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Balkan Blog Roundup: Focus on the Positive

Ljubisa Bojic · 15:11 · Eastern & Central Europe

The Balkans need reconciliation, confidence and positivism to change and become the winning region of Europe with happier citizens. You can see that in the inspirational words from the Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian blogospheres. Toshiba posts some thoughts of the late Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic during his motivational meetings with the people (SRP):

I came in this morning at the gate of the Jagodina cable factory. I saw a nice clock at the entrance. It didn't work. I wanted to get back. I said – OK. You have problem with resources and cash flow but why doesn’t this clock work? What is the issue? That is the point. Let’s do what we can do and then look for excuses. You say – world conspiracy. Maybe there is a world conspiracy against us. But, first of all, let’s see what we can do in our own yard, our city, and our country. If we do our homework, then we can see if the teacher hates us or not.

I plea with each one you. When you wake up tomorrow, just say – there is another day, I have got a chance to do something. When the day finishes up, don't say – thank God another day has ended. Life is a miracle given to us! I will tell you something which is not for television. One human being is just one of 40,000 spermatozoa. Only that one succeeded. The other 39,999 didn't make it. It means – you are all champs! Everybody who has been born is already a winner. And then you say – life is nothing, I will take drugs, I will get drunk. Stop, man! Your responsibility to yourself and God is enormous. You won one of the most important games of them all. You are alive. You got born. Do something positive with your life. We need that atmosphere with our people! We need to crash that feeling which stayed since the Ottoman Empire rule in Serbia. We say – it's easy, I'll do it tomorrow, I can't do that, they are all against us. Of course, the world is a cruel market. People don't like each other. Everybody likes himself. Why don't we like ourselves like Americans like themselves and then we can see who is more successful. Because we don't like ourselves so much and they like themselves, they are always better than us. Are we guilty for not loving ourselves or is somebody else to blame? We are guilty!

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Shock and Tragedy in UCLA, Murder in Iran

Farid Pouya · 13:49 · Middle East & North Africa

According to reports in the media, Mostafa Tabatabainejad, a UCLA student, was repeatedly stunned with a taser and then taken into custody after he failed to exit the CLICC Lab at the Powell Library at UCLA in a timely manner. Community Service Officers had asked Tabatabainejad to leave after he failed to produce his BruinCard during a random check. Global Voices has already published video related to this incident, and now we look at what Iranian bloggers had to say about this incident. As usual their opinions are diverse and interesting.

Iranian-American Youth

IranianTruth has covered news and published many photos and video clips about student protest demonstrations at the university. He also mentions something very interesting about Iranian-Americans.The blogger says

I think relevant, but unreported, to Mostafa’s abuse, is not the abuse itself, but the activism evidenced by the Iranian-American youth. Generally, most of us are first generation Americans. The Iranian community in America is a young one, and most of us born here are born to families who were born, raised and lived in Iran till 1979. As such, most of our parents were unaccustomed to the political nuances of America. It has only been recently, as my generation has become older, that the notion of Iranian-American political activism is taking root.

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Arabisc: Plagiarism, Arrests, Bans and Democracy!

Amira Al Hussaini · 12:33 · Middle East & North Africa

The Arabs are as usual busy this week debating anything and everything, from plagiarism to the arrest of bloggers, and from banning public meetings to embarrising George Bush Senior at a conference held in the UAE.

Ahmed from Egypt had always wanted to become a journalist. But because not all dreams come true, he had to settle for writing online when he stumbled upon the enchanting world of blogging. His love affair for the Press, however, was cut short, after discovering that an Egyptian newspaper was lifting articles from his blog (needless to say without his permission) and posting them as letters to the editor, under different names.

كان كل حلمي وأنا صغير أن أكون كاتب مشهور أدافع عن قضايا الناس، أحمل همومهم، وأدافع بقلمي
عن القيم والمبادئ
فتخيلت أني سأكون صحفي شريف,ولكن لظروف متعددة لم يكن الحلم ولكن عندما عثرت على كنز التدوين،
تخيلت يومها أنني عثرت على كنزي الصغير الذي سأستخرج منه كل ما أحب، ولو كان هذا الكنز لين
يراه غيري أو سيتستفيد منه الكثيرون
ولكن قلت إنها لفرصة عضيمة أخرج فيها ما أريد حتى لا أنفجر غيظا على الاقل…
ولكن أن أجد سبع مواضيع في صفحة واحدة في جريدة الميدان في صفحة “البوسطجي” للمحرر باهر
السليمي وكلها منقولة نقل مسطرة من مدونتي المتواضعة
أي والله 7 مواضيع بسبع أسماء مستعارة في صفحة واحدة
ولا أتخيل أن يكون هناك 7 لصوص صغار أعجبهم مواضيع لي فنشورها في الميدان في نفس الوقت في
نفس الصفحة
يا خبر, إذن إنه لص واحد أراد ملئ صفحة واحدة فأخذذ سبع مواضيع مني ووضع عليها سبع أسماء
من عنده ومن سبع مناطق مختلفة ونشرها

“My dream as a child was to become a famous writer who defended people, carried their burdens on his shoulders and protected our values and principles with my writings. I thought I would be an ethical journalist but because of different circumstances, I couldn't achieve my dream. When I discovered blogging, I realised that I have found my dream, which will enable me to do all that I have loved and that it would benefit others. I thought it would be a good opportunity to express myself so that I don't explode with anger. But to find seven of my articles in one page in a newspaper called Al Maydan in the Letters to the Editor page, all lifted from my modest blog, (is unacceptable). I swear there are seven articles all under different names on one page in the paper. I can't imagine there being seven small thieves who liked my articles and published them all in the newspaper at the same time on the same page. So it must be one thief who wanted to fill one page so he took seven of my articles and inserted seven different names from seven different areas and published them,” he wrote.

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Bush and Indonesia Islam

A. Fatih Syuhud · 11:20 · East Asia

lingua → zht · zhs

If you watched CNN or BBC before and during Bush's visit to Indonesia, you would see a sea of protersters in Indonesia's capital, Jakarta with slogan of anti-Bush and to some extent, anti-American foreign policy. But with most female protesters were wearing Islamic clothes i.e. jilbab (Indonesian term for Islamic veil), it is easy for people on other parts of the world to think that's it's only those Muslim fundamentalists who were against Bush. As a matter of fact, it's not.

Barring a few–mostly conservative Christian minority, Indonesians are united in condemning Bush/US foreign policy, especially its post-9/11 pre-emptive policy that led to US wars in Afghanistan and especially Iraq which is regarded as sheer breach of a nation sovereignty and blatant show of arrogance.

Both conservative and moderate or even the so-called liberal Muslims intellectuals wrote critically against the US invasion in Iraq. Ulil Abshar-Abdalla, the founder of Jaringan Islam Liberal (JIL) (Liberal Islam Network), for example, wrote at that time (the archive link is no longer available, unfortunately) that the invasion was sheer barbarity and telling example of US double-standard. Important to note here, that JIL, an organisation that focuses on Islamic issues from liberal/moderate Muslim point of view, is funded mostly by US money. Mr Ulil himself now is studying a PhD at Boston.

Andreas H Pareira, a Christian and MP from former president Megawati's PDIP party reported by Indonesia News Agency Antara as saying: “Do not behave softly to the US, so as to not create an impression that we are a US puppet country.”

Berita Sore daily, an evening newspaper from Medan, North Sumatra, quoting an east Indonesia political analyst Professor Muin Salim who said that Bush visit “in no way benefitting Indonesia.”

Yet, Bush PR officers should not be too disappointed as Indonesia Ulama Council or MUI (Majelis Ulama Indonesia), infamous for its conservative opinions, is welcoming Bush with bear hug and regard his visit as “positive and beneficial.”

So, from that background in mind, it's no wonder if Bush visit to Indonesia is facing many unflattered responses from various corners including from the Indonesian blogosphere.

For starter, Senopati Wirang at Intelijen Indonesia (Indonesian Intelligence) makes a lengthy posting on Bush's visit from different angles, particularly from intelligence perspective and intransparency of security officials statement, especially on the justifications behind the excessive use of security guards which he thinks too much exaggerated.
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Latin American Election Blogging

David Sasaki · 10:16 · Americas

November is quite the electoral month in what has already been a year of elections throughout the Western Hemisphere. The month has already seen the return of Sanidinista leader, Daniel Ortega to Nicaragua's presidency. The United States - condemned by many for its influence in Nicaragua's elections - shifted to a Democratic majority congress. Political parties, meanwhile, took a hit in Peru's municipal elections last weekend, where independent politicians attracted the most votes. This coming Sunday, Ecuador will join the changing tide as its citizens must decide between pro-business candidate Álvaro Noboa and his second-round competitor, Rafael Correa, a US-educated economist viewed by many as a staunch leftist. The following week will move the spotlight to Venezuela, where the ever-controversial Hugo Chavez finds himself in what has become a close race … that is, if the latest polls are to be believed.

Nicaragua

On November 5 Nicaraguans put Daniel Ortega back in power in the first round of presidential voting. The controversial figure, who served as president from 1985 to 1990, actually received a smaller percentage of votes than in his unsuccessful presidential bids in 1990 and 2000

Alfonso Naranjo Rosabal, a Cuban journalist who used to blog at Cuba Va [ES] and now works at Tiempo21 [ES], contributed a post to the Nicaraguan group blog Barricada [ES] about his elation following the confirmation of Daniel Ortega's victory [ES].

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Egypt: Cairo's women speak out against violence

Sameer Padania · 08:04 · Middle East & North Africa

In the run-up to the annual global campaign for 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, Egypt's First Lady, Suzanne Mubarak, addressing a meeting of the Arab Women's Organisation, issued a heartfelt plea:

What shall we do to face challenges of discrimination, extremism and religious fanaticism?

It's a vexing question - and one to which women back home in Egypt would have a very specific answer: stop ignoring violence against women even when it's become an international scandal thanks to citizen video and the internet.

In her speech, Mrs Mubarak failed to make even a passing reference to what had happened to tens of women in her home city of Cairo just a couple of weeks before. A wave of attacks on women in downtown Cairo erupted on the Muslim feast day of Eid Al Fitr, October 24th 2006, when large groups of men attacked several women in the street, as Manal and Alaa's bit bucket relates. But this wasn't a one-off - in January 2006, on Eid al Adha, film-maker Sherif Sadek was back in Cairo, when he heard a commotion on the street outside his downtown apartment. Sherif grabbed his camera and leaned out the window to film the video presented below.

Synopsis

Initially it's a little difficult to tell what is going on in the video - there are crowds in the middle of the street, which looks unusual - but after about 25 seconds, you will see two or three men leading four or five girls down the street past the building from which Sherif is filming. The crowd behind them is extremely large, a couple of hundred strong, and soon surrounds the girls (around 1′20). They then pass down a side-street, partially out of view, which gives Sherif time to spot a man in uniform - a police officer? - looking down the street at the commotion, who then gets back in his vehicle (1′50). Sections of the crowd then come running back round the corner, although it's not clear whether they have the girls with them or not.

The October attacks took a similar form. GV's Amira al Hussaini rounds up the best blog coverage of the October attacks, including Forsoothsayer's translation of blogger Wael Abbas's eye-witness account, and Mechanical Crowds' attempt to pull together the key facts.

Most strikingly, one of the victims of the Eid al Fitr attacks seems to have found a voice through the medium of blogging. Wounded Girl From Cairo appears to be by one of the women attacked on Eid al Fitr, and her description of her ordeal is required reading.

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