Archive for
May 22nd, 2006
Stories
Afghan Whispers: Parliament Talk & Media
According to Yadashtayi az Gharb (Persian) (notes from the West) Mrs. Malai Joya, deputy in Afghan Parliament, talked about Mujahedeens in negative way in front of Mujahedeens deputies and others in Afghan Parliament (Loya Jigra). According to the blogger:
“She said there were people who sacrificed their lives when Afghanistan was occupied by invaders. She adds Many people who fought and survived the war are handicaps and can barely survive but Mujahedeens leaders became wealthy and have several hidden businesses in country or abroad. Some of them are involved with drug mafia and there is blood on their hands.”
Another blogger, Farasoye Niko Bad, shares same story with us (Persian). Blogger writes :
(more…)
Riots in Sao Paulo: Prison cells and cell phones
One week has passed since the city of Sao Paulo was paralyzed by gang attacks and the blogosphere in Brazil is wildly spinning the many aspects of this unprecedented confrontation. Here, we will present an overview of the various narratives generated from the multifold and multicolored currents flowing through the ever more popular and impassioned personal journaling of Brazilians.
“Sao Paulo, with a population of 17 million and a land mass which spreads over 3,00 square miles is the world’s third largest city and the largest metropolis in South America. This most modern cosmopolitan city in Brazil, has often been compared to New York because of its attraction, which lies in ethic minority communities, upthrusting skyscrapers, and the outstanding cuisines that the city offers. Apart from the outstanding qualities that this city portrays, it is also considered a home to organized crime groups. The vile and evitable drama, which has really turned ugly, sparked up when around 700 members of the PCC [First Command of the Capital] crime gang were moved from a low to a maximum-security prison to minimize the influence they have had over the years on other inmates. The PCC was formed years ago as a gang within the prison walls to protect the rights of prisoners. Today, they have spread immensely outside the prison system and formed organized crime gangs which deal in drugs, kidnapping and armed robbery in most crucial and economically vibrant Brazilian cities.”
São Paulo, Brazil on Fire - Negritu.de - Blog“I believe I imagine civilization as a circle because I've grown up in Sao Paulo. In Rio de Janeiro, for example, there is a close contact between privilege and poverty which does not happen here. From an historical perspective, what differentiates São Paulo is its urban expansion model, which left the poor crowds on the margins of the city. It created a central privileged zone kept orderly by the control of public authorities and a periphery that was invisible. INVISIBLE… Until now!!!! The PCC attacks present a new reality, tearing down the illusion that Sao Paulo was different from other cities. The expansion of the privileged center grew to the poverty zones, crossing to the world beyond the bridge… Sao Paulo is exactly the same as the rest of the country, built upon a brutal inequality which concentrates and does not distribute wealth.”
PCC attack's (II) - Jaw of 1984
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Montenegro: “It Looks Like Europe Has a New Country”
This past Sunday, 55.4 percent of the voters of Montenegro, the smallest of the six former Yugoslav republics (population slightly over 600,000), decided in favor of independence - by a narrow margin of 0.4%, in a heavy turnout.
Below are some bloggers' reactions to the May 21 referendum results.
Doug Muir of A Fistful of Euros points out that the campaign has been peaceful - “by Balkan standards” - but that motivations and convictions of the leading pro- and anti-independence players aren't too hopeful:
Long-time readers of this blog already know my opinion of Montenegrin PM Djukanovic; I think he’s an amoral opportunist who is gunning for independence in large part to keep himself in power. That said, the pro-Union opposition isn’t exactly a band of plucky democrats; they’re dominated by Serb nationalists, many of whom used to be fellow travellers with Milosevic.
Doug Muir's first post-referendum entry begins this way:
It looks like Europe has a new country.
Montserrat volcano watch and West Indies cricket
A woman looks at the rear window of her car, broken by a flying rock from the nearby Soufriere Hills Volcano, Montserrat, on Saturday. Photo from the Trinidad Express website
Nearly eleven years ago, Montserrat’s long-dormant Soufriere Hills Volcano began erupting for the first time in the island's recorded history. A series of pyroclastic flows and sometimes violent eruptions of ash and gases covered much of the southern part of Montserrat, including the capital, Plymouth, rendering it uninhabitable. More than half the population fled, and those who remained were forced to relocate to the northern end of the small island (just one and a half times the size of Manhattan), out of the volcano's range. The volcano is still very much active, though in recent years it's been relatively quiet, with small ash eruptions and pyroclastic flows every six or nine months, and the Montserrat Volcano Observatory (MVO) keeps a close watch on Soufriere's rumblings.
Last Saturday morning, at about 6.00 a.m., the vulcanologists at the MVO noticed signs of increased activity, and at about 7.20 a.m. the lava dome that had been growing from the main peak collapsed, triggering a pyroclastic flow to the east and emitting a big cloud of ash. Global Voices Caribbean editor Georgia Popplewell, visiting St. Kitts, about sixty miles northwest of Montserrat, heard about the eruption in a casual conversation and posted a short summary of the volcano's recent activity, asking readers to leave comments with further news, and pointing out that regularly scheduled flights to airports in the vicinity had been cancelled or diverted because of the huge ash cloud above the central Leeward Islands. Not long after, the Caribbean Beat blog got in touch with the MVO by telephone — their website was temporarily down — and posted a report quoting the two press releases issued that day by Montserrat's Emergency Department, giving full details and emphasising that the island's population was in no danger.
In St. Vincent, 250 miles south, Abeni had the TV on, watching the One Day International cricket match then underway between India and the West Indies in Jamaica (the West Indies won!), and learned about the Soufriere Hills eruption from the “breaking news” tickertape. “They say when your neighbour's house is on fire you must wet yours. Living in St Vincent and the Grenadines under the shadow of an active volcano the saying rings even truer,” she remarked. And, with the next One Day International scheduled for Tuesday in St. Kitts — an important day in West Indies cricket history, since this will be the first first-class match ever played on the island — cricket fans began to worry about the impact of the eruption on the series. If the airports remained closed, how would the players and fans fly in? “This could have a major impact,” wrote the West Indies Cricket Blog.
(more…)
Images from South Asia
For my first post on Global Voices I decided to look beyond words and instead look at the subcontinent through the lens of another. Photoblogs in South Asia are abuzz with the chatter of cameras and flickering of the flash; the result is an amazing array of images from Kerala in India to truck art in Pakistan. So without further ado here are some of the images.
Peter Dulvy with ace Indian athlete PT Usha, nicknamed the ‘Payyoli Express' for her speed on the track. Photo Courtesy: Desmond Roberts
What happens when a runner, a photographer and a writer get together and decide to run over 600 km a month through the Indian state of Kerala ? The answer is …….a very entertaining blog. Peter Dulvy, Desmond Roberts and Rahul Noble Singh in their blog ‘Heels of Fire‘ are doing just that as they blaze through what National Geographic calls one of the ten paradises (more…)
Syrian Blogsphere in a Week
This week the Syrian blogsphere was mostly busy discussing the latest developments in Syria. Last week the Syrian security forces initiated the largest crackdown on opposition figures and dissidents since President Bashar al-Assad came to power in 2000.
Ammar Abdulhamid of Amarji has an interesting analysis of this escalation from the Syrian regime…
The Assad regime is simply upping the ante, then, and demonstrating its continued internal strength, while underscoring the failure of the international community, for all its criticisms, complaints, condemnations and resolutions, to produce any serious outcome on the ground. At the end of the day, the Assads are signaling, there is no one in Syria but them with whom the international community can deal.
Rime Allaf of Mosaic on the same issue…
This is not the first time Michel Kilo (who, like many Syrian activists, has done his share of time in jail … get this, for being associated with the Muslim Brothers, of all the pathetic charges!) has been included in the regime's latest harassment campaign, but he had usually been set free after a few hours. It looks different this time, as they seemed to be waiting for an excuse.
Links for Mon, 2006-05
Luandino Vieira, from Angola, has been chosen for the 2006 Edition of Camões Prize . The Portuguese language's most prestigious award was given to the Angolan writer Luandino Vieira. Born José Vieira Mateus da Graça, in 1935 in Portugal, he moved to Angola with his parents at the age of three. He became an Angolan citizen as a result of his participation in the country's national movement for liberation and chose the name ‘Luandino' as an homage to the city of Luanda. His main books are “No antigamente, na vida - estórias”, “Luanda”, “A Vida verdadeira de Domingos Xavier” and “Nosso Musseque”. It's the second time an Angolan writer is awarded with the Camoes Prize - the first one was Pepetela, in 1997.
Guillermo Parra features Venezuelan poet Elizabeth Schön who he describes as “a writer who has often been overlooked in Venezuela, but whose work has maintained a consistent philosophical and technical rigor throughout her long career.”
Both Miguel Octavio and Daniel Duquenal write about yesterday's mayoral elections in Carrizal and Nirgua, which Duquenal describes as “insignificant in the grand scheme of things, though very telling in illustrating the contradictions within Venezuelan politics.”
Dani Santo Domingo, writing from Costa Rica, says that protesters around Latin America stood outside Nicaraguan embassies in Argentina, Chile, México, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay to speak out against the country's anti-sodomy laws. He has posted pictures from most of the protests.
Fernando Casale has posted the first album of Ale Lago, “published under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.5 AR license, so you’re free to copy, share and remix, as soon as you don’t do it for commerial purposes.”
Maxwell A. Cameron has written an excellent and thorough summary of the presidential debate between Alan Garcia and Ollanta Humala, concluding: “Garcia won on substance, while Humala won on style. The overall effect is unlikely to be decisive.” Gran Combo Club has a review [ES] of the reaction by Peru's media. Meanwhile, Boz is skeptical of Vladimiro Montesinos' claim that “Ollanta Humala staged a fake military rebellion to help him escape the country.
Andrew Comings last week's gang violence and the nature of the Brazilian penal code. Luís Afonso Assumpção recommends an article from FrontPage Magazine.
The General Intelligence Department of Jordan announced today that they caught a senior member of Al Qaeda at Iraq. Khalf wonders; while it is good to learn that the GID is working in Iraq to protect Jordan, it is not obvious what use it is to let the world know about this.
Dubai is making more headlines than Paris Hilton these days. And unsurprisingly, there's as much dirty linen as glittering party frocks hanging on the line, secretdubai said.
This site is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
Please read our attribution policy.
Gregory Asmolov4 posts 
Katharine Ganly8 posts 
Ndesanjo Macha2440 posts 
vergilyeh1 posts 
Juan Arellano128 posts 
Simon Maghakyan25 posts 
Kamla Bhatt60 posts 
Bob Chen78 posts 
Jakub Gornicki2 posts 
Lina Ben Mhenni15 posts 
Tarek Amr64 posts 
Juliana Rotich117 posts