Archive for
August 29th, 2006
Stories
Guyana: Election watch
On Monday 28 August, an estimated 300,000 Guyanese turned out to vote in elections for the unicameral National Assembly. Elections in Guyana have historically been fraught with public anxiety and violence. The two leading parties, the People's Progressive Party (PPP/Civic) and the People's National Congress (PNC/Reform) have traditionally drawn their strength from Guyana's two main ethnic groups — respectively, Indian and African — and most Guyanese vote along ethnic lines. The ruling PPP/Civic has held power since the 1992 elections, widely considered the first relatively free and fair elections in almost thirty years.
More recently, the 1997 and 2001 elections were occasions for significant inter-ethnic violence, and — with the murder rate soaring, and after recent incidents such as the assassination of agriculture minister Satyadeo Sawh in April and the murder of five Kaieteur News employees earlier this month — many Guyanese have spent recent months fearing that this year's elections would bring a further round of bloodshed. “Stock up and lock up,” suggested Guyana-Gyal on the eve of the elections. “‘Cause tomorrow is Election Day and we don't know what them following days gon bring.” Except she detected “something new strumming in the air … humming on tv, on the radio, campaigns for peace, young folks in ads on tv, singing a line or two, asking for peace”. And MediaCritic of Living Guyana reported on election day that the capital city, Georgetown, “is a fortress … We hear that most stores are completely boarded up as if people in Guyana think that Hurricane Ernesto is coming their way.” He suggested that if the PPP/Civic won a clear majority “one major section of the country … ARE GOING TO CAUSE TROUBLE”. (more…)
Russian-Language Blogs: Miscellanea (3)
Israeli blogger pilka writes (RUS) about a surreal experience of eating next to three clowns at a hospital in the wartime Haifa:
[…] I had breakfast with clowns today. I work at the children's department, okay? So strange, a clown on the right, a clown on the left, a vegetable salad in front of me, and next to it, a clown again. Scary. They eat in their noses and suspenders, just like that. It feels especially weird when one of them begins to complain that his wife took their little son away to Eilat, a few hours by car from here, and he hasn't seen him in two weeks already. And the other is whining that he is sick and tired of sharing a protected room with five other people, mother-in-law, father-in-law and two children. And I used to think that clowns are funny… […]
***
LJ user auseklitis posts one of the campaign ads of the Latvian political alliance Harmony Center (Saskanas Centrs in Latvian, Tsentr Soglasiya in Russian), which can be seen in the Latvian capital, Riga:
According to auseklitis (RUS), the slogan, translated from Latvian, reads: “We are for the Jews.”
[…] Of course, when you're crossing the Deglava Bridge for the first time and see the “We are for the Jews” slogan, you flinch and think that someone has decided to clearly express [his/her] position on the conflict between Israel and Hizbullah in Lebanon.
But then you notice other slogans - “We are for the Russians,” “We are for the Latvians,” “We are for everyone” - with pictures, and realize that this is a pre-election thing. […]
International Blog Day is almost here!
A very exciting thing is the vast array of languages in which people are blogging about Blog Day. It will be a day in which we celebrate our right to express ourselves online, and help each other to be heard above the din of spin and bad news… and in some places, help people to be heard despite efforts by governments, politicians or companies to silence independent speech online. Thanks to Israeli blogger Nir Ofir who conceived and organized Blog Day. I repeat a recent quote from about why we should all participate:
On these days, of war in the middle east, I would like to remind you all that BlogDay is a celebration of people and for people. It is a celebration of the ability to visit blogs that are different from our own culture, point of view and attitude and it is a celebration of free content written by people like you and me. Wars, in the other hand, are being foughtby governments. Let us not let governments to stop the celebration of Internet, Blogging and democracy.
Here are Nir's instructions for participating:
In one long moment In August 31st, bloggers from all over the world will post a recommendation of 5 new Blogs, Preferably, Blogs different from their own culture, point of view and attitude. On this day, blog surfers will find themselves leaping and discovering new, unknown Blogs, celebrating the discovery of new people and new bloggers.
BlogDay posting instructions:
1. Find 5 new Blogs that you find interesting
2. Notify the 5 bloggers that you are recommending on them on BlogDay 2005
3. Write a short description of the Blogs and place a a link to the recommended Blogs
4. Post the BlogDay Post (on August 31st) and
5. Add the BlogDay tag using this link: http://technorati.com/tag/BlogDay2006 and a link to BlogDay web site at http://www.blogday.org
If you are interested, Global Voices invites you to help fellow bloggers living in other parts of the world get to know you better. We're finding that people in different countries blog for different reasons, and that blogospheres in different places have developed different kinds of relationships with the rest of their culture, politics, and mainstream media. We'd like to help people understand you and your region's blogosphere better. So if you have the time, please help us do this by writing a post any time between now and Thursday (or several if you like), answering some or all of the following questions:
- Why did you start blogging?
- What do you blog about mainly?
- Do you blog in your first language or in another language, and why?
- What motivates you to keep blogging even if (like most bloggers) you're not paid much for it?
- Is your audience mainly inside your own country or around the world?
- What do your family and friends think about the fact that you are a blogger?
- Does your boss know you have a blog?
- What is the relationship between blogs in your country or region and the mainstream media?
- When you blog, how would you describe what you write? Is it part of a conversation? Is it ranting? Is it a daily diary? Is it journalism? Is it some or all of these things at different times? Does the definition matter?
- Have blogs started to have an impact on politics in your country? Have they started to influence what stories get covered in your country's media? We'd love to know some examples.
When you're done, please trackback to this post, or leave a link to your post in the comments section of this post. If you don't have a blog but would like to share your views about the state of blogs and blogging in your country, please feel free to leave a comment on this post. On Blog Day, we'll do a post or two summarizing, quoting, and linking to what you said.
Chile: The Day that Pinochet Dies
Publicist Roberto Arancibia is one of Chile's most popular bloggers. His affable tone and optimistic perspective are adept at parsing a variety of topics. Yet rarely does his blog, El Mundo Sigue Ahí (”The World's Still There”), delve into anything that would interest a political polemicist.
Last Wednesday, a few weeks before the 33rd anniversary of the coup that installed Pinochet as dictator, could therefore be viewed as an anomaly with the publication of “The Day that Pinochet Dies“:
A few days ago I read a post by Jorge Diaz (ES), which asked us what we were going to do the day that Pinochet died.
Just as I wrote in the comments, on September 11, 1973 I was 16 years old, studied philosophy at the University of Chile and I was the owner of the world. I was on forced vacation from university and had visited Chiloé as a guest of Papo, - what will come of him? - along with 4 companions from school. That morning, his mother woke us up to a large battery-powered radio, at full volume, which took over where we had slept. Get up, there is a coup in Santiago!? Of course, the news immediately replaced what had been our dreams and cured our slugishness from the previous day's curanto. Just like our dreams that Tuesday morning, many dreams were cut short that day, all over the country.
China: chain effect on ipod maker's legal action against journalists
In less than a week's time, Ipod subcontractor Foxconn's legal action against Mainland journalists turns into a global news story.
The story was first appeared in Donews BBS, picked up by mindmeters, then GVO's roundups. On the same date (Aug 24), Chinese citizen journalist websites inmediahk.net (from Hong Kong)(zh) and coolloud.org.tw (from Taiwan)(zh) followed up the news story and translated into English into a to-be-launched citizen journalist website (interlocals.net).
ESWN translates in details the journalist defence statement on Aug 26 and by Aug 28 the news turned global to slashdot.
Yesterday, the First Financial Daily issued an open letter to Foxconn, defending their editor and journalist against Foxconn's legal action in freezing the two individuals assests. The statement also said that such action would enrage the whole media circle. In fact, it has resulted in a series of chain effects within China internet community.
Non-violent Resistance criticized that FoxConn is not dumb, but downright vicious:
Words in the Chinese press circles are, that FoxConn, therefore Hon Hai, had deliberately picked the two journalists from China Business News to sue in a painstaking plot to harrass and intimidate media outlets and journalists. After all, China Business News was not the only newspaper that doggedly followed the iPod sweatshop story.
Sina.com has opened up a special page(zh) on the issue and a blog for two journalists.
Links for Tue, 2006-08
Cintra acknowledges the “surprising fun of the Mundial de Tango.”
Jim Shultz announces the gas and oil brief from the Democracy Center while Miguel Buitrago takes a look at Bolivia's presence on YouTube.
Erwin Cifuentes, Ricardo Carreón, Ceci Connolly, and Eduardo Arcos (ES) on the electoral tribunal's rejection of complaints made by presidential runner-up Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Andres Bianciotto has the score at USA 0 - Mexico 1 (ES) when comparing the United States' federal disaster recovery following Hurricane Katrina with Cancun's post-Wilma recovery. Steve Bridger seems to agree with, at least, the latter.
Ben Dangl survives the most dangerous road in the world to publish this update on his time in Cochabamba.
Tolkun Umaraliev writes about the low reputation and public fear of the police in Kyrgyzstan, and he solicits comments from readers about their opinions on the police.
Sean Roberts details the tensions and issues in US-Kazakhstan relations.
JJ discovers the beauties of Bishkek, “a beautiful, safe, comfortable, green, modern and very pleasant place to live.” For the employed, anyway…
Carpetblogger reports on Batumi, the capital of the Georgian region of Ajaria, saying that autonomy was far from kind to the city.
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