Global Voices Online

Stories

Global Voices Summit begins Saturday!!

Rebecca MacKinnon · 11:33

If you aren't able to join us in Delhi for Saturday's Global Voices 2006 Summit, please join us online!

Information about the schedule, webcast, live online chat, and other information can all be found on this web page. Or you can click here to go directly to the streaming audio webcast - which is scheduled to start at 9:00am Delhi time. (03:30 GMT, 10:30PM EST, 11:30AM Beijing)

We are building up a number of linked resource pages about the summit on the Global Voices wiki which will be available from this central page. It will include feeds of material written about the summit as long as it has been tagged with the summit tag: gvdelhi2006. If you blog / write / take pictures / record audio or video or otherwise generate content about the summit don’t forget to tag it so your views will be more easily found and more widely distributed.

How did we get to this moment? A bit of history: Two years ago this week, a few of us convened a small gathering of bloggers from around the world in a Harvard Law School classroom. From it emerged the Global Voices Manifesto. Here it is in full:

We believe in free speech: in protecting the right to speak — and the right to listen. We believe in universal access to the tools of speech.

To that end, we want to enable everyone who wants to speak to have the means to speak — and everyone who wants to hear that speech, the means to listen to it.

Thanks to new tools, speech need no longer be controlled by those who own the means of publishing and distribution, or by governments that would restrict thought and communication. Now, anyone can wield the power of the press. Everyone can tell their stories to the world.

We want to build bridges across the gulfs of culture and language that divide people, so as to understand each other more fully. We want to work together more effectively, and act more powerfully.

We believe in the power of direct connection. The bond between individuals from different worlds is personal, political and powerful. We believe conversation across boundaries is essential to a future that is free, fair, prosperous and sustainable - for all citizens of this planet.

While we continue to work and speak as individuals, we also want to identify and promote our shared interests and goals. We pledge to respect, assist, teach, learn from, and listen to one other.

We are Global Voices.

By the following summer, the blog that we had originally created as a conversation space for conference attendees had morphed into the website as you see it today: an edited aggregator of weblogs from all over the world except North America and Western Europe (the idea being that voices and views from N.America and W.Europe get disproportionate attention not only in the International media but on the global web). The blogs we link to on the site are curated, contextualized and in some cases translated by our amazing group of regional editors and translators. Roughly one hundred volunteers from all over the world provide in-depth coverage of the discussions taking place in their own countries' blogospheres. Enough people seem to find it useful that we now have over one million visitors per month, and we recently won the Knight-Batten Award for Innovations in Journalism.

At last year's summit in London, it was clear that Global Voices is much more than a citizens' media website or international bloggers' network. It is a community. And it is a movement of people who are united by the values of free speech, tolerance, dialogue, and inclusiveness articulated in the manifesto.

At this year's Delhi summit, much of our public meeting on Saturday will be devoted to the challenges our community hopes to tackle in the coming years: How do we bring more people, not just wired elites, into the global discourse that is facilitated by the Internet? What kinds of technical tools need to be used, adapted or developed in order to bring the less-wealthy into the global conversation? How do we help people speak when their governments or other powerful groups don't want them to? How do we overcome language barriers?

Please help us figure some of these things out by joining the conversation.

2 comments · »»

Speak Quechua: Interview with Noemí Vizcardo

David Sasaki · 00:39

Noemí Vizcardo is no stranger to Global Voices. Her blog Habla Quechua - focused on helping Spanish speakers learn Quechua - is one of the few, perhaps the only, penned in Latin America's most-spoken indigenous language. She is a lawyer, translator, and professor of agrarian law. Peruvian contributor Juan Arellano recently interviewed [ES] Vizcardo to find our more about the state of Quechua online.

You are well-known in the Peruvian blogosphere for your work of spreading and promoting Quechua. What does this language represent and mean to you?
Indeed my incursion into the world of weblogs is thanks to the diffusion of the quechua language through that medium, which motivates to me to publicly express my appreciation; the meaning of quechua in my life is like sap to plants; it is the elixir that strengthens my personality by the generosity and wisdom that it contains. Quechua is my spiritual sustenance, the love that sings me to sleep and the truth that guides me; which is to say it is the ideal materialized in everything I am and do.

How did it develop and how do you maintain such large interest in this language of our ancestors?
Quechua, for me, is connatural. That is, it was always was present since I was conceived, because I come from a bilingual town where the common denominator is oral communication in Quechua; even though, in my house my father prohibited that we speak it because of the generalized and flawed concept then of Creole society; that it was a language of the “Indians”, a term that contemptuously was associated with the beasts of burden or inferior beings - similar to the humans - but without rights. It was thought that although they could speak, they only spoke brutalities and ignorance. The generalized idea was that they did not understand pain, and that their humiliation was met with the silence of Quechua speakers. Their rights were not recognized; even in these times there are people who have this sad concept [of Quechua speakers]. You do not know how my heart is squeezed and shaken when I imagine the suffering this cruelty caused.

(more…)

0 comments · »»

The Esperanto Window Closes / La Esperanta Fenestro Fermiĝas.

Steven BREWER · 00:01

On Nov 29, 2006, Howard Dean addressed the Liberal Leadership and Biennial Convention. He gave an inspirational speech about the strategies that resulted in the Democrats retaking the US House and US Senate. It's a message that ought to resonate with people who want to advance the goals of Esperanto.	Je la 29a de novembro, Howard Dean, prelegis al la Liberala Estra kaj Dujara Kongreso. Li faris inspirigan prelegon pri la strategioj kiuj rezultis en tio ke la Demokratoj regajnis ambaŭ partojn de la usona parlamento. Estas mesaĝo kiun tiuj, kiuj volas antaŭenigi Esperanton devas ekkompreni:
It's just this: Show up everywhere. And work hard everywhere. Knock on doors everywhere. Make the calls everywhere. Shake hands everywhere. Do the hard work everywhere. And keep doing it…	Estas nur tiu ĉi: estu ĉie. Kaj laboregu ĉie. Telefonu ĉie. Manpremu ĉie. Faru la pezan laboron ĉie. Kaj faradu ĝin.
But the most striking moment in the speech came earlier. You can see the video of it here. He said:	Sed la plej trafa momento en la prelego okazis pli frue. Vi povas vidi la vidaĵon ĉi tie. Li diris (en la franca):
Parce que je croi, à la lumière de rèultats de cette èlection, que nous pouvons à nouveau bènèficier d'un partenariat entre les Etats-Unis et le Canada…D'un vèretable partenariat…D'un partnariat fonè sur la coopèration et la vèritè, le respect mutuel el l'ègalitè.	Ĉar mi kredas, en la lumo de la rezultoj de la voĉdonado, ke ni denove povas ĝui kunlaboradon inter Usono kaj Kanado…Veran kunlaboradon…Kunlaboradon fonditan sur kunagado, vero, kaj kunestimo de egaleco.