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The Caribbean Blogosphere: Football fever and more

Georgia Popplewell · 15:19

If only in terms of sheer volume, the leading story in the Caribbean blogosphere this week was the Trinidad & Tobago football team's qualification for the 2006 World Cup on November 16.

The team Trinidad & Tobago beat in order to qualify was Bahrain (hence the oft-repeated line that whichever team won would be the smallest country ever to qualify), and this being sport, Bahraini blogger Chana'd left a good natured comment at Caribbean Free Radio that morning: “You will have to watch your team be trounced by Bahrain.” The country came to a virtual standstill (the Senate included) in order to watch/listen to the broadcast from the Bahraini capital of Manama. Nicholas Laughlin blogged extensively during the match itself, and Caribbean Free Radio relayed the radio broadcast to contacts abroad via Skype. Ryan Naraine, Taran Rampersad and Nicholas Laughlin have saved me some legwork by posting link summaries, but most of the buzz about the match came, naturally, out of Trinidad & Tobago itself, much of it taking the form of brief cries of ecstacy, some of it referring to the unsportsmanlike behaviour of the Bahraini team and fans.

Among the bloggers who wrote about the football were Richard Jobity, Hassan Voyeau, Richard Bolai, Sweet Trini, Small Island Girl, Independence of Mind, Simian Scratchings, Christopher Yee Mon, J9 and Tina. Nicholas Laughlin posted a substantial eyewitness account of the celebrations Port of Spain, the capital (”A friend on the phone from St. James, astonished: “All I can think is, this must be what it was like when the war ended”), and Taran Rampersad did likewise for San Fernando in the south of the island. “Perhaps you have to be the citizen of a really small country with a crummy social and political situation to know how this really feels,” said Caribbean Free Radio, which devoted its 36th podcast to coverage of the activity in the streets of the capital on the evening of November 16. According to Taran, the revelry continued well into Sunday morning.

The victory was also remarked upon by a few non-Trinidadian bloggers. Ryan Naraine (who is Guyanese) noted the messages of congratulation pouring in on the caribbeancricket.com message board and Barbadians Campfyah and Titilayo, Mad Bull and Revolution Island in Cayman and YingYang in Grenada posted reactions.

Things weren't going nearly so well this week, however, for a sport with far deeper roots in the English-speaking Caribbean. The West Indies Cricket Blog reported on the increasingly dismal fortunes of the West Indies cricket team on their tour of Australia, where one commentator even raised the question of “the unthinkable”: Test cricket without the West Indies.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the Caribbean:

(more…)

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The Lebanese Bloggosphere On The Meanings Of The Opposition's Victory in University Elections

Mustapha · 10:58

This week, the issue of Syria has taken the back seat (with a few exceptions); the Lebanese bloggers were mainly concerned with the students’ elections in various Lebanese University campuses.

The elections are important because they’re like mini-general elections. The same parties compete and similar alliances are at work. Which brings us to why they are important: they can actually predict the trends in Lebanese public opinion.

The convoluted dynamics and confusing alliances shocked and fascinated many Lebanese bloggers, who tried to come up with theories on why the opposition movement lead by MP Michel Aoun triumphed:

Lebanon.Profile from The Lebanese Political Journal writes:

Michel Aoun and the Free Patriotic Movement have become the alternative to Lebanese politics as usual. Support for Aoun is support for change. Regardless of what kind of change that is, he's a new face.

He then went further into analyzing the Aoun phenomenon and concludes:

Aoun is the single most powerful politician in Lebanon and offers the potential for social change.

Raja from The Lebanese bloggers suggests:

It has become clear that there is a divide between the political (party) leadership in Lebanon and the people, the followers of these political parties.

Mustapha in The Beirut Spring proposes looking to the elections from an economic angle:

this is not a battle between the Pro-Syrians and the Anti Syrians, This is very much a battle between the proletariat and the bourgeois, the people versus the elite, the left versus the right, the Socialists versus the Conservatives

Anton Efendi from Across The Bay disagreed with Mustapha. He cautions against what he called “a quick and exclusive socio-economic diagnosis” and noted that “identities (sectarian, socio-economic, political…) in Lebanon often interlace”

Miscelaneous

The Lebanese blogger Arch Memory made it to Blogging Poet's “100 Blogging Poets” list,
and Kais is very happy that The Economist magazine considers Lebanon to be the Arab World's most sophisticated and liberal state.

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Tunisian blogger dinner

Rebecca MacKinnon · 07:15

On Friday night I had the pleasure of joining the 8th Tunisian Bloggers Meetup, along with fellow WSIS participants Jeff Ooi of Malaysia and Isam Bayazidi of Jordan. After the craziness of the past several days, it was really nice to leave the conference behind, just talk about blogging, and enjoy each others' company. Presiding over the event were the blogger couple, Global Voices contributor Mohamed Marwen Meddah (MMM) aka "Subzero Blue" and his brilliant and beautiful wife who goes by the nom-de-blog "Aquacool." Many of Tunisia’s bloggers write in French and Arabic, not English, but many of them speak rather decent English (their third language) and we had some fascinating conversations.

We talked a lot about the explosion of blogging in the Arab world, and how it may be time for an "Arab Voices" to help connect conversations going on in various nations' blogospheres. Isam pointed out that bloggers in one country have a hard time knowing who the good bloggers are in neighboring countries, and it's time to create a platform for a pan-Arab blogging community. Sounds like a great idea to me.

Having Jeff Ooi there was a real treat. Everybody at the table sat rapt in fascination and suspense as Jeff told the story of his threatened arrest last year after somebody posted an anonymous, derogatory comment against Islam on his blog. In the Arab world, bloggers naturally share a lot of similar concerns. The conversation was intense as people exchanged experiences and views on how one balances the desire to speak freely with political and religious pressures of various kinds.

The evening really whetted my appetite for our upcoming Global Voices Summit, in London on December 10th.

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