Over on Global Voices, Chinese editor John Kennedy is doing a tremendous job of covering a mass protest of ant farmers (yes, ant farmers) in Shenyang, China which is being systematically silenced by the government.
It’s a huge scandal where a major company selling health supplements (the active ingredient is ants) has filed for bankruptcy taking thousands of workers’ personal investments in ant farming equipment down the drain.
Pictures, videos, and forum comments posted on Chinese websites are quickly being removed by the authorities, but John and other bloggers are copying and translating them on other sites before they disappear forever.
More than 11,000 people in China have visited the post already.
I have been trying to find a cheap used Mac laptop for a friend on Craigslist before I go to Denmark this Xmas. I was delighted to find a $300 used iBook for sale, but when I wrote to the seller she told me she was in Manchester and would send the laptop by express mail. Already then I thought it sounded fishy. The whole point of using Craigslist instead of eBay is that you get to complete the transaction in person. But I wrote back to see what the seller, Amanda Benson, had in mind. Here’s what she wrote:
Hello
I will pay for a 2 days delivery so you will receive the laptop within 3-4 days.
Obviously we need a safe way to complete this deal that will allow us to make sure we receive what we are after.
I have found a way for us to complete the deal safely and fast, and in this way you will receive the laptop in less than 3 days, if you move fast as well. The solution is provided by a worldwide delivery company called TNT. TNT is similar to Fedex, DHL or UPS and they will provide assistance in hadling the payment and delivery of the laptop.
With this procedure you will have the change to test the laptop before I receive my payment.
The procedure is explained on the TNT webpage and please click on the link below to the TNT website to see how we can complete the deal safely and fast directly from the website of the company.
Hmm, now the lure of getting a cheap laptop had me wrapped up in wishful thinking. An honest third party company is surely some form of guarantee? People please, it took one Google search of “Amanda Benson and iBook” to find several pages declaring this a hoax. For some reason the scammers haven’t thought to use different aliases. The Washington Post even did a story on it in October. The TNT website is a fake! There are posts online commenting on this as far back as June 2007. Dammit. Be careful out there.
These films are produced by a group of filmmakers in Brooklyn. They upload a new film every week. The special effects are tremendous.
One film, The Hauntening, has been viewed more than 2 million times. Gotta love YouTube. But you gotta love the dinosaur/refrigerator magnet reference in this film even more.
So, the right wing Liberal government led by prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen continues for another term. And the most depressing thing about the election is actually that turn out was excellent (82%) and voting was fair – but the Danish public still voted for the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim Danish People’s Party in huge numbers. It remains the third biggest party of the country.
I didn’t follow the elections closely this time. It was very rushed and the outcome was pretty much predicted from the start. Also, I am no longer allowed to vote, because my genius government believes I am less Danish if I have lived outside the country for more than 2 years. Or maybe it’s just that I am less likely to vote for a bigot?
One of the interesting things about these elections is the way the internet has factored in. In the United States they say 2004 was the first “internet election”. Presidential candidates discovered blogs, online fundraising, and social networking. Danish media and politicians have had a comparable epiphany in 2007 with the supercharged additions of Facebook, YouTube, and Google map APIs. If you read Danish, the regional RSS aggregator Overskrift.dk has some great analysis of which politicians blogged, who blogged about them, and what they all talked about.
Many people I meet have a hard time understanding the anger that exists towards the United States among nationalists in Puerto Rico. One of the big heroes of the fight for Puerto Rican independence in the 20th century was Pedro Albizu Campos, a Harvard educated lawyer and leader of the Nationalist Party. He died in 1965 after suffering a stroke in prison.
Check out the trailer for a new documentary film that explains who he is: ¿Quien es Albizu Campos?
Here’s an interesting idea – a group of peace activists calling themselves Enough Fear, are organizing live person-to-person conversations on public phones between passers-by in America and Iranians at house parties in Iran. Next dial-up is on November 13 on the Boston Commons. Any topic is up for discussion, and translators will be at hand. It can’t hurt for people to talk to one another.
In addition to blogging at blogbyblog.dk (technology) and borgerdemokrati.dk (politics) my father has now also launched a personal weblog at danlarsen.net. Who said blogging wasn’t addictive? Might be more economical to consolidate at some point, but in the meantime delineation is probably helpful.
Bravo to Ricken Patel for his performance on BBC’s HardTalk. The questions were intelligent and fair, and some of the answers are necessarily inconclusive. I only wish social justice activists could find that kind of airtime and well-prepared journalists in the United States. Can Avaaz really claim to know what the world’s “silent majority” is thinking? If they involved members in the nitty gritty of policy on the Middle East would they still find such strong consensus?
It’s true that pretty much everyone (including depots at the UN) would agree to more peace, freedom and human rights. But Avaaz is one of the few organizations that actually pushes back and asks for those promises to come true. Ironically, they somehow end up reverting to representational democracy, even when the promise of internet activism is to put power in the hands of individuals across borders and party lines. Their true power will lie in gaining the trust of people to make decisions for them. How many people signing their petitions really know what would be best for Pakistan right now? Or even Burma?
As Ricken himself says, their target audience is an average mother checking email at home after a long work day. Short attention span, rather than (but not instead of) thousands of engaged activists, deeply involved in the formation of the campaign. I think Avaaz will find acceptable legitimacy in numbers of people who support them, but I still have hopes that even more democratic, and perhaps more decentralized, models for change through global online people power will take shape in the next years.
I blogged about this already in Danish on blogbyblog.dk – but anyone with a good idea for a blogging project in a “marginalized” community, should write it up and submit it to Rising Voices – the new Global Voices outreach project run by my colleague David Sasaki. We are giving out grants of max $5000 to the best projects. Deadline for application is November 30. The application process is styled like a group brainstorm in a wiki (see instructions). So far Rising Voices grantees include a blogging workshop in El Alto, Bolivia, a group blog at a school for women in Bangladesh, and an urban library blogging project in Colombia. Can’t wait to see what this next round of applications will lead to…
