Global Voices · Citizen media stories from March 2011

March, 2011

Monthly archive · 316 posts

Stories from March, 2011

31 March 2011

Japan: The Tsunami, God and Man

Written by Scilla Alecci · East Asia, Western Europe

A few days after the disaster that killed more than ten thousand people, Italian vice-president of the National Research Council (CNR) Roberto De Mattei and Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara left the Italian and the Japanese blogosphere astounded when they declared that the catastrophe occurred as a manifestation of God’s will. Both in Japan and in Italy bloggers reacted and demanded their resignation.

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Colombia: Indigenous Communities Protect their Food Security

Written by Juliana Rincón Parra · Latin America

Indigenous communities in Colombia are taking steps to protect their food security. Not only are they educating their communities to eat what they grow on their vegetable gardens instead of buying expensive food brought from outside but they are also protesting new laws and regulations limiting their access to milk.

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Brazil: On Opening the Archives of the Dictatorship

Written by Raphael Tsavkko Garcia · Translated by Raphael Tsavkko Garcia · Latin America

A collective blogging was called to demand the opening of the archives of the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-1985), responsible for torturing of thousands and for killing 380 Brazilians. Of these, 147 remain missing and nothing is known about the fate of their bodies. Until now their families are suffering without knowing their stories.

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Macedonia, Bulgaria: Facing Hate Speech

Written by Filip Stojanovski · Eastern & Central Europe

Two NGOs, from Macedonia and from Bulgaria, have published an analysis of the Macedonian-Bulgarian hate speech in the traditional and new media.

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30 March 2011

Lebanon: Exploring the Video Artistic Scene, Featuring Ziad Antar

Written by LIBALEL · Translated by Patricia Worth · Middle East & North Africa

What's happening on the Lebanese art scene? The directors of a web-documentary on this topic are offering some previews in the form of portraits of contemporary artists.

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Syria: Reactions to President Assad's Speech

Written by Anas Qtiesh · Middle East & North Africa

President Bashar Al Assad finally made a speech Wednesday 30 March, 2011, at the Syrian Parliament after days of postponement and anticipation. The president's arrival at the Parliament was met with thundering applause and chanting by the Members of Parliament, and his speech was often interrupted by an MP reciting poems of praise. Twitter users did not receive this well.

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Updates from March, 2011

31 March 2011

Jamaica

As the Manatt Dudus Enquiry is extended for the third time, GWAP comments: “A Commission that should have cost Jamaican tax payers JMD $37 million has now skyrocket[ed] to JMD $78 million!”, while Pray, Laugh, Grow thinks the whole debacle is anything but funny.

• Janine Mendes-Franco

Ghana

The Tripbase Travel award is only given to the blogs that are the top of their respective class and are some of the best in the field. Here you will see the best blog awards for Ghana.

• Ndesanjo Macha

El Salvador

Voices from El Salvador's Weblog writes about the communities affected by an ongoing dispute on the Honduran-Salvadoran border, and argues that the governments from both countries “must take immediate action to ensure that those residents in limbo are granted citizenship so that they may have the rights that everyone else does.”

• Silvia Viñas

Honduras

RNS in Honduras Culture and Politics reports that “security forces in Honduras continue to be in denial about their trampling on the human rights of Hondurans.” RNS concludes: “Until there is a recognition on the part of the police and military that they are violating the human rights of the Honduran people, the problem will persist.”

• Silvia Viñas

Nigeria

Nigerian presidential candidate Mohammadu Buhari leads in mock online polls: “There are now several platforms online that allow Nigerians with access to the Internet to vote for their favourite presidential aspirant and share their preference on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.”

• Ndesanjo Macha

Russia

Ilya Dronov, LiveJournal's head of development, told [ru] some details about yesterday's DDOS-attack on LiveJournal, popular blogging platform in Russia. That was the most fierce attack in the history of the platform. Anton Nosik, suggested [ru] that (despite that most of the attacking machines were outside of Russia) the main client of the attack was probably the same as in the case of DDOS-attacks against Georgia and Estonia.

• Alexey Sidorenko

Japan

South Koreans have expressed deep regret over the Japanese government’s decision to endorse middle school textbooks that defined Dokdo island as part of its territory. Reflecting people's anger, Korea's power Twitterer and bestselling novelist, Lee Oi-soo (@oisoo) harshly condemned [ko] Japanese government for approving the new textbooks.

• Lee Yoo Eun