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Ukraine: Tragedy in Dnipropetrovsk

Veronica Khokhlova · 22:30

On Oct. 13, a gas explosion destroyed much of a 10-story apartment building in Dnipropetrovsk, killing at least 23 people (including seven children).

Dnipropetrovsk-based LJ user didaio (Denis Davydov) has been at the site of the tragedy, blogging about it ever since it occurred. Below are excerpts from his posts (UKR).

Saturday, October 13, 2007 - 5:44 PM:

[…] It was in the morning that the people living within 1 km [of the building that would explode] smelled strong gas odor. Soon afterwards, gas pipe valves in the apartments got blown off, and gas started coming out under high pressure. They called the [Ministry of Emergency Situations] and gas service, but were told that there was nothing wrong and they just had to open their windows a bit. Around 10:30 AM, gas stoves in the neighboring buildings burst into flames. Firefighters showed up some 15 minutes later, and, as they were going up the stairs, the explosion occurred. Eyewitnesses say it happened at 10:45 AM.

[…]

Victor Bondar, governor of [Dnipropetrovsk region], arrived together with [minister of emergency situations] Nestor Shufrych. It was around 3 PM then, four hours after the blast. As of 4 PM, [Dnipropetrovsk] mayor hasn't arrived yet, and everyone is waiting for him.

Everything's organized horribly! People aren't being notified of anything. Apartment owners can't find out about the fate of their relatives who were inside the building at the time of the the blast. Some have been evacuated via fire escapes, but others haven't been able to use them to descend by themselves. […]

The police who encircle the building are telling people to go to the auditorium at Pryvatbank located nearby, but there's no auditorium there. In fact, the headquarters is behind Pryvatbank, at a kindergarten. In a small, unlit room, lists of the building's residents are being made.

[…]

It's been raining heavily since morning in Dnipropetrovsk today, and this is why many people were at home at the time of the explosion. There were many children among them.

Some parents, for example, went to the market, leaving their children at home. One woman, who lives in the most damaged [section of the building], told journalists that her daughter was inside the apartment, with a friend who had dropped by. The daughter's fate is unknown.

At the HQ, there's a room for those seeking urgent psychological assistance, but no one has been there yet. The woman who knows nothing about her daughter's fate is at the garage near the building, which was unlocked for journalists, to keep them out of the rain. There are no doctors around her, only her husband.

And there are many people like her here.

People in bathrobes are wandering around the neighborhood with infants wrapped in blankets in their hands. […]

Sunday, October 14, 2007 - 1:29 AM:

[…] [Victor Yanukovych] arrived at 7:30 PM [Oct. 13]. […] They visited the site of the tragedy and then went to talk to the residents of the unlucky building. Most of those who were present were on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and so as soon as the premier started talking, they interrupted him and began asking: why didn't the gas services arrive right after they had been called, a few hours before the tragedy; why aren't they cleaning away the debris - there are still children buried beneath them and one can hear their voices. Also, the people were asking about new apartments, aid and the permission to go to their old apartments - those that were intact - to take away some belongings and documents.

People were really annoyed with the amount of the premier's security. “There is more ‘Berkut' [riot police] and cops than there are rescuers,” one woman was screaming. “They've filled the pits with pebbles for you, so that there were no pits when you show up, but when we were trying to reach the gas service, we were being told that they are out of gasoline and [can't come],” one of the victims was saying to the premier.

[…] [Yulia Tymoshenko arrived around 8:30 PM] and said she wanted to see the tragedy site. It's about 200 meters away from the HQ. The path is more like an unplowed field after heavy rain than a city road. Tymoshenko didn't get into the car, but walked right through this mud in her high-heeled shoes. An hour earlier, Victor Yanukovych decided to ride a car rather than walk.

[On her way back], Tymoshenko was stopped by the people standing behind the cordon. It's hard to find words to describe the state they were in. Many of them appeared deranged, or under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Some were crying out: “Yulia, punish the guilty ones.” Some were asking for help, asking to make sure that the government didn't leave the people alone, face to face with this problem. With Yanukovych, people were making charges against him, while with Tymoshenko, they were turning for her as if she were a savior.

[…]

This tragedy could've been averted! It wasn't a terror attack. When you stand next to the ruin that's three floors high and realize there are people underneath, your legs become numb. And it could've been enough to just react to the people's phone calls! Imagine there's a fire in the apartment, the owner calls the firefighters, but they reply: “Turn the water on in the bathroom and don't worry.” Shufrych states emotionally: “I'll strangle the guilty ones personally,” “I won't be the minister if the guilty one aren't punished,” but even now representatives of the communal services nob towards one another and blame everyone but themselves. […]

Sunday, October 14, 2007 - 9:59 PM:

[…] People who lived on the 9th and 10th floors of Entrance #1 were allowed to go to their apartments to take the most necessary things (warm clothes and documents). Those who had pets at home were let in first. Only two members from each family were allowed to go in. It was mostly the women who did, because they knew what clothes to take and where to find it. And so they go downstairs with big sacks, and it's about 50 meters from the building's entrance to the police cordon. The women are dragging these sacks all by themselves - because the police do not allow men to get at least 10 meters inside the cordoned-off area to help the women. The whole neighborhood can, perhaps, hear the women wail, and these bastards, the cops, aren't even trying to help them!

All this just minutes after Shufrych was talking self-importantly about the need to treat the victims with care, support them, etc. […]

Sunday, October 14, 2007 - 10:20 PM:

[Five photos by Stanislav Vedmid, two photos by LJ user didaio]

[…]

didaio:

I don't want to scare anyone or ruin anyone's mood tonight, but these photos [fail to convey] what's really going on there. […]

Tuesday, October 16, 2007 - 8:54 AM:

Another day has gone by. What's lost behind the numbers of the dead, the missing and the wounded is information on the main culprits in this horrible tragedy. So here's a little bit on the Dniprogas company.

[It] belongs to one of the richest Russians, the owner of the world's largest aluminum company, Victor Vekselberg. […]

[…]

Stories of life and death.

One resident […] was asleep when the explosion occurred. Without losing consciousness, without falling out of bed, he “descended” on this bed from the 7th floor to the 3rd, and got buried underneath the debris from the upper floors. He survived. When he heard steps nearby, he started calling for help. It turned out these were the steps of a rescuer, and he dragged the man from under the ruins. […]

Another woman found by the rescuers was fully dressed, with all the documents and money. She had enough time to take everything, but, so unfortunately, no time to survive. […]

Wednesday, October 17, 2007 - 9:19 AM:

Yesterday, it became clear once again that human beings are capable of getting used to any conditions. […] People [affected by the Dnipropetrovsk disaster] are already thinking about the future. They are considering the proposed compensation options, trying to rescue at least some of their belongings […].

[…]

There've also been fuss today caused by the President's visit today. Urgently, they are laying asphalt over the pits around the site of the tragedy, flattening the ground, cutting the trees, repairing the school that houses the HQ, replacing lightbulbs in street lamps. The only thing they aren't doing is, perhaps, painting the earth. Everyone who's here finds this extremely annoying. […]

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Contrivance and Controversy as Brazilian Media Cover Urban Violence

Jose Murilo Junior · 19:57

lingua → pt · es

In Brazil last week, it was difficult to find blogs that did not post about the debate over the causes of urban violence. It all began on the web when people “pre-released” the leaked copy of the film ‘Elite Squad'. By now the polemic has reverberated and evolved into a complex chorus of disparate voices expressing themselves through diverse media — all of it reported, commented upon and amplified in the real time conversations of the Brazilian blogosphere.

This round of the discussion was triggered by an article published in a leading São Paulo newspaper (Folha de Sao Paulo) by Luciano Huck, a TV star reporting his distress over having been robbed of his Rolex with a gun pointed to his head. The star may now regret having triggered a huge controversy by evoking the name of ‘Capitão Nascimento' — Elite Squad's torturer policeman protagonist — as the solution to the violence of Brazilian streets.

Perhaps as an example of new strategies being developed by newspapers to compete for readers in the new digitally networked environments, Folha invited the rapper and blogger Ferrez — an active voice from Capão Redondo, one of the most violent communities in São Paulo — to write a kind of response to Huck's essay for publication in the same “Tendencias/ Debates” [Trends/Debates] section.

Ferrez's response asserted that a fair deal came out from Huck's encounter with his robbers, as the rich guy kept his life while the unprivileged guys got the Rolex. As far as we can tell, Folha's strategy worked and bloggers turned the Huck vs Ferrez ‘clash' into the hit of the week for Brazilian media, although many are not exactly happy with the resulting debate.

Fiz o texto, a pedido do coordenador de artigos Uirá Machado, que trabalha na Folha. Ele me mandou a carta de Luciano Huck, sobre seu assalto no Jardins. Coloquei o nome de: Pensamentos de um “correria”, , e com minha mente literária e ingênua fiz uma ficção onde o ponto de vista eram dos ladrões. Quando enviei o artigo para ele, que foi escrito em 5 horas, me mostrei preocupado por ser quase um conto, e podia fugir do estilo do espaço Tendências/Debates, mas o texto foi publicado.
Sobre o texto na Folha de São Paulo - Ferrez

I wrote the text at the request of the article coordinator Uirá Machado, who works at Folha. He sent me Luciano Huck's letter about the assault at the Jardins [a wealthy district of São Paulo]. I titled it as, “Thoughts of a ‘Runaway' “, and with my literary and innocent mind I created a piece of fiction where the point of view was from the thieves. When I sent the article to him, which was written in 5 hours, I was worried that my tale could be out of the style expected for the Trends/Debates section, but it was published anyway.
Sobre o texto na Folha de São Paulo - Ferrez

Está estabelecida a luta de classes. Bastou o apresentador branco e rico escrever um texto-desabafo para que centenas se revoltassem contra a cara de pau do sujeito que tem tudo na vida e ainda a audácia de reclamar apenas porque, no sinal, levaram seu estimado relógio, presente da diva que é também sua mulher, e que vale uma kitinete. Como polêmica é bom, a solução midiática (porque outra não há) foi chamar o Ferrez para tecer o contra-ponto sob a ótica do ladrão. Aí é que o bicho pegou definitivamente. Onde já se viu fazer a apologia do crime. Lugar de ladrão é no xilindró – ou, como prefeririam muitos, a sete palmos. Tudo muito explicável e legítimo, mas também raso e hipócrita. Huck, Ferrez, você, eu, o Renan e o Lula - Blônicas

It is the established class struggle. The white and rich TV showman writes a complaint in the newspaper which was enough to cause a revolt of hundreds over the insolence of the guy who has everything in life and still has the audacity to protest just because his beloved watch — a gift from the diva who is also his wife and which costs the price of a little appartment — was robbed at the red traffic light. As there is nothing like a good polemic, the media solution (as there is no other) was to call Ferrez in order to stitch in a counter-point from the thief's point of view. But then the whole thing definitely blew up. How can you allow an apology for crime? The place for thieves is in prison — or, as many would prefer, six feet under. Everything is very explainable and authentic, but it is also shallow and hypocrital.
Huck, Ferrez, você, eu, o Renan e o Lula - Blônicas

As visit stats and the number of blog posts on the issue were soaring Folha decided to call in another blogger to publish in its ‘Trends / Debates' section, this time a well known right wing watchdog. He had already declared in his blog that there could be no debate with Ferrez, who he described as, 'someone who supports death as a tool for social justice'. But that declaration could only make him the perfect one to blow hot air at the already inflamed debate.

O artigo do tal é irrespondível. Vou eu lhe dizer que o crime não compensa? Ele tem motivos para acreditar que sim. Lênin mandaria que lhe passassem fogo -não sem antes lhe expropriar o relógio. Apenas sugiro ao jornal que corrija seu pé biográfico: ele é um empresário; o bairro do Capão Redondo é seu produto, e a voz dos marginalizados, o fetiche de sua mercadoria. Ir além na contestação de seu libelo criminoso seria reconhecê-lo como voz aceitável na pluralidade do jornal. Eu não reconheço.
Reinaldo Azevedo in Rapper?! Argh - Blog do Orlando Tambosi

The article from that one cannot be given a response . Will I be the one to tell him that crime does not pay? He has elements [that cause him] to believe that it does. Lenin would order his death, not without expropriating the Rolex first. I will just ask the newspaper to correct his bio: he is in fact an entrepreneur, the Capão Redondo sector is his product, and the voice from the periphery is his fetish merchandise. To go further in responding his criminal libel would be like recognizing him as an acceptable voice in the newspaper plurality. I don't acknowlege this.
Reinaldo Azevedo in Rapper?! Argh - Blog do Orlando Tambosi

Folha's interplay with the blogosphere has surely raised enough eye-balls and provoked enough trackback links to characterize it as a successful initiative for the newspaper, but some bloggers and even some traditional media pundits have been criticizing the move.

Luciano Huck foi para a capa da última edição de Época. Antes esteve nas Páginas Amarelas de Veja, duas vezes na primeira página da Folha e foi assunto de quase sessenta mil ocorrências na Internet. Por que a celeuma? O apresentador achou que deveria protestar contra uma violência da qual foi vítima e, como é uma celebridade, teve tratamento VIP. Então um escritor da periferia achou que deveria defender o ponto de vista dos marginais, botou a boca no trombone e também foi para a primeira página. À primeira vista tudo isto parece um debate democrático, troca de idéias dentro de uma sociedade pluralista. Não é. A imprensa fixou-se nos aspectos mais sensacionalistas, como a chamada na capa da Época – Ele Merecia ser Roubado? – o público leitor foi na onda e manteve a mesma entonação. Dai para o linchamento e o canibalismo foi um passo. Quando se simplifica o debate como agora acontece, é inevitável que a resposta coletiva seja ainda mais simplista e ainda mais grosseira. A brutalidade que hoje se nota em alguns blogs e nas seções de cartas dos leitores não acontece por acaso. Alguém fez vibrar um diapasão, a multidão percebeu o tom e procurou a mesma afinação. É evidente que Luciano Huck não merecia ser roubado, ninguém merece ser roubado, nem mesmo ladrões. Mas um assunto sério como este não merece colocações tão ingênuas e tão desatinadas.
Alberto Dines in Sociedade do Espetáculo (de mau gosto) - Flanar

Luciano Huck - Época
Did he deserve to be robbed?
What the debate over Luciano Huck's assault shows about the Brazilian soul

Luciano Huck has gone to the front page of [the weekly magazine] Época's latest edition. Before that he was on Veja's [weekly magazine] yellow pages [main interview section], two times on Folhas first page, and was the subject of almost 60 thousand hits on the Internet. What caused the brouhaha? The TV star decided he should protest against a violence where he was the victim, and as a celebrity, he got VIP treatment. Then a writer from the edge thinking he should defend the thieves' point of view, blew it off and also reached the first page. It does seem like a democratic debate at first sight, an exchange of ideas in a pluralist society. It is not. The media has focused on the most sensationalist aspects. As we can read from the lead on Época's front page — ‘Did he deserve to be robbed?' — the readers catch the wave and keep the same tone. From there to lynching and canibalism was just a step. When you simplify the debate as it happens now, it is inevitable that the collective response becomes even more simplistic and crude. The brutality which we today notice in some blogs and in the letter sections are not a coincidence. Someone vibrated the tuner and the crowd has perceived the sound and followed the same tuning. It is obvious that Luciano Huck did not deserve to be robbed, nobody deserves to be robbed, not even thieves. But such a serious matter does not deserve such naive and immature discourses.
Alberto Dines in Sociedade do Espetáculo (de mau gosto) - Flanar

In this age of viral posts, mass participations and chaotic information in which both angels and demons seem to fly into our faces, the landscape of popular discourse is rapidly expanding in often confusing ways that can challenge the most established conventions of what is truth and what is contrivance and what are the legitimate bounds of public discourse. There will be many mainstream and alternative media intitiatives (and manipulations) seeking to gain a center stage in this new environment. As the debate rages, we can only draw the obvious conclusion — the new digital cultures of the Information Age are changing both the media game and its players at every level.

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Egypt: New Age of Phone Greetings

Amira Al Hussaini · 19:46

lingua → es

With Eid finally wrapped up and out of the way, Egyptian blogger Tarek Amr (Ar) takes time off to study the history of greetings - from the age of problematic phone calls to the new age of Third Generation multi-media wireless phones.

Amr explains:

المعايدة في القاموس المصري هي الإتصال بالأهل و الأصدقاء و تهنئتهم بالأعياد و المناسبات خاصة الدينية منها
قديما كانت تتم عن طريق التليفون, وكانت غالبا ما تكون الخطوط مشغولة, وتتحول المكالمة من تهنئة بالعيد إلى الشكوى من سوء خطوط التليفون. وفي حالة وجود بعض الأهل خارج حدود الوطن كان الناس يذهبوم للسنترال لإجراء تلك المكالمات. وفي السنترال كانوا ينتظرون في طابور طويل حتى يأتي دور العائلة سعيدة الحظ لكي تحشر نفسها في كشك صغير من إجل إجراء مكالمة تليفونية ثم الصياح و العويل من داخل الكشك حتي يستطيع الطرف الأخر سماعهم عبر الخطوط الدولية الرديئة

Greetings in the Egyptian dictionary is contacting family and friends and greeting them on festivals and special religious occasions. In the past, this used to happen using the telephone and very often lines were engaged and a congratulatory call would turn into complaining about bad telephone lines. In cases people had relatives abroad, they would go to the telephone central to conduct those calls. At the central, they would queue in long lines until the turn came for the lucky family to be squeezed into a booth to make their calls. This is following by screaming and wailing so that the other party could hear them, thanks to bad international connections.

ومع تطور الزمن و ظهور التليفون المحمول برسائلة النصية القصيرة الذي إرتدى عباءة منقذ البشرية من براثن التليفون أبو قرص. فبضغطة واحدة من إصبعك يمكنك بعث رسالة لعشرات الأشخاص. وفي البداية كانت تلك الرسائل تكتب باللغة الإنجليزية نظرا لأن الهواتف المحمولة معظمها لم يكن يدعم اللغة العربية. و في الأغلب كانت تتكون من كلمات قليلة و عبارات رسمية. ثم ظهرت بعد ذلك رسائل الأسكي أرت, وهي تلك الرسائل التي يتم فيها رسم أشكال و عبارات بإستخدام الحروف و الفواصل و النقط. ولكن كي تستطيع قرأة تلك الرسائل كان يجب عليك أن يكون عندك موبايل نفس نوع موبايل مرسلها. وأعتقد أن رسائل الأسكي بجانب نغمات ما قبل الإم بي ثري كانت أحد أهم الأسباب التي جعلت المصريين يتفقوا فيما بينهم على عدم شراء أي هاتف محمول غير نوكيا. ثم ظهرت بعد ذلك لغة الضاد في الهواتف المحمولة ومع ظهورها ظهرت نوعية جديدة من الرسائل - أظن أنها مستوردة من دول الخليج العربي - وهي الرسائل العربية المسجوعة على شاكل, “عيد سعيد, ثياب جديد, عمر مديد, ضحك بلا تنهيد, حذاء فريد, مقتول شهيد, إبراهيم سعيد”, وهي غالبة ما تكون عبارات ركيكة غير مفهومة بهدف المعايدة. ثم ظهرت بعد ذلك رسائل الملتيميديا و تكنولوجيا الجيل الثالث و الجيل الثالث شرطة و الجيل الثالث و سبعة من عشرة لكن المعايدة لم تتأثر بها. ربما لأسباب إقتصادية أو لأنها ظهرت في ظل وجود منافس جديد وهو كتاب الوجه المعروف بإسم الفيس بوك الذي ينتمي بدوره لما يعرف بإسم الشبكات الإجتماعية و الويب إتنين. ومن أهم مميزاتة أنه يمكنك إرسال ما لذ و طاب من صور أو عبارات مسجوعة أو حتي فيديو به راقصة إستربتيز على حوائط أشخاص لم ترى معظمهم وجها لوجة دون أن تدفع مليما. لكنه إلى الأن لم يتمكن من إقصاء رسائل المحمول بصورة نهائية نظرا لأن الثقافة الكمبيوترية النتاوية لم تنتشر إلى الأن في ربوع مصر المحروسة كإنتشار المحمول الذي أصبح حق مكفول لكل مصري كالماء و الدواء.

With development, came cellular phones and short text messaging (SMS), which became the saviour for humanity from from land line telephones. At the press of a button, you are able to send messages to scores of people. At the beginning, those messages were written in English because those cell phones did not support Arabic at the time. At most, the messages contained few words and official greetings. Next came the ascii art messages, which were formed using shapes, letters, commas and dots. In order to read those messages, you had to have a cellphone of a make similar to the person who sent the message. I think that those messages in addition to the ring tones from the pre-MP3 era was the reason why Egyptians agree to not buy any cellphone other than the Nokia. Following that, Arabic was introduced to cellular phones, and with this development, came a new type of rhyming text messaging, which I think was imported from Gulf countries. These text messages were of the type “Happy Eid, New Clothes, Long Life, Laughter without Sighs, Unique Shoes, a Killed Martyr and Ebrahim Saeed.” (All the words rhyme in the Arabic original: ie: Happy Eid, with a book to read, and a cat to feed, and a friend in need, a friend indeed). The messages were mostly incomprehensible phrases aimed at conveying the greetings. After that, came multi-media and Third Generation technology messages as well as other applications which didn't effect SMS messaging much, perhaps due to economic reasons or because they appeared at the time when another new competition was in the market, like Facebook. Facebook, which is part of the social networking and Web 2.0 platforms. Among its main features are the ability to send all that your heart desires in terms of photographs, messages and even videos on to the ‘walls' of people you may have never met face to face - without paying a penny. However, this development has not been able to eradicate SMS messages totally as the computer culture is not as widespread as cellphones in Egypt, where Egyptians consider the latter as a basic human right along on an equal footing to water and medicine.

لكن يا ترى يا هل ترى ما هي التكنولوجا القادمة التي ستستأثر بسوق المعايدة خاصة أن شركات المحمول و شركات الدي إس إل لن تتنازل بسهولة عن حقها في القروش القليلة القابعة داخل جيب المواطن المصري. و الناس في المقابل لن تتوقف عن البحث عن طرق جديدة للتواصل إما في سبيل التوفير أو بهدف المنظرة أو الإثنين معا

Will the coming technology impact the greetings market especially since cellular phone and DSL companies will not easily give up their rights in the few coins left in the pockets of Egyptians? People too will not stop looking for new ways to connect with each other, either as a means to save money or to show off or for both reasons together.

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Arabeyes: After Facebook, Comes Hatebook

Amira Al Hussaini · 16:56

lingua → pt · ar · fr · mg · bn

After Facebook, come the Hatebook. Following is what two bloggers, from Tunisia and Oman, have to say about the new sites - Hatebook.com and Hatebook.org.

A Screen Shot of Hatebook from Omani Blogger Sleepless in Muscat Image of hatebook.com from: Sleepless in Muscat

Tunisia:

From Tunisia, Subzeroblue discusses Hatebook.org and writes:

Facebook and all those social networking sites out there not really your kind of thing?
You'd rather be left alone?
You feel you have more people that you hate than people you like?
Then Hatebook is the site for you…
The first anti-social networking site, where you can connect with the people you hate…

Suzeroblue also reviews the site and explains:

Upload blackmail material or publish lies, get the latest gossip from your enemies and friends, post photos and videos on your hate profile, tag your friends, get hate points from disturbing people who live, study, or work around you, simply take over the world…

Hatebook looks and functions a lot like Facebook, except in a more devilish way. The color is a more aggressive red, user profiles include a section called “Why I'm Better Than You!”, and instead of Photo Albums you create “Hate Albums” consisting of photos and descriptions of people/things you hate.

Oman:

Meanwhile, Omani blogger Sleepless in Muscat has discovered another Hatebook site. He writes:

This is so funny.

I was just browsing the BBC world service site and found this by coincidence.

Apparently, someone has invested the popularity of the famous facebook service that has been recently acquired by Google and launched something similar only quite the opposite in purpose: Hatebook.com.

Will the Hatebooks pick up among Middle Eastern internet users as Facebook has? Only time can tell.

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