Blogs & Politics,
originally uploaded by alexdecarvalho.

Thomas Crampton moderated an interesting session on blogs and politics this afternoon at Les Blogs 2.0, in Paris. The panel featured the embattled Christophe Grebert, who appeared on Karl Zero's  TV news-show "Le Vrai Journal" this weekend. His troubles for running the blog are not over and he faces a new court appearance in February 2006: he's a courageous lad in need of support.

lesblogs

December 5, 2005 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tue 18/10/2005 15:12 Forum on the sustainability of Brazil's economic growth

Quick summary of a day-long forum on the political, fiscal and monetary policies, choices and issues in sustaining economic growth in Brazil:

- Growth has been strong but has not matched 'Asian Tigers' levels;
- Despite social advances, much remains to be done to reduce inequalities and major reform is needed in the pensions system, which is skewed in favor of the riches classes;
- The numerous regulatory agencies need to professionalize, gain their independence and coordinate their policies better;
-  And the country's industrial and service sectors find themselves hampered in trade negotiations by Brazil's great success and power in agribusiness. 

However, the outlook is positive and in particular, the economy has hardly flinched in face of current political problems, mainly because of the sound policies in place.

(moblogged from 6680)

October 18, 2005 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Recently I organized the Brazilian delegation's participation at the 6th World Forum on e-Democracy, an event held by the French "high-tech Mayor" Andre Santini, at Issy-Les-Moulineaux, near Paris.

During the event, Monique Ciprut of Les Echos quoted me regarding the role of blogs in Brazil (pdf version note: copyright Les Echos). We spoke about the importance of participatory journalism in a democracy and how bloggers in Brazil were contributing to open up the debate. In particular, she picked up my reference to the popular blog by the right-wing politician Cesar Maia, who has been openly critical of the Lula administration. However, the blog has been 'too" popular and was recently discontinued (on 30/9/2005) because it took too much of Maia's "mental time," even though he had three assistants, each less than 25 years old. I expressed reservations about how open the conversation can be in countries were internet penetration was relatively low, were there were high levels of illiteracy, and where access to computers and the internet were reserved to the middle class and above. I believe the government has an important role in providing conditions for greater internet access, in providing lower-priced computers and in financing local municipalities to support them in e-government initiatives. 

Brazilian Delegation 
.

The Brazilian delegation, pictured left included Minister Carlos Velloso, President of Brazil's Superior Electoral Tribunal and in charge of the country's elections, Ana Cristina Hofmann, President of Petropolis-Tecnopolis and co-chair of the W2i (Wireless Internet Institute) Digital Cities Convention in Europe, held at the beginning of November 2005 in Bilbao, and Vagner Diniz, President of Instituto Conip and active proponent of mobile government (m-gov) in Brazil.

Special thanks to my partner on this project, Philippe Luce, Founder of Agora-Consultants. Thanks also to Yann Mauchamp, France Country Manager, OpenBC, who first saw the Les Echos article. Update: Thanks also to Jussara Nunes, Brazilian blogger in France, who lent us an important hand. We were glad to have you with us!

For more on the significance of the participatory, read-write web (Web 2.0), see Al Gore's speech at the We Media Conference a couple of days ago in New York.

"We must ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they use to connect to the Worldwide Web."

Technorati Tags: blogs, democracy, brazil, brasil, e-governement, e-democracy, wireless

October 9, 2005 in Current Affairs, Miscellaneous Stuff, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

I've been riveted by the images of devastation on CNN and as time passes and the human suffering increases, it becomes even more clear there was no disaster recovery planning in place.The recovery will take months, so it's never too late to give to those in need.

Here's how you can help:

American Red Cross

Victims of Hurricane Katrina are attempting to recover from the massive storm that is still making its way across the Mid-Atlantic States. American Red Cross volunteers have been deployed to the hardest hit areas of Katrina’s destruction, supplying hundreds of thousands victims left homeless with critical necessities. By making a financial gift to Hurricane 2005 Relief, the Red Cross can provide shelter, food, counseling and other assistance to those in need.

HurricaneHelp - Find survivors of Hurricane Katrina

This is a service to help connect Hurricane Katrina victims with their friends and family. Please respect those affected by this tragedy and only submit accurate, relevant information. This is not an official information site.

Social Source Software's Katrina PeopleFinder Project in collaboration with Omidyar.net

Refugees can search 20 web sites for lost relatives and still miss their entry on the 21st web site. There is a need to combine all the refugee data from big databases like Red Cross, large posting forums like Craigslist and many other sources on the web. The Katrina PeopleFinder Project seeks to create a single repository combining as many sources of refugee data as possible from all over the web without interrupting existing momentum.

We need help for both regular people and software engineers. Everybody is critical to building a central repository of ALL the refugee records we can find on the web. The Social Source Foundation, CivicSpace Labs and Salesforce.com Foundation are coordinating hundreds of people and organizations, including Craigslist and Earthlink.

Poignant testimony by public officials and others:

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin - raw and uncensored

Joan Touzet, originally from New Orleans, has posted the full uncensored audio, which is raw in language and emotion. Nagin discusses the current violence and chaos in the city, and the lack of effective action by FEMA and the federal goverment; Nagin accuses the Governor and FEMA of thinking too small.

Read Chris Waigl's transcript here

This video on Crooks & Liars is a must-see:

The tear-filled eyes of Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard as he was interviewed by Tim Russert on today's Meet the Press.

Public photos on Flickr tagged with Katrina (over 4,000)

Joi Ito talks about The underprivileged victims of Katrina

I wonder about the allegations of treating the underprivileged victims as more "expendable". I realize this is quite a harsh allegation, but something that I wonder about none the less.

The armed forces recruits mostly from the underprivileged class, and it is they who fight the wars. It is time to give back.

Learn more about the impact of Katrina:

New Orleans LA post-Katrina Intel Dissemination Wiki!

This wiki was setup to factor the tons of random bits of information flowing out of New Orleans in totally disorganized chunks, and being repeated around the internet in various forms. Blogs are not up to the task of distilling this info in a useful way, so we've setup this ad-hoc project at nola-intel.org to try and keep track of all of this.

Hurricane Katrina - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Many estimates predict that Katrina was the costliest storm in history to strike the United States. In terms of fatalities it was the second deadliest named storm to hit the US, and may be declared the deadliest after more casualties are discovered. Katrina also caused the first total devastation of a major American city since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and subsequent fires.

Technorati Tags: Katrina

September 3, 2005 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Eh oui ... the French say Merde! to the European Constitution (Gapingvoid).

"Hey Guys, next time you draft a proposed constitution, try to keep it under 1000 words. If you can't, it probably means you haven't really given it sufficient thought."

Shades of grey: The debate started at 10pm on 29 May and won't subside until the next Presidential elections in about 18 months time. Although the referendum asked for a simple Yes / No vote, european integration involves a slew of non-binary, negotiated issues between two dozen member states.

Under-communication, alienation and government inaction: So voters felt alienated from the process, the Yessers under-communicated during the campaing and with growing general discontent at the unchanging unemployment situation and with no other outlet for expression, the French voted a resounding "Non" against an ineffective government. In fact, not only was this a veiled vote of no confidence against the government, French voters don't trust greater European integration to solve their problems either.

Broadcast media with blinkers: The French media is as much to blame as the government, though, for undercommunicating and for treating the opposition as irrational and xenophobic. The fact is, there were many reasons to vote no and both the media and the government should have done more to address each issue independently.

Wait and see: At least the Euro took a hit and the government got jolted into trying to create jobs. Between the two effects, Villepin hopes to create 800,000 new jobs within the year (note: this figure is unverified, I heard it on LCI).

If you believe that, do you also believe in Santa Claus?

In the meantime, those lucky enough to be able to emigrate to more accomodating economies ... will do so.

June 6, 2005 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

My most recent posts can be found at FranceBrazil, including photos from the Brazil Economic Forum held at the Palais de Congres yesterday on 14/4/05 and from Paris Blogue t'il ? at l'Entrepot on 13/4/05. I'll update I have updated the post this weekend.

April 15, 2005 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

I've retired the "streaming lights" banner in favor of the new one above to mark the beginning of www.francebrazil.com, the new blog about The Official Year of Brazil in France. The banner above depicts Lagoa in Rio de Janeiro, viewed from the foot of Corcovado mountain on which the famous Christ statue stands. Beyond the buildings lies Ipanema Beach.

The objective of France Brazil is to inform, discuss and celebrate the Year of Brazil in France, which runs from March to December, 2005 . A number of cultural events will be held in Paris and other French cities and hopefully Franco-Brazilian ties will be strengthened through these exchanges.

And hopefully closer ties result in new business opportunities!

The current site, www.tapio.com, will continue to discuss ideas related to innovation, mobility and new marketing. Thanks for reading and I hope you'll enjoy both sites!

February 22, 2005 in Current Affairs, Miscellaneous Stuff | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, February 22 is Free Mojtaba and Arash Day, for the two Iranian bloggers currently jailed by the Iranian government. Read about Arash and Mojtaba. Here is what you can do. With additional contact information.

Let's make a difference today. Freedom of speech is an issue that affects bloggers in the West as well, including France's Christophe Grébert, threatened for his site contesting his city's politics.

February 22, 2005 in Current Affairs, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

With an estimated toll of nearly half a million over a quarter million people, the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake ranks among the worst natural disasters in history. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia has a wealth of information on the earthquake and resulting Tsunami. At the site you´ll also find an extensive list of charities and aid organizations accepting donations.

More information can be found at the excellent 28-blogger collaboration, "The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami: The SEA-EAT blog".

Via Colby Stuart.

The BBC provides a list of links to charitable organisations in their article "Asian Disaster: How to Help".

If you'd like to make a donation with the French Red Cross, here's a link:

Technorati Tags: tsunami

January 4, 2005 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

As posted on many blogs, including here, China blocks its own citizens from accessing foreign blogs. The simple solution for that is to surf anonymously by using a service like Anonymouse, for instance.

With Anonymouse, my weblog address looks like this:  http://anonymouse.ws/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://adecarvalho.typepad.com

This was confirmed by a friend of mine living in Fuzhou.

By the way, T-Salon maintains a great blog about China with lots of links.

December 11, 2004 in Current Affairs, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack