GLOBALISTSpring 2010 / Vol. 10, Issue 3

The Yale

Lunchtime in Mumbai 6 Afghanistan’s Indiana Jones 28Justice for Sudan’s President? 33

Breaking News, Breaking Convention

An Undergraduate Magazine of International Affairs

New Models of Journalismfrom Around the World

The Yale University Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics

The Program in Agrarian Studies

Ethics, Politics, and Economics as an Undergraduate Major

The Interdisciplinary Introduction to Statistics Program

Center for the Study of American Politics

The Yale Institution for Social and Policy Studies

The Yale Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS) strives to facilitate interdisciplinary inquiry in the social

sciences and research into important public policy.

Newspapers in the United States have spilled oceans of ink lamenting their declining fortunes

over the last few years. In this issue of the Globalist, we aim to offer a perspective on jour-

nalism that looks beyond the borders (and anxieties) of developed North America. Instead

of headlines about layoffs or circulation cuts, within these pages you’ll find articles which highlight

both the promise and the perils of journalism around the world.

This issue includes several exciting articles written by freshmen. In “The Talk of the Town,” Jes-

sica Shor profiles Alfred Sirleaf, a Liberian man who has dedicated himself to providing the daily

news for free via blackboard, convinced that increased access to information can bring peace to his

country. A continent away, Erin Biel’s “Little Voices, Resounding Change” examines a program which

gives children from India’s most marginalized communities the tools to become journalists and ad-

vocates for their own cause.

Of course, no issue focusing on journalism could ignore the pressures and hazards that make

reporting a potentially life-threatening occupation in many countries. Kanglei Wang’s Perspectives

piece offers a meditation on the dangers of pursuing journalism in China, from the years of the Cul-

tural Revolution to today, while Carlos Gomez reports on Cuban bloggers who risk their safety to

make their voices heard. Finally, in this issue’s main article, Cat Cheney takes up an often-ignored

element of the U.S. newspaper crisis: the transformation of foreign correspondence, a process which

promises to alter how Americans see the world.

You’ll find equally intriguing articles outside of the journalism section. In Culture, Alon Harish

analyzes Afro-Peruvian music’s journey beyond the Andes. In Politics & Economy, Adèle Rossouw

delves into the taxi drivers’ strikes which have crippled Johannesburg. And Monica Landy inaugu-

rates a brand new section, Science & Technology, with an article on Japan’s drive to build robots to

care for its rapidly aging population.

Enjoy!

Yours,

Alex Soble

Editor-in-Chief, The Yale Globalist

ON THE COVER:South Korean newspapers report on the release of hostages held in Afghanistan,

August 2007.(76371603/Chung Sung-Jun/Courtesy Getty Images)

JOURNALISM AdVISORY BOARd

Steven Brill, Yale Dept. of English

Nayan Chanda, Director of Publications,

MacMillan Center

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, Foreign Affairs

Jef McAllister, Time Magazine

Nathaniel Rich, The Paris Review

Fred Strebeigh, Yale Dept. of English

ACAdEMIC AdVISORY BOARd

Harvey Goldblatt, Professor of Medieval Slavic Literature, Master of Pierson

College

Donald Green, Director, Institution for Social and Policy Studies

Charles Hill, Yale Diplomat-in-Residence

Ian Shapiro, Director, MacMillan Center

Ernesto Zedillo, Director, Yale Center for the Study of Globalization

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Editor-in-ChiefAlex Soble

Managing Editors

Jeffrey Kaiser, Rishabh Khosla, Emma Sokoloff-Rubin, Alison Weiner

Associate EditorsRae Ellen Bichell, Raphaella Friedman, Uzra

Khan, Alexander Klein, Angela Ramirez

Copy EditorAlexander Krey

Production & Design EditorChristina Lin

Online EditorCatherine Osborn

Assistant Production EditorsRaisa Bruner, Anjali Jotwani, Eli Markham

Production StaffMeaghan Barr, Anna Kellar

Executive DirectorAlice Walton

Publisher

Courtney Fukuda

Director of DevelopmentGeorge Bogden

Events Coordinator

Joanna Cornell

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GLOBALISTAn Undergraduate Magazine of

International AffairsSpring 2010 / Vol. 10, Issue 3

www.tyglobalist.org

The Yale

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Editors-at-LargeCatherine Cheney, Amila Golic,

Rachel Wolf

Business MentorsGemma Bloemen, Brad Schecter, Amira

Valliani

Editors EmeritusMaria Blackwood, Jesse Marks, Pete Martin,

Emma Vawter

CONTENTSSpring 2010 / Vol . 10, Issue 3

FOCUS: Journalism

Little Voices, Resounding ChangeA UNICEF journalism initiative in India teaches disadvantaged

children to speak up about the hardships they face daily.

By Erin Biel

12

Financial pressures, new technologies, and changing expectations are transforming the future of foreign reporting. By Catherine Cheney

17

The Talk of the TownIn post-war Liberia, Alfred Sirleaf sees access to information

as the key to peace. By Jessica Shor

14

The Yale Globalist is a member of Global21, a network of student-run international affairs magazines at premier universities around the world.

Q&A: A Conversation with Nicholas Kristof By Jeffrey Kaiser

21

Peace Through PrintThe island of Cyprus has long been the site of ethnic conflict

between Turkish and Greek factions. Could reforming

journalistic practices help bring about peace?

By Emily Sosangelis

22

Cuba’s Emerging BlogosphereIn spite of government repression and limited access to the

Internet, Cuban bloggers are determined to make their voices

heard. By Carlos Gomez

23

FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE

IN FLUX

Courtesy Flickr Creative Commons

Visit our website at www.tyglobalist.org for additional reporting, online exclusives, and blogs by Globalist writers.

6 | The Lunch Box MenAt lunchtime in Mumbai, 20,000 office-goers can sit down and enjoy their own hot, home-cooked food, thanks to the

city’s band of dedicated, error-free dabbawalas. By Uzra Khan

7 | Are We Moving Yet?In South Africa’s commercial capital, destructive strikes and slow negotiations threaten to bring a major public

transportation project to a standstill. By Adèle Rossouw

8 | Ten Million VoicesIn Colombia, new media moves millions to march against the FARC. By Diego Salvatierra

9 | Invisible CityAn ambitious proposal to expand Venice’s port threatens to overwhelm the lagoon’s already fragile ecosystem while

excluding the city’s residents from the process. By Charlotte Parker

10 | Climate-Proofing the NetherlandsThe Netherlands prepares itself for an era of rising sea levels. By Anne van Bruggen

11 | Defiance in DubaiFor Dubai’s immigrant workers, the financial crisis has brought further hardship but also an opportunity to challenge the

unfair conditions under which they work. By Shashwat Udit

25 | Shining in the RoughBeijing’s “it” galleries find a new home in an unlikely neighborhood. By Helena Malchione

26 | Compiling a CultureThe international success of Afro-Peruvian music has brought a once-obscure tradition into the potentially distorting

glare of the spotlight. By Alon Harish

28 | The Eroded Face of AfghanistanArchaeologist Zemaryalai Tarzi seeks the country’s history in its sandstone cliffs. By Rae Ellen Bichell

POLITICS & ECONOMY

CULTURE

PERSPECTIVES 33 | The Hunt for Al-BashirThe President of Sudan has evaded standing trial for the genocide in Darfur. What does this mean for global justice?

By Sibjeet Mahapatra

34 | Journalism in China: A Memoir and a Future?For my family, stepping down the path of journalism is cause for fear as well as hope. By Kanglei Wang

6

25

31 | Robots that Care?For better or for worse, Japan looks to robots to fill the gaps that will soon be left by the world’s fastest aging

population. By Monica Landy

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

8

33

POLITICS & ECONOMYSPring 2010

6

With a twinkle in his eye and his traditional white Nehru hat

placed jauntily on his head, Gangaram Tarekar, secretary of

the Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Association (NMTBSA), ar-

rived at his destination in Mumbai and, true to his profession, was

right on time. The NMTBSA, popularly known as the dabbawalas,

delivers boxes of steaming, home-cooked food to 200,000 Mumbai of-

fice-goers everyday. For the equivalent of seven to nine U.S. dollars a

month, this lunch-delivery service even includes returning the empty

boxes to each subscriber’s house. The dabbawalas keep the city fed,

pumping food through its veins of public transport. Even during the

horrific Mumbai monsoon season, the dabbawalas manage to find a

way through floods and train delays to deliver lunch.

“Dabba” means “lunch box” in Hindi, and “wala” means “man.”

These 5,000 “lunch box men” started their business over a hundred

years ago when India was still under British rule. Indian office-goers

preferred home-cooked meals to the foreign food provided by their

British employers. Today, the dabbawalas are a force to be reckoned

with. Their trademark: they make no mistakes. Their error rate is

one in 16 million, and in 2001, Forbes Global magazine gave them a

rating of Six Sigma, or 99.999 percent accuracy.

Over the years the dabbawalas have evolved from a small group of

business partners to a large organization, managed by an administra-

tive trust under the command of an elected president and secretary.

Yet they retain the characteristics of a brotherhood. They all belong

to the same caste — the Malvas — and dress in the same white garb

and white Nehru hats. As Tarekar said in rapid Hindi, “We only take

new dabbawalas from our own people. Forty percent of dabbawalas

got into the profession because their father was in it before, and there

is a rigorous 6-month training process for each new dabbawala, and

it is in this time that we decide if we like him.”

How do the dabbawalas perpetually avoid mistakes? It’s easy to

imagine reams of addresses and names, a secret computer database

somewhere in Mumbai updated regularly to accommodate their

growing clientele. But most dabbawalas are illiterate. Their method

is shockingly simple: “We work on memory. If you subscribe to us to-

day, one of our brothers will come to your house tomorrow to memo-

rize its location, and go to your office to do the same. The day after

tomorrow he will come to collect your dabba,” said Tarekar proudly.

Apart from this amazing absence of error, the dabbawalas pride

themselves on almost never going on strike. “Error is horror. Strike is

suicide,” Tarekar said in broken English. “A strike has disastrous re-

sults; our brothers in the offices don’t get the lunch that their wives,

mothers, and daughters have prepared for them with so much care.”

The dabbawalas’ remarkable drive has been recognized interna-

tionally by the likes of Prince Charles, Richard Branson, and Bill Clin-

ton, all of whom have traveled to India to meet them. Tarekar, in fact,

was one of the guests at Prince Charles’ wedding to Camilla Parker

Bowles. “We really liked Prince Charles, he was always so punctual

when he met us,” said Tarekar, smiling.

In keeping with changing times, the dabbawalas now have their

own website and offer subscriptions by text message. Even more

striking is the little effort they put into advertising: they rely solely

on word-of-mouth. Mumbai’s dabbawalas have no plans to expand to

other cities in India. As Tarekar put it, “Mumbai is perfect for us. It

is a long and narrow city, and it has an excellent train system. We

wouldn’t be able to function elsewhere. Only in Mumbai can you find

such a variety of people with such a variety of home-cooked food.” He

is unfazed about what the future holds: “The future? We’ll work, we’ll

eat, and we’ll enjoy ourselves! The moon won’t change, the sun won’t

change, the sky won’t change. People will change, but their hunger

for a home-cooked meal will not. And as long as that doesn’t change,

we will not either.”

With a chuckle, a namaste, and a bow of his Nehru hat, Mr. Ganga-

ram Tarekar is off — he can’t be late for his next appointment.

Uzra Khan is a sophomore Psychology major in Trumbull College.

The Lunch Box MenAt lunchtime in Mumbai, 20,000 office-goers can sit down and enjoy their own hot, home-cooked food, thanks to the city’s band of dedicated, error-free dabbawalas.By Uzra Khan

The illiterate dabbawalas use their own codes to distinguish each of the 20,000 lunch boxes they handle daily. (Courtesy Meena Kadri/Flickr)

POLITICS & ECONOMYthe yale globalist

7

Are We Moving Yet?In South Africa’s commercial capital, destructive strikes and slow negotiations

threaten to bring a major public transportation project to a standstill.By Adèle Rossouw

As the taxi drivers of Johannesburg strike, their vehicles sit idle in the streets. (Courtesy Pierre Rossouw)

“If we hear there’s a taxi strike, we know that there will be no

transport to get to work. People who are desperate start walk-

ing, you don’t dare take the bus,” Aida Moyo explained. “If taxi driv-

ers see you getting into buses they will shoot you, or they will burn

the vehicle.” Moyo is a native Zimbabwean who, like so many others,

came to Johannesburg in search of work. “These taxi strikes affect

everybody. You find everybody is in fear.”

Moyo is just one of thousands of members of the South African

workforce who were paralyzed by a series of taxi driver strikes

throughout 2009. The protestors expressed outrage over the govern-

ment’s implementation of a new mass transit system. Modeled on the

transport networks of South American cities, the Bus Rapid Tran-

sit System (BRT) was designed to upgrade Johannesburg’s public

transport in preparation for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Taxi drivers,

who have long been the key providers of public transport in the city,

feared they would lose their customers to the government-subsidized

BRT buses.

The BRT system, which was renamed Rea Vaya (“we are moving”

in the Sotho language) by the department of Transport, was launched

in August 2009. Before then, more than 70 percent of Johannesburg’s

public transport users depended on the city’s chaotic mass of mini-

bus taxis. The limited number of buses and trains could do little to

compete with the taxis’ vast, unregulated network of vehicles, which

are a fast and cheap means of transport. Such advantages, however,

come at a price. Taxis are notorious for reckless speeding, poor ve-

hicle maintenance, and — after the government’s implementation of

the first phase of Rea Vaya — violent repression of competitors.

The BRT system’s main line runs through central Johannesburg

from Soweto Township to the Ellis Park Stadium, a route once dom-

inated by taxis. Protests by taxi drivers started in March 2009 and

brought movement in the city to a standstill. The Ministry of Trans-

port is nevertheless determined to implement Rea Vaya. “This project

will continue to develop, both before and after the World Cup,” stated

Ibrahim Seedat, the ministry’s director of public transport policies.

In recognition of the service that the taxi industry has been pro-

viding, the ministry committed to employing taxi drivers who would

lose clients to the BRT system. Taxi owners will become shareholders

in companies which will eventually run Rea Vaya on behalf of the city.

“The government has stated repeatedly that there will be no loss of

legitimate jobs or profits,” said Seedat.

Such promises have induced members of the taxi industry to en-

ter into negotiations with the City of Johannesburg. By december 14,

2009, the two largest taxi organizations involved in the negotiations,

the Greater Johannesburg Regional Taxi Council and the Top Six

Taxi Association, had signed a memorandum of understanding with

the city. The agreement did not commit taxi operators to any part of

the implementation of Rea Vaya. “How will taxi operators be compen-

sated? What will their shareholding in the BRT companies be? These

are matters which we are discussing at the moment,” stated Frans

Mashishi, secretary general of the Gauteng Taxi Council. “I can’t say

with certainty that these people will get jobs. There are still some

who are against the implementation of BRT.”

The first phase of Rea Vaya replaced 575 taxis with 143 BRT bus-

es, but this number represents only a small proportion of the 25,000

taxis in the city. An approved fleet of drivers has been hired to trans-

port soccer fans for the duration of the World Cup, but only the bus

route from Soweto to Ellis Park will be operational. If Rea Vaya is

to develop into a superior alternative to Johannesburg’s chaotic taxi

network, it will have to incorporate the labor and territory currently

controlled by taxis. The Ministry of Transport hopes that peaceful

negotiations with the taxi industry will continue, but no agreement

has yet been reached. While the power struggle continues, members

of the public are impatient for an improved means of public trans-

port. “If only these problems with the taxis could simply disappear!”

lamented Moyo. “Then everybody could travel to work. Everybody

would be safer.”

Adèle Rossouw is a freshman in Trumbull College.

POLITICS & ECONOMYSPring 2010

8

Ten Million VoicesIn Colombia, new media moves millions to march against the FARC.

By diego Salvatierra

Protesters take to the streets of Colombia on February 4, 2008. (Courtesy Oscar Morales and El Tiempo)

deep in Colombia’s jungle, on February 4th, 2008, several hos-

tages of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)

guerrilla group huddled around a contraband AM radio, listening to

the crackling chant: “Libertad, libertad, libertad.” They were hearing

the shouts of five million protesters across Colombia calling for an

end to the FARC and its terrorist tactics, which have fueled violence

in the country since 1964. The marches became the largest and clear-

est public outcry in Colombian history.

The hostages would later say that it was the brightest day of their

ordeal, bringing them a glimmer of hope. And it was all due to a

single Facebook group, created by 33-year-old Colombian engineer

Oscar Morales. “deep inside, I knew I couldn’t take it anymore,” said

Morales, describing the frustration with the FARC and its violent

guerilla tactics, which include the kidnapping of civilians.

In response, Morales started the group “A Million Voices Against

the FARC.” It grew exponentially; within 12 hours, 1,500 members had

joined. Within a day, 4,000. After one week, over 150,000. discussion

groups proliferated, followed by the moment that set this particular

group apart: Someone suggested they take concrete action.

With his supporters’ help, Morales organized marches to be

staged in Colombia and around the world. The group’s growth seized

headlines in the mainstream Colombian media. On the day of the pro-

tests, nearly five million people, one-tenth of the country’s popula-

tion, poured into Colombia’s streets. Five million more marched in

hundreds of other cities worldwide in a massive show of solidarity.

Since Facebook began, thousands of groups have appeared seek-

ing “a million members” in support of their cause. Most die off before

they reach 1,000. According to Erin Mazursky, co-founder and former

director of the activist group STANd: A Student Anti-Genocide Coali-

tion, what set Morales’s movement apart was that it took “tangible

action, not just online action.”

Once core members of the groups decided to act, dedication be-

came crucial, said Morales. From the start, he wanted to “do things

right, to shine above other groups,” and began devoting almost all

his time to planning the marches. Over 200 local organizers coordi-

nated their actions using Google docs for instantaneous file sharing.

Stylized logos for the movement’s new homepage were posted on the

sites of other organizations, and Colombians living abroad translated

the homepage of “A Million Voices” into 17 languages.

Their use of online media to mobilize people has so far been un-

matched in scope, but many hope it can serve as an example. Morales

himself has been invited to speak at the Facebook headquarters in

Palo Alto, California, and to several new media conferences.

The marches of February 4 also marked the beginning of a year

of defeats for the FARC. Throughout 2008, President Alvaro Uribe’s

government had unusual success in liberating hostages, bringing

down FARC leaders, and demobilizing guerrillas. It remains un-

clear whether the marches sparked these efforts, but as Morales put

it, “historically the military solution by itself hasn’t gotten the job

done.”

After the marches, the guerrilla group’s full name, FARC-EP (EP

standing for “People’s Army”), has been used far less by media and

the FARC itself. According to Morales, a few guerrilleros even said

that the marches convinced them to abandon the fight. Angela Lon-

dono, a Colombian student studying at Yale, noted that people “feel

safer mainly because the military has gotten stronger.” She agreed,

though, that the marches were “a way to unite Colombians” and

show that “there was consensus” against the FARC.

Undoubtedly, the marches allowed millions of people to make

their frustrations public. Before the marches, “people commented on

the streets, but there was no mass show of indignation,” explained

Morales. Mazurky emphasized that the timing of such demonstra-

tions is crucial, but so is the commitment of those involved. “It starts

with a moment, but it’s what you do with that moment: That is really

the important part.”

Diego Salvatierra is a freshman in Pierson College.

POLITICS & ECONOMYthe yale globalist

9

Looking out from streets on the edges of Venice, it is impos-

sible to ignore the dark forms that dot the city’s lagoon. dredg-

ing machines idle like large mechanical birds in the middle of

calm water, auguring the development that Italian officials and the

Port Authority argue will transform Venice into a central hub for the

maritime trade of the 21st century. But to concerned activists, the

machines represent a change that will irreparably damage the city of

Venice and its ecosystem.

On May 11, 2009, Paolo Costa, former mayor of Venice and now

president of the Venice Port Authority, submitted a proposal to the

Italian Senate to further dredge the main channel into the port. The

proposed dredging would expand the Port’s capacity to accommodate

ships larger than 400 meters in length. The proposal forms part of

a 260 million Euro plan for development of port infrastructure that

aims to make Venice a rail, road, and sea hub serving Italy and East-

Central Europe.

The channels dredged for port traffic, however, have been “ac-

celerating the ongoing natural erosion in the lagoon,” according to

biologist and Venice resident Jane da Mosto. The prospect of inten-

sifying port activities is “deeply worrying for those concerned with

safeguarding Venice,” wrote da Mosto and Professor Luigi d’Alpaos

of the University of Padua in “The Venice Report,” a comprehensive

study by British non-profit Venice in Peril.

In 2009, d’Alpaos published research showing that port traffic

and dredging have exacerbated the lagoon’s instability. Excavation

erodes the sedimentary deposits that protect Venice by keeping the

lagoon water lower than sea level. disappearance of these sediments

is linked to increased bouts of flooding and rising water levels.

The Port’s proposal deflects environmental concerns by asserting

that “the situation regarding the lagoon has completely changed and

can be managed through judicious use of the MoSE system.” MoSE

(Experimental Electromechanical Module) is a flood defense system

consisting of giant mobile underwater gates positioned where the Ve-

netian lagoon meets the Adriatic Sea.

But MoSE is simply a tidal flood control system. It cannot protect

the city against damage wrought by large scale excavation, wrote

Tom Spencer of Cambridge University in “The Venice Report.”

The controversy surrounding the port enlargement proposal in-

tensifies the ongoing debate between environmentalists and policy

makers that began when the government first approved the MoSE

project. Accusations of profiteering and data manipulation have

flown back and forth, yet the two sides rarely enter into constructive

dialogue and have not consulted the residents of Venice.

The city has not officially heard the port expansion proposal.

Francesca Meneghetti, an employee of the Environmental Manage-

ment department of Venice, resignedly said that the municipality

would doubtless be against it. Historic Venice and its inhabitants

are politically impotent. The central Italian government has first say

in most city matters because it supplies the majority of funding for

public works projects. The municipality has only a 2.5 percent share

in the Port and no legal control over the state-owned waterways in

question. The hierarchy of political power — the Italian government

at the top, followed by the Veneto Region, and finally the municipality

of Venice itself — leaves the city’s government little room to work for

its constituents. For activist citizens of historic Venice, years of pro-

testing, mainly against the MoSE project, have led to little tangible

action.

The already complicated situation is further convoluted by the

fact that “the average Venetian doesn’t understand what’s going on,”

da Mosto explained.

Invisible CityAn ambitious proposal to expand Venice’s port threatens to overwhelm

the lagoon’s already fragile ecosystem while excluding the city’s residents from the process.

By Charlotte Parker

A cruise ship leaving Venice dwarfs the city. Cruise ship traffic in the Port increased from 200 ships in 2000 to 510 in 2007. (Parker/TYG)

POLITICS & ECONOMYSPring 2010

10

Yet the Port’s expansion project would have very real consequenc-

es for Venice. da Mosto emphasized that it would “exacerbate and

accelerate the degradation of buildings caused by higher water levels

and continue the pressure of cruise ship traffic on Venice, which ef-

fects all kinds of distortions on the local economy and excludes the

permanent inhabitants of Venice.”

Giovanna Benvenuti, a spokesperson for the Port, countered that

the expansion would bring economic benefits, stimulating the local

economy through increased ship traffic. She also noted that the ex-

pansion could have positive consequences for the environment; part

of the excavation will focus on removing and treating sediment pol-

luted by heavy metals. The debate over the future of Venice’s port has

yet to yield a creative, forward-looking vision for the city, its infra-

structure, and its natural environment.

Alternative proposals for the development of Venice and the sur-

rounding region have garnered little airtime. Carlo Crotti, chairman

of the non-profit Association for Hydraulic Protection of the Vene-

tian-Paduan Territory, backs a potentially transformative model that

would also safeguard historic Venice. He spoke of a “highway of the

sea,” a network of inland canals plied by small river-sea craft. These

boats would deliver containers, deposited on offshore platforms by

large ships, via the waterways to inland ports, eliminating the need

for damaging large-scale dredging.

Although construction began in 1965, the waterway from Padua to

Venice — a key part of this alternative system — remains incomplete.

The Port’s proposal acknowledged the value of a waterway system

and suggested further development of existing canals. This commit-

ment, however, rings hollow; the Port recently called on the central

government to approve a project to build a highway where the Padua-

Venice waterway was planned.

According to Crotti, there are around ten small, grassroots asso-

ciations in the communities between Padua and Venice pressuring

officials for completion of the waterway. These associations, however,

appear fairly limited. Their challengers are the multinational compa-

nies who carry out the highway construction, and the central govern-

ment, which stands to make a profit from tollbooths.

Hope remains that protecting the lagoon will become a priority,

but da Mosto warned that time is running out. Ultimately, mobile

flood barriers and large infrastructure investments will not solve

Venice’s problems. Candid discussion between all sides — govern-

ment, citizens, business interests, and environmental activists — is

the only way to protect both the ecology of the lagoon and the living

organism of one of the world’s great cities.

Charlotte Parker is a freshman in Calhoun College.

Accusations of profiteering and data manipulation have flown back and forth, yet the two sides rarely enter into constructive dialogue and have not consulted the residents of Venice.

The dutch have always fought against the sea. A quarter

of the Netherlands’s land — an area that generates 65

percent of national GdP — lies below sea level. As a result,

its citizens take climate change very seriously.

Will the Netherlands really vanish from the map, as

Al Gore suggested in his documentary, “An Inconvenient

Truth?” According to Marcel Stive, a member of the dutch

government-appointed delta Commission, “the problem is

very urgent.” Stive cited official forecasts which predict “a

regional sea level rise of 2.13 to 4.27 feet by 2100 and of 6.56 to

13.12 feet by 2200.”

The Netherlands has already spent billions on a vast sys-

tem of levees, dikes and floodgates, and costs are expected to

rise. Raising flood protection levels by a factor of 10 and cre-

ating a special delta fund to finance climate-proofing projects

through less prosperous times will cost an estimated 1.2 to 1.6

billion Euros per year until 2050, according to experts. “It’s

better to be safe than sorry when you live below sea level,”

quipped Peter C. G. Glas, director of inland water systems at

delft Hydraulics. “We’ve had a tradition over the past cen-

tury of being frightened of the water, and rightly so.”

As part of the scramble to reduce dependence on carbon-

intensive sources of energy, the dutch are turning towards

the very force that threatens to flood their country: the sea.

Last year marked the inauguration of the North Sea’s larg-

est offshore wind park. Its 36 windmills have a total capacity

of 108 megawatts, enough to power about 100,000 households.

Other initiatives include the construction of multifunctional

dikes, which in addition to protecting against floods have

been integrated with systems for transportation, irrigation,

national defense and drinking water. Proposals have been

floated to build a 60,000-hectare tulip-shaped island off the

coast, which would protect the coast, shield against storms,

generate electricity and provide more space for industry and

housing.

Of course, none of these projects alone will be able to stop

a true climate change disaster. But the dutch government

and its delta Commission hope that in the fight against global

warming and rising sea levels, the Netherlands will serve as

an example of innovation for the rest of the world.

Anne van Bruggen is a freshman in Silliman College.

Climate-Proofing the Netherlands

The Netherlands prepares itself for an era of rising sea levels.

By Anne van Bruggen

POLITICS & ECONOMYthe yale globalist

11

Until recently, dubai seemed like one of the world’s great success

stories, replete with gleaming skyscrapers, super luxury hotels,

gigantic shopping malls, and artificial islands. Hearing the call of its

splendors, workers from South Asia, youth from across the Middle

East, and investors the world over poured into dubai. Even during

the boom times, though, not everyone who came to the city enjoyed

its indulgences. Some lived in ramshackle housing, worked danger-

ous jobs under scorching desert sun, and were frequently cheated

by employers. during the bubble years, the problems faced by im-

migrant workers could be ignored. Any attempts to organize resulted

in jail or deportation. But the impact of the recent economic crisis

cannot be brushed aside so lightly.

When the global financial crisis struck, it became evident that

cheap borrowing rather than strong fundamentals had driven dubai’s

growth. Construction projects came to a halt, companies went bank-

rupt, and the massive state-owned conglomerate dubai World sus-

pended payments on its debt, sending jitters through the financial

system. However, according to Samer Muscati, United Arab Emirates

researcher for Human Rights Watch, “those hardest hit by the down-

turn were the workers.”

during the boom years, human traffickers priced passage to the

promised land at thousands of dollars, meaning many workers came

to dubai already heavily indebted. Layoffs left many of them with no

means to pay off their debts. Even worse, employers took advantage

of the opportunity to cheat workers out of what they were owed. To

avoid paying back wages, employers often waited until workers re-

turned home to visit their families to fire them.

The government of the United Arab Emirates, of which dubai

is a constituent emirate, rejects the view that immigrant workers

lack protection against exploitation. A U.A.E. government employee

speaking anonymously did not deny that private companies had com-

mitted abuses, but stressed that the government’s laws and actions

showed they were committed to protecting the rights of workers. The

official pointed to a new electronic system for paying wages, one that

makes cheating on payments impossible. Labor Minister Saqr Go-

bash proclaimed the new system “a model worth emulating in boost-

ing the rights of workers.”

Nonetheless, the workers are not waiting for government action.

They “barely manage to survive and send money to their families,”

one worker told the Associated Press. despite being required to leave

the country when they lose their jobs, many defiantly hold on to their

visas. Some stay in the country illegally. despite being forbidden to

form unions, organize, and strike, they have done so. In december,

workers held a strike against Robust Contracting, a company that

had not paid wages for three months. during the boom years, such

an action would have led to jail time or deportation for the strikers.

This time the U.A.E. government recognized that it had to investigate

the company, not the workers.

Human rights groups welcome the sentiment but retain doubts.

Muscati worried that “it’s about the optics.” While well-intentioned

laws are on the books, too few inspectors have been appointed to en-

force them, and there have been delays and difficulties in setting up

the new electronic accounts. Moreover, he readily acknowledged that

the problem extends farther than the U.A.E. government. Western in-

stitutions and western corporations operating in dubai, including the

Guggenheim and New York University, contract out building projects

to developers known to not respect worker’s rights. Migrant work-

ers’ home countries, mainly in South Asia, also gain heavily from

remittances, enough to make them turn a blind eye to the trafficking

networks that operate within their borders. In the end, “everyone is

willing to make a buck off these guys,” as Muscati explained.

The root of the problem is a system that leaves workers at the

mercy of their employers. Given such a skewed power dynamic, it is

unsurprising that some will be tempted to exploit the helpless. The

workers are already rising to challenge this order. In spite of the cri-

sis, a dubai that still aspires to greatness should help them on their

way.

Shashwat Udit is a sophomore Economics major in Silliman College.

Dubai’s soaring towers have been built by immigrant laborers, largely from South Asia. (Wikimedia Commons)

defiance in dubaiFor Dubai’s immigrant workers, the financial crisis has brought further

hardship but also an opportunity to challenge the unfair conditions under which they work.

By Shashwat Udit

FOCUS: JournalismSPring 2010

12

“We develop only when someone encourages us. It’s

like a bean plant, which grows well only if there’s a

stick to support it,” Samuel Venkatesan, 17, said in

rapid Tamil during an interview with NdTV, a news station based out

of New delhi, India. Samuel’s optimism and pride were unmistakable

as he described his UNICEF-supported filmmaking projects. Sharing

the story of his childhood in a series of e-mail messages translated by

Thomas George, UNICEF communications specialist for Tamil Nadu

state, Samuel explained how a children’s journalism project provided

him with the support he needed to grow and to thrive.

Samuel has spent his childhood in missionary boarding hostels

and is now a 12th-year student at the Government Higher Secondary

School in Shoolagiri village, an impoverished community in Tamil

Nadu. His father deserted his family when he was five years old, and

his family’s only income is the money his mother earns as a domes-

tic helper in Bangalore. At 15, Samuel contemplated dropping out of

school and getting a job. His plans, and his life, changed when he

heard that a non-profit organization called the Nalanda Way Foun-

dation was coming to his district to select students for a journalism

training program.

The program, Eastside Story, selects students ages 12 to 18 to re-

ceive mentorship in journalism, theater, performing arts, or media.

After completing their training, the students research, write about,

and film stories related to pertinent issues in their communities.

Their final products get published in or broadcast on local and na-

tional media, including newspapers, magazines, radio, the Internet,

and television.

Seeing this as perhaps his only opportunity to enrich his life, Sam-

uel decided to audition for a spot in the filmmaking program. “For

the audition I was asked to speak on any topic of interest for a few

minutes. I am a chatterbox and I spoke as usual.” Samuel won over

the representatives of the Eastside Story Program with his charm.

The video camera they gave him felt like the key to a new future.

An Army of Adolescent AdvocatesSamuel joined the ranks of over 7,000 Indian students who are part of

UNICEF’s Child Reporters Initiative (CRI), a program that now spans

14 states in India. UNICEF launched the CRI in 2005 to help fund non-

profit programs like Eastside Story and to encourage children from

marginalized communities to document the hardships they face. The

structure of the program differs from state to state; UNICEF may

work directly with local non-profit organizations, establish programs

with media outlets or universities, or fosters bonds with local govern-

ments so that students can discuss policies that affect their lives with

local officials.

At least 90 percent of the child reporters come from marginalized

communities marked by poverty or caste discrimination, according

to an official internal CRI evaluation conducted in 2008 and 2009. dalit

Sangh, the CRI-sponsored program in Sohagpur, Madhya Pradesh,

started as a result of the glaring caste discrimination toward the

dalits (members of caste groups once referred to as “untouchables”)

in the area. Traditionally the lowest social group in the caste system,

for centuries dalits were considered “impure” and oppressed both

socially and economically. While caste discrimination is illegal in

the Indian constitution, abuse of dalits remains common throughout

much of South Asia. In 1999, major floods swept over Sohagpur and

the impoverished dalits living in the rural areas were left homeless.

However, there was absolutely no media coverage of the dalits’ plight.

As dr. Raote, director and co-founder of dalit Sangh, remarked in

the CRI evaluation, “Reading the biased media coverage, it felt as if

the villages did not count for anything. Why? Dalit poverty-stricken

families suffered the most.” Along with co-founder Gopal Narayan

Authey, Raote decided to encourage young people in the community

to document issues of caste-based discrimination.

CRI reporters learn to channel their artistic passions into advo-

cacy tools when exploring problems in their villages. The 300 child

reporters affiliated with dalit Sangh write articles, poems, and

drawings for their own student-run newspaper entitled Bacchon ki

Pehl (Children’s Initiative). As Anil Gulati, UNICEF communications

specialist for Madhya Pradesh, explained, the children have month-

ly meetings, interact with people from media, and visit newspaper

houses to understand how newspapers are published.

Growing PainsCRI-affiliated programs have not been free of obstacles. Communities

are often unwilling to look upon young people as reputable sources

of information. Sometimes villages do not want to acknowledge such

issues as child marriages, superstition, violence against children, or

caste discrimination, which are all commonly reported. According to

the CRI evaluation, “The CRI is still at its infant stages, meaning that

implementing organizations have little or no past experience of en-

gaging with children.”

The evaluation also noted that the program often does not focus

enough on the wider dissemination of content to the general popu-

lation. For instance, since many CRI initiatives are centered in ex-

tremely impoverished communities, most families and even local offi-

cials do not have televisions or computers. This reality often defeats

the purpose of the videos or Internet articles that the children are

encouraged to produce.

despite these barriers, the CRI has grown substantially, especially

considering its status as an “add-on” program under UNICEF, which

relegates it to lower funding levels. Many of the child reporters’ arti-

Little Voices, Resounding ChangeA UNICEF journalism initiative in India teaches disadvantaged children

to speak up about the hardships they face daily.By Erin Biel

13FOCUS: Journalismthe yale globalist

cles are regularly published in The Hindu, a national newspaper, and

their interviews and films are shown on local cable channels as well

as at public events. The child reporters even have their own regularly

updated blog, and the student-run newspapers have acquired mass

readership within their local communities, including local officials

from the education, labor, and police departments.

Many CRI programs have created balapanchayats, a children’s

version of the local governing councils found in most Indian villages,

to leverage this official attention. These balapanchayats are com-

posed of equal numbers of boys and girls who are elected by their

peers, debate issues amongst themselves, and ultimately speak with

local officials regarding problems they observe in their villages. In

addition, the three-hour-long balapanchayat meetings are modeled

off of the Indian parliamentary process, giving these students insight

into the inner workings of their own government.

Bright Futures on the HorizonAccording to “Voices from the Field,” another internal CRI report,

discrimination against the poor in the village of Baharpur in Mad-

hya Pradesh had reached a crucial point. Ration cards, which give

access to government subsidized food stores, were unavailable to

the village’s poorest inhabitants. Child reporters in the area decided

to write a barrage of articles related to the scarcity of ration cards

and poverty discrimination. The students spoke with their families,

elders, and even people from other villages. Ultimately, the local pan-

chayat responded, and now ration cards are more easily accessible

to the poor. As Rukmini, a slight yet determined child reporter from

Baharpur, commented in “Voices from the Field,” “If we want change,

we have to bring it. Not wait for others to dole it out to us. It does not

work like that.”

Through the CRI program, the child reporters not only learn to

hone their writing skills but also learn a great deal about their in-

ner fortitude. In Uttar Pradesh, three child reporters gave refuge to

a 13-year-old girl who was to marry a man 15 years her senior. The

children resisted all attempts by the community to remove the girl

from their home. Instead, the three reporters communicated with the

girl’s parents and local officials in such an articulate and calm man-

ner that the marriage was called off.

As for Samuel, the garrulous 17-year-old from Tamil Nadu, his

once bleak future now seems to have no boundaries. In July 2009,

Samuel was selected as one of three students to represent India at

the UNICEF Junior 8 Summit, which was held concurrently with the

G8 Summit in Rome. While at the Summit, Samuel was given the op-

portunity to address the entire audience about his devotion to equal

education for all. “I want free quality education for all kids in devel-

oping countries and rights for girls,” he said. Samuel went on to pro-

pose a resolution to improve education in impoverished areas of the

world and to enact steps that help prevent girls from dropping out

of school. His resolution was adopted. Thanks to the CRI program’s

mentorship, Samuel feels that he has become a member of greater

humanity. “Until now, I belonged to a small place. But now, I am a

global citizen.”

Erin Biel is a freshman in Ezra Stiles College.

Samuel Venkatesan, a child reporter from Tamil Nadu, addresses an audience at the 2009 Junior 8 Summit in Rome. (Courtesty Tamil Nadu/UNICEF)

FOCUS: JournalismSPring 2010

14

so people believed whatever they were told to believe.” Experienc-

ing the oppression and atrocities of war, Sirleaf said, inspired him to

create “a new medium of communication, so people can be informed

about local, national, and international issues.” That new medium of

communication was The daily Talk.

Something for EveryoneTo reach a maximum number of readers, Sirleaf strives to keep The

daily Talk a community-centered, grassroots project. He selected

Tubman Boulevard, a street running through central Monrovia, for

his blackboard to ensure that his information would be displayed in a

high-traffic area. As a result, The daily Talk’s readership includes a

diverse group of Monrovians of all ages, classes, and education levels.

Luke davis, a 22-year-old law student and self-proclaimed “daily Talk

admirer,” said that Sirleaf’s service plays an especially important

role for the young people of Monrovia: “It brings to light the issues

and challenges young people face and informs us of our country’s

direction. Youths are more and more politically and socially active in

Liberia, and we must have access to news.”

The illiterate, who comprise 40 percent of Liberia’s adult popula-

tion, is another demographic that Sirleaf seeks to reach. To deliver

the news to those who cannot read, Sirleaf devised a system in which

he hangs objects on The daily Talk’s blackboard to symbolize the

topics of the day’s news. Frequently displayed objects include a gun

representing Charles Taylor, a hubcap showing President Ellen John-

son Sirleaf — known as the Iron Lady of Politics — and a blue helmet

symbolizing the U.N. peacekeepers stationed in Liberia. And just as

the news is never static, neither are Sirleaf’s symbols. While a white

handkerchief, implying peace, usually represents President Obama,

for example, a red cloth was displayed after his announcement of

a troop surge for Afghanistan. This system, Sirleaf said, helps him

“reach all levels of people in society: educated, semi-educated, and

uneducated.”

Perhaps The daily Talk’s greatest accomplishment, however,

has been providing the news for free. In a nation where 80 percent

of the population lives below the poverty line, many people cannot

In the early morning, before the streets of Monrovia, Liberia, fill

with the bustle of everyday life, one man has already begun his

day. By the time the city awakens, he has prepared the news for

all his countrymen to see. This experiment in grassroots journalism,

a news outlet called The daily Talk, lacks an office, paid staff, and

even a computer. Instead, Alfred Sirleaf disseminates the news in

Liberia’s capital city using the simplest of tools: a blackboard and a

piece of chalk.

Liberia is a nation in recovery. After enduring more than a decade

of civil war, the country has emerged as a tenuous democracy. The

daily Talk is Sirleaf’s contribution to his country’s newfound stabil-

ity. Sirleaf hopes that with free access to the news, his fellow citizens

will become informed and engaged, turning to politics and debate,

rather than war, for answers.

A Legacy of WarSince May 14, 2000, Sirleaf has spent each morning on the side of

Tubman Boulevard, tirelessly writing stories of interest on his black-

board. Some news, especially international stories, comes from the

Internet, which Sirleaf accesses at a local café. But more often than

not, the news is generated on the streets of Monrovia itself. Sirleaf

works with a number of volunteers, each of whom brings him infor-

mation for local stories. Though this team of tipsters is small and

unpaid, it is well organized. Only after receiving information for a

story from at least two volunteers does Sirleaf post it on The daily

Talk. “I have several different people covering the same story, so we

get different view points,” explained Sirleaf. “No two opinions on a

piece of news will be the same, but this way we can ensure we get

accurate information.”

Sirleaf’s desire to provide free access to accurate information

stems from witnessing first-hand the horrors of his country’s lengthy

civil war. Fighting first began in 1989, and with the exception of a

brief ceasefire from 1996 to 1999 when former rebel leader Charles

Taylor served as president, war raged until 2003. By the time the sec-

ond ceasefire was signed, the country had been ravaged. The fight-

ing destroyed much of Monrovia’s infrastructure and left most of the

country without electricity for nearly 14 years. disease, violence, and

starvation killed 250,000 people, one out of every 12 Liberians. For

those who survived the war, life expectancy dropped to 44 years, in-

fant mortality rose to more than 10 percent, and GdP per capita fell

to just $500.

According to Sirleaf, the causes of his country’s turmoil are clear:

“One can trace the war back to misinformation. Those with informa-

tion used their own machinery to misguide, misuse, and oppress the

people without information. They denied the people of information,

The Talk of the TownIn post-war Liberia, Alfred Sirleaf sees access to information as

the key to peace.By Jessica Shor

We can’t just have a few informed people ruling the rest of the country. That’s how we ended up fighting and killing. We’re talking about a democracy.”

–Alfred Sirleaf

“

POLITICS & ECONOMYthe yale globalist

15

afford televisions, newspapers, and internet access. For unemployed

readers like Joseph Johnson, The daily Talk may serve as their sole

source of news. According to Johnson, “Without The daily Talk, we

would have no access to information. It focuses on us, the readers,

and helping us stay informed.”

Beatrice Mategwa, a broadcast journalist working with the United

Nations in Sudan, explained that many impoverished Africans like

Johnson must prioritize daily necessities, often at the expense of ac-

cess to information. “People need to get food on the table and meet

their basic needs,” Mategwa remarked, “so they don’t buy a newspa-

per that day. The reality is that people need to make choices.”

Yet in Sirleaf’s eyes, ensuring that Liberians do not have to make

the choice between food and news is fundamental for the survival of

his country’s democracy. “We can’t just have a few informed people

ruling the rest of the country,” he explained. “That’s how we ended

up fighting and killing. We’re talking about a democracy. We need

freedom of speech, freedom of information. We need to get the neces-

sary information to the people. With The daily Talk, we make sure

people are educated and can take part in society, especially the poor

and uninformed.”

A Man with a MissionSuch a bold undertaking, however, was bound to encounter prob-

lems and face opposition. Not long after creating The daily Talk,

Sirleaf was targeted by political leaders seeking to stamp out what

they perceived as a source of dissent. His surname, shared by Presi-

dent Johnson Sirleaf, though the two are not related, proved most

problematic. President Johnson Sirleaf was a vocal opposition figure

during the civil war, and political leaders assumed a subversive con-

nection between her and Alfred. On several occasions, government

forces threatened him with jail time and destroyed or stole The daily

Talk’s blackboard.

Nevertheless, Sirleaf’s resolve never faltered: “The daily Talk

knows no affiliation. It knows no name, no party, and no politics. dur-

ing the war, those invented connections hurt me. But we were people

with ambition, and we stayed put. I put my life on the line to make

sure people were kept informed.”

Today, Sirleaf remains just as steadfastly committed to spreading

the news. While funding remains a significant obstacle, Sirleaf has

high hopes for the future of The daily Talk. He has set his sights

on expanding into more Liberian communities, and eventually into

other African nations. The innovative model of The daily Talk could

provide citizens in other post-conflict states with the information

they need to actively participate in their new democracies. In her

work broadcasting from nations that have endured civil wars, includ-

ing Sierra Leone and Sudan, Mategwa has observed that “communi-

ties with access to the news are more involved. They understand the

issues. They’re able to engage politicians and make informed deci-

sions, and that does make a great difference to the communities.”

With more communities of informed citizens, Sirleaf believes peace

and stability could become reality for Africa’s war-weary nations.

This promise of an engaged populace has pushed Sirleaf to con-

tinue with his morning routine, despite many setbacks. He views

each reader as an integral part of Liberia’s economic and political

recovery, knowing that each will walk away from The daily Talk

more informed than when he or she arrived. And for Sirleaf, even the

few stories he can fit on his blackboard make a world of difference.

“A little knowledge is better than no knowledge,” Sirleaf proclaimed,

“and knowledge is power.”

Nicknamed the analogue blog, for 10 years The Daily Talk has empowered Monrovians through access to free news. (Courtesy Alfred Sirleaf)

Jessica Shor is a freshman in Ezra Stiles College.

FOCUS: JournalismSPring 2010

16

Financial pressures, new technologies, and

changing expectations are transforming the future of

foreign reporting. By Catherine Cheney

Freelance foreign correspondent Amanda Lindhout, 28, was captured by gunmen in Somalia on August 23, 2008. Along with an Australian freelance photog-

rapher, Nigel Brennan, she was held captive for 15 months before being released in November 2009. This was one of several trips Lindhout had taken to conflict zones in Africa and the Middle East, reporting primarily for her hometown newspaper, the Red deer Advocate. She funded her inter-national reporting by working as a waitress in an Alberta, Canada pub.

Only recently has it become possible to pursue foreign correspon-

dence as a part-time job. The traditional image of a foreign corre-

spondent once involved a man wearing a trench coat and a fedora

hat, traveling with a local translator and a professional photogra-

pher. This reporter would have enjoyed generous accommodations,

worked in a permanent bureau and returned to his room at the end

of the day to type his article, which he would then send back home to

the paper before it went to press.

But the rise of the Web and digital technology, combined with the

impact of the financial crisis, caused the traditional profile of the in-

ternational reporter to change. The financial pressures of the 2007

recession hit already vulnerable newsrooms across America, and

news organizations began to cut costs, leading to dwindling numbers

of foreign correspondents and dwindling coverage of international

issues. Foreign bureaus began to close, and media entrepreneurs be-

gan to develop new ideas for covering the world. Now, as financial

pressures force many news organizations to close their foreign bu-

reaus and adapt to a new information landscape, media professionals

and news consumers alike are redefining the future of foreign cor-

respondence.

The End of an EraThe decline of newspaper journalism marks the end of an era, as

fewer publications are able to employ journalists to local, national,

and international beats. The rise of the Internet has created unprec-

edented global interconnectedness, as well as a demand for imme-

diacy that can affect the quality of reporting.

While information is becoming increasingly accessible and people

are demanding more news than ever before, the revenues of news

organizations are in constant decline as publishers and media ex-

ecutives struggle to monetize content and maintain readership. In

the past, newspaper publishers such as the Sulzberger family, which

FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE

IN FLUX

17FOCUS: Journalism the yale globalist

Westin sent an email to ABC News in February announcing the

need to “embrace what is new, rather than being overwhelmed by

it.” Cutting 25 percent of its staff, ABC is halving its bureau corre-

spondents, instead relying on two dozen digital journalists to report

abroad with editing software and small cameras.

Other strategies do not limit bureaus to one person, instead con-

solidating whole groups of countries into regional posts, such as an

“East Africa” office or a “South America” office. This requires news

organizations to fly in reporters to cover breaking news stories. As

the reporters may not have had time to study the language or culture

of the area., their reporting may explore the who, what, when, and

where, but it might misrepresent the why or how.

Beth dickinson, an assistant managing editor at Foreign Policy

magazine and a former Globalist editor, worked as a foreign corre-

spondent in Nigeria for The Economist after graduating from Yale.

dickinson explained that this concept of flying in reporters, referred

to as “helicoper journalism,” assumes that expertise is not needed to

report the news.

“Sometimes, it’s the only way, but it certainly diminishes the depth

that journalists’ have in discussing their topics,” she explained. “No

matter how many books you cram on the plane, you’ll never know as

has controlled and published the New York Times since 1896, made

international reporting and permanent bureaus a top priority. But

while the New York Times maintains 26 bureaus abroad, the age of

fully staffed foreign bureaus is over.

Entrepreneurs redefining foreign coverage have challenged tra-

ditional media outlets. All at once, the industry is having to adjust to

shifting expectations, changing technology, and financial pressures.

From downsizing to outsourcing to creating new models for foreign

news, each media outlet has taken a different tack as they attempt to

weather the crisis.

Bureaus of One ABC News took a new step in the process of redefining foreign corre-

spondence in 2007, when it sent seven television journalists with lap-

tops and handheld video cameras to one-person bureaus around the

world. dana Hughes, an ABC correspondent based in Nairobi, told

the American Journalism Review, “We are fixers, shooters, report-

ers, producers, and bureau chiefs.” Five jobs, one person.

Many argue that this consolidation, this shift from massive foreign

bureaus to bureaus of one, is not only cost effective but also a better

way to report, encouraging reporters to be enterprising by decentral-

izing foreign correspondence from major capitals like Moscow and

London. ABC News president david Westin explained, “Technology

now makes it possible for us to have bureaus without a receptionist,

three edit suites and studio cameras and so on.” He added, “The es-

sence of what we do is reporting.”

No matter how many books you cram on the plane, you'll never know as much about a country as a reporter who lives there.”

— Beth Dickinson, Foreign Policy

“

Responding to new media companies like GlobalPost and Twitter drawing reporters and readers to the web, media outlets such as CNN and the BBC are moving more of their effort to their websites. (left: Cheney/TYG; above: Jotwani/TYG)

FOCUS: JournalismSPring 2010

18

and pictures of breaking news.

Citizen journalism, as applied to international coverage, refers

to foreign nationals working as active participants in the collection,

reporting, and dissemination of news and analysis for an overseas

audience. Media organizations rely on citizen journalism either for

breaking news coverage or as a way of exploring local reactions to in-

ternational events. “Citizen journalism allows us to have bureaus ev-

erywhere in the world, six billion people strong, and that just makes

us better,” said Klein as he described why CNN relies so heavily on

citizen accounts of news in their own hometowns. “Increasingly, that

is a big part of our value. The meeting is taking place in our living

room.”

Twitter is becoming an outlet for snippets of citizen journalism,

as the 2008 Iran protests and the January earthquake in Haiti made

clear. When people on the ground describe what they are experienc-

ing, news organizations far removed from the course of events can

use Twitter as a form of crowd sourcing. CNN is one of many outlets

that relied on this social media Web site to try and capture the reality

on the ground, but Klein warned that it is important to be cautious of

what information to trust.

“We know everything about the people we send to these coun-

tries,” he explained, referring to CNN international correspondents,

such as chief correspondent Christiane Amanpour. As for the content

many citizen journalists upload to the CNN Web site, “we have to

take more time to run them down, double check them, triple check

them,” said Klein.

Mainstream media companies are not the only ones looking to

citizen journalists to maintain foreign news coverage. Other organi-

zations have built models which capitalize on the grassroots power

of the Internet. demotix, a “citizen-journalism Web site and photo

agency,” accepts photographs from “freelance journalists and ama-

teurs” and markets them to mainstream media outlets. According to

its Web site, the company’s goal is to “rescue journalism and promote

free expression by connecting independent journalists with the tra-

ditional media.”

A B C F o r e i g n B u r e a u C l o s u r e sABC’s fully staffed foreign bureaus prior to 2003 ABC’s fully staffed and one-person foreign bureaus in 2009

ABC closed seven fully staffed bureaus in 2003. In 2007, it sent seven “one-person bureaus abroad; as of January 2009, ABC had 17 fully staffed and one-person bureaus. (Information courtesy Project for Excellence in Journalism; graphs Jotwani/TYG)

much about a country as a reporter who lives there.”

Increasingly, though, newsrooms cannot afford the expertise that

comes with permanent bureaus. “Training oneself to the point where

you can effectively [fly] in is the challenge of the new foreign corre-

spondent,” said dickinson. “The best of these keep their eye on the

news throughout their region, so that they can [fly] in from another

close-by location,” ready to report on the situation.

Other strategies to maintain foreign news coverage include fur-

ther collaboration between media outlets as well as further reliance

on newswire services, such as the Associated Press and Reuters.

The Washington Post, part of the Washington Post Company,

maintains 13 international bureaus, and the Tribune Company, which

owns the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, is currently dis-

cussing the possibility of paying the Post for foreign news coverage to

include in its eight daily newspapers.

But even The Washington Post relies on wire services for much

of its foreign news coverage. Wire services cover the major issues

in a given country for an international audience, but there is still a

need for freelancers, and even citizen journalists, to contribute added

value reporting through on-the-ground sourcing, investigative jour-

nalism, and feature stories.

Citizen Journalists “Anybody who is there automatically knows more, has better insight

than anyone sitting in the office,” said Jon Klein, the president of

CNN for the United States, with multiple television screens on the

wall of his New York office displaying domestic and global news cov-

erage. “Whether you are an employee of ours or you are a citizen who

witnesses something, you’ve got a validity right off the bat that needs

to be paid attention to.” The organization maintains 33 international

newsgathering locations, and in January appointed three new inter-

national correspondents, in sharp contrast with the trends affecting

smaller news organizations.

CNN also draws on freelance work and citizen journalism, as evi-

dent in its iReport initiative, which allows people to upload videos

Full foreign bureaus

One-person foreign bureaus

19FOCUS: Journalismthe yale globalist

This shift toward citizen journalism demands increased education

regarding journalistic ethics. Nick Raistrick, a producer and trainer

at the BBC World Service Trust, works to develop news outlets and

train journalists in countries that lack a strong, independent media.

He recently trained journalists from six different radio stations that

the BBC helped establish in Uganda. This form of media development

helps international media thrive, creating a culture of citizen journal-

ists devoted to their craft, aware of its importance, and able to send

their work to American news organizations looking to educate an au-

dience on the area. “I think it is a great opportunity for Americans to

learn about the world, and British people to learn about the world,”

Raistrick explained.

Foreign FreelancingMedia outlets can draw from a more diverse array of reporters and

perspectives by looking to freelance journalists. Many news organi-

zations are adapting to financial pressures by hiring freelancers, who

place themselves in foreign countries, pitching stories to multiple

news organizations in hopes of earning a living. “There are more op-

portunities [today] for people who are resourceful,” said david Case,

editor of Passport, the membership service of the online news service

GlobalPost. “Rather than trying to figure out how to get a foothold at

The New York Times, the market is more fluid and open.”

Jerry Guo, who graduated from Yale in 2009, owes his journalism

career to the adventuresome spirit that allowed him to succeed in

freelancing. “In college I would just basically spend my break in ex-

otic places, and I found that that was an easier way of convincing

editors [to let me write], if it was a place that no one else was stupid

enough to go to.” As an undergraduate, Guo reported from coun-

tries including North Korea, Zimbabwe, Nepal, and Indonesia. After

spending his college career planting himself in compelling areas and

pitching his stories to a variety of publications, Guo was hired as a

staff correspondent at Newsweek. “There is no one path,” he said

from his roaming cell phone in West Africa, explaining that people

who are willing to take risks can find work by digging up unique,

compelling stories.

Frank Smyth, Washington representative of the Committee to

Protect Journalists, spent many years as a freelance journalist and

risked his life in pursuit of stories, including an 18-day imprisonment

in Iraq during the Gulf War. He explained that there are benefits and

disadvantages to relying on the work of a freelancer as compared

to that of a staff writer or special correspondent. “Newspapers may

have a military reporter who is closer to the military than someone

else,” he said. Close relationships between staff reporters and their

sources lead to greater journalistic access, Smyth explained, but at

the same time, freelancers who lack those relationships “may report

more unilaterally, more critically.”

Smyth said that success as a freelancer or a stringer in this com-

petitive media environment requires moving to “an area with lots

of news, like Iraq a few years ago, and Afghanistan today.” But with

freelancing becoming one of the predominant paths to international

journalism, more and more inexperienced people are traveling to

conflict zones hoping to sell their stories, and they are often igno-

rant of the real dangers they face. Amanda Lindhout’s kidnapping is

one example among several, such as Laura Ling, who was arrested

in North Korea while filming at the China-North Korea Border for

the online media company Current TV, and Steven Vincent, a former

freelance journalist for the Wall Street Journal, who was shot dead

in Basra, Iraq in 2005.

Smyth explained that while these risks should be understood, peo-

ple who thrive on bylines and television spots will always take them.

“It is easy to say, well, don’t take risks, but I’ve also taken risks and

gotten stories that were exclusives,” he said.

Funding Foreign CorrespondencePortable digital technology and instant communication online make

it possible for news organizations to utilize freelance reporting, but

with shrinking revenues, it is hard for newspapers and television out-

lets to support their freelance contributors financially. That is where

foundations come in.

Foundations and fellowships are providing new opportunities for

foreign reporting, even as some in the established media can no lon-

ger afford to fund international correspondence. John Schidlovsky

worked as a freelancer in the Middle East and as the bureau chief

for the Baltimore Sun in Beijing and New delhi before becoming the

director of the International Reporting Project. He founded the or-

ganization, which offers the most competitive journalism fellowships

in the country, in 1998 after determining that American journalism

needed a program empowering individuals to pursue foreign re-

porting. “It was clear that a lot of mainstream media organizations

were going to reduce, cut back, or eliminate entirely their foreign

bureaus,” he said. And he was right. The organization has since sent

300 journalists to report in more than 85 countries.

The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting “helps underwrite the

cost of foreign reporting projects and works to get the stories fea-

tured in newspapers, broadcast outlets and on the Internet.” The

Center recently partnered with YouTube to create a journalism com-

petition open to aspiring reporters who want to “share their stories

with the world.”

This is one of a few foundations taking the lead in cultivating the

next generation of foreign correspondents, in addition to organiza-

tions such as the Overseas Press Club Foundation, which offers fel-

lowships to undergraduates and graduate students wishing to pursue

international reporting projects. The intent behind the many foreign

journalism foundations and fellowships is to equip journalists with

the resources they need to report important stories that would oth-

erwise go untold.

Organizations outside of the traditional media, including non-

profit organizations, are also funding global storytelling projects that

Now, as financial pressures force many news organizations to close their foreign bureaus and adapt to a new information landscape, media professionals and news consumers alike are redefining the future of foreign correspondence.

FOCUS: JournalismSPring 2010

20

provide new forums for journalists to publish and broadcast their

work. Human Rights Watch, for example, funds international human

rights reporting fellowships, and the Kaiser Family Foundation offers

fellowships in global health reporting.

From the Ground Up In 2007, when the Boston Globe closed its last three international bu-

reaus in Jerusalem, Berlin, and Bogotá, Charles Sennott, formerly a

foreign correspondent for the Globe, partnered with Philip Balboni to

found the foreign news Web site GlobalPost. Emphasizing the impor-

tance of foreign correspondents living in the areas they cover so that

they can best “untangle complex issues,” the founders of GlobalPost

explain on their site: “Our mission is to provide Americans, and all

English-language readers around the world, with a depth, breadth

and quality of original international reporting that has been steadily

diminished in too many American newspapers and television net-

works.”

Relying on paid membership, syndication in other publications,

and online advertising, GlobalPost was founded in January 2009 with

a for-profit business model. The venture employs more than 70 cor-

respondents in more than 50 countries. These reporters are encour-

aged to produce multimedia content in addition to print stories, and

most of them report for the site part-time. david Case of the Global-

Post explained that the site is a pioneer not only in its financial mod-

el, but also in its approach to foreign news. “War, famine, crises and

politics have long been the lifeblood of the foreign correspondent,”

he said. “GlobalPost is about covering the world the way we cover

domestic news.”

In addition to covering current issues in politics and commerce,

the Web site features stories such as “Saudi women revel in online

lives” and “The ‘miracle babies’ of Mexico City: 25 years later.” These

kinds of stories had gone uncovered by the mainstream media be-

cause publishers and producers assumed that people would not pay

for them. However, as the world grows increasingly interconnected

and people look for new ways to engage with international issues, the

Web creates a forum for a wider range of content. No trend in con-

temporary foreign correspondence, from the rise of citizen journal-

ists to the shift towards one-person bureaus, could have taken place

without the incredible access and speed afforded by the Internet.

Looking Ahead “There are more links between the U.S. and the rest of the world now

than ever before and ironically the mainstream media has receded

from its responsibility to cover the rest of the world,” said Schid-

lovsky. With the increasing number of success stories in new media

models for foreign correspondence, the mainstream media will have

to adapt, as it has already begun to do. If the definition of interna-

tional correspondence is broadened to include these new models, the

field may actually be growing, despite tight budgets and closing bu-

reaus.

Foreign correspondence is not, in fact, dying. It is weathering the

storm of financial pressure and new media technology, with freelanc-

ers, citizen journalists, foundations, and entrepreneurs at the helm.

Catherine Cheney is a senior Politcal Science major in Trumbull College.

counterclockwise from top right: Amanda Lindhout, a freelance foreign correspondent held captive in Somalia for 15 months before being released in No-vember 2009. (Courtesy freeamandafreenigel.wordpress.com)Christiane Amanpour and Anderson Cooper, foreign cor-respondents for CNN. (Courtesy Flickr/Creative Commons)Philip S. Balboni and Charles M. Sennot, co-founders of GlobalPost. (Courtesy David Case/GlobalPost)

21FOCUS: Journalism the yale globalist

some of these new media outlets, whether they be radio stations,

websites, bloggers, who can hold officials’ feet to the fire and, bit

by bit, upgrade the conditions for greater prosperity, greater so-

cial services, greater literacy, and just more efficient government.

Q: Aside from hearing so many heartbreaking stories, what is

the most difficult aspect of the type of reporting you do?

A: It is often hard to be sure of what is going on in places, just trying

to verify the facts and understanding what narrative is right. When I

was a foreign correspondent based in a pretty poor country it was hard

enough, but at least then you are in the country, you speak the language.

Now, in contrast, well, I am just planning a trip to the Congo, and so I

don’t speak any local languages. It’s an enormously complicated coun-

try, and trying to make sure that you get it right can be really tough.

Q: In a world where so many issues warrant attention, how do

you choose which stories to cover?

A: In part, I look for those topics where I think I can make the

most difference. I think of the column as a bit of a spotlight, and

it is most effective when directed at something that is not other-

wise illuminated. Of course, it really only works if I can get ac-

cess to a conflict or to a problem. I look for places that are acces-

sible in some form and that aren’t getting a lot of attention, where

I think that if people read this over breakfast or over their coffee

in the morning that it will be one step toward making a difference.

Jeff Kaiser is a sophomore in Saybrook College.

Nicholas Kristof, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, is an op-ed columnist for The New York Times. His work has focused on issues of global health, poverty, and gender. Some of Mr. Kristof’s most notable columns have focused on regions in conflict, especially Darfur and the Congo. In Janu-ary, the Globalist’s Jeff Kaiser interviewed Mr. Kristof about his work. Below is the edited result of their conversation.

Q: How do you see the state of the international news media?

A: Overall, I do think there is a little more appetite than there

often has been historically in the U.S. On the other hand, news or-

ganizations are cutting costs in any way they can, and TV especial-

ly has realized that if you go out and cover Pakistan, Afghanistan,

wherever it may be, that is dangerous and incredibly expensive,

and on balance, probably won’t get the same ratings as throw-

ing a democrat and a Republican in a room together and hav-

ing them yell at each other. I think overall we’re going downhill in

terms of coverage, with more and more news organizations clos-

ing their foreign news bureaus and relying on stringers, if at all.

Q: Many of your columns seem to have an activist tone. Is this

something you strive for?

A: I flinch a little bit at the notion that I am an activist or a

crusader because there is some connotation that that means

that one’s first loyalty is to some ideological position as op-

posed to just empirically trying to gather the facts. But I must

say I look back at my body of work and it’s clear that I really do

want to galvanize readers and that I care about a whole range

of humanitarian issues. So I wouldn’t fight that label too much.

Q: Do you see this activism as a broader role for all

journalists?

A: I think there is an inherent tension there because a lot of peo-

ple, myself included, went into journalism because we do want to

make a difference, and this is an opportunity to do so. On the other

hand, you can’t cover every school board meeting or every political

fight as if it’s the civil rights movement or genocide. There are a lot

of cases where we really do need rigorous journalistic neutrality and

objectivity. Maybe we can try a little harder to make a difference.

Q: On this theme of journalism as a way to promote action,

what role should the media play in the endorsement of democ-

racy around the world?

A: I wish that we would see democracy not just as an issue of

elections but really as a much broader process, and I think that

one of the best ways to promote that kind of a democratic environ-

ment is to support independent news organizations in countries and

Q & A

A Conversation With Nicholas Kristof

FOCUS: JournalismSPring 2010

22

Peace Through PrintThe island of Cyprus has long been the site of ethnic conflict between

Turkish and Greek factions. Could reforming journalistic practices help bring about peace?

By Emily Sosangelis

At a Greek check point in Nicosia, an anti-Turkish sign depicts the bloody Cyprus conflict along the UN buffer zone. (Courtesy Christopher Rose)

From 1963 to 1974, over 500 Turkish Cypriots went missing. during

the same period, nearly 1,500 Greek Cypriots also disappeared.

For years, both the Greek and Turkish communities of Cyprus as-

sumed that they alone had been the victims of these murky, deadly

attacks. They were shocked to discover that, in fact, each side had

fared similarly in the 50 years since the country’s founding. Thanks

to Cyprus’s ethnically divided media, neither side had learned about

the tragedies the other had suffered.

Cyprus has been rife with civil war and cultural division for years.

British rule from 1914 to 1960 eventually gave way to Cypriot indepen-

dence, but no reconciliation occurred between the two ethnic com-

munities living in separate enclaves on the island. In 1964, U.N. peace-

keeping forces demarcated a buffer zone, called the “green line,” to

end a bloody civil war between the two groups. This line still serves

as a physical and psychological barrier that separates the Republic of

Cyprus from the self-proclaimed Turkish Federated State of Cyprus,

created in 1984 and recognized only by Turkey.

Historical and cultural divisions between Cypriots run deeper

than politics. Greek Cypriots speak only Greek, attend separate

schools, and read only Greek newspapers. Turkish Cypriots are simi-

larly self-segregated. Without linguistic common ground, isolation

persists. Nadia Karayianni is the project manager of the NGO Sup-

port Centre, a Cypriot non-profit that seeks to build a stronger civil

society on the island. “The problem is that there is no joint source of

information,” she said. Karayianni fears that isolation, reinforced by

separate and biased media, engenders deep mistrust.

Many journalists on the island resort to sensationalism and com-

munalism as they pursue readership and ratings. The front pages of

major newspapers in Cyprus regularly seethe with divisive nation-

alism. “Unacceptable Positions of the Turkish Cypriot Community,”

ran the headline of Greek newspaper Philenews in January 2010. The

Turkish Cypriot newspaper Volkan often leads with proclamations

like “Turkish Cyprus Needs to Live on Forever.” Newspapers tend to

depict the other side as the primary cause of the conflict. A 2006 study

by Metin Ersoy, media scholar at Eastern Mediterranean University

on Cyprus, found that over 30 percent of Greek Cypriot newspapers

ran negative headlines about the other side, as did 25 percent of

Turkish Cypriot newspapers.

Cyprus resident and teacher Konstantinos Chatzisavvas, like

many other Cypriots, buys into the headlines. “The media presents

the Cyprus problem the way it is, with Turkey remaining intolerant,”

he said. This language of separation and division renews distrust,

kindling the popular belief that the Turkish and Greek perspectives

are incompatible and irreconcilable.

After several Cypriot reporters were targeted with violence, in-

ternational journalism advocates began to call for reform. One idea

is the concept of “peace journalism,” which encourages mutual un-

derstanding by undermining the divide between “self” and “other” in

journalistic reporting. developed over 40 years ago, the idea has only

recently reached Cyprus. Inspired by the concept, the Boston-based

Cambridge Foundation for Peace has developed a pluralistic Cypri-

ot news source, CyprusMediaNet, which pools reporting from both

sides of the green line and translates each article into Turkish, Greek

and English. While only first steps in bridging the Cypriot language

barrier, such initiatives are providing broader access to information.

On the ground, however, progress is slow. Journalist George Pittas

of the popular Greek Cypriot newspaper Politis described his publica-

tion as “the one and only newspaper in Cyprus that has a couple of

Turkish Cypriot columnists on a permanent basis.” Although there is

some movement towards bridging the two communities, according to

Pittas, these efforts remain limited.

The financial structure of the industry has also posed an obstacle

to the pursuit of a more closely connected media on the island. Be-

cause Turkish Cypriots depend heavily on Turkish financing, nation-

alist news broadcasters in Turkey hold a monopoly on culture and

information for Turkish Cyprus.

There is no doubt that media in Cyprus will continue to play an

important role in easing, or blocking, the road to reunification. As

Karayianni put it, “Journalists should be the initiators of peacemak-

ing. On the contrary, some are only repeating the same stories of the

past, repeating what divides us, not what unites us.”

Emily Sosangelis is a freshman in Timothy Dwight College.

23FOCUS: Journalismthe yale globalist

Cuba’s Emerging BlogosphereIn spite of government repression and limited access to the Internet,

Cuban bloggers are determined to make their voices heard.By Carlos Gomez

Yoani Sanchez was headed to a demonstration for nonvio-

lence in November 2009 when she was kidnapped and beaten

by government agents. The famed Cuban blogger had her

hair pulled, knuckles smashed, and head, chest, knees, and kidneys

punched and kicked. Cries of “traitor” and “dissident” were hurled

her way as she was forced into a car, beaten, and then thrown out

on the street 20 minutes later. Such harassment is not uncommon in

Cuba; Sanchez is but one of many who have suffered under the gov-

ernment’s harsh policies toward independent journalists.

Sanchez created her blog, “Generation Y,” in 2007 as a place to

write freely about Cuba, without government interference. It has

since drawn attention to the repressive regime and sparked a new

wave of Cuban bloggers committed to reporting the real stories of

Cuba. Working within the constraints of the country’s almost nonex-

istent Internet infrastructure and against the government’s attempt

to restrict them, these bloggers must draw on all their creativity and

courage as they attempt to launch a new generation of Cuban jour-

nalism.

Voices of the Government“Independent journalists are mercenaries,” read a 2000 headline of

Cuban newspaper Juventud Rebelde. “The U.S. Empire pays, orga-

nizes, teaches, trains, arms and camouflages them and orders them

to shoot at their own people.”

Clearly, independent journalists have a strained relationship with

the Cuban government, which owns all major news outlets on the

island. Civilians are often hard-pressed to find information not sup-

plied by the three state-controlled newspapers, La Granma, Juventud

Rebelde, and Trabajadores. These three papers serve distinct pur-

poses but share common themes: party loyalty and Cuban national-

ism. La Granma, the official organ of the Cuban Communist Party

and the most widely circulated of the three, publishes mostly celebra-

tions of Cuban policies and chastisements of the American govern-

ment. Juventud Rebelde (Rebellious Youth) runs similar stories to

those in La Granma but geared towards a younger demographic with

the hope of instilling strong nationalism in the rising generation. The

third national publication, Trabajadores (Workers), is the official

voice of the government-controlled trade union.

Journalists for these three papers are well paid and have access to

a number of top government sources, but they trade journalistic lib-

erty for security. The Cuban government dictates what — and how —

stories can be reported. In the words of dr. Jose Alberto Hernandez,

president of CubaNet, these government publications produce “very

somber and unimaginative journalism.”

But the creativity allowed for by independent journalism brings

with it significant risks. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)

puts the number of independent reporters in Cuba at only 25, prob-

ably because these journalists are subjected to routine harassment.

“Immediately the government will identify you,” said Hernandez.

“On a daily basis, they make your life miserable.”

Independent reporters lose at both ends of the journalistic pro-

cess. Sources easily available to government writers suddenly be-

come unreachable, and publication becomes exceedingly difficult.

Because the Communist Party controls all communication, selling

independent work is impossible, making a sufficient income unat-

tainable. Independent journalists also frequently have their phone

lines disconnected and are under constant surveillance by govern-

ment agents. Consequently, Juan Gonzales Febles, Odelin Alfonso,

Luis Cino, and Sanchez — the only Cuban bloggers with available

contact information — could not be reached for this article despite

numerous attempts.

Some reporters are put under house arrest. Others are rounded

Yoani Sanchez copies her articles and emails them to friends to post on foreign servers, a common practice for bloggers who must work around Cuba’s nonexistent Internet infrastructure and government scrutiny. (Courtesy José Luis Orihuela/Flickr)

FOCUS: JournalismSPring 2010

24

writers are forced to type their blog posts on home computers, copy

them to flash drives or Cds, and take them to Internet cafes to send

via email. This is complicated by the fact that most Internet centers

aren’t open to civilians. Sanchez, for example, must pretend to be a

tourist to slip past guards. Other bloggers are similarly forced to use

creative methods to send their entries to friends abroad who post

them online.

Cuban citizens, in turn, have a hard time accessing the Internet

due to its high price and painfully slow connection speed. Some of

the entries are distributed through the population via Cds and flash

drives. The blogs’ real successes, however, have occurred in the inter-

national community. Sanchez has received a number of international

accolades for Generation Y and was included in Time Magazine’s

“100 Most Influential People of 2008.” In addition, organizations like

Reporters without Borders and the CPJ now put Cuba on their top

priority lists, and sites like CubaNet.org post articles that can’t be

published in the mainstream Cuban media. Recently, even President

Barack Obama responded to a series of questions posted by Sanchez.

The Government RespondsSanchez and other bloggers have mostly eluded the level of govern-

ment harassment faced by traditional independent journalists. dan

Erikson, a Cuban expert for Inter-American dialogue, suspects that

this is because most government officials are over 70 years old. “I

suppose there’s a generational disconnect between the activities of

Raul Castro and Yoani Sanchez,” he said.

Nonetheless, the government consistently denies Sanchez the

travel visa necessary to leave Cuba. Clearly, independent blogs are

no longer going unnoticed. As of August 2009, all blog sites were

blocked within Cuba. In addition, the government is reportedly hir-

ing computer science students to serve as cyber police to monitor the

content of these different sites. “There could be a massive crackdown

if the bloggers’ work continues to be recognized abroad,” Lauria said.

With the increased attention that the blogs have generated, how-

ever, most agree that international scrutiny will prevent another

Black Spring. The 2003 arrests caused the European Union to issue

economic sanctions against Cuba, which the country can’t afford to

provoke again. In addition, the global community now monitors the

government’s actions more closely. After the recent assault on San-

chez, the U.S. department of State promptly declared that it “strong-

ly deplores” violence against journalists and urged Castro to honor

the “full respect of human rights and fundamental freedoms of all its

citizens.”

Castro has yet to respond, but Cuba’s new blogging community

shows no signs of slowing down.

Immediately the government will identify you. On a daily basis, they make your life miserable.”

— Dr. Jose Alberto Hernandez, president of CubaNet

“

Carlos Gomez is a freshman in Saybrook College.

A Cuban civilian reads La Granma, the official organ of the Communist Party and one of the only media outlets readily available in Cuba. (Courtesy Mike Reid)

up and driven to remote locations in an effort to keep them from

publishing for a few days. More seriously, prison is a constant threat.

Journalist Bernardo Arevalo served a jail sentence of six years sim-

ply for referring to Castro as a “liar” after the president failed to en-

act promised democratic reforms. In March 2003, a period now aptly

referred to as “Black Spring,” 75 Cuban dissidents were arrested and

imprisoned, including 23 journalists. Many remain in jail, making

Cuba home to the third largest number of imprisoned reporters, after

China and Iran.

With the change of leadership from Fidel Castro to his brother

Raul in 2008, some hoped for an improved journalistic atmosphere.

However, Carlos Lauria, director of the Americas region for CPJ, says

that despite Raul’s announcement of reform, nothing has changed.

“In terms of independent reporting and the ability of journalists to

work freely in Cuba, it’s just not possible.”

Slipping Past the GuardsIn the past few years, independent journalists have found a new ven-

ue for their writings: blogs. Beginning with Sanchez’s Generation Y

blog, Cuban journalists have turned towards less traditional media

to disseminate information. The CPJ reports that there are about 25

regularly maintained news blogs from Cuban authors. These young

reporters are mostly stationed in Havana, as the Cuban capital is

the easiest place to access the Internet. Rather than engaging in

the purely anti-government rhetoric sometimes associated with in-

dependent journalists, the blog entries focus on telling stories not

published in the government-sanctioned papers. Laritza diversent,

for example, runs a blog entitled Laritza’s Laws, which explores le-

gal issues in Cuba. In a recent post titled “Legal Illiteracy,” diversent

discussed the disparity between the idealistic concept of justice she

learned in law school and the reality of working as a lawyer in Cuba.

“Bloggers are slipping through the tight restrictions of the regime

and have been able to report on some of the issues that Cubans face

daily, like food shortages, health care, and education problems,” ex-

plained Lauria, but “they face huge practical obstacles from the re-

stricted Internet access in Cuba.”

Since surfing the web in Cuba costs six dollars an hour, while the

median salary is $17 a month, the CPJ reports that only about 2.1 per-

cent of Cubans have Internet access. Most of these few are govern-

ment employees. Posting blogs online thus presents problems. Cuban

25CULTUREthe yale globalist

This past summer, gallery owners, artists, and collectors raced

around the world to catch the openings of the newest cutting-

edge galleries. They didn’t head to long-established art capitals like

New York, London, or Berlin but to Beijing, searching for the “latest

thing” in art in the capital of communist China.

Beijing first arrived on the international art scene 30 years ago,

when a group of experimental artists called the Stars defied govern-

ment orders and displayed their art in public. But only in the last

decade has China become known as the hot new market in the world

of art. “I have been active in the contemporary art field for 25 years,

and I have never experienced such a boom, at such a speed, to such

heights, in such a short period of time,” explained Fabien Fryns, Bel-

gian owner of gallery F2, which he relocated to Beijing from Spain in

2007.

The journey to international recognition, however, has brought

about major shifts within Beijing’s art community. The 798 Arts dis-

trict, an arrangement of formerly abandoned Soviet factories which

now house galleries and studios, has been the historic nucleus of Bei-

jing’s contemporary art scene. But as boutiques and tourists crowd

its streets and inflate its prices, artists and gallery owners are in-

creasingly establishing or re-establishing themselves in Caochangdi,

a village on the outskirts of Beijing’s urban sprawl that has become a

more serious and subdued home to China’s modern art.

The food stalls, dirt paths, and shirtless construction crews of

Caochangdi are a far stretch from the charming Bauhaus spaces of

798. When artist Ai Weiwei, considered the godfather of contempo-

rary art in China, moved to Caochangdi in 2000, he set a bold prec-

edent that his colleagues considered crazy. Today, the gallery space

Ai opened within the compound he built for himself and his friends,

China Art Archives and Warehouse, is among Beijing’s leading con-

temporary art galleries.

In the years that followed, many more galleries opened in Cao-

changdi. The 2008 Beijing Olympics accelerated 798’s transformation

into a glitzy tourist attraction, and the global economic downturn has

hastened the movement of artists and gallery owners from 798 to Ca-

ochangdi, where tourists are few and real estate is cheaper. By now,

a critical mass of new galleries and anchor organizations — many of

them, including the well-known Pékin Fine Arts, Galerie Urs Meile,

and Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, housed in compounds

designed by Ai — have joined China Art Archives and Warehouse

(CAAW) in Caochangdi.

Two clusters of art spaces have emerged in Caochangdi. To the

north are galleries CAAW, F2 Gallery, Platform China, and Three

Shadows. F2 shows the work of new artists alongside long-established

names and often displays more controversial pieces, such as a recent

Shining in the RoughBeijing’s “it” galleries find a new home in an unlikely neighborhood.By Helena Malchione

collection of paintings by Sheng Qi. With its opening in May 2009, the

twentieth anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, Sheng

Qi’s show “Power of the People” drew unusually high attention from

the Chinese government for its references to the protests. Several

overly political pieces were not permitted to be shown.

In Caochangdi’s southern cluster, a vast arrangement of galleries

lies tucked between the narrow streets. One of them is the veteran

Beijing establishment White Space, the first truly influential gallery

to relocate from 798. “We got to 798 early and we left early,” reflected

White Space owner Tian Yuan on the decision to move her gallery.

“There are very few people in Caochangdi. It is possible for us to

work more peacefully here.”

The shift from 798 to Caochangdi represents a formative moment

in the continuing development of contemporary Chinese art. The

rising prices and touristic ambiance of 798, which prompted some

galleries to close and others to relocate, have helped weed out the

ambitious hopefuls from the real talent. The quiet, more serious at-

mosphere of Caochangdi has allowed some of China’s most celebrat-

ed artists to reflect upon their bodies of work. In the September 2009

issue of The Beijinger, arts editor Madeleine O’dea wrote that a “new

bohemianism” had taken root in the city’s arts scene. If the rugged

alleyways of Caochangdi speak to anything, it is this spirit of bohemi-

anism and renewed creativity, and the promise of many more years

of extraordinary art.

Helena Malchione is a sophomore Economics and East Asian Studies major in Jonathan Edwards College.

left: The sleek, lush pathways of Ai Weiwei-designed Galerie Urs Meile form a sharp contrast to the bleak, dusty Caochangdi streets just beyond. (Malchione/TYG) right: The 798 Arts District has transformed from abandoned warehouses to a glitzy tourist attraction. (Welch/TYG)

CULTURESPring 2010

26

Compiling a CultureThe international success of Afro-Peruvian music has brought a once-obscure tradition into the potentially distorting glare of the spotlight.

By Alon Harish

When david Byrne, former leader of the rock group Talk-

ing Heads, watched a videotape of Peruvian singer Su-

sana Baca in concert, he immediately fell in love with her

voice. He persuaded Baca to sign with his New York-based record

label Luaka Bop, then combined her work with that of other tradi-

tional Peruvian artists in a 1995 compilation entitled “The Soul of

Black Peru.” Opening with Baca’s mournful and evocative version of

the Afro-Peruvian classic “María Landó,” the album not only started

Baca on a path to fame but also contributed to the preservation of a

musical tradition that was on the verge of disappearing. But the very

success of the album raised a difficult question: Can an American la-

bel promote Afro-Peruvian music without changing it?

A People in the ShadowsBaca, who in 2002 became the first Peruvian to win a Grammy, is

part of a new generation of Afro-Peruvian artists dedicated to keep-

ing alive the traditions of their ancestors. Since for most of history

Peruvian music was an oral tradition, much of it was “lost with the

deaths of people who carried the music in their memory,” Baca said.

Born in barrios like Baca’s hometown of Chorrillos, Afro-Peruvian

music was first developed by African slaves brought by the Span-

ish to work in mines and plantations along the Peruvian coast. The

Spanish, fearing the overt spirituality in the slaves’ music and dance,

imposed a ban on drums that inadvertently gave birth to a unique

percussive sound that has survived to this day. Slaves found other

objects with which to create a beat, such as the cajón, which evolved

from wooden crates used to collect fruit on colonial farms. They ad-

opted the quijada de burro (literally “donkey’s jaw” in Spanish) as a

percussion instrument, making its teeth vibrate by slapping the jaw

with the palm of their hands.

To Baca, “percussion is at the core of Afro-Peruvian music.” So,

too, is the theme of loss of a homeland and of freedom. Though the

rhythms and melodies that sprang from these emotions are sung in

Spanish, a language people speak in most of Latin America, they went

unheard by the outside world for centuries. And despite the natural

appeal of their soulful grooves, Afro-Peruvian music did not register

on the international scene until the release of Byrne’s compilation in

the United States.

Out of ObscurityBaca’s commitment to her country’s musical tradition began before

Byrne’s first visit to Peru in the early 1990s. Susana Baca and her

husband Ricardo Pereira founded the Instituto Negro Continuo

(Black Continuum Institute) in Chorrillos in 1992, years before she

became a commercial success. Instituto Negro Continuo supports

musicians and scholars of black culture in Peru by conducting

workshops at local schools to teach students about Afro-Peruvian

music and running a library with traditional musical archives and

documents.

Yale Evelev, Luaka Bop’s president, credits Baca with “single-

handedly reinvigorating a culture that was fading away.” But Luaka

Bop, which Byrne founded in 1988 as an umbrella label to unite his

numerous international compilation projects, has played a signifi-

cant role in the renaissance of a musical culture formerly unheard

outside of Peru’s borders.

It was Baca’s rendition of the landó, a signature Afro-Peruvian

meter akin to an extended waltz, that lured Byrne to Peru. The shuf-

fling beat of the cajón carried Baca’s deep voice through the tale of

“María,” a servant girl for whom life offers “no dawn,” only suffering

and “doing the work of others.” And yet, as Byrne and Evelev were

surprised to learn, no label in Peru had thought enough of Baca’s mu-

sic to record it.

“We went to the Warner Bros. outpost in Peru, a label called Iemp-

sa, and no one there had even heard of her,” Evelev said. Baca signed

with Luaka Bop in shortly after the release of “The Soul of Black

Peru,” and the label released “Susana Baca,” a solo album in 1997.

A product of Evelev and Byrne’s travels to Peru and acquisitions of

cassette material from local labels, “The Soul of Black Peru” boosted

Susana Baca performing in Reading, U.K., in 2006. (Courtesy Damian Rafferty/Flickr)

27CULTUREthe yale globalist

awareness of Afro-Peruvian music, once known only in small, iso-

lated black communities in Peru, until it was well known beyond the

Andes.

From the Outside Looking InLater in 1995, Luaka Bop set Baca off on a 30-show tour across the

United States, during which Baca played for audiences far larger

than any she could have dreamed of in Peru — but who were also

complete strangers to her heritage and did not speak her language.

despite those barriers, the song “María Landó” became so popular

that by the end of the tour, crowds would applaud only a few bars

into the introduction. Back home, while taking pride in Baca’s

success, many Black Peruvians were skeptical of whom she truly

sought to represent through her music while she was abroad.

“Here was a woman no one wanted to do a record with, and sud-

denly some outsiders come in and now she’s touring the States.

There were a lot of people wondering how that was even possible,”

Evelev said.

Evelev and Byrne put themselves in a complex situation in Peru.

The music that stirred them most had been left behind by local cul-

tural trends. Evelev and Byrne saw their task as unearthing forgot-

ten folk gems that deserved greater recognition. A quote from Byrne

in Heidi Feldman’s book The Black Rhythms of Peru captures Byrne’s

attitude towards his work: “Sometimes it takes a naïve foreigner to

appreciate what people who live in a country don’t realize they have.”

But many Peruvians, acutely aware that Byrne and Evelev were

marketing a culture they did not know firsthand, questioned Byrne

and Evelev’s motives. Black Peruvians who still remembered the

days when their music was first reappearing criticized his selections

for the compilation. Some questioned the inclusion of Chabuca Gran-

da, one of Susana Baca’s musical mentors, due to her mixed racial

heritage, claiming she was not truly black. They worried above all

that the image of their culture produced by Luaka Bop would not be

faithful to the reality with which they grew up.

Culture Preservation or Cultural Change?This cultural tension is not uncommon for Luaka Bop, a label that

despite its size — it operates out of a one-room office on Manhat-

tan’s Lower East Side — has done a great deal for the promotion of

under-recognized music around the world. Luaka Bop compilations

spread the musical wealth of places like Brazil, Cuba, and Mali,

among others. Although they contain notes with historical back-

ground on the musical culture of the country, Evelev says the label’s

core mission is to spread good music, not to educate. “We’re not the

Smithsonian,” he joked.

Every well-intentioned label described by the intellectually vacu-

ous term “world music” faces this conundrum. Because of the conve-

A street scene in Lima: Two men play the guitar and the cajón, performing a lando by Chabuca Granda. (Courtesy Flickr)

nience of grouping distinct foreign musical cultures like Baca’s under

the banner of world music, record stores and other distributors com-

monly shuffle her albums among those of various other “non-West-

ern” artists, not bothering to distinguish them regardless of how dra-

matic their differences are.

Baca, who recently finished her fifth album with Luaka Bop and is

planning a sixth, said she does not worry that her culture might be

misrepresented. “Music either stirs your heart or it doesn’t, regard-

less of where you’ve grown up,” she said. In Peru, at least, she be-

lieves that the respect she and her music have achieved through her

relationship with the U.S. label has been well worth the risk of mixing

culture and commerce. Indeed, in the past decade, its influence on Pe-

ruvian popular music and appreciation throughout Peru have grown

rapidly. Novalima, one of Peru’s most commercially successful rock

groups, proudly describes itself as heavily indebted to Afro-Peruvian

music. A man playing the cajón graces the cover of their latest album.

Baca said she believes the music of her ancestors will live on in

the generation that succeeds her. “Today I can see high school kids

learning all the old songs and dances, and I know that they won’t have

to disappear,” she said.

Abroad, however, Luaka Bop’s impact is less clear. As a purveyor

of foreign musical traditions to American listeners, Luaka Bop can-

not ignore its role as a cultural agent. After all, by choosing the songs

that appear on a compilation like “The Soul of Black Peru,” they in-

evitably shape international perceptions of a culture whose scope far

exceeds that of a single Cd.

Alon Harish is a freshman in Branford College. He worked as an intern at Luaka Bop Records in the summer of 2008.

Today I can see high school kids learning all the old songs and dances, and I know that they won’t have to disappear.”

—Susana Baca

“

CULTURESPring 2010

28

tions with his home country were once tumultuous. When he started

excavations as a student with a French team, Afghanistan was still

a kingdom and France had sole rights to excavate in the country. A

professor for many years, he held the title of director of Archaeology

and Preservation of Historical Monuments of Afghanistan, and also

of director General of the Archaeology Institute of Kabul. “When I

left, I was the big deal, the head.” Following the Soviet invasion in

1979, however, Tarzi was forced to flee to France in the trunk of a car.

during his exile, everything Tarzi knew in his home country

turned upside-down. “Kabul was destroyed, people disappeared, ev-

erything was magnified — the poor became poorer, the rich richer,

and everything razed. It was worse than Stalingrad.” Archaeology

suffered huge blows. “In this case, you have no patience, time, or

thoughts for objects of art,” he said, particularly when Russian sol-

diers loot the museums for gold objects.

Even now, conditions for cultural preservation are less than ideal.

The Eroded Face of AfghanistanArchaeologist Zemaryalai Tarzi seeks the country’s history in its

sandstone cliffs.By Rae Ellen Bichell

Azdhar, known as the Valley of the Dragon, was the site of Bamiyan’s fabled Buddhas until their wholesale destruction in 2001. (Courtesy Alessandro Monsutti)

Archaeology can serve as a slogan for a country. It can be venerated.”

— Dr. Zemaryalai Tarzi

“

For most of the year, dr. Zemaryalai Tarzi is a professor of ar-

chaeology at the University of Strasbourg, France. In the sum-

mer — excavating season — he becomes an “Afghan Indiana

Jones,” a nickname bestowed on him last year by the BBC in refer-

ence to his tireless search for the long-lost Third Buddha of Afghani-

stan.

Tarzi has conducted excavations in the Bamiyan province for de-

cades, managing teams of workers and students at a site that was, in

the sixth and seventh centuries, a thriving post along the Silk Road.

At 71, Tarzi’s career has spanned turbulent decades in Afghanistan’s

history, during which he has earned a name as the father of Afghan

archaeology and one of the only people, he says, to whom “politics

don’t matter much.” But with tribal tensions, high illiteracy rates,

and foreign troops patrolling the countryside, wiping complex politi-

cal cobwebs from Afghanistan’s past is an uphill battle.

Turbulent ConditionsTarzi has contributed extensively to Afghanistan’s cultural preser-

vation, recovering some of what the Taliban tried to erase. “Archae-

ology can serve as a slogan for a country. It can be venerated,” he

said. Tarzi has dedicated his life to uncovering his country’s buried

cultural treasures. “It’s my excavations that have yielded the most

information on Afghanistan’s Buddhist past,” he said. “Before me,

there weren’t sites excavated officially. It was more of a free-for-all.”

Tarzi may have a place in Afghanistan’s history now, but his rela-

29CULTUREthe yale globalist

At the foot of Bamiyan’s largest cliff, the Oriental Monastery endured wholesale destruction by the Taliban in 2001, and is now the site of one Tarzi’s excavations. (Courtesy Zemaryalai Tarzi)

Viewed from the former Buddha’s eye level, Bamiyan holds some of Afghanistan’s more important Buddhist sites, as well as a population of Hazaras historically at odds with Tarzi’s Pashtun tribe. (Courtesy Alessandro Monsutti)

Afghanistan currently houses troops from 47 different countries,

with 107,000 more slated to be sent this year by the United States and

others. “There are bombs, everything is so extreme,” said Tarzi. “The

world is becoming crazy.”

It is this violence which put a spotlight on the importance of

Tarzi’s excavations. In March 2001, the Taliban began obliterating all

idols as violations of Muslim sharia law. Among the victims of this

rampage were two 130-foot-high colossal Buddhas, which at one point

housed up to 5,000 monks in surrounding niches set within the cliffs.

The move was a cultural and archaeological disaster and a widely

publicized example of the Taliban’s fanaticism.

Far away, in exile in France, Tarzi’s years of work on the site had

a protective effect. Tarzi had inserted steel reinforcements into the

cliff to stave off natural erosion and shifting. As a result, it took the

Taliban four days of continuous shelling to reduce the site to rubble.

Feats like these have earned Tarzi his reputation for tenacity, and

maybe a side of egotism. “Have you seen the movie Saving Private

Ryan?” he asked as he described the event. “I was compared to the

man who saved Private Ryan. But instead of saving a soldier, I was

saving the artifacts of Afghanistan.”

Against the GrainSince 2002, Tarzi has received much attention for his search for the

Third Buddha of Bamiyan, a third and final colossus described in Chi-

nese accounts and somehow hidden from view. At a predicted 1,000

feet long, it could potentially be the largest Buddha in existence, but

Tarzi’s take on it differs from that given in the news. To him, the lost

Buddha may be the glamorous face of Afghan archaeology and an

enticing story for international media, but finding its location is not

the core of what he does. “The people who give me money want me to

find the Third Buddha, but when I work, I lead a scientific research

team,” he said, hinting at the discrepancy between how the world

sees of archaeology and how it is actually practiced. “What I find is

much more interesting than the Buddha. I am much more concerned

with the grottoes at the bottom of the cliff,” he said, referring to mu-

rals, clay figurines, and thatch huts which proved that the site was

actually much older than previously accepted.

His contribution to the national museum has been integral in

restoring the country’s heritage, but Tarzi and the government fre-

quently do not see eye-to-eye. Attempting to restore national pride,

the government now wants to rebuild the fallen Buddhas, but Tarzi

is against the proposal. “I want to debunk this view that restoring

cultural heritage comes with rebuilding. Why not then rebuild the

pyramids, just because we can?”

To Tarzi, even the site’s designation as a UNESCO World Heritage

Site is not much more than empty publicity. “UNESCO? No, no, no,

they don’t do anything,” he said of the NGO responsible for funding

another team of excavators in the region under Japanese supervision.

Tarzi has similar feelings about “Hidden Treasures of Afghanistan,”

CULTURESPring 2010

30

top: Shown on a visit to the former location of the Krakrak Buddha, Tarzi said, “The joy of discovery and the suffering of destruction are the daily lot of archaeologists.” (Courtesy Zemaryalai Tarzi)center: Before beginning excavations, Tarzi’s team of 169 workers gathers at the base of the Oriental Monastery’s Grand Stupa. (Courtesy Zemaryalai Tarzi)bottom: Now an empty hole in the cliff face, the Bamiyan Buddhas once housed thou-sands of monks in niches embedded in the cliffs. (Courtesy Alessandro Monsutti)

an exhibit of Afghan artifacts that toured the US last year. To Tarzi,

the show was little more than a “political exhibit.” “I was against the

objects ever leaving Afghanistan,” he said.

Another ReputationA purist and a traditionalist, Tarzi claims detachment from politics

and jealousy. According to Yale professor of anthropology Alessan-

dro Monsutti, the real picture may be different. Afghanistan’s long

history of fragmentation and tribal warfare causes locals to see any

attempt at cultural reconstruction as political manipulation. This is

especially true for Tarzi, who comes from a powerful family linked to

the former monarchy and whose relatives include an ambassador, a

representative to the United Nations, a professor at the U.S. Marine

Corps University, and Soraya Tarzi, late Queen of Afghanistan.

“The elite are interested in fostering a national identity, but the

Buddhist past is probably not relevant to the Afghan people,” said

Monsutti. “They don’t even know what a Buddha is. Even the statues

don’t represent a pre-Islamic time. For them, it’s a couple of kings,

local folklore.” The centuries-old history of friction between contend-

ing tribes, while recent in comparison with the ancient Buddhas, is

much more real for the inhabitants of the region.

Tarzi sticks to his objectivity: “I dig for archaeology and for histo-

ry. It’s not political for me.” But his reputation precedes him in Bami-

yan. Tarzi is a powerful Pashtun in a region populated by the his-

torically suppressed Hazaras. Antagonism between the two groups is

such that the province holds annual celebrations of local leaders who

resisted the Pashtuns, while Tarzi digs away nearby. “Tarzi probably

can’t imagine that he could be seen as an emissary of the Old Regime,

which the locals hate,” said Monsutti, “but there is so much suspi-

cion, fed by decades of war. He’s not following a political agenda, but

not one would believe that.”

In a country where illiteracy may be as high as 72 percent, the

disconnect between scholars and locals means that efforts to foster

a national identity will be difficult, particularly in rural areas like

Bamiyan.

Now at an age when most retire, Tarzi is still going strong. Besides

conducting excavations every summer, he is also the president of the

Association for the Protection of Afghan Archaeology, an association

he co-founded with his daughter to promote Afghanistan’s 5,000-year

old heritage. As for when he will stop, Tarzi said, “Maybe in four or

five years, when I am done with my final volume.”

Finished with two of four volumes, Tarzi waits for funding for the

third. “I’m old, you know. I’m gaining weight,” he said. If Tarzi had

his way, excavations would continue for centuries. Indeed, it may take

much longer before the troops pull out, tribal tensions ease, and a

consensus is reached about Afghanistan’s history. Regardless of old

age and the political swirl around him, Tarzi will be on the case until

his job is done, by the end perhaps a cultural relic himself.

Rae Ellen Bichell is a sophomore Anthropology major in Davenport College.

31SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGYthe yale globalist

Robots that Care?For better or for worse, Japan looks to robots to fill the gaps that will soon

be left by the world’s fastest aging population.By Monica Landy

SPC101C measures a mere 13 inches in height and weighs just

over three pounds. With arms, legs, a torso, and a head, his

miniature frame clearly resembles that of a human. He march-

es, dances, and even responds to the human voice; on command,

SPC101C can check an email inbox or send a message to grandchil-

dren halfway across the world. He is one of many robots being de-

veloped to meet the needs of the world’s fastest aging society, Japan,

and his creators are confident that he will be an unmitigated success.

But will SPC101C and his kin really be capable of providing necessary

care to an aging nation, or will they be looked back upon as a foolish

and expensive flop?

In a desperate effort to avert demographic disaster, the Japanese

government has set a target to introduce robots into every household

by 2015 and has flooded the domestic robotics industry with funding

for years. But opinions within Japan differ dramatically from those

of foreign experts, leaving a great deal of uncertainty as to what Ja-

pan’s robotic future might look like or what the costs of such a future

might be.

Robots versus Immigrants Japan’s elderly will constitute about one-third of the nation’s total

population by 2025, according to Hiroe Kinoshita, a representative of

Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. This trend poses

two great challenges for Japan: an unprecedented number of elder-

ly in need of care as well as a shortage of Japanese who are fit to

work. As Kinoshita put it, “The era of absolute shortage of human

resources is approaching.” Plenty of young people in less wealthy

countries like the Philippines and Thailand would leap at an oppor-

tunity to move to Japan to work in high-demand professions such as

nursing. But immigrant-wary Japan issues very few work visas each

year, leaving an acute shortage of manpower available to care for the

country’s elderly. As an alternative, the Japanese government has

begun to invest substantially in the domestic robotics industry. Both

academic researchers and private robotics firms have been striving

to develop robots that will assist the elderly in their daily lives and

perform jobs left unfilled due to labor shortage, nullifying the need to

admit immigrants from South East Asia.

These investments are slowly paying off as the first such robotic

products reach maturity. A model named Robovie-II leads the elderly

around the supermarket, reminds them what is on their shopping

list, and makes suggestions for additional purchases. Saya, a robotic

teacher, is currently being tested in classrooms. According to Junji

Matsuo, a representative of the robotics firm Tmsuk, Japan will soon

enjoy the services of receptionist robots, guide robots, surveillance

robots, and rescue robots.

“We Should Always Try to Replace Humans ...”Japanese researchers and businessmen alike are optimistic about

how effective this strategy will be in dealing with the aging popu-

above: An encounter between the Japanese public and Speecys Corporation’s latest project, SPC101C, on display. CEO and Founder Tomoaki Kasuga expects a warm welcome for his robot. (Courtesy Speecys Corp.)

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGYSPring 2010

32

lation. “I think that the robot will be the new platform for elderly

people’s communication,” pronounced Tomoaki Kasuga, CEO and

founder of Speecys Corporation. Kasuga has high hopes for his up-

coming SPC101C and believes that it will have a positive impact on

the lives of the elderly. “Generally, elderly people don’t use PCs or

mobile phones. Voice communication is much easier for them. My ro-

bots can help elderly people, because they can send emails by voice,”

he noted.

Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro, director of the Intelligent Robotics

Laboratory at Osaka University, was even more enthusiastic and con-

fident than Kasuga. “We should always try to replace humans per-

forming simple, mechanical tasks with robots,” he said. An adamant

proponent of robotics, Ishiguro believes that robots will one day ad-

vance to the point of being indistinguishable from humans at first

glance, an assertion he’s attempted to prove by creating an incred-

ibly realistic robot replica of himself named Geminoid. “Someday,”

he said, “we are going to replace the workers in the factories with

robots, and then robots will control the robots, and the people can

have better jobs.”

Robo-skepticism However, in the minds of many robotics experts from around the

world, Japan’s faith in a robotic solution is misguided. “We as roboti-

cists are often arrogant,” asserted Professor Ronald Arkin, a robotics

expert at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “We assume our tech-

nology is the best solution without even really investigating what

people really want and need.” Professor Robert Sparrow of Monash

University in Australia agreed, stressing that often the most impor-

tant aspects of robotics are the human factors. Yet, he said, “a lot of

the people doing the research and making the claims about robotics

are actually not sociologists, they’re not gerontologists — they’re en-

gineers.”

Sparrow remains skeptical about the practicality and efficiency of

employing robots in homes and in the workplace. “If you’re going to

test a robot, you need to look at what happens after all the engi-

neers have gone home, it’s been in your facility for a year, you’ve

spilled a few cups of tea on it, and nobody’s got the instructions

anymore. That’s the point at which you analyze a robot.”

Both professors expressed concern about the moral impli-

cations of entrusting the care of the elderly to robots. Arkin

worried that prolonged interaction with robots could delude

seniors. “These robots maintain the illusion of life, and

this may cause the elderly to not understand the real

world or what’s going on in society,” he said. Com-

menting on SPC101C, Sparrow was troubled by simi-

lar anxieties: “designing technology on the basis that

we want to trick people into thinking that they’re talk-

ing to a person instead of a machine, I would think that’s

ethically problematic.”

Japan’s robot strategy was sparked by concern for the

future of its people and is intended to have a significant impact on

their everyday lives. Yet thus far their opinions have been strangely

absent. “One of the interesting things in the debate about robotics

and aged care is how few voices there are from the perspective of

people who are in nursing homes or assisted living facilities,” re-

marked Sparrow disapprovingly. despite this absence, experts do

not hesitate to make their own predictions and assumptions. “This

situation is similar to that of the car, or the cell phone, or the comput-

er,” Ishiguro asserted. “In the beginning, people didn’t accept these

things, they didn’t react to them well, but ultimately they cannot re-

fuse new technologies because technology develops new markets.

The people never refuse new technologies.”

Control + ZRegardless of whether the Japanese public welcomes an increased

presence of robots in society initially, the robots will need to prove

themselves to be capable, productive, and effective in their roles lest

the enthusiasm of the public wane. “At a superficial level, clearly

there is a higher level of acceptance of robots” in Japan than else-

where, said Sparrow, “but whether or not that acceptance can sur-

vive interaction with robots in important roles, that’s a much more

open-ended question.”

The example of the Aidu Chuo Hospital in Fukushima prefecture

demonstrates that the transition to a robot-saturated work environ-

ment may not be as smooth as Japan’s avid robotics proponents imag-

ine. In 2006, the hospital welcomed a receptionist robot and two guide

robots, all produced by Tmsuk, to its staff. designed to greet visitors,

carry their baggage, and direct them vocally and with touch-screen

maps, these robots received a warm welcome, especially considering

that their new home was the first private hospital in the world to em-

ploy such devices. However, according to a current employee at Aidu

Chuo Hospital, the robots are no longer there. “The robots are being

repaired now,” she said. “They needed a new function.” She did not

know when — or if — they would return.

The debate concerning Japan’s demographic chal-

lenges and whether or not robotics can provide an effec-

tive solution is marked by optimism in Japan, skepticism

abroad, and a lack of input from the elderly, whose

opinion matters most. Yet, even if the elderly en-

thusiastically embraced the robotics program,

would that be enough to justify Japan’s robot

strategy? “I just think people should think

about their own experience with comput-

ers,” said Sparrow. “How much irritation,

how much frustration, how much time you

spend taking the bloody thing to be repaired,

and how many computers get thrown away.

Think about that and then think about what it

would be like to have Microsoft Word feeding

you.” Indeed, in the real world, you can’t

always count on pressing “Edit: Undo.”

Monica Landy is a freshman in Trumbull College.

According to Tomoaki Kasuga, CEO and founder of Speecys Cor-poration, SPC101C will be “the new platform for elderly people’s communication,” as it is vocally operated and therefore easy to use. (Courtesy Speecys Corp.)

33PERSPECTIVESthe yale globalist

Imagine a world where a man wanted for murder can

be president of a nation of 42 million people.

“Now imagine a world where that man is wanted

in not one but 110 countries, for not only the crime of

murder but also those of rape, extermination, forcible

transfer, pillaging, and torture, and not only remains

in high office but also plans to run for another term in

2010,” said Josh Rubenstein, a 30-year veteran of hu-

man rights policy and regional director for Amnesty

International USA.

Welcome to the world of Omar al-Bashir.

On March 4, 2009, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, head pros-

ecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), is-

sued an indictment against President Omar Hassan

al-Bashir of Sudan. Al-Bashir was charged with five

counts of crimes against humanity and two counts of

war crimes in the region of darfur. The warrant placed

square blame for the conflict in darfur, in which an es-

timated 300,000 people have been killed, on al-Bashir

and his administration. Al-Bashir is the first head of

state to be indicted by the ICC while in office. The

warrant has been lauded by the international human

rights community and supported by NATO and the Eu-

ropean Union.

The indictment has its opponents, too. The day the

warrant was made public, the permanent representa-

tive of Sudan to the United Nations lambasted the ICC

in the tiny, blue-walled press room at U.N. Headquar-

ters. “This verdict does not deserve the ink used to

print it,” the ambassador said, pounding his podium.

“The message that the ICC has sent to the entire world

is that it is a tool of imperialism and double standards.”

Thousands of Sudanese marched in the capital

Khartoum following the announcement of the war-

rant, rallying in support of al-Bashir. “Some Sudanese

don’t agree with al-Bashir’s politics, but at the end

of the day, they’re nationalists, and they will support

their leader against what they perceive as a patron-

izing and pro-Western system of justice, especially in

the northern part of the country,” said Beatrice Mat-

egwa, a journalist with the U.N. who has spent four out

of the past five years in Sudan. darfur, where most of

the violence has occurred, lies far to the west of Khar-

toum.

Most of the member states of the Arab League and

the African Union (AU) joined the Sudanese govern-

ment in condemning the warrant as an expression of

western hegemony. China and Russia have also voiced

their support for al-Bashir. An official message on the

Chinese Foreign Ministry’s website described the war-

rant as a “disruption” to the Sudanese peace process.

(Notably, the Chinese consume around two-thirds of

Sudan’s annual oil production.)

days after the release of the warrant, the Sudanese

government expelled most of the non-political interna-

tional aid organizations working in darfur, including

Oxfam International, Médecins sans Frontières, and

Mercy Corps. Al-Bashir accused the organizations of

being “spies” and “thieves,” though he made sure to

seize their assets before kicking them out of Sudan.

Almost a year after the warrant was issued, Omar

al-Bashir remains comfortably in power in Sudan. In

the months following the indictment, al-Bashir has not

curbed his international travel, travelling to confer-

ences in Qatar, Egypt, Libya, and Eritrea.

does this mean that the ICC — an institution found-

ed with the goal of ending impunity for even the most

powerful perpetrators of atrocities — is doomed to

fail?

“Absolutely not,” Rubenstein said firmly. “Sure,

we haven’t gotten al-Bashir yet — we always knew

he wouldn’t come easily.” But even so, “the fact that

the international community has gotten to the point

where it can hold a sitting head of state accountable

for human rights violations marks an enormous mile-

stone.”

For now, al-Bashir is free and in power, and he will

seek to extend his reign in the 2010 Sudanese elec-

tions. The politics of race, religion, and oil make it

unlikely that he will face trial at The Hague any time

soon. But the ICC has sent Omar al-Bashir a message:

Watch out. When you leave your presidential com-

pound, when you travel outside of Sudan for medical

treatment, and when you attend conferences in other

nations, you are stepping into a world in which you are

wanted for war crimes. Your days are numbered. We

know your game, and we will bring you to justice.

Sibjeet Mahapatra is a freshman in Silliman College.

The Hunt for Al-BashirThe President of Sudan has evaded standing trial for the genocide in Darfur. What does this mean for global justice?By Sibjeet Mahapatra

Does this mean that the ICC — an institution founded with the goal of ending impunity for even the most powerful perpetrators of atrocities — is doomed to fail?

PERSPECTIVESSPring 2010

34

Journalism in China: A Memoir and a Future?For my family, stepping down the path of journalism is cause for fear as well as hope.By Kanglei Wang

My grandpa was a newspaper man. He grew up running barefoot

near Guilin, a town in southern China known for its thumb-

shaped mountains, and studied chemistry at college in Beijing. In the

late 1940s, infected by the idealism of his era, my grandpa decided

that other pursuits mattered more. He took his notebook and pen into

the front lines of the Chinese Civil War and sent handwritten pages

of quick, accurate reporting back to Beijing. Later, after the found-

ing of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, he continued to write.

When the chief of Xinhua — a government-owned news agency and

the only officially sanctioned press in China at the time — needed to

be replaced, my grandpa stepped into politics.

For a time, he oversaw the press of an entire nation. I still don’t

know exactly what happened in those hallowed meeting halls of Xin-

hua, but I do know that my grandfather’s time was short-lived. A few

months after he took the reins, the beginning throes of the Cultural

Revolution hit Xinhua. Wealth and power were deemed dangerous

emblems of capitalism, and almost everyone in positions of power

was ousted. In 1976, my grandpa died of diabetes as a political pris-

oner in jail.

I interned for a magazine in Beijing this summer, in part because I

wanted to learn more about my grandpa, and in part because I want-

ed to see if I could be a writer, too. Before I left, my mom told me

the same thing she always tells me before I go to China: “don’t do

anything stupid.” Shut your mouth, she means. don’t let your all-too-

Americanized self get the best of you. don’t talk about politics.

Caijing magazine, where I worked, has been touted as one of Chi-

na’s most progressive. It reported the truth about SARS when the

rest of Chinese media remained silent; it exposes government and

big business scandals and interviews people whose communities are

being hurt by new Chinese development. But China’s information veil

is ever-present. Caijing’s style is carefully rendered; only after the

government-sanctioned “facts” are presented are Caijing’s indepen-

dent statistics or quotes added. While no opinion is stated directly,

it is clear the reader — often a member of the upper crust of Chinese

society — should think for him or herself.

Yet I was surprised last summer when, during the Uyghur riots in

China’s Xinjiang region, Caijing reporting fell in step with all other

government-controlled media outlets in China, who were sent script-

ed facts to broadcast. I was disappointed. Where was Caijing’s pur-

ported progressiveness? Its independence? Its voice?

Nowadays, the Xinhua compound in Beijing looks like a fortress,

or a jail. It has barracks of apartments for its reporters and steel

gates and guards who look at Id before letting you inside any build-

ings. I don’t work there, so I wasn’t allowed to enter. When I went

back to Guilin, Grandpa’s hometown, the people who knew him had

died. At the end of the summer, I went back to America, my questions

unasked.

Three months ago, I found out that Caijing Magazine underwent

an upheaval: the editor-in-chief left, and over seventy percent of the

staff followed.

It turns out that over the summer, as I wondered why we weren’t

reporting on the riots, Caijing had flown correspondents to Xinjiang,

only to be told by the magazine’s publisher and funder that Caijing

could not risk angering the government by publishing an indepen-

dent piece on the riots. The reporters were sent home. A few months

later, the editor-in-chief left to work in freer spaces, and hopes to

found another financial magazine with different backers.

The latest issue of Caijing — now under new leadership — began

with a letter from a former party official, commending Caijing’s past

coverage of social issues. But the people responsible for that coverage

are gone. Chinese online forums questioned if Caijing closing meant

“the death of Chinese journalism?” the question mark inserted, per-

haps, as a sign of hope.

My mom doesn’t want me to do journalism. Both she and my dad

were sent from the city to work in the fields during the Cultural Revo-

lution as part of China’s educating-the-youth initiative; their parents

were victimized because they spoke out. Yet, even in America, they

are defensive of China and offended by my questioning of Chinese

policies. This is the story of many Chinese of their age. How can you

convince a generation like theirs that an independent voice is impor-

tant, perhaps essential, to growth, when all it has brought is punish-

ment? My parents don’t want me to follow in my grandfather’s foot-

steps, because his disappeared.

Kanglei Wang is a junior Environmental Studies major in Branford College.

Shut your mouth, she means. Don’t let your all-too-Americanized self get the best of you. Don’t talk about politics.

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