The quiet repression of non-believers

NOTE: I wrote about this subject in a story which failed to be published last year, and am publishing it now as a new IHEU report is gaining media attention that focuses entirely on Muslim countries.

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In 1988 in Sydney I attended a protest which I've never forgotten. It was defending the right of the Sydney Film Festival to screen Martin Scorsese's film 'The Last Temptation of Christ'. That film had been subjected to international protests, including a Molotov cocktail attack on a Paris cinema. In Sydney a mainly elderly and mainly female group counter protested and a number of these older women - dressed in black if memory serves - tried to assault the film's defenders, including me, and those attending the screening.

Last year in Athens, those attending a performance of the play 'Corpus Christi' were attacked by right-wing religious protesters and the police stood by. The Greek state then charged the play's organizers, producers and cast with blasphemy following a lawsuit filed by a Greek Orthodox Bishop. Greek law says that "a lack of respect for things divine, is punished with up to three months in prison."

A report, 'Freedom of Thought 2012: A Global Report on Discrimination Against Humanists, Atheists and the Non-religious' from the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) covers the Greek developments in a global overview of the often forgotten side of religious persecution -- that of atheists, humanists and the non-religious.

The report extensively covers persecution in majority Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Mauritania, Malaysia and Indonesia but it also features other countries where state protection of religion and their persecution of those who dissent and mock draws less attention.

Many of those countries have a Christian church as the state religion and have prosecuted blasphemers, and it's not just the country you've probably heard about -- Russia and the Pussy Riot case.

In Germany insulting "the content of others' religious faith or faith related to a philosophy of life" can get you three years imprisonment. In 2010 a magazine was prosecuted for a cartoon about the pedophilia scandals in the Catholic Church.

The German state of Bavaria gives Catholic bishops a veto on professorial appointments, including philosophy and sociology/political science, at state universities. That veto was unsuccessfully challenged in court in 2007.

Last year, the case of the lead singer of a Polish heavy metal band who ripped up a Bible and called the Catholic Church a "criminal sect" during a 2007 concert came to the Supreme Court. It found that he did have a case to answer and sent the case back to a lower court. The rock star could get two years in prison.

In many European countries Christian churches are state funded. In some parts of Switzerland there is a church tax, which private companies are required to pay.

The UK funds religious schools -- around one third of all schools -- who can hire and fire based on deviation from their religion (the same is true in Canada). British religious organizations providing social services can discriminate against employees in ways which other service providers cannot. Britain actually has the 26 most senior Church of England Bishops sitting in its upper house of parliament.

Although the UK has abolished its blasphemy law, since 2004 there have been comparable prosecutions for "offense" under the Public Order Act, such as one of a man who refused to remove a sign from his window which read "religions are fairy stories for adults". There is a campaign for the law's repeal, which the government has said it is sympathetic to, but it is yet to be repealed or amended.

Britain's colonial blasphemy law passed over to independent India and in 2011, citing it, the Indian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology told social media networks to screen and remove blasphemous content within 36 hours of receiving a complaint. The Indian Catholic Church has used that law against Sanul Edamaruku, a humanist who has exposed numerous "miracle" frauds. These include a so-called "weeping Jesus" statue which was actually underneath a leaky drain whose contents gullible supplicants were drinking (and falling ill from as a result). Last month two women who complained online when Mumbai was shut down following the death of a Hindu nationalist leader were arrested and their family attacked by mobs.

In Israel, you can be imprisoned for a year if "one voices in a public place and in the hearing of another person any word or sound that is liable to crudely offend the religious faith or sentiment of others." Israelis who are non-religious only got a limited right to marry in 2010 and interfaith marriages and divorces have to be conducted overseas.

The United States, despite constitutional separation of church and state, the report says:

Has long been home to a social and political atmosphere in which atheists and the non-religious are made to feel like lesser Americans or non-Americans.

Despite a 1961 Supreme Court decision, Arkansas, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas still have in place constitutional provisions that bar atheists from holding public office. It was 2007 when the US Congress got its first and only openly atheist member in Pete Stark from California. In 2012 Stark lost and now there are no atheists in Congress.

Under the radar of media attention, the wealthy American Christian evangelical lobby, aligned with the Vatican and Islamic countries, have been pressing the United Nations for an international blasphemy ban. That notion was knocked back by the Obama administration in October 2012.

In America's military, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has fought "inappropriate religious incursion" by what the group calls "the fundamentalist Christian Taliban".

None of these examples matches the persecution in Muslim majority countries like Pakistan, but media coverage is partial. For example the tourist tropical paradise islands of The Maldives mandate that citizens must be Muslim. Non-Muslims cannot vote. Education, according to the Maldivian constitution, must inculcate obedience to Islam.

Two years ago a Maldivian air traffic controller threatened with death for abandoning Islam was found hanged from the control tower of the international airport which receives thousands of rich foreign tourists every day.

Ismail Mohamed Didi's suicide did not lead to a subsequent tourist boycott of The Maldives. [After this was written a tourist boycott campaign was launched, not because of Didi, or because of the arrest of former president Mohamed Nasheed, but due to a teenage rape victim being sentenced to be lashed for premarital sex].

The IHEU report has one upside. Despite the prosecutions for defying religion on social media, it is through social media that the non-religious are finding each other in religiously repressive countries. The report says that:

There are now Facebook groups of atheists in Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, and Sudan, as well as more general online ex-Muslim and Arab language atheist groups.

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Socially responsible outsourcing

I posted recently about mobile developments in Africa and how they are being used in a number of imaginative ways - many of which which we're yet to see in the 'West'!

As well as being used to organise day labour they're also used by people to do small jobs such as translations. In Kenya, with its many languages, this is how help resources for mobile companies' customer services are being built - word-by-word



Samasource is a fantastic new San Francisco non-profit that partners with small, talented, tech companies and nonprofit training centers in poor and rural communities (currently Kenya, Cameroon, Uganda, rural India, and Nepal) to find them clients.

It derives its name from the word sama, Sanskrit for “equal”.

Their partners must meet stringent social impact criteria - fewer than 20% of applicant firms are selected - and they specialize in services ranging from data entry to advanced software and website development.

It's about giving work, not aid to people in the world's poorest countries.

Socially Responsible Outsourcing 101

View more Microsoft Word documents from Leila Chirayath.

Here's a profile of Ann Wangui, a graduate with honors from Nairobi's Methodist University. She is an example of the sort of person who is struggling to find a job in Nairobi despite her qualifications and who Samasource aims to help.



This is certainly a much better approach than the one being adopted by the world's large tech companies. Erik Hersman recently posted Microsoft vs the Open Source Community in Africa.

If Microsoft developer communities do emerge in Africa, Erik writes, even with the massive hurdle of paying for expensive access to developer tools, "we’re still left with what one person wrote: …they will be formed from programmers who are completely dependent on American software for the livelihood: it’s neo-colonialism, pure and simple."

In Africa organizations have a lot of hurdles to overcome, not least of which is the straight cost of doing business. Where it might be simple for some organizations in the US and Europe to wave off a couple thousand dollars worth of licensing fees, the same is not true in Africa. The margins are lower, so every cent counts.

In a region where cost is so important, it’s amazing then that the most lucrative deals go to the Western organizations that have high costs for ownership and maintenance. These outside organizations use backdoor methods to gain contracts where in-country options are available, usually with less expense and with greater local support.

Hersman also reports that Microsoft are trying to muscle in on the African-developed Ushahidi crisis reporting social software with a new product called Vine. He says "if they really are about creating emergency and disaster software for use by normal people, then I would encourage them to not charge for it and to make it as open as possible for others to work with it."

Fat chance, I suspect.

HT: Owen Barder

Tech lessons from Africa

Ushahidi, which means ”testimony” in Swahili, is an open source engine. The project was developed in the effort to better map out reports of violence in Kenya. This was after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008.

The aim of Ushahidi is to create a platform that any person or organization can use to set up his or her own platform for collecting and visualizing information. They explain that, ‘the core Ushahidi platform allows for a plug-in and extensions that can be customized for different locales and needs. The tool is open source allowing others to download, implement and use the engine so that they can bring awareness to crises in their own region.’

The core engine is built on the premise that gathering crisis information from the general public provides new insights into events happening in ‘near real-time.’

Ushahidi is also being utilised in the Indian election by Vote Report India.



Users contribute direct SMS, email, and web reports on violations of the Indian Election Commission’s Model Code of Conduct (PDF). The platform will then aggregate these direct reports with news reports, blog posts, photos, videos and tweets related to the elections from all relevant sources, in one place, on an interactive map.

Vote Report India aim is to not only increase transparency and accountability in the Indian election process, but also provide the most complete picture of public opinion in India during the elections.

Vote Report India is a non-partisan all-volunteer collaboration between software developers, designers, academics, and other professionals.

Here's Erik Hersman, aka WhiteAfrican, talking to TED about Ushahidi:



Here's a paper on the use of the Ushahidi platform in the Gaza war. Scroll to sec.5 for new media.

Recent research from ResearchICTAfrica reveals that Kenyans are spending incredible amounts on mobile communication as a proportion of income.

Here’s how it breaks down. The average Kenyan spends over 50% of their disposable income on mobile communication. For the bottom 75% of the population, that figure goes up to 63.6%. In terms of total individual income, the average Kenyan spends 16.7% of their income on mobile communication. That figure rises to 26.6% when looking at the bottom 75% of the population.

Africans are paying for mobile communication in spite of how expensive it is, not because of how affordable it is and because access to mobile communication is critical for people. Even if you are digging a ditch by the side of the road, day labour is now organised via SMS.

Nathan Eagle of MIT recently gave a talk to eTech where he explained about the mobile scene in Africa.



Entrepreneurs are constantly finding new uses for the technology.

A Kenyan water pump manufacturer combines an mobile-mPesa-enabled, solar-powered metering system with their water pumps. They give water pumps away for free and then make a profit by selling access to water via Safaricom’s mPesa service. Send the pump 20 Kenyan Shillings and it pumps 20 litres of water for you. This has increased the water pump companies business and made water more accessible to those who need it.

However, as Steve Song points out:

When a single mobile operator is a gatekeeper to water supply, something is wrong. For any village in this situation, [Kenya's largest mobile network]Safaricom can charge whatever they like.

If we accept the premise that, in places like Kenya, no one can afford not to have access to a phone, then one cannot help but feel that something needs to be done. A flour milling company in South Africa was recently fined more than 45 million Rand by the Competition Commission for price fixing and collusion. I think it is time to take a serious look at mobile operators.

Imagine an alternate reality where Africans paid less than 5% percent of their income on mobile communications and all phones operated on an IP-based network so that any new African innovation might be unlimited in terms of scope. Then we would see mobile-enabled social and economic innovation taking off in Africa.

As Nathan explains, African colleges and universities are turning out a lot of entrepreneurial tech talent. Unfortunately, much of this then migrates. Things like his work and the establishment of companies like Google Kenya is helping to stem this flow. Barcamp's have been held in Kenya and are coming up in Nigeria.

London is hosting a chance for sponsors and African innovators to meet up this weekend at Africa Gathering.

WhiteAfrican's blog is full of tales of tech innovation in Africa. Here he talks about the problems facing the next generation of techies in Liberia. Here's his list of African tech events.

Here Jonathan Gosier explains about his work in developing a tech hub in Uganda.

The rest of the world has a lot to learn from Africa, most obviously in developments around mobile phones.

HT: Kenya Pundit, WhiteAfrican

The Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women

Fabulous.

Indians outraged at an attack on women for drinking in a bar have gathered together to send a provocative gift of underwear to right-wing activists.

More than 5,000 people, including men, have joined the Facebook group, which calls itself the Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women.

The group says it will give the pink underwear to Sri Ram Sena (Army of Lord Ram) on Valentine's Day on Saturday.

It was blamed for the bar attack in the southern city of Mangalore last month.

Pramod Mutalik, who heads the little known Ram Sena and is now on bail after he was held following the attack, has said it is "not acceptable" for women to go to bars in India.

He has also said his men will protest against Valentine's Day on Saturday.

The Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women, which was formed on Facebook last Thursday, has also exhorted women to "walk to the nearest pub and buy a drink" on Valentine's Day.

A spokeswoman for the group, Nisha Susan, told the BBC it was giving chaddis (Hindi colloquial for underwear) as they alluded to a prominent Hindu right-wing group whose khaki-shorts-wearing cadres were often derisively called "chaddi wallahs" (chaddi wearers).

"We chose the colour pink because it is a frivolous colour," she said.

thepinkchaddicampaign

Our two-tier rights regime

Watched a funny episode of the Welsh sitcom High Hopes, 'A Passage to India', which had this synopsis:

The Immigration Department, in the guise of Adam Mosley, plan to deport Muktar Rahman, the elderly patriarch of the local Indian restaurant, back to the Punjab. The community rallies around to save him, led by Mam.

Moseley indeed. In a big, black leather Matrix coat and a copy of Mein Kampf on the desk. All very funny and perhaps only in Wales as I'm sure some English newspaper/Minister would object were it on BBC1 (England).

Thing is, it was drawing on a big grain of truth. The 'Immigration Department' (the Home Office) may not actually be Nazis but they are out of control, with asylum seekers being deliberately made destitute, beaten in detention centres and the whole system riddled with racism and homophobia where other parts of government are being systematically un-riddled.

The treatment of refugee Zimbabweans (many of whom are professionals) has, perhaps, shone some light on just how disgusting the regime is in its treatment of people fleeing persecution. But I could quote you case after maltreated case, particularly of gay people.

Just where we are is best shown by the case of Labour populist Minister Phil Woolas who recently got out the big tar brush to attack NGOs who support such people as causing "more harm than they do good." Did anyone complain about what he said?

The Queen's Speech featured another attempt by the government to remove higher court appeal and review rights on refugee decisions by civil servants (which consistently find more than a third of initial decisions to be wrong under existing rules).

Other proposals included new powers for immigration officers to stop people in the street and demand to see proof of entitlement to be here, no statutory limitation on the length of immigration detention, no limitation of the power to detain children, anyone assaulting, obstructing or resisting anyone exercising functions 'under the Act' commits a criminal offence and - most relevant to the sitcom - the exemption from deportation of certain long-resident Commonwealth citizens has gone.

Were you aware? Read of this anywhere other than vague references to a 'crack-down' and Ministers being 'hard'? Thought not.

As Nick Clegg said on the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we are "fast developing a two-tier rights regime."

And what are we becoming in the process? Not the country which welcomed tens of thousands of Jewish refugees, or the Ugandan Asians, or exiled Poles or numerous others but some other country and, particularly, some other Labour party I barely recognise.

Smith, Woolas and their ilk come across as having not a shred of humanity. We are better than this.

The UK recession: one way out

After being without the internet at home for a while, I sure know I'd rather have it than a car. And it seems I'm not alone - in fact most Brits feel the same way according to a new survey by AMD.

The average Briton would rather have access to the internet than a car or washing machine, according to a new survey.

The research, from technology company AMD, looked into British notebook usage and connectivity, and found that getting online for many has become essential, in particular for ‘Generation Y’, with 90% of 18-24 year olds owning a notebook and 73% going so far as to say they ‘couldn’t live without’ it.

In addition, Britons consider access to the Internet (67%) as more important than access to a car (54%) or a washing machine (58%).

And in another report, this sounds like a good choice as the only sector likely to stay steady or even grow in a recession is ... the web and digital media. And here the UK is doing well.

The UK leads a table of 12 industrialised nations when it comes to embracing digital technology, according to a new report from communications watchdog Ofcom.

The report also indicates at the Irish spend most time on their mobiles, while the Poles spend the most time listening to the radio.

Significantly, the research also uncovered that more women than men use the internet.

The Ofcom research reveals that UK consumers are embracing new digital TV services, such as High Definition TV and Digital Video Recorders, alongside many other leading economies across the world.

These services give UK consumers a much greater choice of TV channels with sharper pictures and the ability to record, store, pause and fast-forward programmes.

Ofcom's third International Communications Market Report into the £876 billion global communications market also looks at take-up, availability and use of broadband, landlines and mobiles, TV and radio in 12 established industrial economies and in four fast growing economies: Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Covering 2007, the report finds that UK consumers are getting a good deal for their money when buying communications services compared with people in other countries.

Digital TV take-up

Of the larger countries surveyed, the UK has more households with digital TV on their main set, at 86 per cent, up 9 per cent on the previous year as switchover gets underway here.

This compares with the US where 70 per cent of households have a digital TV, up 15 per cent over the past 12 months. France was next at 66 per cent of households with digital TV, and it had the highest growth during the period - an increase of 25 per cent.

High Definition

Consumers across the 7 main countries we surveyed are also making more sophisticated choices. High Definition (HD) services were relatively new in 2006 but now take-up of HD subscriptions has been huge, especially in the UK, US and Canada. Take-up doubled during 2007 to around 9 million subscribers across the 7 larger countries surveyed.

Although the US has the highest number of households with HD subscriptions at 6 million (6.2 per cent) the number of HD households in Canada is nearly 2 million, representing 17.6 per cent of households. The UK leads Europe with 700,000 HD households (6 per cent), higher than the combined number of HD households in France, Germany and Italy (500,000).

Digital Video Recorders

More households are choosing to pause, record, store and fast-forward TV programmes with a Digital Video Recorder (DVR). Ofcom's report shows that the UK leads the way with 30 per cent of people saying they own a DVR. The recorders are also popular in Italy (21 per cent), Canada and the US (20 per cent) and least popular in Japan (7 per cent). Across the seven largest countries, around 28 million pay-TV homes had a DVR in 2007, up from 14 million on the previous year.

According to price comparison research commissioned for the report, consumers in the UK continue to get a good deal when buying communications services. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, competitive markets are driving prices down and, secondly, consumers are shopping around for good deals through 'bundling' - taking multiple services from single communications providers.

The lowest prices for consumers, outside the US, are available when some services are bought in a 'bundle' from the same provider. A typical basket of services which includes a landline, four mobile phones, basic pay-TV and broadband is available in the UK for £104 a month when they are purchased together within a 'triple-play' deal, with Italy offering the next lowest price at £114, and then France at £131.

When these services are bought separately, the lowest prices a typical family will pay are in Italy (£116 a month), followed by the UK (£123). The same basket is £144 in France, £153 in Germany, £188 in the US and £248 in Spain.

The take-up of these new services is having an impact on traditional industry revenues as consumer behaviour changes.

With the growing popularity of pay television services, and the rising take-up of DVRs, advertising revenues no longer account for the main source of commercial TV funding. Advertising accounted for 49 per cent (£81 billion) down from 50 per cent on last year, while subscription revenues were at 43 per cent (£71 billion) - up by 2 per cent on the year.

Some 60 years since the first TV advertisement was aired in the US, subscription revenues overtook advertising revenues in the US for the first time in 2007 (£111 compared to £110 per person).

Advertising is increasingly shifting online. In the UK, online advertising accounted for £1 in every £5 of advertising (19 per cent) - the highest among the countries surveyed and up by a third in 2006. Sweden followed at 17 per cent (up from 13 per cent) with the USA next on 13 per cent (up from 10 per cent).

People spent less time making fixed-line voice calls in 2007 than in 2006 in every country covered by the report as people increasingly used mobile phones. In the UK, people spent five minutes less per head making calls on a fixed line in 2007 than in the previous year, but 23 minutes longer making mobile calls.

• People in all the countries surveyed are spending much more time online. The US leads the way at just over 15 hours per week in 2007 - up from 11 hours in 2004. The UK is second at nearly 14 hours per week, an increase of nearly 6.5 hours a week in 2004, the highest increase amongst the countries surveyed.
• The US and UK are also leading the trend of watching TV online. People in the US watched nearly 26 TV programmes per person in 2007, more than three times higher than in the UK with nearly 8 TV downloads per person. This increase has been driven by popular free to view TV (including the iPlayer in the UK, and the recently launched Hulu service in the US).
• Canadians remain in the vanguard of social networking with 55 per cent of internet users visiting a social networking site. Half of UK internet users (50 per cent) accessed a social networking site, an 11 per cent increase since 2007.
• Across all the countries surveyed, more women than men are using the internet. Some 56 per cent of Italian women use the internet compared to 44 per cent of Italian men. Japanese and Spanish women follow at 55 per cent, with the UK and France having an equal gender split. Women in the US are bucking this trend, at 48 per cent compared with 52 per cent of men using the internet.

NY Times: Iraq war ends

A brilliant satire with a fake website and 1.2m fake copies handed out on the streets.

It's the product of The Yes Men, whose job is:

Impersonating big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else.

Famous past hoaxes include Dow Chemical apologising for the Bhopal, India chemical disaster.

Britain's indigenous peoples shame

Here's something you won't read, er, anywhere:

One year after the UN General Assembly approved the Declaration on Indigenous Peoples’ Rights, Britain and four of its former colonies have not shaken off their reputation as leading opponents of tribal peoples’ rights.

The four countries which voted against the declaration – Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US – are all former British colonies. And the British government continues to resist calls to sign up to ILO Convention 169, the leading international law on tribal peoples.

In addition, many of the companies in the spotlight for targeting tribal lands are based in Britain, Australia, the US or Canada. Perhaps the most controversial is UK-based Vedanta, which is planning a massive bauxite mine on the sacred hills of the Dongria Kondh tribe in India, despite their steadfast opposition.

Other mining companies mired in controversy are US-based Freeport McMoran, operators of the world’s biggest gold mine at Grasberg, in Papua, Indonesia, and Canadian TVI Pacific, whose mine in the Philippines has been fiercely opposed by the Subanen people. Norway’s government has recently sold its shares in British company Rio Tinto, a joint venture partner in the Grasberg mine, due to ‘a risk of contributing to severe environmental damage’.

Stephen Corry, Survival’s Director, said today, ‘For centuries the colonial policies of Britain and other European countries were directly responsible for the deaths of millions of tribal people around the world. How tragic that today Britain and its former colonies are exporting another kind of misery – commercial exploitation under the guise of ‘development’.’

From Survival International. THE most vulnerable peoples in the world. And Miliband/Brown will stamp all over them. In your name.

Transference in egov

Here's one tale you'd have a hard time novelising, but it's true.

Top government mandarins are paying £480 to be lectured, amongst other things on poker strategies by someone called Caspar Berry, who used to work alongside Ant & Dec. PSF has the story.

Last week (or, possibly the week before) leading Departmental representatives were asked to attend a 'special one-day conference' on 'transformation, innovation and delivery' chaired by David Bell, DCSF Permanent Secretary and 'designed primarily for senior civil servants and equivalent levels across the public sector.'

As a recipient of the missive put it:

'… at a bargain price of £480 senior staff can pay to hear their Ministers and colleagues speak about what they’d like to see their Department doing; listen to examples of how this has been done and also apply professional poker strategies to their work.'

There's form on this gravytrain. Emma Mulqueeny didn't exactly rave about him in May.

The agenda for this session introduces Poker Master Berry thus:

'A dawn of new professionalism needs to emerge where sufficient incentives are in place to ensure appropriate levels of risk are taking place across the public sector. In this session, leading poker player Caspar Berry will illustrate how the public sector can become less risk averse. In particular, how do we manage risk in a sensible and proportionate way by bringing about a change in approach to risk? How do we reduce the cost of risk management and do more with less?'

Berry describes himself as:

A highly distinctive speaker within the corporate world with a unique and challenging message that forces people to question many of the things they took for granted.

Why they're not going to the source and hiring gurus/'motivational speakers' from either India or California I don't know ...

By the by, here's an interesting quote from Rob Preece's book 'The noble imperfection', that warns about the naiveté amongst Westerners as to the nature of the guru/devotee relationship:

When we transfer an inner quality onto another person, we may be giving that person a power over us as a consequence of the projection, carrying the potential for great insight and inspiration, but also the potential for great danger. In giving this power over to someone else they have a certain hold and influence over us it is hard to resist, while we become enthralled or spellbound by the power of the archetype.

Now I know I've mentioned breaking down egov's walled garden and inviting 'industry' expertise ... this wasn't exactly what I meant ... Jakob Nielsen would be a tad more apt.

Americans views of British influence: what the heck is going on?

The annual review by the BBC World Service of world opinion of country's influence headlines improving views of the United States, but I noticed a nugget in it which seems to have been missed: Americans dislike UK 'influence' more than almost anyone - and that's increasing.

Positive views of Britain have slipped considerably in the United States (45%, down from 67%) while negative views have increased significantly (42%, up from 18%).

In the graph image to the right the US view of Britain is second from the top.

Overall, says the report:

Views of Britain remain largely positive and have grown more positive over the last year. Among those countries polled in both years, on average positive views have grown from 46 per cent to 50 per cent, while negative views have fallen from 29 per cent to 24 per cent. Views improved significantly in 13 countries and worsened in three.

Out of 23 countries that evaluated Britain in 2007 and 2008, 16 have most saying their view is mainly positive, while in four the most common view is mainly negative (down from six in 2007) and three are divided.

Notable increases in positive views of Britain have occurred in predominantly Muslim publics, including the UAE (54%, up from 31%), Turkey (36%, up from 21%), and Lebanon (39%, up from 32%). Views of Britain are also considerably more favourable among South Koreans (77%, up from 61%) and the Chinese (56%, up from 49%).

Positive views are up considerably in France (54%, up from 44%) while negative views are down (21%, falling from 42%) so that now a majority says they view Britain positively. Italians also show marked improvement in their views of Britain (70%, up from 56%), as do Australians (72%, up from 60%) and Kenyans (85%, up from 74%).

Positive views have also fallen in Russia (43%, down from 55%), Portugal (56%, down from 65%), and in India (22%, down from 37%), but the overall view of Britain’s influence remains positive.

Among publics polled for the first time this year, views of Britain are largely positive, with this being the most common view in Ghana (69%), Israel (67%), Spain (55%), Japan (39%), and publics of Central America (31%).

What da heck is going on, Mr Milliband?

• Report (PDF 3.5mb)

Trying really, really hard

I wasn't going to blog this because I'm too kind :} but an email from Shadow Chancellor George Osborne's office claiming that the government eGov Minister, Tom Watson, is stealing George's lines landed with me and a lot of others yesterday. It came from a - I'm guessing - young staffer and George (maybe) nodded OK. Ya live, ya learn ...

Into the sharks lair ...

Simon Dickson

Amusingly, it condemns the Watson speech as a ‘mashup’. But hold on. Surely it’s entirely in keeping with the whole ethos of open source, to take good ideas and build on them? Didn’t you say mass collaboration was a good thing?

Yep, keep the humour in. It is funny :} We're not laughing at you, young staffer, but with you ...

Dave Briggs

Why not post this on a blog somewhere, point us to it and start a discussion around it?

Yes, told them that. Didn't seem that bovvered.

Mick Fealty in the Torygraph:

.. this is not exactly a secret. The free economy of the Internet means a lot of this stuff is common knowledge.

Funny how NetMums is somewhat of a meme here though, eh?

Nick Booth

To accuse the other party of stealing ideas simply because you are making the same argument is very tired Government 1.0. If you really believe in the power of collaboration then get involved in a conversation online with Tom, recognise your common understanding and ambitions and get on with improving the way we are governed, not disapproving of the fact that you agree.

Ministry of Truth go to town on the detail

Where shall we start?

Dizzy (he bites!)

Do we need more evidence of a Government that is really being led by the Opposition?

So that's one blogger on side with the plagiarism idea.

I am kind, and was in responding to the staffer. So, apart from Simon and others points, from those freebie tips:

• Don't do this stuff if you're not going to put it on a blog with full links backup etc. — especially if you want follow up.
  
• Expect the lot you've sent it to to examine it closely and not receive it as gospel.
• 'We said it first!' is a bit schoolboyish/Westminster Village.

And my main point

• This isn't of much interest to the public — meaning, try looking at what's actually not happening/going wrong. Directgov anyone? Or try 'India + sms' maybe to start?

Maybe they could get some ideas by actually reading some of the blogs they mass BCCed? As the staffer wrote back to me:

It is slightly frustrating that we haven't punched past the blogosphere with some of our online policies.

And ..

We are trying really hard.

Be kind, Paul, be kind ...

World eGov survey · UK 5th

Equatorial Guinea eGov bests France, Japan, Italy and former colonists Spain.


PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University], July 24, 2007 — Asian countries continue to dominate international e-government ratings, taking three of the top four spots in a global e-government study undertaken by researchers at Brown University. South Korea earned the top rank, followed by Singapore, Taiwan, the United States, Great Britain and Canada. The study shows that 28 percent of government agencies around the world are offering online services, about the same as in 2006.

• Report [Pdf 700kb]

Global e-Government: 198 Countries Ranked

Rankings from 1 to 50

RANK COUNTRY RATING 1. (1) South Korea 74.9 (60.3) 2. (3) Singapore 54.0 (47.5) 3. (2) Taiwan 51.1 (49.8) 4. (4) United States 49.4 (47.4) 5. (6) Great Britain 44.3 (42.6) 6. (5) Canada 44.1 (43.5) 7. (48) Portugal 43.8 (31.3) 8. (12) Australia 43.5 (39.9) 8. (27) Turkey 43.5 (33.7) 10. (8) Germany 42.9 (41.5) 11. (7) Ireland 42.4 (41.9) 12. (16) Switzerland 42.3 (36.9) 13. (38) Brazil 41.1 (32.1) 14. (11) Dominica 41.0 (40.0) 15. (65) Bahrain 40.3 (29.6) 16. (40) Equator. Guinea 40.0 (32.0) 16. (32) Liechtenstein 40.0 (33.0) 18. (133) Andorra 39.0 (24.0) 19. (14) New Zealand 38.4 (37.6) 20. (35) Italy 38.0 (32.9) 21. (10) Spain 37.7 (40.6) 22. (20) Hong Kong 37.5 (35.4) 23. (19) Finland 37.3 (35.6) 24. (30) Vatican 37.0 (33.5) 25. (36) Malaysia 36.9 (32.7)

RANK COUNTRY RATING 26. (15) Netherlands 36.8 (37.4) 27. (46) Czech Rep. 36.7 (31.7) 28. (106) Brunei 36.5 (26.8) 29. (84) Cyprus (Rep.) 36.4 (28.3) 30. (40) Liberia 36.0 (24.0) 30. (56) Austria 36.0 (30.6) 30. (17) Azerbaijan 36.0 (36.0) 30. (143) Sierra Leone 36.0 (24.0) 30. (39) Bhutan 36.0 (32.0) 30. (175) Costa Rica 36.0 (20.0) 30. (73) Eritrea 36.0 (29.0) 30. (166) Ethiopia 36.0 (22.0) 30. (137) Gabon 36.0 (24.0) 30. (17) North Korea 36.0 (36.0) 40. (9) Japan 35.9 (41.5) 41. (28) Malta 35.8 (33.6) 42. (23) France 35.6 (34.7) 42. (24) Qatar 35.6 (34.5) 44. (67) Israel 35.5 (29.4) 45. (88) Croatia 35.0 (28.0) 46. (51) Iceland 34.6 (31.1) 47. (77) India 34.2 (28.7) 48. (54) Peru 34.0 (30.8) 48. (150) Zambia 34.0 (23.5) 50. (68) Mexico 33.9 (29.3)

According to Wikipedia, the PM website is the closest to a Japanese national government portal.


Common services include voter registration, visa application, passport application/renewal, job listings and online application, and requests for statistical reports.

Online tax filing was very prevalent, and was found on the Belgian Portal Site, the Pakistani Customs site, the Philippine Portal, and the French Economic Ministry.

Many departments offer online complaint forms. For example, the Malaysian Portal site has links to many of these forms. The Netherlands has a dedicated site for their Ombudsman, which accepts online complaint submissions. The New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs lets you complain about the presence of “objectionable material”. Several Philippine sites, such as the Portal page, Armed Forces, and Public Works have complaint forms. The South African Public Protector has an online complaint form.

Applying for and renewing licenses and permits is another common area where services are offered. The Mauritius Portal lets you apply for work permits and learner’s licenses and the New Zealand Economic Development website lets you renew an electrical workers or radio license. Many departments allow you to apply for government jobs online, including the New Zealand Portal.

Many sites allow you to order publications, including the Slovenia Tourism Board, South African Department of Environment & Tourism, Australian Portal site, Slovakia Industrial Property site, and the Swiss Intellectual Property Institute.

Several sites allow users to apply for grants online, including the New Zealand portal and U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Various websites allow for electronic document filing. The New Zealand portal lets you file various corporate documents (including annual returns). The Slovakia Industrial Property uses a digital signature system to enable its e-filling of documents. The Swiss Intellectual Property Institute offers the ability to file trademark applications through “e-Trademark” The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has the EDGAR Service, which allows for the online filing of 116 different forms.

Several sites are unique in their attempt to encourage electronic government.

The Swiss Intellectual Property Institute offers the “e-Trademark” service to help file trademark applications, and the fees for electronic filing are less than those for submitting paper copies. The Slovakia Industrial Property also offers online filing of documents for reduced fees online.

Several countries offered unique online services. The Republic of Congo offers a means to send SMS text messages from its site, for a fee. The New Zealand Portal and Conservation site allow online booking of huts and campsites in national parks. The Australian Toilet Map found at the National Continence Management Strategy lets you browse and pinpoint public toilets throughout Australia and see toilets along a planned route. Visitors can suggest additions to the toilet database.



Uluru .. There are 5 nearby toilets:

The Philippine Portal offers a link to an online betting site for basketball games run by the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation. The Luxembourg Education Ministry has a link to its mySchool Portal where students can take online classes and tests and receive help with homework.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Administration allows users to search the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System database for case studies of injuries to people by consumer products. Mexico’s Ministry of the Economy site has an online “conversation forum” available to visitors where you can have an instant message conversation with agency officials.

Colombia’s Ministry of Education allows users to elect to erase all cookies placed on their hard drive periodically as they log in with their username and password. Guatemala’s Ministry of Agriculture site has a webshots.com page embedded in their government web page that shows albums documenting the programs they put on and their service projects.



NUEVO - Fotos Proyectos

Turkey’s Portal has webcams of streets and squares all around the country on a live feed via the internet. Peru’s Portal site has an interactive online video that shows a mouse clicking on different things and what each click would accomplish plus a tutorial showing how to navigate pages while a voiceover explains the different services.

Ecuador’s President site has a youtube.com website with videos and an entire user profile for the President of the country. Czech Republic’s Portal site has a new “Did you know?” fact at the top of each page. The page contains a unique “conversation bubble” theme that allows for links to interesting services and a “quick review” that gives current time and date, weather, and exchange information at a glance.

India’s Department of Commerce site holds regular online chat sessions, with pre-designated topics either a few times a week or daily for one hour. They broadcast the topics and their schedule on a scrolling banner at the top of the webpage for every visitor to see.

OnLine Chat Date : 20 Nov 2006

On 'Special Economic Zones Policy' on every working day between 17.00 - 18.00 Hrs | "Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs)" on Monday, Tuesday between 11 AM and 12 Noon | "WTO(Doha Round of Negotiations)" on Thursday, Friday between 11 AM and 12 Noon

One feature that has slowed the development of online services has been an inability to use credit cards and digital signatures on financial transactions. On commercial sites, it is becoming a more common practice to offer goods and services online for purchase through the use of credit cards.

However, of the government websites analyzed, only 5 percent accept credit cards and 1 percent allowed digital signatures for financial transactions, similar to last year.

For our test, we used the Priority Level One standard and evaluated each government agency regarding whether it complies with the W3C guidelines. Sites are judged to be either in compliance or not in compliance based on the results of this test. According to our Bobby [sic] analysis, 23 percent of government websites are accessible to the disabled, the same as last year.

Disability Access
2004 2005 2006 2007
14% 19% 23% 23%

The most basic means to ensure accessibility is to maintain compliance with WWC standards. However, there now exist other ways to aid accessibility. Many sites how allow users to change the size on the text, to accommodate those with poor eyesight. Other pages have applications that will read the entire page to the user. The most extreme example of this trend can be seen on the Swedish Government Portal (
http://www.sweden.gov.se/), which not only will read to page to you, but lets you
customize the text size, spacing, and coloring. Advances in technology have made these types of aids possible, and government website should begin implementing them In order to improve electronic government, the report suggests that governments take several steps to reach their full potential in terms of accessibility and effectiveness. The ultimate goal of e-government is to provide citizens with services, information, and interactive features. To this end, sites need to be well-designed, easy to navigate, and accessible to a wide variety of users.

The researchers suggest the following steps be undertaken:

• standardize templates with consistent navigation;
• have accessibility aids;
• list when pages are updated;
• organize pages by user type;
• create “most popular” lists;
• have an online services menu;
  
• have interactive technical assistance;
• make it interesting!
• avoid commercial advertising;
• fix faulty links;
• improve language accessibility;
• do not sell domain names; and
  
• have a secure and stable server.
  
  
  

And so, the Macaca turns ..

From Wikipedia

Macaca is a pejorative epithet used by francophone colonialists in Central Africa's Belgian Congo for the native population. It may be derived from the name of the genus comprising macaque monkeys. The word macaque has also been used as a racial slur. The macaque's genus name, Macaca, is a latinization of the Bantu (Kongo) ma-kako,^[3] meaning "monkey".

Allen points to Webb aide, Sidarth, referring to him as "Macaca."^[18]

In the 2006 Senate election in Virginia the Republican Senator George Allen lost, in part, because of a video showing him directing the Macaca slur at an opposition campaign worker, S.R. Sidarth, whose ancestors came from India.

TechPresident reports that:

Videos of Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani making gaffes have been circulating to potentially damaging effect. Romney's video, in which he seems to equate volunteer military service with working for his campaign, was shot (actually, it's just audio) at a campaign stop in Iowa [it's an official video]. In Giuliani's video, in which he compares himself to the 9/11 rescue workers ("I'm one of them"), Giuliani is speaking at press conference. But while the George Allen/Macaca video captured an unguarded Allen speaking off the cuff at a fundraiser, these captured candidates speaking on the record, directly to cameras.

So they wonder if the moment's hitting when candidates should justly have a 'Fear of Macaca?'

The macaca video hit because someone happened to shoot it and upload it, and others took notice and it began to spread virally. In these cases, however, it didn't take a tracker to spot the videos and promote them; instead, an online, distributed network is efficiently spreading them upward making them into a bigger and bigger issue.

This is about the size of the network compared to just last year and also the ease of connecting, with search improvements and online video visibility etc.

In my town a clip caught on a mobile phone of a local Councilor caught off-guard is doing the rounds - a local campaign has been slowly developing video as documentary evidence so it's as one with that - and much being made of it by the opposition.

It's not going to spread upwards like Romney's but the implications are possibly serious and only going to get more so for all elected officials. And probably some unelected ones too.

Romney video


Guiliani video

Bytes ·$10 laptop? - Malware on websites - last.fm goes MTV

• The One Laptop Per Child Project, recently pushed its price per laptop to $175, from $100.
  
  But India's HRD ministry says it thinks it can push that price down to $10 — the manufacturing cost has already been scaled down to $47, reports the India Times.
  
  It is also Indians who have forced down the costs of HIV/AIDS drugs to a level that developing countries, like Brazil, can afford. Hence prolonging many million of lives.
  
  
• A recent Google study discovered "around 450,000 web pages that launched drive-by downloads of malicious programs. Another 700,000 pages launched downloads of suspicious software."
  

  "We have started an effort to identify all web pages on the Internet that could potentially be malicious ... Web sites that have been identified as malicious, using our verification procedure, are labeled as potentially harmful when returned as a search result."

• The New York Times is performing a SEO trick to get it's archived content seen — everything's been redated.
  

  Each “article” is re-purposed on a clean, CSS-driven text page, clearly dated TODAY and not-co-clearly labeled as “originally published” back in 1997, 1998, or whatever all the way back to 1981 .. Clearly if Google is going to rank “newly published” results as most relevant in a SERP, there is a nice big fat incentive to “re-publish” such archives fairly often.

• YouTube/Google is experimenting with text ads, running directly under videos. They've also announced they'll soon start sharing advertising revenue with content-creating users.
  
  Next stage, user-generated viral advertising?
  
  All of which should send Vivienne Reding, the European Commissioner whose TV Without Frontiers directive includes a ban on "falsely representing oneself as a consumer", back to the drawing board. Unfortunately, it's UK law from the end of the year.
  
  
• last.fm is launching a video service, using a much higher bitrate than YouTube. You could set up your own version of MTV (I'll stick to audio ... ) The eventual aim is to have every music video ever made!
  
  
• VeeSee TV is a new Web TV Station for deaf people, using BSL. Like Current TV, it'll carry user-generated content

Bytes · YouTube copyright - Apple greens- Online soap hit

• A new study has shown that YouTube is overwhelmingly not relying on copyrighted content. Vidmeter says it's more than 90%. Takedown notices cover less than 6% of the views on YouTube. The Premiership is now suing them alongside Viacom.
  
  
• Coming in very late: Michael Grade has announced that ITV "plans to learn from the mistakes of the music industry" and "keep control" of its content as that content moves online.
  
  It wants to make it's website ("The ITV portal to its television and programmes") the destination.
  
  Good luck to them but they've made themselves a rod through completely ignoring findability and viral buzz — no posting I'm a Celebrity viral nuggets on YouTube..
  
  
• UK Online Centres — which are just about the only people addressing the digital divide — are under threat because of buck-passing on funding amongst Whitehall departments.
  
  In Singapore, they have a whole eCitizen Helper Service, which is a partnership with businesses.
  
  

  Need help to transact with the Government online?
  
  Don't worry, eCitizen Helper Service is available island-wide. The service offers free assistance for all citizens and residents to access the Government services online. Look out for our mascot at participating outlets.

  
  
  
• Greenpeace have welcomed Steve Jobs promise that Apple will be greener. Jobs move follows a long and persistent campaign.
  
  

  "It's not everything we asked for. Apple has declared a phase out of the worst chemicals in its product range, Brominated Fire Retardants (BFRs) and Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) by 2008. That beats Dell and other computer manufactures' pledge to phase them out by 2009. Way to go Steve!
  
  But while customers in the US will be able to return their Apple products for recycling knowing that their gear won't end up in the e-waste mountains of Asia and India, Apple isn't making that promise to anyone but customers in the USA. Elsewhere in the world, an Apple product today can still be tomorrow's e-waste. Other manufacturers offer worldwide takeback and recycling. Apple should too!
  
  Now, let's take it to the next level! An Apple green to the core!"
  
  

  
• A San Francisco TV Station recently premiered a show online — it was a documentary — but a daily teen-aimed soap opera, is entirely online and already a minor hit.
  
  Prom Queen is averaging roughly 200,000 views a day, and has accumulated more than 5.2 million views since its April 2 debut.
  
  While relevant benchmarks are hard to come buy in this uncharted space, the show’s daily audience is equivalent to a low-rated cable series, though much smaller than individual clips of popular YouTube ‘series’ like lonelygirl15, which sometimes yield more than a million views.
  
  Web Shows is a Comedy Central project where “webisodes” that originated online will then make their small screen debut in July.
  
  Another example of an online-traditional TV experiment is Jack Black’s Acceptable.tv, which ties to a show on VH1.
  
  
  
• The Register is reporting that fans who missed out on Glastonbury tickets are nevertheless being spammed.
  
  Michael Eavis runs the Glastonbury ticketing through the huge Mean Fiddler organisation and the Reg suggests that "data was somehow leaked".
  
  
• Jacob Nielsen comments on eBay's reported record profits for Q1.

  In presenting the record numbers, the CEO, Meg Whitman, said that "the company had been benefiting from changes in the user experience that had increased the number of auctions leading to sales" (as quoted in The New York Times, April 19).
  
  This is a great example of the benefits of usability for e-commerce: income comes from multiplying the amount of use with the conversion rate. The more you improve the user experience of finding products, researching them, and buying them, the higher your conversion rate.
  
  Yet most sites invest vastly more in bringing in new traffic (increasing an almost-irrelevant "unique user" count) than they invest in making these users convert.
  
  The cost of doubling traffic is a hugely expensive advertising campaign. Doubling conversion costs a modest usability project to identify your users' main pain points followed by targeted redesigns of those elements. Much cheaper – and a sustainable advantage, whereas traffic brought in by ads will subside when your advertising budget runs out.
  
  In eBay's case, user experience is so important for profits that it's one of the main things the CEO mentions to the financial press in presenting the quarterly results. eBay has a particularly competent user experience department, but smaller companies usually find that a smaller usability effort can increase their financial performance materially. Your first usability test will uncover a gold mine of low-hanging fruit, to mix metaphors.
  
  

  
  

Mobile Content Usage is Higher in Developing Countries

Click Z Stats: Wireless

Mobile Content Usage is Higher in Developing Countries

By Enid Burns | March 2, 2007

Mobile users in third world countries express a stronger desire for content and advanced features, according to a "Global Mobile Mindset Audit" study released by the Forum to Advance the Mobile Experience (FAME), part of the CMO Council and Global Market Insight (GMI), and sponsored by Palm.

U.S. users lag most behind other countries in terms of accessing the Web, or wanting access, using cellular phones. In the U.S., 22.6 percent find the feature important or very important. Other countries exhibit higher demand: Western Europe (30.4 percent); Eastern Europe (53.9 percent); Asia (56.4 percent); and Latin America (63.5 percent).

"The difference between developing countries and the U.S. and Western Europe really is played out throughout the survey in terms of advanced services and how interested users are in accessing them," said Dave Murray, director of the CMO Council's FAME Group. "The new mobile power user is really in emerging markets. There is a population in these markets that is interested in using and willing to pay for advanced services."

In some cases, mobile services can compensate for a lack of infrastructure in phone and Internet services, as well as in other areas. One example Murray cites is a demand for mobile network banking access.

"In India there is a lack of an established consumer ATM network," said Murray. "The idea of a lack of infrastructure goes beyond communications, lack of infrastructure in banking, commerce, and entertainment, which is leaving users in developing countries to rely more heavily on mobile devices."

The study also finds a sense of "function fatigue," where consumers either do not use or understand all handset or service features. Criteria for useful and useless functions on a handset differ by customer. "The whole issue around function fatigue has a lot to do with how easy and intuitive a device might be," said Murray. "There are features they don't actually know how to use. I think that's exacerbated by the retail experience."

The retail experience is another pain point. Globally, consumers complain about a lack of in-store demonstrations, knowledgeable sales staff, and slow service. Point-of-purchase differences have emerged between the U.S. and elsewhere. U.S. consumers rely on in-store displays and literature, where international buyers use the knowledge of retail sales associates and editorial reviews. Outside the store, the Internet is the leading source for product and service information, surpassing print, TV, and word-of-mouth.

The data come from findings from a GMI study of 15,000 consumers in 37 countries. Surveys were conducted in the native languages of each country.

From Matatu to the Masai via mobile
Newsnight correspondent Paul Mason travels through Kenya using a map of the country's mobile phone networks as his guide.

"How big a change have cellphones made to Africa?" I shout the question at Isis Nyong'o, over the throbbing bassline of a Kenyan ragga track. She tells me calmly: "It's had about the same effect as a democratic change of leadership."

A user-centred approach to creating new mobile phone services

• Qualcomm (Cambridge) new mobile interfaces

(requested citation) Ismael Peña-López (2006) “World Telecommunication/ICT Development Report 2006: digital divide narrowing?” In ICTlogy, #32, 2006. Barcelona: ICTlogy.
Retrieved month 08/03, 2007 from http://ictlogy.net/review/?p=402