Archive for
October 29th, 2006
Stories
IGF in Athens: searching globally for the Internet's common ground
The first meeting of the Internet Governance Forum - IGF, which aims to be a a place for a “multi-stakeholder policy dialogue”, starts tomorrow, going from 30 October to 2 November in Athens, Greece. The idea of the forum emerged during last year's meetings of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis which sought to be an alternative to the stalemated debate about the future constituency and role of the all powerful ICANN, or Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
Approximately 1300 participants are estimated to attend the workings of the meeting, one third of which are state representatives (84 different delegations of countries), while the other two thirds consist of representatives from the civil society and the private (business) sector.
What Will Be the Outcome of the Internet Governance Forum Meeting in Athens? - CircleID
‘The Internet has become a global commons, providing a uniform platform for commerce, communications, debate and research for all nations. But, with the rapid rise in Asian Internet users, the Internet runs the risk of becoming balkanized', Nitin Desai, chair of the U.N.’s Internet Governance Forum (IGF), warns. Speaking at a conference hosted by Nominet, the UK body in charge of domain names ending .uk, Desai pointed in particular to a problem that could lead Asian nations to break away from the current Internet structure and create their own, separate Internet: most Asians don’t know the Latin alphabet, the basis of all domain names. [mp3 files]
U.N. Official Warns of Internet Balkanization - IP & Democracy
Prominent Bahraini Blog, Blocked!
It's official, Mahmood's Blog (http://mahmood.tv) will be blocked effective immediately, by the orders of the Bahraini Ministry of Information.
Together with 6 other web sites (listed below), the official memo was delivered to all the ISP's in Bahrain this afternoon.
Mahmood Al-Yousif, is a prominent Bahraini/Arab blogger. His blog is the most famous one in Bahrain. His blog tagline read: “intelligent… informative… and fun!” and it is. he was until a while one of the Global Voices Authors. His intelligent post added a lot to on the coverage of the Bahraini Blogsphere.
Immediately after Mahmood made the announcement, he received endless support calls from friends all around the world. He was interviewed in at least three Bahraini daily newspapers and his news will be published tomorrow in Al-Wasat, GDN and Bahrain Tribune. Several letters went out to some NGO's to support unblocking Mahmood's Blog.
Few hours after Mahmood published the official memo, his blog is going up and down due to unexpected bandwidth load from visitors and supporters.
Following is a list of the web sites ordered to be blocked in today's official memo:
http://www.annaqed.com
http://freecopts.net
http://arabchurch.com
http://www.ladeeni.net
http://www.albawaba.com
http://kurdtimes.com
http://mahmood.tv
Among the above list, only Mahmood's blog is a Bahraini. Other web sites vary between news, religious and entertainment web sites. (more…)
Bangladesh in Turmoil
Bangladesh is going through turbulent times as the row over an interim caretaker government chief persists who will lead the country towards the upcoming parliament election in January 2007.
This unique caretaker government (CTG) system adopted in Bangladesh constitution worked in past three elections. However this time the opposition parties led by Awami League (AL) and its fourteen party alliances were protesting that the designate Chief Justice KM Hasan not to be allowed as Chief of CTG because his past involvement with the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and because of the government's deliberate attempts to keep him in this position by
extending the retirement age of the judges. They claimed that Hasan was too close the government and have accused the outgoing administration of trying to rig elections. Drishtipat group blog has details on the crisis.
On October 27, the Bangladesh government comprising of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the four party alliance ended their five year tenure. In recent times the ruling coaltion was battered by constant opposition protests crippling the country, failure to curb price hike and inflation and mishandling the power and energy sector as demand increased supply, and some dissidents within the party. Former president Badruddoza Chowdhury and a former dissident of BNP and 24 dissident active BNP members led by Oli Ahmed MP formed a new political party called Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) couple of days ago. They have accused the government of carrying out widespread corruption, alleged absence of democracy in the party and supporting the Islamic fundamentalists.
Bangladesh is passing through (more…)
Links for Sun, 2006-10
Joel Martinsen in DANWEI translated an article by Yu Qui-yu, a famous contemporary writer and critics, about the challenges on cross cultural communication for Chinese.
Shang pei-jin in Shanghaiist reports that in Beijing, Changsha, and Xi'an, a certain group of people has decided to take on what they see as the coldness and apathy of human relations in the big city — by giving out free hugs.
“It is expected that in 2007 the sex industry in Japan will surpass the car manufacturing industry in terms of gross capital net gains”, reported by Alexpappas in Japundit.
This site is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
Please read our attribution policy.
Steve Sharra21 posts 
Syafique Shuib3 posts 
Janet Gunter7 posts 
Carolina Rumuat16 posts 
Mac-Jordan1 posts 
Lina Ben Mhenni15 posts 
Andriankoto Ratozamanana1 posts 
Onnik Krikorian1157 posts 
Claire Ulrich4 posts 
Markpeak6 posts 
Jenny Cascante5 posts 
David Sasaki2547 posts