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India: Bangalore - Infrastructure and Barcamps

Kamla Bhatt · 18:56

lingua → zht · zhs · es

Bangalore is the focus of this post. Bangalore is the capital of the southern state of Karnataka and and is often referred to as the Silicon Valley of India. Once known as the “garden city” of India, the city has morphed into a sprawling metropolis with poor infrastructure and a government that seems to change every few months. A few weeks ago the current state government was dismissed and President's rule was imposed. Churumuri has an excellent post outlining the current political status of the state:

The yo-yo, on-off-on politics in Karnataka would defy Mr Ripley, if he hasn’t given up already. But the key question after Saturday’s developments—when the JDS and BJP once again seemingly came together—is how long will the second honeymoon last? Will it last the full course of 19 months? Will it last less than a year? Will it last between three and six months? Or will it tumble within the first three months?

Alok Mittal, who is into venture capital, shares his experience in VentureWoods on what it is like to make a flying visit to the city.

I was in Bangalore on wednesday for BangaloreIT.in event, and it took 4 hours to go and come back due to traffic and demonstrations. At the evening, it took more than an hour and a half in the security queue at the airport!

It is not surprising that technology and IT tend to be a dominant theme of bloggers from Bangalore. The city probably leads other Indian cities when it comes to hosting Barcamps, the unconference phenomenon that started a few years ago. The next barcamp is slated to be held in mid-November. Rajiv Poddar of Wireless Utopia writes that he has lost interest in barcamp and probably will skip the next one. He writes:

To my mind, BCB3 was the peak and the decline has started. One of the most attractive aspects of Barcamp was its simplicity. It was easy to find who was attending and who was talking about what. With each Barcamp it got progressively difficult to do so. With BCB4 it was impossible to get a quick snapshot and I dont expect BCB5 to be any different.

Jace wonders about Rajiv's line of thinking about barcamps and writes:

That focused events are reducing Barcamp’s significance is indeed true. What Rajiv appears to have missed, though, is that as these communities gain traction and find their focus, they will want to move on and manage themselves, leaving Barcamp to newer communities seeking similar exposure. The collective format is designed around encouraging this.

Bangalore is also home to quite a few major IT companies and their research labs. I recently interviewed Jonathan Donner of Microsoft Research India about the missed call phenomenon around the world. You can listen to Jonathan talk about missed calls in India, Rwanda, Kenya, Jamaica, Philippines and other places.

From technology we move to wine. John and Don of Bangalore Monkey have been reviewing various Indian wines in their blog posts. For instance here is what they have to say about Seagrams Nine Hills Chenin Blanc:

Actually, we think its sweetness might not even work for many appetizers — this would probably be nicest as a dessert wine, or something to sip with a biscuit. It would be a good wine to drink on most occasions when you'd be drinking champagne.

1 comment · »»

Trinidad and Tobago: Election Picong

Nicholas Laughlin · 18:38

Voters in Trinidad and Tobago are preparing to go to the polls on Monday 5 November, in the long-anticipated general election to choose 41 MPs for the House of Representatives. The party that wins a majority will form the next government, but as campaigning politicians and political analysts alike point out, there's more at stake. Special majorities of two thirds and three quarters of the votes in the House are required to amend specific sections of the Trinidad and Tobago constitution. The current ruling party has promised that constitution reform will be high on the agenda if it is re-elected; opposition parties and civic groups fear a new constitution that concentrates power in the hands of the executive and weakens legislative and judicial checks and balances.

Traditionally, political parties in Trinidad and Tobago have attracted support along more or less ethnic lines. The People's National Movement (PNM), which currently forms the government under political leader and prime minister Patrick Manning, has its main power base among urban Afro-Trinidadians. The United National Congress (UNC), fighting the election under the controversial co-leadership of former prime minister Basdeo Panday and financier Jack Warner, has its core support among rural Indo-Trinidadians. Complicating the picture is the Congress of the People (COP), led by former government minister Winston Dookeran. Originally a splinter group of former UNC members, the COP — fighting its first election — has managed to attract support from disaffected members of both other parties, from “floating” voters, and from the country's disenchanted mixed-race middle class.

In Trinidad and Tobago's first-past-the-post electoral system, third parties have rarely fared well. Recent opinion polls have been highly contradictory; some suggest the COP may win more votes than the UNC and even run neck-and-neck with the PNM. But with the race coming down to a handful of marginal constituencies, it's entirely possible the COP could win a third of the popular vote nationwide and no seats in the House. Three days ahead of the election, it's still too close to call.

This situation — compounded by a baroquely complicated sequence of scandals, corruption accusations, and political floor-crossings in the last seven or eight years — has led to a highly recriminatory campaign season, with unprecedented spending on campaign advertising. Many bloggers have responded with frustration to the high jinks and low blows. Both The Manicou Report and Ramblings and Reason expressed dismay that the PNM and UNC have attempted to court younger voters not by addressing their serious concerns but by staging expensive concerts often featuring foreign performers. As Manicou puts it:

I cringe when I think of the meeting where this decision was made. Yeah, why don't we hold a “Youth Vibes Rally” with a lot of reggae stars. I hear the kids like that kind of thing”…. Is that their perception of the youth? Partiers and limers who have no interest in issues?

Trinidad Media Arts & Culture has been posting a series of angry, outspoken analyses not just of the parties and their campaigns but of media coverage — which, he argues, has consistently downplayed the groundswell of support for the COP:

The sick thing is, this is the strongest, most rational party in terms of all the standards the public claims to desire: incorruptibility; technocratic knowledge; and proven competence, yet it's the least visible and most vulnerable of the three.

Meanwhile, Taran Rampersad, who emphasises that he has no political affiliation, worries that “people are simply following the pointing fingers from one side to another with what appears to be almost no critical thinking involved”, and offers two recent conversations as evidence. Jonathan Ali argues that the party leaders should engage in a televised debate: “Imagine what that could mean for our politics.” And after seeing what she describes as “the latest episode of T&T’s political soap opera”, in which the UNC appeared to trivialise a domestic violence accusation to score a political point, Francomenz is left speechless: “I’m so stunned I can’t think of a single witty thing to say.”

But finding witty things to say under any and all circumstances is a classic Trinidadian trait (and coping technique), and perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the online coverage of this campaign has been the emergence of satirical blogs deploying good old-fashioned Trinidadian picong — a kind of relentless, merciless backtalking banter.

It seems to have been sparked off by the launch in late August of The Secret Blog of Patrick Manning, supposedly offering a glimpse “inside the mind of Trinidad & Tobago's Prime Minister”, with occasional interjections from his wife Hazel Manning, the current minister of education. The “Manning blogger” has offered tongue-in-cheek takes on the new multi-million-dollar prime ministerial residence, the ousting of longtime PNM MP Kenneth Valley, and the prime minister's alleged makeover at the hands of Cuban doctors. Soon the blog was attracting attention from the mainstream press; GV's own Georgia Popplewell even scored an interview with the “Manning blogger” but didn't manage to penetrate his (or her?) anonymity.

Soon The Secret Blog was getting comments from readers purporting to be other political figures, and before long the “Manning blogger” had a rival: The Extra Secret Blog of Basdeo Panday, replete with manipulated photos and even an audio parody of senior UNC politician Kamla Persad-Bissessar (who many party members had expected to lead the UNC into the elections, until she was out-manoeuvred at the last minute). The “Panday blogger” even promises to host a live election night chat.

Also contributing to this parody trend: a new blog called The Real Fake News in T&T, which was launched in October, offering satirical news reports, fake newspaper front pages, and doctored political ads.

Other bloggers have been getting into the fun-poking act. Trinidad Media Arts & Culture posts cartoons commenting on “the complacent electorate” and what he calls “A Word from God: The Shiva Poll”. The Manicou Report has started a “twelve days of elections” series. And Jumbie's Watch manages to find a photo of Patrick Manning bowing before an image of himself: “Doesn't it look like he is bowing before a dictator???”

The parody blogs aren't having fun for fun's sake. Political commentators have argued that, even without a possible future amendment, Trinidad and Tobago's constitutional and electoral systems tend to produce a House of Representatives that does not always actually represent the majority of citzens. A sizable part of the populace can feel effectively shut out of the political process. Under circumstances like these, satire becomes an especially powerful tool, and the laughter it provokes has a sharp edge.

19 comments · »»

Japan: Two Degrees from Terror

Chris Salzberg · 16:27

lingua → es

These days, particularly since the events of 9/11, a latent fear of “terror” has come to lurk in the hearts of many a concerned citizen. In a place like Japan, though, “terror” is still far away, disconnected from the events of everyday life. But how far away are the terrorists, really? How many degrees of separation are there between you and them? Certainly at least a few, most would answer; in the case of a high-ranking public official, no doubt more. And what about an elected cabinet member? Well, no one could be further from the terrorists than that.

But networks are funny things, and they connect people in unexpected ways. This week in Japan, the unexpected nature of networks suddenly dominated the headlines [Ja] when Justice Minister Hatoyama Kunio [Ja], only recently appointed to his new cabinet position, revealed in an off-hand comment that a “friend of a friend” of his belonged to the terrorist organization al-Qaeda. Although he later apologized for the statement [Ja], many were not satisfied. While some were calling it the dumbest remark of the month, and others awarded it the “foot in mouth” award, still others were not so gentle in their comments [Ja].

The “degrees of separation” idea, however, was also picked up and discussed by a handful of bloggers in more general terms. Blogger shumpei remarks that:

mixiなどのSNSに見られるようなスモールワールド的な考え方をすれば、6ディグリーズということで、だいたい、「友人の友人の友人の友人の友人の友人」で、だいたい世界の人々とつながるらしい。政治家であれば、「知人の知人の知人」で、だいたい日本の人たちとだいたいつながれるでしょう。芸能界の人間関係図を見ていたりすると、これまた、すごいことになっているわけです。

From the point of view of small world networks seen in SNSs [Social Network Services] such as mixi and so on, through only 6 degrees, i.e. something like a “friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend”, you can apparently connect nearly all people of the world. I suppose in the case of politicians, through a “friend of a friend of a friend” you can probably connect nearly all people in Japan. If you look just at a diagram of person-to-person relationships in the entertainment industry, this also is really amazing.

Blogger zarathustra1883 elaborates:

複雑ネットワーク研究でよく引き合いに出される「６次の隔たり」の事例だな。

「６次の隔たり」とは、６人の知人を間に介すれば、世界中のほとんど誰とでも繋がる、という仮説で、俗に「世間（世界）は狭い」ということと対応する。

Seems like a case example of the oft-cited “six degrees of separation” [idea] from research in complex networks.

What is called “six degrees of separation” is the hypothesis that nearly everybody in the world is connected to anybody else through [a chain of] six acquaintances, which corresponds to [the expression in] common speech: “It's a small world.”

まぁ、この場合は、立場が立場なだけに、多少事実関係をよく質す必要はあるが、それほど奇異なことではあるまい。私から小沢一郎や小泉純一郎までだって「友達の友達の友達」くらいで到達するんだから。（そして、これは別に珍しいことではない。）

Well, in this case, there needs to be some verification of the relation of facts, that the situation is as it is said to be, but there is nothing really that strange about this. Because look, you can get from me to Ozawa Ichiro, and to Koizumi Junichiro, through something like a “friend of a friend of a friend”. (Therefore, it's not really that unusual.)

But why did Justice Minister Hatoyama even make the statement in the first place? Blogger amata wonders:

鳩山法務大臣のあの「私の･･･友人の･･･友人が･･･アル○○○で、ございまして。」の喋りの間が絶妙で、どうしても笑ってしまうあの傑作な発言VTR。

This talk by Justice Minister Hatoyama that “My… friend's … friend's is … Al Qaeda” is just so exquisite that I can't help but laugh, this VTR [video tape recording] of his masterful statement.

結局あれはナニが言いたかったのか？という疑問がおのずと湧く。
テレビではそのへんが全然判らなかったので新聞で読んだら、あの発言は『問題の友人の友人が髭をつける変装をして何回か日本に来てるので、（空港チェックとして）指紋を取ったほうがいいのではないか。』という発言の中の前半の一部だった。

In the end, what did he want to say? — this question naturally comes up.
Watching the TV broadcast I could not figure this out at all, so I read the newspaper [about it], and apparently it was part of the first half of the statement that: “A friend of a friend, who is involved in the problem [of terrorism], disguises himself by wearing a beard and has managed to enter Japan many times, so I think we need to start taking fingerprints (as a check at the airport).”

Finally, blogger iio at CLASSICA Japan follows the implications of the “friend of a friend” statement to their logical conclusion:

●鳩山法相：「友人の友人にアルカイダ」。前に「六次の隔たり」ってのを書いたけど、アメリカの社会学者スタンレー・ミルグラムによれば、友達の友達の……と6人を介すると、みんな世界中の誰とでもつながるんである。ワタシとロナウドだってちゃんと6人でつながったし、中村俊輔にいたってはわずか4人でつながった。だから友人の友人くらいでアルカイダにつながったとしても特に驚くことはない気もする。ていうか、そのアルカイダのメンバーは当然ビン・ラディンとも友人であろうから、法相的には「友人の友人がアルカイダ」ってのは「友人の友人の友人がビン・ラディン」と敷衍することも可能なはずで、そんなふうに発言したらさらに物議を醸したかもしれん。国会で追及されたりしたら大変だ。

Justice Minister Hatoyama: “Al Qaeda, a friend of a friend.” I earlier wrote about “six degrees of separation,” but according to American sociologist Stanley Milgram, if you [trace a path] from your friend, to your friend's friend … through 6 people, you can connect yourself to anyone in the world. Between [Brazilian soccer player] Ronaldo and I there are 6 people, and I am connected to Nakamura Shunsuke through only 4 people. So even if you are connected to Al Qaeda through a friend of a friend, I don't think that it is something to be particularly surprised about. I mean, it is natural that the Al Qaeda member would be friends with Bin Laden, therefore that the Justice Minister is “a friend of a friend of Al Qaeda” means that it is also logically possible that he is “a friend of a friend of a friend of Bin Laden,” but to make such a declaration would probably create another controversy. If he was grilled about it at the National Diet it would be pretty bad.

●「友人の友人の友人がビン・ラディンなどという人物に大臣を任せられるでしょうか！」

「いや待て、そう言うあなたは大臣の友人ではないか。つまり友人の友人の友人の友人がビン・ラディンというあなたみたいな人間に追及する資格があるのか！」

「だがそういうあなたも友人の友人の友人の友人の友人がビン・ラディンということになるのであって……」

　みたいな無限ループとか。なわけないか。

“Can we trust a person who is a friend of a friend of a friend of Bin Laden to be in the position of Cabinet Minister?”

“No wait, aren't you a friend of the Minister? In other words, does someone like you, whose friend's friend's friend's friend is Bin Laden, have the rights to pursue?”

“Yes, but if you think that way, then you are also the friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of Bin Laden……”

It's this kind of endless loop. No?

1 comment · »»

Chad: French NGO Adoption Scandal

Jennifer Brea · 10:44

lingua → bn · mg · zht · zhs · es

Zoe's arc, “your love is choking me!”

Le blog du Prési!, written by a French-Cameroonian blogger, comments on a recent scandal involving a French NGO that tried to rescue 103 children from the Chadian-Sudanese border–supposedly Darfurian refugees–from “certain death” by adopting them to France.

Six members of the charity L’Arche de Zoé (Zoe's Arc) were arrested in Chad and charged with “abducting minors for the purpose of changing their civil status,” i.e. giving them new parents. The punishment is five to 20 years of forced labor.

Zoe's Arc has denied wrongdoing, saying that the children were orphans from Sudan. But according to reports, UN officials and French diplomats said that many of the children had parents and were Chadian, not Sudanese. Neither country allows international adoption.

To make matters worse, Chad's president Idriss Déby has been speculating that the charity, which was charging a 2,400 euro adoption fee, planned to sell these children to pedophiles or harvest their organs.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy is not pleased. This incident has raised tensions in the two country's relations just before the planned deployment of a French-led EU peacekeeping force in eastern Chad and northeastern Central African Republic.

Le blog du Prési! comments: on the Zoe affair, celebrity adoption, and a love that chokes, whatever its good intentions: (more…)

6 comments · »»

Russia: Togliatti Bus Explosion

Veronica Khokhlova · 01:12

lingua → pt

On Oct. 31, a bomb exploded on a bus packed with morning commuters in the southern Russian city of Togliatti, killing eight people and wounding 50.

LJ user kotenok_suz wrote (RUS):

[…] I'm scared. I'm scared to death, just like [the majority of people] in Togliatti. Today Death has settled in our city. Watch out as you walk around. It's close…

LiveInternet.ru user anfisa yop wrote (RUS):

And they won't call my favorite city a village anymore. Because in a village, all is quiet and calm… […]

LiveInternet.ru user Omar4ik wrote (RUS):

Today, I guess, has been the most nervous day in my life. My child (the older one) sets out for the institute at THIS VERY time and from THIS VERY [bus] stop (30 meters from the intersection), [to get there] by 8:30 AM. She leaves home at 8 sharp, it takes 5 minutes of walking to reach the [bus] stop, she crosses the street at THIS intersection. So it's a matter of minutes. We learned about the blast in 20 minutes or so, started calling right away. She wasn't picking up the phone! I wasn't too worried at first - […] she usually turns down the phone's volume when she's in class, and if the phone is in the pocket of her jacket, she doesn't even hear the vibration. Then everyone started calling - relatives, sisters, aunties, friends, etc. I began to get nervous! My daughter didn't respond till 11:30 AM, when the big break began and she turned the phone back on.

Turns out she was at the [bus] stop at the time of the blast and heard the sound of it. People started screaming, ran to the site of the explosion, but she had to go to the institute. She waited till the bus arrived from the other street and left for her classes. […] It's good that she didn't go to the bus [that exploded] to take a look. The daughter of my colleague at work witnessed the incident, and she got so hysterical that her mother had to leave the office and take her to the doctor. My younger one has also spent the whole day at school crying so hard she got a headache.

Anyway, all's well that ends well. Unfortunately, not for everyone: eight people died, among them children, students, a teacher. All in all, 14 students from my daughters institute were hurt (one from the group she's in). God, receive the souls of the dead and cure the wounded.

LJ user baobabka was incredulous (RUS) on hearing the news of the blast:

And that was when I read about Togliatti… It made me numb. It's not happening in my world. Or, I am elsewhere.

A reader offered an explanation:

aazz:

Why are you surprised? The elections are real close.

baobabka:

Explain what you mean.

aazz:

Somehow, in our country, similar crap always takes place on the eve of the elections. A submarine, an apartment building, or even a war…

It does not seem uncommon among Russian bloggers to tie the Togliatti bus blast to the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections in Russia, but the strangest connection - though not the most obvious one - has been through LJ user casualmente's blog.

Two months ago, its author, Inna Smbatyan, became one of the two official blogger-representatives of Russia's Central Election Commission (CEC) in the Russian LiveJournal-sphere, as a moderator of the izbircom LJ community, “an informational bridge between the CEC and bloggers,” there to “provide information about the election, and election campaign as a whole, in a language that is easy to understand.” Such an innovative initiative of the CEC received lots of blog coverage at the time.

On the day of the tragedy in Togliatti, Smbatyan reposted a selection of ten extremely gory photos of the victims of the blast (http://casualmente.livejournal.com/193353.html - WARNING: VERY GRAPHIC CONTENT). This post of hers, which I choose not to link to directly, topped Russian blog rankings on Oct. 31 and has received 681 comments so far. Two subsequent - explanatory - posts have received nearly a hundred comments each already. Many of Smbatyan's readers were enraged by her decision to run these highly disturbing images - and here's one of her attempts (RUS) to justify herself:

[…] What did I want to achieve? - for people to see what [the line] “eight people were killed” means, instead of turning their eyes elsewhere: “ah… [just] eight…”

Here is part of a related - and a rather typical - discussion at another blog (RUS), whose author, LJ user pantherclaw, also chose to reproduce the horrible photos:

gibor:

To publish pictures like these means being a jerk just like the one who blew up the bus.

pantherclaw:

Explain your position.

igorilla:

You aren't a jerk, obviously. But I think that publishing someone's photo on which [he or she] is depicted in a [repulsive] way - and you wouldn't deny that a person torn into two pieces is [repulsive], would you? - means to dishonor him [or her]. Those who died are your fellow citizens, and I think that out of civil solidarity, it's wrong to put up pictures of the fallen for everyone to view. It's better to publish photos of dead enemies - the sight of a dead enemy is more pleasant that the sight of a dead friend.

pantherclaw:

The thing is, the enemies are still alive. While the ones who have died no longer care.

dobriy_cheburek:

Yes, yes, of course. Let's show nothing but “flowers” - the way [the state-controlled TV channel] ORT does.

konoplyaeva_n:

[This is the only way to get] our people to understand what's going on.