Global Voices

English

The world is talking, are you listening?

On the blog section [es] of Chilean newspaper El Mercurio [es], columnist Leila Guerrero analyzes the meaning of prestige [es] and notes:

Rock musicians have been smart: ‘rock star’ is one of the few jobs (we'd had to add non-Saxon public servants) where a loss of prestige means an increase of quotation. Almost for every other member of the human race, regardless of their profession, prestige, for some time now, is useful only to estimate the height where they will fall from.

And she concludes:

[...] only a man prepared to lose everything is invulnerable. Only someone who is ready to live without caring about how others look at him/her -and who is ready to design a life accordingly- will be an effective machine, a being that is apt for survival.

Does the absence of women in public spaces makes these spaces safer for women?

The above comment is made by the blogger at The Life and Times of an Indian Homemaker, who is outraged by the decision of the government of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, to ban women from pubs after 10 pm claiming that it would keep them safe.

Following Saturday's scoreless soccer game that catapulted Moscow's CSKA club to its fourth Russian Premier League title, the team's fans clashed with riot troops in downtown Moscow. Police detained 140 people [ru], later releasing all but two. Bloggers posted photos to LiveJournal here, here, and here [ru], alleging police brutality.

Police “detain” a soccer fan, Moscow, 18 May 2013, photo by Sergey Danilov, posted to his LJ.

Rudi Putra initiated an online petition asking the Indonesian government to block the expansion of mining and palm oil activities in Aceh and to protect the country's remaining rainforest. More than one million people around the world have already signed the petition:

I live and work in the last place on Earth where endangered orangutans, rhinos, elephants, and tigers still roam together — but it'll be bulldozed to bits unless our President hears our call and steps in to save this unique habitat.

Another two speakers [pt] have been confirmed for the event TEDxSão Tomé, in the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe, in 20 June. Mark Richard Shuttleworth [en], a South African founder of the company Canonical Ltd, which develops free software like Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Xubuntu and Lubuntu and Guilherme Alves Luís Vaz de Carvalho [pt], an artist from São Tome that composed the song “Frutinha da Sorte” for the film “Frutinha do Equador”.