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El País coverage of the second day of the Global Voices Summit
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Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2008
Let’s put the fact that I’m probably the only member of the Global Voices community who hasn’t yet blogged about the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2008 — going on right now in Budapest, Hungary — down to shoemaker’s child syndrome: I’ve been way too busy organising the thing to do much else lately.
Yesterday we focused on online censorship and freedom of speech, and we’re paying attention today to the work of the wider Global Voices community.
Follow the proceedings via our liveblog, our Twitter feed, our videostream, Flickr and the global blogosphere.
Back to work.
UPDATE: Follow the Twitter commentary on GV Summit via Summize (Thanks to @hectorpal for the tip!)
Technorati Tags: gvsummit08, globalvoices
links for 2008-06-27
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Article on cyberactivism by Evgeny Morozov mentioning the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit.
links for 2008-06-25
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“Google Map Maker is enabled for Trinidad and Tobago (and several other Caribbean islands). Read the Google MapMaker Getting Started Guide and begin adding content to Google MapMaker Trinidad and Tobago”
links for 2008-06-20
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Great paper by GV’s Japanese language editor, Chris Salzberg, examining Global Voices’ translation section
links for 2008-06-19
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“The CARIBID 2010 CAMPAIGN is a movement to ensure Caribbean American or West Indians get their own category on the U.S. Census, whether on the short form or in the American Survey initiative invisible as an economic and political bloc in mainstream Ameri
links for 2008-06-18
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“”If they take those guidelines and start using them to refine the way they make complaints, and if they closely match the law, then it’s helpful - it’s a restraint on their own legal department… If they were on the other hand to say, you may use 10 wor
links for 2008-06-12
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“…. The Jamaican government went as far as preventing its country’s leading gay rights group from even attending the New York meeting. Bloggers throughout the Caribbean are taking the country’s government to task.”
links for 2008-06-06
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Nikipedia posts his two cents’ on the Walcott-Naipaul feud at the Guardian blog
links for 2008-06-04
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Ned Sublette is “kinetic energy made flesh”, writes Garnette Cadogan in this BOMB interview about Sublette’s new book on New Orleans
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“How much do we have to care about?” asks David Weinberger, with a little help from Ethan Z.
links for 2008-06-02
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“For veteran wildlife ranger Joseph Kimojino, the traditional tools of his trade — binoculars, off-road jeep and a rifle — have been supplemented by Twitter, Flickr and a blog.”
Ratty
Ratty would now be in his mid-twenties, I figured. If he was still alive. In 1996, when I met him, he didn’t look like a kid with a promising future. He had puffy eyelids which gave him a slow, sleepy appearance and seemed to have difficulty grasping basic concepts. Like the reason I wasn’t overjoyed to find him hanging out on my balcony when I emerged from my room first thing in the morning. Or why it wasn’t practical for me to mail him a football all the way from Trinidad.
During the two or three days I spent at Jake’s, Ratty followed me around like a shadow. I wondered if he behaved that way with every guest, thought jokingly that he should be listed among the hotel’s amenities: CD player, ceiling fan, mosquito nets, ocean view, 12 year-old Jamaican boy. As far as I remember, I was mostly patient with him. If he had a family, they were nowhere in evidence. He didn’t seem to be in school. The people at Jake’s appeared to have adopted him, in a manner of speaking, and during the time I was there he spent most of his day on the property.
Jake’s, Treasure Beach
I struggle now to recall what Ratty and I talked about, but all I remember is him asking me for things, which is probably highly unfair to him. In those days I used to draw almost as avidly as I take photos today (though with far less success), and seeing me one day with a pencil and sketch book, Ratty commissioned the two portraits below (drawing him sleeping was his idea). The fact that I still have them in my possession would suggest he wasn’t too impressed with his likeness or my drawing ability, which would in turn suggest that he was much more discerning than I gave him credit for.
Returning to Treasure Beach week before last, I wondered what had become of Ratty. It became a running joke among my idle villa-mates to point out Treasure Beach limers in their mid-twenties and say “Hey, look Ratty”. Or to conjure up wild stories in which Ratty was cast in absurdly negative or positive roles: Ratty as village don, Ratty as ultra-successful businessman and owner of several choice beachfront properties. And they teased me endlessly about Ratty’s “Rosebud“, the football that I, dasher of poor village boys’ dreams, had failed to send him. If Ratty had indeed gone off the straight and narrow, it was all my fault.
On our last evening in Treasure Beach I had the chance to ask Jake’s owner Sally Henzell what had happened to Ratty. Sally sighed. “We let him go only last week,” she said, in a way that suggested that it wasn’t the first time they’d had to do so. “Drugs.” I didn’t mention the football.
I was impressed, though not surprised, that Jake’s had remained committed to Ratty, even if only off and on, over the course of 12 years. Jake’s is that kind of place. When I first stayed there, in 1996, before there was a wall out front, they didn’t serve breakfast, insisting that guests walk down the road instead and patronise a local establishment called the Trans-Love Café (now called A&J Heart of Love).
Perhaps the 12 year-old Ratty had in fact been a part of the hotel’s amenities, a way of reminding guests that the chic, pricey establishment they were staying at was in fact part of a community, a community that sometimes produces boys like Ratty, in the hope that a few of them leave with a sense that their fate and Ratty’s are intertwined. So that they’d make the effort to mail a football–which, while impractical, isn’t impossible–or maybe do something even more meaningful.
links for 2008-06-01
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Chris Lydon’s second despatch from the Calabash litfest
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African blog aggregator Afrigator sets up a page to compile content discussing the South African Xenophobia crisis
links for 2008-05-31
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Chris Lydon opens his series of Calabsh litfest reports with a show on the Walcott-Naipaul feud.
Caribbean Free Radio #48 - Calabash Literary Festival 2008
Tuesday May 27th 2008, 11:57 pm
Filed under: Arts & culture, Podcast, Reading & writing, Travel
Posted by: Georgia
Filed under: Arts & culture, Podcast, Reading & writing, Travel
Posted by: Georgia
Yes — a podcast. In CFR’s 48th show, a collaboration with Antilles and the Caribbean Review of Books (CRB) recorded in Treasure Beach, Jamaica, my gin and tonic-lubricated friends Annie Paul, Nicholas Laughlin, Jonathan Ali, Kei Miller, Alastair Bird and I review the first day-and-a-half of the Calabash International Literary Festival.
Apologies to Chris Abani and Yusef Komunyakaa for omitting mention of their fine readings on Friday night. At the time of the recording we were still recovering from Derek Walcott’s unforgettable premiere reading of “The Mongoose”, a “tribute” to V S Naipaul that begins with the choice lines, “I have been bitten/I must avoid infection/Or else I’ll be dead as Naipaul’s fiction,” and goes either downhill or uphill from there, depending on your point of view. Being good bacchanal-loving Caribbeans, we naturally devote a section of our review to discussion of that episode.
Thomas Glave at Calabash 2008
Following our review is a far more coherent interview with Jamaican writer Thomas Glave, who talks about his latest work, Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles. Thomas was also kind enough to send me a copy of the statement with which he prefaced his reading at Calabash on opening night:
“I want to say a special thanks to the Calabash organisers – Colin Channer, Kwame Dawes, and Justine Henzell – for inviting me back to Calabash, this being my second reading at the festival, and for their unceasing generosity to, and support of, writers from around the world. And so, mindful of that generosity and kindness, my conscience will not permit me to begin reading from this book in particular before I say that as a gay man of Jamaican background I am appalled and outraged by the Prime Minister’s having said only three days ago on BBC-TV that homosexuals will not have any place in his Cabinet and, implicitly, by extension, in Jamaica. I guess this means that there will never be any room in Mr Golding’s Cabinet for me and for the many, many other men and women in Jamaica who are homosexual. And so I now feel moved to say directly to Mr Golding that it is exactly this kind of bigotry and narrow-mindedness that Jamaica does not need any more of, and that you, Mr Golding, should be ashamed of yourself for providing such an example of how not to lead Jamaica into the future. And so, Mr Golding, think about how much you are not helping Jamaica the next time you decide to stand up and say that only some Jamaicans – heterosexuals, in this case – have the right to live in their country as full citizens with full human rights, while others – homosexuals – do not. That is not democracy. That is not humane leadership. That is simply the stupidity and cruelty of bigotry.”
links for 2008-05-24
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Nikipedia rounds up the blog reaction to the Jamaican PM’s recent statements on the non-participation of homosexuals in his administration
No photos at Calabash
On Wednesday I promised “festival reports and photos” from the Calabash International Literary Festival starting today. It looks, however, like I’ll have to break that promise, as I learned this afternoon that photography isn’t allowed at this year’s event. An official I spoke with briefly said something to the effect that this year they were trying to prevent photos from getting out “all over the place”. A misguided policy, in my opinion, and one that’s contrary to the spirit of the age and the openness that Calabash is otherwise known for.
The ban on photography also deprives the festival of the kind of free publicity the likes of me gave them last year. I just hope the official festival photographer gives the festival dogs their due.
See last year’s photos here.