From Jasmina Tesoanovic's blog:
2.21.2008
9 a.m Morning, a big silence in the streets: even some schools will be closed because of the planned rally in the afternoon, 5 p.m.
1 p.m
Buses from all over Serbia are coming into Belgrade city. The buses and trains are free, state-organized for people to come and perform the big show with the official title "Kosovo is Serbia." This is the motto that runs constantly on national TV channels.
My friend from inner Serbia wanted to come to Belgrade in a free ride, to have a coffee with me and then go back home. But then, maybe better not to be seen around you, he said, you are a notorious Woman in Black, somebody might hurt you.
The official organizers, meaning all Serbian political parties except for the 5 percent dissidents, all claim that Belgrade has to show its real face: that of a calm dignified Serb. And what about is calm and dignified about the busted MacDonald's, burning embassies and window-broken shops with foreign names? Those are nothing compared to the loss of Kosovo, justify our high-ranked officials on almost all tv channels.
My father lives behind the Parliament, while I live next to the biggest church in the Balkans. The official rally starts in front of the Parliament where Kostunica the premier will give a public speech, and it ends with a prayer in the church. They estimate that all the streets in between will be full of people, just as crowded as Belgrade was during the toppling of Milosevic in 2000, or the Djindjic funeral in 2003. I attended those two events, it was my conscience, it was my duty. This particular rally I will omit, although I am curious and I would love to see their faces.
On the stage it will be the usual crowd, really: Serbian prominent nationalists , like the world famous film director Kusturica and the president of Bosnian Serbs Dodik maybe somewhere in the crowd. The war criminals are hiding in the massive crowds too: Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic. Rumor says they are both in Belgrade now. . Before the rally began, I crossed the square in front of the Parliament. A lot of half drunk teenagers, turbofolk fans, and the sad, miserable and angry people I used to see in Milosevic rallies. It is a lovely spring day, but instead of relaxing I trembled: what if something goes wrong and massive violence bursts out? Who is responsible now for riotous damage to our lives and property? Nobody and everybody, really; Kosovo Albanian or Serbians apart, Belgrade itself is the only place at risk today.
I hear phrases on TV such as "Kosovo is the heart cut from the body of Serbia," and also lamentations about how much money was lost there, for instance in coal mines. These seem absurdly large sums for such a poor province -- who lost those investments, I wonder?
A big, nationalist, screaming speech by our prime minister. I don't remember ever hearing Kostunica so angry, loud and pathetic, like an aging rock star, this guy who hardly ever addresses his people. He is calling various world powers bad names and condemning the fake state of Kosovo, almost publicly cursing them. And extolling the Great Serbs with their pride and honor.
Now Putin is a Slavic hero. He swears oaths, uses words like life, death, Serbs, brothers, freedom, blood and all that; here in 21 century.
World famous stars are here too: Novak Djokovic the tennis player speaks like a robot on the screen, saying he will never let go of Kosovo. Emir Kusturica the film director interrupted his movie in US and came to speak live in Belgrade. The prime minister calls him a Serb -- actually Kusturica has changed his name from the rather unl-Slavic "Emir" to "Nemanja," the ancient Serbian king. The swaggering film director speaks against the local traitors and calls them "mice." The mice would be us, me, Women in Black. He says he doesn't not believe in Hollywood myth but in Kosovo myths. Why embrace myths at all?
In the meantime, on my blog, which I put up to follow the news in the city: Turkish and Croatian embassies attacked, a Nike shop looted. Where are the police? They claim this is the biggest meeting ever held in Belgrade.
Close to my home, the hooligans are in some pitched conflict with the police. Should I remove my name from my own door? No; when things really get bad in Serbia, the police arrive in company with the hooligans.
The American embassy is attacked right now, 7 00pm, no police around there; the reporter sounds really afraid as he reports the smashing and burning.
The German bank in downtown Belgrade is attacked too: gosh this is like during the NATO bombings, but in reverse.
Tonight at 2 am it will be a full moon eclipse -- Earth Moon and Sun in alignment, a perfect excuse for madness.
Right now I hear that the American embassy is broken into and burning with Molotov cocktails. The TV coverage reminds me of when people looted the parliament to topple Milosevic.
The newly elected president of Serbia is right now in Rumania. He avoided this rally in the last minute, even though his party has backed up the rally.
The country may be on the verge of a state of emergency.
Today was supposed to be blog silence day, a silent protest of the detention of Saudi blogger Fouad Ahmed al-Farhan, who's been held since early December. I wasn't silence (I already posted something), but I suggest you follow this link, read about Fouad, and take action in his behalf. We'd really like to see this free speech thing catch on, globally.
"Access Denied" mapGlobal Voices has created a map of countries where there's state censorship of Web 2.0 sites and technologies.
[Link]
despite the potential of web 2.0, in regions ridden with censorship and where the state holds the monopoly on information dissemination, open access to the Internet is often a tough goal to achieve considering the “authoritarian reflex” that is activated each time the repressive regimes feel threatened. Governments who already excel at muzzling the traditional media have been turning their efforts lately to the Internet, doing all they can to tighten their grip on this last refuge of communication. The rise of user-generated content is perceived as a threat by a growing number of countries who are seeking to block and control its dissemination by legal and technical means. Rarely does a week pass by without news about yet another major website being blocked by repressive states. Multimedia-sharing websites, social networking communities, mapping tools and popular web 2.0 websites are becoming a primary target of state censorship in more and more countries.
A world in flames
Jasmina has written a very personal account of global warming's impact on Serbia. Personal, I say – this piece helps me realize that global warming is really a set of personal stories played out against dramatic climate shifts and personal attempts at mitigation (or defiance). In the end, no matter who we are, how rich or poor, how loved or unloved, we're naked and small against the forces of nature.
If there is any justice in this injustice, is that global warming has no borders or nationality, and yet it has guilty and victims. Guilty: all of us who ignored inconvenient truths and sacrificed the ecological conscience for other more or less legitimate priorities. Victims: everyone yet to be born on our damaged planet; when crops wilt and forests burn down to black stumps, does it matter if that wasteland is called Kosovo or Serbia?Petition: Kareem Amer and Abdul-Moneim Mahmoud
If you care about global free speech, follow the link below and sign the petition. [Link]
“We call for the release of Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman (Kareem Amer) and of Abdul-Moneim Mahmud, who have been imprisoned for expressing their opinion online. We urge the organisers of the Internet Governance Forum to intervene with the Egyptian authorities on behalf of these two bloggers. It would be intolerable for a UN summit on the future of the Internet to be held in a country which imprisons bloggers”.
There's also a wiki where you can sign (especially if you need to be anonymous).
Isaac Mao to Google on its presence in China: Don't forget to "do no evil." [Link]
During the National Day holiday week in 2002, when Google.com was blocked in China for the first time, Chinese Google users made an online protest spontaneously. They appealed to free the purer search engine wave by wave. Its seemed its also the first time grassroots power was demonstrated in China on Internet. You can imagine how eager they are to have a complete Internet instead of a shrinked one. At last, people won, Google backed. However, after 4 years, we started to question whether we should continue to support Google. Many users here were disappointed when they found Google.cn filtered many keywords. The compromise remarks by you in Davos made us more frustrated. Seems you are adopting self-censorship which hurts those loyal users a lot which also devalue your motto of "non-evil".Jasmina Tesanovic: "Good Morning, Fascist Serbia!"
Google is ever regarded not only a leading Internet business, but a hope for many people around the world to open their thinking. Many bloggers in China still believes that in their everyday writings. We guess you were misled by incomplete information on how censorship is good to Chinese people. The fact is Google in the 130M-Internet-Users country is losing loyal users with loosing your principles. We understand its tough to anyone to make decisions. But it high time to change it back to the right track. Here we would like to propose 3 ideas to Google for its China strategy in a long term run, to survive, and live better...At bOING bOING, Jasmina posts about the Serbian election, wherein "one third of the population still votes for the fascist Radical Party, whose leader Seselj is in jail in The Hague." [Link]
Yesterday, young voters in their early twenties were crying in front of the school where they were supposed to vote. I interviewed them. They told me they were desperate because they cannot vote for what they want in their lives, but only against what they fear.Their youthful aspirations are overwhelmed by fascists, radicals, wars, global isolation... They have had enough of that treatment in their young lives, for practically all their days. "Never make decisions out of fear," I told them boldly. I wonder how they voted.....Online journalists in jailRebecca MacKinnon blogs a new report from The Committee to Protect Journalists. She says the report provokes "some important questions about how the Internet is impacting the relationship between governments and journalists - especially now that the Internet makes it easy for just about anybody with an Internet connection to commit acts of journalism." Though more print journalists are in jail, "... internet journalists are a growing segment of the census and now constitute the second largest category, with 49 cases."
The report goes on to say "We’re at a crucial juncture in the fight for press freedom because authoritarian states have made the Internet a major front in their effort to control information." Rebecca suggests this is because Internet journalism is harder to control than print journalism.
Why? Because Internet journalism is harder to control than traditional journalism. It's much easier to create dissident news organizations online with a hope of reaching wide audiences across fast distances, and it's easy for anybody to blog what they eyewitness around them. An individual blogger can report a police crackdown he witnessed in his hometown, despite the fact that official media organizations have all been forbidden from reporting it. With traditional media, the main mechanisms used by governments to control journalists tend to be pre-publication or pre-broadcast: the issuing and withdrawal of media licenses without which a news organization cannot operate legally; political and economic pressures by authorities on editors and publishers to avoid or emphasize certain topics; and hiring processes that try to weed out journalists whose reporting would cause too much trouble. Imprisonment is the last resort when all else fails, or when people persist in setting up unlicensed or dissident publications.More at RConversation, Rebecca's blog.
Iraqis blog the Middle East warSalam Adil compares two Iraqi blogs commenting on the Middle East war. The comments are quite different, but "there is a common thread. A deep hatred of the hypocrisy of media and governments. and a recognition that the days of peaceful negotiation are over." [Link]
"On the Maya Frontier"Dave Pentecost, back from Mexico and Guatemala, send a link to the brief intro to the documentary he's been shooting. Looking forward to the complete film!
Blocking blogs in India and elsewhereAs I reported a couple of days ago, India's no longer blocking most blogs, but they're still blocking the sites originally specified. Ethan Zuckerman says
That India is blocking any sites is disappointing. I’d like to see all governments - my own included - block only as an absolute last resort, and as a way to prevent access to content that’s clearly illegal, like child pornography. And I think it’s critical that governments who do block the Internet do so in a way that’s transparent, posting a page that makes it clear that a site has been blocked, offering an appeals process and makng it clear that the page isn’t inaccessible due to technical errors. (Oddly enough, the Saudi practice for blocking prohibited content is near ideal on these criteria, and vastly better than blocking blindly, as Indian ISPs did.) As Neha and Atanu pointed out in the quotes I blogged yesterday, blocking blogs is a slippery slope. Blocking opaquely makes it even more slippery.He makes another good point: that censorship is present in worse forms in countries like Pakistan, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe; we should support free speech in those countries, as well. India blocks blogs: updateA couple of days ago I mentioned a report that the government of India was blocking access to blogspot, typepad, and geocities blogs. Here's an explanation from A.R. Ghanashyam, Deputy Consul General based in NYC, forwarded to Global Voices by Saja:
A two-page write up containing extremely derogatory references to Islam and the holy prophet which had the potential to inflame religious sens itivities in India and create serious law and order problems in the country appeared in a blog facilitated by well known search engines. The matter was immediately taken note of by our CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) and the Department of Telecommunications (DOT) was informed of it. The DOT took up the matter forthwith with the search engines and instructions were also issued to all Internet providers to block the two impertinent pages. Because of a technological error, the Internet providers went beyond what was expected of them which in turn resulted in the unfortunate blocking of all blogs.It's great to see normalcy restored somewhere on the planet...! India blocks blogs
Department of Telecommunications have now clarified the issue and the error is being rectified and it is expected that normalcy in respect of blogs will soon be restored.bOING bOING reports that the government of India is blocking access to blogs. [Link]
The plot gets thicker and thicker as more bloggers are getting alerted to the fact that an increasing number of Indian ISP's are banning blogspot and typepad blogs and geocities.com. Several detailed posts on this, with regular updates here: withinandwithout.com, Conversations with Dina, and Travel Tales from India.
There's a wiki here: Link. We're treading with a little caution before we go whole-hog at the government. There is a possibility that it is a mistake - where a directive from the government on a few blogs might have been misrepresented by ISP's here - who have blocked the entire sites.
Update from bOING bOING:
An Indian political blog is reporting that the ban was initiated by the Indian intelligence service to stop terrorism: Link. According to their source, the terrorists are using blogs to communicate. Not only is this useless (because the terrorists can simply use proxies), it's akin to shutting off the country's telephone service because terrorists talk to each other through phones.Hao Wu freedIn March I posted about the detention of filmmaker Hao Wu (or Wu Hao) in China, with a rather bleak update a couple of weeks later. Good news: he's been released. He still hasn't updated his blog, Beijing or Bust; word is that he "needs some silence for now." I'm not so sure he would've been released had it not been for support from Global Voices, the international aggregate blog. GV members spread the word.
Support was strong across the blogsphere, with hundreds of fellow bloggers posting on Nina and Hao’s story, as well as putting up Free Hao Wu tags. Support was there from some mainstream media, with the Wall Street Journal chipping in just a week ago, and a piece written in The Washington Post by Global Voices co-founder Rebecca MacKinnon coinciding with Chinese president Hu Jintao’s visit to America:Alaa's release
“Hao turned 34 this week. He personifies a generation of urban Chinese who have flourished thanks to the Communist Party’s embrace of market-style capitalism and greater cultural openness. He got his MBA from
the University of Michigan and worked for EarthLink before returning to China to pursue his dream of becoming a documentary filmmaker. He and his sister, Nina Wu, who works in finance and lives a comfortable
middle-class life in Shanghai, have enjoyed freedoms of expression, travel, lifestyle and career choice that their parents could never have dreamed of. They are proof of how U.S. economic engagement with China has been overwhelmingly good for many Chinese.”Just this week, I was in a discussion (with Mary Joyce et al) where we talked about how Google bombs for Alaa and other aspects of the Free Alaa campaign hadn't worked so far. Yesterday Xeni had a post that said Alaa's being released. Check out Manal and Alaa's Bit Bucket. (Still questionable whether Alaa's release can be tied to the campaign.)
Crossing the Bridge
Just viewed a trailer for a new film called "Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul" by German/Turkish filmmaker Fatih Akin and featuring Alexander Hacke of the experimental band Einstürzende Neubauten. The trailer rocks; I'm eager to see this one. From Wikipedia:
Hacke roamed the streets of Istanbul with his mobile recording studio and a microphone to assemble an inspired portrait of Turkish music — from classical Arabesque to indie rock and rap.Google bombs for Alaa
Amongst the featured artists are Baba Zula, Sertab Erener, Sezen Aksu, Orhan Gencebay, Erkin Koray, the alternative rock band Replikas, Mercan Dede, Brenna MacCrimmon, Selim Sesler, and Müzeyyen Senar.Here's a press release regarding an innovative campaign to free a blogger (Alaa Ahmed Seif El Islam) who was detained in Cairo:
Contact: Mary Joyce (MaryCJoyce@gmail.com, Skype name: demoblogger)
On Sunday May 7, Alaa Ahmed Seif El Islam, a prominent Egyptian blogger and political activist, was detained in Cairo by the Egyptian authorities while protesting the earlier detention of political activists rallying for a free judiciary.
Although illegal detentions are not uncommon in Egypt, this case drew special attention because Alaa's blog aggregator, Alaa and Manal's Bit Bucket, has made him a well-known figure in the blogosphere. Soon, news of Alaa's arrest had spread to blogs across the world. Bloggers advocated different actions in an effort to free Alaa, including writing to Egyptian Embassies around the world and posting a "free Alaa" banner on their blogs.
On Tuesday, a group of bloggers connected to the site Global Voices decided to launch a different kind of campaign, one that would use the mechanics of the internet itself to bring world-wide attention to Alaa's case. They launched a campaign called "Google bombing for Alaa," an effort to manipulate the ranking of the world's search engines so that a blog dedicated to freeing Alaa (http://freealaa.blogspot.com/) would be the first page displayed when a person searches for information on the word "Egypt."
Internet search engines, most notably Google, determine the ranking of a site according to how many other sites link to it. If you search the term "Egypt" on Google, the first page you will see is the page most often linked to the word "Egypt" by other websites. Google bombing manipulates this formula. If many people around the world link the word "Egypt" to the Free Alaa blog, then that site will move up in the rankings.
Already, bloggers from around the world have written "Google bombs for Alaa," blog posts that contain instances of the word "Egypt" linked to the Free Alaa site, in an effort to move the blog up in the rankings. Google-bombing for Alaa allows bloggers around the world to become activists, using the power of the link to bring attention to an unfair detention and free their fellow blogger. A certain passage of text has become popular in the posts and exemplifies the spirit of the campaign:
"Some governEgyptments think they can trampEgyptle the rights of those that oppEgyptose them and noEgyptone will notEgyptice. Well, that fact is changEgypting and we are changEgypting it."
Update on Hao Wu
Filmmaker Hao Wu, still detained in China, has evidently been accused of committing a crime, but police won't say what the crime was, or allow him to speak with his lawyer. This updated information is based on a blog post by Hao Wu's sister. [Link]
Yahoo and Human Rights (YHOO)Rebecca MacKinnon explains why she no longer trusts Yahoo:
Yahoo! executives keep framing this issue as black and white: Either you're in there and do everything the Chinese authorities tell you without question, or you can't do business in China at all. That is false. Companies can and do make choices. You can engage in China and choose not to do certain kinds of business. Yahoo! has placed user e-mail data within legal jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China. Google and Microsoft have both chosen not to do so. Why did Yahoo! chose to do this? Either they weren't thinking through the consequences or they don't care.
Note that Rebecca, a former CNN Bureau Chief in Beijing, knows something about China.Amnesty International has a "Take Action" page to facilitate a letter writing campaign.
Free Hao Wu"Beijing or Bust" director and Global Voices editor Hao Wu was detained by the Beijing division of Chinas State Security Bureau on the afternoon of Wednesday, Febuary 22, 2006. It's not completely clear why he was detained; one theory involves potential prosecution of members of China's underground churches. Join the campaign to Free Hao Wu. Hao Wu's blog, Beijing or Bust.
Global Voices London Summit 2005The Global Voices London Summit today gave the GV bloggers a chance to meet and talk about the state and future of the GV web site, including a chance to give feedback to site wizard Boris Anthony and the inevitable discussion of blogging relative to journalism. Dean Wright from Reuters, who was part of that discussion via videoconference, expressed an interest in working with bloggers. Dina Mehta talked about the Southeast Asian Earthquake and Tsunami blog... I'm still reading, there's a wealth of information in the record of the event, and this was just one day (as Ethan commented, it should have been three).
Global Voices is important, perhaps essential. The USA is in a state of economic decline, and the developing world is growing. Balance depends on understanding and collaboration, and you won't get the communication to support that from traditional media or politicians. It'll come from ordinary people in extraordinary times, publishing their thoughts and perspectives via the blogosphere.
World Summit on the Information SocietyI'm either too tired or too lazy to post about David Weekly's liveblogging from the World Summit in Tunisia, since Xeni's done such a good job. Maybe I'll have a chance to blog the World Congress on Information Technology in May, right here in Austin.
Expression Under RepressionEthan Zuckerman and Rebecca MacKinnon set up an 'Expression under Repression' panel at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia, and their Tunisian hosts tried to shut the discussion down... but they ignored the cancellation and held the session anyway, to an SRO crowd. [Link]
Rebecca rejects as absurd the idea that expression under repression isnt relevant to ICT and development, as had been suggested by Tunisian authorities in reacting to our panel. She points to the spread of SARS in China as an example of the ill consequences of blocking communications between citizens. The blocking of sites that report on anti-corruption efforts probably costs real money, as politicans continue putting money in their pockets at the expense of the wider populus. But she points out that filtering occurs in the United States as well, through things like filters in libraries that prevent teenagers from finding out about reproductive health.Investment firms push human rightsPretty amazing: Reporters without Borders along with 25 U.S. and International investment firms pledged shareholder support "for an increased commitment to freedom of information by major Internet and technology companies."
The backdrop for the afternoons conference was a recent incident wherein Yahoos Hong Kong branch supplied information about an e-mail sent through its servers to the Chinese communist government. The e-mailsent overseas by Chinese journalist Shi Taooutlined new media restrictions imposed before the 15th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. The Chinese government charged Shi with divulging state secrets abroad and sentenced him to ten years in prison on April 30.[Link] Indian blogger resigns, but it ain't over til it's over...
Information supplied by Yahoo led to the conviction of a good journalist who has paid dearly for trying to get the news out, an RSF press release stated. The company was apparently under no obligation to cooperate with mainland Chinese authorities.India's corner of the blogosphere is buzzing over a controversy that began when the webzine Jam published a critical piece, "The Truth About IIPM's Tall Claims,". The article suggests that India Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM) uses false advertising to attract students. IIPM visited Jam, then initiated legal action. Amit Varma at India Uncut describes what happened next:
A number of blogs sprung up overnight defending IIPM and defaming Rashmi and Gaurav Sabnis, a popular Indian blogger who had linked to Rashmi's article and added some facts of his own. Ludicrous rumours were spread about Aaj Tak, the news channel, having done a sting operation and having caught Amity, a rival of IIPM, giving money to Rashmi to do the story. Rashmi posted on the matter, and filthy comments were left on that post – you can read them for yourself and see the class of the people who left them. Also, Gaurav received a hilarious legal notice, which he reproduced on his blog – it was hilarious at the time, that is.Yesterday Guarav posted that he'd resigned "in view of some really bizarre threats that were apparently made by IIPM to IBM." Specifically, the Dean of IIPM wrote IBM "saying that the IIPM Students Union had decided that if my blog posts were not deleted, then they would gather all the Thinkpads they had been given by the institute, and burn them in front of the IBM office in Delhi. Yes, that's right. Burn laptops!" Guarav writes that the decision to resign was his alone, driven by his respect for IBM and his commitment to free speech.
Then it got serious. IIPM happens to be a client of IBM, Gaurav's employer, having purchased a huge bunch of laptops from them. (In fact, they are a company with serious money clout, and are one of the biggest advertisers in India.) So what would you expect them to do? Well, Gaurav relates that on his post on the subject. It's bizarre and worrying stuff – read it.
I'll sum it up for you: to save his employer from a dharam sankat, Gaurav found himself faced with two courses of action – to delete his posts and apologise; or to resign from the company. What choice would he make? Isn't the practical thing to do obvious?
Via Dina Mehta, who forwarded me this link to a post at Indian Writing. There's also a summary post by Neha Viswanathan at Global Voices. Disaster relief via databaseThe Red Cross has deployed its Family News Network for the South Asian Quake region. Similar to the PeopleFinder project set up following Hurricane Katrina, though we don't think the Red Cross has adopted an open format like PFIF (the PeopleFinder Interchange Format). Global Voices has a summary of online community responses to the quake, and a longer summary of the generally ignored problem of flooding caused by Hurricane Stan in Central America. ("Current events are making me tense," as Larry Monroe usedta say.)
It's gotta be a real nightmare to lose people, and have no way of knowing whether they're alive, injured, or dead. These database projects for tracking people down need more development, and we need ways to provide access on or close to the scene so that searches will yield meaningful results. And it has to be more than a volunteer effort. The Red Cross is probably the right organization to be putting the databases together, but distribution of a common format that many can use to gather data that feeds into the central authoritative search respository is crucial, and I don't think the Red Cross has that as one of their priorities. I know there are PeopleFinder volunteers still mindful of that goal.
We're going to talk about the high tech Katrina relief efforts at Austin's first PlaNetwork meeting this week, October 13th, at City Hall. Gary Chapman and I will be talking about efforts we were involved with. It's an evening meeting; I'll post details here asap.
Terrorists and the InternetNot long ago, CNN's Miles O'Brien tossed off a comment implying that where Al Qaeda is concerned, the Internet may be the problem. Today the Washington post is running a longer piece (requires free registration) that says
al Qaeda has become the first guerrilla movement in history to migrate from physical space to cyberspace. With laptops and DVDs, in secret hideouts and at neighborhood Internet cafes, young code-writing jihadists have sought to replicate the training, communication, planning and preaching facilities they lost in Afghanistan with countless new locations on the Internet.According to the article, "the Web's shapeless disregard for national boundaries and ethnic markers fits exactly with bin Laden's original vision for al Qaeda," and that the Internet is increasingly used tactically, "especially for training new adherents," quoting Rita Katz, director of the SITE Institute, a group that monitors and tracks the jihadist Internet sites.We should be attentive to the story between the lines here: if people use the Internet to do terrible things, what should we do? That question's come up more than once since access to the Internet started spreading in the early '90s, often from people and organizations who, on the scale balancing openness and freedom with social control, put their thumb heavily on the social control side, The world would be so much simpler and safer if we had more restrictions, they think, though there's never been much evidence to suggest that this is the case.
Consider a substitution: if people use free speech to do terrible things, what should we do? This suggests the slippery slope we're on when we talk about restricting the Internet. As Mike Godwin used to say, often, in the freedom/control discussions... the best response to "bad" speech is more speech. If we're concerned that young Muslims will join the jihad because of something they read online, perhaps we should support wiser, nonviolent Muslims in their attempts to dialog with potential terrorists in their midst.
Whatever the case, we should get ready for the next attempt to regulate speech on the Internet, an inevitable response to this idea of web-based jihad.
John Garang's death Sudan's vice president John Garang, missing since Saturday, was killed in an airplane crash. He was sworn in as vice-president only three weeks ago. Garang had led the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), and as VP he would have been instrumental in sustaining the peace agreement signed last January. Following Garang's death, there's been rioting in Sudan, though the SPLM says they believe the crash was an accident. Live8Austin is 101 degrees with a realfeel of 111... it's sizzle or melt, so I'm hanging out inside, checking out the Live8 Concert Feed at AOLmusic. Over my broadband connection I'm getting great quality, though none of the acts currently onstage pulls my trigger. I checked MTV's 8-hour coverage on the telly, and found it obnoxious; they'll toss you 3/4 of a great song by Green Day or the Marleys, then cut to yammering vjays or commercials. Ethan Zuckerman posts a pointer to a Christian Scientist Monitor poll, "How can the West help Africa? A global Q&A"
The Monitor decided to find out what some Western concertgoers really know about Africa, and where there is - and isn't - common ground with Africans.Zhang Lin
Our correspondents spoke with eight ticket-holders for concerts in Philadelphia, London, and Rome. They also interviewed eight people in Senegal and Nigeria, two indebted African nations.
As it turns out, the two groups have different priorities. Nearly every Westerner mentioned HIV/AIDS as a top African problem. Only one African did. Every African cited poverty as a major worry. And most wanted investment - not aid.The USA might be worse than it's been in years, but at least we have basic free speech (otherwise I'm sure the proper authorities would have carted me away months ago). No such luck in China, where free speech is considered a threat to national security, and where Zhang Lin may find himself rotting in jail because he posted the words to a song. I'm hoping those of us who still have voices and can speak openly will raise unmitigated hell about this travesty. Bloggers, this means you! (Via email from GILC – hey, guys, it's time to update the site!) [Link]
Microsoft bans democracy and freedomOkay, Microsoft didn't really ban democracy and freedom – the Chinese version of MSN Spaces banned the words "democracy" and "freedom." [Link]
MSN this year became the first big international internet service to win a licence to offer value-added telecoms services in China, a coup that was possible in part because of its decision to team up in a joint venture with Shanghai Alliance Investment (Sail). Sail is an investment arm of the Shanghai city government. Microsoft has also been careful to ensure that news and other content offered through the Chinese MSN portal are provided by local partners who can work within the informal and shifting boundaries set by China's unseen army of internet censors."Children's Drawings from Darfur"
The MSN Spaces service, however, is directly operated by the joint venture, Shanghai MSN Network Communications Technology, in which Microsoft holds a 50 per cent stake.
MSN on Friday declined to comment directly on the ban on sensitive words, but its China joint venture said users of MSN Spaces were required to accept the service's code of conduct. "MSN abides by the laws and regulations of each country in which it operates," the joint venture said. The MSN Spaces code of conduct forbids the posting of content that "violates any local and national laws".Refugee children from Darfur are drawing scenes of bombings and militia that "provide visual evidence that international media organizations have not been able to provide, as theyve been blocked by the Sudanese government from travelling in Darfur." Human Rights Watch has collected many of these drawings and displayed them on the web. Background info regarding the "ethnic cleansing" in Darfur is posted here. Thanks to Ethan for the pointer.
Tag: darfur
