Global News Journal

PangeaDay: Videos to change the world on May 10th

Juliana Rincon is video editor of Global Voices, which monitors citizen media in the developing world, Thomson Reuters is not responsible for the content — the views are the author’s alone.

On May 10th 2008 at 18:00 GMT, 24 films will be broadcast during a 4 hour event. What makes this different is that this event, PangeaDay will be broadcast from six locations worldwide in seven different languages to be viewed through internet, television or cellphones with one unique purpose: to make each other know about the lives of others and focus on what makes us similar, instead of what makes us different and let us work together towards peace. This initiative came from Egyptian filmmaker Jehane Noujaim‘s wish. As a TED Prize winner she was granted a wish in addition to a $100 000 USD award. PangeaDay is her wish, to change the world and create a day in which people of the world could come together through film. Her 2006 acceptance speech can be found here.

Because PangeaDay is about bringing people together, an invitation was made for audiences to upload their own videos on the pangeaday video channel where you can view the 1037 videos people uploaded in reply.

As an example, one of the uploaded videos is about an Art student in Tanzania, telling the story of his day to day life and how he wants to teach homeless kids about art. Following, the story of Chado by jamesstephenbrown:

The logistics of PangeaDay are awe-inspiring: from Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro, films, live music and speakers will come together to inspire the whole world. The films chosen have been selected from more than 25000 films from over 100 hundred countries.These movies all share some characteristics such as being able to inspire, transform and enabling us to experience life through another’s eyes. Queen Noor of Jordan, will be one of the speakers, along with musician and activist Bob Geldorf, Christiane Amanpour from CNN and the Iranian rock group Hypernova. While at these locations people will be getting together, all around the world parties and groups of friends can sign up and show that they will be tuned in: you can attend an open event in your hometown or even host your own.

However, Pangea Day isn’t just about getting together during 4 hours. The idea is for the event to get people inspired, talking and making changes. It has also allowed others to participate not only as viewers. Through partner organization Nokia, aspiring filmmakers in different locations throughout the world have been given video enabled mobile devices to some people in rural areas, refugee camps, and film schools, so they too can portray their stories. People can also upload their own videos for a chance to win a Nokia N95 8GB mobile device. This partnership brings us a Myanmar refugee in India recording children’s laughter, an Iranian family in a refugee camp in Afghanistan recording their idea of Hope, and an Indian in Bangalore filming the cutting down of Banyan trees… and children planting new trees. You can view these and other videos on this page.

So there are many different ways to participate. Don’t miss the chance to be a part of this and make sure to tell others and spread the word.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Pakistan’s peace deal : will it work?

Update - Since filing this blog,  Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud has said he is pulling out of the peace deal with the government after it refused to withdraw the army from tribal lands on the Afghan border. So were the sceptics right all along? And what does this mean for the government's new strategy?

On the same subject, here is an interesting piece in the Christian Science Monitor comparing Pakistan's policy to that of the United States in Iraq. "Americans can hardly complain that Pakistan is on the verge of a deal with jihadists," it says. "The US has already done a similar deal with Iraqi Sunni terrorists. In both cases, a prime goal is simply to isolate Al Qaeda."

No doubt many more twists and turns are yet to come before the picture becomes clearer.

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Pakistan's impending deal with the Mehsud tribes to end hostilities in South Waziristan could either turn out to be the door to a wider peace along the troubled corridor with Afghanistan or a strategic blunder with consequences not just for Pakistan, but for Afghanistan and beyond including the West.

Is Pakistan ready for it ? How far have the country's new civilian leaders -- who had pledged a radically different approach to the northwest region considered the haven of the Taliban and al Qaeda -- thought it through?

Newspaper editorials, military experts and blogs are debating those questions both in Pakistan and a world away in the United States, Britain and even Canada, which worries whether its troops in Afghanistan will end up paying a price.

Dominican Republic tests new metro system in Santo Domingo

Juliana Rincon is video editor of Global Voices, which monitors citizen media in the developing world, and will be a regular contributor to these pages. Thomson Reuters is not responsible for the content — the views are the author’s alone.

People scream, yell and cheer as they see it pass: in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, the newest celebrity is the Metro transportation system. The city is buzzing at the new metro system which starting last Saturday began operating tentatively for testing to bring visitors to and from the Santo Domingo Book Fair [es]. Excited Dominicans have been recording the metro passing by their houses on the different test runs and uploaded videos of themselves walking into the completed metro stations and travelling in train carriages which are so new they still have bubble-wrap on the seats.

User noe0324 has uploaded a video that manages to transmit the overwhelming expectation and pride for this massive public transportation method. On the first minute you can hear and see the excitement of the people who standing on their roofs at the side of the metro track, cheer, wave flags and clap as it passes by. The video can be seen by following this link or by viewing it on the embedded video that follows.

DJBlastor shows us another view: people standing in line 3 people deep waiting to get aboard the metro cars, and then the people rushing into the cars to see if they can get a seat. He has 3 other videos recorded that same day, with political commentary which seems to be the underlining current of support for the actual president as well as rare footage of people crammed inside a metro car, and most of them cracking brilliant smiles.

As mentioned previously, the metro seems to have raised President Leonel Fernandez’ popularity, and it was high to begin with, since it’s his second non-consecutive presidential period. The following video was uploaded by macaco993 and you can hear the crowd cheering and chanting “Leonel, Leonel, Leonel”:

Supercrackers also recorded last week’s calmer entrance into the Metro system, where she travels through the station, down stairs and sits, while watching children and adults happily pop the bubble-wrap between the seats.

from Africa News blog:

Kenya gets new cabinet — at last

It took six weeks of intense negotiation to end Kenya's post-election mayhem and another six weeks of haggling over a new power-sharing cabinet. The 41-member cabinet has now been sworn in, with President Mwai Kibaki sharing portfolios with opposition leader Raila Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement. Kibaki's disputed re-election after Kenya's Dec. 27 poll triggered the country's worst post-independence crisis that killed more than 1,200 people and uprooted more than 300,000.

The African Union moved swiftly to end the turmoil in Kenya, sending former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to mediate. He was back in Kenya on April 17 when the new cabinet was sworn in. Does the formation of the power-sharing cabinet mark a triumph for African diplomacy? Are there any lessons here for the post-election crisis in Zimbabwe? Has Kenya now turned the corner after the traumatic ethnic killings that battered its image as a comparatively stable African democracy and economy? What should be the priorities of the new cabinet? What measures need to be taken to resettle  displaced people, notably in the Rift Valley, and give them assurances of future security? What constitutional changes does Kenya need to ensure enduring peace and stability? Have your say.

Veltroni – ‘yes he can’ admit defeat

Does Italy like a good loser?

“As is customary in all Western democracy, and as I feel it is right to do, I called the leader of the People of Freedom, Silvio Berlusconi, to acknowledge his victory and wish him good luck in his job,” Veltroni told reporters, bowing to the inevitable, even if final results were hours away.

Berlusconi has never admitted losing the 2006 election which he blamed on fraud and Veltroni’s noble gesture seemed to be the latest effort to imitate his much-admired counterparts in the Anglo-Saxon world where ‘fair play’ is, in theory, considered a virtue.

“I can’t deny that I think the 2006 elections were irregular. The result we achieved today is proof of that,” Berlusconi said.

Barack Obama, from whom Veltroni copied his “Yes we can” slogan “Si puo’ fare”, will be hoping he does not to have to make a phone call similar to Veltroni’s any time soon.

Italy’s hard-left at the Hard Rock

Italy’s far-left alliance of Communists and Greens may not conjure up images of glitz and New York steaks, but leader Fausto Bertinotti has nevertheless picked the Hard Rock Cafe on Rome’s fashionable Via Veneto to wait out the tally of election results on Monday evening.  Conveniently located next to the American Embassy, the Hard Rock promises everything from hickory smoked chicken wings to mac & cheese to help ease the long wait ahead for the leader of the Rainbow Left coalition.

 Other candidates have chosen more traditional venues for the evening: the centre-right’s Silvio Berlusconi will be waiting it out at his villa in Arcore near Milan, while centre-left rival Walter Veltroni will be standing by at his party’s offices in Rome dubbed the “Loft”.

Far-right leader Daniela Santanche says she won’t stray far from her home in Milan, while Northern League leader Umberto Bossi and centrist leader Pier Ferdinando Casini will both be holed up at their respective party headquarters.

Ringing cellphones, drunken polling booth chief…

The judicial problems in Italy of former Justice Minister Clemente Mastella’s wife Sandra signaled the start of the political crisis that forced Italians back to the ballot box on Sunday and Monday, and she was back in the news over a ringing cellphone as she cast her vote.

Italy’s interior ministry has banned Italians from carrying cellphones or any device that can take pictures or videos into the voting booth, over fears of corruption. Sandra Mastella caused a minor stir when her cell phone started ringing while she voted in the southern town of Ceppaloni on Sunday, prompting electoral workers to call in the police. It turns out her cell phone did not double as a camera, meaning she was not violating the law.

“It was a banal distraction, I had it in my pocket,” Mastella said.

There were minor hiccups at other polling stations as well. In the northern town of Sant’Orsola, the head of a local polling station showed up drunk, prompting colleagues to call in the police. The chief was fined and a new, sober polling booth chairman was instated.

No hope, no vote…

As Italians began trickling to the polls to vote in the general election on Sunday, some protested to show their disillusionment with politics.

Angry at plans to build a landfill site nearby, one group of young Neapolitans  gathered 600 election identification cards and sent them to the Italian president instead of using them to vote.

“I’m not going to vote because I don’t feel represented by the institutions and because there is no-one that worries about preserving our rights,” group member Sebastian Perrone told the Ansa news agency. 

Another angry Neapolitan took an even more novel approach: he ate his ballot form at the polling booth.

Finally, motorists on the A14 highway in Italy were greeted on Sunday morning by two large banners spray painted with the words : “Enough with politics, We want colonels!” They were quickly taken down by police.

A popular “anti-politics” movement led by figures like comedian Beppe Grillo has swept up about 6 to 8 percent of voters, estimates the pollster Luigi Crespi. He estimates the number of blank ballots will nearly triple to about 1 million during the April 13-14 election from about 400,000 in the last parliamentary election two years ago.

from Reuters Editors:

Blogging Iran: Politics and Poetry

Blogging is big in Iran. We already knew that from Technorati statistics on the prevalence of Farsi language blogs on the Web. But now comes a fascinating insight into what all those bloggers are blogging about.

This is what the Iranian blogosphere looks like, according to John Kelly - a Columbia University academic who isn't joking when he tells audiences he thinks there isn't a human phenomenon that can't be reduced to a series of coloured dots.

Each dot represents a blog , and the bigger the dot the greater the number of links being made to that blog.

I'm surprised by the size of the conservative politics blogosphere and of the neighbouring religious blogosphere, which are jointly around the same size as the secular and reformist blogospheres.

Most surprising, however, is the equally large poetry blogosphere in the upper left hand quadrant.

John previewed this recently published research at the Media:Republic gathering in Los Angeles last month. And it was the size of the poetry blogosphere that got participants talking -- I think most of the American and British participants felt slightly awed that Iranians were using the Web to create art on such a scale.

Giving it to Berlusconi…

With her striking good looks and stiletto heels, Italy’s far-right candidate Daniela Santanche has been turning heads on the campaign trail. But is centre-right candidate Silvio Berlusconi also among her admirers? 

“Berlusconi? He’s obsessed with me. But I won’t give it to him…,” Santanche said during a campaign stop this week.

Berlusconi initially responded by saying he would not get into a debate with someone who comes from a world of “yachts, caviar and champagne.” But he was willing to play ball a day later. 

“Well! If she continues to come on to me….,” the media tycoon told reporters when they prodded him on Santanche’s comments again. 

Santanche and Berlusconi have been trading barbs throughout the election campaign, with the 47-year old businesswoman’s La Destra party expected to steal  votes on the right away from the 71-year old media tycoon looking to return to power for the third time.

Santanche — conscious of the small splash she has made by becoming one of the few women prime minister candidates in Italy – has reserved some of her sharpest rebukes for Berlusconi, urging Italian women not to vote for him and calling his views outdated and sexist.  

“Berlusconi better be careful, because on April 13-14, Italian women will be the ones to cook his goose,” Santanche told Reuters last week.