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Latest in the Francophone African Blogosphere

Alice Backer · 23:47 · Sub-Saharan Africa

PAN-AFRICAN

For the United States of Africa
Le Pangolin is fervently advocating for the dissolution of the current borders that separate African countries and that, he believes, weaken each individual African country:

Je suis pour des Etats-Unis d’Afrique par zone géographique ou linguistique, car cela va permettre d’impliquer l’ensemble des Africains dans la résolution de nombreux problèmes actuels (…). Pensez-vous sincèrement qu’un pays africain est capable de faire la guerre à un petit pays européen ? (…) Croyez-vous que des pays comme par exemple le Cameroun ou le Congo possédant beaucoup des richesses naturelles qui suscitent la convoitise de plusieurs pays occidentaux et des USA sont-ils capables de se développer individuellement ? De protéger leur territoire ? La réponse est un NON catégorique, car ni le Cameroun, ni le Congo de façon séparée n’ont pas les moyens de constituer des armées capables de défendre leurs richesses en mer (…) et sur terre (…) et s’opposer à la France.

I am for the United States of Africa broken down by geographic or linguistic zones because that would allow the involvement of the whole of Africans in resolving many existing problems (…). Do you really think an African country can go to war with a small European one? (…) Do you really think that countries like Cameroon or the Congo that own natural ressources sought after by many Western countries and the USA are able to develop individually? The answer is a categoric NObecause neither Cameroon nor the Congo have the means to erect armies capable of defending their riches on land (…) or on ground (…) and to oppose France.

Selon moi les avantages sont colossaux. Et les Africains feraient mieux de réfléchir à comment aboutir dans la décennie qui vient à ces grands ensembles, le plus rapidement possible. Il y va de la survie de l’Afrique d’ici 2025. Le développement fulgurant de la Chine et de l’Inde contraint l’Afrique à se diriger vers cette voie. A vouloir rester dans nos frontières et souverainetés actuelles est une attitude hautement suicidaire car la pression sur les ressources naturelles devient de plus forte presque impossible à tenir. Dans cette configuration l'Afrique detient à elle seule plus de trois-quarts de toutes les resources encore disponibles sur terre et mer.Tout le monde le sait aucun pays d’Afrique dans la configuration actuelle en dehors peut-être de l’Afrique du Sud, Nigeria (et même ?) ne pourra opposer une résistance à sa destruction ou spoliation par l'Occident.

I think the benefits would be colossal. And Africans had better think through how to arrive in the coming decade at those wider groupings [of countries] and as fast as possible. Africa's survival to the year 2025 depends on it. The tremendous development of China and India forces Africa to head in that direction. To choose to remain in our current borders and sovereignties is a highly suicidal attitude because the pressure on our natural resources is becoming stronger and impossible to uphold. In this configuration Africa becomes on its own more than three quarters of of all available ressources on land and sea. Everyone knows that in the current configuration, no African country except maybe South Africa and Nigeria (and then again?) will be able to resist its destruction or spoiling by the West.

COTE D'IVOIRE
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The Week That Was in Bahrain

Amira Al Hussaini · 12:00 · Middle East & North Africa

With temperatures soaring above 45 degrees Celcius, summer is hot in Bahrain. And it is getting hotter, thanks to the escalating war being waged against local telecommunications company Batelco, which has changed its Internet packages overnight in newspaper announcements and emails to customers on May 11.

To add insult to injury, customers who had no say in the changes, had their accounts altered automatically. It was a take it or leave it deal, especially as the company has what amounts to a monopoly over the local Internet market.

“Batelco's current Broadband customers will automatically be upgraded during this month,” said the Press release.

What made some customers hit the rooftop, was the sugary language the Press release was coated with, especially when people who exceed their thresholds and who would have to pay through the nose, were being told that they would have unlimited Internet usage of UP TO … hehe

Are the increases a genuine plan to improve services or are they just another scheme to limit internet accessibility, especially in the poor areas of Bahrain?
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China: June 4th:Silence, Memorial and Blogger's Saying

Frank Dai · 08:12 · East Asia

Today it's June 4th, the 17th anniversary of Tiananmen Square Massacre, which marked the end of student democracy movement in Beijing and nationwide lasting from March to June, 1989. The communist party of China still did not recognize this mass incident as peaceful protest of students, who used demonstration and hunger strike to demand democracy and removal of corrupted officials.

Under the party propaganda policies, no commemoration of the movement was allowed in public places and the newspapers and TV networks passed the day wthout any even implied mention of it. Like the popular columnist and blogger Lianyue once has wrote when Google has entered Chinese market:”We(Google) guarantee: The day after Jun3th must be Jun5th”, the state-controlled media have just pretended that the event never happened 17 years ago, identical with the official history book's negligible claim of the movement as “a political incident in the spring and summer of 1989″.

Silence did not only existed in the media outlets but also on Internet. The major websites are mute as much as their mainstream media counterparts. While many foreign media will run their stories of civil right groups, dissidents sayings and request of groups like Tiananmen Mother, who demand compensation and recognition of people who sacrifice their lives in the event, a basic embarrassing fact is that the government will tighten the control of information online and offline, with blocking access to witnesses and elevation of Internet blocking alike.

Even Google, who compromise to offered its Chinese search engine services in censored and uncensored version simultaneously are no exception from the powerful censor. Many areas in mainland China have reported failures to connect to Google in the past few days, while the censored and China-hosted Google.cn is still available. Andrew Lih has blogged a stories about it. Shizhao also warned that people be careful using Google Desktop, since the application robots will crawl sensitive news from websites like BBC, causing the Great Firewall to trigger off.

Fortunately, the decentralized nature of Internet means such content can't be removed and ignored entirely. Andrea of T-Salon remind us that the del.icio.us tag “8964″ is once again active, aggregating reflections and thoughts from the Internet,especially the blogosphere. The scanning copy of Hong Kong newspaper in June 4th 1989 can be found on Flickr and video on YouTube. It's like what XiaoQiang of China Digital Times, a participant of that event told in a recent interview that “Internet Keeps Tiananmen Spirit Alive”

Keepwalking shot photos of Tiananmen Square and post it on his blog titled “Picture without Words: Today, Square”: peaceful and crowded, not with anguish students but the cheerful and curious tourists, who may not even heard about the so-called June 4th Massacre, for many of them were born after the event and the state prohibt public discussion of the incident. Compared with the now famous image of Tank Man, who poised in front a row of armed tanks and block them to advance on the street in 1989, a true repersentatives of the spirits of the protesters, today's square is so quiet as usual as if nobody even remember, not mention to struggle for it.

Zheng, one of the earliest Chinese blogger, wrote today on his blog titled “17 Years”:

[In translation]
After the 17 years, the generation has grown up to adult.
However the ringing cry, warm blood and zealous yearning of them has not grown to be a self-organized and self-adapted environment of democracy, like the tiny seeds growing into green and vast fores
t…..
The thing needed to magnify is the voice, the continuity not the boring and faded mourning and commemoration year after year.
History won't repeat. New questions are ahead in front of us, and it's these news question that make the voice resurrect.

SideKick, a Hong Kong blogger, showed her “8964″ special watch and change her blog's appearance in total black for “indirect memorandum”. In another post she edits a playlist of songs to commorate the anniversary . Every year Hong Kong will hold an unofficial memorial party to pay tribute to those who died on the street 17 years ago and HiRadio has many resources for that party.

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