Photoblog
Editor’s note: The Turkmenet may be very small and very young, but it’s certainly developing at a remarkable rate, and not always in ways that can be clearly said to be good or bad. neweurasia’s Annasoltan explores the rise of hacking in this new space and its particularly Turkmen flavor. [The images above are proxy instructions for a Symbian-enabled smartphone from a Turkmen social site. Sensitive information has been removed from them for security reasons.]
Despite the Internet having so little penetration in Turkmenistan – somewhere in the vicinity of 1.6% of the population or 80,400 users according to the World Bank and United Nation’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU) – already it’s exhibiting many of the hallmarks of a much more mature cyberscape, right down to hackers.
The cyber-attack against the Chronicles of Turkmenistan this past summer, not to mention the related e-mail sent to neweurasia, was quite an eye-opener on the Turkmenet’s rapidly increasing capacities for digital misbehavior (although Schwartz suspects that the hacker from that incident, “0fx0”, was a hired gun). Since then, there have been cyber-attacks against the personal accounts of several prominent Turkmen journalists and human rights activists, including against a close friend of mine.
However, far less dramatic has been the emergence of more “mundane” — but no less dangerous — forms of hacking.
Today Kyrgyzstan is holding presidential elections. For the first time in the history of independent Kyrgyzstan, the presidency is shifting from one person to another in a peaceful way.
Current president of Kyrgyzstan Roza Otunbayeva is casting her vote.
Translator’s Note: Originally written by neweurasia’s Nuraika (RUS)
TEDxBishkek. As we had previously announced, last Saturday was the day of TEDxBishkek – the first event of this kind and scale in Bishkek. The actual event took place at Vefa Center last Saturday, but its pre-inception spirit had already been hovering around by Friday. The opening ceremony was held in «Цех», the creative, colorful, a bit crazy atmosphere of which is especially appealing to similar occasions.
Following on my theme from earlier last week, while in Bishkek this past summer, I was really interested in the signs of global youth corporate culture spreading into Kyrgyzstan. Probably the clearest example is the artist and start-up collective called The Loft (loft.kg), which serves simultaneously as business cluster, exhibit space and art studio.
Some of these photos were taken at different times of day. And again, apologies for the terrible quality.
Uzbekistan is still in the mood of the 20th anniversary of the “most sacred and greatest” holiday of all times — Independence Day celebrated on September 1, 2011.
In return to official propaganda videos on the happiest people on Earth — Uzbekistanis, Uzbek dissidents protest, organize new civic platforms, call the Canadian government to re-evaluate relations with Uzbekistan. These facts do not threaten the ideological situation in the country, at all.
Below is the set of pictures taken in Tashkent and some other parts of Uzbekistan: Only in authoritarian countries such as Uzbekistan one can see shops selling sports stuff and tickets and fabulous restaurants being enermously happy with the fact that there’s no Center/Moscow anymore dictating, against Uzbek businessmen’s will.
In fact, these organizations had been forced by local authorities — expenditures on any propaganda banners/ads/flyers are covered by businessmen themselves, not from the local budget.
This is how it works: Businessmen do not seem 100% happy with that, but happy to realize that a few times a year expenditures of a couple hundred U.S. dollars can keep corupted officials away for some time from their business. Read the full story »
Editor’s note: Bishkek is known for two things: blight and tragedy. But is there another way of viewing the city? neweurasia’s Schwartz explores the interaction between aging Soviet architecture, Kyrgyz urbanization and invading nature in a new photo-essay. [All photos by Schwartz, CC-usage.]
It may sound crazy, but Bishkek is one of the most aesthetically beautiful and anthropologically-philosophically interesting cities I’ve yet encountered. Make no mistake, this city has some hardcore urban blight, with slum conditions literally right around the corner of a downtown that is itself slowly rotting and crumbling (that is, when nationalists and ideologues aren’t constantly reconfiguring its shape in their endless pursuit for symbolic coherence). There’s a distinctive Philly or Detroit verve, right down to the homeless who live in the network of underground tunnels beneath the city and crawl out, mole-like, when night falls, to rummage through the stinking trash bins.
However, what really catches my eye is the aging Soviet ideological-utilitarian architecture, slowly becoming entangled in tree branches and creeping vines —
– or the gradual whittling down of the sharp angles of the avenues, the square sidewalk corners chipped away by the onslaught of pedestrians into curves, the pavement locked in a battle to the death with the invading tendrils of tree trunks and roots.
What I find fascinating in this is how an experiment in rigid urban planning — you can’t get much more “rational” than slapping a grid down onto the earth! — that was, as I understand it, pretty much a sleepy ghost town during the Soviet era, has since independence slowly been reclaimed and adapted by human beings and nature and turned into something rather bustling, organic, alive.
In Uzbekistan, photography – and other forms of media relations and human rights activities – are carefully watched and monitored by the state.
On September 15th, Gulshan Karayeva and Nodir Ahatov – members of an unregistered Uzbekistan’s Human Rights society – were held by authorities for 10 hours for their act of photographing injustice, for “… taking pictures of schoolchildren picking cotton in the southern Kashkadarya region.”
The Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) Uzbek Service quotes activist Karayeva saying:
“We saw the fourth-graders picking the cotton as we were monitoring allegations of child labor in our region.”
“[The students] pick cotton from the early morning till the afternoon and then they are supposed to go to school afterward.”
A lot of my acquaintances in Kyrgyzstan are under the assumption that their country is totally obscure in the West. To the contrary, they are fairly well-known — for political upheaval and intense poverty. Images of mobs surging against the White House as Svoboda looked on and rotting, almost post-apocalyptic infrastructure are typically the first things that come to a Westerner’s mind, well, usually with a culpak or two thrown in.
Of course, like any country, Kyrgyzstan has several realities, often overlapping, sometimes contradictory, sometimes merging. A lot of Western specialists, and for that matter, a lot of Kyrgyzstan’s own intelligentsia, tend to identify the most unstable, tragic and savage realities of the country with its totality, often at the expense of some really cool or interesting other aspects.
One of these aspects has been the gradual entrance of what can be described as global youth corporate culture — informal office environments, where graffiti art adorns the walls, there’s a mixture of business savvy and punkish DIY ethics in the air, and co-workers often go out clubbing together after work. Business start-ups and artist collectives in this mold are starting to sprout across Bishkek, and it’s all got a very incipient Berlin vibe in my opinion.
BarCamp 2011 was certainly the topic of the past weekend among so called Internet activists of Kyrgyzstan and some countries of Central Asia. People who usually do their communication through chats, skype calls, comments, tweets and likes gathered in Bishkek to talk in person and discuss latest developments in Web 2.0, open source software, applications and what not. Official website of the event says that more than 1100 people registered for the conference. However, my estimates of real attendance is 500-600, which is also a good indicator for our region. Here is my traditional photo story about the event.
I must say, the weather’s been lovely and the city’s been teeming all day with people in costumes, on roller blades, and just in general having a good time. I’m glad that I’m here to see Bishkek in such a good mood, especially after so much unhappiness as of late.
Dina Tokbaeva from IWPR and I spent the morning at Ala-Too Square watching the parade, which included everything from T-72s to Korean drummers. The photos below were taken by us (for credits, check out the file names). Then we did the most “natural” thing: sat down at Cafe Academia over two cups of green tea and debated the future of Kyrgyzstan. ;-)
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