Global Voices

English

The world is talking, are you listening?

Berlin held its second SenseCamp on February 8 and 9, 2013, a barcamp dedicated to social entrepreneurship. The program included workshops, meetings and conferences, to raise the impact of social entrepreneurial start-ups. Creative types, entrepreneurs and those who were interested, were invited to register in order to participate in this event:

Video created by Stanislas Buagev to present SenseCamp 2013 in Berlin – Sous license CC-BY-2.0

The photo that won the first place in Journalism in Arab European photographers ninth festival 10-10-2012. Source: Yazan Homsi Facebook page

More »

Journelle tweeted about a hashtag that has gripped the German twittersphere:

What I like about #aufschrei [outcry] is that it’s bringing much-deserved attention to these disgusting incidents of casual sexism that might otherwise be played down.

Using the hashtag #aufschrei [de], female Twitter users have been reporting the sexual harassment and abuse they have experienced at work or at school, or when simply going about their day-to-day lives. Ina Marinescu has collected some of these Tweets on her blog [de].

Rick Falkvinge, the founder of Pirate Party, reinterprets the wars of religion that devastated Western Europe in the XVI and XVII centuries in terms of the current struggle to control information through overbearing legislation related to copyright and freedom of expression:

The religious wars were never about religion as such. They were about who held the power of interpretation, about who controlled the knowledge and culture available to the masses. It was a war of gatekeepers of information.

The news about anti-Chinese sentiment in Australia, Germany and the Netherlands as a result of the shortage of infant forumla milk is widely discussed in Hong Kong. Dictionary of Politically Incorrect Hong Kong Cantonese has collected the reports and the online discussion on this anti-Chinese sentiment.

The three-day conference “Digital Backyards” initiated by smal.jp and berlinergazette.de will take place in Sapporo on January 10-12, 2013. There will be a barcamp-style networking event on January 10 and 11 for journalists, activists, bloggers, researchers, entrepreneurs, cultural workers and programmers to define problems and come up with solutions. The outcome will be presented on January 12 to the larger public. Details can be found here.

Portuguese economist and researcher José Maria Castro Caldas published an open letter to the citizens of Germany on the website of the Initiative for a Citizen Audit of the public debt. The Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel will be on an official visit to Portugal on November 12, 2012.

After a series of scandals surrounding the academic achievements of German politicians who cheated on their dissertations, the online satire magazine“Der Postillon” is now calling for a complimentary Ph.D. [de] for all politicans:

This way, the embarrassing and politically dishonorable rescinding of doctorates can be avoided. The Ministry of Education has already given the green light for the “Dr. pseud.”

More »

What distinguishes citizen media from traditional media? Is it even still possible do draw the line?

Global Voices author Débora Medeiros shares her notes from a discussion on new forms of journalism, which took place during a barcamp session at the Berlin Colloquium for Internet and Society, on October 26, 2012.

Yuzuko Horigome and her violin. Photo used with permission from Change.org Japan.

On August 16, 2012, German customs officials at Frankfurt Airport seized a Guarneri violin from Japanese professional musician Yuzuko Horigome when she failed to present correct documentation. They demanded that she pay nearly US$ 500,000 in order to get it back.
More »

Cooked Chinese mitten crab. Flickr/ autan (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

An interesting post from China Hush on the problems caused by Chinese mitten crabs in German rivers. To tackle the problem, German fishermen are selling the crabs to Chinese restaurants.

It ought to become something understood in the language that disabled people do things not in spite of or because of, but with their disabilities.

During the Paralympics in London there have been more and more reports on “against-it-all people” or “supercripples” in the media. leidmedien.de explains how to get the tone right.

Le café pédagogique links [pdf, fr] to the results of a survey launched in 15 cities from 7 U.E. countries, among immigrants in possession of their legal documents and with or without citizenship of their host countries. The questions were aimed at integration, which appears to be highly wished for.

Ana María Vallejo, a Colombian studying in Germany, has written a two-part series (1, 2) [es] on her experience accessing the Internet in that country. She compares it with her experience in Colombia and describes the restrictions for accessing some content there.

A cartoon of German Chancellor Angela Merkel as the Uncle Sam of Europe, with her finger pointed saying “I respect your right to vote, as long as you vote right”, is the way Portuguese ‘guerrilla’ designer Gui Castro Felga [pt] addresses the upcoming Greek elections on June 17. She wonders whether Europe is “going to ‘let’ the greek people say NO to austerity and the IMF policies”.

The Bavarian broadcasting company, Bayerischer Rundfunk, in Germany recently launched a social TV experiment called “Rundshow” [de] (Roundshow). Viewers are actively incorporated into the show through virtual means such as Google Hangout, videos, an app called “Die Macht” (The Power), and Twitter. The concept of blurring the lines between TV and the Internet can already be seen with Al Jazeera's show The Stream. But Rundshow is the first format of its kind to be attempted in Germany.

French group Rhodia and German company Tantalus announced the signing of a Letter of Intent to exploit a 300 km-long region filled with rare deposits [fr] in the Ampasindava peninsula in the North-West of Madagascar. The group expects to produce 15,000 tons a year within the next 18 months, a total value estimated at  2 billion euros [fr].  Madagascar is still marred in a political crisis that was triggered by a land grab scandal. Meanwhile, the head of the transitional government Rajoelina has seemingly kicked off his presidential campaign [fr] [photos] after announcing two years ago that he would not run [fr] for president.

Thanks to the work of dedicated volunteers, Global Voices special coverage of “Europe in Crisis” has been named a national winner for the European Charlemagne Youth Prize. The final winners for all of Europe will be announced in Aachen, Germany in May 2012. The award aims to encourage a European consciousness among young people.

The Pirate Party, which was started in Sweden in 2006, has since spread to other countries in Europe. In Germany, the local elections of Sunday, March 25, 2012, allowed the party to enter the parliament of Saarland after an earlier victory admitted it to the Berlin Parliament. This result has inspired its French counterpart to put forward candidates for this year's French Legislative Election. The newly created Alsace branch [fr] of the Pirate Party is preparing an “essentially digital campaign costing zero Euros”. Le blog de la vache libre [fr] hosted a video [fr] interview in which a candidate explains the objectives [fr] of the party, and journalism student Jérémie Nadé describes the anticipated pirate invasion on his blog.

As a reaction to the corporate efforts to enact an even more draconian legislation and in response to the attempts of the distributor of the film Downfall to take down the Hitler meme on copyright grounds, Ribaro published [mk] an animated parody of the iconic scene, free for download and re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial License.

Elsa Doladille writes  [fr] on the Educators Without Borders blog : ” While the Guéant Bill in France aims at toughening the conditions for foreign students to obtain a work permit,  Germany encourages the integration of students from abroad in their workforce.”

ChinaSMACK has a post about about the Nazi Chic cosplay culture in China and translated Chinese netizens’ reactions to a set of Nazi Chic photos.

Kelly Hignett at The View East writes about the Berlin wall, and its historical significance as a divide between East and West, as it is now 50 years since the wall – demolished in 1989 – was constructed.

David Cook at The View East writes about the East German security police, Stasi, during the Cold War, and its system of informers.

James Shingler at The View East writes about East German rock and pop music and its subvertive role in changing society during the 1970s and 1980s.

Zimbru of Morning in Moldova comments on and argues against rumours about an upcoming German-Russian proposal on the status of breakaway province Transnistria within a federal state of Moldova.

Alexander J. Motyl writes at Ukraine's Orange Blues/World Affairs about the implications of the May 12 sentencing of John Demjanjuk “for being an accessory to the murder of 28,060 Jews in the Nazi concentration camp in Sobibor, in occupied Poland.”

Every Tuesday, Canadian expat Marie in Berlin uploads recordings of the peculiar new words she learns in German to her blog.

Berlin Beatet Bestes is a blog by Andreas Michalke of rare out of print German 45 rpm records found at flea markets. For instance, this 1959 tune of Trinidadian singer Mona Baptiste singing a mambo in German.