Blue Gal filling in for Mike this week, taking this opportunity to link the international activist bloggers featured at this past weekend's BlogHer09 Conference:
Known Turf, India: Oh, you think the US has bad political sex scandal coverups?
Indigenous Bolivia, revealing and welcoming the hidden and banned indigenous peoples of Bolivia (and the only blogger I know blogging in English on this subject).
Mideast Youth People in Iraq marching on behalf of democracy in Iran.
Pilirani Semu-Banda, Malawi: Africa steps up the fight against maternal and infant mortality.
Gender and Me, Nigeria: Yes, India has Bollywood, but Nigeria has Nollywood. Interview with a Nollywood director.
With web 2.0, we’ve embraced the idea that people are going to share pictures of their cats, and now we build sophisticated tools to make that easier to do. as a result, we’re creating a wealth of tech that’s extremely helpful for activists. There are twin revolutions going on - the ease of creating content and the ease of sharing it with local and global audiences.
Author Ethan Zuckerman looks at political activism in Tunisia, China and Bahrain and how the respective governments tried to shut down the activists by blocking access to various sites like Daily Motion and YouTube, only to create more activists upset at the censorship of their right to look at cute kitties. The entire essay with all its links is well worth your time.
But that's international activism. Here at home, the internet has enabled a whole new swath of citizen journalists. And they are picking up the slack for the old media:
This is truly a sad statement on the state of journalism in the US today. That the question "How is Obama different from Bush?" even needs to be posed -- much less discussed -- is truly insulting to the intelligence of the waning viewers that these guys get.
Hmmm....let me count the ways: One's a divisive ideologue who has risen to undeserved levels of status given his personal mediocrity and intellectual laziness due to his connections versus one who believes in a post-partisan government that gets things done who has had to overcome many personal obstacles to achieve great levels based on intelligence, charisma and hard work. I can totally see why the public would need this clarified.
The thing that continues to be so frustrating is the continued post facto admissions by the Villagers as to the deficits that we've had over the last eight years with Bush. Sure, now that he is two months away from walking out of the White House for the last time, we can admit that the world hates us and doesn't want to work with Bush, as Katty Kay does, or that he is stupid (to put a more honest term to Woodward and Borger's "intellectually incurious) and finds the whole "understanding other people's points of view" boring.
But where were they for the last four years? Where was their outrage and coverage of this then? How many soldiers' lives could we have saved if the media had been more honest about Bush? How many poor Iraqi civilian lives? Time and time again, the media abdicates their role in presenting context and in this case, their acceptance of the catapulted propaganda has led the country to the brink of ruin. And yet they feel no culpability. Instead, they treat us to these faux-hard hitting dialogues comparing and contrasting Obama to Bush. Brilliant.
It shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that if the world could vote in the American elections, Barack Obama would be the winner. The world at large – with the possible exception of al Qaeda who ardently champion McCain’s candidacy – is sick to the back teeth of Bush, his policies, his wars and his Doctrines. But what is a bit unusual is the degree of Obamamania sweeping the world, with hope, with excitement, with jubilation. For the most part the world is looking forward to Change with a capital O.
So, at a time when American standing in the world has hit an all-time low, a small taste of what Obama could bring about and restore America’s reputation, a selection of excepts from comments around the world, and please feel free to add a few from your own neck of the woods, should you happen to be outside the borders of the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave:
European Union states agreed on Thursday to scrap sanctions against Cuba but will insist the Communist island improves its human rights record, EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said.
The decision, taken despite U.S. calls for the world to remain tough on Havana, will be reviewed after one year, EU sources said.
"Cuban sanctions will be lifted," Ferrero-Waldner told reporters after foreign ministers of the 27-nation bloc clinched agreement at a summit dinner in Brussels.
"Of course there is clear language on human rights, on the detention of prisoners and there will have to be a review also," she said, referring to statement to be issued later. [..]
Unlike the 1962 U.S. embargo, the EU sanctions do not prevent trade and investment. Lifting the sanctions will put the EU at odds with Washington, which wants to maintain a hard line against Cuba.
"We certainly don't see any kind of fundamental break with the Castro dictatorship that would give us reason to believe that now would be the time to lift sanctions," U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said on Thursday.
"We would not be supportive of the EU or anyone else easing those restrictions at this time."
There was a time -- not that long ago -- that we were respected enough that the EU would have acceded to our position. Of course the whole notion of our embargo against Cuba is way past any kind of relevant threat they may have posed and to claim now that it's due to human rights violations would be the worst kind of double standards on our part.
