Rebecca MacKinnon · July, 2005

Latest posts by Rebecca MacKinnon from July, 2005

BBC statement on Afghan blogger threats

The Committee to Protect Bloggers recently received the following statement from the BBC in response to complaints by Afghan Blogger Sohrab Kabuli that somebody has been using a BBC computer to threaten him. The statement was sent by Mike Gardner, Head of Media Relations at BBC World Service: The BBC...

Podcast: Love-blogging in Chinese

  27 July 2005

Prof. Charlie Nesson, co-founder of the Berkman Center and enthusiastic Global Voices supporter, recently traveled to China. He and internet radio journalist Ben Walker made a podcast in which they interviewed a Chinese blogger who uses his blog to communicate with his girlfriend – who unfortunately lives in another city....

Egyptian Bloggers Against Terrorism

  24 July 2005

(Photo from OneArabWorld.) Karim Eslahy has posted a link to photos of Sunday's demonstration against terrorism organized by Egyptian bloggers. We're still trying to confirm how many people attended, but Karim reports: “Very small turnout and the cops made them leave but proportionally significant coverage nonetheless.” Attendees included The Big...

Iraqi blogger Khalid Jarrar is freed

Iraqi blogger Khalid Jarrar, whose detention by the Iraqi secret police we reported last week, has now been released according to his brother Raed and his mother Faiza. The Jarrar family were never big fans of the U.S. presence in Iraq. This experience appears to have made them even less...

Egyptian Bloggers on the Radio

Congratulations to Big Pharaoh and Mohammed of From Cairo With Love for their appearance on NPR today (audio is also archived on the site). NPR correspondent Eric Weiner (who I knew in Tokyo) did a nice job mixing the sound of these two bloggers reading some of their posts, I...

Skypecast: Andrea Monti of ICTlex

  20 July 2005

Lawyer Andrea Monti, who blogs in Italian at ICTlex, is winner in the Europe category of this year's RSF Freedom Blog Awards. Monti is concerned that people in Western democracies are not sufficiently aware of the extent to which their freedoms of speech are being eroded – and while the...

Khalid Jarrar: Iraqi blogger detained

Blogger Khalid Jarrar, author of Secrets in Baghdad, remains in custody of the Iraqi intelligence service, known as the Mukhabarat. As we reported yesterday, Khalid's brother Raed says their family was relieved to hear on Thursday morning that Khalid is still alive after going missing for two days. On Sunday,...

Podcast: Chinese bloggers interview each other

  12 July 2005

Chinese blogger Haxi (left) has interviewed the Hangzhou-based blogger, Leylop (right), one of the early Chinese bloggers to blog in English. Here is Leylop's account of the intervew. You can listen to it here (MP3, 5MB). UPDATE: Halley Xie points out that the original interview was posted here on Chinastic.com,...

Welcome to our new look!

  11 July 2005

If you've visited Global Voices before, you'll notice we've changed our look. Hope you like it. Thanks to Boris Anthony of HelpPush.org for his painstaking work!! As we fit into our new skin over the next hours and days, you will most likely see a few more adjustments here and...

“Mr. Behi” podcasts from Iran

The Iranian blogger who calls himself “Mr. Behi” and blogs at The Adventures of Mr. Behi, is now podcasting. In his inaugural show, he gives his personal perspective about the bombings in London, Iran's presidential election, and his recent misadventures in attempting to get a U.S. student visa upon acceptance...

Muslim Blogosphere Reacts to London Blast

We hope that multi-lingual bridge-bloggers can help translate more of what bloggers are saying in Arabic, Farsi and other languages. (If you have done so please let us know in the comments section at the bottom of this post.) Meanwhile, here is what has come through our aggregator in English...

London blast blogging

  7 July 2005

(Image by “alfie” posted at moblog.co.uk) Thanks to Erica George for pointing us to this Livejournal Community devoted to information sharing in the aftermath of today's bomb blasts in London. DoWire.org has put together a “London Responds” wiki. Metroblogging London has been going all day, as have thousands of other...

Seeking “Bridge Bloggers”

  7 July 2005

Global Voices Online is looking for “bridge-bloggers.” What is a bridge-blogger? Somebody who acts as a “bridge” between their blogging community and the rest of the world. Lots of blogospheres are springing up around the world, in lots of languages, but many of them don't communicate with each other. That's...

International Human Rights Funding

  7 July 2005

Global Voices has agreed to pass on the following announcement from the International Human Rights Funders Group. This specific grant opportunity may be of special interest to human rights activists and bloggers in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. Fund for Global Human Rights Michael Chertok – 01:00pm Jun...

More on the BBC investigation of Afghan blogger threats

  6 July 2005

The BBC continues to investigate claims by Afghan blogger Sohrab Kabuli that somebody has been threatening him from within the BBC computer system. Here is the latest statement from the BBC: “The BBC has been investigating a serious allegation that offensive e-mails were sent from one of its staff members...

Threats against Afghan blogger

  5 July 2005

This post has been removed at the request of the Afghan blogger involved, as new information has come to light substantially changing the story. The post concerned the following: “Sohrab Kabuli“, Afghan blogger and winner of the Freedom Blog Award for his Farsi blog, Shared Pains, has been getting death...

Sohrab Kabuli: Afghan blogger

  5 July 2005

Global Voices Online continues to bring you interviews with winners of the Reporters Without Borders Freedom Blog Awards. This week we bring you an interview with Sohrab Kabuli (not his real name), author of two blogs: Shared Pains in Farsi and Afghan Lord in English. Kabuli answered questions via e-mail...

Monday: Eastern Europe, Russia, NIS & Central Asia

Afghan Lord has been receiving threats, and discovers they're coming from an IP address associated with the BBC. (More on this in a separate post coming soon.) Onnik Krikorian at Oneworld Multimedia reports on Vardavar, an ancient Armenian festival in which people douse each other with water. Sounds a bit...

Middle East & North Africa Roundup

The prolific Bahraini blogger Mahmood of Mahmood's Den has done an Arabic translation of Reporters Without Borders’ 6 Recommendations for freedom of expression on the Internet. (PDF version is here.) He encourages people in the Arab world to: “link to it, replicate it on your site or use it to...

Chinese bloggers react to registration deadline

  2 July 2005

Laohumiao (老虎庙) at 24HoursOnline describes his frustrating efforts to figure out whether and how he should register, given that his blog is hosted on Blogbus, which is registered as his blog's host domain. (Laohumiao's blog is thus a subdomain, at http://24hour.blogbus.com.) According to our recent interview with Isaac Mao, who...