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Guyana: Police Looking for Blogger

lingua → es

Following one Guyana blogger's reporting of alleged economic fallout over the CL Financial failure, mainstream media are reporting that Guyana police are looking for the person (or people) behind the now-defunct blog Living Guyana because of “a false report that a commercial bank in the South American nation had requested a $5 million bailout to avert a collapse.”

Fellow bloggers have had a lot to say. Guyana 360 predicts that the blog will probably “resurface under another name”, and claims that the police became involved after they “received a complaint from the Guyana Bank for Trade and Industry (GBTI) concerning an article that appeared on a website livingguyana.blogspot.com and which carried a letter with erroneous statements about the said Bank.” The post continues:

Further investigations have revealed that these articles are erroneous and intended to cause confusion and disruption to the lives of citizens of Guyana and other stakeholders of these banking institutions.

The Force considers these acts to be erroneous, wicked and intended to cause public mischief. In the circumstances, an investigation has been launched to verify who is hosting this website and to pursue any other information or intelligence which surfaces during the investigation.

International and local agencies have been contacted for assistance in this investigation, and if it is determined that the law has been broken, anonymity does not exonerate anyone from the consequences that follow.

Guyana 911 is extremely critical about Living Guyana, calling the blog a “play-play news agency”, but also making the point that the “panic” is not as widespread as is believed:

[President] Jagdeo has convinced himself that the public has been put into panic and now police and shit are involved.

Look Jagdeo … nobody has panicked.

Meanwhile, Guyana Music Arts calls the situation “so sad”, and Live in Guyana (not to be confused with the blogger in question) republishes the statement that Living Guyana posted before the blog was removed:

Critic's note: Living Guyana has already published a statement on this. We have accepted that the story is false. 100% INCORRECT. We were relayed information by someone who was duped by a wicked person whose aim was to use this blog to create mischief. Living Guyana apologises wholeheartedly to those inconvenienced.

But the retraction doesn't get the blogger of the hook, according to Live in Guyana:

Any part of the world you'll be crucified for spreading fear, panic and public [mischief] on such sensitive issues. The Global financial crisis is extremely serious and is not for anyone to mess around by sending panic waves through the society.

The blogger goes on to republish a statement by the government:

The Government of Guyana wishes to denounce comments carried on a blog and repeated by Evening News last evening stating that GBTI has applied to the Bank of Guyana for a G$1 billion bailout, along with comments carried on a blog regarding Citizens Bank.

Government has noted that Evening News has since retracted its comments and apologised for its actions, and it is hoped that other media houses and citizens will act responsibly in these matters.

The Government further wishes to condemn in the harshest possible manner what appears to be a coordinated attempt to cast aspersions on the strength of our financial system. As has been reiterated by the Central Bank, Guyana’s financial system continues to be stable and the financial institutions operating in Guyana remain well-managed and financially sound.

Diaspora blogger Signifyin' Guyana, however, does not seem to be entirely convinced:

CLICO clients are still worried about their policies, and there appears to be a lot of silence around the state of affairs over there. Stabroek News couldn't get a comment from the Insurance Commissioner, Maria van Beek in response to customers' complaints about their policies and their concerns about an economic downturn.

And as the Government of Guyana seems intent on sending this message about financial stability, there appears to be more lack of confidence about their handling of money–this time from Canada. In an effort to make its international assisstance “more focused, more effective, and more accountable,” the Canadian government (in a statement on Monday) recently dropped Guyana from its list of aid recipients. A condition President Jagdeo claimed to be unaware of two days ago.

Now given these internal and external concerns about Guyana's money dealings and management, one wonders who this emphatic talk about a stable state of financial affairs by the Government of Guyana is meant to pacify?

Signifyin' Guyana also sees a silver lining in the fact that the police are involved:

This is definitely an indication that bloggers in Guyana are being taken seriously, and as a result should behave like any responsible media and check sources carefully and so forth. To their credit, they did the right thing and retracted the stories once they discovered they were false.

But she also admits there is a negative side:

Living Guyana (as I said somewhere on this blog last year) has become a largely credible place for giving us the stories other media in Guyana seem reluctant to carry. So this investigation, which for the moment has quieted their voices over there, seems to me an attempt to keep the fallout stories from this financial crisis out of view. This investigation is rather suspicious to me. Highly suspicious.

Finally, she writes a post “in protest and in hope”:

Whether they were forced to do it, or opted to shut down to protect the identities of the bloggers, I, and some of the readers of this blog who have been emailing me with questions all day, am very concerned about the disappearance of Living Guyana, Guyana's most widely-read blog, whose authors have been the most critical of Government and media operations in Guyana.

Although I agree bloggers should adhere to the same code of ethics and standards for verifying sources of their stories as any credible media, I also believe that in order to fight corruption and the possibilities of retribution, one must rely on anonymous whistle blowers, and take risks with the stories they tell. Living Guyana fought corruption bravely and honourably, and it seems as if they paid the price for the fight.

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Africa: Blogging And Walking With God

Paula Odhiambo · 13:16 · Sub-Saharan Africa

lingua → es · mg

It has been a while, but as with most things, blogging did not wait for life to catch up with it – it can be said that blogging helped to keep many sane as they weather the storms that life brings them. Through struggles and fears and laughter and tears, African women have continued to tell their stories and to share their walk with God. 2008 was a year of growth for many. It follows, then, that 2009 will be a year of maturity.

Chichi, who is Surviving on Grace, shares a valid lesson learned from a bruise on her light skin:

…why are we so adamant, so stubborn some times to go to Jesus for help. Why do we tend to feel on other occassions that he just can't understand where we are, and what we are facing, or even allowing guilt to make us feel we do not deserve to go to him and cry out “I HAVE MESSED UP. HELP ME!”

When we cry out for help, the Lord perfects that which concerns us, as Gomer will confidently tell you. She learns a lesson in time management while she is unwell at home and cannot make it to work. She longs for her bed but realizes that she has been doing way more sleeping than her pastor recommends:

I need to fix up sharpish tho cos I have really begun to notice that lately I sleep wayyy too much..Im talking at least 8 hrs a night or else my body aint happy. This is bad for someone as young as me. My Pastor is always going on about how a Christian should only sleep roughly 5hrs every nite- evrything else is counterproductive….

Rita asks us twelve questions every woman should ask while preparing for her king, and then gives her reasons for asking them:

Beloved, I am not giving you a checklist or a guide. I am simply saying 2 things:

1. As you prepare for your king, you need to look beyond the physical and satisfying your current wants. Imagine 3 years with him.
2. For the guys, I am sure you want a “queen” but you have to start preparing for her. She probably has her checklist.

She probably does! But while she waits, she should learn how to manage her time, and when it gets too hard, she should not be ashamed to cry out for help.

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Uganda: The Literary Blogren

Rebekah Heacock · 12:58 · Sub-Saharan Africa

lingua → fr · mg · id · es · bn

Uganda's bloggers are increasingly using their blogs as forums for literary expression, and online poems, short stories and multi-part novellas are becoming increasingly popular.

Carsozy is one of the blogren's most prolific creative writers. His series, The Devil's Bonfire, is the story of Simon Katende, a young Kampalan who leaves the city to visit his grandfather and gets mixed up in things he doesn't understand:

He was halfway to the bar when he saw her, his entire body froze and his mouth opened in shock, the glass slipped from his fingers and fell to the ground.

It was her the girl from the forest, she was wearing the same skirt and blouse he had seen her in, only this time she was clean and wearing white trainers. He eyes sparkled in the disco lights, they were the same pretty eyes that had stared back at him in terror just a few hours back in the forest.

She smiled and waved at him playfully.

Each installment of Carsozy's story (there are eight currently, and a new “season” is scheduled to start next month) is commented on widely by eager readers:

Everyone at work has been reading ‘the devil's bonfire' aloud from my PC
— Mudamuli

U know this could be a book. Actually, lucky us, we get o read the manuscript before u publish on hard paper back. Yay. Seriously, nice read Caz.
— Miss Cheri

Jon Gosier, an American living and working in Uganda, is also blogging a novel. Muxtionary, currently in its second chapter, is African science fiction. Jon introduced it as follows:

I gave myself three rules for writing this story…

It had to take place largely in Africa

I wouldn’t sacrifice my own literary tastes

It had to look forward

The reason for the last being that most literary works about Africa look back at what’s been, what went wrong, who caused what. The historians of African are literally writing the past for the continent and subsequently the rest of the world. In my opinion, there’s not enough dreamers. I want people to come here and let their minds wander about the possibilities of what could be. It’s my personal philosophy that if Africans don’t look ahead to what is potentially in store, they may find themselves in much more dire times in the future.

For those who prefer their literature in short form, Gay Uganda frequently posts poetry inspired by his daily life:

He is
a fast talker-

where I
with silence
an armor I
clothe myself;

he litters the air
with flak,
decoys,
noise-

and lo, behold
he’s past my defenses
deep,
down into
my fastnesses,
holding his own-

I cannot not
be in love
with him.

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Virus scare hits Southeast Asia

Mong Palatino · 07:01 · East Asia

lingua → it · zht · zhs

Rising cases of dengue fever, chikungunya, bird flu and ebola viruses were reported in several Southeast Asian countries in the past two months. Relax, there are no pandemic threats. Not yet, anyway.

Last month, 4,521 dengue cases and 13 dengue-related deaths were reported in Malaysia. These are alarming numbers. Last year Malaysia recorded 49,335 dengue cases and 112 dengue deaths – the worst in the nation’s history.

Aside from dengue fever, there is another virus that is spreading in several Malaysian states: chikungunya. According to a medical specialist, chikungunya is the latest in a long line of diseases carried by mosquitoes, which include malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis and West Nile encephalitis. These diseases are causing 1 million deaths worldwide every year.

In Singapore, dengue cases were down last year but chikungunya infections were up. Last month, 160 chikungunya cases were reported. This figure is high since only 11 chikungunya cases were registered in 2008. This was confirmed by the Ministry of Health, which already included chikungunya fever in its weekly infectious disease bulletin.

bird-flu
A Vietnamese poster warning about H5N1. From Flickr page of Joe Gatling

Vietnam confirmed that there are thirteen bird flu-hit provinces in the country. The virus was discovered in more than 4 communes in 23 districts of 13 provinces of Bac Lieu, Bac Ninh, Ca Mau, Dien Bien, Hau Giang, Khanh Hoa, Nghe An, Ninh Binh, Quang Ninh, Quang Tri, Soc Trang, Thai Nguyen and Thanh Hoa.

To contain the bird flu, Vietnam slaughtered over 52,000 poultry had been killed including 11,500 chickens and 21,000 ducks which had contracted the disease. It has also banned the transportation of poultry on motorbikes in its capital city to try stopping the spread of disease.

Five persons tested positive for the Ebola-Reston virus last month in the northern Philippines. The five individuals were from pig farms in Bulacan, Pangasinan and Valenzuela City, and a slaughterhouse in Pangasinan.

According to health experts, this is the first time the virus has been found outside monkeys. There are five Ebola virus subtypes: Zaire, Sudan, Cote d'Ivoire, Bundibugyo and Reston. The Ebola-Reston virus was first found in the Philippines in the late 1980s.

Filipino health officials claim there has been no evidence that Reston can cause significant illness in humans. But the transmission of the virus from pigs to humans has worried many experts. People are more exposed to pigs than monkeys. If the virus is not contained, more humans might be infected with the disease.

Journalist Dana Batnag quotes from a statement published by health authorities about the transmission of Ebola from pigs to humans:

Right now authorities do not know how the virus is transmitted from one pig to another, or from pigs to humans. This is the first time that the virus has been found in pigs. The concern stems from the fact that while the Reston strain here in the Philippines do not appear to be that harmful to humans, they still belong to that Ebola family of viruses “known to be highly pathogenic to humans.”

BUT: the humans who have been infected so far are all well, and have not reported any signs of illness, except one. It is not sure if the flu-like illness reported by one man in the past 12 months was caused by the Ebola Reston Virus. That man, also, does not remember having handled pigs that appeared to be sick (dovetails with the observation that pigs with Ebola may appear to be healthy)

The Philippines’ Department of Health has added an information page on its website about the dreaded Ebola-Reston virus. It has instructed the public on proper meat handling and preparation to avoid infections from pigs. The government will also slaughter 6,000 pigs to contain the spread of the virus.

Edwin Casimero is not convinced about the Ebola. Instead, he blames genetically modified corn for the poor health of pigs:

The bad news is an international body seems to be pressuring Filipino hog raisers and the government that the poor health of pigs have this mysterious Ebola Virus to blame. This is just another western medical crap meant to cover-up their greedy imperialist moves.

I’ve talked with a hog raiser, I’ve talked with a corn farmer. The corn farmer raises corn that is the primary component of hog feed. The corn being for hog feed raised in the past few years by many Filipino farmers is GENETICALLY MODIFIED corn, GM corn.

Your hogs are what they eat. Lately, what has changed is the content of their feed. Lately, in the past few years, more and more GMO corn has been getting into the pig feeds. And this pig feeds you depend on to raise healthy pigs. You know the GM corn is deadly to pests. Do you honestly think GM corn is healthy for your pigs?

Are you still going to believe in that fairy tale called this Ebola Virus?

So come on smart cookie hog raiser business men. Wake up and save your hogs from destruction. This witch hunt by the international agencies will bury your business. Save yourself. Change your hog feeds. Switch to the good old traditional feeds of 20 years ago or even older. The back yard organic pigs are not in any fear or danger of getting sick, the households know better and feed them good food, they can forage out in the yards.

It’s only the second month of the year but several alarming outbreaks have been reported already across Asia. This looks like a very interesting but scary year.

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Global: Hijablogging In Vogue

Jillian C. York · 05:14, March 1st, 2009 · Americas , Western Europe

lingua → fr · nl · id · pt · it · bn · es

Hijablogging: Just another global trend taking the blogosphere by storm. All around the world, women who opt to wear hijab (the Islamic head covering) are also opting to blog about their experiences, as well as veiled fashion, lifestyle, experience, and the political and religious issues surrounding it.

The Hijablog is leading the movement. Based in Norway, the woman behind the blog writes about everything from political issues (such as the recent debate surrounding hijab-clad women joining the Norwegian police force) to Islamic wedding fashion in Malaysia. In one recent post, the blogger profiled Indonesian designer of Islamic fashion Itang Yunasz:

Itang Yunasz is a designer that used to create revealing gowns but then dissappeared for some years, to return with a comeback collection designed for veiled women. His designs were featured on the latest Islamic Fashion Festival.

Muslima Maria is a Canadian blog which greets readers with the sentence: “Welcome to my hijab journey…” From her most recent post, it's clear that the decision to wear hijab, which she made nearly eight months ago, has indeed been a journey. She writes:

I don't know if this is the case for all women, but i think I discovered the core issue for why hijab is hard for most women - myself included. When you put on hijab you have no where to hide. You can't hide what you feel about yourself, all the things you dislike about yourself, all the character you feel you lack because you spend 25 years building a life revolved around beauty rather than building your character. You feel ugly, even though every woman I have seen looks better in hijab, your own feelings about your body, your face, your self esteem is laid bare before you. this is the challange a woman has when she decides to take on hijab. She has the challange of living in the world and not hiding behind her looks, her make up her hair, her clothes. There is nothing to distract the world from her character, from the words she says, the thoughts she expresses….and that is what is truely scary. It is scary to go from a world where you bat your eyes, toss your hair, and flash a smile and gain automatic acceptance, to a world where people are actually paying attention to what you say and how you say it. Its easy to hide all the things you think bad about yourself behind fashion, make up, jewlery, and hair styling. when you were hijab, you have to face yourself, your low self esteem, your poor body image, your feelings about your lack of character or how you think you are not interesting now that you don't use sexuality to attract attention. When you wear hijab you face your own demons inside - thats the hardest part.

New Jersey (U.S.) blogger Is There Food On My Niqaab? ponders the concept of hijab salons in this recent post:

I'm telling you, pretty soon you'll see HIJAB SALONS everywhere. A sister can go and have a hijab stylist come and wrap their hijab for them if they have a wedding or aqeeqah to go to, if they aren't practiced in tying a hijab in a fancy manner. Heck, you'll probably be able to go there and rent a hijab with a perfectly matching hijab pin! You can wear it out and then return it to the salon where it will be thoroughly washed and waiting for the next customer.

Sisters will sit in the back, waiting… flipping through magazines with hijab styles, doggy earing pages that they may consider for their look. They'll bring their outfit in a separate bag to have the hijab, underscarf, and pin properly matched with it. The hijab stylist will examine their facial structure and complexion and then go to work, forming huge ruffles, buns, and arrangements with the hijab, tying and draping it in every way possible. Maybe they'll need special hijab spray to make it stay in place and not flop! Perhaps there will also be a beautician as well to help with makeup and they'll offer a niqaab for you to wear out since you'd be dolled up.

I can see it now… hmm…

By the way, if ANY of you jack my idea and open up a hijab salon I WILL come after you for 50% … at least! Hmph!

HijabiStyle is a blog which captures the myriad styles of hijab, as well as a variety of different women's perspectives on wearing it. This video was recently posted on the blog:

In addition to the three mentioned above, there are a number of other hijab-clad bloggers: Hijab Style, Hijabee, and Hijabi Couture are only a sampling of the others.

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