Defend a blogger's right and The Committee to Protect Bloggers

Everyone has right to freedom of opinion and expressions; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.--- Article 19 ,

Abdel Fattah Murad, Kareem Amer,and ‘freedom of expression’ in Egypt
Sami Ben Gharbia writes: On February 22, the Egyptian court sentenced the 22-year-old blogger Abdel Kareem Soliman (aka Kareem Amer) to four years in prison for insulting Islam , inciting hatred of Islam in comments criticising the government’s authoritarian and religious excesses and criticising the president Hosni Mubarak and Islamist control of the country’s universities on his personal blog posts.

Egypt’s decision to sentence 23-year old blogger Kareem Amer to prison in February sparked a fury among the civil society and attracted much unwanted attention from international media. A critic of both the leading Islamic institution al-Azhar and the Egyptian government, Amer was sentenced to a four-year prison sentence for insulting Islam and President Mubarak on his blog. The case marks the first time Egypt refers a blogger to a prison term.

Amer’s lawyer Gamal Eid, who is also the director of the Cairo-based non-governmental
organization, The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRInfo), stressed that “Kareem crossed the line by criticizing Islam, the President, and the Al-Azhar institution.”
Abdel Hadi suggested that the regime might have sought to “protect its legitimacy” by sentencing Amer, thus “demonstrating that they are tough on those criticizing religion.”
When combined with public activism, blogging is a particularly dangerous activity, according to Eid. In April, security officials at Cairo airport arrested Brotherhood-affiliated journalist and blogger Abdel Moneim Mahmoud as he attempted to travel to Sudan to do reporting on human rights in the Arab world.

Furthermore, on the March 12, Judge Abdel Fattah Mourad, head of the Alexandria Appeal Court, upheld Kareem’s four-year prison sentence and prepared to launch a lawsuit to block 21 blogs and websites for “defaming Egypt’s image and insulting the president.”

Hossam el-Hamalawy republished on his blog the following message from blogger Amr Gharbeia: The list, 21-websites-long, includes the blogs and sites that took part in the discussion around the book the Judge has written, and the wide plagiarism evident in the book copying HRInfo’s report on Internet Freedoms in the Arab World, and a how-to-blog guide written by blogger Bent Masreya. Of the 21 blogs and website, I was able so far to confirm Kifaya’s and HRInfo’s websites, in addition to the blogs of Bent Masreya, Yehia Megahed, and my own.

However, and despite the power and the unity that characterize the Egyptian blogshpere, many believe that the Egyptian regime, using the stratagem of sowing discord by condemning Kareem Amer, has succeeded in dividing Egyptian bloggers into two camps:
the Islamists, who criticize the way Kareem was writing about Islam and Muslims and, in a way, support his condemnation; and the liberals, who are defending Kareem’s rights and campaigning for his release. According to Elijah Zarwan, a Cairo-based researcher for Human Rights Watch, “many of the people who defended Kareem in the Egyptian blogosphere strenuously objected, publicly or privately, to some of his writings. But they still defended his right to express his views. In any case, as the Egyptian blogosphere grows, it is becoming more reflective of the diversity and pluralism of Egypt itself. Kareem didn’t divide the blogosphere. It wasn’t unified to begin with.”

Government repression no longer ignores bloggers .The Internet is occupying more and more space in the breakdown of press freedom violations. Several countries fell in the ranking this year because of serious, repeated violations of the free flow of online news and information.
In Malaysia (124th), Thailand (135th), Vietnam (162nd) and Egypt (146th), for example, bloggers were arrested and news websites were closed or made inaccessible. “We are concerned about the increase in cases of online censorship,” Reporters Without Borders said. “More and more governments have realised that the Internet can play a key role in the fight for democracy and they are establishing new methods of censoring it. The governments of repressive countries are now targeting bloggers and online journalists as forcefully as journalists in the traditional media.”
China maintains its leadership in this form of repression, with a total of 50 cyber-dissidents in prison. Eight are being held in Vietnam.
Egyptian bloggers, often at the forefront of exposing human rights abuses, are planning an online festival of torture videos to run alongside the 31st Cairo Film Festival, from 27 November to 7 December.
According to the “Middle East Times”, the parallel festival is the invention of a blogger named Walid, and will feature “controversial acts of torture allegedly committed by the security authorities.” Prizes, including a “Golden Whip”, will be awarded to the best entrants. Egypt’s bloggers have exposed many incidents of police torture. In a rare case of security forces being sentenced for abusing detainees, two policemen got three years in jail for torturing a man in their custody earlier this month. Footage of the abuse filmed with a mobile phone was widely distributed on YouTube and sparked nationwide and international outrage.
But bloggers who are critical of the government can also find themselves as victims. Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer, who is serving a four-year jail term for insulting Islam and President Hosni Mubarak, has recently been tortured while in custody, reports the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRInfo). Amer, the first blogger to stand trial in Egypt for his Internet postings, has three more years left in his sentence.
Reporters Without Borders strongly condemned the arrest of journalist Hossam el-Hendy at Helwan University, south of Cairo, as “an attempt to intimate all bloggers in Egypt” after officials there reported him to police for taking photos and sending messages about a demonstration on his mobile phone.
El-Hendy, 22, who works for the daily paper Al-Dustour and the website Eshreen (www.20at.com ), was covering a 28 November protest that erupted when a speaker at a university conference on information technology said it was important to regulate online activity in Egypt. The press freedom organisation also deplored the suspension on 21 November of the YouTube account of journalist and blogger Wael Abbas, who had posted scenes of police brutality towards suspects, and of his Yahoo! E-mail account on 29 November.
“Abbas is seen by the country’s bloggers as a key figure who alerts Egyptians to acts of torture,” it said. “If some of his clips are too shocking, YouTube can ask him to remove them, but suspending his account is excessive.” Abbas has suggested a parallel event to the Cairo Film Festival that would award a “golden whip” to the video of the worst example of police torture.
Egypt is on the Reporters Without Borders list of “enemies of Internet freedom.”
One blogger, Kareem Amer, 22, is in prison for posting material online and has become a symbol of repression towards the country’s bloggers.

Reporters Without Borders hails the decision taken by the administrative court of Egypt’s state council on 29 December ’07 not to block access to 51 websites which judge Abdel Fattah Murad, the head of the Alexandria court, had accused of defaming and attacking the president.

“The real reason Murad wanted to block these sites was their reference to the charge of
‘intellectual dishonesty’ made against him last February. This ruling raises our hopes about respect for free speech on the Egyptian Internet and we would like to think that similar ones will follow, for example, in the case of Kareem Amer, a young blogger who has been imprisoned for criticising the president and others.”

A total of 21 sites, including Baheyya and Gharbeia, two popular blogs, and the site of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, were initially accused of attacking the president by Judge Murad on 11 March, after allegations circulated on the blogosphere that a book by the judge on the Internet’s legal challenges had been plagiarised. The judge subsequently added another 30 websites to his complaint.

The administrative court ruled that the sites were just content hosts and, as such, not responsible for the comments that might be posted on them. Judge Ahmed Hassaan, the head of the administrative court, refused to block the sites and denied that they had violated the constitution, as Murad had claimed.

The ruling has been hailed as “historic” by the Egyptian blogosphere. Gamal Eid, the head of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, said he was “delighted” by the decision. It presaged a “return to normal” for the Egyptian Internet and recognised “the right of Egyptian citizens to have access to a free network,” he said.

Egypt is one of the world’s most repressive countries as regards online activity. Two bloggers were arrested in 2007, including Kareem Amer.

Alexandra Sandels, a Cairo-based Swedish journalist, writes about the growing lack of press freedom in Egypt for Menassat: Despite the freedom of expression boundaries being pushed by the independent press and the blogging community, 2007 witnessed an upsurge in clampdowns on the press and free speech in Egypt.

Source: Menassat, Reporters Without Borders, International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX), Worldwide Press Freedom, The Committee to Protect Bloggers,
http://www.freekareem.org/category/egyptian-blogosphere/
http://committeetoprotectbloggers.org/
http://freekareem.org/

------------------------------

This web log(blog) is dedicated for ‘Freedom of Expression’, as a means/measure/ manoeuvre of social service, all news and information posted herein, are collected from mostly electronic media/ online (published) news. The source party/ or the name who has the credit of the news shoulders all responsibility of the concerned news have been mentioned along with the posted/published news at bottom of every news, maintained and updated by Albert Ashok on behalf of http://rainbowartistsandwritersfoundation.blogspot.com a non-profit artists’ and writers’ organization defends ‘Freedom of Expression’ and ‘Human Rights’.
If you find any news/information is incorrect/wrong then please bring it to our knowledge for immediate correction, we express our unwilling ignorance and ready to make information correct. email : rawfoundation@ymail.com Please visit us

Who are behind the outages and blocking the blog?

Picture:Blogger is blocked

All aboard the Hyperbole Express
June 30, 2008 at 10:32 pm · Filed under google, follow-up post

Since I published my article about the Anti-Obama blog outages last night the story has exploded across the blogosphere. I probably should have expected this, but I was surprised to find that within hours Blogspot users were announcing boycotts. All kinds of conspiracy theories were launched. Bloggers were using the incident to attack Obama, Google, or both. Free speech was under attack. Nazi comparisons were made. And I think an LOLcat or two weighed in.
I tried to contact Google for my article; no response. But I spoke to New York Times writer Miguel Helft today and he did manage to get a response from the search giant, which he published in this article:
On Monday, Google would not explicitly rebut the idea that it had been tricked but said that the cause of the temporary blockage appeared to be elsewhere. “It appears that our anti-spam filters caused some Blogger accounts to be blocked from creating new posts,” Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich said in a statement. “While we are still investigating, we believe this may have been caused by mass spam e-mails mentioning the ‘Just Say No Deal’ network of blogs, which in turn caused our system to classify the blog addresses mentioned in the e-mails as spam. We have restored posting rights to the affected blogs, and it is very important to us that Blogger remain a tool for political debate and free expression.”

Also, at least one of the affected bloggers got this email today from Google:
Hi there,
On behalf of the Blogger Team, I want to apologize for the recent trouble you’ve had with your locked blog. Automated spam detection is not yet a perfect science, and although we are constantly working to improve our tools, it appears that our filters have caused some Blogger accounts to mistakenly be blocked from creating new posts.

While we are still investigating, we believe this may have been caused by mass spam e-mails mentioning the “Just Say No Deal” network of blogs, which in turn caused our system to classify the blog addresses mentioned in the e-mails as spam. Regardless, we have restored posting rights to your blog, and it is very important to us that Blogger remain a tool for political debate and free expression.
So once again, we apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience as we looked into the problem.
Sincerely,
The Blogger Team

Their explanation is certainly interesting, and if true it means that Obama supporters had absolutely nothing to do with the Blogspot lockdowns.

I bet a few anti-Obama folks who thought they had discovered Hitler 2.0. might be feeling a little silly right now. Of course Miguel told me that Google wasn’t really elaborating much on this issue, and their claims sound a little suspicious, but wouldn’t it be ironic if they were telling the truth and the blogs were flagged simply because of the mass emailing?
a google Picture
For complete reading material Source: http://bloggasm.com/all-aboard-the-hyperbole-express

June 30, 2008 at 1:41 am · Filed under Politics, blog criticism
Carissa Snedeker had created her blog, Blue Lyon, three years ago and up until this point had very few problems posting new content. But this time a message from Google came up when she visited her dashboard.
“This blog has been locked due to possible Blogger Terms of Service violations,” the message stated. “You may not publish new posts until your blog is reviewed and unlocked.”

photo : Carissa Snedeker

When Snedeker clicked on the link at the bottom of the message she came to another one that told her that her blog “has characteristics of a spam blog” and, because of this, it had been locked. It allowed her the chance to send an “unlock request” but told her she’d have to wait up to four business days before someone at Google could review her blog and confirm it wasn’t publishing spam.
Snedeker received an email from another blogger claiming that a number of anti-Obama blogs had been “hacked” that same night. After some digging it became apparent that several Blogspot accounts had been shut down because of similar spam issues, and nearly all of them had three things in common: Most were pro-Hillary Clinton blogs, all were anti-Barack Obama, and several were listed on justsaynodeal.com, an anti-Obama website.
A “Flag Blog” link sits at the very top of every free Blogspot account. If a person finds objectionable content on a Blogspot site or suspects it’s publishing spam, he or she can click on the link and it will send a notice to Google requesting “human review.”
I spoke to several of the bloggers who had accounts locked and every single one was convinced that it was Obama supporters who had flagged the blogs in some kind of concerted effort to silence them. But when I asked for specific evidence of this, most simply pointed out that only anti-Obama blogs were targeted — a fact that is certainly suspicious but not especially conclusive.

A blogger who uses the pseudonym “GeekLove” (she wouldn’t agree to a phone interview and wouldn’t tell me her real name) said to me via email that when her blog, Come A Long Way, was shut down she thought it was a fluke as well.
“I also felt a little bit humiliated that someone would think to characterize my Blog as ’spam,’” she said. “I had no idea why it would be ’spam’ I assumed it was just some sort of mistake. I did think it was an isolated incident. I requested the Blogger review. I then went to the Hillary Clinton Forum, a place I frequently participate in on line discussions, and I saw Nobama’s post ‘Blogger just shut down my NObama Blog!!‘ Then when other Blogger blogs were affected, I knew it was more than coincidence.”

“I suspect that it was Obama supporters because I think the block was timed to affect blogs prior to the unity event so that we would not ‘rain on the unity parade,’ GeekLove said. “Also, Obama has ads out hiring people with no experience, except the ability to use computers. I presume these are the individuals responsible for silencing any opposition. His campaign has really harnessed the power of the internet and in the process learned to game the system in a way that I find frightening.”
When it comes to butting heads with Obama supporters, perhaps nobody has more experience than Larry Johnson. If his name rings a bell, it’s because Johnson, who worked for the CIA in the ’80s and now does military consulting, was the origin of the famous “whitey” claim. Not long ago he reported on his website that people connected with the McCain campaign are in possession of video footage of Michelle Obama saying derogatory things about white people. However, he admitted that he hadn’t actually seen the video and his two sources hadn’t seen it either. He quickly became a target of bloggers from both the right and left.
Several of the bloggers hit by the Blogspot outage also write at his site, No Quarter, and so Johnson has been watching the controversy with interest.
“We were contacted by our host in March and they claimed we were draining too many resources,” he said. “They shut us down completely. But when we went in to look at our site statistics it was evident that something else was clearly going on — we were the subject of some kind of spam attack that was putting a strain on the site.”

To ward off such attacks, he decided to go with his own server, a move that he said would make it harder to shut him down. But after he published the “whitey” claims, he had more direct conflicts with Obama supporters.
“The problem with these people who had their Google accounts shut down, they’re intimidated by it,” Johnson said. “They don’t want to get themselves in a situation so they would be identified. Some of these people who get identified, the Obama folks start picking up the phone and calling. I had phone calls into my office, threatening me, saying that you’re going to be fired, let me talk to your boss. I told them to go fuck themselves, because I am my own boss. It helps to be self-employed.”
Johnson and the other people interviewed for this article all agreed that Google was partly to blame for the outages. It was because of the search giant’s “guilty until proven innocent” approach, they said, that allowed the attackers to shut down the blogs so easily.

“My biggest objection is not necessarily that these people did this, but that Blogger had the policy that basically locks you out,” Snedeker said. “In other words you’re guilty until proven innocent, instead of the other way around, and that was what frustrated me.”
“I understand the need if you have some complaints from people that you need to investigate it,” Johnson said. “But you also have to make sure that the person filing the complaint is legitimate.”

An email I sent to Google requesting comment was not immediately returned. Nearly all the bloggers who were targeted by this spam crusade are not waiting around for their accounts to be restored. They’ve flocked to Wordpress and opened free accounts there (including Blue Lyon and Come A Long Way), and they don’t have any immediate plans to return to their original URLs once the dust settles.
What’s perhaps even more notable is that none of the people I spoke to is planning any kind of backlash against Obama supporters. It seemed to me that, for the most part, they just want to be left alone.
“While I am expressing my political beliefs, on Blogger it was a simple push of a button to mark my blog as spam and silence me,” GeekLove said. ” Pushing the button set me back a couple of days and I was unable to post anything during the unity event. The prospect of starting over on another blog was also daunting [and] I briefly, only briefly considered [giving] up blogging. Tactics like this work to silence opposition, why wouldn’t we expect more of that in the future?”
Contact me at simon.bloggasm@gmail.com
Bloggers readers have many things to comment:
John Samford said,
Hire an attorney. Don’t sue blogger, but the people that posted the spam complaint. You have a right to face your accuser,

If Blogger’s guilty-until-innocent policy is the problem, a perhaps effective response would be to click the “flag blog” button on great numbers of Blogger blogs–making the button useless.
Susan Nunes said, Blogger simply needs to disable and delete the “Flag” function on the top of the blog pages. People would have to email Blogger about spam blogs instead.
.
In any case, moving from Blogger just tells the perpetrators they’ve won.
Sister Toldjah said, Are Obama supporters having anti-Obama blogs shut down on Blogspot?
Just another example of how far some far left Obama supporters are willing to go to shut down criticism about the Obamessiah? Bloggasm and Stop The ACLU take a look.some reader can not believe it!
Is Google, owner of Blogspot, shutting down anti-Obama blogs?
Tantor said,

No longer will you be trouble by differing views of the world. ..
And really, don’t you know these kinds of attacks on free speech is how the Left works? If you put a conservative bumper sticker on your car during election season, you can expect the lefty stormtroopers to tear it off or razor blade it up. It happenned to me a couple times in different parts of the country and its happenned to other people. The Left wants a monopoly on all public forums. This kind of factional fight is akin to the Nazis attacking their rival Communist demonstrations back in the 1930s Germany.


John Samford: part of the problem here is that some of these bloggers want to remain anonymous. By confronting the attackers directly, they reveal their identity. That makes it very difficult for some of these folks to fight back.

Howard Hirsch said, June 30, 2008 Simon–
I am the Republican party chairman in Lyon County, Carissa’s base. I have known her for four years, ….
As pernicious as the liberal agenda is, it might be time for us on the other side to admit that its followers constitute a sizeable force, if not majority opinion in America today. That may be unfortunate (at least to me), but what is far more dangerous is that it intends to be the ONLY permissible opinion in America today. It will be interesting to see how an Obama Administration, sworn to defend the First Amendment, instead upholds some vague and unwritten “right not to be offended”.
Howard Hirsch, Chairman, Lyon County Republican Party Dayton, Nevada

PorkBomb said,
June 30, 2008 @ 5:11 pm
There are people being tortured in Chinese prisons right now because Google turned them in to the Chinese government. Many people seem to forget that.
Google is openly leftist. I have no doubt that they would aid and abet the elimination of opposition to the left’s messiah, Barack Obama. They censor and delete right-leaning videos and comments on YouTube and I’m not talking about raving racist garbage or death threats, I’m talking about people like Michelle Malkin. They do it on YouTube, why wouldn’t they do it on Blogger?
The “web 2.0″ leftists who manipulate and steer information on the internet are the latest and most dangerous version of leftist totalitarianism. Obviously, they are not wearing uniforms and kicking down doors but Google is insidiously evil and it’s time people began facing up to that.

Ellen K said,
June 30, 2008 @ 11:31 pm
I am not a Democrat. I am not a liberal. But I do passionately believe in free speech. And by my definition, that means that even when people disagree with me, they are legally given that right by our Constitution. Sadly, there are people who believe that manipulating campaigns and playing silly games are synonymous with political finesse. What worries me the most is that if these game players win the White House, at what point will they realize that life is not a game? I read the commentary, I find it appalling that an organized effort was used to shut down opposition. I also find it just a little bit scary that the Obama campaign and its subsidiaries think of this as normal behavior. When you look at the news, very little critical attenation is given to Mr. Obama’s views. And if you dare to oppose his views, you are labeled as either racist, a neo-con or backward. At some point someone is going to have to be brave enough to ask some hard questions of this man. I think a reading of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is in order for the media in general. One final question, if indeed this was an organized effort to shut down opposition, doesn’t that make you question what type of candidate would sanction that type of behavior by subordinates? Just wondering.
Hillary or Bust said,
My blog was one of the blogs that was locked down by Blogger on June 26. I have since moved it to my own domain name
An unintended side effect of this juvenile attempt at censorship has been that my blog has actually gotten more exposure thanks to them. This story has now traveled throughout the blogosphere and is being covered by left and right wing blogs. So the final verdict is that their plan to shut us up completely and totally backfired.
That said, I am concerned that certain radical progressives are getting out of control (and I always considered myself a progressive). For more on this, please read:
http://hillaryorbust.com/2008/06/please-save-this-country-from-progressives/
Saskboy said,
July 3, 2008 @ 5:24 pm
Blogger is terrible at enforcing their Terms of Service. I’ve notified them of a series of blogs set up for harassment purposes (which is contrary to their TOS in multiple ways that I listed for them) and they just unflagged the blog, and cited “free speech”.

Source http://bloggasm.com/whos-responsible-for-shutting-down-a-number-of-anti-obama-blogspot-accounts,

Bloggasm is a blog run by Simon Owens that focuses on the media, with an emphasis on online media and journalism. It often features interviews with prominent bloggers, authors and journalists. If you want to request an interview, just drop us a line.
simon.bloggasm@gmail.com


Well, well, well. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Magically, my posting privileges are back. Blogger sent me this email:

Hi there,
On behalf of the Blogger Team, I want to apologize for the recent trouble you've had with your locked blog. Automated spam detection is not yet a perfect science, and although we are constantly working to improve our tools, it appears that our filters have caused some Blogger accounts to mistakenly be blocked from creating new posts.

While we are still investigating, we believe this may have been caused by mass spam e-mails mentioning the "Just Say No Deal" network of blogs, which in turn caused our system to classify the blog addresses mentioned in the e-mails as spam.
Regardless, we have restored posting rights to your blog, and it is very important to us that Blogger remain a tool for political debate and free expression.
So once again, we apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience as we looked into the problem.

Sincerely,
The Blogger Team
Read complete news source @ http://bluelyon.blogspot.com/
http://bloggasm.com/whos-responsible-for-shutting-down-a-number-of-anti-obama-blogspot-accounts%20%20,
---------------------xox---------------------

This web log(blog) is dedicated for ‘Freedom of Expression’, as a measure/ manoeuvre of social service all news and information, posted herein, are collected from mostly electronic media/ online (published) news, the source party/ or the name who has the credit of the news shoulders all responsibility of the concerned news have been mentioned along with the original news at bottom of every news, maintained and updated by Albert Ashok on behalf of http://rainbowartistsandwritersfoundation.blogspot.com/ a non-profit artists’ and writers’ organization defends ‘Freedom of Expression’ and ‘Human Rights’.
If you find any news/information is incorrect/wrong then please bring it to our knowledge for immediate correction, we express our unwilling ignorance and ready to make information correct. . email : rawfoundation@ymail.com Please visit us

Religious Intimidation and Blogger blocked/controled

Human expression in weblog/ blogger is being reined. Some where by state power / central power (government power), somewhere by service provider, it should be condemned.

in Blogspot, Pakistan, Blogger Blocked
Indus Asia Online Journal reports that the government of Pakistan has blocked Blogspot, cutting off access to thousands of blogs in the country. It was last reported blocked in Pakistan in September.
Mizzima reports that the tinhorns in Burma have, through the country’s two ISPs, blocked access to the Blogger.com blogging platform (also known as Blogspot).
In a bid to stop the flow of information outside Burma one of the most popular blog sites http://www.blogger.com/ has been banned by the Myanmar Post and Telecomm Ministry as of […]
Blogging as Protected Speech
According to Law.com, a judge in Manhattan has ruled that Google, the ISP of a blogger critical of a school board, is under no obligation to disclose the name of the blogger, known as Othormom. The ruling, based on the details of the complaint against the blogger, are not necessarily going to further establish blogging […]
Nazi Blogger Shut Down
Google has closed down the blog of Serbian neo-Nazi, Novosadjanin Goran Davidovi?. I just checked it and the message said, “This blog is in violation of Blogger’s Terms of Service and is open to authors only”. Blogger/Google is a private company, but the tendency to cinch up on weird thought is troubling. It certainly doesn’t […]
Burmese Bloggers Go Dark, Pt. 2
It has being widely reported throughout Pakistan that access to the entire blogspot.com domain has yet again been blocked in Pakistan. For about four months (since May, 2007) Google fortunately had changed the IP address of its Blogspot servers. The new IP addresses were not demarcated as prohibited by the censorship […]

According to Global Voices Advocacy, China Telecom has blocked feeds from the popular FeedBurner service. If you use China Telcom in China, you will not be able to reed the RSS feeds generated by FeedBurner.
Moon-Blog, who has done a traceroute from China to check the block, found that the traceroute failed at the backbone level […]

Update: Three hours of sleep is not your friend. I had a very old Slashdot posting. (Thanks, Anil.)
According to BBC News, Blogger has been hacked.
Google’s Blogger site is being used by malicious hackers who are posting fake entries to some blogs.
The fake entries contain weblinks that lead to booby-trapped downloads that could infect a […]
source http://committeetoprotectbloggers.org/category/blogger/


The Associated Press reports that today the Chinese government has blocked the video-sharing service YouTube. The block was in response to the posting of dozens of videos showing footage of the Tibet riots. Like last year’s Burmese riots, these have also been led by monks and have resulted in over 80 deaths so far.

A car belonging to YemenPortal, was vandalized today. Editor Walid Al-Saqaf indicated in a note that he believes official representatives of the Yemeni government directly responsible. He believes the action was a result of his attempt to provide alternative URLs for his site. He created an alternative domain and emailed it to several hundred subscribers […]
Report on Anti-Blogging Measures from Burmese Blogger
http://committeetoprotectbloggers.org/category/censorship


NEW LAWS THREATEN FREE EXPRESSION
http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/95192/

ETHIOPIA
Ethiopia has passed a new media law that bans censorship of private media and the detention of journalists, but which critics say maintains other threats to free expression.
"Under the new law, previous restrictions against private media outlets, such as detention of journalists suspected of infringement of the law, has been scrapped," a Parliament statement said.
But opposition members say the law, passed on 1 July, still allows state prosecutors to invoke national security as grounds for impounding publishing materials prior to publication and distribution.
Opposition Parliamentarian Temesgen Zewede told reporters, "Although censorship is abolished, such a right to impound press material before distribution is tantamount to censorship."
The government is also planning to impose strict controls and "draconian" criminal penalties on non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in a separate law, say Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
Ethiopia says the draft law on charities and societies is a way for NGOs to be financially transparent and accountable to their stakeholders. But Human Rights Watch says the government's intent is "to consolidate that trend by taking the 'non' out of 'non-governmental' and putting civil society under government control."

For example, the draft law imposes stiff criminal penalties for anyone participating in "unlawful" civil society activity - jail time for participating in a meeting held by an unlawful organisation or disseminating the organisation's information.

Who decides which NGOs are lawful? The government of course - the bill calls for a Charities and Society Agency with extensive powers to license NGOs, monitor their activities and interfere in their management and staffing, says Human Rights Watch.

Plus, all non-Ethiopian NGOs are not allowed to carry out work related to human rights - making it difficult for IFEX members to report free expression violations or engage in human rights activities in the country. Meanwhile, Ethiopian rights NGOs that get more than 10 percent of funding from foreign sources would be considered foreign and would also be closed down.

"The law's key provisions are blunt and heavy-handed mechanisms to control and monitor civil society groups while punishing those whose work displeases the government," say Human Rights Watch and Amnesty. "It could also seriously restrict much of the development-related work currently being carried out by some of Ethiopia's key international partners."

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty are calling on donor governments, especially Ethiopia's biggest donors, the United States and the United Kingdom, to speak out publicly against the criminalisation of human rights work in Ethiopia.

"Their policy of silence has had the effect of helping to embolden the Ethiopian government to make further assaults on human rights, exemplified by the draft NGO law," says Human Rights Watch.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, once considered a pioneer of democracy in Africa, had seen his reputation wane since post-election violence that killed 200 people in 2005. Journalists and opposition members viewed as sympathetic to the protesters were then arrested and charged with treason, and now formal political opposition has become nearly extinct in most of the country.

Visit these links:
- Human Rights Watch: http://tinyurl.com/5jplq2
- "The Nation" (Kenya) on new media law: http://allafrica.com/stories/200807040064.html
- IFEX Ethiopia page: http://tinyurl.com/58q5rr

Intimidation-Free Europe?
July 9, 2008 by centurean2 The right of free expression is at stake
Holland, FITNA & Islamic Intimidation
Terrorism Lance Fairchok, Featured Writer April 3, 2008

“The film equates Islam with violence. We reject that interpretation,”
The Netherlands Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende
Geert Wilders film FITNA is a 15-minute indictment of Islamic radicalism. This terrifies the government of the Netherlands and it hopes minimize any violent reaction by condemning it. However, saying something does not make it so, no matter how endlessly it is repeated. It is not a matter of “interpretation,” it is a matter of truth; Islam brings violence. Decades of naïve multiculturalism, generous handouts and easy asylum for “Muslim refugees” has made Holland a land of two incompatible belief systems. Islam has become the largest active religion in Holland, its churches do not draw a fraction of the attendance that its mosques do.
The Dutch Prime Minister also rejects free speech in his condemnation, which is not surprising; the Netherlands may be the first European country to allow Shari’a law to compete with national courts. They may not have a choice. While the Dutch see themselves as eminently civilized and able to negotiate and appease conflict away, Muslim immigrant populations skyrocket. They dither while their country is stolen from under them.

Last October a Muslim radical attacked and seriously wounded two police officers with a knife in the city of Amsterdam. One officer was able to get off a shot, which killed the attacker. That officer nearly died. The event touched off days of riots and car burnings. Moroccan residents ironically claimed they were upset at being “stigmatized” as violent. The attacker, a member of a radical group with a long criminal record shouted “Allah Akbar” as he attacked. The fact that he was shot by a female officer did not help matters. The Dutch press avoided any mention of Islamic radicalism. The government-spun tales of disadvantaged youth, mental illness and economic inequities to distract the citizenry and like the French, deftly side stepped the problem.

Islam has been eating away at the Netherlands for many decades. Its sway is far out of proportion to its population. It demands special treatment and gets it. The government fears them, they know it, and exploit that fear at every turn. Dutchmen who speak out against Muslim violence toward women, such as Theo Van Gogh, are murdered in the street. Outspoken critics of Islam such as parliamentarian Ayan Hirsi Ali are hounded out of the country by a combination of intimidation and government cowardice. Residents in her apartment building asked for her to move after death threats were made. They did not feel safe. Perhaps the cowardice is cultural.

Europe is being methodically Islamicized. The steady undermining of the rule of law and democratic institutions by Islamic supremacists attempts to create two separate societies, with Islam preeminent. The intrinsic multicultural tolerance of nations like Holland and Belgium is turned against them. Islam is a bully, and the endless concessions to its hypersensitive self-image inevitably go unrewarded. Tolerance is a weakness, one gleefully exploited. Islam does not share the Dutch humanist ideology, an ideology that has transformed from a primrose path to utopia into a suicidal pathology.

“I condemn, in the strongest terms, the airing of Geert Wilders’ offensively anti-Islamic film. There is no justification for hate speech or incitement to violence. The right of free expression is not at stake here. I acknowledge the efforts of the Government of the Netherlands to stop the broadcast of this film, and appeal for calm to those understandably offended by it. Freedom must always be accompanied by social responsibility.” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the film FITNA

The UN General Secretary, as usual, has it exactly backwards. His muddle-headed timorous leftism supports censorship to appease a violent minority, not social responsibility. When does the accusation of “incitement” translate into intimidation and extortion? At the point where free speech is silenced by threats, when incitement is defined as any criticism, however logical, when our standards of freedom, free expression and reason are overturned.

Wilders film does not incite violence, he merely points out the root cause, Islam provides the rest. The insistence that the Koran does not encourage violence is absurd. Of course it does, one merely has to tally the recorded acts of terror worldwide since 9-11 to see that unfortunate fact. The numbers do not lie. A quick cross reference with their holy book reveals violent virtues on many of its pages, as well as guidance for misogyny, pedophilia and genocidal hatred. They do not consider them metaphors. They act on them.

The outrage about this film is an inarticulate shout from a belief system trying to disguise its innate depravity and hide its hypocrisy. We cannot fight what we do not understand, and we cannot understand unless we examine more than the propaganda of Islamic apologists and their useful idiots. The film asks us to see a truth too many people, and too many governments simply ignore.

Geert Wilder’s film is easily accessible on the web. It should be spread to the widest possible audience. He says nothing in the film that is not true, nor does he make any unsupportable accusation. He is a man watching his nation and his culture slowly strangled. Making FITNA was an act of bravery and love of country, which has put Geert Wilders in mortal peril. It is a desperate rallying cry that may well be too late.
“So, fight them till all opposition ends and the only religion is Islam.” – Qur’an 8:39
http://www.therant.us/staff/l_fairchok/2008/04032008.htm
http://uk1884.wordpress.com/2008/07/09/intimidation-free-europe/
http://citizensagainstsharia.wordpress.com/2008/07/08/notice-what-does-not-offend-muslims/


We’re for freedom of expression and equality for women and religious minorities.Home About Standard Arguments Reform or Apostasy? Sharia More Sharia Resources:
Notice What Does NOT Offend Muslims .
The Amboy Times ( http://amboytimes.typepad.com/the_amboy_times/2007/02/how_the_pope_se.html
http://amboytimes.typepad.com/the_amboy_times/2007/02/how_the_pope_se.html )

watch.islam@gmail.com has posted a growing list of Things That Offend Muslims. Several of the items on this list have been protested quite visibly by many Muslims, in some cases including death threats, violence and even murder.

Thousands upon thousands of Muslims have protested a bunch of cartoons published in Denmark. Muslims worldwide have expressed their outrage, not only through peaceful protests, but also by burning down embassies and murdering innocent people.
More recently, the movie Fitna was produced by Geert Wilders, a Dutch PM. Again, thousands protested.
Now, let’s look at what does NOT offend Muslims….
If worldwide demonstrations, violence, and mayhem shows us what offends Muslims the most, then it is equally revealing to pay attention to the events that do not cause sufficient offense for Muslims to muster any noticeable protest at all:

Apostates Tortured, Killed: As we have noted, apostates of Islam may be threatened with death, even in the West. Recently, a Muslim man who converted to Christianity in Iran was arrested, tortured, and may yet be killed. Many other apostates have been killed, beaten, or threatened. Where’s the Muslim outrage over this travesty? Why are there no large, visible groups of Muslims fighting for the right of apostasy?
Religious Minorities Persecuted Throughout Muslim Lands: Christians, Jews, Bahais, Hindus, Buddhists and others are persecuted throughout the Muslim world. Why aren’t Muslims more offended by this than they are by a movie?
Women Treated as Second Class Citizens: In Pakistan, thousands of women in prison are rape victims. Honor killings, stoning of adulteresses, and FGM (female genital mutilation) plague the Muslim world. Saudi women can get into trouble for driving a car. Why no big demonstrations against this appalling treatment of women? Is this less of an offense than a cartoon?
Islam Linked to Militant Jihad by Muslims: Muslims are offended when non-Muslims discuss Islamic Jihad (which was one subject of the movie Fitna). However, there are Muslims who have linked militant Jihad to Islam, in modern times and throughout history, yet these Muslims who promote militant Jihad are never protested in a large way by other Muslims. A press release may be issued, but Muslims are not demonstrating in the streets over this. Why the double standard?
Mohammed’s Example Justifies Marital Sex with Nine-Year-Olds: According to a Saudi marriage official, a girl can be married at any age, even one year, so long as the marriage isn’t consummated until she is nine. This is based on authenticated Muslim Hadith (traditions) that Mohammed married Aisha, his favorite wife, when she was six and consummated the marriage when she was nine. How is it possible that Muslims aren’t sufficiently offended by the Saudi’s comment to protest his words?
Jews Marked for Death Worldwide: According to Palestinian cleric Wael Al-Zarad on Al-Aqsa TV, the Muslims’ blood vengeance against the Jews “will only subside with their [the Jews] annihilation.” This is not the only recent example of Muslims calling for a new Jewish holocaust. Why are Muslims not offended by these calls to genocide? Why is there no obvious sign of Muslim outrage over this?
OIC Moves to Quash Free Expression in the West: The OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference) is making bold moves to stifle criticism of Islam through the UN. There is a plethora of other Muslim groups attempting to stifle free speech about Islam in the West. All Muslims who embrace free speech and free press must be terribly embarrassed about this. Where are the demonstrations?
Slavery Practiced by Muslims: Recently, UAE royals enslaved 17 women at a luxury hotel in Belgium. Slavery has never been entirely abolished in the Muslim world. Surely this would be enough to generate some Muslim outrage, but I have seen no mass demonstrations against those Muslims who continue this abhorrent practice.
It isn’t that no Muslims are offended by the above list. On the contrary, there are some examples of decent Muslims speaking out against abuses committed by Muslims, often in the name of Islam. To notice the lack of public demonstrations over the above list does not disparage the tremendous efforts of these brave individuals and small groups. However, the Muslim community as a whole does not seem sufficiently disturbed by the items on this list to protest them en masse. Why would some cartoons be more offensive than torturing and killing apostates? Why would a movie be more offensive than declarations of genocide? Where are the Muslims who would demonstrate in the streets for the right of apostasy, true equality for religious minorities in Muslim lands, equality for women, full renunciation of militant Jihad, marriage for adults only, respect for Jews, free expression, and a real abolition of slavery? Hello? Are you out there?

http://citizensagainstsharia.wordpress.com/2008/07/08/notice-what-does-not-offend-muslims/

Tuesday, July 08, 2008
'Public' online spaces don't carry speech, rights
by ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer Sun Jul 6, 2:17 PM ET

Say it on the Internet, and you'll find that free speech and other constitutional rights are anything but guaranteed.
Companies in charge of seemingly public spaces online wipe out content that's controversial but otherwise legal. Service providers write their own rules for users worldwide and set foreign policy when they cooperate with regimes like China. They serve as prosecutor, judge and jury in handling disputes behind closed doors.
The governmental role that companies play online is taking on greater importance as their services — from online hangouts to virtual repositories of photos and video — become more central to public discourse around the world. It's a fallout of the Internet's market-driven growth, but possible remedies, including government regulation, can be worse than the symptoms.

Dutch photographer Maarten Dors met the limits of free speech at Yahoo Inc.'s photo-sharing service, Flickr, when he posted an image of an early-adolescent boy with disheveled hair and a ragged T-shirt, staring blankly with a lit cigarette in his mouth.

Without prior notice, Yahoo deleted the photo on grounds it violated an unwritten ban on depicting children smoking. Dors eventually convinced a Yahoo manager that — far from promoting smoking — the photo had value as a statement on poverty and street life in Romania. Yet another employee deleted it again a few months later.

"I never thought of it as a photo of a smoking kid," Dors said. "It was just of a kid in Romania and how his life is. You can never make a serious documentary if you always have to think about what Flickr will delete."

There may be legitimate reasons to take action, such as to stop spam, security threats, copyright infringement and child pornography, but many cases aren't clear-cut, and balancing competing needs can get thorny.

"We often get caught in the middle between a rock and a hard place," said Christine Jones, general counsel with service provider GoDaddy.com Inc. "We're obviously sensitive to the freedoms we have, particularly in this country, to speak our mind, (yet) we want to be good corporate citizens and make the Internet a better and safer place."

In Dors' case, the law is fully with Yahoo. Its terms of service, similar to those of other service providers, gives Yahoo "sole discretion to pre-screen, refuse or remove any content." Service providers aren't required to police content, but they aren't prohibited from doing so.

While mindful of free speech and other rights, Yahoo and other companies say they must craft and enforce guidelines that go beyond legal requirements to protect their brands and foster safe, enjoyable communities — ones where minors may be roaming.

Guidelines help "engender a positive community experience," one to which users will want to return, said Anne Toth, Yahoo's vice president for policy.

Dors ultimately got his photo restored a second time, and Yahoo has apologized, acknowledging its community managers went too far.

Heather Champ, community director for Flickr, said the company crafts policies based on feedback from users and trains employees to weigh disputes fairly and consistently, though mistakes can happen.

"We're humans," she said. "We're pretty transparent when we make mistakes. We have a record of being good about stepping up and fessing up."

But that underscores another consequence of having online commons controlled by private corporations. Rules aren't always clear, enforcement is inconsistent, and users can find content removed or accounts terminated without a hearing. Appeals are solely at the service provider's discretion.

Users get caught in the crossfire as hundreds of individual service representatives apply their own interpretations of corporate policies, sometimes imposing personal agendas or misreading guidelines.

To wit: Verizon Wireless barred an abortion-rights group from obtaining a "short code" for conducting text-messaging campaigns, while LiveJournal suspended legitimate blogs on fiction and crime victims in a crackdown on pedophilia. Two lines criticizing President Bush disappeared from AT&T Inc.'s webcast of a Pearl Jam concert. All three decisions were reversed only after senior executives intervened amid complaints.

Inconsistencies and mysteries behind decisions lead to perceptions that content is being stricken merely for being unpopular.

"As we move more of our communications into social networks, how are we limiting ourselves if we can't see alternative points of view, if we can't see the things that offend us?" asked Fred Stutzman, a University of North Carolina researcher who tracks online communities.

First Amendment protections generally do not extend to private property in the physical world, allowing a shopping mall to legally kick out a customer wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a smoking child.

With online services becoming greater conduits than shopping malls for public communications, however, some advocacy groups believe the federal government needs to guarantee open access to speech. That, of course, could also invite meddling by the government, the way broadcasters now face indecency and other restrictions that are criticized as vague.

Others believe companies shouldn't police content at all, and if they do, they should at least make clearer the rules and the mechanisms for appeal.

"Vagueness does not inspire the confidence of people and leaves room for gaming the system by outside groups," said Lauren Weinstein, a veteran computer scientist and Internet activist. "When the rules are clear and the grievance procedures are clear, then people know what they are working with and they at least have a starting point in urging changes in those rules."

But Marjorie Heins, director of the Free Expression Policy Project, questions whether the private sector is equipped to handle such matters at all. She said written rules mean little when service representatives applying them "tend to be tone-deaf. They don't see context."

At least when a court order or other governmental action is involved, "there's more of a guarantee of due process protections," said Robin Gross, executive director of the civil-liberties group IP Justice. With a private company, users' rights are limited to the service provider's contractual terms of services.

Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard professor who recently published a book on threats to the Internet's openness, said parties unhappy with sensitive materials online are increasingly aware they can simply pressure service providers and other intermediaries.

"Going after individuals can be difficult. They can be hard to find. They can be hard to sue," Zittrain said. "Intermediaries still have a calculus where if a particular Web site is causing a lot of trouble ... it may not be worth it to them."

Unable to stop purveyors of child pornography directly, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo recently persuaded three major access providers to disable online newsgroups that distribute such images. But rather than cut off those specific newsgroups, all three decided to reduce administrative hassles by also disabling thousands of legitimate groups devoted to TV shows, the New York Mets and other topics.

Gordon Lyon, who runs a site that archives e-mail postings on security, found his domain name suddenly deactivated because one entry contained MySpace passwords obtained by hackers.

He said MySpace went directly to domain provider GoDaddy, which effectively shut down his entire site, rather than contact him to remove the one posting or replace passwords with asterisks. GoDaddy justified such drastic measures, saying that waiting to reach Lyon would have unnecessarily exposed MySpace passwords, including those to profiles of children.
To read more click the link
http://greatlibrarynews.blogspot.com/2008/07/public-online-spaces-dont-carry-speech.html

Free speech and fearless listening
By Rashme Sehgal
The digital revolution has ensured that more and more films are made on subjects dealing with exploitation, injustice and terror. But filmmakers from South Asia reported the intensity and frequency of state, mob and media censorship is also increasing

The spectre of censorship is spreading through South Asia, manipulating control of its democratic structures and traditions and creating increasingly authoritarian regimes.
Expressing concern at this trend, documentary filmmakers, lawyers and journalists from across South Asia gathered at the Max Mueller Bhavan in New Delhi in February 2006 to participate in a seminar titled ‘Free Speech and Fearless Listening: The Encounter with Censorship in South Asia’.
Sri Lanka’s Vimukhti Jayasundra’s film The Forsaken Land won a prestigious prize at the Cannes Festival in 2005. A triumphant Jayasundra returned home and to his surprise, he found a hostile environment. There were no reviews and no criticism either. As if this was not discouragement enough, the army entered the fray and decided “it was not a good film” and must be banned. Jayasundra got news that a group of army officers were planning to kill him and the members of his crew. Jayasundra fled the country and remained in exile for several months.

Prasanna Vithanage, also from Sri Lanka, described how several kinds of censorship have made life very difficult for the independent documentary maker who he describes as “being part of a vanishing breed”. Corporate censorship ensured that only large production houses were given the finance to make films. Worse was the draconian ‘army censorship law’ whereby any film that was perceived to affect national security would not receive a censor certificate.

The former was extremely dangerous because the intensification of the ethnic war had created a situation where filmmakers had become soft targets against whom it was easy to whip up a sentiment of hate.

Filmmaker Tanvir Mokkamel from Bangladesh confirmed the presence of a harsh censorship regime in his country. Although he is director of the Bangladesh Film Institute, he described how he has had several skirmishes with the censor board which behaved in contradictory ways that could be harsh, trivial or downright inconsistent.

Mokkamel recalls, “Many of my films were banned including my documentary Remembrance of ’71. The film focused on the killing of over 300 intellectuals in then East Pakistan. They were kidnapped, blindfolded and shot by the soldiers of the Pakistani army and by Islamic fundamentalists. It was one of the most horrifying periods of our life.”

Mokkamel added when his feature film Nadir Nam Modhumat (A River Named Modhumati) was being screened before the censor board. It turned out that the film had several shots of boats negotiating the river. The boat however turned out to be an election symbol of the opposition party and that had the censor board worried. “Why are there so many boats in the film?” he was asked.
Hasan Zaidi, writer and filmmaker from Karachi, pointed out that the present quasi-military dictatorship in Pakistan was following the method of “killing through ambiguity”. The government was not clamping down on the media but was concentrating on tightening the screws on the television media. For one, it was much easier to put pressure on their owners, and for another, television reached much wider audiences. It was for this reason that Indian networks had been taken off the air since they were threatening the cultural sanctity of the nation.
Anurag Kashyap, who has written scripts for such hits as Satya, Yuva and Nayak, describes the insurmountable problems that he faced while trying to release his two films Paanch and Black Friday. Paanch deals with the sub-culture of violence that has spread through Mumbai while Black Friday deals with the Mumbai riots of 1992. Kashyap described how Black Friday had received a censor clearance. But eight hours before its release, the consent was withdrawn. “I realised then that the police did not want it to be screened; neither did the politicians. .. Underlying this changed stance was the fact that if this film was released, other filmmakers would also start making similar films,” said Kashyap.

Other parallel issues were also explored during the course of this three-day seminar. At a session dealing with censorship-related laws participants pointed out the problems of invoking the right to freedom of expression laws because these invariably led to the invoking of other restrictions. Lawrence Liang, a Bangalore-based lawyer, spoke about the need to move from a prohibitive model which curtails freedom of speech to the productive model which removes curbs on creativity.

Surprisingly, censorship is as prevalent in western nations as it is in our part of the world. The highly-acclaimed German filmmaker Andres Veiel spoke about the problems he faced while making a film on Alfred Herrhausen, the chairman of Deutsche Bank, who is reported to have been killed by the CIA (at the behest of US banks) because he wanted to waive third world debt. While there was no proof about this theory, Veiel admits to having been at the receiving end of intimidation and threats. The film called Black Box Germany received the European Film Award for best documentary of 2001.
InfoChange News & Features, March 2006
http://infochangeindia.org/200603116240/Film-Forum/News-Views/Free-speech-and-fearless-listening.html

'Everyone has right to freedom of speech'
Fri, Mar 28 07:19 PM

Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan refused to be drawn into a controversy over the MNS campaign against him saying that India was a free country and everyone has a right to freedom of expression.

"India is a free country and we have the right to freedom of speech and expression. I abide and respect the Constitution. Beyond this I have nothing to say," Bachchan said on the sidelines of International Indian Film Academy function.

Bachchan, who is the Brand Ambassador of IIFA, also said that he was not affected by the comments made by Maharashtra Navnirman Sena.
http://in.news.yahoo.com/indianexpress/20080328/r_t_ie_en_bwd/ten-everyone-has-right-to-freedom-of-spe-80df384.html
http://www.mumbaimirror.com/net/mmpaper.aspx?page=article&sectid=44&contentid=20080510200805100228367447cd2c196
_____________________________
This web log(blog) is dedicated for ‘Freedom of Expression’, as a measure/ manoeuvre of social service all news and information, posted herein, are collected from mostly electronic media/ online (published) news, the source party/ or the name who has the credit of the news shoulders all responsibility of the concerned news have been mentioned along with the original news at bottom of every news, maintained and updated by Albert Ashok on behalf of http://rainbowartistsandwritersfoundation.blogspot.com a non-profit artists’ and writers’ organization defends ‘Freedom of Expression’ and ‘Human Rights’.If you find any news/information is incorrect/wrong then please bring it to our knowledge for immediate correction, we express our unwilling ignorance and ready to make information correct. . email : rawfoundation@ymail.com Please visit us

Chinese authorities failed to respect their promises of reform

http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/95199/
CHINA: RACE TO TAKE ACTION FOR FREE EXPRESSION AHEAD OF BEIJING GAMES

One hundred journalists and cyber-dissidents still in jail. Foreign journalists blocked and threatened despite Beijing's repeated promises to give them "complete freedom" ahead of the Olympics - both in Tibet and the earthquake-hit areas in Sichuan. Ongoing censorship online and elsewhere. With just one month left to the Beijing Games, IFEX members are asking that you turn up the heat and speak up for free expression in China. Find out what you can do now to add your voice to the protests.
While Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is continuing to call on world leaders and heads of state to boycott the opening ceremonies - rumour has it that French President Nicolas Sarkozy is reneging on his earlier vow that he'd attend only if the Chinese engaged in real dialogue with the Dalai Lama - they're also organising for the masses. RSF is urging you to turn away from your TV and march outside Chinese embassies on 8 August.
RSF, along with IFEX members the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) have already joined the global appeal for the release of the Chinese "POC (Prisoners of Conscience) 8" before lucky 08/08/08 - the day of the opening ceremonies. IFEX members have lobbied for all eight, particularly, Shi Tao and Hu Jia. Get out your pen and address your letter to the Chinese ambassador or consul where you live.

Appreciating that knowing your rights is essential and that access to websites may be censored, Human Rights Watch and CPJ have published a pocket-sized survival guide - ideal for your plane journey. If you don't have enough time to order it, the "Reporters' Guide to Covering the Beijing Olympics" can be downloaded free at: http://china.hrw.org/ and will also soon be available in French, German, Spanish and Japanese. It includes an English/Chinese version of the temporary regulations, which can be shown to officials questioning reporters in the field.
Three International PEN centres - the Independent Chinese PEN Center, PEN American Center and PEN Canada - say free expression in China has deteriorated so substantially over the past year "in full view of the international community" that there are more writers and journalists in Chinese prisons than there were seven months ago. Read "Failing to Deliver: An Olympic-Year Report Card on Free Expression in China", at: http://www.pen.org/chinareport

PEN Petitions Chinese Government to Release Imprisoned Writers
By Lynn Andriani -- Publishers Weekly, 5/1/2008 2:42:00 PM
At a press conference in New York this morning PEN announced its intent to petition the Chinese government to free 39 Chinese writers who have been jailed for exercising their right to speak and write freely. Francine Prose, Salman Rushdie, Edward Albee and Ian McEwan all spoke about the importance of allowing freedom of speech in China as the nation prepares to host the Olympics.
Prose , who is the PEN American Center president, said 3,000 PEN members and supporters have signed the petition, which was delivered to the Chinese Mission to the UN immediately following the conference. “The Chinese government has the power to release [the imprisoned individuals] at a moment’s notice. And it should do so before the Olympic Games open,” she said.

Rushdie, Albee and McEwan reiterated the need for China to protect free speech. Rushdie was particularly passionate, noting that “the greatest victory of censorship is when it goes on so long that the truth begins to seem like bad manners or lies.” He said PEN has a history of helping to free imprisoned writers by shining a spotlight on the oppressive government, and hopes it will succeed in this case.

Following the writers’ remarks, Chinese writer Ma Jian spoke, via a translator, about censorship in China. Noting that he has been the victim of China’s stringent laws—his story collection Stick Out Your Tongue (which FSG published in the U.S.) was banned in China as a “vulgar and obscene book that defames the image of our Tibetan compatriots”—he said, “The power of literature is still stronger than the power of totalitarianism.” Finally, human rights lawyer Li Jianhong, who has represented seven of the writers currently imprisoned in China, talked, also via a translator, about the situation and thanked the U.S. for its support.

PEN American Center Freedom to Write director Larry Siems said PEN is not asking for a boycott of the Olympics. However, he said, “The Chinese government made explicit promises to the world to improve human rights before the Olympics, but if anything this year has seen even greater restrictions on freedom of expression and freedom of the press.”

The press conference coincided with the PEN World Voices Festival, which is running now through May 4.
Source : http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6556808.html?desc=topstory

We Are Ready: Petition to the Chinese Government
On August 8, 2007, China launched a publicity campaign proclaiming “We Are Ready” to host the Olympic Games in August 2008. We, the undersigned members and supporters of PEN American Center, are writing to ask you to show the world that China is in fact ready—not just to stage the Olympics, but to acknowledge, protect, and celebrate the full rights of its citizens.

PEN believes there are currently 44 writers and journalists imprisoned in China for exercising their right to speak and write freely, as guaranteed under Chinese and international law. We are concerned that, despite official pledges to respect essential rights in this Olympic year, Chinese authorities continue to harass and detain writers in violation of their right to freedom of expression.

In order to fulfill the promises China made in securing the Olympic Games, and to ensure that the rights of our colleagues are fully protected in your country, we therefore urge you to:

• facilitate the immediate and unconditional release of all writers and journalists currently imprisoned and end the practice of detaining, harassing, and censoring writers and journalists in China

• abide by China’s pledge that “there will be no restrictions on media reporting and movement of journalists up to and including the Olympic Games;” and

• end Internet censorship and reform laws that are used to imprison writers and journalists and suppress the free exchange of information and ideas on the Internet.
http://www.pen.org/page.php/prmID/1545

PEN Hits China On Free Expression Restrictions
"Media freedom organization PEN is giving China a failing grade on free expression one month before the opening of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Conditions for both international and Chinese journalists have deteriorated between December 2007 and June 2008, according to a report released Tuesday by PEN Canada, the PEN American Centre, and the Independent Chinese PEN Centre."

"There were very specific promises that were made by the Chinese government when they were awarded the Olympics in 2001," Marion Botsford Fraser, a representative of PEN Canada, told CBC News in an interview.

"They made very clear promises to improve human rights for their own citizens and also not to limit media coverage in the time leading up to the games and during the games."
But in the months leading up to the Olympics, which begin Aug. 8, China has cracked down heavily on free expression over the internet, she said.
More than 40 journalists and writers were in jail in December 2007 and 44 are in jail today, according to the report. PEN is following the cases of an additional eight journalists, Botsford Fraser said.
"Unfortunately, it was never the intention of the Chinese government to protect or relieve the situation for its own journalists during the Olympic period," she said.
Following people around
"There is an enormous amount of harassment and tracking people and following people around," she added. "There was a case a week ago where a couple of Chinese journalists and human rights lawyers were supposed to be meeting with U.S. Congressmen and they were detained on the way to the meeting."
Foreign journalists also are not experiencing the opening up that China promised, despite a move to allow freer movement of journalists as China recovered from the Shandong earthquake.

"A window opened very briefly right after the earthquake when the story was about the tragedy of the earthquake and the enormous efficiency of the Chinese government in getting in there and actually doing something to help people," Botsford Fraser said.
"But when journalists wanted to write about the role of corruption in the collapse of buildings, China withdrew those privileges."
China's promises to allow media to report freely throughout China have also been undermined by its attempts to manage international coverage from Tibet, the PEN report found.
The report calls on the Chinese government to:
Release all writers and journalists currently imprisoned.
Stop detaining, harassing, and censoring writers and journalists.
End internet censorship.
Reform laws that are being used to suppress freedom of expression.
Abide by its pledge that "there will be no restrictions on media reporting and movement of journalists up to and including the Olympic Games."
PEN is also urging foreign governments to put pressure on the Chinese government over freedom of expression and detention of journalists during the Olympic games.
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/media/story/2008/07/08/china-pen.html?ref=rss
http://www.complete-review.com/saloon/archive/200807a.htm#fs8
9 July 2008 - Wednesday
PEN report on free expression in China
PEN have issued their report Failing to Deliver: An Olympic-Year Report Card on Free Expression in China (and a press release to go with it, China Fails to Deliver: An Olympic-Year Report Card on Free Expression from PEN ). No surprise: they don't think the Chinese have lived up to their promises.
The American president recently announced that -- and explained why he will be attending the Olympic opening ceremonies in Beijing, and presumably this report won't change his mind -- but maybe the widely-touted-as-book-loving first lady will now find some excuse to stay clear.

PEN American Center, PEN Canada, and the Independent Chinese PEN Center are among the 145 worldwide centers of International PEN, an organization that works to promote friendship and intellectual cooperation among writers everywhere, to fight for freedom of expression, and represent the conscience of world literature.
http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/2591/prmID/172

Chinese authorities failed to respect their promises of reform
Source: http://worldpressfreedomday.org/
Dear Reader,
Despite promises of reform made ahead of the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese authorities have not only failed to respect them, but they have intensified their crackdown on journalists and others who seek to exercise their right to freedom of expression.
Chinese journalists continue to face censorship and repression and authoritarian laws, including subversion, disseminating state secrets and spying, are used by the government to control and restrict newsgathering and information and to jail journalists.
Furthermore, both Chinese-language media based abroad and foreign media have been routinely blocked or jammed in China.

Foreign journalists now reporting from China in the run up to the Olympics are regularly harassed and even expelled, as was the case during the March 2008 events in Tibet. This violates the Organising Committee for the Beijing Olympic Games pledge that foreign media would have "complete freedom to report when they come to China".
At least 30 journalists and 50 cyber reporters are currently held in Chinese prisons for reporting facts or peacefully expressing their views.
It is high time for China to respect its commitments pertaining to freedom of expression and freedom of the press and to guarantee the right of all people to access information.
This is the clear message we need to impress on the Chinese authorities and other Olympics' stakeholders on World Press Freedom Day.
Timothy Balding
Chief Executive Officer
World Association of Newspapers
A number of individuals and organisations have made this year's campaign possible. We would like to express our sincere thanks to Agence France-Presse, Russian Guild of Press Publishers, Reporters Without Borders, Committee to Protect Journalists, Yu Zhang, Michel Cambon, JiCé, Sanjeev Saikia, Keshav Hazra, Tom Callaghan and Dominic Lambert.

This web log(blog) is dedicated for ‘Freedom of Expression’, as a measure/ manoeuvre of social service all news and information, posted herein, are collected from mostly electronic media/ online (published) news, the source party/ or the name who has the credit of the news shoulders all responsibility of the concerned news have been mentioned along with the original news at bottom of every news, maintained and updated by Albert Ashok on behalf of http://rainbowartistsandwritersfoundation.blogspot.com a non-profit artists’ and writers’ organization defends ‘Freedom of Expression’ and ‘Human Rights’.If you find any news/information is incorrect/wrong then please bring it to our knowledge for immediate correction, we express our unwilling ignorance and ready to make information correct. . email : rawfoundation@ymail.com Please visit us

Taslima Nasreen gets honorary citizenship of Paris

The honorary citizenship of Paris was given to Taslima Nasreen
Source : http://www.hindu.com/2008/07/10/stories/2008071055801300.htm

“It is indeed a great honour to be granted honorary citizenship of Paris, but my biggest award will be when all women in Bengal attain the self-esteem and self-dignity my writings aim at…,” says Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen.
“I was granted honorary citizenship of Paris at a function in the city on July 7 where the city council unanimously approved a proposal by the Mayor. I was overwhelmed by the standing ovation given to me. But as I stood there listening to the applause one part of my mind travelled to my empty home in Kolkata ……….,” Ms. Nasreen said.
The author has been staying in Europe since her departure from India on March 19 after months at an undisclosed location arranged for her by the government.
She had to leave Kolkata in the face of violent demonstrations demanding that her visa in India be revoked. Ms. Nasreen’s visa expires on August 17.
“The honorary citizenship of Paris was given to me in recognition of my fight against the inhumanity of fanaticism. I have been accorded similar honours in Venice and Barcelona; what is special about Paris is that it is a city with rich cultural heritage and where the freedom of expression is respected,” the author said.
Taslimas’s happiness lies in Bengal , she wants to return her mother land in Bengal, either in West Bengal or East Bengal which is called now Bangladesh.

This web log (blog) is dedicated for ‘Freedom of Expression’, as a measure/ manoeuvre of social service all news and information, posted herein, are collected from mostly electronic media/ online (published) news, the source party/ or the name who has the credit of the news shoulders all responsibility of the concerned news have been mentioned along with the original news at bottom of every news, maintained and updated by Albert Ashok on behalf of http://rainbowartistsandwritersfoundation.blogspot.com a non-profit artists’ and writers’ organization defends ‘Freedom of Expression’ and ‘Human Rights’.If you find any news/information is incorrect/wrong then please bring it to our knowledge for immediate correction, we express our unwilling ignorance and ready to make information correct. . email : rawfoundation@ymail.com Please visit us

Call for literacy, freedom of expression and authors' rights

Writers and Translators call for literacy and freedom of expression, July 03, 2008
The first ever Writers' and Literary Translators' International Congress or WALTIC concluded in Stockholm on Wednesday with a resolution calling for improving literacy, freedom of expression and authors' rights.
The WALTIC is organized by the Swedish Writers' Union with the theme of Intercultural dialogue. During the four-day congress, writers and translators from more than 60 countries shared the bilingual or trilingual experiences and discussed standards of translations opening the door for future debate and thinking.
Call for literacy, freedom of expression and authors' rights
Mats Söderlund, a poet and also President of the Swedish Writers' Union has said that today there are still 860 million illiterate people in the world, two thirds of them are women. Literacy is an important step towards democracy, individual empowerment and social development.
"Therefore, there is a need to talk about what we as writers and translators, in cooperation with others, can do to change this situation."

According to the WALTIC resolution, literature is a source of knowledge with the strength to empower entire populations and human rights are profoundly associated with the growth of literacy and to the creation and dissemination of literature of all kinds.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations' General Assembly stated that everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory.
The WALTIC resolution calls for increasing literacy, safeguarding freedom of expression and strengthening authors' rights.
Get rid of the old colonial or cold war terms and words
Professor Hans Rosling from Sweden has used a modern digital power-point presentation to show how the world has been changing.
"Our traditional mindset is still the colonial mindset which thinks we as the western and they as the third world or we are the developed countries and they are the developing countries," said Professor Rosling.
"However, Asia especially China and India have been extremely successful in economic development and China especially in family planning. The words North and South are also out of date. It is not very accurate any more."
Professor Rosling said if you use the method of purchasing power to compare between countries, then Shanghai people's living standards is similar to that of Finland or Denmark. While the development in China as a whole is not well balanced.
Therefore he suggests people use high, middle and low-income countries or regions to categorize in the current world. That is not the only way to describe, but one at least should use more words to describe the complicated world which reflect more truth in them. For example, newly emerged economic entities are kind of proper expression.
By Xuefei Chen People's Daily Online correspondent in Stockholm.
Copyright by People's Daily Online, All Rights Reserved http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90782/90873/6441334.html

This web log(blog) is dedicated for ‘Freedom of Expression’, as a measure/ manoeuvre of social service all news and information, posted herein, are collected from mostly electronic media/ online (published) news, the source party/ or the name who has the credit of the news shoulders all responsibility of the concerned news have been mentioned along with the original news at bottom of every news, maintained and updated by Albert Ashok on behalf of http://rainbowartistsandwritersfoundation.blogspot.com a non-profit artists’ and writers’ organization defends ‘Freedom of Expression’ and ‘Human Rights’.If you find any news/information is incorrect/wrong then please bring it to our knowledge for immediate correction, we express our unwilling ignorance and ready to make information correct. . email : rawfoundation@ymail.com Please visit us

STOP ATTACKS ON PRESS

Political parties terrorize the press and media
SFI activists attack journalists, Malayala Manorama office
Wed, Jun 25 (PTI) Kottayam.
Three journalists, two of them from crew of Manorama News channel, were injured as pro-CPI (M), SFI (the student wing of the CPM, Students Federation of India) workers attacked them while they were covering clashes between SFI and pro-Congress students wing activists here. The SFI workers also stoned the Malayala Manorama office, damaging window panes of the daily's headquarters building.
The injured journalists, Nishanth ( Nishad ?) Kurien and Manorama TV reporter Pradeep Jose, both from Manorama News, and Arun John from another daily were admitted to the district hospital (Government Medical College Hospital ).
According to eyewitnesses, the attack by the SFI activists was without any provocation.
Earlier in the day, the SFI took out a march to Kottayam district Collectorate in protest against an agitation organised by the KSU, student wing of the Congress, seeking withdrawal of controversial portions from a class VII social science textbook which reportedly contained an "anti-religious" sentiment.
While returning after the march, they came face to face with a group of KSU workers the SFI men, activists, on seeing Youth Congress leader Jayji Palackalodi, who led the Youth Congress protest march on Tuesday, started chasing him and clashed with a group of KSU, UDF student outfits, activists near a college in the city.
When the activists saw Mr. Joseph of Manorama News, they chased him too through K.K. Road and pelted stones at him. While the journalists tried to seek shelter in police jeep, the assailants pulled him out and beaten up brutally. He suffered serious injuries in the right eye and bruises all over the body.
Others who came to his rescue were also manhandled by the SFI men. A camera was also damaged in the melee. When the journalists and photographers returned to their office, the SFI activists chased them even as the police remained mute spectators.
Superintendent of Police Mathew Policarp said 10 persons were arrested.
Kerala Union of Working Journalists condemned the attack on the daily's office and journalists and held a protest march in the town. Deploring the incident, Malayalam Manorama editorial director Thomas Jacob told attacks against Malayala Manorama had become recurrent since 1967, when the newspaper’s office was first targeted by CPM cadres.
The Kerala Police decided to register a case of attempt to murder against those who carried out the attack after journalists staged a protest. CPM leaders had not contacted Malayala Manorama office to condemn the attack. The only conversation was over phone between Chief Editor K M Mathew and Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan last night. “We had to take a protest march to the SP’s office to ensure that police took the issue seriously,” Jacob said.
The CPM mouthpiece Deshabhimani virtually blacked out the issue. Coverage of the attack was limited to a one-paragraph statement, condemning the incident, issued by the Thiruvananthapuram Press Club.
The Indian Newspaper Society (INS) and Editors Guild of India condemned the attack on three journalists and the office of Malayala Manorama in Kerala allegedly by SFI activists and asked the state government to take strong action against the guilty.
In a statement, INS President Bahubali S Shah said the three journalists and a driver were attacked in Kottayam when they were on duty.
"The INS expects the Kerala government to take strict exemplary action against the perpetrators and ensure that an atmosphere is created for mediapersons to perform their duties without fear and intimidation," Shah said.
In its statement, Editors Guild of India expressed deep concern over the increasing instances of intolerance and violence against editors, journalists and newspapers in recent past and said attacks in different parts of the country were carried out by outfits which enjoys protection and immunity from ruling parties.
"The Editors Guild of India considers this as a serious and violent infringement of the freedom of the press and urges the Kerala government to take exemplary action against the guilty and ensure that such attacks are not repeated," Guild Secretary General K S Sachidananda Murthy said.
All the three journalists and their driver Sabu are undergoing treatment for multiple injuries in the Kottayam Medical College Hospital.
SFI state president A N Shamseer said the trouble began after Youth Congress men “tried to tease” an SFI activist. “Our workers misunderstood the journalist as a Youth Congress activist,” Shamsheer said. He instead blamed the media for blacking out the attack on journalists by activists of the Muslim Students Federation, the student wing of Indian Union Muslim League, in Malappuram on Tuesday.
More Incidents took place in kerala
In 2007, Monday, Aug 12 some miscreants attacked journalists at KOTTAYAM in Kerala. The journalists who arrived to cover a meeting were forced into the Press Club and locked inside the building. Trouble began when some of the participants shouted slogans against Mar Mathew Arackal, the Bishop of Kanjirappally, who was on the dais. They demanded that the Bishop be ousted from the venue. Others vented their ire at the mediapersons who were covering the melee. Soon, miscreants attacked the journalists standing near the Press Club.
More than 30 journalists were under siege. A team of police officials, led by Superintendent of Police S. Sreejith, chased away the miscreants.
In Nov 01, 2004 MALAPPURAM, Fifteen mediapersons who went to cover the reception according to the Industries Minister, P.K. Kunhalikutty, at the Karipur airport here today came under attack allegedly from activists of the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML).
Mr. Kunhalikutty was arriving here after performing `Umarah' at Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
Asianet correspondent V.M. Deepa and cameraman K.P. Ramesh, Indiavision correspondent Baiju Unnikrishnan, Kairali correspondent Shailesh, Jeevan TV correspondent Ayyappadas and cameraman Suresh, NTV correspondent Sajeev C. Warrier, Surya TV reporter Jayan Komath, New Indian Express photographer N.P. Jayan and Kerala Shabdham reporter Koyamu sustained injuries. All of them had been admitted to the Baby Memorial Hospital in Kozhikode.
It was around 2.30 p.m. that an unruly mob attacked an Indiavision vehicle. Later, another mob targeted correspondent Deepa and cameramen of other television channels.
Abusive and lewd remarks were made against her; she was attacked and kicked. The cadres threw stones at the other journalists.
In COIMBATORE, Feb. 16 , TN journalists attacked by Kerala police .
A GROUP of journalists from Coimbatore district in Tamil Nadu, who had gone to Mukkali in adjoining Kerala where a weir was being constructed across the Bhavani river, despite a ban, were injured when the police from Kerala allegedly attacked them on Saturday.
A section of the farmers from Erode district in Tamil Nadu, who had gone to the place to see the construction work, also earned the wrath of the police and were hurt in the attack.
The injured journalists and farmers were admitted to the Coimbatore Medical College Hospital.

Intolerance and violence against the Fourth pillar of Indian constitutional democracy, The media, press and Information, are rising , This is a serious matter of civil concern and it is apparently nourished and unleashed by state or center Power and Political power apart from anti social elements like terrorism…
Where is the saviour of democracy? Such questions haunt us often?

Eenadu, the largest Telugu newspaper, being financially squeezed by the government at the Centre, under pressure from the state chief minister whom the newspaper had criticised. A sedition case, in Gujarat, has been lodged against ‘The Times of India’ for reports criticising a police official. In Kerala, three journalists from the Malayala Manorama were beaten up by CPI(M) cadres and they were under police protection. In Maharashtra, the home of the Loksatta editor was ransacked by people belonging to a regional party. The editor of Andhra Jyothi has been arrested for being in the vicinity when an effigy of a Dalit leader was beaten with chappals by the newpaper's staff — who were protesting against its offices being attacked by the Dalit organisation. The offices of at least three TV news channels in different cities have been vandalised. And a well-known public intellectual, Ashis Nandy, had to rush to the Supreme Court in order prevent arrest by the Gujarat police because he wrote about the communalisation of the middle class, in The Times of India. Apart from stray incidents which go un noticed!

This country has witnessed last three decades the awkward and ugly fangs of intolerance and violence on freedom of Press and its crew men. This should be stopped ! this is our only prayer to our Indian government.
source are following mentioned below
editor@expressindia.com
IndianExpress_com CPM sees no red when comrades assault Kerala journalists.htm
PTI.
http://www.outlookindia.com/pti_news.asp?id=583354
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/327434.html
http://www.thehindu.com/2008/06/26/stories/2008062655571300.htm
http://www.thehindu.com/2008/06/26/stories/2008062655571300.htm
http://in.news.yahoo.com/20/20080625/1416/tnl-sfi-activists-attack-journalists-mal.html
Source business standard 2nd july \ Editorial Press under attack.htm
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/004200806251864.htm and more

If you find any news/information is incorrect/wrong then please bring it to my knowledge for correction , email : rawfoundation@ymail.com
This blog is dedicated for ‘Freedom of Expression’, all news and information, posted herein, are collected from mostly electronic media/ online (published) news, maintained and updated by Albert Ashok on behalf of http://rainbowartistsandwritersfoundation.blogspot.com a non-profit artists’ and writers’ organization. please visit us