Understandably, most of the U.S. was preoccupied with Barack Obama’s second inauguration yesterday. However in the midst of the celebrations of yet another peaceful transfer of power in the U.S., word began to trickle out of an attempted coup in Eritrea. It appears that the attempt, led by a group of military mutineers at the […]
As rebel forces advance in Syria’s north and east and prepare to contest regime forces for control of Damascus, the internet went dark in Syria last week. The strategic importance of cutting communication lines is obvious and it suggests a certain desperation on the part of Assad’s government. While much of the discussion about U.S. […]
Google, Reddit, and Wikipedia all are using their considerable web presence today to protest legislation pending in the U.S. Congress. According to the Google announcement: Two bills before Congress, known as the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, would censor the Web and impose […]
Thousands of Turks gathered in some 40 cities and towns around the country on Sunday, May 15th, to join marches organized on Facebook against state Internet censorship. The trigger for the protests was a decision by Turkey’s Internet regulator, the Information and Communication Technologies Authority, or BTK, to introduce a selection of filters that Turkish […]
What a difference a few days make. Since writing my post on the demonstrations in Tunisia on Wednesday, President Ben Ali went from claiming that only terrorists and fanatics were protesting to announcing that he would not run for re-election when his current term expires in 2014. He also assured the population that […]
Today in Tunisia, amid government blackouts and Western apathy among the press and government bureaucracy, social media and second generation journalism through blogs is emerging as one of the only methods for demonstrators to tell their tale for those willing to listen.
Repression, certainly. The news coming out of Rwanda doesn’t look good. As the country prepares for elections in August (which current president Kagame is almost certain to win) dissident voices and opposition party leaders are feeling the heat. Last week editor-journalist Jean-Léonard Rugambage was shot dead outside his house. He worked for Umuvugizi, a banned […]
News of the disaster in Haiti drowned out most other concerns last week but the earthquake was not the only newsworthy thing that happened in the world. Earlier the same day as the earthquake, Google posted a surprising message on its official company blog that raised the possibility the search engine giant may leave the […]
A virtual wall created for Twitter users to express their thoughts and hopes on the 20 year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall has been blocked in China. The “Berlin Twitter Wall,” as it’s called, is an initiative of KulturProjekte Berli, a not-for-profit organization that promotes networking and mediation of art and culture. […]
– The Thai courts refused a request to extradite Viktor Bout (aka The Merchant of Death) to the United States. Bout, an notorious global arms dealer, is accused by the U.S. of attempting to sell more than 700 surface-to-air missiles, a massive cache of automatic weapons, and airplanes and helicopters to the Revolutionary Armed Forces […]
– South East Asia Times is reporting that the man killed in the Indonesian government’s raid in central Java is not Noordin Mohammed Top. The government will compare the DNA of the corpses of the man suspected of being Top to one of Top’s children, which may take up to two weeks. This may be […]
A recent analysis of China’s media censorship practices deftly analyzes and explains the country’s system of repression and control of the media by using the threat of economically punishment. The piece, published on May 2 in the Far Eastern Economic Review, is aptly titled “China’s Commercialization of Censorship“. The piece not only explains how China […]
I was not as bemused as some who stumbled across Treehugger‘s April 1st story on China’s plans to build a green city, by veteran contributor and colleague of mine, Alex Pasternack. Knowing well that wit is Pasternack’s forte, today is April Fool’s Day, and the Center for Urban Misuse does not exist, I drank in […]