Brené Brown

Be vulnerable, not weak

Brown, who is also the author of The Gifts of Imperfection, wants to spread the message that vulnerability is a sign of courage, not weakness – and that empathy is the antidote to shame.

“Maybe stories are just data with a soul”

(from TED 2012: 10 innovations that could help shape a better world)

How do we ensure that the Internet develops in a way that is compatible with democracy? Given the strong push provided by social media to the recent uprisings in the Middle East region and elsewhere, how can people ensure that the same tools are not being used for government censorship and surveillance (often with more than a little help from Western technology companies)? And ultimately, how can we stop thinking of ourselves as passive “users” of technology but rather as “netizens” who take ownership and responsibility for our digital future?

The full review by Bernardo Parrella can be read on advocacy

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italiano.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italiano.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italiano.

Internet is a huge archive for the next generations of researcher and historian in different fields, and in this sense we should try to keep and organize records of people interventions, comments etc. Global Voices is a global environment of citizen journalists and bloggers that tries to create a transnational network of news. Recently the French site launched an interesting proposal to Facebook to keep and make freely available  the multimedia content related to events in Tunisia. Here is the text (in French – I will post a translation as soon as I find time) of the letter. The original is here.

Monsieur Zuckerberg,

La Tunisie vient de vivre une événement historique à plus d’un titre. Car il s’agit de la première révolution populaire dans le monde arabe, et parce que votre société, Facebook, y a joué un rôle non négligeable.

L’une des rares technologies sociales quasiment libres d’utilisation en Tunisie sous la présidence de Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Facebook a longtemps été le seul espace où la liberté d’expression était possible dans ce pays où la toile tunisienne était ultra surveillée et faisait l’objet d’une censure importante. Aujourd’hui, au lendemain de la fuite de l’ancien président, le gouvernement provisoire d’union nationale s’est engagé à garantir la liberté d’expression des citoyens tunisiens, notamment sur Internet.

Le rôle de Facebook reste à éclaircir dans le déroulement des événements en Tunisie, mais il est indéniable que le réseau proposé par votre société et fréquenté par 1,9 million de Tunisiens, – 54,7 pour cent des Tunisiens fréquentant Internet – a eu un rôle non négligeable dans la circulation de l’information concernant les événements survenus en Tunisie. En effet, depuis le 17 décembre 2011 et le début du soulèvement populaire qui a conduit à la chute de Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Facebook a servi de plateforme sur laquelle les internautes tunisiens écrivaient des commentaires, postaient des vidéos et des photos, afin de témoigner du caractère extrêmement violent de la répression policière à l’encontre des manifestants.

Il nous semble important que l’ensemble de ces informations (témoignages écrits, vidéo, audio) soient sauvegardées, afin qu’elles puissent servir de base de données pour toute personne qui souhaitera analyser ce tournant historique.

Par la présente lettre, Read Write Web Francophone, l’un des blogs technologiques les plus réputés, Global Voices en français, qui publie depuis mars 2007 les témoignages des blogueurs tunisiens sur la censure et la répression en Tunisie, Reporters sans frontières et le Comittee to Protect Bloggers, associations qui ont défendu les journalistes et les blogueurs tunisiens inquiétés, arrêtés ou emprisonnés et dénoncé la censure, vous demandent de sauvegarder toutes les données relatives aux événements de décembre 2010 et janvier 2011 en Tunisie, afin que ces informations puissent, demain, servir à une nation tunisienne en pleine reconstruction.

Nous vous demandons également de permettre l’accès aux historiens, qu’ils soient Tunisiens ou étrangers, à l’ensemble des informations anonymisées relatives à cette période. Ces données, déposées sur Facebook, appartiennent également au peuple tunisien.

Nous vous remercions d’avance d’examiner positivement notre demande, et vous prions d’agréer, Monsieur, l’expression de nos salutations distinguées.

Fabrice Epelboin
Editeur de ReadWriteWeb francophone

Claire Ulrich
Editeur de Global Voices en français

Jean-François Julliard
Secrétaire Général, Reporters Sans Frontières

Curt Hopkins
Fondateur du Committee to Protect Bloggers

Mis à jour le 26 Janvier 2011

Language as an alleged science

The importance of language for the development of culture lies in the fact that, in language, man juxtaposed to the one world another world of his own, a place which he thought so sturdy that from it he could move the rest of the world from its foundations and make himself lord over it. To the extent that he believed over long periods of time in the concepts and names of things as if they were aeternae veritates, man has acquired that pride by which he has raised himself above the animals: he really did believe that in language he had knowledge of the world. The shaper of language was not so modest as to think that he was only giving things labels; rather, he imagined that he was expressing the highest knowledge of things with words; and in fact, language is the first stage of scientific effort. Here, too, it is the belief in found truth from which the mightiest sources of strength have flowed. Very belatedly (only now) is it dawning on men that in their belief in language they have propagated a monstrous error. Fortunately, it is too late to be able to revoke the development of reason, which rests on that belief.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human

Sorry, no English for you today.

You can read my Italian translation here.

The English original is on Global Voices, along with translations in various other languages.

Testament of a Viet

I send my brain to your research center so they can find out what makes us fight.

I send my eyes to your President so they will look him in the eyes.

I send my teeth to your General; they have bitten more guns than bread because hunger kept me company all the time.

My body, I will leave it to the Mekong.

Those who survived, those are the ones that should afford to live like human beings, like humans deserve to live.

Otherwise, what is war for? What is peace for?

The movie L’empire au milieu du sud, premiered at the Cinema Escurial in Paris, and the other film scheduled in the same cinema, Venus noire, couldn’t be more different, in terms of setting, of plot and story, of language. Still they share a common, uncompromising condemnation of violence.

The first one is a documentary about the twentieth century of Vietnam, evocative and stirring, that shows how the numerous war that took place throughout the century violated the land, the soil of Vietname.  Believe me, if you see the movie, violation, even rape,  are the words that comes to mind. And it’s not a question of green revolution or so, it goes more deeply than that. Because the land is one of the most significant and persistant theme inhabited by Vietnamese literature, a very ancient and very reach one. And the authors were aware of that, and show this awareness in the movie. Following what Alain Resnais, did with Auschwitz’s camp in Nuit et brouillard, they put together newsreels from  various archives and film libraries (30 per cent of which were produced in Vietnam and found in local archives)  with a voice over of a literary pastiche made with excerpts from Vietnamese, French and American authors. What came out after ten years work by Jacques Perrin ed Eric Deroo, is an exciting, arresting and provocative  experience for the viewers. The filmakers were in the cinema and the ensuing debate was very lively, clearly showing how provocative the movie was for the audience. A lady, in particular, almost cried out his desire and need to understand why we continue to ravage and violate the planet, the earth, by making wars and using destructive weapons.

Peu à peu, Jacques Perrin, à l’aide de textes littéraires souvent très pertinents, parvient à créer un sentiment de fatalité, comme si la mort faisait partie intégrante du destin de ce peuple aux innombrables souffrances. Hymne à la beauté de la vie, mais également terrible réquisitoire contre la cupidité des hommes et l’absurdité de toutes les guerres, L’empire du milieu du Sud, moins directement commercial que les habituelles productions animalières de l’acteur-producteur, est un excellent documentaire qui dépasse largement la stricte géographie orientale de son sujet pour devenir un amer constat sur la nature humaine.

Virginie Dumez

J’envoie mon cerveau à votre centre de recherches pour qu’on trouve ce qui nous fit lutter. J’envoie mes yeux à votre président pour qu’il les regarde en face. J’envoie mes dents à vos généraux, elles ont mordu plus de fusils que de pain car la faim fut ma compagne. Mon corps, je le laisse au Mékong.

C’est qui ont survecu, à eux de vivre comme il faut, comme il convient à des hommes, sinon à quoi çà sert la guerre, à quoi çà sert la paix?

Personally, I bought a 300-pages anthology of Vietnamese literature that I will try to read as soon as I got time. Or maybe not. Il pensiero è quello che conta.

I am out of time now and I will talk about Venus noire some other time. This movie also talks sharply about violence, not against the land but against a famous African woman, the so-called Hottentot Venus. It’s a sad, disquieting and troubling story, almost unbearable to watch at times (several people left the room befor the end of the movie) The body and soul of Sarah Baartman have been violated and raped (in the real sense of the word, this time) in every possible way, unashamedly and without remorse whatsoever, and the movie goes all the way in showing it to the audience.

As you can, Venus noire deserves a post on its own.