Interview with Prokofy Neva, Part Two

By Bixyl Shuftan

This is the second part of an interview with Prokofy Neva, a longtime resident in Second Life whom is best known for being a sometimes controversial commentator on his "Second Thoughts" blog and various Second Life related forums. In the first part of the interview, he discussed his earlier days on the Grid and his opinions on how conflict and debate shaped it's evolution over time. In the second part, he had a few comments about more recent issues in Second Life, such as content creator rights, the temporary ban of third party currency exchange services, and the announcement of a new grid in development. He also talked some about his idea of "virtuality," and why Second Life truly hasn't succeeded in appealing to the masses with it's version of it.

To read the first part of the interview: Click Here.

To one of Prokofy's earlier comments about Linden Lab, I asked, "You thought they were trying to wreck businesses rather than a case of 'It seemed like a good idea?' "

Prokofy's answer was, "With Ebbe Linden's announcement of a new world, we are going to be dealing with a larger whack than we've ever been given. This is like telehubs, island discounts, homesteads, VAT -- all those scandals -- copybot -- all rolled into one. The Lindens have only one goal: how to make money from land long enough to get rid of land as a business model so that they can move to content fees and currency fees instead. It's also about power-sharing in my view, as I said about the thread on SL Universe (forums)."

"Yes," I responded, "many, including my old boss, wondered just what the Lindens are up to."

Prokofy continued, "Instead of saying to their customers with rental communities, 'Advertise in our welcome areas, help us with our new customers,' or saying to clubs and live music venues 'Advertise in our welcome areas and our splash screen, help us with our customers,' they do completely different things to serve their interests which are short-sighted for the world itself. They create special builder and scripter dev groups and throw them out-world business, they put in Linden Homes and give special contracts to certain designers to build for them, so their business is helped even as ours is screwed, because they really don't believe in the user community outside their own very special and trusted friends who are coders/designers. They can't share power with a class alien to them in values. There isn't a parliament or a constitutional court to solve these things through law. There is only warfare."

"So they put in the Linden homes to try to drive people to buy premium accounts which languished, and to guide newbies toward content purchases. In the end, they couldn't completely ruin the low cost newbies rentals business, or I wouldn't be here or others wouldn't be here."

I brought up, "Two controversies in the past year were the third party linden exchanges, and the Terms of Service change in reguards to content creators. Anything to say about those?" (Note, SL Newser is partialy sponsored by the Podex Exchange)

Prokofy answered, "Well to take it backwards, the content creator stuff is in a way standard Silicon Valley legal boilerplate in Instagram or anywhere, and done deliberately so that the platform can retain the ability to first display your content as a technical matter but then also reserve the right to grab it for advertising or ultimately any reason or no reason. And it's about failure to share power even with their own FIC. Qarl nailed it on the forums although he sounds like a whiner."

"But here's how they will solve it, and I don't think it will be pretty. They will create a privileged class that has license to create, but must supply SS number and ID, or passport number let's say. They have a huge problem on their hands of liability themselves. The world is filled with content swiped from the Internet, textures and pictures and ideas." He drew my attention to the floor, "say, look at this rug here I make and sell! It comes from Malevich's painting for example, which is public domain. But not every thing is. So the Lindens already got some lawsuits from real-life furniture makers. They can't share power and give rights to people who may themselves have violated other rights."

"Now to the third party exchanges. My own view is that this was an evil and vile move, and it significantly depressed my interest, involvement, and purchases of content and land in SL. Why? because I couldn't cash out instantly. In the past, I could do business and instantly pay a bill that came up in real-life, instantly buy groceries for my family if my real-life contractors were slow in payments. Now, I have to set it up to wait 5-7 or more business days. So I really mourn that loss. It was also a huge boon to my customers. I don't think any fraud vulnerability justified it because they had given out essentially licenses or risk APIs to people. I don't know what your take on it is."

I mentioned two opinions I kept hearing, "Some thought it was Linden Lab's legal department overracting to the Treasury Department's sudden interest in virtual currency. Others thought it was a simple power grab."

Prokofy answered, "I think the latter quite frankly, because the reality is that the Treasury Dept never defined the currency inworld as taxable. It's a game point, a limited license to use inworld game currency, if you will, like a Mycokerewards.com bottle cap, not true currency. So they can't tax my bucket of Mycokerewards.com bottle caps I turned into a coupon for Olive Restaurant yet. If I turned that into $5 real money, they could tax it if it built up. And everything cashed out of SL they should tax. I personally and other business people have put SL revenue as revenue in my tax return. It's not much after costs but it's something. So maybe they were gun-shy, but I think they just hated the idea that people were getting a revenue stream they didn't have. Any money cashed out through those other services paid THOSE people currency fees, not Lindens.  Lindens need a non-land revenue stream model. Their hope was currency exchange fees, subscriptions, and content charges would carry it. But it's like all media that can't live by subscriptions or classified ads alone. All media needs advertising, and buying sims is the equivalent of big advertising revenue for any media property."

I brought up, "After their initial decision, there was a particuarly large outcry from overseas residents. I heard of one entire German community talking about up and leaving."

"Well that's just it," Prokofy told me, "I used to use that European company myself, can't recall its name. It had the option to buy Euros and even bitcoins. I thought it would be a place I could put Euros that I earn in Europe from my RL business which lose so much on transfers here. But it was not to be as they had to close, or rather, I think they sell Lindens but they can't cash them out now or something. No one can provide the cash-out service, correct? That's just it, it hugely retards business progress."

"The Lindens are not here to help your business. They are not here to promote the inworld economy. They are here to run their own business. Their interests and ours do not harmonize. They clash. That is the harsh reality that no one has solved, and won't solve as long as you have those with either a techocommunist view about mass culture or mass free economies in charge, or technolibertarians that only care about their own business and not how their customers make a living."

"Google with its Google buses taking over cities, driving up rents, and not caring how the non-Google people will live. I understand Ebbe is now saying something about making the transition to the new world smooth with regard to land. But sorry, that's not specific. I call for 1:1 transfers of sims or compensation of X pennies on the dollar, to be negotiated. But we don't even know if there will *BE* sims in this new world, sims as we know them."

"so -- right click, SELL LAND for Prokofy, while that lack of clarity and that self-interest on the part of (the) Lindens prevails. And remember, I'm just a tiny self-aware unit in this economy who thinks and blogs, there are hundreds more who don't blog and maybe even don't think about this issue, but they have thousands of dollars at stake not tens or hundreds, and they will act, and that action will influence the outcome."

I followed his comment about the Linden Lab CEO, "Yes, at the third party viewer developer meeting the other day, Ebbe Linden mentioned the development of a next generation virtual world."

"Yes, and it was immediately bruited about as good news that it was closed source," Prokovy commented, "but bad news because no backwards compatibility. None of the things in this room could come with me. Pr let's say I could get their builders to re-rez them as mesh. But what about my outfit? It's made by Osprey Therein, who died in real life. Now there's no way to port it," he frowned, "Sure, I could possibly copybot it or something. But it's not the same."

I sadly nodded, having attended and written about Osprey's funeral.

"Or my Moth King staff Osprey made. Let me show you." Prokovy got it from his inventory, "See the staff?"

"Yes," I answered, "When did she make those clothes?"

"These are very old school clothes," Prokofy told me, "made on that original avatar outfit maker, which is why I like them. Look at what she did with this. Even fur-lined boots, Russian style, all on that old thing. I tend to like the old things better and I only have recently started putting in prim or mesh hair. I think this is prim hair."

"It does look unique," I told him about the outfit.

Prokofy went on, "I don't like mesh. Occasionally I'll find a good house made out of mesh my customers have. I haven't bought them because I can't *see* them half the time-- they don't rez right, even with my computer and new FIOS blazing Internet."

"That's something I've heard from many content creators," I spoke of his dislike of mesh, "and more than one who aren't buying it."

"Well again, to speak of classes," Prokovy commented, "and mind you, I'm certainly not a Marxist and not a European, I'm American and for a more democratic and classless society and upward mobility. But there are classes in SL, and there are those who can see mesh and those who can't. There are entire groups of people living still only with prims not even sculpties, like aboriginals. It's hard to make the world develop uniformly, the 'future is here, only unevenly distributed.' This new world of Ebbe's is definitely one of those futures arriving unevenly distributed. We don't know if we will have graphic cards to view it. We don't know if we will have to buy Oculus Rift headsets to view it, etc."

"So basically, 'It's being developed, that's all we know?' " I asked.

"Well read the latest," Prokofy suggested, "lots of happy speak shy of details. But here's the thing, the model for the economy, which tends to then dictate governance and new user experience is 'the customer is the creator.' The creator class (is) what is top and most important, NOT the consumer class or amateur creator. So what that means, tools for high-end creativity are featured. Which means I can't rez a prim, or edit a prim. Those things are important to rental agents who adjust everything constantly, for customers, ordinary people."

"So basically, it means we are mere spectators at the Renaissance Faire. We're to buy some of the guilds' expensive items and  put them in our homes which are under limited control. That is incredibly dull for me. I could watch TV if that were my purpose. I don't want to watch, I want to interact, as an amateur."

"So what I see then is that once again, they can't conceive of how to make a world mass-user friendly, except by their very old formula, which is 'have a privileged class of people or the game devs themselves make content, bring in the rubes.'"

"And when I talk about compensating those of us who were not in that class and still made the world what it is. Lordfly says 'Game designers don't give you free stuff in the next sequel.' To which I can say, this isn't a game, it's a platform. I can also point out what is coming then for those fancy creators, which they themselves don't seem to realize, which is the other Silicon Valley model that goes with the prosumer model: HUGE FEES, like Amazon, where I sell my e-book."

"Sure, I sell my ebook for $2.99 a pop and buy my family groceries. It actually sells everyday, it's about Snowden. But Amazon takes out 30%-70% of every sale, huge cuts."

"Oh, What's the title?" I asked.

" 'Privacy for Me and Not for Thee' -  http://www.amazon.com/Privacy-Not-Thee-Invincible-Transparency-ebook/dp/B00I2CJKI6 . So sure, be a seller on Amazon or be a merchant on Third Life -- but pay huge fees then, guys"

"Snowden's certainly sparked no shortage of conversation," I commented.

"Yes, well I know a lot about the Snowden story as Russia is my field of expertise," Prokofy told me. "So I have unique materials there translated from the Russian press. But more importantly, I write about hacker culture, which I learned about in SL. And I have two chapters just on SL in that book. So it might be interesting to you."

"I'm sure it would," I thought out loud.

"What I hope is that there will be an outcry and a debate about how the new world is made," Prokvy expressed, "so that it is not all decided by LL itself. But I see little opportunity for that frankly. If it were Philip doing it, there would be. But it's not. I have a whole theory about virtual worlds in general I've written about."

My next question, "I was going to ask if you felt today's Linden Lab was less interested in
the residents' opinions than the early one."

"Oh no question," Prokofy answered, "Philip was integrated into the world, he did Town Halls, walkabouts, he answered mail. M Linden was more removed, he started by making his name impossible to pull up in search. Then the one before Ebbe, he was completely incommunicado. He didn't have a tweet or a blog hardly the entire time. I honestly don't know what he did all day with this world. He developed LL's OTHER products to be sure, so they could say now they are a game company with multiple products. I don't think those products do terribly well, but then, I don't have a tablet. Like most people, a computer and a phone in the family for each member already strains the budget. (A) tablet -- just too expensive."

"Anyway, Ebbe makes a show of communicating with the swells on Sluniverse.com. Call me when he holds an inworld town meeting with the top land barons. Of course, I may be in the dark, they may have already had secret meetings. Who the hell knows? But let him have meetings with furry or Gor or elves or fairies or whatever communities. All of these people sink money into SL, they pay his bills, what do they think? They aren't on sluniverse.com as creators necessarily, although some of the key power brokers are. In any event, I have tried to write to Ebbe multiple times, no answer, no bear, no nothing. And I am busy in real-life so I can't chase him as I used to other Lindens."

"But here's my concept of virtuality in a nutshell: Virtual worlds as a destination is an obsolete concept and will fail as a new project. The direction of the future is virtualization of reality itself, not destination worlds. Destination worlds will remain niches of course for half a million or 500 million. But not billions like Facebook or Twitter. People don't avatarize and immerse well and the learning curve and technology is too hard. We don't realize that, we're acclimated. Most people can't acclimate. They can't live in the mountains with less oxygen."

"In my real-life jobs, I use Twitter, Facebook, Skype, Google Maps, and other various chat clients. And I live in a virtual world that is the sum total of those tools, it's the virtual world called 'The War in Ukraine.' With the tools, in that virtualized space, I can ... watch the tragedy of the Odessa fire live. I can interview people with Skye standing at a demonstration in Kharkiv. I can chat with my colleagues and translate the news. I can watch Twitter and see a citizen journalist has uploaded a picture of a Russian tank not in Russia, but Ukraine, where it should not be, and find experts who can confirm, yes, that's a Russian tank. I can geolocate that tank using Google Street View even for little towns in Ukraine."

"This *is* the virtual world, not a destination called "Second Life" with a sim called 'Ukraine.' So eventually 3D will enter that space by Facebook or by somebody, Google or Yahoo or whoever, so that we can manage those tools, those images, those chats, those experiences. And not as a destination but as a kind of rolling layer over things. Does that make sense?"

I nodded, "It does."

Prokofy went on, "Somebody in Ukraine can't log on to SL because either Internet is spotty or graphics poor on their laptop, but they can use their cell phone and call on Skype. They can set up a stream, so eventually less heavy virtualization where you can avatarize or project yourself into the interstices of these outworld tools will create worlds of sorts. That's how I see it."


"Also I've written about how the Internet of Things will play out as a virtualized world you control with a console. This is the analogy I think of from my father's business. He was a ceramic engineer. He used to explain that bricks are very heavy, very old fashioned, too expensive to move, to build, to maintain. So going into the brick business was a very heavy, expensive old fashioned thing to do. But if you worked on carrier beads in Xerox machines, they weren't heavy. And people were motivated to buy and move the Xerox machines themselves. So I realize that those of us who made bricks are obsolete in a world that wants carrier beads which have ceramic components for Xerox toner. You may not have realized that what happens with a Xerox copy, ceramic pieces of toner are fused to paper, i.e. toner is a kind of ceramics, if you will."

"But even Xeroxes are going out of style in a world of mobile phones with pictures. On the other hand, the metaphor works both ways. People who make destination worlds are in a sense obsolete too, because people need much more portability. And frankly I don't mean having open source and free content, which is how everyone understands this issue. I think permissions systems can and should be built into every world and every virtuality -- it could have been built into Instagram but wasn't for ideological reasons."

"What I mean by portability is usability in everyday life across various platforms and settings. Google Street view is easy to port, Twitter is easy to port, Skype too. Second Life isn't, even if on a phone. It's about culture and about settings and expectations and not just technology. It's about user control. People join things on mass that have two features, 1) devs provide enough of the bare bones so you don't have to fight the platform to use it, 2) but you can easily generate your user content.  Twitter really hits that sweet spot and so does Facebook. SL doesn't."

"Anyway," Prokofy relaxed a bit, "I've bored you with my theories quite a bit, I should get back to work."

"Well, you mentioned where the outfit came from," I brought up, "But one other question about what you're wearing," I directed my attention to an ornimentation he had with a number of country's flags in small cicular disks, "What kind of necklace is that?"

"Oh this is my Peace on Earth hunt necklace found a few years ago," Prokofy informed, "I like it because it has all the countries on it, their flags. It's part of my International Bazaar, which is a project I have where you can get notecards to go to all real-life foreign country sims. It's what I had set up in the infohub for years and years, which sadly I just had to remove because of ridiculous buggy Land Impact issues. But I will get it back. I still maintain the main hall for it with the notecards, so you can go to Russia, China, France, etc. My hope was to encourage exploration. I used to have a discussion group called Council on Virtual Relations to discuss foreign affairs and those sims. But like all things in SL it got griefed, had problems, etc so I had to suspend it."

"Oh, sorry," I told him.

"Well as I noted to you," he went on, "I used to spend a lot more hours on SL. I would average say 4 hours a day. I would make things, explore, think up ways to improve my business, etc. I made a tutorial for new businesses. I would help people in various ways. But since various real-life challenges occured, I had to suspend this and limit myself now to pure customer service, and perhaps occasionally some card updating. I can't say when I will be back to normal as I have a rare illness now and the treatment is worse than the disease. And all my energy has to go into my real-life work to make a living. But I'm sure it will get better in a few months. I certainly understand better now what Osprey went through, what a brave brave and creative soul."

"Sounds like you were both good friends," I expressed.

"No," Prokofy corrected, "I wouldn't say we were such close friends or anything like that. It was more like this, she was a very kind person and even though she was among the oldbies who hated me, she was very kind to me personally. And we got together around the Moth Temple years ago. I was the one who thought up the idea of the Moth Swarms. She then immediately picked it up and made the moth feelers, moth wings, and this kind outfit. Yes I thought it up actually, although people think she did, but we were creative partners, I had the idea, she made it work. So she was a creative partner. We did those moth swarms and other moth things, including the moth lanterns that she made to replace the Linden ones that mysteriously disappeared."

"Then the other area where we collaborated was the Resident Developed Infohubs. I ran two of them and she ran one of them. We made a group of like 10-12 of us doing that, tried to make some uniform content for them like newbie help, and tried to lobby Lindens on their issues. So we did that for several years. Hers was Ambat. I hope they didn't take it down, it's probably still there."

"What I like about SL is that you don't have to be friends with someone, they don't have to be your best buddy, you don't have to share real-life news, etc. But you can meet as minds and souls and make something and share a deep connection and then move on. They could be your enemies, politically or lifestyle wise, but they are shared collaborators in the business of making the world. So I have furry or BDSM tenants, or neighbours who may be antithetical to my world views, let's say. But in SL we could collaborate on some shared interest like 'let's keep the view nice,' 'let's make nice builds,' 'let's help newbies,'  'let's have live music.' And those things can be done without having to even know that person votes Republican or Democrat or whatever, which real life does not enable."

"I don't mean to idealize that shared creative existence as it is frail and can rip and be in tatters soon enough. But it's an interesting basis for community. And that's why I liked the foreign sims idea, or 'international sims' as foreign implies they are foreign to us, but they aren't foreign to themselves. So when the London terrorist attack happened, I could TP and say 'I'm sorry,' Or the Poles lost an entire planeload of leaders -- I could say 'I'm sorry,' or the Egyptians were killed in demonstrations, I could say 'I'm sorry' with a translator. Or just show up to light a candle or buy something or whatever. The virtual world enables things like that which are interesting, not part of real life, but to make them work better."

"Lindens have to establish better governance tools. The thing they care about the least is managing the world as a world society. They do not want to be in the governance business. They want a customer service state and that's it. And you can't blame them. World governance is endless as a proposition, especially with open source cult ideals."

Prokofy chuckled, "Anyway I've babbled on quite a bit. Hope that was interesting."

"It was," I told him, "Thank you for your time."

"Sure," Prokofy bade farewell, "nice to talk to you."

I tipped my hat, and we went our separate ways.

To check up on the latest from Prokovy, he continues to post in his blog "Second Thoughts" (http://3dblogger.typepad.com/second_thoughts/) under the avatar's real-life identity Catherine Fitzpatrick, occasionally a long commentary, sometimes just a picture. He also has a Twitter account: https://twitter.com/Prokofy .

Bixyl Shuftan

Interview With Tuna Oddfellow and Shava Suntzu

By Bixyl Shuftan

For those not familiar with "The Odd Ball," it was one of Second Life's more unique shows (youtube link), run by Tuna Oddfellow and Shava Suntzu. Tuna himself described it as, "nothing you can ever expect. It is like no show in the metaverse. I have been called the Peter Max of virtual worlds. It is like the 60s but with much better graphics. The show is trippy. Some people consider it to be there tome to relax.  It is a mix of psychedelic graphics and experimental music. The audience is encouraged to be wild and dress crazy."

For several years the show ran performances in Second Life. Then earlier this week, Tuna and Shava closed the Odd Ball. The reason: Linden Lab had changed it's Terms of Service so that they claimed all rights to all content loaded onto the Grid. They made the decision to move their performance to the virtual world of Inworldz. Second Life Newser contacted Tuna, and a meeting in Inworldz was arranged. I met up with Tuna and Shava at their new club. Tuna's appearance was much as it was in Second Life, top hat and psychedelic collared suit with a mohawk hairstyle and pointed ears. The only difference in his appearance was his skin was less pale. Shava was all in black except for the whites of her eyes and a few places on her outfit, "(giggle) I'm all dressed in freebies!" Yours truly was without his characteristic "fox news" appearance, looking like a newcomer with only a few days experience.

"So this is home now," Tuna told me, "I have had an InWorldz presence since 2010, but my virtual life was tied to SL. I just purchased this club today from Maximillian Svarovski. It's going to take a little bit to get those crowds regular here I suspect. I will be starting events in phases. I will be rebuilding the new Odd Ball here and I don't want to perform before it is up to standards. So I am going to be doing my particle show here at my smaller club in Dolphin Bay. … I am putting together a collection of special effects - lights shows and sometimes fireworks. It's never the same show twice."

Of the smaller club, Tuna remarked, "I see this smaller space being used as a coffee house where anything is possible. When I did shows at my castle sometime the ceiling would open for an out door light show. - I have big plans for this place too. You need to wait and see but creatively I see this move as an opportunity to try new things. There actually three club locations that I am working with to get the show going in different directions. The Odd Ball that is."

It was at this point, we were joined by a friend of theirs, Madog Garsztka, "Hi Guys. Shava, its like I haven't seen you in forever." "Madog! Heya!" Shava told him, "Yes I haven't been haunting virtual space much." "I hope to get Shava haunting InWorldz," Tuna commented, "We have a lot of ideas to hash out." Turning back to me, "Madog is a member of the Tunaverse who came back to InWorldz following us for the show." "You Bet," Madog spoke enthusiastically, "Odd Ball is the best! Theraputic value too (smile)." "The community is slowly pulling together to make this transition easier. The land we use for this club is sponsored by Quadrapop Tree." "This is such a story of community," Shava told.

"… the virtual world community is long since broken out of SL," Shava commented, "it's in twitter, G+, Facebook, it's on blogs and has it's own metagame media, and it's own set of grids. It's time we broke free and started liberating ourselves of the mindset of the mothership. We have a multiverse, a whole Internet. Part of it is 3d, and all of it is us." "From the angle of some Second Lifers it is only there though.," Tuna added, "This needs to change."

"Ultimately we are the people behind the keyboards," Shava continued, "if it's our world, our imagination -- that world is the world we create where ever we go. It just takes a little more work. If you were in SL long enough ago, you remember how much work it was. We all started with a cube at some point. We're starting with a whole lot more than a cube here." "And we were all told what we did with that cube we owned," Tuna commented. Shava added, "And now we're told we don't own it --  someone else can sell it, re-sell it, and never tell you?"

"This is what the original vision was at Burning Man, right?" Shava asked. "That creators would be coming in and creating things that the Lindens never imagined, and the Lindens would not lay claim to, and that would enrichen the entire community. What happened to that? I think they left it on Linden Avenue. Maybe it left with Governor Linden and Pathfinder. So that vision gets to find a home elsewhere. If people want to stay in SL that's their choice."

So why did Tuna come to Inworldz and not somewhere else like the OSGrid? "I came to InWorldz in 2010 because I am a metaversalist," he answered, "I believe in the bigger picture of the metaverse beyond SL, and many of the former Lindens wanted to be bridges to the metaverse. And it never happened. (The) OS grid is something I am on, but it is less secure with content than SL. It has a huge learning curve to get it done. And if you hypercube well they have not gotten a way to secure assets owned by the avatar yet."

Of the new terms of service, Shava felt legally the Lab had covered its bases, "the law will support that TOS and the TOS says 'All your cubes are belong to us.' By the time anyone straightens it out, in the case of a bankruptcy, unless you do your own free legal work and don't value your time -- you will be very deep into buying a new boat for an attorney. And it won't be made out of prims." Tuna added, "I am friends with some of the owners of InWorldz there is no TOS here that is taking your work away from you and you are safer with your IP in InWorldz right now than any other grid. Sure that can change." "But this is what artists face all the time." Shava completed.

I mentioned the debate among Second Life residents about the new ToS, some saying this was no big deal. If Linden Lab abused it's authority, they'd be shooting itself in the foot. Tuna responded, "If Linden Lab was to go under tomorrow would they be shooting themselves in the foot to cash in on the assets we signed away Bixyl? If bad TOS happen in a virtual most of us wont read the TOS and then many will just follow as sheep. It's the way these things work. Shava and I are leading a movement to educate creators we have been doing things like this in SL our entire career." Shava added "If you don't stand up in numbers, they will smile and tell you 'Of course, we won't do anything to harm you. It's just a contract.' In my professional life, I'm the member of a writer's union. And I actually do sign contracts all the time that sign away perpetual rights to work I do on contract. But they PAY me!"

So did Linden Lab enact this change as a desire for greater control of Second Life? Shava commented, "Even if they aren't, you don't have to assume they are malicious. If they aren't they need to change it. But if they don't, if they don't change it, WHY NOT?? It's like I said on g+, they are either lazy, dumb, or malicious. They said to Hamlet that they wanted the same template for all their businesses. Sounds lazy. They wouldn't use the same policies for a trucking business and an airline would they? I'm pointing out a good case for why even if they have good intentions, it's not safe for them to leave it as is. If the company goes bankrupt, it's just not safe. So they need to change it to a limited license for SL for this one business. If they don't, then, we go from lazy, stupid or malicious to stupid or malicious. Because it's not just lazy, we've informed them that it's not just slack."

Of Hamlet Au asking Linden Lab about the issue behind closed doors, Shava commented, "So, we have Hamlet asking them, what about this case of going into receivership? Now, I like Hamlet but he tends to love the one he's with, do you understand what I'm saying? (a reference to his special relationship to the Lab following his time as their embedded journalist) So let's see what they say to him and what he comes back with. (smile) But I have a perhaps vain hope that Hamlet goes in, and we come out with a revised TOS. It could happen.  And then, I ride off into the sunset and say, 'My work here is done!' (grin) And maybe put out a tip hat... (smile) How do you do that for something like this…?"

Shava wasn't feeling that great, "Man, my stomach has hurt for days … This sort of thing used to be my main line of work back in the day... it stresses me out more than it used to. This sort of thing used to be bread and butter, Bixyl. This isn't exactly the NSA or the Arab Spring, heh." "It has been so hard watching things happen." Tuna commented, "This all came to a head for us a couple days before my 45th birthday, which is September 24th. 'Happy birthday you need to rebuild your show and dismantle your inventory.' " "Tuna handed me the TOS -- whose article was it, Jo Yardley? And I just said, 'Oh, no...oh, we have to pack out…' And then wrote the G+ piece, and told him, 'Don't mourn, organize -- well, ok, mourn, and organize…' And told him, 'You do the technical stuff, and I'll write and all.' " "We are struggling," Tuna commented, "and I had just gained momentum at doing multiple shows per week to pay the bills."

Of the issue, Tuna informed, "I am also doing a lot of community outreach and education." "I looked at it," Shava added, "and thought, they've already smoothed over one wave of panic. It's going to be hard to get people to understand that, no, this really is a problem. I have EFF, Berkman, LiberationTech, Ben Noble and other folks watching, but none of them are interested in getting involved, they are all watching it like a lab experiment. There's no case, nothing's happened. No one's brought a suit."

Shava commented, "We're an example of a virtual 'life, liberty, property' colonial rule situation in a virtual world. Essentially, the people are observing what we're doing, because no law has been broken. No case has been brought before a judge." Tuna spoke, "Many watch just to see if the community can convince the corporation to make the change." "Right, well, I don't think LL anticipated a former VP of Marketing from an Inc1000 entertainment marketing company with LIMA membership calling out 'WAIT! We don't all have to be SHEEP!' I mean the whole legal situation in SL is a little loosy-goosey at best anyway, it would give most real licensing lawyers hives. But this is just totally over the top. No one really understands the virtual goods market very well anyway."

"We are looking for more of us Bixyl," Tuna told me, "I spoke to Roxy Gellar who runs a music venue in Second Life. She was considering doing a blackout demonstration if she could get 5 other venue owners to do it with her." Shava asked, "ow do people take goods and achievements and whatnot from one game or one network or through a social network contextually by license or whatever mechanism without the lawyers killing each other or making the microtransactions not be worth the business itself? it's a bunch of hard questions. A lot of these issues in SL have been solved with the shakespearean gordian knot: First we shoot all the lawyers. That worked when the lab was small. So now, someone noticed and freaked out, and applied the gordian noose, which is now, we choke all the creators. Or hang them out to dry I guess."

I asked how many would join them, or at least take a break in making content. Tuna answered, "Too many creators are not going to notice and go about their lives. I met someone here today. Purchased the club we are now in. Gave him the article from SLNewser. After reviewing who I was, he said he was pulling his stuff out of SL. Another person who read my most a music who I know by his real life but not his SL name, he is pulling his media out of SL. People have short memories though." "But these things start somewhere," Shava reminded, "and where we are having an impact is on merchant forums, blogs -- the metagame forums, twitter, your article, Hamlet's article, buzz …"

Shava commented if the Lab changed it's Terms of Service back because of her efforts, "that's a good bit of influence right there. I have a lifelong ambition, Bixyl. I would rather be influential than famous. If I could fix this without getting any exposure or whatever at all, I'm fine with that." Tuna retorted, "I would rather be famous and influential." "Yeah, Tuna likes fame. Not me." "I am the brand." "I never saw fame make anyone happy when I was growing up. I think he's nuts." "Or odd?" I mused. Shava grinned, "DEFINITELY Odd!"

"But if we could fix this with minimal disruption that's fine too," Shava spoke, "What it does is it makes people think, well, some people, about what the future might look like. Even if this time this gets fixed, do I need a second grid home?" Tuna commented, "I can not imagine not playing in InWorldz too even if SL fixes tomorrow." "Exactly," Shava affirmed, "We're not going to get caught like this again. We're not going to think about the metaverse the same way even if LL fixes the TOS tomorrow. And I don't think anyone else should either." "II have had a place to keep as home in InWorldz since 2010 I knew I would need it some day for something."

Tuna stated he would still be on Second Life some, "I am guild leader of a Tiny Empires 3000 guild in SL, Tunaverse Immortals. I need to spend time in SL for my people." Shava commented, "I've always thought that the people who played games within SL were working extra hard -- it's not a graceful environment for 'MMO' style gaming. But the people who do it do it because of the community. If we had something that was more like Steam for SL chat and community to base out of so the community could become more multi-game, We might diversify more freely. I see more of people I know from SL on twitter and G+ and maybe even Steam on a daily basis than in SL. But I'm not as active in SL as I used to be for a lot of reasons. We are a tribe that is distributed across the net. I used to game with folks in various MMOs I knew from SL (that I) never met in real-life. But they seemed more like real life friends because I knew them from SL, than people who I just knew from gaming." Tuna added, "I share this experience in my MMO gaming. I have even brought people from SL to the MMO I was playing at the time. (City of Steam) Virtual worlds are something you just have to be part of to GET."

I asked Tuna how soon it might be before the Odd Ball gets to what it was in Second Life. He answered, "Once I have the rezzing device coded here I will be able to do a show that no one would recogize as anything but the best Odd Ball." "Depends on the code porting gods," Shava commented. Tuna then began to express some doubts, and Shava would hear none of it, "He's always like that -- he feels like that about most shows in SL anyway. Don't let him make you think that would be new here. He'd just have a new reason for it. He cusses at the screen all the time and everyone is jumping up and down and telling him how awesome the show is. And he's talking about how everything is going wrong. It's hilarious." "My cursing is your entertainment - humpff!" "When he's doing real life magic, he'll drop the cards sometimes, and pick them up and just say, 'This is part of the show I didn't plan folks -- the floor show!' And sometimes people will really think he did it on purpose."

Of their relationship in real life, Tuna remarked, "We are like an old married couple. Even if we are now best friends with me demoted to annoying little brother." Shava told, "Oh, we still live together but we aren't a 'couple any more. But we are still family. It confuses the hell out of people." "We were engaged in real life and married in Second Life. Our SL wedding made business week." "Most people can't see how we do it. But we love each other we just aren't in a lover-type relationship. It's platonic. We have another roommate, we just are best friends. And I tell people I demoted him to annoying little brother, because we are so obviously family." The reaction of most in real life has mostly been confusion, mostly.

Shava informed, "He has a girlfriend, and I think she's awesome and we get along great. And it confuses the hell out of his parents that we still are housemates. I guess I'm supposed to hate him because we 'broke up.'" "She saw the Odd Ball for the first time over my shoulder last week," Tuna told. "And our other housemate is in SL now, or I guess I should say in virtual worlds. She's more of a tablet sort of person than a 3D type." "She has a Mac though, she plays Minecraft." "I didn't know that. … That's right I forgot she has a Mac." Of Minecraft, Shava told, "My son's got a server and I got a license, but I haven't done anything with it."

It was about this time that Tuna and Shava needed to leave. So we went our separate ways, and me soon back in Second Life and my familiar foxy form.

Since the interview, Tuna informed me he should have a show of some kind in Inworldz by Saturday Sept 28. If all goes very well, it will be the Odd Ball reopened. But this time in a new home.

Bixyl Shuftan

One Billion Still Rising

By Gemma Cleanslate

 Saffia Widdershins sent out a call for a  meeting to discuss how to keep the One Billion Rising event on February 14 in SL to continue and not just be a one time 24 hour recognition of violence against women in the world. The event itself was a way to recognize the real life event taking place all over the world. There were demonstrations in many counties from one side of the world to the other .http://onebillionrising.org/ some were marches, some were singings, some were sudden dances. In my own state in the USA there was a hearing going on at the state capital and a group showed up there and broke into the song and dance.  

 

The way it was done here, in SL, in this little part of the universe, was to have magnificent art builds dedicated to the issue,  surrounding a party stage  where people gathered from midnight to midnight at this place in a universe that is open to people all over the world, men, women and children as avatars and they came! Every minute of the day there were four sims full of avatars who came to recognize, affirm that there is a problem against girl children  teens and adult women in this 21st century in the world. 

The discussion led by Saffia at the meetings Friday March 1 and Saturday March 2,  were held at the Virtual Ability sim and were well attended by those who had some contribution to the original event in some way during or before the OBR in SL. There were numerous suggestions and ideas presentedduring the meeting that went on for well over an hour . It is the first of many such meetings I think.

 

Education in SL is a wonderful idea, but that education is not always sitting in a classroom listening to lectures. How well does that go over in SL? (although I do it in philosophy, lol)  It can be as easy as being invited by a friend to participate in a party, where you say “what is this about“ and are suddenly educated to an issue you had no idea existed and become a student of it or more, a  part of it all. This IS education. This is to the betterment of life here and outside of SL for you. 

 

As a Customer Relations Officer at the SL event I saw wonderful discussion going on around me during the “party”  and at the art pieces and at the greeting points. If you attended and liked it all you may be interested in getting more involved . If so contact Saffia ... with a notecard with your ideas or suggestions how to continue this in SL. This is a universal issue and an easy way to get involved. Thanks to Gentle Heron, a “volunteer”  as she calls herself,  the heart of Virtual Ability, took notes and allowed us to use the site for a meeting. 

 

Watch the blog for developments: http://onebillionrisingsl.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/after-one-billion-rising-in-second-life-what-next/

 

Gemma Cleanslate

Women of Juarez Speak in SL

Brutal Juarez Mexico truth followed by Men Marching in Pink High Heels, Womens Monologue storytelling, and frank Mens Roundtable Discussion... We had a rollercoaster ride of emotions at 16 Days for Elimination of Violence Against Women in Second Life. Picture 1 is Les Mortes de Juarez (Deaths of Juarez), an art installation at: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Four%20Bridges%20North/87/81/38

Pictures 2 and 3 are from the Walk a Mile in Her Shoes march in Second Life, notice the Pink High Heel footwear on these brawny SL men! This event based on the real life hilarious walk a mile events, such as: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zFWVmzRyLA

16 Days Womens Rights observances continue through Friday December 10 - UN Human Rights Day. Schedule/Locations in our earlier article: (http://slnewserevents.blogspot.com/2010/11/16-day-womens-rights-festival-in-second.html )

Subject matter experts on the 400+ unsolved murders of Women of Juarez joined us in SL and shared these exclusive insider remarks...

The true story of Cuidad Juarez is a very shameful topic. The international community must be aware of what happened in the last decade on the issue of violence against women in Mexico, specifically about women being murdered.

Mexico is a proud country and culture and its people, who are by and large honest and hardworking. Mexico is one of the most beautiful countries in the world; but women's human rights have been trampled upon, and where Mexican authorities through their corrupt practices, have not been able to offer their citizens a safe country.

The issue of femicide in Mexico dates from the year 1993 in the northern city of Ciudad Juarez Chihuahua, when society began to notice the crimes against girls and young women. We begin by talking about Juarez City. That city has gained notoriety worldwide for the way that these crimes have been carried out. What they have in common is that these killings are brutal, horrible deaths; many women were abducted, tortured, mutilated and many have been gang-raped.

Most Americans outside west Texas know Ciudad Juarez. Ciudad Juarez is not just a small border town, it is the fourth largest city in Mexico and the largest on the U.S. Mexican border, with more than 2 million people. Many are street people, living hand-to-mouth and day-to-day, while others are simply in transit, passing through the city en route to the border and the promised land of the U.S. Those who stay behind often work in maquiladoras--sweat-shops producing goods for sale abroad--at wages averaging five U.S. dollars per day. These factories are foreign owned corporations. A few examples are Acer, Canon, Chrysler, Casio, Kodak, Ericsson, General Electric, Lear Corporation, Mattel, IBM, Philips, Zenith, Hitachi, Hewlett Packard, Motorola, and Samsung.

The maquilas (factories) make everything from electronics and pharmaceuticals to auto parts and household goods. They employ 200.000 people in Juarez. Mostly women. Most are underpaid. They earn 6 dollars per day, while in U.S a similar worker earns 6 dollars per hour. Thousands of those workers are young women from outlying towns and villages.

Like similar factories worldwide, they prefer to hire women rather than men, supposedly because they are more nimble. In reality, the preference is based on the fact that traditional patriarchal socialization makes women workers more exploitable than men. While the maquilas were originally intended to employ men, managers soon realized that it was in fact young women who made the perfect employees. They are considered more docile and obedient, and their young nimble fingers are better suited to the repetitive work.

By the 1980s, about 90 percent of maquila workers were women. More men have become employed in the past decade, with the institution of maquilas making auto parts and other things requiring heavier lifting. But women still make up a sizable 58 percent of the approximately 230,000-person maquila workforce in Juarez.They come hoping for the best, but often find the worst. Squalid work conditions and sexual harassment can become mere annoyances in a city where life is cheap.

Since 1993, over 450 women, most of them young maquila workers, have disappeared in Ciudad Juarez. The government lists at least 271 as official murders, though residents say the true number is likely much higher. Of these, 178 are listed as cases of domestic violence, with a jealous husband or lover to blame, while 93 are considered the work of a "serial killer" or killers of disputed and unknown identity.

They are all part of the same phenomenon, however--a decade-long wave of hatred and brutality toward women in Juarez, characterized by its gut-wrenching perversity and the failure of the state, local and federal governments to take any meaningful steps to stop the killings. The bodies have been found individually as well as in groups of three, four, or eight. On February 17 1993, the bodies of three young women were found together and then a six-year-old girl's body was found a few days later. There are nipples, eyes and hearts cut out--signs of brutal rape and other forms of torture. Some were burned to a crisp, others left unburied to be decimated by the harsh desert elements. Some of the victims were buried wearing the clothing of other victims. They range in age from a three-year-old to an 80-year-old, but the bulk of them were young women between age 14 and 27.

Many of them were described as having similar characteristics-- poor, brown, thin, attractive, and their ages ranged most between 7 and 27 years old. A high number of young disappeared in the course of their work at the factories. They disappear while waiting for or leaving the buses that take them to and from work, or after visiting the bars that are popular with factory workers on Friday nights. Rumors abound as to who is responsible for the scores of unsolved killings.

In 1995, the government arrested an Egyptian chemist named Abdel Latif Sharif Sharif, who had been deported from the U.S. after serving time in jail for sex crimes. The murders continued after Sharif's incarceration, however. He was held for years without a conviction until recently being sentenced to 20 years for one of the handful of murders he had been charged with. Then the government blamed members of a street gang called Los Rebeldes (The Rebels).They claimed Sharif was paying the gang to keep killing women, maybe in an attempt to prove he wasn't to blame for the earlier killings. Others blame narcotraffickers, sex offenders who live in El Paso, or the government and police themselves for the killings. A good number of the sadistic torturers and murderers come from the richest and most powerful families in Juarez and other border cities. The juniors and not as juniors seeking their potency in the throes of young women workers from poor families.

In his book Bones in the Desert, Sergio Gonzalez Rodriguez says: "According to federal sources, there are six prominent businessmen in El Paso, Texas, Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana who sponsor and witness the acts committed by hired killers, dedicated to kidnap rape, and murder women ... The Mexican authorities - at the highest level – have been aware of such activities for a long time, and have refused to intervene. These entrepreneurs - the gas industry, transport, media, soft drink, and entertainment establishments, gambling and betting - ties with politicians keep the government” under their control.

Vicente Fox Quesada In “Harvest of Women”, Diana Washington says: "The Mexican federal investigation contains accounts of officers and others who facilitated orgies where women are ravaged that later found dead. Researchers say some people also participated in the murders. Among the names that U.S. and Mexican officials know of people that could be expected to know the facts or may be involved are: Molinar, Sotelo, Hank, Rivera, Fernández, Zaragoza, Cabada, Molina, Fuentes, Hernández, Urbina, Cano, Martínez, Dominguez and others. "

The arrest of Sharif and Los Rebeldes changed nothing in Juarez. The brutal murders continued and community groups accused police of negligence or worse. At least 16 female victims were slain between late April and November 1996.Eight remain unidentified. Five were stabbed, three shot, and one was found in a drum of acid. In several cases advanced decomposition made determinations about cause of death or sexual assault impossible. While rape was confirmed in only four cases, the position and nudity of several other corpses suggested sexual assault. In the cases where the cause of death could be determined, five were stabbed, three were strangled, three shot, and two beaten. Statistically, 1998 was the city's worst year yet. There were 23 on the books by December, six remained unidentified. The killings reflected the usual pattern of stabbings, stranglings, bullets and burning. Rocio Barrazza Gallegos was killed on September 21 in the parking lot of the city's police academy. She was strangled inside a patrol car by a cop assigned to the "murdered women" case. Authorities described the death of 20-year-old Rosalina Veloz Vasquez, found dead on January 25, as "similar to 20 other murders in the city."

And indeed, by 1998 the long-running investigation had become a numbers game. In May, media reports referred to "more than 100 women raped and killed" in Ciudad Juarez. Mexico's Human Rights Commission issued a report in 1998 castigating the police. But politicians suppressed it to avoid any adverse impact on upcoming state elections"

At least 17 bodies show enough in common--the way shoelaces were tied together, where they were buried, how they were mutilated--that investigators say at least one serial killer is at work. And 76 other cases bear enough similarities that investigators say one or more copycats may be at work."

In fact, all that anyone really knew was that the murders were continuing. A government roster of the victims lists many of the culprits as unknown.Likewise many of the women whose bodies were found were never identified, even though in some cases a specific person was charged with their murder. They are listed as "unknown” or “unidentified woman.” This is the way many of them were thought of in life as well as in death.

The young women who work in the maquilas are like cogs in the machine of global commerceThey are expendable and interchangeable, putting in 45 hours or more per week at low-skill assembly line jobs for average pay of $24 to $35 per week, depending on the fluctuation of the peso.These are women who have streamed into Juarez from destitute towns and rural areas in central and southern Mexico.

This influx of migrants to a virtually waterless town without the infrastructure to handle such population increases, has resulted in the growth of the sprawling shantytowns, called colonias, like Anapra on the outskirts of the city. Fifty percent of the roads in the towns are unpaved, 30 percent of the residents don't have running water and at least 100,000 have no electricity. At first glance, the maquilas look like decent places to work. They are gorgeously landscaped, clean and well lit. But in reality, the working conditions are far from satisfactory.

Workers are forced to put in mandatory overtime on top of nine-hour days (that stretch to twelve hours when an average one-and-a-half-hour bus ride on each side is factored in).They are regularly exposed to toxic chemicals and dangerous machinery without adequate safety equipment.Sexual harassment and abuse in the maquilas is rampant.Women have virtually no choice but to submit to ongoing sexual harassment as well as actual abuse and rape to hold onto and advance in their jobs.

Since the government mandates 60 days of paid leave for pregnant women, maquilas force women to take pregnancy tests and don't hire anyone who is pregnant. Former workers say that in some cases, these "pregnancy tests" consist of showing their used sanitary napkins to managers."All the corporations have the same code of conduct--sexual harassment, mandatory pregnancy tests, poor working conditions, humiliation," said Veronica Leiba, a former maquila worker and labor organizer. Many women are also forced to resort to prostitution because of the impossibility of supporting a family on maquila wages. This climate makes the rapes, sexual mutilations and murders more understandableIn everyday life, women are regularly treated as objects of manual labor and sexual gratification for men.That they would meet their deaths that way, and that no one in a position of power would even seem to care, is just the next step.

The Mexican government has appointed a string of special prosecutors to investigate the killings, but like most victims' families, other maquila workers, and many in the general public feel the government is not taking even the most basic steps to adequately investigate and prevent the killings. In a documentary produced by Lourdes Portillo called "Senorita Extraviada" (Missing Woman) exploring the killings, mothers of the murdered women describe how police refused to investigate their daughters' disappearances at all, often saying they must have run off with a boyfriend."

When women report their daughter has disappeared, the police respond by challenging the families to convince them of the importance of doing a search," said Acosta. "The police ask personal questions--did she have a boyfriend, was she planning to go out. They say the girls weren't careful enough."Many blame the government's failure to stop the killings on ineptness and a lack of effort on the part of the local police.There is a binational effort to get the FBI involved in the investigations, a plan which the U.S. has been amenable to but which, besides a few joint trainings, the Mexican government has failed to embrace. Others have a darker view of the police's failure to adequately investigate the murders.

In the maquilas and towns of Juarez, many believe police and government officials themselves are responsible for many of the killings.The explanation for the killings, often given by the police and government, including the governor of the state of Chihuahua, is that the women were involved in prostitution or drug trafficking, and that they shouldn't have been out by themselves at night.But this excuse doesn't stand up to the most basic logic since some of the women were abducted in broad daylight. Others are forced to be out alone in the dark because their maquila shifts end at 12:30 a.m. or they have to catch 5 a.m. buses in the morning." The maquila owners say the reason they're getting killed is they're wearing those short skirts and going dancing," said Victor Munoz, a Chihuahua native and member of an El Paso-based coalition against the killings. "It's the attitude of blaming the victim."

Advocates say efforts to get the maquilas to provide more security for women on their way to and from work have gone nowhere. Even if the victims were working as prostitutes, or had willingly gone on dates with their eventual killers, this doesn't justify the murders or decrease the government's responsibility to investigate them. The same applies to the known domestic violence victims, many of whose killers have gotten off scot-free or with relatively light sentences. On a larger level, many see the murders as part of an overall culture that wants to keep women subservient and dependent on menThis includes both the maquila owners who want their female employees to be docile and obedient, and husbands who want their wives to be the same way. Women say there is also general resentment from men at the fact women are earning money and taking jobs in a tight economy. Overwhelming and increasing poverty just exacerbates these feelings."

There are a lot of problems for poor people in Juarez," said Esther Chavez Cano, founder of Casa Amiga, the only domestic violence crisis center in the city. "Jobs are being lost at the maquilas and the maquilas are paying less. Domestic violence increases, alcoholism has increased tremendously. In Mexican culture, men feel they are supposed to be the supporters of the family, and they are frustrated that the women are earning the money, so they abuse more."

The recession in the U.S., and the growing interest in even cheaper labor in Asia, has had a significant effect on the maquila industry in the past few years.Over 30 maquilas have recently closed, at a loss of about 100,000 jobs. Yet economic conditions in the rest of Mexico continue to worsen as well, so the stream of workers up to Juarez continues.

This squeeze threatens to make the violence against women even worse. With more competition for jobs, maquilas will have even less incentive to provide decent working conditions, wages and security measures for women.And the increased economic pressure on men will cause many to take out their frustrations on their domestic partners, not to mention increasing men's anger at competing with women for fewer maquila jobs.

The situation is not without hope, however. A variety of women's groups and organizations of the victims' mothers have formed in Juarez to fight for accountability, justice and the prevention of more killings. Coalitions have also been formed with U.S. groups near the border and major U.S. foundations have funneled financial resources to the struggle.

The event on International Women's Day drew about 500 people marching from Mexico City to Ciudad Juarez, demanding an end to the murders and violence against women in generalThe issue is urgent, entailing not only the search for justice for past victims and the safety of potential victims but symbolizing the well being and hope of Mexican women as a whole.

Several years later it seems that justice begins. The American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) has implicated the Government of Mexico in the death of Esmeralda Herrera Monreal, 15, Claudia Ivette Gonzalez, 19, and Laura Berenice Ramos 17, whose bodies, tortured and sexually abused, were drawn in Cotton Field on campus in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua.

The Mexican state will pay for the first time for its lack of diligence in investigating the more than 400 deaths of women come to regret in Ciudad Juarez since 1993.The government did not protect, did not prevent the murder, although they knew the pattern of gender violence in the region, which has left hundreds of murdered women and girls, and the authorities in Ciudad Juarez did not respond to complaints.

This story paints a shameful picture of Mexico, but the story must continue to be broadcast in the international community, so that people know that Mexicans continue fighting against impunity ... not relenting in efforts to live in a dignified country which offers the security that Mexican women deserve.

Any1 Gynoid
(story also on CNN)