The digital awakening of a continent continues apace (despite the continual faltering of Cuba): The Dominican Republic has the second-highest technology level within the CAFTA trade pact, according to the second annual Latin Technology Index from Latin Business Chronicle. The Dominican Republic ranks ten among the 20 countries surveyed, but is ahead of all CAFTA…
Showing all posts tagged internet
One hand takes and the other hand represses
Never. Trust. A. Multinational. The sordid stories of Western companies, including Yahoo, Nokia and Ericsson, assisting the Chinese government in censoring material (and it’s far worse than you imagined.)
American tax-dollars well spent
And you thought Guantanamo Bay was just about illegal detention and torture? Think again (thanks to the essential Wikileaks site): The US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has been caught conducting covert propaganda attacks on the internet. The attacks, exposed this week in a report by the government transparency group Wikileaks, include deleting detainee ID…
This is establishment journalism
The Washington Post recently published a front page story that supposedly aimed to investigate whether Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama was a closet Muslim. It was little more than smear and innuendo dressed up as serious journalism. The paper’s ombudsman – a role that simply doesn’t exist at Australian newspapers, but surely should – has…
Let the people speak
French news channel France 24 has recently launched an interesting online project, The Observers,… to “enrich our coverage of international current affairs with eyewitness accounts from ”˜observers’- that’s to say those people who are at the heart of events. Videos, texts, photos- none of the content is produced by professional journalists – but everything is…
Not lying down
The bravery of Chinese bloggers against the paranoia of the Communist state continues to inspire. Read on.
Treat us with respect
Syrian blogger Golaniya on his government’s censorship of the internet and its recent banning of Facebook: What bothers me is that we are not treated as peers with the government, as if we cannot rightly judge what’s good and what’s bad for us … it is not only about censoring thoughts and freedom of speech…
Working together (ideally)
Citizen journalists and bloggers will not and should not replace the well-financed resources of the mainstream media. Discuss.
Checking the watchers
Following Google/YouTube’s recent clumsy attempt to remove (or censor, it’s still unclear) the account of a prominent Egyptian blogger who had posted videos of policemen torturing prisoners, things have now returned to supposed normality: It looks as though Wael’s YouTube account has been restored, after being blocked several days ago. The reason given for the…
Two sides of the WWW
The New York Times unloads on the leading internet companies: Yahoo’s collaboration [against Chinese dissidents] is appalling, and Yahoo is not the only American company helping the Chinese government repress its people. Microsoft shut down a blogger at Beijing’s request. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft censor searches in China. Cisco Systems provided hardware used by Beijing…