Global Voices Online » 2006 » January

The Week That Was - Bolivian Blogs

Eduardo Avila · 21:17

Now the dust has settled following the historic elections of December 18, the Bolivian blogsophere continues with reactions, concerns and hope. Bolivian bloggers are being asked to add thoughts and commentary to a subject rapidly gaining a worldwide following. Miguel Centellas of Ciao! and Jim Shultz of Blog from Bolivia recently joined Economist Jeffrey Sachs on Radio Open Source regarding the topic: Latin America's New Socialism.

The election of Evo Morales has attracted many eyes on the country of Bolivia. Even though he does not formally take office until January 22, the three weeks in January will involve a lot of movement that will have a lot of effect on his administration. Many are looking ahead at inauguration plans. Miguel Buitrago of MABB summarizes the three different ceremonies, one official and the other two symbolic, that Morales has planned for January 21-22. Many regional heads of states, international football stars and well-known singers have confirmed their attendance.

Last Friday marked the beginning of a worldwide tour, starting with a visit to the island nation of Cuba. President Fidel Castro sent a plane to pick up Morales and approximately 75 members of a delegation to visit. Jaime Humérez Seleme wrote in his blog Boliviscopio that he hoped that the visit to Cuba woud only “contribute to the strengthening of friendship and cooperation between Bolivia and Cuba, leaving out offensive allusions towards others” and that “the cordiality in the meeting between Evo and Fidel not be dominated by inneccesary and inopportune declarations”, referring to frequent statements made by Castro and Morales in open defiance of the United States. Morales has plans to visit Venezuela, Spain, South Africa and Brazil, among other countries over the next 10 days.

As a result of the meeting with Castro, an agreement has been reached for the complete literacy of Bolivia within 30 months. Jaime C. Rubin de Celis who writes at JCR’s Place thinks that education in Bolivia needs much more than this ambitious plan. Morales’ MAS has pledged to eliminate the Education Reform Law. De Celis would rather see a reform of that law, rather than starting from zero.

Others have looked back at the election and their results. Oswaldo returns from a two month hiatus to reflect on his blog Pensamiento Indio about the role of the Bolivian media during the elections. In his entry, “The Racist Journalism in Bolivia“, he states that all of the journalists in print and on the radio were racist towards el Indio, and were surprised by the election of the indigenous Morales. Joaquin Cuevas, who publishes his cartoons in La Vida de Chico Larva, posted several politics-realted drawings. This entry demonstrates how newly elected Prefect, Manfred Reyes Villa, finally got rid of his old political party. The second entry shows 2nd-place finisher Tuto Quiroga and the bitter taste of defeat.

Finally a couple of new blogs, including the anonymous Paisano de Elite who makes frequent appearances in the comments section of another Bolivian blog. He started a blog of the same name, which serves to publish rebuttals to many of the entries written by Shultz' Blog from Bolivia.

Edgar's Musicantos blog gives an excellent and personal account of how his election day went. He ran into MAS' Vice-Presidential candidate Alvaro Garcia Linera, who voted in the same location in the neighborhood of Sopocachi in La Paz.

Upon exiting, I approached Alvaro, firmly squeezed his hand and with a serious look from someone who changed his consistently invalid vote for a valid one, said with a hopeful threat, “Alvaro, don't let us down.”

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The first week of 2006 in the Moroccan blogs

Farah Kinani · 03:25

2006 is here, so happy new year from the Moroccan blogosphere.

After a one month absence , Larbi is back. This blog is definitely the most popular among the Moroccan bloggers and in addition to its critical posts it also offers services to its readers. And I just had to visit Larbi to know the addresses of the Moroccan blogs written in a list regurlarly updated.

In his latest post, Larbi disapproves (French) the recent declarations of the Moroccan Justice Minister Mohammad Bouzoubaa to set up a follow-up unit in charge of monitoring all press publications. The comments to this post were all surprisingly not surprised of such decision and focused mainly in condemning the Moroccan journalists .

Still in the national events and while I was suspecting a bigger reaction from the Moroccan bloggers to the Tel Quel's sentence, only few blogs mentioned it last week .

One of them, and probably the first one to report the news about the Moroccan Magazine was Bluesman who simply wrote the court punishment in his post while he asked his readers in the comments section to show” fiercer ” support to Tel Quel.

Reactions to Ayman Nour's arrest

Meanwhile, Ayman nour's sentence was more succesful to get the Moroccan bloggers' attention last week.

Amazigh qualifies the arrest of Nour as a very bad surprise at the end of 2005 , and he writes in his post intitled “Purelyt Arabica : five-five!” that while Husni Mubarak Has 5 years to govern Egypt, Nour has to spend them in jail.

those dictators don't want to learn the new rules nor want they leave their places to young est and newest mentalities

Amazigh ends his post saying that the only way to have democratic elections in an arab country is to wait for its president to die or to be disgraced by Americans.

Karim has a different opinion concerning the arrest of Ayman Nour, and he says in The Arab Observers that if Ayman Nour was arrested , it's because the Egyptian government must feel in a position of force that enables it to do this without fearing an internatiol uproar.

In my opinion, this is evidence that Egypt is still being needed as one of Washington's key allies in the war on terror. Thus, in this particular case, we may again conclude that the threat of terrorism has only served to further strengthen a repressive arab regime and western ally, not exactly what the extremists sought.

The Arab observers is one of my favorite blogs and it has the paritcularity to reach a large audience with different interests.The main reason lies behind the different sections that ,Karim and Jallal, authors of the blog offer to their readers.
You have the main page that gives an idea of the recent posts you can reach in one of those sections :Political Islam, Current Events, Moroccan Issues, Miscellaneous Topics and Books.

The post about Ayman Nour is in the Current Events section, and its main subject is actually about Mona El Talhawi who got herself in trouble after she published a opinion piece in the International Herald Tribune, in which she expressed sharp criticism of the elections in Egypt.

The Arab observers report that Eltahawy was summoned to a meeting with egyptian officials, during which she was told that her actions are being monitored by the egyptian government.

About Iraq and Palestine

Geronium “screams” in his post intitles “In memory of Fllujan Massacre” his rage against the killing of civilians that occurred (occurs?) in Fallujah. He says in the introdution of his post:

What can I say ?
Is it hate ? Is it Pain for those persons ? Is it Rage against the americans ? I don't Know. But what am sure about is that there is no words to express this feeling inside my heart. For What ? For Fallujah battle.
I don't want to hate the americans but the truth I say, It's very difficult to love people implicated in mass killing of civilians.

Lili gives the readers of her french blog Etre soi meme a Background to the Israel-Palestine Crisis , and she asks them to read more about this subject since she considers knowing the truth to be a human duty .

Coup de coeur..

I definitely have to visit more Moroccan blogs to come out with a clear vision about the nature of The Moroccan blogging. But, from what I have seen, I can say that 60 per cent of the Moroccan bloggers are more familiar with the journal kind of blogs.

Crucivore is a blog that I can label as intellectual even if its author doesn't seem to think so ;). Last week, crucivore posted about a book reporting funny real situations. It's called “Laughing just to keep from crying.”

And here's a taste of some of the stories you'll find in the post intitled “real stories.”

A man to his wife:
How come God created you so beautiful and so stupid?
The wife:
God created me beautiful to attract you, and stupid to be attracted by you..

There is also a tendancy to make irony of political or social events the way Anima is doing. Her “serial” about a couple who seems lost while trying to make sens of events around them, has a big audience. And they're right now begging her to keep writing about “Oum al'yal” and “Ab al'yal” since she declared in her latest post that the adventure of the famous couple reached its end….i'm actually begging her too…ahemmm.

That's it for this week. See you next Wednesday, Inshallah.

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