反美的斗士在中国赚足了稿费，然后一家人移民到了美国。

倒是有一点，大家不知是否注意到了。经此人个人微博的表述是去美国开会，而不是与家人团聚。虽然无法证实真假，我觉得这比他的家人在美国更发人深省，一个强烈反美的人，能够得到美国的签证，以工作的理由进入美国，而不是由于家庭团聚人道的理由拿到签证。这在天朝，你能想象吗？

I deeply sympathize with the injured person, and I don't think this is the time to be ridiculing him. As for the rumors online that he'd gone to see his family, it's best not to spread that sort of thing until the situation has been clarified. What is undeniable, however, is that many people who once spent years fighting America from China, have immigrated to the US with their families after having saved up enough through writing earnings.

There's one point, though, I don't know if people have noticed, that he's written on his personal Weibo account that he went to the US for a conference, and not to reunite with his family. Although it's impossible to confirm either way, what's far more telling I think is to know that someone so fiercely opposed to the United States can still receive a visa to go there, for work purposes in particular, rather than obtaining a visa for the humane reason of going to join his family. Can you imagine China doing the same thing?

龙年新气象。认同美国价值的人往美国跑，因为在国内受到了迫害。反对美国价值的人也往美国跑，不是因为在国内受到迫害，而是至少受到美国方面的邀请，这是所有以开会的理由取得签证的人都可以证明的常识。

一个国家是不是强大，到底怎样才能变得强大？就要看他是否能够包容反对自己的人。我们回顾中国历史，真正盛世的时期都是从大臣到老百姓能够胡说八道的环境。为什么？因为皇帝不怕有人谋反，因为你没那个本事，没那个能力，想胡说八道就说吧，变不了天。一朝皇帝只要是根基不稳，则会严格控制老百姓的言论，特别是控制大臣们的言论，采取酷刑政策，怕是有人谋反，每天惶惶不可终日。

Fresh into the Year of the Dragon. Those who accept American values have run off to America, because staying in China they just endure persecution. Those against American values are also running off to America, not for fear of facing persecution at home, but at the very least due to an invitation from the US, which as everyone knows is necessary to obtain a visa to go take part in a conference.

What is it that allows a country to grow to become great? You need only look at whether it can tolerate those who oppose it. If we look back at Chinese history, the truly prosperous periods were all times in which everyone from top officials down to common folk could all say whatever they wanted. Why is that? The emperors weren't afraid of anyone rebelling because no one was capable of pulling something like that off, and knowing that it wouldn't change anything, people could speak whatever nonsense they chose. Only the emperor of an unstable dynasty, meanwhile, will strictly control what people can say, exercising the most control over what top officials say, even employing torture out of fear of a rebellion, spending each day in a panic.

这位司马南到底去参加颂美的会议准备只身去舌战群儒，还是去参加反美的会议，去锦上添花，都代表美国社会的包容。前者是这个会议包容他这个人，后者是美国政府包容这个会议。只有包容才能使一个国家强大，美国不用担心什么，只有虚弱的政府才会担心，不敢让反对者进来。很多异见人士因为不堪在国内的迫害逃到国外，结果中国的护照不能更新，取得国外护照以后拿不到中国的签证，导致再也无法见到国内的亲友，其实这就是一种流放，天朝连文弱的书生都怕，你就可想而知了。

很好奇想知道这位反美的斗士到底去参加什么性质的会议，成果能否和大家分享一下，所以希望伤者早日康复，给大家一个真相。这一现象难道不令人深思吗？

This Sima Nan, was he on his way to a verbal showdown at a pro-US conference, or was he going to take part in an anti-American conference, like the frosting on a cake, a representation of the tolerance within America's society. In the case of the former, it would have been the conference tolerating this individual, and in the latter, the US government tolerating such a conference. Only tolerance can make a nation great, and America has nothing to worry about. Only a weak government would worry about something like this and not let its opponents in. Many dissidents, unable to bear the persecution at home, have fled overseas and found themselves unable to renew their Chinese passports. Similarly, once they receive foreign passports, they can't obtain visas to China, leaving them unable to see their friends and family in the country. What this actually is is a form of exile, and for China to fear even frail intellectuals, you can figure out the rest yourself.

I'm curious to know just what sort of conference this anti-American warrior was on his way to attend, so I hope the injured person recovers soon to share the truth with everyone. Either way, it's gotta make you wonder.

Caribbean: TEDx Shows “Ideas Worth Spreading”

Karel McIntosh — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:02:09 +0000

“Ideas worth spreading.” With this simple slogan, TED.com, which began in 1984 as an annual conference devoted to technology, entertainment and design, has infiltrated the Internet, gathered valuable global mindshare among people interested in changing their communities and empowered people in various countries to spark discussions in local, self-organised, intimate, TED-branded events, dubbed TEDx.

This sharing of ideas has found its way to the Caribbean - in 2011, five TEDx events were held in the region: two in Jamaica, two in Trinidad and one in Puerto Rico, the prelude to which was the hosting of a TED Talk in November 2010 by Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. TED Talks cover science, arts, politics, global issues, architecture, music and more. Events can be held in homes, workplaces, schools, universities or public theatres.

Showcasing local live speakers and featuring TED video talks, the Caribbean events each had a different viewpoint. All TEDx events share TED's format of short, prepared talks on a wide range of subjects to foster learning, inspiration and wonder, and to provoke conversations about the topics for discussion. Interestingly, for all of the interest they garnered and the reportedly high attendance at each of these events, very few bloggers actually wrote about them, and a survey of the respective events’ hashtags showed a trail of mainly the organiser’s tweets.

The first Jamaican event, TEDxIrie, aimed to “show the world that Jamaica's size doesn’t limit what [they] can contribute globally in all areas of human activity.” Speakers included Carolyn Cooper, Ebony G. Patterson, Jacqueline Sutherland, Kaiton Williams, Mark A. Jones and Wayne Marshall.

TEDxJamaica, held in October 2011, featured a mix of local and foreign speakers and seemed more business-oriented. The Jamaica-born featured speaker, Barrington Irving, is confirmed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the youngest global solo flyer. He used the event to announce a global initiative with Brazilian aeronautics manufacturer Embraer to create the world's first Flying Classroom at 40,000 feet in the air.

Other speakers included Andrew Simpson, Information Technology guru expert of CASEWare; former “Apprentice” winner Randall Pinkett, who now heads his own multimillion-dollar company; Simon Benjamin, an artist whose portfolio includes television commercials, music videos and branding for major entities; JJ Geewax, who helped establish the real-time, online advertisement exchange company Invite Media, as a market leader before its acquisition by Google and Divya Narendra of ConnectU, the campus-based, social-networking platform, the central ideas of which would eventually morph (albeit with bitter litigation) into Facebook.

In contrast, Trinidad’s latest TEDx event, TEDxPortofSpain, the theme of which was “Changing Conversations”, attracted a crowd that seemed largely filled with persons from the arts and creative industries. Featured speakers included Global Voices’ Managing Director, Georgia Popplewell, who spoke about Global Voices’ work around the world; Wendell Manwarren of the Rapso Group 3Canal, who is a singer, writer, producer, teacher, sound designer and director, entrepreneurs Ria Ramkissoon and Kiran Shiva Akal; architect Mark Raymond and Stefan Grosberg, food artisan.

Students at the University of the West Indies also threw their hat in the ring, hosting a TEDx event, TEDxUWI with the theme “Beyond Your Limits” in February 2011. Speakers included students Amilcar Sanatan, Brandon O’Brien, and Stephan Taylor and UWI graduate Omar Mohammed. Sanatan spoke about youth and culture in Trinidad and Tobago and examined how self-acceptance affects the way we live.  Taylor talked about new ways of thinking about innovation, discussing how the Caribbean region is developing through fresh ideas, and O’Brien discussed “Compassion as 21st Century Enlightenment”, outlining how compassion can be used to border the differences between different sectors of society and push towards a new unity. Mohammed focused on the ways in which Caribbean countries are responding to Climate Change.

Local celebrities, Miss Universe 1998 Wendy Fitzwilliam, and comedian Learie Joseph, were also featured. the former beauty queen focused on encouraging the audience to recognize opportunities, while Joseph shared his life's journey, comically illustrating how perseverance can help to overcome boundaries.

The response to the student-led event was so positive that the university held another TEDx event in November 2011 event, themed “Cultural Reality Imitated in a Mutual Environment”. The focus, inspired by the Trinidad and Tobago's government's imposition of a state of emergency to combat the escalating crime situation, looked at crime “as part of the cumulative narrative of Trinidad and Tobago and its connective ability”.

Finally, higher up the Caribbean archipelago, in December 2011, TEDxSanJuan was about to its mark. At first, bloggers seemed uncertain about what the event was meant to accomplish and how successful it would be. Gil the Jenius quipped:

As I write this, TEDx San Juan, first edition, is to start in 17 hours.

I have no idea who's speaking. Or what they'll talk about.

The only information I have is that the theme is “Bursting the Bubble,” referring to My Brethren who are pushing the envelope, boricuas breaking new ground. Good. Marvelous. But to be blunt: so what?

So Jenius, if you're so down on the event, why are you going?

Because I could be wrong. I could be wrong that the agenda, when it is finally revealed, will be a flop, a collection of butt-buddies brought in to present a skewed shadow of “Bursting the Bubble” excellence.

And wrong he was! Post-event, the Jenius wrote here that “TEDx San Juan was a rousing success“:

As I tweeted: I'll eat some of My words, happily.

Let Me dismiss My off-targets first: I sill don't agree with hiding the speakers line-up until just before the event.

Now for the positives: TEDx San Juan is the first event I have ever attended locally that exceeded My expectations…for My money, every speaker was a huge hit. TEDx San Juan was interesting, dynamic, moving and impressive. Three thoughts came together during the event:

1) I'm so used to events like these being “what could have been” that I have become too cynical about “what could be.” I won't do that again.

2) I, and We, are not alone. There are plenty of My Brethren who not only want to make a difference, they actually are making a difference.

3) The next TEDx has already begun. And it will be even better than this one.

Dondequiera was excited to attend the event from the get-go and noted that:

2011 has really been a breakthrough year for the Internet in Puerto Rico…everyday, I see more signs that the Internet is gaining broader and deeper acceptance locally. I have two predictions:

We're still on training wheels here in Puerto Rico, but the rollercoaster ride that is the Internet, is just about ready to take off. Look for a more ubiqitious Internet presence in 2012.

The Internet marketing embargo that the local advertising agencies controls, is starting to leak. When the dam breaks, it will break a tidal wave of opportunity.

After the event, the blogger noted that despite the limited number of invitees for the conference, which he called a “barrier [that] caused many local social media users to express their disgust with the process and the exclusion it caused”, there was a bright side:

Pissing people off because they couldn't register for an event is a great problem to have. Let's reframe this. 900+ people in Puerto Rico wanted to attend the TEDx San Juan Conference! People are hungry for ideas. What a optimistic signal!

I talked to one of the organizers and we agreed that, if nothing else we celebrate TEDx San Juan for having told us this one story: I am not alone. You are not alone. They are others. And they're here and in many different places around the world. Many speakers talked of transformation, to becoming fueled by passion.

TEDx is one way in which the Caribbean creative and technology fraternities are getting their ideas out and sharing them with the world - and the phenomenon seems to be a harbinger of innovation for the regional online community.

The thumbnail image used in this post, “TEDxPortofSpain”, is by TEDxPortofSpain, used under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Creative Commons license. Visit TEDxPortofSpain's flickr photostream.

Why do I wish to see Hong Kong's independence

Andy Yee — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:05:26 +0000

Amid a series of social and cultural clashes between Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese, Hong Kong netizen Marie Meow has written an open letter (English translation here) on Facebook exploring the reasons, possibilities and limitations for a Hong Kong independent from China. The letter has gone viral on the Hong Kong Internet, attracting lots of positive feedback.

Russia: The Fake Political Twitter Account Phenomenon

Alexey Sidorenko — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:05:29 +0000

The Internet not only gives life to citizen activist groups, human bots or lolcat lovers; online anonymity provides perfect conditions for human creativity and humor. Twitter is possibly the best platform for this quality, and in the Russian context this involves mixing anonymity, humor and political reality via a number of accounts belonging either to dead politicians or to those that deliberately avoid publicity.

Faux tweeting

The first Russian fake Twitter users appeared long before other well known faux accounts, like @ArabicObama, @KimJongNumberUn or @Angela_D_Merkel. Some have developed their own particular ironic styles and have become integrated into the socio-political landscape of the Russian blogosphere.

Constantly gaining new followers, Twitter parodies represent a new literary genre: a critical, often sarcastic view on politics, provided from the historical/political perspective of the accounts' respective ‘owners.' Some definitely remind of the legacy of Kozma Prutkov, a fictional character of the mid-19th century, who mocked arrogant officials some 150 years ago. Meanwhile, some accounts (like the one of @LevSharansky) mock the opposition and the West.

The dynamics of the fake Twitter universe are overwhelming. Not only do the number of fake accounts grow, so too grows their audience. According to the follower count, the overall number of fake Twitter followers increased by 40,000 followers only in one month from 21 December 2011 - 23 January 2012.

Below is a chronology of some of the most popular fake Twitter parodies:

List of RuNet's Fake Twitter Accounts

Fake Twitter parodies

Profile picture of Lev Sharanskiy

9. @levsharansky [ru]

Lev Sharansky is a parody of a Soviet dissident (the surname refers to Ukrainian and Israeli political activist Natan Sharansky, while on the profile picture Alexander Solzhenitsyn is depicted). Unlike most fake Twitter personalities in the RuNet, this one is run by pro-Kremlin bloggers and mocks the pro-Democracy opposition.

Lev Sharansky's personality is often used in various online polls to discredit online voting (bots and human bots get commanded to vote for Sharansky in order to prove that online voting is easy to hijack).

Sample tweet [ru]:

Чем быстрее Урал, Сибирь, Дальний Восток перейдут под юрисдикцию США, тем лучше не только для россиян, но и для всего мира.

The sooner the Urals, Siberia, and Far East secedes to US jurisdiction, the better it will be not only for Russians, but also for the whole world.

Profile picture of @LeninRussia

8. @LeninRussia [ru]

This fake account of Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin [ru], is a Soviet cult object as well as the source of numerous jokes. The tweeting style includes references to atrocities commited by the Bolsheviks.

Sample tweet [ru]:

Судить людей и сажать их в тюрьмы - какая-то средневековая дикость. В конце концов, всех, кто нам с вами не нравится, можно просто сжечь.

To judge people and imprison them - it's such a medieval cruelty. At the end of the day, everyone whom we do not like can just be burnt.

Profile picture of @LeninRussia

7. @igor_sechin [ru]

Igor Sechin is a secretive ally of Vladimir Putin, now occupying the chair of Deputy Prime Minister of Russia. Sechin remains one of the least public figure in Russian politics. Exploiting this mysterious aura, his faux account mocks corruption and government officials.

Sample tweet [ru]:

Все хотят дворец за миллиард. Но только Путин нашел смелость его построить.

Everyone wants a castle worth a billion dollars. But only Putin found the courage to build it.

Profile picture of @tolstoy_lev

6. @tolstoy_lev [ru]

An account for Leo Tolstoy, the Russian literary classic, published philosophical quotes from Tolstoy's diaries wittily chosen to fit with contemporary news stories.

Sample tweet [ru]:

Как тысячелетия слагалась государственная жизнь, так, может быть, тысячелетия она будет разделываться.

As government life has been made throughout millennia, it will, probably, be dissolving the same way.

Profile picture of @SurkovRussia

5. @SurkovRussia [ru]

The fake account of Vladislav Surkov, former deputy prime minister, plays with his reportedly post-modern and art-loving nature, previously known as the “grey eminence” of the Russian politics, often going into literary explorations and drug experiments.

Sample tweet [ru]:

Если Бог зол, он насылает Сталина. Если Богу всё до лампочки, правит Брежнев. Но если Бог решил поприкалываться - на сцену выходит Путин!

If the God is angry, he sends Stalin. If the God doesn't care, it is Brezhnev. But if the God decided to have fun - here comes Putin!

Profile picture of @KremlinCherv

4. @KremlinCherv [ru]

Kremlin Worm is a meme created as the result of a scandal involving Governor Dmitry Zelenin who spotted a worm in his plate whilst having dinner at the Kremlin (read the GV story here).

Sample tweet [ru]:

Если бы меня пригласили в правительство, я бы был вице–премьером, ответственным за мелиорацию.

If they invited me to the government, I would be vice-minister for melioration.

Profile picture of @NikolayII

3. @NikolayII [ru]

This account is the tweeted diary of the last Russian czar Nicholas II. As in case of Leo Tolstoy's Twitter twin, Nicholas II mainly quotes extracts from his diaries. As many historians had noted, diaries of Nicholas II show complete detachment from wild political life around him while exposing focus on his personal life and personal experiences.

Sample tweet [ru]:

Завтракали в галерее. Вернувшись домой, читал, писал телеграммы и погулял.

Had breakfast in the gallery. After returning home, I read, wrote telegrams and went for a walk.

Profile picture of @alex_pushkin

2. @alex_pushkin [ru]

A poetic Twitter account resembling the playful style of one of Russia's most acclaimed poets Alexander Pushkin. It skillfully re-masters Pushkin's original rhymes to fit contemporary politics and make his tweets particularly ironic.

Sample tweet [ru]:

Ну что, пора. Итоги года / Привычно странная погода / Навальный, митинги, подтяжки / Год был не скучный, хоть и тяжкий

So, it's time. The totals of the year / Traditionally strange weather / Navalny, meetings and face lifts [reference to Putin's alleged plastic surgery] / The year was hard but not boring

Profile picture of @KermlinRussia

1. @KermlinRussia [ru]

A fake Russian Kremlin account led by an anonymous Moscow-based businessman, this even got into the Foreign Policy list of the best fake Twitter accounts and has managed to give several interviews, one of them in English. It is also one of the most popular Twitter accounts in the Twittersphere, having at the moment about 224,000 followers.

Kevin Rothrock describes the account's formula that can be more or less applied to the overwhelming majority of Russia's fake Twitter users:

..he regularly posts acerbic, ironic tweets mocking news stories about Russia’s leaders, often rewording the language of tweets by the official presidential Twitter account […], typically reversing or otherwise transforming the meaning of a prosaic Kremlin announcement into something embarrassing, cryptic, or downright evil.

Sample tweet [ru]:

We should make Russsia a better place to leave.

Macedonia: Analyzing Skopje 2014

Filip Stojanovski — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 02:54:01 +0000

Jasna Koteska published an analysis of the implications of Skopje 2014 project in the light of the concepts developed by foremost contemporary philosophers and other thinkers. Informative and readable, full of juicy details on the use of history to create a new nationalist ideology.

Chile: Crowd Funding a Mapuche-Inspired Mobile Game

Silvia Viñas — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:36:40 +0000

Digital communication and social network consultant Paloma Baytelman [es] explains crowd funding in her personal blog. She shares the experience of “Pewen Collector” [es], a mobile game inspired by the Mapuche indigenous people that was financed using a crowd funding platform.

Video: One Year, One World and 52 Different Stories

Juliana Rincón Parra — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 23:23:49 +0000

Video journalist Maggie Padlewska will travel alone for one year, visiting a country each week for a total of 52 countries. During her journey she'll be recording, editing and producing videos of her interactions with communities, organizations and people under-represented by mass media and uploading them to the web, so that the stories of these people in lesser known communities come out into the world. This is the One Year One World.

One year One World is an initiative to raise awareness of people and communities living in some of the world's most fascinating but under-reported regions through an independent multimedia production. The mission is to provide lesser-known communitites with an opportunity to share their stories wth the world, to educate and inspire youth and adults to think about the global community, to help bridge the “communications gap” in media coverage and to promote peace and understanding around the world.

The idea to do this project came to Padlewska when she was filming a medical mission to a remote indigenous community in Panama. As she explains on this next video, during her trip, she realized that she didn't want to just report what the medical community was doing, she wanted to go beyond that.

Her pilot project took place with the Embera communities in Panama. The Embera are one of the few traditional pre- Columbian tribes remaining in Central America, and recently, their ancestral lands, mostly forests and jungles were declared a National Park. This meant that they weren't able to hunt anymore, which meant they had lost food security and needed to buy food from outside their community. They had turned to cultural tourism as a way to earn income, and this intrigued Padlewska:

Were the Embera peoples forced to embrace tourism as a means of survival after being prohibited from hunting? What implications has this had on the tribe's traditional lifestyle and cultural survival? Is the tribe being exploited? These are some of the questions that I asked the Embera Drua and Embera Quera, two indigenous communities currently living on government land.

This journey's video shows us how these communities are dealing with this new way to interact with outsiders, and what impact it is having on their traditional ways:

Padlewska plans to travel to Africa, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, Asia and South and Central America as soon as she finishes her fundraising to back her year of travel.

Iran: Sanctions Bite, and the Iranian Currency Falls

Fred Petrossian — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 22:43:18 +0000

Iranians are facing a financial tsunami as the national currency (Rial) loses value day by day as sanctions against Iranian oil and the banking system get tougher. The Rial was trading at nearly 20,000 to the U.S. dollar on Saturday on the black market, compared to 18,000 Rials a day earlier.

Some bloggers blame Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for failing to keep his economic promises. Fasl tazeh says [fa]:

One dollar is currently traded at about 2,200 tomans (22,000 Rials) and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took a trip to Mashhad to talk about Taziyeh [religious art].

Nikahang Kowsar, Image from Roozonline

Harfayi az Tahe Del says:

The Iranian regime [Velyate Faghieh] took Iran and its people hostage for its useless nuclear energy…. The economy is collapsing… dark days are ahead of us… with prayer nothing will get changed… This regime and its nuclear energy only gave th Iranian people poverty and misery.

The blogger Sight writes [fa] ironically, that is it a bad thing that “most of our people became millionaires. You need to have one gold coin to have one million tomans”.

Hamdel writes [fa]:

… People consider the Islamic Republic's political and economic situation unstable and they exchange their Rials to Dollars, Euros and gold. The Islamic Republic moves into the direction that there is no hope for economic and political improvements. Concerning the economic situation, we can compare Iran to a bankrupt company. In regards to foreign policy, Iran is in the worst situation of the last 30 years and is led by Iran's Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei. More and more workers become jobless and people's purchasing power is declining.

Dara2011 predicted fall of the Rial a couple of weeks ago. The blogger says [fa]:

… since the Islamic Revolution, Iran's leaders do not care about the economy and just want to remain in power. During Ahmadinejad's presidency the economic situation has deteriorated more. A Dollar was around 70 Rials in 1979 and now we buy at 14,000 rials because the Dollar is on its way to becoming 2,000 rials. Does Iran become Middle East's Zimbabwe, with a national currency without value?