Archive for
May 10th, 2009
Stories
Kenya: World Renowned Elephant Matriarch Dies in Amboseli
The Unforgetable Echo
World renowned Amboseli National Park elephant matriarch, Echo, has died from what the Amboseli Trust for Elephants (ATE) believes to be a combination of old age and the long 3-year drought that has left this southern Kenya wildlife preserve dry and with little to offer in terms of food.
Echo died at 2pm on Sunday, 3 May 2009. She had collapsed on Saturday morning and had remained down for more than 24 hours, unable to get up, until she eventually died. “ATE staff Katito and Robert stayed with her the whole time”, Cynthia Moss, who learned of Echo's death while on a fundraising trip in the US, told WildlifeDirect on Monday, 4 May. Moss has suspended her US trip to travel to Kenya to be with the sorrowful staff at STE and to observe how Echo's family will deal with this sudden loss.
When Moss identified Echo for the first time in 1973, the elephant's family consisted of 7 members. At the time of her death, 36 years later, Echo was the leader of a family of 40 elephants that roamed the Amboseli plains in the shadow of the majestic Kilimanjaro.
Echo is perhaps the most famous wild elephant in the world after her appearance in various films the most memorable being her 1993 debut in the film Echo of the Elephants produced by the BBC Natural History Unit and narrated by world famous elephant researcher Cynthia Moss with BBC's Martyn Colbeck behind the camera. Echo appeared in the films sequels now popularly known as the ‘Echo Trilogy'.
The ‘Echo Trilogy' includes Echo of the Elephants (1993), Echo of the Elephants: The Next Generation (1996), and, the most recent, Echo of the Elephants: The Final Chapter (2005). Most recently, Echo has appeared in the film about Martyn Colbeck's work called An Eye for An Elephant.
According to Moss, the loss of Echo will be very disturbing for her elephant family.
“For all of them, except for her sister Ella, Echo was the only leader they have ever known”
says Moss in a communication to WildlifeDirect also posted in the ATE website. Moss will be observing how the elephants handle the transition from Amboseli, Kenya.
Echo was of great value to science. Moss says
“For us on the Amboseli Elephant Research Project she has been an invaluable research subject providing us with insights into elephant behavior, leadership, communication, social relations and intelligence”. But Echo was not just a research project. “She was more than that. She was a daily presence, almost a companion to all of us. She gave us joy and filled us with wonder”
For all those who knew Echo, this is indeed a great loss. Dr Paula Kahumbu asked readers of the blog Baraza to light a candle for this magnificent mother, while Joyce Poole and Peter Granli remembered the moments they spent with Echo while studying elephant vocal communication on their blog at Elephant Voices.
Global Health: “Swine Flu” In Images
Though concerns over the “swine flu” outbreak have eased, the virus continues to spread throughout the world. Also called the H1N1 virus, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced today that there are now 4,379 confirmed cases of the virus in 29 countries, with 49 deaths from the sickness.
The United States and Mexico still have the most cases of the virus, though it has now been found on most continents. This map shows all confirmed cases and deaths globally from the H1N1 virus. Images from around the world are capturing the disease's impact and people's reactions.
This photo was taken in Mexico, where the virus has been the most deadly. The WHO says that Mexico has reported 1,626 confirmed cases of the infection, including 45 deaths.
Photo by Guerry on Flickr
Photo by Chupacabra on Flickr
Photo by 19melissa68 on Flickr
When H1N1 was initially detected and started spreading in Mexico City it caused panic, said the photographer of this image. This photo shows empty shelves in a supermarket in the east part of Mexico City. The photographer added that authorities have stressed that there will be no shortage of food and medicine, which has slowed down hoarding.
Photo by Enea on Flickr
From Mexico City to New York City, people in closed places such as the subway have been using face masks to try and avoid getting swine flu, since the virus is mainly spread between people through coughing and sneezing. But there's been much debate over whether these masks are actually effective.
Photo of New York City by Swerz on Flickr
Photo of Mexico City by Enea on Flickr
Still, many people have used face masks to protect themselves, particularly when traveling, be it airline crew members or passengers. In this image, members of a flight crew wear masks as they wait for their luggage in an airport in Bogota.
Photo by laimagendelmundo on Flickr
This image shows the panic that also hit the U.K., which has 39 confirmed cases of swine flu. In response to the outbreak, Britain's Health Protection Agency announced last week that they have sequenced the full genetic code of the H1N1 virus, the first step in producing a European prototype of a swine flu vaccine.
Photo by donebythehandsofabroken artist on Flickr
This image shows an elevator in Hong Kong that is sterilized regularly to prevent swine flu. Though there's only one confirmed case in China so far, the country has taken strong measures to prevent the spread of the virus. For example, on May 8 Hong Kong lifted a weeklong quarantine on a hotel where a Mexican swine flu patient stayed, releasing around 280 people who had been isolated in the building.
Photo by David Bailey MBE on Flickr
Finally, in this image people gather at the Metropolitan Cathedral Mexico City. The photographer said that they were praying for the sick, the government and the rest of the society, hoping “they make ‘good decisions' against the swine flu epidemic in our country.”
Photo by Sarihuella on Flickr
Global: Happy Mother's Day!
Flowers in Xela, Guatemala by Erik++ on Flickr
From Denmark to Dominica, Peru to Pakistan, the United States to Uganda, bloggers of all ages are calling, visiting, or otherwise honoring their mothers today.
One such blogger is Santa Cruz Barillas of the Guatemalan province of Huehuetenango, who writes of a traditional celebration of Mother's Day:
Feliz día de la Madre. Como ya es tradicional en nuestro querido municipio, el día de hoy 10 de mayo, desde las 2 de la mañana han salido diferentes grupos de organizaciones como iglesias, la Municipalidad y grupos de jóvenes a darle Serenata a las madrecitas de todas las zonas.
Mahesh, from Bangalore, India, is also blogging about today's holiday. Of mothers, he writes:
In every culture Mother plays the most important role in bringing up kids. But at times I do feel in urban India children [i.e. grown ups] are slowly drifting away from parents :-( We will pay a heavy price for this sin down the road. It would be best we thank our Mothers (and Fathers) on a daily basis instead of on a ‘yearly basis’.
The blogger behind American blog “Plan A” is a mother herself, and is celebrating two special lives today: those of the mothers of her two adopted children from Uganda. The blogger writes:
Did you know ~ Mother’s Day is not just an American holiday but is celebrated in many other countries across the globe, including Uganda. Today, I am very aware that there are two women out there who birthed two little boys back in 2006 and 2007. There is no way for them to know what happened to the sons they last saw so long ago. Since maternal death is a primary reason for children becoming orphans in the first place it is very likely that they are no longer living. But, even though we will never know their stories - today I am deeply grateful for the two African women who birthed my two youngest children.
The Filipina Mom in Denmark marks the occasion with this short and sweet message:
Because Moms were once daughters and without our children we wouldn’t be mothers! Happy Mothers Day (2009) !
Finally, Manfred Elfstrom, blogging for Labor is Not a Commodity, takes the time to remind us to appreciate all women, and not just our own mothers:
With Mother’s Day and the less-well-known World Fair Trade Day approaching, it’s worth thinking about a sector that employs a large number of women and is singularly unfair. This is the electronics industry—not the industry of Silicon Valley creative types on bean bag chairs, but the industry that makes the actual MP3 players and laptops we use. While some jobs in the sector are skilled and pay reasonable wages, many require long days of repetitive, minute tasks, tasks that cramp backs and cause workers’ eyesight to wear out at an early age, all for low pay, sometimes lower than the local minimum wage.
Azerbaijan: Blogger response to University massacre
Information about the tragedy which occurred in Baku at the end of last month, shocking many worldwide, was slow to emerge, and even more than a week later, there are still many questions left unanswered. However, what is known is that on the morning of 30 April 2009, 13 people were killed in a terrifying shooting spree at the Azerbaijan State Oil Academy.
But, with very little local reporting on the incident, many such as 27 months in Azerbaijan were at first unsure what exactly had happened.
There was a shooting at a university in Baku today. The only thing that I’ve heard that seems credible is that there was a Georgian who was ethnically Azeri that entered the school and started shoot at people as he made his way up a staircase before turning the gun on himself. […]
I’ve heard rumors of up to 50 people dead and up to three gunmen, but I’m not sure what to believe at this point.
Indeed, the media in the country failed to report on the incident until hours after the international media had, as Jessica P. Hayden is off the map pointed out.
[…] while the murders were taking place with police rushing to the scene the television channels all continued to broadcast their midday talk shows. (Think very, very low budget Oprah or Ellen.) No cut away to breaking news. No updates. One woman I talked to seethed that she got better information from internet message boards than from any official news sources. […]
Some students shot video of the horrific scenes inside the university with their mobile phones as they were evacuated.
A week after the tragic events, Flying Carpets and Broken Pipelines remembers first hearing the news.
30th of April, I am in Istanbul, heading to work, seems like just a normal day, the weather is finally sunny. But everything changes once I arrive to my office, a colleague tells me if I have heard what happened at one of the Baku's Universities […]. I turn on my computer and check the news- 22 students died (the actual number was 13 according to the latest news that day) in tragic shootings at Azerbaijan's Oil Academy. First comes the shock, then comes sadness, followed by anger.
I frantically check the news every 15 minutes- nothing much, still the same, x number of people dead, x number of people wounded. I check my Facebook, news are everywhere- all my friends' upload the latest numbers.
[…]
But still no precise news about the perpetrators, the reason behind the shooting and the true story. […]
Writing for the Frontline Club, Global Voices Online author Ali S. Novruzov raises some questions now being asked by many in Baku, as does Side-Talks Azerbaijan.
As we sympathize with the families of those who have lost their love ones, it is wise to put some questions in perspective. It could be anybody, but why is there no concrete news as to what actually happened? Why is there still no defined motive for the killings? Who were those involved? And to what extent has investigations revealed other “assumed” accomplice?
Meanwhile, Sheki, Azerbaijan sums up the shock felt by everyone in the country that day and says the tragedy will be remembered for years to come.
Unfortunately 30 April 2009 in memories of many families in Azerbaijan will stay as the day when their children went to university and never returned home. Today gunman shot to death at least 13 people in Oil Academy of Azerbaijan in Baku and many are heavily wounded. We don't know the reasons yet…and no reason will return those innocent victims (Allah rəhmət eləsin - Peace be with all victims).
Madagascar: Behind the Scenes of Foko Ushahidi SMS Alert System
A growing community of bloggers in Madagascar have been helping a global audience understand the political struggle between a former mayor and a president that recently drove their country into national disarray.
A new initiative led by Malagasy bloggers captures witness accounts of social unrest via SMS text messages and Google maps using the Kenyan web interface, Ushahidi.
They have been interviewed widely by world media, and many have applauded their efforts.
Tahina
One of the bloggers working behind the scenes in this effort is named Tahina. About a year ago, he was invited to start blogging with Foko Madagascar, an organization co-founded by the Malagasy bloggers Andriankoto, Lova, Mialy and Joan to empower Malagasy citizens to work for their own environment and economic development.
In 2007, Foko received a micro-grant from Rising Voices for The Foko Blog Club which has trained several dozen bloggers around the country. They have developed a community that encourages citizen journalism at a time when mainstream media is lacking or unreliable at best.
The country, not the movie
When a devastating cyclone hit Madagascar last year destroying thousands of homes, online news searches for “Madagascar” were still more likely to turn up news of a Disney movie about animals escaped from a New York zoo.
Tahina named his blog Madagascar not the Movie, because his main objective was to show an English-speaking international audience that life in his country has nothing to do with the movie of the same name.
“It can change how people from outside see Madagascar,” says Tahina. “I try to find things that can be related to Malagasy people's daily lives, what problems they encounter and so on,” he says.
But over the past months, his blog and Twitter stream became an almost blow by blow account of a political struggle that he himself worried could lead to civil war. “I didn't really want to blog about politics, but since there is this turmoil here I feel that I have to say something about what is going on,” says Tahina.
SMS alerts to the world
Foko's newest initiative is the launch of an SMS citizen reporting and online mapping tool. It is based on a system called “Ushahidi” developed by Kenyan bloggers in 2007 to map post-election violence in their own country. The software has since been used in many other news and crisis projects. On the Rising Voices blog, Rezwan has written of the dramatic events that led to Foko's adaptation of Ushahidi's platform.
Screenshot of Foko Ushahidi in May 2009
With Foko Ushahidi, ordinary citizens can now upload reports of unrest around the country and have them added immediately to an online map. Tahina installed the system himself with technical help from abroad and is in charge of managing the hub through which the SMS messages pass. A team of bloggers, including Lalatiana and Stephane (known as Pakysse), check reports for accuracy after they have been posted.
Technical challenges
Tahina describes Foko Ushahidi as “a kind of platform where everybody is invited to submit reports. The main objective is to find real facts, and to distinguish rumors from truth.”
Q: What has Foko done to promote this platform to citizens?
Tahina: We are just starting the promotion. In fact, we just set it up and tested it during the last few weeks. The plan is to promote it within Foko first. Later, Lova plans on getting in touch with the mainstream media here.
(Update: Madagascar-Tribunen ewspaper has already published a story.)
Q: What have the challenges been in getting the system up and running?
Tahina: Our main problem was finding the right phones that could work with the Frontline SMS software employed by Ushahidi. We really wanted to use SMS because it doesn't require an internet connection. But FrontlineSMS needs a type of phone that is not easy to find in Madagascar. Plus all mobile shops were closed due to the unrest. Pakysse and I both went from shop to shop to find a phone, and tested and tested. Lova backed us up from the USA.
In the end we couldn't get it to work. So Ken Banks and his team at FrontlineSMS suggested we try IntelliSMS gateway as a way to send and receive SMS via the web. FrontlineSMS hurried a new version of their software to help us out with our issue, and for that we are very grateful.
The internet connections here make it a little slow - it can sometimes take 15 minutes for the message to reach the Ushahidi platform. You can either upload a message via the web, or send a text message to a UK phone number (+447800000197) that gets relayed by email to the system. Here is a chart that shows how it works.
We also got help getting #madagascar Tweets listed automatically on the Ushahidi website, which has substantially increased our ability to gather data.
Q: Why do you think using a system like Ushahidi is necessary?
Tahina: We need it to offer more details about the things citizens see themselves. There will be lots of information here that you can't find anywhere else. Just like with any citizen media. Frankly, mainstream media is not reliable here. They are really biased. The reality is, they often end up misinforming people. Foko has a lot of bloggers based on each corner of the island who are ready to report, and we think they'll do a great job with Ushahidi.
We're also going to keep the platform open for other types of crises because unfortunately, cyclones and environmental disasters are recurring events in Madagascar and we can also benefit from a crowd sourcing type of data collection in these cases.
Q: How does the Foko team plan on organizing the “verification” of messages?
Tahina: As I said we have bloggers on the ground and will be counting on them. But we will also use all media - newspapers, television and radio to help verify. We also have Twitter now, where we can compare and contrast information. We won't verify reports unless we are sure of them.
It's going to be a lot of work, but we like challenges!
See Global Voices special coverage of Madagascar's power struggle in 2009.
Pakistan: Fighting The Taliban
The Pakistan government has long been criticized at home and abroad for not taking a tough stand against the Taliban insurgencies, which has been growing like a plague in Pakistan. The Taliban rebels had been active especially in the North-West Frontier Province and have consolidated their position in the Swat valley region. After fierce fighting between the Pakistani army and the pro-Taliban groups, the Taliban truce deal of last March was an effort to minimize tensions. But this deal was much debated because it allowed pro Taliban groups to establish their hard line form of Islamic rule as law.
The truce deal was supposed to put an end to violence in this region. But this was proven wrong as Pak Tea House reported:
Two weeks after the Pakistani government capitulated to Islamist demands and imposed Islamic law throughout the Swat valley, armed militants are patrolling the streets of the district capital and masked gunmen have taken control of outlying districts, where they’re terrorizing residents and using intimidation to close girls’ schools.
The Pakistan army started to fight back to take control from Taliban and the fighting has escalated ever since. Chowrangi reports:
Military operations are taking place in three districts that stretch over some 400 square miles (1036 square kilometers), but most of the fighting has been in the main town of Mingora, which before the insurgency three years ago was home to around 360,000 people. The military claimed to have killed more than 147 militants in Swat and the neighboring Buner region. Officials have said nothing about civilian casualties. But those fleeing the region bore tales of families wiped out by stray shells.
More than half a million Pakistanis have been displaced due to the fighting and this has become a humanitarian crisis. And this is not going to end anytime soon. After the recent tripartite talks between Afghanistan, Pakistan and USA, Pakistan’s Prime Minister vowed for “elimination” of militants, as CHUP! – Changing Up Pakistan reported.
However, the claims of the Pakistan army may not be hundred percent true. Teeth Maestro posted first hand news from Buner:
The military is targeting the civilian population instead of hideout of the militants which resulted the casualties more than 100. ISPR’s reports are false. Their claim of killing 80 Taliban is totally baseless. All the killed people are commoners. Journalists are not allowed to enter the areas while local journalists are either in Peshawar or not writing or telling the truth due to the fear of both Taliban and Military.
This poses the question “who is winning the war“?
This time around there is less local sympathy for Taliban. But Adil Najam at All Things Pakistan points out:
It should not be a surprise, then, that at least some, probably many, and possibly most, “non-liberal,” “non-elite,” Pakistani Muslims would be against the Taliban and the war they are waging on Pakistan, Pakistanis and on Pakistani Muslims. The tragedy is that too many Pakistanis remain agnostic on the Talibanization threat and even more who are afraid of or reluctant to raise their voices against them.
All things Pakistan also tells that “Taliban are NOT the core issue. Effective policing and access to justice is“:
We need to fight the battle in NWFP. However, fighting a battle without a strategy for winning the war is another fanciful enterprise. That containing the Taliban will somehow cause the people of Pakistan to be more satisfied with their grievous lot is silly.
Jahane Rumi dispels some myths about the Taliban so that people can face the truth:
The terrorist activities going on in Pakistan are not jihad, or targeted to enforce sharia. These are criminal acts of violence killing thousands of innocent citizens and security forces of Pakistan in order to gain power and control over our land.
In the same post some suggestions by Amankaar Tehrik (peace movement) in Pakistan were highlighted:
- All government departments, including the military, must be scrutinized, to root out elements that are supportive of terrorism or no government strategy will be implemented effectively.
- Although USA and their allies were the major creators of this problem, at present the government should keep the interests of Pakistan and its ‘people first’ agenda while negotiating with these terrorists.
- We, the people, want to support our government in safeguarding the interests of the State of Pakistan and to combat terrorism. We urge the government and other key political parties to show their commitment and a clear intention to deal with the menace of terrorism.
- We call on media not to portray terrorists as “soldier of Islam or freedom fighters” and expose their brutalities against common people and the security forces of Pakistan.
Now the question is “can Pakistan's deep pluralist culture stop the Taliban infestation”?
Links for Sun, 2009-05
In Mutiny reports that three British TV journalists, who reported the grim situation from the Sir Lankan IDP camps for Channel 4 News, have been arrested and will be deported shortly.
Mir Hussein Mousavi, former Prime Minister and one of leading candidates in Iranian presidential election is a painter too.In Setadnet blog you can see some of his paintings.
Bahraini blogger Funaki believes there is a new kind of mafia in Bahrain - the telecommunications companies who provide Internet services.
Bahraini blogger The Dude fears for the consequences of an alcohol ban, as proposed by Bahrain's MPs.
Change for Equality reports that six members of One Million Signatures Campaign were arrested during and after a peaceful demonstration on Friday which was held in Tehran to celebrate May 1st. One of them is Nikzad Zanganeh, an Iranian blogger.
When incoming president-elect Mauricio Funes takes office in the beginning of June, he will inherit a Salvadoran government without any money writes JJmar of Hunnapuh [es].
Elizabeth Gonzalez writes about her experience as a Paraguayan immigrant in Rosario, Argentina at the blog Somos Paraguayos [es] (We Are Paraguayans). She adds that many refer to her not by name, but by the nickname “Paraguas” which is often used in a disparaging manner.
Frontline Club blogger and Global Voices Online author Ali S. Novruzov has reportedly been detained in Baku as the Azerbaijani capital prepared for a planned youth demonstration. Tweets from a reliable source report that at least one other blogger was also detained along with the head of the National Democratic Institute in Azerbaijan, but that they were simply walking on the streets. Updates in the comments section of this post.
Elvira Arellano, a migrant and activist woman who had been deported from Chicago back to her native Mexico has decided to run for Congress representing Baja California writes Franc Contreras of Mexico Monitor.
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