Friends with the poor

By: FIDELIS SUKINA

Aged and deranged an old man is walking

 

Silent but diligent, crouched and humped backed,

I cry a silent tear for an elder, a sad old man so help him God.

Every ounce of energy a welcome to this hard worker, laziness never brings him much,

He walks the dusty streets of Moresby, slinging a flour bag,

For cans and bottles he forages, through the stink of drains and rubbish drums.

How can a man like me see you and just walk away? 

How can I a simple middle class Papua New Guinean give you my last bus fare and walk home?

I ask myself and leave with the thought of you lingering toward home.

I lay awake and think where the poor old man will lay tonight, 

Thunder striking cold shivers and a bed sheet over my body,

But the old man sits under a broken down shelter, cold and frail,

Praying to God for a life more than this,

Perhaps maybe a good gesture will find him tomorrow.

Another day another dollar, for me and the old man I just hope tomorrow brings me joy,

And for the old man, well let’s just say he is now my good friend.

Social Media Sites confused on which laws comply in the world

Caption: Supporters of anti-corruption figure Aleksei Navalny in Moscow. The government had Facebook block a page on a planned rally, but copycat pages popped up. Credit Ivan Sekretarev/Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO — Government censorship of the Internet is a cat-and-mouse game. And despite more aggressive tactics in recent months, the cats have been largely frustrated while the mice wriggle away.

But this year, the challenges for Silicon Valley will mount, with Russia and Turkey in particular trying to tighten controls on foreign-based Internet companies. Major American companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google are increasingly being put in the tricky position of figuring out which laws and orders to comply with around the world — and which to ignore or contest.

On Wednesday, Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, signed the latest version of a personal data law that will require companies to store data about Russian users on computers inside the country, where it will be easier for the government to get access to it. With few companies expected to comply with the law, which goes into effect Sept. 1, a confrontation may well erupt.

The clumsiness of current censorship efforts was apparent in mid-December, when Russia’s Internet regulator demanded that Facebook remove a page that was promoting an anti-government rally. After Facebook blocked the page for its 10 million or so Russian users, dozens of copycat pages popped up and the word spread on other social networks like Twitter. That created even more publicity for the planned Jan. 15 event, intended to protest the sentencing of Aleksei A. Navalny, a leading opposition figure.

The Turkish government faced similar embarrassment when it tried to stop the dissemination of leaked documents and audio recordings on Twitter in March. The administration of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was then prime minister and is now president, ordered the shutdown of Twitter within Turkey after the company refused to block the posts, which implicated government officials in a corruption investigation.

Not only did the government lose a court fight on the issue, but while Twitter was blocked, legions of Turkish users taught one another technical tricks to evade the ban, even spray-painting the instructions on the walls of buildings.

“We all became hackers,” Asli Tunc, a professor of communication at Istanbul Bilgi University, said in a phone interview. “And we all got on Twitter.”

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