Clothilde Le Coz writes at PBS Media Shift:
At least 80 people were killed during the latest clashes in Thailand. But the confusion and danger that are present in various parts of Bangkok do not explain why several Thai and foreign journalists have been shot since April. Two are dead. The tense political situation also doesn’t justify the leadership’s blocking of more than 4,000 anti-monarchy websites.
Read the whole piece here.
On Personal Democracy Forum, Antonella Napolitano writes:
This weekend a Gay Pride march took place in Moscow took place, but it wasn’t a common event. The Moscow LGBT community has been trying to stage a Gay Pride march every year since May 2006 but the permit has always been denied by the City authorities.
On Saturday, a small group of about 30 participants briefly marched in the busy Leningradsky Street, after organisers totally out-witted the police an security services. More of a flashmob than a march, as it lasted just 10 minutes, but still a significant result for the LGBT community. How was it possible?Thanks to the Internet and its power of spreading information. Wrong information.
Read the whole post here.
Raffi Khatchadourian writes in the New Yorker:
Assange is an international trafficker, of sorts. He and his colleagues collect documents and imagery that governments and other institutions regard as confidential and publish them on a Web site called WikiLeaks.org. Since it went online, three and a half years ago, the site has published an extensive catalogue of secret material, ranging from the Standard Operating Procedures at Camp Delta, in Guantánamo Bay, and the “Climategate” e-mails from the University of East Anglia, in England, to the contents of Sarah Palin’s private Yahoo account. The catalogue is especially remarkable because WikiLeaks is not quite an organization; it is better described as a media insurgency. It has no paid staff, no copiers, no desks, no office. Assange does not even have a home. He travels from country to country, staying with supporters, or friends of friends—as he once put it to me, “I’m living in airports these days.” He is the operation’s prime mover, and it is fair to say that WikiLeaks exists wherever he does. At the same time, hundreds of volunteers from around the world help maintain the Web site’s complicated infrastructure; many participate in small ways, and between three and five people dedicate themselves to it full time. Key members are known only by initials—M, for instance—even deep within WikiLeaks, where communications are conducted by encrypted online chat services. The secretiveness stems from the belief that a populist intelligence operation with virtually no resources, designed to publicize information that powerful institutions do not want public, will have serious adversaries.
Read the whole story here.
On Global Voices Advocacy, Jacob McHangama writes:
On 27 May the Danish Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision which obliges internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to websites that may contain – or link to other sites which contain – material which infringes copyrights (the Pirate Bay in this instance).
The decision has rightly been criticized as a setback for internet freedom in Denmark. The decision attaches undue weight to the interests of copyright holders while ignoring obvious dangers of abuse, restrictions on internet freedom and access to information and the lack of any due process. The decision may lead to the blocking of websites that mainly includes content that does not infringe copyright and thus restrict the free flow of information. Moreover, by forcing ISP’s to police the Internet without due process the decision marks a dangerous precedent that is likely to include other “illegal” or “offensive” material in the future.
Read the whole post here.
From the BBC:
Bangladesh has blocked access to Facebook after satirical images of the prophet Muhammad and the country’s leaders were uploaded, say reports.
Read the whole article here.
On Global Voices Advocacy, Ramy Raoof writes:
AlKhalifa misdemeanor court will consider the case 8260/2009 on Saturday 22nd of May 2010, in which judge Abdel Fattah Mourad is accusing Ahmed Seif – Director of Hisham Mubarak Law Center (HMLC), Gamal Eid – Director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) and blogger Amr Gharbeia for “insult, libel, blackmail and abuse of internet services”.
The judge who requested in 2007 to block 51 websites and blogs, is accusing Gharbeia for publishing and not deleting some “insulting” comments left by the blog visitors. Seif, Eid and Gharbeia are all accused to misuse communication means including phone lines and World Wide Web!
Read the full post here.
