· August, 2006

Stories about Digital Activism from August, 2006

China: more on Foxconn

  31 August 2006

Bingfeng is now translating comments from present and ex-foxconn workers on the working conditions in Foxconn from the two First Financial Daily workers’ blog. According to Bingfeng, the newspapers company has a meeting last night to collect evidences to prepare for the libel case.

Syria: Peaceful Change Forum

Ammar is calling to hold a closed forum of well-known intellectuals and dissidents with the purpose of coming up with a draft for a Syrian national pact or charter where all issues related to peaceful change in the country. Then, he will demand that Syrian opposition groups sign on to...

Internet in Chile: Creating New Political Actors?

  31 August 2006

Co-authored by Mary Joyce and Rosario Lizana Why has Chile, a country of only 16 million people where only 10% have internet in their homes, become a hotbed of cyberactivism? We know that the answer is not related to the tool, it is related to what is done with the...

China: Foxconn court case con't

  31 August 2006

Bingfeng updates that Shenzhen court has unfreezed the personal assets of the journalists, foxconn now sues BOTH the newspaper AND the two journalists and seeks only 1 RMB instead of 3 million RMB in damages. Roland continues his media analysis and for the first time describes his life as an...

Hong Kong: Jimmy Wales

  30 August 2006

Chiao blogs his eat-eat-talk-talk conversation with Jimmy Wales and briefly discusses about future development of the very young wiki community in Hong Kong.

China: Patron saint of activist-bloggers?

  26 August 2006

How to describe twenty two-year old MSN Spaces blogger Zeng Jinyan? A threat to national security? An AIDS activist who brings support, joy and hope to countless AIDS orphans? A young wife radicalized after her husband was kidnapped by the state for over a month? Patron spokesblogger for otherwise voiceless...

Russian-Language Blogs: Miscellanea (2)

  25 August 2006

Victoria Shcherbina (LJ user saint-autere) reacts to the news of the August 22 TU-154 crash in eastern Ukraine, which killed all 170 people on board, by writing (RUS) about the death of her father – IL-86 navigator Valeriy Shcherbina – in a crash at Moscow's Sheremetyevo four years earlier, on...

Broadband for All!!!

  24 August 2006

Chilean bloggers are concerned about the opportunities that broadband can bring to our development. Alex Lagos (ES) , writes on his blog: One week ago, La Nación published an article about broadband in Chile. The real thing is that we have been hearing about this issue for a while and...

Iran: Ahmadinejad's blog

MohammadAli Abtahi, reformist politician & blogger writes about Ahmadinejad's new blog. He says I think the fans of weblog and internet are happy that Mr. Ahmadinejad is also a member of the society that Keyhan (conservative newspaper) called it two years ago as the spider network, if and only if...

61st Anniversary of Indonesia's Independence Day

  20 August 2006

In commemorating the 61st anniversary of independence day, Indonesian bloggers have many ways to celebrate it. Agusti Anwar highlights the meaning of flag as a symbol of nation and nationalism: Flag is indeed a formal expression of recognition. To that effect, if a people dispose or pull out recognition of...

Cambodia: New Story Tellers on the Internet

  20 August 2006

According to a research report released recently by Pew Internet, most webloggers don't consider themselves doing journalism. In most cases they are not up to what a journalist does. In Cambodian blogosphere, there exists a series of interviews done by digital citizens playing the role of citizen's media. Chan Bopha,...

Estonia: “Democracy in Action”

  18 August 2006

In preparation for Estonia's presidential election, Giustino of Itching for Eestimaa decides to annoy municipal representatives of political parties and thus show “democracy in action“: “So for the next eleven days I will be putting up the contact information for different municpalities, starting with the capital of Tallinn.”

Ahmadinejad's blog and Fidel Castro

  18 August 2006

According to the BBC, the launch of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s blog was reported on state TV, which urged users to send in messages to the president. Several magazines and newspapers around the world have already talked about Ahmadinejad’s blog. In his first, and so far only, post, Ahmadinejad talks...

A Google Earth Canary Islands Conspiracy?

  17 August 2006

In late July Google updated the satellite imagery of the Canary Islands in both Google Earth and Google Maps. The former satellite images from 2005 and 2006 were replaced by images belonging to the Canary public company Grafcan. While some applauded the partnership of Google with a local mapping company,...

China: SARFT and farts, castrations feigned and intended: let the spoofing begin!

  17 August 2006

In a recent edition of MindMeters columnist Fang Jun's Marriagement column entitled Love in the Internet Age [zh] is a spoiler of the recently-released Hollywood movie Hard Candy: 危险的水果硬糖 Dangerous Fruit Hard Candy 《Hard Candy》是我看的第一部与网络密切相关的电影。中文翻译为《水果硬糖》,其实“Hard candy”是网络俚语,指未成年少女。 Hard Candy is the first movie I've seen that deals with internet intimacy. It's...

Belarus: Opposition's FAQ; Gay Belarus

  15 August 2006

The once very lively Belarusian flash mob LJ community – by_mob – is now rather sleepy (possibly, because it's summer). But it's not dead. LJ user z-hunter, for example, has recently suggested to compile a list of 100 “frequently asked questions and answers” – about the opposition to Aleksandr Lukashenko's...

Iran: Copyright & newspapers

Kosoof, photo blogger says Shargh newspaper has published several photos without paying attention to copy right principle or even mentioning photographer's name. The photo blogger has published some of these photos on his blog.

The Week That Was in Bahrain

Bahrain's Internet scene witnessed what could be described this week as ‘no step forward and 10 steps backwards!’ On Monday, newspapers reported that the Kingdom would ban Google Earth. ‘(T)he Ministry of DISinformation has instructed the Bahrain Internet Exchange to block Google Earth. Possibly because through Google Earth, the whole...