Archive for
November 22nd, 2008
Stories
MENA: How to deal with Somali piracy?
Last week a Saudi supertanker was hijacked by Somali pirates off the coast of Kenya, making it the largest ship ever to have been seized in this way. The problem of Somali piracy is growing; in this post we hear bloggers' reactions from around the Middle East.
Saudi blogger Ahmed Ba Aboud wants Arab nations, and international bodies, to do something about the reasons for the increase in piracy:
من المؤسف بالنسبة لي أن تجتمع الدول العربية المطلة على البحر الأحمر من أجل مناقشة سبل حماية الملاحة في البحر الأحمر و يتم تناسي الأسباب الجذرية للمشاكل الصومالية و الدور الإنساني و الديني و المنطقي المفترض تحمله تجاه الصومال و اهله.
Syrian blogger Maysaloon believes there is more to the story than meets the eye:
Apparently this Somali piracy issue has only become a problem since 2005, around the time that somebody started supplying the men with fast white speedboats. There is probably some truth to this, and somebody is probably making a lot of money out of this, so the actual pirates are getting only a fraction of the takings. Still, there are huge sums of money being paid in ransoms, lots of good which are being stolen and I'm not so sure I understand how well these goods are being sold in a country with practically no infrastructure. Recently a shipment of Russian tanks was also seized. Interesting that Somalia was only recently “liberated” by Ethiopian troops with US blessings.
Iraqi blogger Roads to Iraq also has a conspiracy theory, translating some opinions found on Arabic news sites:
There is some truth behind Yemen accusations of Western countries with ignoring the piracy to internationalize the Red Sea. … This is also what Al-Akhbar reported today saying:
Western fleets raises doubts about the nature of their mission… Puntland’s Minister of ports, Nur Said, the West fleet led by the United near the coast of Somalia was involved in the increasing piracy operation…Chairman of the Red Sea shipping company, Abdul Majeed Matar, recalled how the commander of a British warship, called the company to tell them the details of hijacking the company’s ship (Al-Mansoura) rather than to militarily intervene to prevent the operation.
The last clue is reported on Al-Sharq Al-Awsat by asking one of the pirates, who revealed:
Some countries provide the pirates with information about the routes of the ships in the area.
John Burgess, who writes about Saudi Arabia at Crossroads Arabia, reports on the kingdom's plans to get more involved in the attempts to control piracy:
Saudi Arabia has decided that it needs to play its fair role in confronting international piracy, particularly after the hijacking of Sirius Star, the Saudi-owned supertanker seized over the weekend. The tanker, which holds 1/4 of one day’s production of Saudi oil is being held off the coast of Somalia. While Saudi Arabia’s Navy is small, it does have ‘blue water’ capabilities. It can take part in anti-piracy patrols and is sufficiently armed to sink any pirate vessel, from attack boats to ‘mother ships’ from which they descend. The Saudi Navy is probably not large enough to do port-to-port escort duty, even for only the super-est of tankers, but might manage shorter escorts, through particularly dangerous waters. […] The new Saudi assertiveness is pretty hot. Arab News, in an editorial, does call for attacks on the port cities of Somalia that are hosting the pirate fleets. And yes, ‘collateral damage’ is always a possibility when military action is taken. I don’t see any way to get around that. But perhaps if Arab armed forces were required to face up to that reality, it might change some of the overblown rhetoric about other unintended casualties in other wars.
In his post John Burgess mentioned that the Indian Navy sank a pirate ‘mother ship' earlier this week, and commenter ratherdashing quipped:
Apparently the defense of shipping lanes has been outsourced to India just like everything else.
American-born Israeli Yisrael Medad is looking at the situation from a different angle:
If these [Arab] countries can't handle a dozen pirates, what can we expect against Iran going nuclear?
Jordanian blogger Hareega wants to offer the pirates a little encouragement - by linking to a Japanese animated version of Treasure Island he watched as a child:
To watch the clip, click here.
Denmark: “Deep Linking” Under Fire by Newspaper Publishers
Blogging journalists in Denmark are up in arms over a renewed effort by Danish newspaper publishers to stop websites like Google News from linking to individual articles rather than a newspaper's homepage. They call this “deep linking”, and it is precisely what bloggers usually do. Regardless of what is considered normal practice around the world, the Danish Association of Newspaper Publishers insist they only want homepage links, so they can better control the user experience.
Specifically, the Danish Newspaper Publishers Association are frustrated that Google News in Denmark wants to list and link to articles of Danish newspapers without paying them royalties.
Danish blogger, Peter Svarre writes, “AAAARRRRGH!” upon reading arguments against Google News.
I don’t really know whether I am in a state of shock, despair or outright frustrated rage, but after reading an article in Politiken I just realized that the traditional Danish media or at least the editorial board of [newspaper] Berlingske Tidende seems to have understood nothing and learned nothing of the last five years development on the Internet. What seems to be common sense and ordinary street knowledge for media and advertising people in New York is apparently exotic, dangerous, and threatening lore to the established Danish Media industry.
There was a similar dispute in Belgium in 2006-7, when newspapers there took Google News to court and according to Finfacts threatened to fine them €1 million a day if they kept linking. In Denmark, there are also precedents. In 2002, the Danish Newspaper Publishers Association took a Danish web company, Newsbooster, to court for emailing links to news articles to their customers. Newsbooster was forced to shut down.
Blogger Ricco Førgaard at Fiskeben.dk [Da] said in May:
Det er tydeligt, at disse såkaldte medier ikke har forstået en pind og ikke er kommet ud af 1994 endnu. De har ikke forstået, at det er trafikken på hjemmesiden, som sælger de (irriterende) reklamer, som efter sigende skal være med til at financiere nyhederne.
On Medieblogger, Lars K Jensen quotes [Da] from a recent email discussion on the mailing list of the Danish Online News Association (DONA), where the chief legal adviser from the Danish Union of Journalists, Anne Louise Schelin, responded to a question about the official rules for citation and linking.
Schelin advised, that one should never link to anything but a website's homepage, even in an email to colleagues about a specific article. The only redeeming factor would be whether a link could be considered “loyal,” she said, referring to a Danish court case between two real estate websites from 2006.
Others on the mailing list vehemently disagreed. One called it “nonsense from the fax generation”. Blog editor of Politiken newspaper, Kim Elmose published his response in his personal blog Mediehack, calling the resistance to deep linking counter productive, and pointed to the irony that most Danish journalists use Google News as a tool themselves.
Lars K Jensen asks in Medieblogger:
Tilbage sidder jeg med spørgsmålet: Hvad er et illoyalt link? Hvem definerer, hvornår et link er loyalt eller illoyalt?
Et link er vel et link?
And now I am left with the question. What is an un-loyal link? Who defines when a link is loyal or not?
Isn't a link just a link?
* Photo above of Danish newspapers is by Jacob Bøtter on Flickr.
Humanitarian crisis in south Philippines
The escalation of conflict between government troops and Muslim separatist rebels in several areas of Mindanao Island has affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Mindanao is located in south Philippines.
The intensified fighting began after a peace agreement was rejected by many politicians, and finally by the Philippine Supreme Court. Critics believe the agreement was unconstitutional since it would compromise the sovereignty of the Republic of the Philippines. They added that the agreement would pave the way for the establishment of a separate Moro-controlled state within the territories of the country.
Angered by the rejection of the agreement, a rebel commander attacked military posts which produced civilian casualties. The government retaliated by launching offensives against the territories controlled by the rebels.
The fighting has not stopped. More than 610,000 people have been displaced already. The non-stop fighting has created several “ghost towns” in some provinces of Mindanao. The situation of refugees is deteriorating. Children are among those who are suffering the most.
Volunteer Sarah Matalam posts pictures of evacuation centers in Cotabato province:
Muslim groups want the government to stop the indiscriminate air strikes by the military. Like a Rolling Store uploads a report by a humanitarian mission which visited several evacuation sites in Mindanao:
“The offensives have led to mass evacuations. In the evacuation centers, the displaced persons suffer from inadequate facilities. Most of them have set up tents in whatever public place available. With heavy rains and flooding now common at this time of year, many child evacuees are sick with cough, cold, fever, and diarrhea. A number of evacuees have died of disease. There is also the trauma experienced by the evacuees, particularly the children.”
Dr. Carol Araullo, a member of the humanitarian mission, emphasizes that more help is needed:
“The hunger, sickness and generalized misery; the listlessness, the yearning to go back to their farms and homes safely; the appeal for a return to normalcy, for an end to the military restrictions over their comings and goings – these images and plaints became etched in our minds and hearts as we went from one evacuation center to another.
“Scores of victims of human rights abuses were interviewed: those wrongfully arrested, those beaten up because they were rebel suspects or so that they would point to the rebels/rebel sympathizers; those whose relatives had been killed or were injured in the course of the government’s drive to flush out the “rogue elements” of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front; those whose houses and other properties had been destroyed.
“After the teams had tallied the numbers of patients treated, families given relief goods and victims of human rights violations attended to, we came to the sobering conclusion that what the Mission had achieved was a mere drop in the bucket compared to the overwhelming needs.”
Journalist Edwin Espejo was affected by what he witnessed:
“Deep into the heart of the conflict, trails of destruction – burnt houses, abandoned homes and ubiquitous presence of checkpoints and war materiel – are eerie testaments of the war.
“Of course, we are living in troubled times and disturbing scenes are fast numbing one’s senses. Many would argue that journalists covering the conflict in Mindanao cannot afford to be emotionally attached to events unfolding before their very eyes.
“Yet one cannot totally dissociate his or her self from realizing that the war is affecting not only the combatants from both sides of the conflicts. It is also sublimely creating different levels of consciousness and commitment on journalists covering the war and affecting the quality of their reportage.”
Reckons of Spring writes that while Manila politicians are debating, the people of Mindanao are suffering:
“While many of the politicians and top government officials based in Manila are busy in expressing their contrasting opinions about the issues related to the “ancestral domain”, I wonder how the displaced locales of North Cotabato and neighboring provinces are faring. Do they have any food to ease their hunger? Do they have any medicine or medical attention to ease their pains? Can they ever sleep amidst the horror of the ongoing circumstances, or to simplify my question, can they find a shelter, no matter how temporary it is- for a night's sleep?”
The fighting is turning uglier everyday. An Al Jazeera team has learned that the government has been recruiting vigilantes to fight the rebels:
“Civilians are being given jobs normally the preserve of the police and army at an alarming rate across Mindanao. In North Cotabato Al Jazeera met some new recruits being put through their paces in a military-backed militia programme that normally takes three months. This training programme has been accelerated to just six weeks in order to fill what the authorities regard as a security vacuum.”
Watch the report of Al Jazeera:
And Part II of the report:
The rebel commander who is probably the most wanted man in the Philippines today insists in a video interview that it was government troops who first attacked the rebels.
Another controversy is the alleged involvement of US troops in the fighting. Himagsik Kayumanggi reports:
“US Special Forces were sighted inside the 64th Infantry Battalion Camp in Datu Saudi Ampatuan, Maguindanao. Bai Ali Indayla of the Moro human rights group Kawagip testified that the soldiers were engaged in covert operations, such as the supervision of drones or spy planes and predator missile strikes. This was confimed by Major Gen. Eugenio Cedo, then commander of the Western Mindanao Command. As usual, the US Embassy denied that the soldiers were involved in actual combat; they were only responding to the military request for aerial surveillance to determine conditions of the terrain and visibility, for “future civil-military projects,” to quote Rebecca Thompson, US Embassy Information Officer.”
Peace advocates want both parties – the government and Muslim rebels – to call for a ceasefire. There is an online petition asking the government to cease its military operations in Mindanao. A letter was sent to the Holy Pope to intervene. The Philippines is a Catholic-dominated country:
“We hope that Your Holiness could help us bring peace and justice to our brothers and sisters in Mindanao by expressing concern about the unfolding humanitarian crisis and appeal for restraint for the protection of all civilians, as well as for the opening of access for the provision of speedy humanitarian assistance to the affected population.”
Mindanao bloggers have vowed to blog for peace. Journalist Walter Balane has a message for bloggers:
“Blogging might not only be limited to blogging about Mindanao and its peoples but also helping the “voiceless” learn to blog so they, too, can blog about themselves.
“Of course it would be extremely difficult for existing Mindanao bloggers to access many of the areas safely and for the people in communities to approach which local bloggers can help them.
But bloggers must continue to try linking them and engaging them for mutual respect and understanding in an effort to connect more and more people.
Many of us who are already blogging about the voiceless must continue doing it and infect others to do the same.
We can focus on a Mindanao consciousness that is more inclusive, not exclusive.”
China: Baidu's new scandal.
CCTV reported that Baidu, referred to as China's Google, had accepted money from illegal medical companies and placed their Web links on top of search results. Baidu’s marketing employees were also reported to have the knowledge of these.The service is called page-rank bid and accounts for more than 80% of the company’s revenue. The company’s business model, “which inserts ads in the natural search result without notice, has long been criticized for destroying the integrity of the search engine,” adds China Daily.On previous milk scandal, Baidu was said to have censored news in exchange for payment from dairy companies, said ChinaSmack. CCTV reports page-rank bid of Baidu. The price of Baidu has lost 37.5 percent after the state TV reports that companies, including unlicensed medical firms and hospitals, pay Baidu in order to appear around the top of keyword search results. However, Beijing News viewed CCTV's reports from another aspect:
有时候很难分别企业是不是合法，因为非法企业可能伪装得很好，蒙骗了央视或者百度。央视对百度的曝光，从某种意义上说就是两家企业竞争广告市场份额。在百度未兴盛之前，央视等传统媒体的广告份额很大，网络的兴盛使得百度这样的企业也能从央视抢广告份额。所以笔者看来，央视曝光百度很容易理解，这至少有两个方面的好处，一是作为媒体的功能所在；二是降低竞争对手的信誉以便争取市场份额。
After CCTV reports, Baidu unveiled its response quickly in a conference call with analysts last night and promised to design a new system that more clearly separates its paid links from ordinary search results.China Journalreports.
“We are doing this because we care. It is important to us. We want to be a responsible corporate citizen,” said Baidu chief executive Robin Li.
Tianya blogger 阿杜在线 updu.com.cn calls for regulations to supervise powerful companies like Baidu.
只有一只独大，才会导致垄断、才能取得话语权、定价权，才有恶意屏蔽的资本。但是一支独大的现象是不可避免的，因此就更加需要媒体的监督，也需要相关法律法规来制约。
常平changping has another comment.
很多网站都是从纯商业起家，尽管它们从一开始就发挥着信息发布、观点讨论的功能，却没有传统媒体职业规则的负担，可以相对单纯地考虑商业运作.
Hungary, Slovakia: Tense Relationship
On Nov. 15, Slovak prime minister Robert Fico and his Hungarian counterpart, Ferenc Gyurcsány, met in the border town of Komárno, Slovakia, in an attempt to ease nationalist tensions that have escalated due to Nov. 1 football game violence in Dunajská Streda, Slovakia.
Eva S. Balogh of Hungarian Spectrum has been blogging a lot recently about the Slovak-Hungarian relations, and here are some of the highlights.
On Nov. 1, Eva provided details and background on the football game incident:
While families made their yearly pilgrimage to cemeteries to place flowers on the graves of relatives about five hundred Hungarian soccer fans went to the southern Slovak town of Dunajská Streda (Dunaszerdahely) to create trouble. The town, situated fairly close to the Slovak-Hungarian border, is predominantly Hungarian. Of the 23,000 inhabitants the Slovak population is no more than about 3,000.
The soccer match between Slovan Bratislava and the locals was unlikely to be a nailbiter. But the stadium, seating 10,000, was filled. One thousand people came from Bratislava and there was a contingent of 500 from Hungary. The Slovak police must have known that trouble was brewing because about 1,000 policemen were ordered to the scene. […] The Bratislava group was attacked en route: rocks were thrown at them. Some people were arrested at that junction.
The Hungarians called attention to themselves by displaying signs saying: Perseverence (Kitartás). Unfortunately that was the customary greeting of Hungarian Nazis in the late 30's and 40's. The stadium was full about an hour before kickoff, and the two sides spent the time screaming obscenities at each other. Just before the match began the locals and the Hungarian visitors sang the Hungarian national anthem. At last play started, but after eighteen minutes the referee had to stop the match because the people from Bratislava threw a smoke bomb onto the field. […]
On Nov. 9, Eva noted that it was “difficult to know exactly what happened” when the Slovak police chose to interfere:
[…] Each side has its own story. The Hungarian “fans” claim that there was no disturbance in their sector of the arena and that the Slovak police brutally attacked them without reason. The videos that circulated on the Internet indeed show Slovak policemen using their nightsticks rather indiscriminately on the retreating Hungarians. But I'm a cautious sort, and there is a very good possibility that the video segment we see doesn't tell the whole story. Moreover, the breakdown of arrestees indicates that the Slovak police were not kinder to their own extremists. About the same number of Slovaks and Hungarians were arrested and later released. […]
In Hungary, people were “outraged” by the presumed actions of the Slovak police:
[…] Yes, they do admit that it was not appropriate to go to Slovakia with pictures of Greater Hungary, a Hungary that included as part of its territory present-day Slovakia, then known as the Upland (Felvidék). And, yes, it was provocative to display irredentist slogans. But, they add, neither justified the use of brutal force. […]
On Nov. 3, an ultra-nationalist rally was held in Budapest:
[…] They gathered close to 1,000 people in front of the Slovak embassy, burned at least one Slovak flag, and displayed signs demanding “Death to Ján Slota.” Ján Slota, head of SNS (Slovak National Party), is not a nice man. Hungarians are high up on his hate list, but Gypsies and homosexuals are not exactly his favorites either. He considers the Hungarian minority in Slovakia “a cancer in the body of the Slovak nation,” and a couple of times he alluded to the joy he would feel someday moving into Budapest inside of a tank. Every time Slota says something outrageous all of Hungary listens. Before the current coalition which includes Slota's party came to power in 2006, Hungarian-Slovak relations were cordial. But, of course, then the coalition partner was MKP (Magyar Koalició Pártja/Strana Mad'arsklek Koalícije), a party of the Hungarian minority. […]
On Nov. 12, Eva wrote pessimistically about the upcoming meeting between the prime ministers of the two sabre-rattling neighbor nations:
At last. After months and months of strained relations between Slovakia and Hungary the two prime ministers agreed to meet. […]
[…]
What can the meeting between Fico and Gyurcsány achieve? As far as I can see, nothing. […]
She also commented on the Hungarian politicians' stance:
[…] To wit, the Hungarian government and all the parties condemn the recent actions of the Hungarian extreme right. They are against Hungarian nationalism, they are against extremists entering Slovakia in Nazi uniforms. They are also against these little Nazis marching up and down in Hungary, but what can the Hungarian government do? […]
There were cases of dissent, however, as Eva pointed out in her Nov. 14 post:
[…] Predictably, Hungarian politicians are not of one mind on the recent incidents in Slovakia. To give only one example. A Fidesz member of parliament, Béla Túri-Kovács, is demanding the resignation of a colleague, Mátyás Eörsi of [SZDSZ], who is the chairman of the parliamentary committee on European affairs. Eörsi went to Slovakia for a meeting with his Slovak counterparts. He said that both sides should accept some blame for the incidents and did a mea culpa on behalf of Hungary. Well, Túri-Kovács sure didn't like this admission of guilt. […]
The right-wing Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Union, mentioned in the passage above, is Hungary's largest opposition party; an earlier GV roundup of Hungarian Spectrum's posts on Fidesz politics is here. Also, in this post, Eva discussed an article on the “managers of populism” - Austria's late Jörg Haider, Hungary's Viktor Orbán, and Slovakia's Robert Fico - written by sociologist Pál Tamás.
In her Nov. 15 post, Eva put part of the blame for the Hungarian government's failure to rein in “small but vocal and active far-right groups” on Fidesz:
[…] One problem is that there is no united political resolve to deal with the extremists. Viktor Orbán and his party, Fidesz, are masters of double-talk which encourages the extremists. If Fidesz doesn't unequivocally support the extremists, the party doesn't condemn them either. Or if they say something negative, they add: “but one can understand their frustration.” After all, Orbán needs their votes. The extreme right is much larger than the few hundred people who are ready to go out on the street to demonstrate. According to one recent sociological study, those with extreme right-wing sentiments may be as high as 20% of the population though only 5% are ready to take part in demonstrations that may end in violence. The rest just watch and cheer their friends on. […]
[…]
The only hope is the force of public opinion. But it surely would be easier if Fidesz openly and without reservation stood alongside the government in condemning these extremists. Alas, that is not in the party's interest at the moment.
As for the meeting between Fico and Gyurcsány, it resulted in a joint statement, in which the two leaders pledged to take steps towards eliminating “any kind of extremism, xenophobia, intolerance, chauvinism, nationalism and every manifestation of violence.” Eva commented on the meeting's outcome in her Nov. 16 post:
[…] Let's face it, this is not much, although surely it is better than nothing. As far as I know, the Hungarians wanted to have a satisfactory explanation of “police brutality” at the soccer match as well as assurances of a more balanced treatment of Hungarian history in Hungarian-language schools. They were also unhappy about the ban on Hungarian flags at games […]. None of these demands was met. Fico didn't arrive with any proof that the Hungarian soccer fans used physical violence prior to the police attack on their ranks. Fico didn't budge on the flag issue. […] While Gyurcsány complained about the nationalistic, anti-Hungarian rhetoric of the Slovak government, Fico voiced his indignation over the appearance of uniformed Hungarian extremists on Slovak soil. […]
In her Nov. 18 post, Eva wrote about the media coverage of the meeting:
[…] However, it seems that Robert Fico was dissatisfied with the Slovak reporters who were present at the rather stormy press conference after the Komarno meeting. The same evening he, together with the president of the republic and the speaker of the Slovak parliament, appeared on Slovak public television (STV) and accused the Slovak journalists of having tossed softballs to Gyurcsány; they did not represent the interests of Slovakia. The Hungarian journalists, perhaps not surprisingly, believed that Gyurcsány came out better from the verbal duel. […]
Commentators whose sympathies lie with the right keep repeating an old Hungarian adage that can be summarized as “nobody understands us.” This is usually uttered when it becomes obvious that western reporters can easily grasp that police at violent soccer matches often act violently and that uniformed paramilitary groups have no place anywhere, especially not in a neighboring country. These commentators usually continue that the West simply can't understand the complexities of Slovak-Hungarian relations. […]
Links for Sat, 2008-11
Sean's Russia Blog writes about Moscow Patriarch's plans to found an Orthodox People's Militia serving the Church. WindowonEurasia and Windows to Russia! continue the discussion.
Finrosforum draws attention to Russian authorities warning mainstream newspaper Vedomosti against publishing extremist content.
Veiko Spolitis of Baltic reviews Latvia's economic crisis, the warnings of international financial institutions, and how Latvian politicians have responded to them. BabelTallinn accounts for an official view on how the crisis has affected Estonia.
From Egypt, Zeinobia writes: “The famous Egyptian MB blogger Mohamed Adel aka Meit is reportedly missing. No one seems to know for sure where he is currently. Of course the speculations are saying that the State Security has something with this sudden disappearance especially the S.S came and searched his house.”
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