Archive for
September 5th, 2006


Stories

Russia: Kondopoga and Thoughts on Illegal Immigration 

a small portrait of this author Veronica Khokhlova · 20:48

A week ago, two ethnic Russians were killed in a restaurant fight with Chechens in the northwestern town of Kondopoga, Republic of Karelia. The deaths triggered riots and demands to deport all Caucasus people from the town.

Reading Russian blogs now is a little like walking through a minefield: ethnic tensions in Kondopoga have revealed a highly charged segment of the blogosphere, with a fair number of bloggers seemingly favoring most radical measures against Russia's non-Slavic minorities and immigrants, including their physical elimination. But Russia is huge and so is its blogosphere (LJ-sphere, to be precise): tolerance isn't rare there, and nor are common sense and sense of humor.

Moscow-based gallery owner and once notorious political consultant Marat Guelman (LJ user galerist) outlines potential political consequences of the situation and offers a long-term solution to the crisis:

Can't get Karelia out of my mind. Chechens are citizens of Russia, so it has nothing to do with illegal immigration. To declare Karelia “free from the natives of the southern federal district” is to make the first and significant step toward the breakup of the country. A quick breakup, with the nearest election as its catalyst. This is on the one hand.

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Interview with Mr. Behi, Iranian blogger 

This author has no photo Farid Pouya · 15:42

Mr. Behi is an Iran-based blogger from Tehran writing in English under a pseudonym. His blog has been mentioned several times in Global Voices and other media. He is a very busy young professional and found time to answer some of our questions between two trips.

1- Please present yourself and your blog and tell us why you chose to write in English?

I am a 28 year old individual who was born, grew up and lived in Tehran all my life. I believe I earned myself a very satisfying life that helps me to grow and enable me to have a free mind to look around myself and interpret the surroundings. My blog, Adventures of Mr.Behi is, to me, the memoir of a world citizen. I write this electronic diary to preserve my experiences from the corrosion of my short memory. I started it to be able to record my thoughts and ideas and the fact that on the blog I could see other people's reactions to my point of view was an interesting incentive. I have always been passionate about learning languages. I had the opportunity to train myself well enough in English communication and I have lately discovered that communication is a bridge to extend your mental boundaries by interacting with other people. Adventures of Mr.Behi had to be recorded in an international language to achieve my goal of being a world citizen. Despite the initial goal of being just a personal diary, the fact that I always think about politics and society dragged the posts towards domestic/world issues and soon I realized that there are people who try to look at Iran through my words - which is an extra advantage of the ability to engage in dialogue via your own personal space.

2-Do you think when Iranian bloggers write in English, they try to say things to please English speaking audience?

That is an interesting question. I have actually never looked at Iranian English blogs like that to be able to present a straight answer but if we look at the way Iran is being presented to the world through all the negative news, it can be considered a reaction to show that Iranian people are not well presented. I am not sure if you mean if I think my blog is behaving like that… I try not to write for my audience… sometimes I add things as background information for non-Iranians but my initial intention was to have a personal diary.

3-What has been the reacion of western media and the public to your blog?

The reaction has been so positive and encouraging overall. To be honest I never felt that the little things about Iran and some personal ideas about the world could make anyone interested. I have made so many friends via the blog and I always love the difference in perspectives when people comment. I never filter or remove comments and always enjoy even aggressive ones because that shows how differently some people think from the way I do, and that is cool.

4-How do Iranian bloggers cope with filtering?

It looks very hard. Sometimes I read some bogs that their writers say they write via e-mail forwarding and could not see their own blog for a while which is very sad. I guess for an English-language blog, the attention is not high because the number of internal readers is not high (I have no clue). The problem of filtering is not just for bloggers - it affects so many other internet users. People try to bypass filtering using proxy servers and for news websites I personally use RRS feed readers.

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Our next interview will be with a Swedish blogger who visited Iran recently and took some very interesting photos.

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Ethiopia's bloggers remember two prisoners 

a small portrait of this author Andrew Heavens · 15:26

Tributes to two imprisoned men stood out from Ethiopia's blogosphere over the past fortnight.

ET Wonqette of the blog Weichegud ET Politics came up with a heart-rending portrait of Ato G [Ato = Mr.], an elderly man employed by her and a group of friends to look after a small charity in Ethiopia. Ato G agreed to send the funders regular updates on the progress of the organisation:

Every three months or so we get a letter from Ato G, an elderly Ethiopian man who lives a few hundred kilometers from Addis Abeba [Ethiopia's capital]. Ato G’s letters have become events. We pass them around eagerly.

Ato G's handwriting is brittle and it carves mercilessly into the flimsy, bumpy sheet of paper. He uses the same color pen -bluish purple- that leaves a crater of ink spots every time he rounds the letters “de” and “m.”

His letters are agonizingly no nonsense. He doesn’t use any magniloquent greetings Ethiopians usually preface a simple letter. (“Ke semai kokeb yebeza nafqote …” Loosely translated… “My yearning transcends the number of stars in the sky…”) Instead, each word is obviously penned after much thought, none wasted on himself. He takes time to list all our names, with all the women prefixed with a respectful “Weizero” (Mrs.) and the men with Ato (Mr.). No sycophant titles; not a trace of overwrought flattery or flowery phrases.

But then… then he calls us “Lijoche” (my children). And the way he writes it, Lijoche… something about it tugs at me every time.

Then his letters stopped arriving. After some investigation, they found out why. Local officials who had heard of the money flowing into this new charity had come to his house and asked for a bribe. When he refused “the bureaucrat pencil-pushers thought a few days in jail would straighten out the old man”. So they locked him up for 16 days.

When ET Wonqette phoned Ato G after his release, he consoled her by saying “‘Mechase mn yderegal? Dehna qen eiskimeTa.' (What can you do? Until better days dawn.')” You should read the full transcript in the post 16 days. She concluded:

That’s the thing about Ethiopia. What breaks your heart also manages to mend it.

I wish people knew how much kindness there is in Ethiopia. Even through this seemingly chronic state of misery and brutality, there is kindness that breaks your heart into a million and one pieces. Ethiopia, we often forget, is so much more than a government determined to asphyxiate the spirit of people already savaged.

And perhaps the universe is waiting for us to find our spirits before it dawns better days for us. But the minute I loved what Ato G had done more than I hated the people who had robbed him out of 16 days, I knew I had arrived.

It is ruinously, unrelentingly peaceful. Better days are coming because there are so many others doing their “16 days.”

Ethio-Zagol of the blog ethiopian life, politics, culture and arts wrote about another elderly Ethiopian man - one who is still in jail.

He wrote about Professor Mesfin Woldemariam, a prominent figure in Ethiopian political and cultural life who founded the Ethiopian Human Rights Council and more recently the opposition Rainbow Ethiopia: Movement for Democracy and Social Justice. Late last year, after violence broke out following disputed national elections, he was detained alongside other key opposition figures on a range of charges including treason.

Ethio-Zagol summed up his feelings on the title of the post - To Mesfin Woldemariam: the single most important Ethiopian academic and intellectual of our time. He went on to remember happier days when the Professor used to hold court in Addis Ababa's best coffee house Tomoka:

Tomoka has an intriguing feel of a 19th century Viennesian coffeehouse. Its tables are as much a platform for ideas as coffee. It is where brilliant youth with precocious talents for analytical thinking and reasoning grapple with philosophy, politics and economics.

Professor Mesfin Woldemariam used to have a routine morning walk to Tomoka where he would be surrounded by the smart and fiercely combative young intellectuals, who weren't even born when his seminal works on famine and food security were published, and argue about everything on earth, from post-modernism and Derrida to Tomism . The spirit of Tomoka is Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto ; nothing human is alien to me. No debate, however, is without an Ethiopian reference.

Like ET Wonqette before him, Ethio-Zagol ended on a determinedly upbeat note:

The influence of great dissenters will be felt when their ideas and views sip through the layers of time and reach the subsequent generations. Professor Mesfin has among other things saved the principles of non-violent struggle and the defence of individual rights from extinction in Ethiopia with an exemplary, frank and patient devotion. The youth in Tomoka and elsewhere are making it mainstream. Idea lives beyond the incarceration and death of its holder.

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BlogDay 2006 in Latin America 

a small portrait of this author David Sasaki · 15:04

On August 31 bloggers around the world tried to make the planet a tad smaller, a wee bit more familiar, by introducing five new blogs to their readers. Here is a look at how some Latin American bloggers chose to celebrate the day.

Let's start in Mexico where Ricardo Carréon, General Manager of Latin America for Intel, has an eclectic mix of recommendations including the popular citizen journalism blog, EBRMx (ES) and Ellen Fields' Mexico-in-English (ES), which regularly highlights websites and blogs about Mexico written in English. On Blog Day, however, Fields chose to step outside of Mexico's blogosphere and find “five English-language blogs from other countries where Spanish is the spoken language.” One of those five bloggers is Panamanian food blogger Melissa de León:

Here's a tasty blog from Panama: Cooking Diva. This woman, Melissa de Leon, is originally from Panama. She is full of energy…my goodness! Her blog is chock full of recipes, reports of events in Panama and even videos! Just writing her blog seems to me like it would be a full-time job, but on top of that she offers a Pre-prepared Dinners of the Week program in Panama, a Corporate Culinary team building program, gives cooking classes and does food product development. I'm impressed. Again, her blog presents a maze of information that any foodie will enjoying getting lost in.

You can find out more about Melissa de León by checking out her own Blog Day post where she answers questions put forth by Rebecca MacKinnon. Alejandro, a Peruvian-Californian food blogger was inspired by Melissa and answered the same questions.

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Lebanon: Peace, Art, Humor and Politics This is a Photos post

a small portrait of this author Moussa Bashir · 14:20

Topics discussed in the Lebanese blogosphere this week involved, among others, literature, war-art, the art of souvenir production and war-humor. Peace is a topic that is almost always present. A few samples discussing and dissecting the concept of peace with Israel has been selected for this week’s roundup. In addition to these we have historical account, from a personal view point, of one blogger who lived the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and what followed. Happy surfing.

The death of Naguib Mahfouz, the only Arab to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature prompted The Angry Arab News Service to write a post in which he said:

I certainly will argue that his prominence in Western eyes rose in the Sadat era—when Sadat’s trip to Israel made Egypt an acceptable model of Arab countries, when things Egyptian became less controversial than things Arab or Muslim in general. The respect for Mahfouz was a reward for Sadat.

“Peace Art Graffiti in Beirut” is a topic mentioned by Raincoaster posting from Cold Desert where combat zone graffiti artist Arofish, who was drawing in one of the most bombed out areas in Beirut, is quoted:

I was asked by local people to paint something happy, to reflect the spirit of the community. Before starting I banged up a piece of explanatory text on the wall (…) It reads: “When Ramallah, in Palestine, is put under curfew by the Israeli Army, nobody goes outside for days. The streets look completely deserted. But from a tall building, if you look out over the city, you can sometimes see hundreds of many-coloured kites, flown from the roof-terraces by the children of Ramallah. The children you can see here are flying kites to celebrate the spirit of the people of Dahyeh. Some kites you can see are flying away. These are for the children who are no longer here; they are no longer held down to the Earth.”

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